Page 15 of Echoes of the Tide

She reached for it, huffing out an angry sound when he held it back from her. “Can I have that?” she growled.

“No.”

A muscle in her jaw jumped as she clenched her teeth. Somehow she still ground out, “Why not?”

Because he wanted to touch her. Because he wanted to see how soft she was and if she felt the way he thought she might. But saying all of that would scare her off, and he had no interest in ending this adventure. So instead, he reached for her.

His hand slid around her waist, fingers curling around the cooled flesh even as he felt the strange sensation of her shivering. She shuddered against his touch and he thought for the briefest of moments it was because she might enjoy his touch. Even if that was only a dream, it surely was a wondrous one.

Maketes drew her through the water, turning her body so her back was pressed against his chest. At this angle, his tail was just long enough to wedge against the wall. It gave him a steady brace for her spine, with his tail lifting between her legs. She could sit on him, which she seemed to fight for a moment before giving in. Then her legs straddled his tail, the sudden heat of her core nearly burning through his scales, and he had to remind himself he wasn’t doing this for that sensation.

Cleaning her. That’s what he was doing. Helping her find what she needed to find. Getting weapons for his people.

He wasn’t here to seduce the female he’d been talking to for weeks on end. And he certainly wasn’t here to find himself an achromo mate of his own.

But what if he was?

To distract himself from the thoughts that were entirely beyond reality, he scooped some of the spongy substance out of the pod and lathered it between his hands. “Why were you in Gamma?”

The question blurted out of his mouth before he realized just how awful it was to say. It was like asking Daios why he was missing an arm, or Mira why she was so abrasive sometimes.These weren’t things a male asked when a female was straddling his tail and stiff as a board beside him.

She somehow became even stiffer. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because no one is in Gamma without good reason, and I suppose I wish to know if I’m helping a murderer...” He paused, tilting his head slightly even as he lifted his hands to her hair. “Murderess?”

“Murderess might be correct. I failed English class, but...” She froze as his claws skated through her hair. There wasn’t much of it. She’d shorn it off at her shoulders and the ends were particularly uneven. But she seemed to lean a little into his touch as he started to work the foam into her hair.

“You were saying?”

“I’m not a murderess,” she murmured, and he had the distinct pleasure of feeling all the tension leak out of her body. It started in her shoulders, as the tight muscles there loosened and her arms dropped. Then it went down her spine like liquid dripping down her entire body. Her legs fell limp against his tail, and she even leaned further back into his touch.

What a joy. What a pleasure to know that she trusted him not to hurt her. He knew it must have been a shock to see him, but he had thought they had a friendship brewing between the two of them. Now, he was certain of it.

“Not a murderess,” he murmured, slowly moving through the strands of her hair knot by knot until his claws slipped through them smoothly. “Then what did you do to end up in Gamma?”

“Oh, nothing terrible. I’m a thief, is all.”

Now that was interesting. “A thief? What did you steal, Ace?”

“Just a few things here and there. It started with food to eat, then it was clothing my sister wanted, but we couldn’t afford.And then I started being more interested in money and... well. It all went downhill from there.”

“You stole... money? I have heard humans need this, but I do not know what it means.”

“You don’t have currency?”

He tried to think of the word that might even match what she was saying. But there wasn’t anything that was the same, not really. Not in his language. “In a way, I suppose. We trade what others might need for things we do. We take care of each other in our pods, although I cannot say that we are particularly kind to other groups. It is merely who we are. We take care of our own, perhaps not so much of others.”

She nodded. “That makes sense. Well, anyway. I went too far. I stole from a bank that apparently kept accounts of a lot of very rich people, and the people I took from weren’t thrilled that I did so.”

“Did you wish to hurt them by taking the money?” Intent meant everything. The Ace he knew was not someone who wished to harm others, only to help. But if she was here because she did want to hurt others...

“No,” she whispered, moving away from him and using her own hands to scrub her scalp a little harder. “I just wanted to see if I could do it. And I could. I did. One glorious heist that no one had seen the likes of in years, and now look at where I am? A broken city, surrounded by criminals, taking a risk I never should have taken.”

He watched her dunk under the water and vigorously slide her hands through her hair. When she came back up, he was looking at a different woman. Her expression was hard. Her features said she was no longer an open book, and she would talk to him no more. But he wasn’t done peeling back her secrets, not even remotely.

She hauled herself out of the water, dripping on the floor as she rushed back to the blanket and rubbed her skin until it was bright red. “I have to get going. I don’t know where this man’s office is, but I can only assume it is in the upper levels of this place. Who knows what I’ll have to deal with between here and there?”

“Right,” he muttered, watching her body as she dried herself. She even bent over and ran that blanket over her short hair, rubbing so hard he thought she’d rip strands right out. And when she righted herself, pushing those strange round glass pieces up her nose, he felt something inside him click.

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