Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,48
a little give in his massive muscles. Tentatively, she cracked one eye and angled her face upward.
He gazed back at her. So, alive still. That was good, or maybe something more… The fire in the hearth had gone out, leaving only the tiny pilot light—had that been her fault?—and the only other illumination in the library was the luminous glow of the aquarium illumination. In that shimmering light, the opalescent gleam of his eyes told her that the protective shield had rolled back. Her heart seized at this evidence of his vulnerability.
“Oh, Sting…” Her voice drifted away on a sigh.
“Use your words.” He didn’t laugh as he had when she’d blown him out of the Atlantyri spire, but the twinkle in his exposed eyes wasn’t all the silver blue-green glow of the aquarium.
She wrinkled her nose at him and deliberately grunted, sending out a ping from the center of her chest, not strong like his but there.
The protective shield over his eyes flickered once in surprise but stayed retracted. “With a little more practice, you could knock me over… Oh, wait. You’ve already done that more times than I can count.”
“Just twice,” she corrected indignantly. “I know you can count higher than that, Titanyri.”
“Oh, it’s been more than that,” he murmured. Without giving her a chance to demand an explanation of what he meant by that, he continued, “Do I need more practice to blow you over?”
He flexed inside her, and she laughed. “I think you already know you rocked my world.” She laid her cheek back on his chest. If she hadn’t been so worried she’d killed him, she would’ve sensed right away the relentless throb of his pulse. Speaking of relentless throbbing…
She peeked up at him again. “Um, did you…?”
“I liked it. I wanted it. I’ve dreamed of it.”
“But you didn’t finish.”
He splayed his big hands at the small of her back, cradling her against him. “The weapons conclave did not want me for creation, only destruction,” he reminded her. “I cannot make the sperm packet that would quicken your spawn.”
She sputtered. “My spawn…”
His grip tightened on her, not quite enough to be painful, but for once he seemed unaware of his own great strength. “I thought you would favor my sterility since you do not seek a life bound to Tritona.”
“Tritona didn’t want me,” she reminded him. “As for spawn… Before I could seriously think about whether I wanted children, it was clear my symptoms were getting worse. When I didn’t know if I was going to pass along the problems, even before I realized the zaps would likely kill me, I’d decided no spawning for me.”
“Would you change your mind if you could?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced up at the hard set of his chin. “Would you?”
“Our sea has always been lightly populated,” he told her. “Tritona is the only habitable planet in our system, and the Abyssa who guides us warns we must float with respect in her waters, so there will be room and resources for all. But centuries of war with the Cretarni decimated our numbers. The Tritonesse withdrew to the deeps, and the Tritonyri fought alone so the only time for mating was the winter storms when the Cretarni fled inland and we had such short time to find each other—Tritonesse rising, Tritonyri descending.”
She eased her hand upward to rest against the writhing muscle in his clenched jaw. “But you never had sex at all, even for pleasure?” He’d very clearly understood the possibilities, even if he’d never had the chance to practice.
“My trainers in the weapons conclave ordered me never to share the breath of rising desire. Since I had no sperm packet, I would only obstruct a more worthy Tritonyri, and we needed those fighters.”
Outrage on his behalf brought her up to her elbows on his chest. “That wasn’t fair.”
“I defied them. I said I would fight for my chance at a life with a beloved mate.”
Having herself experienced the remorseless domination of the female Tritonans who controlled their submerged society, Lana winced. “I can imagine how that went.”
“They said fighting was all they needed from me, and no Tritonesse would ever want me for anything else. So I fought them. If they thought our world needed no more Titanyri, I would give them what they wanted. I destroyed the experimental lab where I was made—tearing, crushing, drowning everything in the process so there’d be no other like me.”
She wrapped one arm around his broad chest as far as she