he insisted.
I wasn’t going to get anywhere until I answered his question to his satisfaction. “Listen, it’s true, I am half. When I’m home, in Dirtwater, I’m very… human. I’m…”
He took my hand as I hesitated, and held it to his heart. Its low thump was like a wedding tattoo as he spoke. Commanded, really. “Tell me.”
“I’m… moved by human things. Axel Rose. Caramel corn. And…” My brain dissected and catalogued the things of home. The things I loved. “Brownies.”
He lifted my hand in his surprisingly warm one and held it to his cheek, which was smooth in the way of mermen. I felt a million miles from anywhere. At least, anywhere I’d ever wanted to be that wasn’t here.
“And what about the rest of you?”
“Huh?” It was too distracting feeling the pulse jump in his neck and the hard tangle of muscle in his jaw.
“What about the mermaid part? What moves her?”
The music.
I closed my eyes. It had been a long time since I’d thought for too long about Aegira. I was usually too busy meditating all thoughts of the place out of my head so I didn’t go mad. I opened my mouth to say it, to say “the music”, but I choked on the words and took the safe way out. “I can’t remember.”
He laughed again, the moment broken and his mood changed. I felt a swift flash of grief until he spoke again. “Okay, then. Looks like a little reminder is required.”
I was surprised by the saying. His way of speaking told me he’d been a watch-keeper, which surprised me too. Watch-keepers are intense, clever, often beautiful. But not with this wolfish grin, and some crazy, hard-but-fluid body that I kept remembering naked.
Down, girl. No sleeping with the fishes.
He grabbed my other hand, so that he was holding both, and danced his fingers down my arms, past wrists and elbows to rest on my waist. Then he slowly traced them up the inside of my arms again. I was heavy, molten and unable to move. It was like hypnosis by touch. He used the advantage to grasp my shoulders in those long, strong fingers and pull.
“Come.”
I didn’t move, but neither did I resist. “I don’t even know your name”.
His eyes flicked down and up again, quickly. “You will, soon enough. It’s better we go before you do.”
Looks that would have to do, for now. “Where are we going?”
He looked at me with a heady indigo smirk, parroting my words. “I can’t remember.”
An hour later we were at the surface.
The moon glittered becomingly on inky blue swell that was like soft glass as our faces broke the surface. He grinned at me like a child. “Remember how that feels?”
I couldn’t help but smile back. My limbs ached with exertion but my heart was zinging.
“I do now.”
“It gets better.”
“How?”
“Enough with the questions.” He held a still-warm finger to my lips before planting a strong hand either side of my waist and pirouetting me through the water like I was as dainty as a ballerina instead of a muscly deputy Sheriff from a place with no water.
I waited for him to say: No-one puts Baby in the corner.
But instead, he slowly turned me 180 degrees, and I saw where we were. Directly above the deepest place on earth. Further from land than most people have ever been. There was no distant glimpse of shore, no comforting horizon.
We were bobbing on a silver-blue blanket under the light of a zillion stars.
“Lie on your back.” Somehow he managed to say it without sounding creepy, or like an ob-gyn. He guided me gently but determinedly into a floating position as he spoke softly into my ear. “Can you see the stars?”
“Uh-huh.” I was a little worried I was sounding too syrupy, drugged by his touch and his voice and the soft lap of his breath at my ear. But I was too loose and warm to try harder.
He picked up a hand and trickled cold water onto my neck. “Can you feel the water, all around you?”
Feel it? I think I’m turning to water. “Yes.” This time I was clearer. Because as he guided me through the sights and sensations I could feel myself coming alive again. I could feel the ocean caressing my skin in a way I had barely registered seven miles down.
He leaned closer to my neck, that toffee-tobacco voice barely more than the lowest whisper but warm and insistent against the sensitive skin of my ear. It shot