Page 3 of Rising from the Depths

Blake snickered. “Have to agree.”

Addison’s face fell into a comical pout. “I don’t know what Eva sees in you, Blake, much less why I still put up with Sam!”

“Aw, come on now, Addy,” Samuel crooned, returning to her side and slipping an arm around her. “You know I don’t judge you. It’d be hypocritical, since I join you on a lot of thosebreaks.”

Addison’s face flamed red. She sent a spray of water up into his face.

Eva smiled as she watched her friends. Though she’d been in The Watch for less than a year, they’d taken her in as family from the beginning. Blake, of course, had had a lot to do with that. He’d introduced her to them as soon as they’d come into town together; they’d met in Emmiton when he’d come to buy hides from her father, and he’d decided early on that she was the one for him.

“Ugh, check out what’s looking our way,” Hailey said.

Eva followed Hailey’s gaze with her own. Fishermen were working all along the dock, but her friend wasn’t referring to them; she was staring at the kraken. There were four of them, each a different color, each taller and broader than the nearby human males. Even from this distance, twenty or twenty-five meters, she could see the subtle movement of their tentacles on the dock.

She’d caught her first glimpse of their kind the same day she’d come to The Watch. The creatures were terrifying, but intriguing. All she’d known before that day was from stories that had drifted to Emmiton on the lips of far-roaming traders, stories about intelligent,talking, many-limbed creatures from the sea. That was all the kraken had been to Eva and her family — stories. Most of the kraken seemed to remain on the outskirts of town, where they worked, but there always seemed to be a few mingling with the humans, often working alongside them.

Her eyes locked with those of the ochre kraken. There was a stern set to his features, his brow low and his lips downturned. The golden sunlight lent a uniquely beautiful vibrancy to his color.

“What do you think they’re thinking?” Addison asked.

“Probably thinking they have a chance with you,” Samuel said, kissing her shoulder. “They can think again.”

“How cananyonestand to be touched by those things? They’re disgusting,” said Hailey. “It’s probably like being touched by a bunch of worms, all cold and slimy.”

Addison gagged. “Stop it! That’s a mental image I donotneed.”

Sam and Blake laughed.

“It’s such a waste,” Hailey continued. “I had my eye on Randall Laster when he came into town with his rangers a few years ago, but now he’s with one ofthem. I mean,howcan he stand touching that, much less fucking it?”

“They can impregnate human women, too,” Blake said. “They’re breeding with our kind.”

“That’s even worse! It’s unnatural. Just the thought of one of those things squirming inside me makes me want to vomit.” Hailey’s revulsion was clear in her tone, though it seemed exaggerated.

Eva kept her attention on the ochre kraken as her friends continued to talk. He held her gaze unwaveringly. Awareness flickered in his eyes, as though heknewwhat her friends were saying despite the relatively low volume of their voices and the distance between them. A pang of guilt struck her, though she didn’t necessarily disagree with her friends; the kraken were…inhuman.

Her gaze roamed over the male. Though she couldn’t make out the subtler details, the differences between kraken and human were stark and unquestionable — the most obvious of all being the eight tentacles each had in place of legs. The appendages were lined with suction cups along their undersides and seemed to be in constant motion; they were wholly alien.

Something splashed behind her, and an arm snaked around her waist an instant later, turning her and pulling her against Blake’s large, hard body.

“Doesn’t matter,” Blake said. “They won’t get you. You’re alreadymine.”

Eva shifted her focus to the man holding her, her newly joined husband. The conversation she’d missed didn’t matter; she washis, and she harbored no worries about the kraken.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. Smiling, Eva loosely draped her arms over his shoulders and returned the kiss, brushing her fingertips over his short blonde hair. Blake grinned against her mouth as he lowered his hands to the backs of her thighs and guided her legs around his hips. His palms slid along her skin, and he groaned as she locked her ankles, anchoring herself in place. He removed his hands only to continue treading water.

“I love your legs,” he said into her ear, voice low. His tongue flicked out to lick her lobe, sending a tingle of desire across her skin. “Especially when they’re wrapped around me.”

Eva tightened her legs, pressing her sex against the hardened length of his cock through their clothes. She drew her head back and arched a brow. “Here? Now?”

Blake’s grin widened. “Just looking at you. You’re perfect.”

“Don’t soil the good name of this town by being such a horny bastard, Blake.” Sam teased. He rose out of the water, dropped his hands on Blake’s shoulders, and shoved both Blake and Eva beneath the water.

She barely managed to snap her mouth shut before she went under. The sound of water — somehow quiet and deafening at once — filled her ears.

Eva released Blake and kicked to the surface. She shook her head and wiped her eyes, sputtering and spitting salty water. “Damn you, Sam!”

Blake resurfaced with a great splash and charged after Samuel, who swam away laughing.

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