Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,44
the disks like she’d chosen. “I like it better when you show me.” He stuck the disk into his mouth and chewed. “I like this food too.”
“It’s a cookie—a baked pastry called shortbread. This silvery stuff on top is called frosting.” Though she’d told him she wasn’t hungry, she took a nibble. “Thomas does know what he’s doing in the kitchen.”
“And you appreciate that about him.” Though he’d been known to tear apart and swallow whole chunks of Cretarni weaponry just to intimidate the enemy, the small sweetened disk stuck in his throat. “Knowing what he is doing in the kitchen is why your mother gave him her name with such a smile?”
The delicate frosting melted on her tongue. “Well, she hadn’t tried any of his desserts yet, but I think it’s pretty easy to sense Thomas’s kindness.”
“It smells like sin-mans.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, he seems to take great pride in caring for others.”
Sting sank to the flat stone before the fire, the food in his lap. “Now that the war is over, I have no purpose.” He glanced up at her sidelong. “And my last mission for my people is a failure since you refuse to be abducted.”
After a moment, Lana sat beside him, her legs curled to the side. She’d left off her shoes and was wearing only the thick woven covers around her feet which made them almost as large and webbed as his own feet, which he found alluring.
She took another shortbread. “You definitely need a better hobby.”
He tilted his head as his universal translator clarified the concept. “I could learn to bake.”
She blinked. “Um… True, you could do that.”
Without taking a bite, he put down the cookie in his hand. “You don’t believe me.”
“No, I…” She shook her head. “Actually, you’re right. The only reason it seems strange is because I am judging you wrongly for being big and lethal and part shark. I’m sorry. I bet Thomas would be thrilled to show you a recipe or two. Before you go back to Tritona with my mother.”
Very deliberately, he focused on the cookie, chewing more thoughtfully this time so he could be excused for not answering her directly. “This frosted shortbread cookie is flaky, like a pie crust, but sweeter. If it had a dollop of pixberry, the sweetness would be tempered by the tart.” He peeked up at her to see if he’d impressed her with his understanding.
“A dollop,” she mused. “Of pixberry. Sure, right, that’s what it needs.”
He scowled. “You doubt me again.”
She laughed. “No, really. That could be yummy. But I think the recipe you’d want for that is called a thumbprint cookie.”
“Thumbprint? Can you use it for biometric authentication?”
She smiled. “Not quite the same kind of thumbprint lock. But if the lock is to a cookie-lover’s heart, then yes.”
This conversation was starting to become murky to him. He looked back at the cookie. “I think this structure would hold up, at least briefly, to submersion,” he announced. “I will attempt a plankton and krill thumbprint.”
“I think you could make some Tritonyri very happy with this new hobby,” she said solemnly.
Pleased at her praise, he worked his way through the rest of the plate, saving the cookies for her.
She stretched her feet toward the fire. “Is there anything you don’t eat?” There was a hitch in her voice that he couldn’t quite decipher.
He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Cretarni,” he announced last. “At least not anymore.”
“Not…anymore?”
“Once my trainers were confident I could track the taste of our enemies on the waters, they said actual blood was no longer necessary.”
Lana swallowed, as if she took could taste the blood. “The Tritonesse sure had an awful lot of orders for people who stayed safe in the deeps while others did the fighting.”
“Awful lot,” he agreed. “But that was our way.”
“And what is the new way?”
He licked his fingers and put the plate aside. “I will return to the Diatom tonight and begin duplicating the matrix of the data gel you revived. It shouldn’t take long to repair the systems damaged in the crash.”
She gazed past him to the flames, tapping her toes together in counterpoint to the restless energy he sensed still sparking her. “So maybe tomorrow, or the next day. But my mom still needs to review all the disclaimers we borrowed from the Intergalactic Dating Agency handbook as well as the planetary immigration agreement, plus the testing for Tritonan genetics.”
“Perhaps she would rather stay here, to become reacquainted with you after all this time.