From the Depths

by S. J. Sanders

  Chapter Seven

  Terra woke to the smell of crushed flowers and comfortably warm air. It was only a touch on the cool side—more refreshing than chilly. She stretched, surprised at the feel of a cushioned surface beneath her and the soft glide of blankets around her. She hadn’t felt anything like that in years, and certainly never of such luxury!

  Her eyes opened to a pale green room. There were a few shelves anchored tightly to the walls which contained various pieces of unfamiliar tech and random bits of what could only be described as personal mementos stretched out across their length. At one end was a carving of a material so white she wondered if it were from whale bone or ivory. Some of the smaller whales went extinct a long time ago, leaving only the largest and strongest from among their ranks. Sometimes fisherman would come back with whale bone that they’d found on various beaches, or giant tusks from the bull walruses that still inhabited the far northern waters in surprising numbers.

  She rubbed her eye as she sat up. Did a fisherman rescue her from the sea? A rich one, given the state of the cabin and the numerous signs of tech. Maybe a merchant came across her… That seemed more likely given her surroundings.

  Sliding her legs from beneath the bedding, Terra inspected her ankle closely. To her surprise there was no sign of venom. Not one painful mark. How was that possible?

  She heard a door slide open.

  “Good. You are awake,” a deep voice spoke melodically.

  Glancing over at the source, she froze. The big alien from the beach stood by the door holding a tray in its hands. Its eyes slid over her contemplatively before it spoke again.

  “I am Ji’wa, the commander and prime male of the Li’lal’fa pod. Who are you, female?” he inquired politely at her side.

  “Terra,” she choked out nervously, happy that her voice didn’t betray her and doom her to squawk embarrassingly. He’d been surprising and more than a little scary in that brief initial meeting at the beach, but now his strong presence and something else she couldn’t put a finger on made him more than a little intimidating for different reasons. “I am a human. No profession or status,” she offered uncertainly. “Terra the shipwrecked might be the best designation.”

  “You are alone then.” It wasn’t a question, but a mild observation. She knew she could protest it and claim that she had people on the island somewhere, or fishing out further on the ocean that would be back any day with fresh catches, but what would that get her? Sooner or later, he would realize it was not true. Lying would not improve her situation any.

  “I am,” she said. “But by choice. I chose to leave the dangers of the cities. It is better to be alone than to worry about someone trying to kill you or take everything you have. I choose this life out of necessity.”

  He cocked his head and nodded before he walked by, giving her a view of his back side. Just below the long fringe of his hair that swung gracefully with his movement, he had long, flat… what could only be described as spines that lay flat against his arms, and larger ones along his back and down the length of his long tail. The tail had a thick fringe of brilliant orange.

  Ji’wa glanced at her curiously as he set the tray down near the bed and raised his tail for her inspection. She watched in awe as the spines raised, drawing the fleshy webbing that ran down his tail taut and terminating as a tail fin like some kind of fan. Despite the beauty of the webbing that varied in color from the hue of the sunset to the shiniest copper, the spines extended beyond the webbing with a needle-like sharpness to them.

  The spines snapped close against his tail once more and he turned to sit on a curved stool facing her. Yellow eyes drifted over her with a sort of focus that she found unnerving. It made her skin tighten with awareness everywhere his gaze touched.

  “How are you feeling?” he inquired.

  She fidgeted. His voice was having a strange effect on her, or was it the smell that seemed to get more intense when he came to sit beside her? She couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but her skin felt tight and hot and her sex was clenching, a hot flush of arousal making it slippery. She had experimented with sex when she first blossomed into womanhood, so she wasn’t naïve about what she was feeling, but it had been a long time and to feel such hyper attraction to an alien with such an inhuman appearance was unsettling.

  Swallowing, she attempted a smile. “I am well enough. I don’t hurt, anyway.”

