Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,8
lot, but enough that she could see it. “You…crashed? That was a good ship, small but solid. And it had already been here once, so it should’ve had the landing coordinates and original security code already cleared.”
“I know all that. That’s why I borrowed it.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t realize how strong my zaps had gotten. When I was coming in to land, the whole ship went out.” She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself at the memory of plunging through the darkness, the only lights the demonic red glow of atmospheric friction out the viewport and the only sounds the howl of furious forces on the hull plus the tiny voice of the Diatom’s AI apologizing for the catastrophic systems failure.
“How did you land without power?” A note of disbelief sharpened his tone.
“I didn’t. I crashed in Sunset Lake. Luckily, since Thomas still has the sensor array that Maelstrom set up here, he got the mayday from the Diatom. He came up to the lake and found me on the shore.” She shivered again. “I don’t even really remember how I got out of the ship and through the water.” She bowed her head. “Not that it matters since the zaps are going to kill me eventually anyway.” From the corner of her lowered gaze, she saw him reaching for her and flinched away. “Don’t touch me! Unless you want me to kill you instead.”
“No.” Although he seemed to be responding to her threat, neither did he lower his hand. His fingers flexed wider. “I feel your skin. Cold.” He made a fist. “Go inside before you freeze.”
She grimaced. If she went inside, he was just going to follow. She couldn’t stop him. But even if he didn’t come inside, she couldn’t stop him from lurking.
Not unless she wanted to zap him to death.
Whirling on her heel, she stalked back to the balcony doors. She stomped over to the marble fireplace and cranked the gas to high. Surely a shark-man wouldn’t want to be smoked any more than he wanted to be fried.
She refused to look over at him, but it was pretty much impossible to ignore his massive form drifting silently along the row of bookshelves and past the enormous teak desk, toward the aquarium, where of course he stopped.
She whipped her head around to glower at him. If he tried to catch her precious seahorses, she would definitely zap him to death. And not even feel bad about it.
“So tiny,” he murmured. “So delicate.”
She hesitated. He seemed almost…mesmerized.
And she realized he was staring at her reflection in the thick glass.
She stiffened. “The anemones have stinging tentacles,” she informed him tartly. “And the lionfish has toxins in its spines.”
“I like stings.” He straightened and turned to face her with that unblinking gaze. “Very much.”
Was he still talking about the fish, or…? The waves of heat from the fireplace suddenly made her lightheaded, and she groped behind her for the marble throne. She held on tight, but she refused to sit down. She was already tiny and delicate compared to him, that was true enough, and she refused to make herself more vulnerable.
As if anything she might do, short of electrocution, could stop him.
Except boot him back to the stars. “Maelstrom left a messaging system. Thomas can only send passive data to get through Earth’s closed-world protections. But he should be able to send a note for someone to come retrieve you.”
“Why didn’t he tell your friends that you’re here?”
“Because I asked him not to.”
Sting tilted his head in that way she was coming to realize meant he had no idea what she was talking about. And not because of a glitching translator.
“I made him promise not to betray me,” she clarified.
“So he betrayed your friends instead.”
“What? No…” She grimaced. Maybe it had been unfair to force Thomas to keep her secret from his employer. “Just for a little while,” she muttered. “I needed a place to be, until…” Well, she wasn’t going there right now. Blowing off that massive electrical charge might’ve gained her a lull in the zaps.
His eyes narrowed slightly, turning the white shield of his lenses to ice with the blue-green glow of the tropical water behind him. “A place to be? It’s wherever you are.”
She snorted out a hard breath. “Easy for you to say, when you’re…” She waved one hand at him vaguely.
He cocked his head again. “What?”
She sputtered. “Big,” she said at last. “Of course any place