Chapter 22

Twenty-Two

Arges

Though he wished for it, Arges knew he couldn’t stay with her forever. They weren’t getting anywhere on his mission to learn more about the achromos, and he knew the other People of Water were losing their patience with him. He was supposed to either lead the pod, or find them ways to harm the achromos. That was his purpose in life.

And yet... It was so hard to consider doing either of those when he was so well and truly obsessed with her.

She’d taken the time and energy to continue healing his wounds, no matter how long it had been or how much it was healed. Even now, a full week after he’d been injured, she still made him show her his shoulder as though it would somehow open up again. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that his people healed so much faster than hers.

She wouldn’t believe him, anyway. His kairos was decidedly bossy and ordered him around whenever she got the chance. He rarely listened to her, of course, but he still appreciated her bravery.

Soon enough, they had a routine of where they were moving, and why. She didn’t even mind it when he came to get her, apparently more than prepared to move every two or three days.

Arges just wished he knew of a place that would be safe for her. A place that wasn’t directly in the line of his kind, while still being nowhere near hers. If he brought her back to that place, that glowing monolith under the sea, he had a feeling he would never get her back.

So when he popped his head into the air in this newest cave, larger than the others, he was pleased to see she was ready for him. She didn’t even seem to mind that they were underwater anymore, although there had been a few days where she’d been less than excited. At least she wasn’t yelling this time.

“Arges!” she said, pleased to see him. Her eyes lit up and sometimes he swore she knew what he was saying to her. Unfortunately, her robot friend hadn’t gotten any closer to creating the translation chip for her.

“Hello, kairos,” he replied, swimming a little closer and propping his arms on the edge of the stone. “Are you ready for your next journey?”

He looked over at the box and waited for it to poke its head out. He wasn’t sure if he thought of the creature more like a crab or a turtle. Some days it was prickly like a crab, far more likely to nip at him with its claws than it was to be kind.

The box did not show its face. In fact, it had been suspiciously quiet these days. Choosing to linger inside of its shell rather than look at what was happening around it. He found this new behavior to be rather disturbing. Byte always seemed to want to be involved in everything.

He supposed it wasn’t worth the energy to be suspicious of the two of them. In all the time he’d spent with Mira, he had never once thought she was trying to deceive him. She was honest to a fault, it seemed.

Mira rubbed her hands up and down her arms, and he caught the faintest shiver trail down her spine before she stopped herself. “Is there anywhere warmer?” she asked. “I know that’s a rare thing to ask in the ocean, but I’ve been struggling a bit lately. I can’t seem to get warm, and my hands...”

She held out her hands for him to look at, and he could see how the joints were curling in on themselves. Was she sick?

“Do your people have some illness I need to know about?” He reached for her hands, still speaking even though he knew she couldn’t understand him. “You achromos are so fragile.”

She made a soft snorting sound, and he looked up in surprise. Was she picking up on his language, after all?

But then she shook her head with a wry grin. “I can only imagine you are scolding me for not taking care of myself. Is that right?”

It was close enough. He nodded before gesturing to the water. “There are hot springs that come out of the vents in the sea. Many of the creatures there are startling, but they will leave us alone if I am close to you. You can get warm there, but we cannot take the heat with us.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion, but then she smiled at him and he forgot how to breathe. “I trust you, Arges. Wherever you plan to take me, I will go.”

Again, that blind trust that he hadn’t truly earned made his hearts race. This woman, she gifted him such wonderful trust without ever needing him to prove himself.

“Thank you,” he murmured, holding out his arms for her. “We can leave the box for a while. I know there will be valuable conversation that it misses out on, but the vents are no place for a crab made of metal.”

Byte poked its head out at that. “I am not a crab,” it muttered.

“You understand me quite well these days.” Arges slotted his hands above Mira’s hips, tucking his fingers into the valley that always entranced him. “And here you are, saying the translation is not ready for human ears.”

“It isn’t,” the robot muttered. “I’ve told you both that countless times.”

He did not intend to waste more time arguing with the creature. Instead, he lifted Mira into the water, allowing her to slink down his body until it almost made him groan. She was so different from him, not at all compatible and yet... the longer he spent with her, the more he wished it were not true.

Usually he would hold Mira against his chest and drag her through the water. But this time, she turned to face him as she had in the beginning. When she slipped her toes against the fins of his hips, he had to grit his teeth against the sudden spike of pleasure.

“You have no idea what that touch does to me,” he murmured, his hands flexing against her hips and drawing her tighter against him. “It is a private touch, and you give it so freely. I can count on one hand the amount of people daring enough to touch those fins, let alone with such confidence and ease.”

He wanted to explain to her how personal it was. How touching him like that was an advance by females of his kind. That she was telling his body that she was ready to mate, that he should release the cock he hid beneath a panel of scales.

But she did not mean to do that, and he should not antagonize himself with such thoughts.

And yet... They journeyed away from the cave and her strange fins flexed against him. Toes, he remembered her calling them. Then her fingers stretched up to his neck. Usually she held onto his shoulders, but this time she brushed her fingers through his gills. They flared for her, fluttering even though he was moving fast enough to flatten them with the movement.

He tilted his body, slowing just barely and swimming as though she was lying on top of him. “That touch as well. It has meaning, achromo. I know you do not know it, but that touch boils my blood.”

