He stared at her. “I don’t understand you.”
“It isn’t ethical,” she told him. “If you really have to know what goes on with the rest of the planet and you won’t travel on land, there must be some way of sending messages to find out. You don’t have to use the water to spy on them unawares. That’s no better than peeking in on them in their bedrooms.”
He blinked, but she interrupted him before he could speak. “Don’t tell me. You don’t think anything of peeking in on someone in their bedroom because you share bedrooms in your family homes. You have no concept of privacy or personal space, so you wouldn’t understand how a person could feel violated by you watching them without their knowledge.”
“You’re right,” he replied. “I wouldn’t understand that. Everyone here can see everyone else at all times.”
“I’m surprised Sasha hasn’t said something about this,” Frieda remarked.
“Maybe she said something to Fritz about it,” he replied. “She wouldn’t attend the convocation for months after she first came. But she does now.”
Frieda turned away. “I will never attend it.”
Now he would leave for certain. She’d offended their most sacred institution and called it a lot of nasty names. She had no business staying here. That vision she shared with Deek in the meadow was nothing more than wishful thinking, a fantasy like the rest of this dream world.
She wouldn’t look at him. When he walked out that door, he wouldn’t come back. He wouldn’t try again to welcome her into his family after she snubbed him twice. As soon as he was gone, she would go find Sasha and find out how to go back to the land.
She waited, but he didn’t move. Then he took her hand. “You don’t have to attend the convocation, Frieda. If you live here the rest of your life and never attend it, no one will care. If you want to join our shared vision of Angondra, you are very welcome. You are very welcome no matter what you do.”
Her eyes drifted around to his face. “Do you really mean that?”
He nodded. “No one will require you to do anything you aren’t comfortable with. If you don’t want to join the convocation, you don’t have to. I’d still like you to join me at our family gathering. There will be a lot of my relatives there you haven’t met, and I’d like them to meet you.”
Her heart fluttered. She couldn’t contain her overflowing emotions. “Really?”
He frowned. Then he sighed. “I don’t know how to explain to you that you are welcome here—more than welcome. You’re the answer to our prayers.” He pressed her hand between his. “You’re the answer to my prayers.”
She looked down at his fingers tracing over her skin. “I’m a breeder.”
“You’re so much more than that,” he murmured. “Do you think I would throw myself at any woman who showed her face here? You’re the woman marked for me by the water. The water brought us together, and we belong together.”
She shook her head, but she couldn’t look him in the eye. “I can’t accept it that way. I can’t put my reservations aside and accept this world as my own.”
“No one’s asking you to,” he told her. “You can keep your reservations. Don’t you see? You’re reservations are your greatest asset. I wouldn’t love you the way I do if you didn’t have any reservations. I wouldn’t want you if you blindly gave yourself away to the first man you met.”
“I have to hold myself back,” she went on. “I want to accept this world as my home. I want to join my life with yours and share a common vision, but I can’t. It isn’t right.”
“Not yet, it isn’t,” he replied. “And until it is right, you have to stick to your reservations. You have to keep your distance from me and my family. I understand that. Don’t give yourself away to me or anybody. I want you the way you are, with all your resistance and reservations. You wouldn’t be worth waiting for if you didn’t.”
She lifted her eyes to his face and found him not half an inch from her. In a heartbeat, he caught her in his arms, and she buried herself in his kiss. She laughed and gasped for breath between catching hold of his lips with her mouth and stroking his forehead with her hands.
He pulled her against him, and they fell over backwards onto the bed. They lay side by side enfolded in endless kisses until the sun traversed the sky and disappeared behind the forest. The light from the ceiling faded, but didn’t go out altogether. Frieda lounged on the bed with her arms draped over Deek’s shoulders and chest, and they intertwined their legs together in fathomless kissing.
After an eternity of lying on top of the bedding fully clothed, Deek propped himself up on his elbow and regarded Frieda with an inscrutable eye. “It’s getting late.”
“Are you sure you aren’t hungry?” she asked.
“No one ever gets hungry here,” he replied. “It’s only people like you and Sasha that need food. You aren’t used to metabolizing the algae’s byproducts.”
“That’s exactly what Sasha said,” she told him.
“It’s true,” he exclaimed.
“Do you have to go home?” she asked. “Will your family wonder where you are?”
“They know where I am,” he told her.
“How could they know?” She closed her eyes. “Don’t answer that.”
He trailed his fingertips down the side of her face to the first button of her shirt. “How does this work?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen buttons before,” she shot back.
“We don’t have them,” he replied. “This piece slips through the hole, I guess.”
She laughed at him. “It’s pretty straightforward when you look at it up close.”
He slipped the first button through its hole and moved down to the second. Then he spread the shirt lapels apart. “And what about the rest? Is that pretty straightforward, too?”
“It’s like any other woman you could meet,” she teased.
“I’ve never been with a woman before,” he told her.
Her eyes popped open. “What? Never?”
“I told you there aren’t enough women to go around,” he replied. “All Aqinas women are already mated. When would I get to see one?”
