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“Sure,” she breathed against his lips. “I don’t know if I’ll ever believe that, but I want you. I want to stay. I want to be with you for the rest of my life, even if that’s an insane thing to say.”
And how...
How was she talking? How was she possibly saying that much when they both knew she needed air to breathe?
Leaning back, she felt panic flare a little too brightly in her chest for a brief moment. The mouthpiece wasn’t on. Was this the few moments before she was going to drown? Had they finally made a mistake?
When that moment never came, heartbeat after heartbeat, she stared down at the mouth piece on the ocean floor. Oxygen still bubbled out of it, trailing up through the water in little iridescent bubbles that were so pretty to look at and yet so confusing at the same time.
“How?” she whispered, realizing that air was still exiting her mouth. Every time she spoke, a few bubbles popped out as well. That meant there was air in her lungs.
But...
The prick at the side of her neck. She watched Imber’s eyes widen with brief horror before his clawed fingers touched the side of her neck. “I don’t... I don’t know how I did that.”
She reached up her hand to touch his and realized there was a small tendril stuck to the side of her neck. Shifting her head from side to side, she realized she could almost feel it in her throat. Just a little hint that there was a foreign body somehow inside her.
She watched his chest rise and fall with a surprised breath, and she felt her own mimic his.
“Are you... breathing for me?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
“I don’t know.”
It was the only explanation, and yet she didn’t know how that was possible. He couldn’t breathe for her underwater. It wasn’t scientifically possible and yet, here it was.
She was underwater. With him. Not drowning even though her mouth piece had long been on the ground at her feet and... and...
“Wow,” she whispered. “I didn’t know we could do this.”
“Neither did I.” The shock had already faded from his eyes, though. He reached for her, his claws tangling in her long skirts as he dragged her closer to him. “But now you can be here without fear for your life. You can live under the water with me.”
She knew that light in his eyes. It was the same expression he made when he wanted to kiss her. And it was always such a dangerous game they played when they kissed each other, knowing that she would have to eventually take a breath, or he would have to pinch her nose and force oxygen through her lips. They always knew they were only moments from her drowning.
But now?
They were safe.
Now he could hold her without fear. So he did. He dragged her into his arms, parting her legs around his hips with confident hands that had her arching into his grip.
It all suddenly hit her with all the weight of the sun. She was here, in his arms, underwater, and for the first time since she’d met him, she was safe. Safe to explore his body, his touch, the feelings that had been brewing for the few months that she’d known him. They had spent so much time together and she had been completely blind in the realization that she’d been carrying so much fear with her.
Every interaction, every touch, every moment that she got to see him, she was terrified.
What if she lost connection to her oxygen? What if she drowned right in front of him? What if someone followed her, or her ship broke down, or she disappointed him because she was weak and needed goggles and a mouth piece?
All of that faded away until there was nothing but her and him. Nothing but the man in front of her with heated eyes who wanted her.
He wanted to touch her. To hold her. To kiss her because he knew, for the first time, it was safe to do so.
She would be an idiot to not take advantage of every second.
She grabbed onto his shoulders and yanked him to her. She could feel the slight huff of surprise that echoed through his body because it also puffed air into her lungs. But the flexing of his claws against her spine, or the way he grabbed handfuls of her skirt before stopping himself, all of it told her just how close he was to losing his control as well.
“I want you,” she moaned against his lips. “I don’t care how or why this has happened. I want you.”
And maybe, just maybe, he wanted her as much as she did him.
Like she’d unleashed a shark, he descended upon her. She only had a few moments to realize they were sinking to the sands before her back hit them. A plume of sand covered her vision for a brief moment before his gills fluttered hard enough to push it all away from her. He loomed over her, a dark shadow with a frame of the sea behind him.
