Page 36 of Jewel of the Sea

“It...it is open, endless, and liberating, and stifling and lonely all at once. It is deceptively quiet despite its constant sound, and you can never see too far in any direction. It lulls you into a sense of isolation. Reminds you how small you are, and how the possibilities stretching before you are as vast as its entirety.”

“That sounds…dismal.” Aymee pulled her hand back, flattening it over his chest, and was silent for a time. “Are you lonely, Arkon?”

He glanced down; her hand was hidden underwater. “That depends on how I choose to define the word.”

“How would you define it?”

“If I have friends, a home, people I interact with and hunt with, can I truly consider myself lonely?”

Of course I can.

“Do you feel like you belong? Even when you’re with the people you care about, does it feel like something’s missing?”

They rose and fell with the easy rhythm of the surface, and Arkon searched within himself for the words. He already knew the answer, even if he’d never admitted it. Her questions reminded him of a conversation he’d had with Jax.

It is missing something, Arkon had said.

It needs...heart,Jax replied.Something in the center to give it life.

They’d been discussing the arrangement of stones in the pool at the time, but Jax’s words were oddly fitting now. Arkon had always been missingsomething. He’d spent most of his life trying to determine what it was, trying to locate the piece to fill in the hole. The thing that would make him truly content.

“Is that how you feel amongst your people?” he asked.

“Sometimes. It’s strange how you can be surrounded by people who love you, and yet, still feel like no oneseesyou. Like no one really understands you.” She rubbed her nose against his cheek and nuzzled his siphon.

His breath caught in his throat. There was something so gentle, so intimate, about the way she’d touched him; it was beyond his comprehension, too far outside his experience. “I… They try. That means something, doesn’t it?”

“It does, but it’s not the same,” she said softly into his ear.

Arkon closed his eyes andfelther; the press of her body, warm even in the water, the smoothness of her skin, the tickle of her damp hair and the caress of her breath. The hidden strength in her lithe legs and the heat of her core.

Was that what he and Aymee had shared thus far? A mutual understanding so deep and natural that it hadn’t required voicing, that it had existed without his conscious acknowledgment?

“Arkon?”

“Hmm?”

Aymee hooked a finger beneath his chin and guided his face toward her. He opened his eyes the moment her lips brushed his; they closed again as a heady thrill spread through him. She cupped his jaw and deepened the kiss, parting her lips. His entire body tensed when her tongue flicked across the seam of his mouth.

Caught by surprise, he jerked his head away; he’d seen Macy and Jax kissing but didn’t know they used their tongues.

Aymee followed him, taking advantage of his shock by flicking her tongue between his open lips.

Arkon dropped his hands to her legs, squeezing gently. Her taste was sweet. He tentatively sought her tongue with his. She stroked his mouth, explored it, and with every caress, he sank deeper into the kiss. Her sighs emboldened him.

This was seduction, sensuality, a mating of mouths; Arkon’s tenuous control slipped.

She stiffened and pulled mouth away. “Arkon!”

He recognized her alarm slowly, as though emerging from a daze, and opened his eyes just as his head — and Aymee’s immediately after — dipped underwater.

Her hold became desperate, arms and legs squeezing him with crushing force. He fanned out his tentacles and thrust them down, propelling himself back to the surface.

She sputtered, spraying water to either side as she shook her head, and raised a hand to sweep hair out of her eyes.

“Aymee! Are you all right?”

He turned his head to look back at her, eyes wide and shining with reflected moonlight. If he twisted any further, he’d spin them in circles.

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