by Elsa Jade
Realizing she’d drifted again, she cleared her throat. She dug through her messenger bag and held out some extra clothing. “Here. Put these on. They won’t be perfect, but at least you won’t be half naked.”
“More like five-sevenths,” he said.
“What?” She shook the fabric at him.
He accepted them with no change in his expression. “Most of my skin is exposed. And I like it that way.” When she took a breath, he shook his head. “But if you want me like this for now, so be it.”
She bit her lip again. It wasn’t that she wanted him…
When he pulled her white poet blouse over his head, the soft, flowing folds of the voluminous shirt became the snuggest, most provocative clubwear ever. The gold cord threaded through the eyelets of the V neck unraveled helplessly under his fingers, leaving a wide gap down his chest. The exposed skin glimmered with a faint sheen, as if he were freshly waxed all over.
Her fingers twitched, not with a threatening zap but with the urge to touch. He kept saying he was armored, but for the brief moment he’d placed her hand on his chest to feel the call to the seahorses, he hadn’t been hard, exactly. More like super-dense memory foam that resisted pressure but tempted her to keep pushing, like the finest mattress that could take all her weight, simultaneously holding her up and conforming to her shape…
Oops, drifting again.
When he pulled on her loosest leggings, they were little more than skin-tight capris on him, like the knee breeches on an old-school historical romance cover.
This was not going how she’d intended. Now he wasn’t cosplaying some obscure anime alien; he was the all-male review version of a rakish highwaymen.
Under her own caftan skirt, she clenched her knees together. At this point, she’d built up such a yearning energy, she’d likely incinerate him if she opened her legs.
Which was not going to happen. She was going to show him the ship and then kick him off her world.
“Do I look Earther?”
Not in the slightest. Impressive that she’d actually made things worse. But even before her zaps, making things worse had always been her superpower.
“We just need to get to the crash site,” she reminded herself through clenched teeth.
He nodded. “Can you breathe underwater like the other two females now, or will you need an external gill when we swim?”
“We’re going to take the car,” she said firmly. No way was she holding onto him while he dragged her underwater through the interconnected aquifer tunnels below Sunset Falls.
Thomas appeared with a picnic basket and a set of car keys. Lana nodded for him to hand both to Sting.
The staid butler raised both eyebrows. “Miss Lana…”
“If I stick a piece of metal in the ignition, I’ll likely blow up the car,” she said ruefully. “Since Sting has piloted a spaceship before, I’m sure he can handle a car.”
At her side, she was aware of the way Sting straightened. Was he that surprised she would give him the key? The Tritonesse had really done a number on him, making him believe he was nothing more than a killing machine. Well, he was a killing machine. But he was more than that too.
At least she hoped he was if he was actually going to repair the crashed ship and go away.
He had to move the seat of the estate’s big SUV all the way back to make room for himself behind the wheel, and he did a few donuts around the circular drive of the estate before she was sure he understood the controls.
“Where are the weapons systems?”
She gulped. So much for being more than a killing machine. “No weapons.” She had to sit on her hands to stop herself from batting him away as he poked at the other dashboard buttons.
Music came on, not too loud and very elegant. Exactly the sort of thing that a reclusive billionaire heiress would have programmed into her car’s sound system.
“Is something being slaughtered?” Sting wondered over the whine of violins.
Lana choked on a laugh. “Click the button next to it. Let’s see if she has anything else to listen to.”
The much louder and infinitely more aggro growly shriek of lady death metal ripped through the speakers. Obviously Marisol had been going some shit and had purged her emotions in heavy distortion and double kick drums. Lana would’ve laughed except she was mostly deafened.
Sting nodded along in time. “I like this,” he said loudly with the same enthusiasm he showed for cinnamon rolls.
Though she wasn’t feeling quite the same appreciation, Lana figured it was better than talking. She’d never been good at subterfuge, so it wouldn’t take much for Sting to realize she had no intention of accompanying him back to Tritona.
When they left the main road, flakes of snow appeared in the gray sky, and before long there were drifts across the forest roads that led to the lake. Despite the sketchy conditions, Sting handled the SUV deftly. Not a surprise, she supposed, since he’d taken command of a Cretarni spaceship all by himself during her first, last, and only trip off Earth.
It was high noon by the time they made it to the parking lot of the trailhead that served the lake, but the low slant of the sun didn’t clear the tops of the tall pine trees. They were the only ones in the snowy lot, and when they got out of the car, Lana shivered, partly at the cold but mostly at the realization that she was all alone. Not just alone with a big, violent, half-shark warrior. But basically alone in the universe.
It was one thing to feel small—she’d always been short, after all—but this was different.
The low clouds swirled overhead, and somehow in their gray haze, she sensed the vast, churning weight of water and crackle of electrons that in another season would’ve been a thundercloud. The slow whirl was mesmerizing, as if a magnetic force was trying to suck her upward into the sky…
Her knees buckled, and she tilted to one side. She would’ve fallen except for the strong hand at her elbow.
“I told you not to touch me,” she whispered. “I don’t want to zap you.”
“I’ve suffered worse,” he reminded her.
“I don’t want anyone to suffer because of me. Not again.”