“But you’ve seen your relatives at close quarters all your life,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t examine them.” He popped another button loose. “And I certainly never studied their inner workings well enough to know what to do in a situation like this.”
He opened her shirt another inch, and she sucked in her breath. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough.”
He watched her nostrils flare and the blood rush to her cheeks. He buried his nose between her shirt lapels and nuzzled at her chest. She arched her back and cradled his head against her chest. He inhaled her scent, and his warm breath sent tingles through her spine.
He unbuttoned her shirt the rest of the way and laid both pieces aside. She lay on her back before him with her chest exposed. He ran his palm up and down her chest, down to her belly, to the waistband of her pants nestled in a tuft of hair. He discovered the clefts of her armpits and the dimpled pillows of her breasts.
Frieda struggled to control her breathing and lay still for his examination. He didn’t miss the slightest sign of his effect on her. He moved his hand an inch to the right or left and watched for her reaction before he made his next move.
Once he explored her chest to his own satisfaction, he moved closer to her so he loomed over her. He kissed her deeply, and then he plunged face first into her neck. He devoured her skin with his ravenous mouth and worked down to her chest.
Frieda exploded into a frenzy of passion. She clutched at him and gasped in excitement. He consumed her body in ardent appreciation. She pushed her breasts against his face and wrapped her legs around his waist to draw him into her.
He went as far as her belly before he withdrew, back to her face, leaving her breathless and desperate. He stretched out beside her and kissed her long and deep. Frieda held herself still and swooned in his kiss.
He held her on tenterhooks so acute she could barely breathe. Every nerve tingled in quivering anticipation of what he would do next. Would he go further next time, or would he stop here? She couldn’t bear the thought that he would decide to leave her like this, yearning and incomplete.
He gazed into her eyes with his lips touching hers. “What is it?”
Her eyes crinkled. “I’m metabolizing the algae’s byproducts.”
His eyes flashed until he saw the wicked glint in her eye. Then he laughed, and she laughed with him. “Are you getting used to it now?”
“I think so,” she murmured.
In answer, he rolled up on top of her, and his knee nudged between her legs. She gripped that knee with every muscle fiber she could marshal and held on for dear life. He let her exhaust herself against him before he proceeded. He kept his eyes locked on her face until she whimpered in desperate agony under him. He waited until she would do anything, submit to anything, if only he would act.
He hovered over her with the stealthy intent of a hawk over its prey. He judged the direction of the wind, he measured her expressions, her breathing, with masterful accuracy. Then he dropped out of the sky with his talons bared and seized her body, limp and ripe and ready.
She watched him swoop and her breath stuck in her throat, but she couldn’t resist. Before she knew what happened, she lay bare and open to his insatiable appetite. He filled her with the power of his presence until she couldn’t take another particle. In the end, no watery vision could compare with the complete union of their bodies and minds.
Frieda dissolved into him, into his body and his spirit. The vision she experienced in the meadow came back to her, and she never wanted anything so much as to be his, like this, the way the vision showed her she could be. If she only stayed there, in his arms, her body wrapped around him, she would never lose that vision, and she would be happy.
Chapter 7
Frieda woke up the next morning and found Deek sitting on the edge of her bed. “I didn’t know you were up.”
He turned around. He had his pants on, but not his boots or shirt. He bent down and kissed her. “I have to go. I’m helping lay the foundation for the new hall today.”
“You weren’t going to sneak out without saying good-bye, were you?” she asked.
He took her in his arms. “You looked so peaceful sleeping, I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I would rather you woke me up before you leave,” she told him. “I wouldn’t want to wake up and find you gone.”
“Okay,” he told her. “Now I know.”
“Will you be at the work site all day?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ll see you later. You’re coming to the gathering, aren’t you?”
“I’ll come to the gathering,” she replied, “as long as you understand I won’t be coming to the convocation.”
“I understand that,” he replied. “I still wish I could convince you....”
She cut him off with a shake of her head. “Don’t even try. You got me this far by respecting how I feel about it. Don’t spoil it by trying to convince me.”
He kissed her again. “Okay.”
She watched him pull his boots on, and then his shirt. At last, fully clothed, he stretched out next to her again on the bed. She lay under the covers and he lay on top of them with his arms around her. They kissed and cuddled for a long time before he got up again. “I’ll see you later.”
She nodded and watched his form get smaller in the meadow outside her door. Pretty soon, only the shimmering multi-coloured sunlight rippled over the grass outside.
Frieda lay in bed for a long time and listened to the wind murmuring over the land. Nothing could soothe her like that sound. Nothing disturbed the everlasting tranquillity of that day. She never had to get out of the bed. She would never get hungry or thirsty.
Only boredom could drive her out of bed, and in the end, it did. She couldn’t force herself to lie there any longer. Life demanded to be lived, even if you lived under the ocean with a symbiotic algae feeding oxygen into your cells. Not even a fantasy world could take the place of movement, life, purpose.
