Lords of the Deep (3 page)

A round window snagged her gaze with the second cautious sweep. She stared at it—or rather the gloom beyond—hard. A small shark swam leisurely by the ‘window’. Her lips parted in stunned surprise.

She jerked her gaze back to the strange looking man and discovered he’d set the tray he was carrying down on the floor. She stared at the tray, jumping when he caught hold of the edge of the cloth and peeled it back.

There weren’t any medical instruments on it. She didn’t know what the hell it was, but it wasn’t instruments of torture. A dark green glob of something had been piled in one corner. Next to it, a fish, struggling uselessly to suck air into its gills flopped helplessly. Dragging her gaze from it after a moment, she glanced over the other things on the tray and saw that it looked like some sort of cooked food. It was on dishes.

What the fuck?

A live fish, a glob of what looked like fresh plucked seaweed and food?

He spoke. His deep voice didn’t regulate well to the low tones he was using. It made his voice sound husky.

A shiver traced its way down her spine, but she found his voice oddly reassuring. She realized after a moment that that was exactly what he was trying to do—reassure her by taking care to move slowly and unthreateningly and to speak low.

The question was, why?

He sat down, folding his legs. The movement drew her eyes right to his crotch, now ‘framed’ by his folded legs.

Good god! Her eyes felt like they might bulge from her head for a minute. The damned thing looked more like an underdeveloped third limb than a cock! It was as thick as her wrist and nearly as long as her forearm—soft!

The man on the other side of the glass said something, redirecting her attention. When she saw he was talking to the man inside with her, she glanced toward him again.

He’d dropped the cloth that had been covering the tray over his crotch, although she could see he was frowning, his expression doubtful.

She felt her face turning red.

Obviously both of them had noticed her absolute fascination with their genitals!

The black haired man studied her face curiously and said something to the other one.

* * * *

“What do suppose it means when she changes color like that?” Damien asked uneasily, though he didn’t take his eyes off of her. She could move with surprising speed, he’d discovered, when in her own element.

Miles said nothing for several moments. “I don’t know. She doesn’t seem angry. She’s changed colors like that several times. She was looking at my cock the time before, though—and then yours. Flashing? Like when our catkins are ready for mating?” he hazarded a guess.

Startled, Damien almost whipped his head around to look at Miles. He resisted the urge with an effort, but he couldn’t prevent his reaction to the suggestion. Heat washed over him. He felt his cock rising. Swallowing with an effort, he very casually dropped a forearm across his lap before the damned thing stood up and waved the fucking cloth at her.

He had the uncomfortable suspicion that she noticed anyway. Her gaze zeroed in on his crotch again, her eyes widening. She looked a lot more uneasy when she met his gaze, he thought wryly, than interested in mating.

Not that
he
was thinking that way. She was a … well, he didn’t actually know what she was. Gods! What the hell was wrong with him any damned way? He thought she was a beautiful creature—almost ethereal—but she
was
a creature!

Trying to distract himself, he looked down at the tray again, wondering what he should offer her first. Issuing a mental shrug, he picked up the fish he’d caught by the tail and lifted it invitingly. “Come on, pretty little catkin. You want something to eat? Are you hungry?”

“She isn’t a catkin,” Miles said dryly. “In case you haven’t noticed.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Damien snarled without thinking, then ground his teeth when he saw he’d startled her. “She’s female, isn’t she?”

“But not one of ours—not a catkin.”

Damien tamped his irritation with an effort. She looked close enough his cock was having trouble grasping that those pretty little petals of hers were off limits.

It was strange that the terra—whatever—looked so much like them.

And damned disconcerting. He had to keep reminding himself that she was an
above
creature, however intelligent she seemed, not a mer.

The expression that crossed her face when he waved the fish at her, as near as he could tell, seemed more of revulsion than interest. He dropped the fish again. Maybe they were grazing creatures? Scooping up a handful of the slimy seaweed, he held the dripping mess up in offering.

She stared at his hand and then looked at his face. He couldn’t tell anything about her expression that time. Intelligence flickered in her clear blue eyes, though. He stared at them, fascinated. It wasn’t until she blinked and looked down at the tray again that he managed to break the spell. He looked down, trying to decide what she was looking at and discovered his cock had managed to elude captivity. It was standing at attention, peering at her hopefully with its dark eye.

Resisting the urge to look at Miles to see if he’d noticed, he grasped his cock and shoved it down again, wincing slightly at the pain.

This was getting him nowhere fast. He couldn’t ‘gentle’ her when she wouldn’t let him come near her and she didn’t seem interested in anything anyway but his cock—and he sure as hell wasn’t putting that anywhere near her no matter how badly the brainless moron wanted to go there.

Lifting his head, he studied her. She wasn’t shivering anymore, but he couldn’t decide if that was just because she wasn’t cold or if she’d calmed down—or maybe both. As he scanned her, his attention was caught again by something that fascinated him almost as much as the pretty pink petals between her legs—the two little pink nubs surrounded by a slightly lighter pink area right in the center of the globes on her chest. They weren’t hard now like they had been before, or didn’t appear to be
as
hard as before. They looked just like the milk globes their catkins had—except that the tips were pink instead of blue. He wasn’t sure why he found them so fascinating.

The thought flashed in his mind before he could prevent it to wonder if they tasted any different from their catkins’ buds. His cock instantly tried to leap up again. He gritted his teeth at the pain that shot through him.

This wasn’t going well at all!

“She isn’t going to come to me. She remembers I’m the one that caught her and she’s afraid of me. I’m going to leave this food here and see if she’ll come out and eat.”