His shielded eyes caught a gleam from the low clouds, the blank white reflecting silver. “Again?”
She bit her lip until she tasted blood. “Ever,” she amended fiercely.
His grip tightened on her arm, just a little, almost imperceptible. But she felt so attuned to him in the moment, a lightning rod waiting for the strike.
Then he released her. “You should stay here with the ground vehicle. I can find the Diatom on my own.”
That would be best, wouldn’t it? After all, she couldn’t be abducted by an alien if she wasn’t with him, right?
Except the clouds seemed to be sinking lower, like they wanted to swallow her. If Sting left, she’d be all alone with the dying day. Her pulse stuttered at the thought of being left.
“No, I’m going with you,” she said with a stubborn jut of her chin. Because if she was going to make bad life choices, she could at least be consistent.
Being left here in this empty parking lot surrounded by the towering trees as the sun fell, unable to start the engine without fear of blowing herself up, while that storm devoured her wasn’t really how she wanted to spend her last moments on Earth.
Without waiting for his response, she strode down the path toward the lake.
And promptly slipped in the snow.
Once again, he caught her. At this point, he’d touched her more than…well, almost more than anyone in far too long. “Your footwear is insufficient for this terrain,” he announced. “I will carry you.”
“Good heavens, no.” The only thing that would make this worse was wrapping her legs around him, even from behind. “Anyway, you’re barefoot.”
“I don’t feel anything,” he reminded her.
Embarrassed by her wobbliness and annoyed by the inexplicable surge of helpless, pointless lust, she snapped back more cruelly than she i
ntended. “Oh, you have to feel something. Even flatworms respond to physical stimulus.”
He fell back a step from her on the path, silent for a few paces. “I do not know flatworms,” he said in his rough growl. “But yes, I too respond to sensation. And my nervous system is the same as the Tritonyri. They feel pain, so perhaps I do too. But the Tritonesse said it didn’t matter.”
All her frustration drained away. “Oh, Sting.” She paused for a heartbeat as he caught up beside her. “I’m sorry. I’m just angry”—and stupidly horny, not that she was going to say it—“but I shouldn’t take that out on you.”
“The Tritonesse taught me to do that too.”
“What’s that?”
“Take my anger out on others.”
She sighed. “I know they were desperate to save your world, but maybe they just couldn’t think how saving Tritona meant sacrificing so much else.” Like her forgotten ancestors, sent away to a strange planet, buried in the memory of a long-gone inland sea in a place that became Montana. Like those descendants who’d suffered and maybe died from Wavercrest syndrome without ever knowing why or what they were.
“It was a price we had to pay.”
“Did anybody even ask you?”
His reflective eyes caught the shadows beneath the towering trees. But he didn’t answer.
Though his silence rang like death metal cymbals that still jangled her nerves, as they continued on and the path narrowed and darkened between the trees, she found herself grateful for the heat of his big body. How rude of her to think of him as cold-blooded just because he didn’t have the range of expression she was used to. He wasn’t just an animal, but maybe he was a little feral, unsocialized like a junkyard dog tied up in an empty lot, alone.
Probably she should get used to the feeling herself.
When the tangle of the trees finally opened up to the reedy banks of the lake, the wind tugged at her fretfully, tightening the folds of her caftan almost as snug as the poet blouse on Sting. A few flat stones jutted out into the water, and with a little hop she stepped out to the edge of the farthest rock.
She was lucky that the equipment Maelstrom had left at the estate had received the Diatom’s distress signal and warned Thomas about the crash. Otherwise, she’d likely still be sitting out there with the crashed ship half submerged like a defunct toaster in a bathtub.
Sting waded his bare feet into the icy water.
Mirroring the low clouds darkly, the lake was a slate gray almost as opaque as the rocks. “The Diatom is in the middle of the lake, basically,” she told him. “The AI was able to retain enough power to engage the mimic shield, so at least we weren’t exposed to radar or anything else here.”
“It may be invisible to Earther eyes, but I can find it,” he said. “I’ll need to look around the ship, identify what’s broken, and likely return to the estate to manufacture replacement components.”
The Tritonan equipment left at the estate had included a futuristic 3D printer, but she hadn’t realized it could print out a new spaceship. At least she didn’t have to worry about Sting dragging her to the Diatom and launching immediately.
She started stripping off her clothes, tucking everything into the messenger bag.
Sting watched her with his impassive white eyes. Without a word, he took off the blouse and pants.
She forced herself not to ogle. “Ah, would you like me to keep your stuff in my satchel?” Oh god, had she just said stuff my satchel?
He nodded.
As she accepted the items, still warm from his body, another tingle went through her. Whyyy? These were her clothes, so there was no reason they should feel so intimate after just an hour on his body. But tucking their clothes together in her bag made her face hot. And other parts of her too.
She hung the bag out of sight on a branch and waded back into the water.
Sting watched her. “You swim?”
“Not as well as a native Tritonan, of course, but I’m not half bad.” She sucked in a breath as the water rose up to her knees. “I must not’ve noticed how cold it was last time.”
“Probably because you were escaping a burning spaceship.”
