Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,17
you,” she said with a stubborn jut of her chin. Because if she was going to make bad life choices, she could at least be consistent.
Being left here in this empty parking lot surrounded by the towering trees as the sun fell, unable to start the engine without fear of blowing herself up, while that storm devoured her wasn’t really how she wanted to spend her last moments on Earth.
Without waiting for his response, she strode down the path toward the lake.
And promptly slipped in the snow.
Once again, he caught her. At this point, he’d touched her more than…well, almost more than anyone in far too long. “Your footwear is insufficient for this terrain,” he announced. “I will carry you.”
“Good heavens, no.” The only thing that would make this worse was wrapping her legs around him, even from behind. “Anyway, you’re barefoot.”
“I don’t feel anything,” he reminded her.
Embarrassed by her wobbliness and annoyed by the inexplicable surge of helpless, pointless lust, she snapped back more cruelly than she intended. “Oh, you have to feel something. Even flatworms respond to physical stimulus.”
He fell back a step from her on the path, silent for a few paces. “I do not know flatworms,” he said in his rough growl. “But yes, I too respond to sensation. And my nervous system is the same as the Tritonyri. They feel pain, so perhaps I do too. But the Tritonesse said it didn’t matter.”
All her frustration drained away. “Oh, Sting.” She paused for a heartbeat as he caught up beside her. “I’m sorry. I’m just angry”—and stupidly horny, not that she was going to say it—“but I shouldn’t take that out on you.”
“The Tritonesse taught me to do that too.”
“What’s that?”
“Take my anger out on others.”
She sighed. “I know they were desperate to save your world, but maybe they just couldn’t think how saving Tritona meant sacrificing so much else.” Like her forgotten ancestors, sent away to a strange planet, buried in the memory of a long-gone inland sea in a place that became Montana. Like those descendants who’d suffered and maybe died from Wavercrest syndrome without ever knowing why or what they were.
“It was a price we had to pay.”
“Did anybody even ask you?”
His reflective eyes caught the shadows beneath the towering trees. But he didn’t answer.
Though his silence rang like death metal cymbals that still jangled her nerves, as they continued on and the path narrowed and darkened between the trees, she found herself grateful for the heat of his big body. How rude of her to think of him as cold-blooded just because he didn’t have the range of expression she was used to. He wasn’t just an animal, but maybe he was a little feral, unsocialized like a junkyard dog tied up in an empty lot, alone.
Probably she should get used to the feeling herself.
When the tangle of the trees finally opened up to the reedy banks of the lake, the wind tugged at her fretfully, tightening the folds of her caftan almost as snug as the poet blouse on Sting. A few flat stones jutted out into the water, and with a little hop she stepped out to the edge of the farthest rock.
She was lucky that the equipment Maelstrom had left at the estate had received the Diatom’s distress signal and warned Thomas about the crash. Otherwise, she’d likely still be sitting out there with the crashed ship half submerged like a defunct toaster in a bathtub.
Sting waded his bare feet into the icy water.
Mirroring the low clouds darkly, the lake was a slate gray almost as opaque as the rocks. “The Diatom is in the middle of the lake, basically,” she told him. “The AI was able to retain enough power to engage the mimic shield, so at least we weren’t exposed to radar or anything else here.”
“It may be invisible to Earther eyes, but I can find it,” he said. “I’ll need to look around the ship, identify what’s broken, and likely return to the estate to manufacture replacement components.”
The Tritonan equipment left at the estate had included a futuristic 3D printer, but she hadn’t realized it could print out a new spaceship. At least she didn’t have to worry about Sting dragging her to the Diatom and launching immediately.
She started stripping off her clothes, tucking everything into the messenger bag.
Sting watched her with his impassive white eyes. Without a word, he took off the blouse and pants.
She forced herself not to ogle. “Ah, would you like me