Chapter 17
He didn't know when he became so comfortable around her. It was probably the first moment when he saw her in the water and realized how weak she was. The achromos were dangerous creatures who could surprise him with their violence. But Anya?
Anya didn't have a violent bone in her body.
Not even when she'd leapt on top of him, and he was quite certain she wanted to hurt him. He had, after all, kidnapped her from her home. He'd dragged her down into the frigid depths where she shivered every night.
Instead, she'd asked him to touch her. Even thinking about it made his cocks press against the scales that held them in place. He'd fisted himself multiple times to the memory of her twin tails on either side of his stomach. He'd felt the heat of her between her twin tails and it...
He couldn't think of that now. Not when he was about to see her again, and he had no way of knowing what he might do. Daios wanted to pull her over him like she'd been before, but this time he wanted to use his muscles to grind up on her. He wanted to yank her into the water and show her why the ocean was so much better than being in the air.
He wanted to taste her. Not just to lick her skin, but to draw her scent into his gills and drown himself in every flavor she might give him.
Stilling his thoughts, he poked his head out of the water and peered into her room. He had a fish in his hands, much smaller since she'd wasted the last tuna he'd brought her. But this time, he'd also been stupid. He'd brought a string of oysters with him. It was a foolish idea. A silly hope that bloomed in his chest and one he crushed just as quickly.
She was sitting in front of the consoles, as she called them, Bitsy in front of her face and a projection out in front of her again.
"No, Ace, you can't go in that way. No, I'm not just saying that. Would you look at the damn schematics again before you just start yelling? Look at it." Her words were flying on the glass after she said them, but no other voice replied to her.
He laid the fish out and then tried his best to quietly set down the oysters, but they clacked together. The damn shells were louder than he wanted them to be, and the droid must have told Anya he was here. She spun around in the chair only moments after the sound.
It didn't escape his notice that she turned with a bright grin on her face. One that made his heart thunder in his chest.
"Ace, I gotta go." That smile shifted into a glare as she turned her attention from him to the glass in front of her eye. "No, I'm not leaving you at the worst time. This is a terrible plan. Come up with something better, and we'll chat again soon."
She swiped a finger through the projection before she looked back at him with that bright grin. "Sorry about that. No rest for the wicked, as they say."
"I don't understand that phrase." He pushed the oysters a little closer to her. "I brought you something."
"I can see." She slid down from the chair to sit on the floor, as she had many times since he'd brought her here. With her twin tails folded, she picked up the oysters. "Am I supposed to eat them?"
"You can. They are best raw."
Her little nose wrinkled, and he was concerned by how much he thought it was adorable. The fondness for her that stretched through his chest was almost painful at this point. Arges had been right, he hated to admit. She'd wriggled her way underneath his skin, just by being herself.
Never in his life had he thought an achromo could treat him like a person. But he supposed Anya wasn't like the other achromos. She couldn't be.
He smiled at her, not even noticing the expression crossing his face before she pointed at him.
"You're smiling."
"I don't even know what that means."
"You know what a smile is." The wrinkles above her nose were now joined by twin dashes between her eyes. A sure sign she was upset with him. "You were smiling at me, but now it's gone."
He tried his best to mimic what he thought she wanted, but even he could feel the bared teeth were more a grimace than a smile.
She shook her head. "No, that's not it. You get little wings around your eyes when you smile."
"Are you saying I have wrinkles?"
"Yes." She grinned, and this time he couldn't help but follow suit.
She stared at him with that goofy expression and he could feel a matching one on his own face. This was stupid. But it sent a thrill throughout his entire body because he kind of loved it at the same time.
He didn't remember the last time he'd been able to just... be. And Anya wanted that. She seemed to like it when he was himself, even if that self was a gruff bastard with an angry streak. She didn't mind that he mostly grunted in response to her questions, even though he tried to answer them.
He was rusty at this. Conversing. Being around other people in a way that wasn't just arguing about plans of attack or a need for violence.
Planting her hand on the floor, she pushed herself a little closer to him. This time, she didn't kneel on those strange tails. She wrapped them around each other with those horrible bones sticking out in all directions.
"Is that comfortable?" he asked before he could stop himself.
She looked up from the oysters she'd brought with her. "Is what comfortable?"
He gestured up and down her body.