She forced a chuckle, then sucked in another pained breath as the water rose to her crotch and immediately wicked up through her panties, soaking her privates like the least fun frozen margarita mistake ever. She’d left her underwear on since it covered as much as a bikini, but maybe it would’ve been better to just be naked. Sting didn’t seem to mind nudity—or even notice, particularly. He hadn’t so much as flickered a muscle when she took off her clothes.
Not that she was trying to get him to flicker his muscles. Much.
He took a couple of strides past her into deeper water, somehow leaving no ripple around him despite the amount of water he was displacing with those not flickering muscles. He sank down to his neck, his expression never changing despite the chill. When he turned to face her, she gulped in a bracing breath, about to dunk herself—
She let the breath out in a startled gasp when the water around her abruptly bubbled and heated. “What the…?”
“If you don’t go too fast, I can keep the water around you at a temperature you won’t find unpleasant.”
It was like the best hot tubbing ever. “How are you doing that?”
“My sub-acoustics can excite the electrons, heating the water,” he said matter-of-factly, as if anyone could boil water with inaudible humming. “Under battle conditions, I could not waste the energy. But you are small and take up little space.”
She grimaced, but he wasn’t wrong.
As she sank down into the hot effervescence, despite her pique she couldn’t hold back a giggle at the fizz. Maybe being small wasn’t all bad. With the heavy mineral content of the lake plus Sting’s scrubbing bubbles, Sunset Lake had suddenly become an upscale spa, at least her little piece of it.
She waded into the lake and then pushed off into a strong breaststroke. The bubbles gathered on the scallops of the lace trim of her bra, tickling the inner curves of her breasts. Breaststroke indeed…
Sting was nowhere to be seen, but she knew he must be somewhere close under the surface because the enveloping warmth stayed centered around her. Only her fingertips barely brushed the chill if she reached too far ahead of her. She’d never been a professional diver like Ridley or a tabloid-renowned beach body like Marisol, but she’d always made swimming a regular part of her exercise routine, and as she relaxed into the familiar movements, her mind drifted a little too.
No one had ever mistaken her for a fighter and that wasn’t going to change, but just as Tritona’s long war was over, maybe there was some other way for her; she didn’t need to be as fierce as Ridley or as frightening as Marisol.
Right now she was just fizzy.
Maybe she could just kept swimming, dive to the bottom of the lake and find the hidden spring, follow it back through the interconnected aquifers below Sunset Falls, all the way out to the great rivers and lakes and finally the ocean, circling her world endlessly…
Except of course she couldn’t do that, not without Sting’s bubble of protection around her. And she wouldn’t get far anyway, not with the zaps haunting her. She’d run away from Tritona and the Tritonesse judgment when really that was the only place she’d find a cure for her zaps.
Because if she was being honest with herself—just for a minute, out here in the middle of a lonely lake—the zaps were the only thing she had to call her own.
Oof, too much honesty. If this were the parks & rec swimming pool, she would be doing an awkward flip turn right about now and skedaddling back the way she’d come into blissful self-inflicted delusion.
But that wasn’t possible anymore, now that she knew the truth about aliens, mermen, and herself.
Just as she was getting nervous about not having seen Sting for too long—of course he was a shark-man so it wasn’t like he needed to breathe, but still—a spume of white bubbles erupted ahead of her. The froth cut ou
t abruptly as if stopped by an invisible wall. The hull of the Diatom.
Sting broke the surface of the water, the dark water shining on his pale skin. “I’ve opened the hatch,” he called. “Grab my harness and I’ll pull you in.”
Since she’d dived out under her own power, she knew it wasn’t far or long to reach the hatch—within her breath control—but somehow it was different now, being mostly in possession of her senses this time but still not able to see the ship through its mimic disguise.
Treading water, she eyed his broad shoulders. “If you try to abduct me, I’ll zap you,” she blurted.
“I won’t make you zap me. I need the ship in one unzapped piece to get back to Tritona.”
Huffing partly from exasperation, partly from exertion, she paddled closer to him. With almost no distance between them, the strength of the sound waves he emitted was like snuggling right up to the jets of a hot tub. If she angled her nethers just right…
She was going to blame the whole-body flush on the heat of the water.
Warning her hands not to wander, she reached out to grasp the matte black straps of his battle skin.
“Hold tight,” he said, his rough voice sounding almost excited. Then he dove, dragging her with him.
Just as well she’d sucked in an inadvertent breath at the rasp of his skin against her knuckles. He kept saying that his skin was armored, but really the texture was more like a burned-out velvet comforter thrown over that very firm memory foam mattress—an intriguing mix of textured and soft, and her fingertips longed to trace the inconsistency, as if there were an invisible message to be found in the pattern of hard muscle and sculpted hollow under the surface. But before she could worry about running out of air—or running out of self-control—they were rocketing up out of the water into the interior of the Diatom’s half-submerged entryway.
The power of him propelled them all the way out of the water and up onto the dry deck. The emergency lights were low, the pale glow little more than a nightlight. In the ghostly gleam, Sting’s white eyes were even more inhuman, as if she needed the reminder that this was a spaceship, and that she herself pulsed with alien blood that even other aliens considered monstrous.
