Lords of the Deep (13 page)

Damien considered that thoughtfully for a while. “So the problem isn’t that she doesn’t have a very good understanding,” he said medatively. “It’s that she
has
a very good understanding. She’s afraid of the lab because she thinks we think of her as a lab animal and she expects us to hurt her whenever we bring her in here.”

Miles looked uncomfortable. “I think that’s about the size of it—and, of course, there’s the little matter of you capturing her to start with.”

Damien glared at him, but he didn’t say anything because he knew damned well Miles was right and even though he’d been laboring under the same misapprehension as Miles had in the beginning—believed he was capturing a wild beast—he didn’t think Angie was going to forgive him either way. He’d still kidnapped her, knocked her out for transport, and shoved her into an animal trap.

Somehow, he didn’t think ‘I’m sorry’ was going to sound adequate.

They had bigger problems, though, if Miles was right. It was criminal to keep her caged like an animal, knowing she wasn’t, and it was going to be disastrous to return her to her own people with the knowledge she’d no doubt gathered about them.

They could have a war on their hands—and neither he nor Miles would ever see freedom again if they brought war down on the kingdom—a kingdom that had lived in peace for nearly a century.

“Well, this is just fucking wonderful!” he growled.

Miles cleared his throat but apparently decided to keep his thoughts to himself.

“How is translation going?” Damien asked after a moment.

Miles smiled tightly. “Progressing.”

Damien narrowed his eyes. “And the scan?”

Miles blinked. “I’ve barely begun to study the results.”

“You don’t lie worth a fuck, Miles!” Damien growled. “What did you find in the scan that you don’t want me to know?”

Miles glared at him. “It’s my research, gods damn it! When I write the gods damn paper, you can read it!”

Damien slipped off the table. “You’re not going to write a gods damned paper—now—and you know it!” He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “She’s in season.”

“Not that I can tell!” Miles snapped. “I told you I’d just started going over the data.”

“So what did you find out?”

Miles shrugged. “Her reproductive organs look remarkably like our catkins’.” He studied the look on Damien’s face uneasily for a moment. “It
might
be the same. It could look the same in the scan and not be on the genetic level.”

“Except you already did that test.”

“It’s close.”

Damien lifted a brow.

“Very close. There are at least two mutations that separate us. I’ll have to do more research, run more tests before I could determine if we could actually breed.”

Damien gave him a look. “I don’t particularly give a gods damned if we can breed or not!” he snapped. “I’m only interested in whether we’re close enough to try.”

“
She
will want to know,” Miles said pointedly. “You know as well as I do that that’s the primary objective of the catkins and they aren’t interested if they can’t breed.”

Damien frowned. “Will she even come in season if we aren’t compatible? The catkins seem to know, instinctively, which okean will give them the strongest offspring—which would seem to suggest that they’d know when the okean can’t provide viable seed.”

Miles shrugged unhappily. “I don’t know. We still don’t know exactly what triggers the breeding cycle—beyond the rise in hormones, and we don’t know what triggers that.”

Damien paced the length of the lab and back again, thinking.

“Whether we can or can’t breed on her, we have problems that are a lot more dire than that.”

“Speak for you yourself!” Damien growled. “
Nothing
is more dire to me at the moment!”

Miles considered that. “You have a point.” He brightened. “Actually, you have a very good point! We can explain that it was all a big misunderstanding and we were out to capture a mate—mistook her for one of ours …. She doesn’t know our customs!”

Damien gave him a look. “And what happens when she gets to talking with some of the other catkins and finds out that it isn’t our ‘custom’ to snatch them and throw a net over them, knock them out, and put them in a fucking cage?”

“Put like that, that does sound pretty bad,” Miles said thoughtfully.

“I don’t know any other way to put it, Miles!” Damien growled. “That’s what happened!”

Miles stroked his chin, thinking. “She was unconscious when she got here, so she won’t remember the part about the trap. We’d already taken her out of it when she came to.”

Damien stared at him. “And I suppose we could explain the net by saying I was just out fishing and she got tangled up in it?” he said sarcastically.

Miles lifted his brows. “Good idea!”

Damien rubbed his head. “Lie to her, you mean?”

Miles gave him a sullen look. “You think she’ll even
consider
letting us near her when she gets the itch if we tell her the truth?” he demanded testily. “The catkins might get a little bonky when they go in season, but they aren’t
that
irrational!”

“The mating is the key,” Damien said decisively.

“It is? How?”

“Because I can’t fucking think straight right now, that’s how!” Damien snarled. “And I’m pretty gods damned sure it isn’t going to get any better until after the season!”

Nodding, Miles considered for a moment. “You thinking about just putting her back afterward?”

Damien stared at him in fascination. “Just tuck her back on the little island that’s probably floated away by now, you mean? With a little okean or catkin of mine or yours tucked in her belly? A gift from the merfolk as it were?”

“I guess you’d have to wait for another of their little floating islands,” Miles said thoughtfully. “That could be dangerous for you. Besides which, according to the myths, they’re rare. She might deliver before another one comes along. That could present a problem.”

Damien pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to alleviate the pain that was building behind his eyes. “When did this get from ‘we’ to ‘you’?” he muttered.

“Well,
you
took her!”

Damien dropped his hand and glared at Miles. Grinding his teeth, he whirled on his heel and stalked toward the door of the lab. “I’m going back to my place to check on things—feed the animals and make sure I haven’t been declared dead and my place abandoned. If she comes in season before I get back and you fuck her, Miles, I’m going to break your gods damn neck!”