She seemed confused before it dawned on her what he was trying to say. "Oh! You mean my legs?"
Legs, right. That's what Mira always called them. He had a hard time thinking of them as anything other than tails, but they didn't work like tails. He knew that.
Frowning, he nodded before reaching out to touch a finger to one of the sharp bones. "They do not seem like they should do this."
"They're fine," she replied with a small chuckle. She dragged the oysters into her lap, the cold water staining the fabric around her limbs a darker color. "I forget we're so different sometimes. I must seem so strange looking to you."
"You are quite ugly." The honesty made her tilt her head back and laugh so hard her face turned bright red.
He didn't mean it to sound as terrible as it did. She wasn't so ugly that he didn't want to look at her, but she wasn't exactly... Well, she wasn't a graceful and beautiful female floating through the water with a long tail and fins that helped her skate through the waves. She was an achromo.
It was hard to get used to.
She stopped laughing, wiping her fingers under her eyes as she gathered up the tears that streamed down her cheeks. He felt a little bad for that, although he hadn't thought it would make her cry. Honesty had always been his greatest weapon.
And now he realized what a weapon it could be.
Grabbing onto her arm, he gently pulled her hands away from her face so he could smooth away the tears himself. They were surprisingly warm on his fingers. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you upset."
"You didn't." She held onto his wrist, that grin not moving from her face. "Laughing sometimes makes me cry. They're tears of mirth, not tears of sadness."
Ah. Well, at least he'd gotten to touch her. And suddenly, all he could focus on was the soft texture of her skin. The way her eyelashes flicked against the webs of his fingers when she blinked, and how soft and plush her lips were, just a hair's breadth away from his claws.
With a soft trailing of his fingers, he released her. Even though he didn't want to stop touching her.
He kept their gazes locked as he slowly licked her tears off his fingertips. She watched every single movement, and he swore her chest didn't even rise with a breath. She just watched him, her eyes slowly turning more lidded as her gaze locked on his fingers.
"You taste like the sea," he rasped. "My favorite flavor."
He watched her throat work in a gulp. He wondered if that was fear or something else he saw in her eyes. It was hard to read this achromo, no matter how hard he tried. She surprised him more than he wished to admit.
Her gaze dropped back to the oysters in her lap, and when she responded, it was with that throaty tone that always made him painfully hard. "Why did you bring me oysters? Just to eat?"
No. Not just to eat, although now he didn't think she should eat them at all. They were delicious delicacies, not to be looked at with a nose wrinkle like they were disgusting.
Sighing, he reached for the strand and plucked one off of it. "Not just to eat."
Using his claw, he balanced the oyster on the metal floor and then wedged his nail inside of it. Anya's hand darted out, holding onto the oyster to keep it steady for him.
He looked up at her with an unimpressed expression.
"It's easier if I hold it for you," she said.
"No, it is not."
"It definitely is." She blew out a breath to move the hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. "You're going to cut yourself or me. Just let me hold it while you open the thing."
Baring his teeth at her, he flared all his fins wide to make himself even larger than he already was. She should have run from him screaming. Instead, she just puffed her cheeks up and squared her shoulders.
Like she was mimicking him.
His fins flattened to his sides with a snap. That was… unexpected, but he supposed she might help him if she wished. "Hold it steady then."
"That's what I thought."
Grumbling under his breath about foolish females taking too many risks, he finally got the damn thing open. He let the shells fall to each side, choosing to ignore the tiny wrinkle of her nose—again—as she looked at the pale meat inside.
"You eat that raw?" she asked, clearly struggling. "It looks so... so..."
"Delicious?" he asked, using his claw to scrape it from the shell. He was a little disappointed it didn't contain what he'd hoped, but it would still taste as good as always. "Nutritious? Like food that is much better than the food I have brought you before?"
"Wet."
He slurped it from the shell before dropping the empty halves in the water. She was right, it was a little wet. Oysters were always soft and tasted like the sea where they grew. These were particularly briny, which he quite enjoyed.
Taking the next one off, he waited for her to balance it before prying it open again. "They are wet, I suppose."
"What do they taste like?"
"Salty."
That damned wrinkle deepened. It made him want to press his thumb there, to ease the tension from her features.
"You're not really making these sound good," she said with a soft laugh. "Wet and salty isn't on my list of things that I like to eat."
