Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,58

take a bite.

“This is amazing,” she blurted.

“So even weird, worst enemies make good pudding.” He lifted his chin, as if expecting a hit.

And he was, she realized. He was expecting punishment and pain, just as he’d always known. The night of pleasure they’d shared had ended awkwardly, and then she’d hidden from him. Of course he expected something bad.

She set the spoon in the etched crystal cup with a softer click than he’d set down the tray, cushioned by the pudding she hadn’t eaten—yet—but still he flinched. Just a few molecules of air displaced, imperceptible to anyone who didn’t know him.

She knew him, at least enough to see it and recognize it.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “For the dessert. For taking me to see the Atlantyri where I came from and to Evens’ shop to get my mom. Thank you for coming back to Earth to make sure I was all right.”

“I came here to abduct you,” he corrected.

“Thank you for not abducting me when I told you why I can’t go back with you.” She took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “I can’t—won’t—go where I’m not wanted, not anymore.”

Though his shielded eyes meant she couldn’t track his focus, she felt the hot weight of his intense focus. “And if I said I wanted you”—he let out a slow breath, much longer than any Titanyri would waste unwarranted—“I want you to return to Tritona?”

Now his eyes seemed to her not to blank or chromed steel or even ice, but glass crystal, beautiful and breakable.

“You’d ask me that even after everything they asked of you?” She shook her head slowly. “I’m not as strong as you, Sting. I can’t stand against my erratic power and against the Tritonesse and against the council rep the Tritona needs so badly to impress. I’m not the fighter you are. Not now, maybe not ever.”

After an endless moment, his shoulders sagged. “Then I’ve failed my mission. Failed Tritona.”

“No.” Lana’s mother forward. “You two set up the messages that brought me here. Others will follow who recognize the call of their forgotten ancestry.”

He glanced at her. “But not you either.”

“I’m not leaving my daughter again, as much as I’d like to see my ancestors’ homeworld someday.” She smiled at him. “Your mission wasn’t a failure. It just changed.”

When he stayed silent and still, seemingly incapable of absorbing that change, Lana’s heart ached for him. Maybe he was more than what the Tritonesse weapons conclave had intended, but even for someone who wanted to change, flexing those unused muscles hurt. She took the third pudding cup and handed it to him. “Eat your pudding,” she said kindly. “Maybe the mission went sideways, but you really nailed dessert.”

“Desserts always mark the end,” he mused. “And I don’t think pudding would be improved by the addition of nails.” He cradled the cup in his palm and took a taste. “It is small. But delicious.” Putting aside the spoon, he swept his long tongue around the cup in one lascivious stroke.

Choking on a giggle, Lana’s mom clutched the tray to her chest and announced, “I’m, uh, just going to take these dirty things back to Thomas. You two can just, um, stay here. Good night!”

Before Lana could roll her eyes at her mom, she and Sting were alone. While she finished her chocolate in lingering bites, he prowled around the room. When Thomas had suggested the music room for the mother/daughter reunion-fest, she’d complained she hadn’t even known there was a music room.

“Doesn’t every grand old estate have a music room?” The quirk of his smile faded. “But it feels lonely to me. A music room needs people to play and listen, and there’ve never been enough Wavercrests in residence to do it justice.”

In addition to the fancy jukebox and the beautiful grand piano, a huge floor harp of the kind Lana had only seen in movies stood in one corner. Three guitars—one of them electric and one bass—hung on the wall along with a variety of other stringed instruments, some of which she didn’t recognize, plus a violin, which for some reason made her agree with Thomas’s comment about loneliness. An epic drum set took up the other corner by the huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking what seemed like half of Montana, and Lana imagined teenage Marisol pounding out her teenage angst, sequestered in this place.

She finished her dessert, watching as Sting assessed the drums. With stiff steps, he circled closer, until he brushed against the hi-hat