Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,24

try to trick her. “I want to hold you,” he said. “I can keep you warm and we can go fast if we are together.”

She had the e-suit sealed all the way up to her chin, but despite the thickness of the material the slow throb of her pulse was revealed to his sonic ping. “Fast and hot, that’s what I’ll get with you?”

He nodded slowly, though something about her tone made him wonder if there was more to her words, as there was with monster. “Hotter and faster than by yourself.”

She huffed under her breath. “My zaps have made it way too fast and way, way too hot,” she grumbled.

Since he didn’t want to say the wrong thing again, he simply stood with the gill in his open hand. Still, he would not bridge the distance between them. She had to come the rest of the way herself.

She bit at her lower lip until that already plump, reddened flesh had swollen like a ripe pixberry. Why did he think so much of her mouth and berries? He’d seen his commander and Maelstrom put their mouths on their Earther mates even when they were not sharing air or food. Had those mouth moments helped the females match with their Tritonyri mates?

She said something low under her breath, more words he didn’t understand—and jolted toward him to pluck the gill pouch from his hand. When she bit down into the mouthpiece and unfurled the oxygen exchange filaments, the gill covered her pretty mouth. Which should’ve eliminated the distraction. Instead, he found himself captivated by her dark brown eyes, so unlike the oceanic colors of the Tritonesse who’d made him, raised him, and tortured him. Sin-man brown. His gut contracted with the strange hunger, nothing like the appetite that would’ve sent him searching for plankton or pie.

That gaze was locked on him with an intensity that would’ve knocked him back a step if he’d been a smaller creature. But he held fast, as if his feet had grown hectopi tentacles with a thousand suckers to hold him in place until she came to him.

With a silent breath that fluttered the gill filaments, she put her hand in his.

A tingle, but no zap. He closed his fingers around her wrist, drawing her closer. Her eyes widened, and inside, he steeled himself for a brutal jolt.

Instead, his pulse raced, hot and fast, as if she were dragging him through some unfathomable darkness.

When she stepped into his space, wrapping her free hand around the central strap of his battle skin, he fell backward into the lake water swamping the partly submerged hatch.

The slap of cold water did nothing to dampen the reckless rush of his blood. And when he curled himself around her to protect her, the taste of her on the water—the way he tracked anyone through the seas—only ignited a deeper craving.

With a rumble, he heated the water around them as he descended slowly toward the current that led to the hidden aqueducts tracing outward from the Atlantyri.

He’d forgotten that she’d need a light as well as air, so he flexed the bioluminescent chromatophores in his skin. She didn’t need to be afraid of the darkness.

In the murky depths of the lake there was nothing to see. Except each other. He kept her snugged up against his chest although perhaps it would’ve been easier to sling her to his back. But it was easier to maintain a comfortable temperature in the shelter of his chest.

Also, he just liked the feel of her in his arms.

The thick, coarse curls of her hair came undone in the tug of the water, and the lengthened strands flailed against the bare skin of his shoulders like hundreds of tiny whips. Pleasurable whips, which he wouldn’t have thought possible considering what he’d endured during his conditioning, but Lana made it so.

Despite the speed of their passage, she stared straight ahead, the gill clenched in her teeth, her dark eyes wide. For no good reason, he expelled a tight cone of bubbles ahead of them, the same way he would hunt in the wild, confusing his prey. The cone expanded as they rushed through it. With his skinshine alight, the bubbles streamed past their bodies like tickling, twinkling stars.

Lana tilted her face upward to his. With the mouthpiece clenched between her teeth and hiding her lips, of course she could not speak, but something about the sudden wrinkles around her eyes made him think she might be smiling. Was