He was burning up from the inside out. Wanting to touch her. Wanting her to touch him more. And he knew it was impossible, but oh... He had never been one to shy away from temptation.

Mimicking her touch, he scooped his hands underneath her hair that she had allowed to flow freely. She rarely did this, and he was going to take advantage of this unusual opportunity. Her hair was so long, and such a pretty color. It coiled around his fingers, clinging to him as he wished to cling to her.

Even though he knew she couldn’t see him right now, he still wanted her to feel him. Perhaps that would work to his advantage. She couldn’t see the differences and could only feel the webs on his fingers. He traced a long nail down her jaw, watching her skin dimple even as they arrived at the vents.

He could feel the warm water instantly. It was almost too hot for him, but he heard her long, relaxed sigh. It was at least lit here, so she could see through the small fissures of red that warmed the water. Even the strange, pale crabs with long legs and antennae that moved in their direction watched as he brought her closer to the heat.

“Tell me when to stop,” he murmured, slowly turning her in his arms, so she was facing the warm vents. “And I will keep us where you find it most comfortable.”

She shivered, and he could assume it was the depth of his voice in her ear that affected her so. “Arges?”

“Yes, kairos?” Perhaps he leaned a little too close. Perhaps he slightly nuzzled his lips against her ear as he said the words.

“I’m going to remove my suit. It keeps me warm in cold water, but keeps me cool in warm water. Just the top, but... Will you not look?”

She asked the impossible. He had to hold on to her. The currents were far too strong for her to stay in one place without them whipping her away from him. So that meant she would be pressed against him, skin to skin, for the first time. He would surely die remaining still and not looking or touching everything he’d never seen bare.

Still, she had asked. And he had promised that he would take care of her.

Mindful of the device on her face, he moved her hands, so that she reached behind herself to grip his hips. If she slid her fingers around the fins at his hips, holding on a little too tight with that nimble grip, he had to ignore it. And then, with gentle hands, he reached for the back of her suit. She called it a zipper, and she’d shown him how it worked many times.

He’d been fascinated by it, but now, with the red glow playing on her front and the sudden brilliance of his own luminescence, he drew that zipper down to reveal her back. All that lovely, pale skin looked almost white in the blue light shimmering through his chest now. Every gill on his body stood straight out, vibrating with need as he saw the delicate hollows of her ribs and the expansion of her breath. In and out. So delicate. So impossibly thin skinned.

Oh, he could see her veins underneath as well. The slight flex of her shoulder blades as she tightened her grip on him, even as he drew the suit down her shoulders.

Voice guttural with desire, he leaned forward to murmur in her ear, “I have to draw this down your arms. If you wish to continue facing away from me, then I will have to touch you.”

With no way for her to confirm if she understood, all he could do was reach his arms forward and gently slid the suit down her front. It was difficult to remove. She’d said before that it was tight to maintain her body pressure or something along those lines. He couldn’t even think about what she’d told him before when the pointed peaks of her breasts brushed his forearms.

She made a little noise in the back of her throat and he thought he would never forget the sound. He wanted to bite down on her neck. To grip her hips and pull her back against him, as he would have done with one of his own kind. But then he would not know what to do. Her tail wouldn’t coil with his. He wouldn’t even know where on her body was the right place for him to slide against or touch or linger.

But then, impossibly so, she pressed back into him. Those hips rocked, and oh, he was going to embarrass himself. He had never once released his cock without intention or purpose. And yet, here he was, about to reveal just how different they were because she fingered his fins and rocked against him.

Sliding her wetsuit down, he skimmed the backs of his fingers down her ribs and the soft plane of her belly. Unlike his own kind, she was the softest thing he’d ever touched.

And, oh, he wanted to look.

It would take just the slightest shift for him to peer over her shoulder and see what she looked like. If she was just as pale over her entire body.

It was a temptation he could not feed. But she did not understand a word he was saying, so he shifted them a little closer to the heat and wrapped an arm around her soft waist.

“When I first saw you, I was certain you were monstrous. Your people are so different from my own kind. With your two tails and your strange, white eyes, there was nothing I thought I could find tempting about you. But then, every day that you have been with me, I have found something new to admire.”

He swallowed and froze when she stroked her hand down his arm. He stopped moving forward, keeping her hovering where it was warm enough for her. And here he was, boiling alive.

“The graceful sway of your hips. The way your eyelids widen and then droop halfway closed when I do something you like. I wish to touch all of you. To find every part of your body that makes you gasp or hiss. I want to know the sounds that come out of your mouth when I pleasure you. When you realize that the ocean itself would guide me into you, and set a pace that neither of us could deny. My people believe that lovemaking is the purpose of the sea.”

Then he drew her scent deep into his lungs. Tainted only slightly by the sulfur of the vents, but he could still taste that sweet scent of her again.

“I can smell how excited you are,” he groaned. “I draw that scent into my gills and tuck it underneath my scales for times when I am not by your side. Kairos, Mira, I grow so weary of seeking release in my hand.”

Again, that scent bloomed, far stronger than he’d ever scented it before. He knew it was only because she was warm, finally, when she had been so cold for such a long time. And yet... Oh, he enjoyed pretending that scent was for him.