“Maybe if you’d quit waving your cock at her, she would anyway,” Miles said dryly. “Obviously, even if she is flashing for mating, it’s a signal that she isn’t interested in you.”

Chapter Two

Damien turned to glare at Miles. “You were waving your cock at her when I came in,” he said testily.

Miles shrugged, smiling faintly. “It couldn’t see mine, though.”

It annoyed the hell out of him that Miles was right and he couldn’t think of anything else to say. After a moment, he pushed the tray a little closer to where she was hiding. She shifted, tensed, flicking a glance behind him. Startled, he realized she was studying the door.

“Did you see that?”

“It knows that’s where you came in.”

Damien nodded, frowning. Maybe it was nothing but that, but he’d gotten the strangest sense that she was examining it … as if she was trying to figure out how he’d opened it.

She opened her mouth as he started to rise. He tensed, bracing himself for the painful sonic blast she’d emitted before. Instead, she moved her lips and tongue, emitting a soft sound that made his flesh pebble. He stared at her pretty little heart shaped face, watched the movement of her lips and the little pointed pink tongue he could just glimpse inside her mouth. For several moments he’d couldn’t focus on anything else beyond looking at her while her sounds flowed over him almost like … music. He realized after a moment, though, that expressions flitted across her features as she made the sounds.

He didn’t give a fuck what Miles believed, he thought abruptly. She wasn’t just making sounds. She was trying to communicate. Even though he couldn’t understand any of it, he noticed she kept making the same sounds repeatedly.

She stopped after a moment, distress evident in her expression. She splayed her palm against her chest. “Angie,” she said. “Mm, Angie.”

He stared at her without comprehension, studying the movement of her hands. Finally, wondering if he’d gone off the deep end, he pointed at her. “Awngy?” he repeated, trying to wrap his tongue around the unfamiliar sounds.

She stared at him a moment and suddenly her lips curled, parting in a smile that made his belly tighten as if someone had punched him. She nodded vigorously. “Angie.”

He felt his jaw go slack. “Damien,” he said after a moment, pointing to himself, almost holding his breath.

She frowned. “Damien?”

Damien swallowed with an effort, nodding.

She pointed to Miles.

He glanced at Miles and then back at her. “Miles.”

She repeated it, almost pronouncing it just the way he had.

Pleased for no reason he immediately grasped, charmed by the funny way she moved her lips trying to mimic the sounds he’d made, he felt a grin tugging at his lips. “Did you hear that?”

“Hmm,” Miles responded. “Obviously its communication skill level is fairly high—higher than I’d expected.”

Damien’s lips tightened at Miles’ persistence in referring to her as an ‘it’. He supposed Miles was trying to maintain his scientific objectivity, but it still irritated the hell out of him.

Mostly, he realized in surprise, because Miles was so determined to see her as little more than an animal.

He discovered when he focused on her again that she’d lifted her hands and begun gesturing again. Frowning, he studied the movements, wondering for a moment if she was actually trying to communicate something or just waving her hands around for some other reason. She kept plucking at the thing hanging from her shoulders, though, and then pointing at him.

She was pointing at the cloth he’d draped over his cock, he realized, disconcerted, and then inappropriately aroused all over again. He was still trying to get his mind to function when she inched out from under the trap and eased slowly toward him.

“Watch it!” Miles warned him. “It might attack!”

Damien flicked an irritated glance at him, but focused on her again immediately.

He discovered she was watching his face—as if debating if it was safe to creep so close to him. Whatever she wanted, though, she wanted pretty badly.

Pausing when she was directly across the tray from him, she met his gaze for a long moment and then, almost quicker than thought, shot her hand out. He caught her wrist, narrowing his eyes at her, but when he glanced down he saw that she’d grabbed the cloth—not him.

Not that he wouldn’t have noticed instantly. His cock was already throbbing like a sore tooth. He eased his grip on her wrist cautiously, ready to grab her again if she tried to attack. Instead, she grabbed the cloth and clutched it against her chest.

Scrambling back into the corner, she smoothed the cloth out, clasping with one arm across her globes to hold it over herself.

Damien’s first reaction was supreme disappointment that she’d hidden them from him completely, although he realized almost immediately that that was why she’d kept her arm across them before. Why would she do that, he wondered? They were so pretty he couldn’t understand why she would hide them.

“She didn’t like us looking at her,” Miles observed almost as if he’d shared Damien’s thoughts, his voice meditative.

It was the fact that he’d referred to her as ‘she’ for the first time, though, that caught Damien’s attention.

“You might as well come out. I don’t think she’s interested in the food—not right now, anyway.”

Damien discovered he didn’t particularly want to leave. “I think I’ll sit with her for a little longer. She seems to be getting used to me. She isn’t as skittish as she was.”

Miles frowned. Damien could see he wanted to order him out. Finally, he seemed to shrug. “I’m going to get the recorder. See if you can get her to make more sounds. I think it might be speech. Maybe we can get enough the computer can decipher it.”

Relieved that Miles wasn’t going to challenge him on his decision, he relaxed fractionally, staring at her speculatively. “Why?” he asked, waving a hand over his own chest and then pointing to hers.

She stared back at him blankly, but he could see something flicker in her eyes.

He smiled faintly, trying to reassure her. “Pretty,” he said, pointing at her globes.

She frowned in confusion, followed the direction of his finger and then lifted her head and glared at him.

Surprised, he lifted his brows at her. “I think Miles might be right,” he murmured ruefully. “I’d still like to see them.” He considered that thoughtfully for a moment. “Actually, I’d like to examine you all over a lot more thoroughly.”

“I heard that,” Miles snapped.

“And I give a fuck!” Damien shot back at him. “She’s no more an animal than we are.”