  His lips pulled up in an answering masculine smile as his nostrils and the vents running from his nose to his outer eye expanded. She was certain that he was scenting her. Her suspicions were confirmed as he closed his eyes with a delighted expression. He shuddered and let out a musical moan. Those yellow eyes opened, warmed to an almost golden color. He turned away as if it had never happened and poured something hot into a cup and handed it to her. She sniffed her cup and, smelling only a sweetness reminiscent of mint and chamomile, she took an experimental sip.

  “I must say that your pheromones are without a doubt quite exquisite,” he murmured conversationally as he brought his own cup to his mouth. “I really wasn’t expecting that, but I am not sure why not.” He took a contemplative sip from his cup as Terra struggled to swallow the brew rather than spew it out in surprise. It took some doing, but she managed to get it swallowed down, though some of it had still managed to sneak down the wrong way, sending her into a coughing fit.

  With a lingering cough, she gave him a watery look. “I’m sorry, but what is that supposed to mean?”

  Again, he responded with a tiny smile as if he was uncertain as well as to how this whole meeting should go.

  “My apologies… That was a bit direct, wasn’t it? I am afraid we have much to discuss, and these are foreign waters for me in the most literal sense.”

  “Okay, let’s start with, ‘What do you want with me?’” It wasn’t the most original question, but the one which weighed the most on her mind. She could think of no reason why the alien would have gone through so much trouble to acquire her. First, he’d spent days watching for her on the island. Now he’d brought her to what she could only assume was his home.

  His smile widened. “I suppose you can say that what I want from you is what a male would desire from the right female who he brings into his abode…”

  “What, friendship? A random fuck? Help me out here just a little,” she said. His lack of aggression had increased her comfort enough that it had a woeful effect on her mental filter. That had been another reason she didn’t do well among the cities. She was far too direct even in the best situations, and her mouth hadn’t helped her much.

  His lip curled at her suggestion, revealing the terribly sharp edges of his teeth, and he sat his cup down with a clink on the tray. “Is that what you would imagine? I have numerous individuals in my pod who I count as friends. Why would I bring you into my chambers to seek friendship when just about any setting would be more appropriate? As for the other question, if by fuck you refer to sex as my translator suggests, then no, it wouldn’t be random at all. Sirei are not made that way. Not only do we not sexually mature for anyone but our mate, our sexual needs are pinned to our attachment to our mates, which develop almost immediately.”

  “Okay…” she said. “That was an awesome crash course in sirei sexual education. So, no fucking and no friendship, then what?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested in fucking,” he said matter-of-factly as if they were discussing the weather. “It just would be wholly, very specifically with you.” His eyes gleamed at his final words, delivering a full punch of heat that caught her off guard.

  He was smoldering at her!

  The interest that jumped into wakefulness within her demanded satisfaction. All the years of being alone weighed on her, and here was a man… an alien male… propositioning her with more tact and desire than she’d ever been on the receiving end in the hasty fucks along the docks or tumbling in a bed on his boat or hers late into the night.

  His want seared her and ignited her own. Would s
he be able to embrace that sort of passion and be able to walk away when it was over? What about the whole no random sex thing?”

  “I’m afraid you have me confused. What exactly are you saying?”

  “It is simple really,” he said, his voice lilting with subtle notes on each word that called to her like the song of a fabled siren that sailors still whispered of in hushed voices. If only they knew and could witness the real thing!

  “How so?” she asked softly, meeting his eyes as desire rolled over her in hot, heady waves.

  He leaned forward and she inhaled the rich scent of him. Crushed roses and a spice that teased some forgotten memory. His gaze held hers as he reached out and ran one tough ivory hand down the side of her face.

  “In all the revolutions I’ve been alive, it has all come to this moment. I never suspected that the strange female on the shores would be the one to mature me… but you have. It was before I could scent you, but the taste of you upon my tongue when I was attempting to save your life, and the feel of your body pressed against mine was all it took. Sometimes it happens quickly like that, other times after numerous meetings over a great many rotations. Because of you, I feel the desire to mate for the first time in my life. I desire you, but I also need you,” he said quietly.