* * * *

Angie sighed deeply. She was bored out of her mind. She would’ve never thought, when she’d first been taken, that she could possibly get to that point, but she had, in fact, reached it days ago.

She should still be too anxious to be bored. She was still a captive, after all, but she’d either reached a point where she’d come to trust that they really didn’t intend her any harm—more harm!—or she’d just exhausted every avenue of worry.

She’d worried about staying alive until she’d decided they obviously didn’t intend to do anything horrible to her any time soon—they were too busy studying her. Then she’d worried about what her family might be thinking about her disappearance.

Then she’d realized that her aunt and uncle were probably too busy spending her life insurance policy to worry too much.

She’d hoped when Damien had taken her on a tour of the place that it meant that she would at least be allowed out of the room where she might have some chance of finding something to keep herself occupied, but she hadn’t seen him after he’d brought her back. Miles had brought her the evening meal—after she’d finally given up on getting fed and gotten in bed.

Fortunately, Damien had brought her something the following morning and he hadn’t failed her since.

She had a bad feeling that if she had to rely on Miles for food she might starve before he thought of her.

Unless he had something of an urgent scientific nature to explore that he needed her for.

The only highlights of her days, she thought glumly, was the food—which was actually pretty good if a little limited in variety. Evidently, whoever was cooking, and she thought it must be Damien—unless everything he brought was ‘take out’—didn’t know a lot of different recipes.

She’d tried really hard not to think about either man’s interest in her beyond the scientific. It wasn’t easy when all she had was time on her hands to think, particularly since Damien’s kisses had been anything but tame and the effect they’d had on her had totally wrecked her system.

The incident in what she thought of as ‘the bubble room’ had almost completely overshadowed her reaction to his kisses, though, had made it nearly impossible to focus her mind away from sexual interest for any length of time. It had disconcerted her, to say the very least, at first, but she’d been too horrified to find herself standing under a glass bubble and looking around at the vast ocean surrounding it to react as she might otherwise have. She’d gone from stark terror of the sea to abrupt awareness.

Who would’ve thought it could be so sensual merely to have a cock wedged between the cheeks of her ass that she’d come perilously close to climaxing?

If it came to that, she wasn’t even certain that was what had made her so hot she couldn’t catch her breath. It was the tension she felt in Damien, the heat of him against her back, the faint tremors she’d felt rushing through him.

Maybe even the sense almost of desperation in the way he’d held her so tightly and then thrust her away as if he didn’t trust himself to stop at merely rubbing himself against her?

If it was his idea to tease her until she fell into his arms when he finally got around to getting ‘serious’ about his blatant desire for her, it was damned sure working, as much as she hated to admit even to herself.

She’d begun to feel warm and tense and achy every time he came in with food and it was all she could do to actually focus on eating.

At the rate things were going, it occurred to her that she might, regardless of the nasty comment she’d made to Miles, reach a point where she wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to hop on one of them and try to mount them!

The way Damien looked at her—the way
Miles
did on those few occasions when he actually seemed to surface into the real world—was driving her crazy.

Miles wandered in looking lost some time later. When his glazed eyes finally focused on her, he looked a little startled to discover that she was watching him with deep suspicion. He paused near the threshold, apparently thinking over what he’d had in mind when he came in, and finally strode decisively to the bed, settling on the edge and very carefully laying out the instruments he’d brought with him—well out of her reach. She studied the instruments—all electronic—trying to decide what they might be for, but the answer eluded her.

Picking up the largest, he turned it on and then used his thumbs to key data into it, holding it much the same as she’d seen gamers with their game controllers. She saw when he set it down that it had a bright screen and that symbols had been entered in a vertical stream. Setting it down, he picked up a small, rounded object, studying her speculatively.

“Measurements,” he said, enunciating the single word slowly and loudly, as if he was talking to a deaf person or an idiot that might understand if he said the word slowly enough and loud enough.

Naturally enough, it didn’t help Angie understand it.

He reached for her. She jerked a little further away from him.

He frowned with a mixture of impatience and thoughtfulness. “Don’t hurt,” he said finally.

Surprise flickered through Angie and then irritation that both Miles and Damien seemed to be picking up her language when she hadn’t figured out any of theirs. She stared at him blankly, as if she hadn’t understood his attempt to speak to her in English.

He said it again, but the second attempt to pronounce it was worse than the first.

Angie bit her lip, trying to keep from smiling.

The movement caught his attention and he stared at her mouth as if mesmerized for a long moment before he seemed to shake himself. Taking the object he held, he lifted his arm and ran it from his shoulder to the tip of his longest finger, then showed her the little screen on it. The symbols meant nothing to her, but she realized abruptly that it must be for measuring.

Did she have anything to gain by being difficult, she wondered?

She didn’t think so, but she probably had a lot to lose.

She was reluctant, but she lifted one arm.

A look of pleased excitement entered his eyes and he shifted closer. Settling one palm beneath hers to support her arm and hand, he placed the round devise at the tip of her longest finger and carefully rolled it up until he reached her shoulder. Glancing at the reading, he groped blindly for his tablet and recorded it and then reached for her hand again. Turning it over in his, he measured from wrist to the beginning of her fingers and then side to side, recorded it and then measured each of her fingers. He paused when he’d finished, studying her hand intently where it lay in his palm.