He opened the next one a little harder, and his claw thunked against the metal floor. "I am wet and salty."
She blinked, her mind clearly trying to catch up to what he had just said. He wasn't even sure why he had said it. He was wet and salty, but what did it matter if she didn't like those things? Sure, he had tasted her tears. The flavor was still on his tongue as one of the best he'd ever tasted, even better than the oysters he had brought her.
It didn't matter if she didn't like him. He was her captor. He didn't even know what he was doing with her here or why he was keeping her here for such a long time.
It was wrong. He was wrong. Everything about this situation was wrong, and he should...
Her hand touched his jaw, gently stroking down his neck to his gills. "Thankfully, I have no intention of eating you. So it doesn't matter if I don't like wet and salty foods."
Right. He was overreacting.
Grunting, he ran his claw over the oyster to find that there was exactly what he was looking for inside of it. Nerves churned in his belly.
She had no way of knowing that, step by step, he'd been completing a mating process that was as old as time. His ancestors had done it years and years ago. They were the ones who had started this ritual by listening to their gut and the sea who guided them. She didn't know what it meant when he brought her food, or that he had kept her to himself so no other competing males could find her.
The last time he'd tried any of this, he'd been shot down so quickly it had made his gills ache. He'd been told he was too large, too bumbling, and that his hunting skills were lacking. Back then, he'd brought his chosen one a necklace made of bones. The back of it had been a massive shark jaw, and she'd looked at him like he was a fool.
Perhaps he should tell her. He should probably explain why he was doing all this and yet, that same instinct told him not to. Hooking his finger around his treasure, he held it up so she could see it.
A tiny, pale pearl perched on his claw. He had a feeling she would have the same reaction as all the other females before. It was too small, too dull. A pearl like this wasn't nearly enough to impress a female like Anya.
But then her breath rushed out of her lungs in a very long, "Oh."
Anya reached for the pearl, her hand shaking as she took it off his claw. Like she was scared that the slightest breath on it would make it tumble from his grip and she would lose it.
She cradled it in one hand, turning it this way and that in the light. "I've only seen these..." She lost her words, her hands fluttering with movement that was so pretty he forgot it was a language. He should be listening to her, but instead, he was just enjoying the way her hands moved.
He tried to catch what she was saying, but there weren't a lot of words there that he knew. He could only wait until she finally gathered herself enough to say, "This is so pretty. I've seen pearls before. I just... I've never seen where they came from."
"You like it?"
"I really do," she breathed, her voice the tiniest whisper that was so hard to hear. "It's beautiful. Are there more?"
He gestured to all the oysters beside her. "We won't know until we find them."
"Oh." She sniffed hard, and he eyed her to make sure she wasn't crying again. "I feel bad that we have to kill them to get the pearls."
His teeth flashed in a dark grin. "I was going to eat them anyway, kalon."
Her eyes widened a bit, but then she grinned right back at him. "Okay, then. If you're sure."
He touched his claws to his hearts and then gestured to the other oysters. "I am certain. They cannot feel much pain. Now, let's gather you a fist full of pearls."
"Why?" Her gaze searched his. "Why did you bring these to me?"
His mouth opened, the words ready to fall from his lips.
Because I want to keep you for myself.
Because if I keep you, feed you, bring you everything you ever dreamt of, maybe you'll give me a chance.
Because no one has made me want them as much as I want you.
Instead, what he said was, "I wanted to."
Her lips twisted into a little half smile. "A man of many words, aren't you?"
But he knew that expression on her face. He could see the way the half smile stayed, and her eyes crinkled just a little. There was a sparkle in her gaze as she held out the next oyster for him to open with his claw. All of this meant she was amused by him. That she... maybe enjoyed his company.
Daios didn't know what to do with any of that. People tolerated him, they didn't enjoy him being around. He was too difficult, too forward, and certainly too angry for anyone to really want to spend time with.
So all he could do in response was grunt, open the next one with a sharp twist of his nail, and then smile at her chortle of glee.
"There's another one!"
Heart squeezing, he told himself to store this memory away for when he no longer had her. Her happiness was a fleeting moment he would cling to for the rest of his life. He scooped the next pearl out for her, so she wouldn't have to touch the oyster she found so disgusting. "Here you are, kalon. Another for your collection."