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Was this how she ate? Was the shell itself actually the creature she served, and she was just the bait to draw things back into the shell for food?
Horrified at the mere thought, he told himself to get a grip. She was not some mythical creature who served a giant metal god. He had seen her kind many times before, and they were individual creatures that were intelligent enough to create something like this shell. Not the other way around.
Still, he hesitantly trailed the strange tube through the kelp forest. The last thing he needed was to die on the day his sister gave birth. They’d call his spirit to them just so they could yell at him for being such an idiot on a special day.
Frowning, he picked up the tube again in his hand and felt it loosely drawing through his fingers. Surely she was close... ah. There. He brushed the kelp aside to see her floating above a large rocky outcropping, staring down into the sheer drop off that continued on for hundreds and hundreds of meters. That was the very bottom of the ocean down that drop off, although he doubted she had any way of knowing that.
Carefully, so he didn’t surprise her, he tugged on the tube. It was connected to something she wore around her face, and he had no idea how it was helping her. The achromos that he’d seen before couldn’t breathe underwater.
Without looking behind her, she tugged back.
Again, he tugged. Insistent that she look at him so he didn’t have to swim right up to her and scare her into the abyss. “Achromo,” he said quietly, although he knew his voice could be booming in the water. “What are you doing?”
She let out a shriek that would rival the killer whales that ruled this area of the ocean. The sound made his ears hurt so badly that he lifted his hands to cover them, but that also meanthe tugged harder on the tube. She shrieked again, this time dragged closer by his movements as she desperately hung onto the thing attached to her head.
Why did that matter?
She was screaming so loud he was going to lose his ability to hear, and all she could do was hang onto that stupid tube going to her...
Suddenly the achromo catapulted toward him. He hadn’t realized she could move quite so fast, or he would have put more distance between the two of them. He braced himself, flaring his fins wide to prepare for her attack. Imber was much larger than her, and he would hurt her if he had to. Didn’t she see his claws? Hadn’t she seen his fangs when he’d bared them in surprise after her shell suddenly came to life?
She hit him hard. Harder than he’d expected for someone so small. And in that moment, he realized two very startling things. First, she had two tails. Two bony, horrible feeling tails that wrapped around him like a crab grabbing onto its prey. The second was that she was so very soft.
He planted his hand against her back, his claws ready to rend her flesh from her bone and leave her bleeding out on the ground. But he hesitated when she did nothing other than cling to him, her form so warm against his usually cool skin. Those tails held him in place as she reached for his wrists.
He thought perhaps she wished to speak with him, but that wasn’t what she was doing. Instead, she drew the tube out of his hand and let it drift in the water beside them.
She was so close. Closer than he’d ever anticipated getting to one of her kind. White surrounded the pale blue of her eyes. All those golden curls billowed around her head, creating a terrible tangle of curls and coils that would be nearly impossible to brush out. But his gaze caught on the soft swells of her cheeks, the paleness of her lips that he remembered being much darker. Andthe wide eyes that stared directly into his own, as though she were overwhelmed with what she saw.
Garbled sounds came out of her mouth, and though he had no idea what she was saying, he could guess.
“I’m sorry to have startled you.” And because he couldn’t not touch her—what man had such inner strength?—he lifted his hand to brush a strand of her hair aside. “I was trying not to.”
She seemed to freeze in his arms as he touched her. Growing bolder now, he let the back of his nail drag down the plushness of her cheek. She shivered, and he couldn’t tell if that was from fear or something else entirely.
Some small whisper in his mind hoped it was something else. He hoped she didn’t see him as some monstrous creature who had risen out of the depths to tear her away from life itself. He wanted to... He wasn’t sure what he wanted, really. Anything dancing through his mind right now must be an abomination and he should never be thinking it.
He just wanted. Her attention, her gaze, her.
Everything always seemed to boil down to this magical creature who shouldn’t be here and yet, here she was.
“Where did you come from?” he whispered, trying to keep his voice as quiet as possible. “You seem to have appeared out of thin air, achromo.”
Curious little thing. Though her strange tails still gripped him around the waist with surprising strength, she used her web free hands to touch him. First she hovered just over his forehead, watching his movements with wide eyes, as though she was afraid he would tell her no.
He didn’t. How could he? The first moment those warm fingertips trailed twin lines down his forehead, to his temples, and then just barely over his gills, he knew he was a goner.
No one touched him so gently. Not even his mother. He was a creature made to hunt and kill, that was all. Their kind werebrutal to live in the waters that tried to kill them. Gentleness wasn’t in their nature.
Perhaps, if he was lucky, he would find himself a mate who knew how to control herself during a mating. She might not kill him, and then he could be gentle with his own child.
Imber had never hoped to feel a female touch him like this. He hadn’t even known it existed.
Groaning, he tilted his head back and let her bury her fingers in his hair. She seemed particularly interested in the gills at his neck and also the texture of the long strands of his hair.
Surely she didn’t know the intimacy with which she touched him. How would she know that every stroke along his body was telling him that he should prepare himself for mating? That she wanted him. Needed him. Desired him.
Another low groan echoed through his entire chest, and he felt the gills along his ribs begin to flutter. The choked sound that came out of her at the movement was intriguing. Cracking open an eye, he drew in a deep breath of a scent that fascinated him. It was coming from her.