She got up and got dressed. She would have to get Deek to explain the secret of how he washed that dirt off himself. She couldn’t exactly take a shower under the sea, could she? Yet her body begged for one to refresh her after last night.
She worked around her house for the rest of the day until she happened to glance through the door and noticed Trin crossing the meadow in her direction. Trin stopped in front of Frieda’s house. “I’ve come to bring you to the gathering.”
“You didn’t need to go to the trouble,” Frieda told her. “I can find my way on my own.”
Trin shook her head. “Guests should be escorted through the door. Call it a tradition.”
Frieda laughed. “Kind of like the groom carrying the bride over the threshold?”
Trin frowned. “The.....what?”
Frieda waved her hand. “Never mind.”
Trin watched her set the room to rights before she left. “What are you doing?”
Frieda swept a bunch of fabric scraps into a pile on her table. “I’m working.”
“Working?” Trin repeated. “What kind of work is that?”
Frieda blushed and dropped her eyes. “I’m learning to sew.”
Trin’s eyes widened. “Sew? By yourself?”
“I thought I’d give it a shot,” Frieda explained. “I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m all thumbs.”
Trin glanced down at Frieda’s hands and blinked.
Frieda shifted on her feet. “It’s an expression we have on Earth. It means I’m not very good at it.”
“That’s exactly why you should get someone to teach you,” Trin pointed out. “You should tell my mother. If she can’t teach you herself, she will find someone who can.”
“I’m sure she could,” Frieda replied, “and I’m sure I would make better progress if I had someone like that to teach me. But I can’t do that—not yet.”
Trin stared at her in blank wonder. “Why ever not? How long to you plan to stumble along by yourself before you ask for help?”
Frieda smiled at her. “I’m not afraid to ask for help. It isn’t that. I’ve just never worked with my hands before. I want to try it on my own before I set out to learn to do it right.”
Trin shook her head. “I don’t understand you at all.”
“I’m not trying to be an expert sewer,” Frieda explained. “I just want to start on something. It doesn’t really matter what. I don’t know if I’m really even interested in sewing. I just want to do something with my hands, and I’m not ready to learn from one of your people yet. That would mean....” She stopped herself.
Trin waited. “That would mean....what? That you’re really Aqinas now?”
Frieda looked down at the floor. “Something like that.”
Trin pursed her lips. Then she took a step across the room and took Frieda’s hand. “Never mind. You’ll never be Aqinas until you decide for yourself that you want to be.”
She guided Frieda out of the house and into the meadow. Frieda surveyed the familiar scene. “I must be crazy not to want to stay here.”
“I understand why you don’t.” Trin shrugged. “I mean, I understand why you haven’t made up your mind to. I wouldn’t want to leave to go live on land. Making the adjustment from land to the ocean must be very difficult. If I left the ocean for the land, I don’t think I would ever stop dreaming of a way to go back.”
Frieda cast a sidelong glance at her. “Not even if you found a man you loved there?”
Trin squeezed her hand. “It’s hard to say, since I’m mated here to a man who matches me perfectly. On land, you don’t have the water to match you with your mate. You might mate with the wrong man. But yes, even if I found a man I loved on land, I would still want to come back. I belong to the water. I’ve never lived anywhere else, and I don’t want to.”
“It’s n
ice of you to say that,” Frieda replied. “All the Aqinas have been so kind and caring. No one could ask for nicer people.”
“Not even that makes a difference, does it?” Trin asked. “Nice people, a strong, loving man, a beautiful environment—none of it can take the place of the land.”
“You hit the nail on the head there,” Frieda replied. “I was born and raised on land, the way you were born and raised in the water. I’m like a tree that grows in rocky soil. Putting me in the water would drown me.”
“And yet,” Trin returned, “here you are. You’re not drowned. You’re getting closer to Deek and all the rest of us. You’re even learning to sew. It looks like you might be making the adjustment to life under the water after all.”
Frieda shook her head. “Then there’s the convocation. I’ll never adjust to that.”
Trin started back. “What’s wrong with the convocation?”
“Only someone who lived on land could understand,” Frieda replied. “Ask Sasha. She’ll tell you. People who live on land don’t look in on each other like that, and I don’t think the other factions will appreciate it if they find out you’re doing it.”
Trin furrowed her brow in deep thought. “I never thought of that.”
“I’ll bet no Aqinas ever has,” Frieda replied. “You must have seen in this convocation of yours how much the other factions mistrust the Aqinas. Now you know why.”
“But they couldn’t know about the convocation,” Trin pointed out. “They couldn’t know we looked in on them without their knowledge.”
Frieda shook her head. “They mistrust you without knowing why. They only have a vague sense that something isn’t right with you. Maybe the fact that you know so much about them gives them a hint that you have ways of gathering information about them that they don’t know about. A lot makes sense to me now that I know about the convocation.”
Trin walked in silence for a while. “I wonder if Sasha has told Fritz about this. Maybe if he knew, he wouldn’t allow the convocation anymore.”
Saved by a Bear (Legends of Black Salmon Falls Book 2) Page 90