  “Need me?” She shook her head in confusion. “No one needs me.”

  “I do. I am already forming a deep bonding attachment to you with every second I spend in your presence, just as you are to me. I recognize the signs as clearly as I would see it in my own species. So alike and yet so different. We will need to be close to each other.”

  Terra ran a hand through her hair in agitation, panic flaring in her chest at the idea of being locked into something she never signed up for. She left the cities to get away from males accosting her, and now it was happening in an entirely different way. He had saved her and was now claiming some sort of bizarre alien ownership even if it was mutual. “This is… a lot. I am going to need some time to think on this.”

  He looked as if he were about to object and she stiffened for a fight, but to her surprise he let out a breath and inclined his head. “Perhaps time for adjustment would be ideal for both of us. I can return you to the island if you will take some basic supplies with you and permit me to continue my courting.”

  “How long are we talking?” she asked suspiciously. “Are you going to be hanging around all the time until I cave?”

  He shook his head in amusement. “Humans must be a suspicious and capricious people. No, my little mate. I have many duties that I must attend to here in the dome before I can escort you back up through the seas.”

  Terra shot to her feet with exhilaration. “We’re in a dome under water?”

  Ji’wa outright laughed. “That we are. The medic is altering a respiratory device for young sirei. This should make it much easier to swim with you as you will be able to breathe for yourself rather than having me breathe for both of us. It will be ready shortly.”

  She turned and regarded him with shock, her fingers running across her lips. “You kept me alive by breathing for me? Thank you. That was very kind,” she murmured as it hit her just how close she’d come to losing her life. She would have been dead if he hadn’t generously provided for her.

  His gaze softened as he stood, his large body towering over her as he looked down at her through hooded eyes. “There is no need to thank me for the one thing that, in the end, has brought me the utmost joy.” He extended one large, formidable hand. “Come. Let’s see about your respirator. It should be nearly finished by now. The idea of courting you away from curious eyes makes me eager to return to the island. I truly look forward to the rotations ahead. I will prove to you the strength of the attachment between us and the bonds of mates. You deserve nothing less.”

  A shiver raced up her spine and somehow, despite all the bad come-ons and terrible lines she’d heard on the floating city, she couldn’t help but feel that there was nothing but truth in what he spoke. She offered him a hesitant smile and placed her hand trustingly in his.

  Chapter Eight

  Ji’wa was waiting for her on the beach. Although he’d packed her numerous blankets, soft pillows, foods, spices, and several loose robes that were apparently common among his race though she’d never seen him in one yet, he stood waiting with three fish already spitted over a fire. His face brightened at her approach and she blushed. She couldn’t remember anyone looking so happy to see her.

  To her surprise, he’d brought up two curved stools and had set them side by side in front of the fire. As always, his fins were closed, but she’d dreamed the night before of the way they looked as they’d swam through the sea, the bio-luminescent markings brightening the water around them even more than the natural sunlight as his flame colored fins and tail cut through the water like living fire. None of the beauty she had seen in the water had been able to compare to the sight. Even then, she had felt in awe that this was the male who fate had tied with her.

  “I have brought you a gift,” he told her as they sat together. She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  “You gave me a lot already yesterday,” she reminded him with an amused shake of her head.

  His tail flicked impatiently, fanning out a little as it had a habit of doing. “It is not the same. Those were necessary provisions—and the robe looks lovely on you, just as I knew it would,” he praised as his eyes appraised her with another of his heated looks that she was coming to covet in the space of a single day. She’d hoped to get that reaction from him when she carefully selected a pearl pink robe with delicate stitching of what appeared to be flowers. “But this,” he said as he leaned so close to her that she felt the heat from his body, “is a gift.”

  Nestled in his large palm was a necklace. It wasn’t some randomly strung together shell beads that she and her friends had played with as children. It was an exquisite piece of art.

  “It’s gorgeous,” she breathed.

  He nodded, his hand shifting so that the light hit stones the like of which she’d never seen. They were arranged into a sweeping shape that reminded her of a pair of stylized tail fins twined together in elegant curves. “It was my mother’s,” he said. “My father gave it to her when they mated, just as his father had given it to his mother. It has come down through our family, an heirloom of our world before all we knew and loved disappeared. The design is an old one called ‘tying of two.’ It reminds us that though we are separate and different,” he gave her a small smile at that, “we are also the same. We are one as two tails tied together.”

  “I don’t have a tail,” she teased.

  His eyes sparkled with humor as he leaned forward, looped the pendant around her neck, and whispered back, “I can work with that.”

  The weight of promise in his tone made her shiver with pleasure, but as before when things has seemed to heat up, he respectfully retreated, leaving her in a state of frustrated sexual need. He knew it too. She could tell by the way his nostrils and olfactory vents flared, but he never again commented on it, nor did he attempt to seduce her. Part of her wished he would and take the decision out of her hands. Logically, however, she knew she was being smart. Even if some of her insisted otherwise, she still wanted to make the choice.

  Still, it didn’t make it any easier when he left. It seemed that all too soon he had to return to the sea. She was startled at how dismayed she was at the thought. When he stepped back into the water, she felt as if her heart was breaking. It had to be the need that he spoke of. She had been uncomfortable the first time when he left her on the beach, but now it was infinitely worse!

  The next day wasn’t any better when he had to leave, though his visit always made the grief that settled over her when he left worth it. He made her smile and listened to her even when she wasn’t talking about anything specific. Though he spoke of his pod and his people, he rarely spoke of anything going on in the dome itself. For weeks, they had the same routine, and she treasured
each day until one day he wasn’t there.

  A different male with a stockier build stood on the beach that day rather than her Ji’wa, bearing aggressive crimson-red fins and tail fanned as he eyed her with undisguised hostility. She paused at the edge of the beach, eyeing him warily.

  “Who are you? Where is Ji’wa?” she shouted over the sand.

  “Ji’wa cannot risk being with you any longer!” he returned.

  Terra brushed a lock behind her ear and scowled at him. He was clearly trying to intimidate her, probably to deflect from the fact that his words made no sense. “Ji’wa said that mates need to be together.”

  “Foolish female,” he snapped with an angry laugh. “There is no way you can truly be mates. You are not sirei! What he feels for you is due to confusion. He doesn’t even need you anymore. Now that he is sexually mature, he can join with another family or find a female who lost her mate. He can take solace with one of his kind and be safe rather than risk everything being with you!”

  His words cut just as they were meant to, and it took great effort for her not to shed any tears as she faced the strange male down. Ji’wa had told her how families often worked among his kind, so the stranger wasn’t saying anything she didn’t know.

  “If what you say is true, and he wants to end things despite our attachment, he should come and tell me so himself. I do not place any obligation upon him,” Terra snapped. Though her heart protested, it was still true. If he wanted to leave, there was nothing in her power that she could do to stop him. She wouldn’t try to hold that which sought to escape even if it tore her heart in two. But no matter how his words cut, she refused to believe that her Ji’wa wanted any such thing… Though that begged the question, where was he?

  The male growled, tearing up and down the beach within a small space, slapping the sand with his tail until he spun around and glowered at her with his hard, yellow gaze. “He will not come,” he admitted in frustration and her heart soared at the confirmation he offered. “But for him to remain with you, he risks death. If you care anything about Ji’wa, you must turn him away and refuse to see him. The high council is already suspicious. If they find out about this, they will demand his death and our pod will lose him! We will all lose him! Right now, while he is speaking to High Command over the comms, I have come to you to insist, even to beg if needs be, that you end things. Let him go so that you can save him.”