Lords of the Deep (17 page)

And because it had made her feel completely safe, she’d slept as peacefully and as worry free as if she’d been at home, in her own apartment, and completely secure.

When she’d dried and stepped out of the shower, she debated, briefly, over whether or not to continue to cling to the pathetic remnants of her wardrobe. Clearly, it wasn’t their custom to wear anything at all. Just as plainly, it hadn’t really discouraged their sexual interest. What was the point?

Aside from that, it didn’t cover much anyway and it wasn’t weathering her captivity well.

She certainly wasn’t used to running around naked and it made her uncomfortable to consider it, but she supposed she could get used to it. People in nudist colonies did.

They
were.

She didn’t actually need them for protection, weather-wise or otherwise.

She decided to discard them. She was still more than a little uncomfortable when she left the bathroom, particularly when she discovered that Damien was waiting for her with breakfast.

His gaze instantly scanned her from her breasts to her mound. He couldn’t seem to decide which intrigued him more but after a long moment, he seemed to realize he was staring and turned to frown at the food on the tray.

Trying to ignore the sexual tension that one appraising look had aroused in her, Angie climbed onto the bed and settled opposite him, wondering why he’d brought the tray when they’d eaten in the kitchen the night before.

Then again, she thought wryly, they hadn’t exactly invited her to wander the place at will. She’d taken the opportunity to search for herself and they just hadn’t ordered her back to her ‘gilded cage’.

That dulled her enthusiasm considerably, but she dismissed it after a few moments. If she’d begun to trust them, surely they’d begun to trust her? Maybe they just weren’t quite ready to let her wander at will—particularly since that would give her access to Miles’ lab?

She discovered it was actually hard to focus on her food with Damien’s cock eyeing her over the top of the tray. It would’ve been distracting and disconcerting enough if it merely stood erect, but it
looked
at her, curving snake-like and weaving slightly like a cobra summoned by a snake charmer!

She knew it was prehensile because they were water folk and probably always had been, making it a necessary evolutionary trait for them to procreate, but it was
still
disconcerting.

She wasn’t actually surprised when Damien took the tray and left, closing the door firmly behind him, or that, upon checking it, she discovered he’d also locked it. She’d more than half expected it, and it still angered her.

After glaring at the barrier for a moment, though, she merely returned to the bed to sulk for a while and to stare out of the window when she got tired of sulking. The mid-day meal was late arriving—not that she had anything but her internal clock to go by as far as passing time went, but she’d gotten hungry, wrestled with a growling stomach for a while and then it had passed again before the door finally opened.

Surprise flickered through her when both Damien and Miles stepped into the room, and not a particularly pleasant surprise when she realized that neither one of them was carrying a tray of food.

They paused when they’d covered about half the distance between the door and the bed.

Flexing seemingly every muscle on their bodies and fanning their fins, both men turned red—she wasn’t sure if it was from exertion or anger, but her heart nearly stopped in her chest and she felt the color leave her face.

As
if
they hadn’t been intimidating enough already! When they flexed like that, they looked
huge
!

They took a step closer. Uttering a squawk of fright, Angie did the only thing that sprang into her suddenly chaotic mind. She grabbed the coverlet and dove under it.

Damien stilled. After a moment, completely disconcerted, he glanced at Miles to see what he thought about the situation. Miles, he saw, looked as deflated as he felt. “Well, that was the shortest gods damned mating rite I’ve ever taken part in!” he muttered.

Chapter Eight

Miles stared at him in opened mouth surprise, much as Angie had, except he hadn’t turned white. He
had
lost his flash, though.

After shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, Miles finally shrugged, turned and left.

Flicking a last hopeful glance in Angie’s direction, Damien discovered she’d lowered the coverlet enough to peer at them over the edge. He hesitated but finally followed Miles when she didn’t show any signs, at all, of welcome.

“I don’t gods damn understand that at all,” he growled when he’d followed Miles into his lab. “If you do, I wish to fuck you’d explain it!”

Miles settled on the stool in front of his computer, nervously drumming his fingers on the desk top until Damien had to fight the urge to surge forward and break them.

“Mayhap she isn’t in season?” Miles said a little doubtfully.

Damien stared at him blankly. “That makes less fucking sense than what just happened!” he growled, gesturing in the general direction of Angie’s room. “And
that
didn’t make any fucking sense at all!”

“Because you …
we
keep expecting her to behave like a catkin, and she isn’t!” Miles said caustically.

Disconcerted, Damien stared at him blankly for a moment and finally looked around for a place to sit. “How different could she be?” he muttered irritably when he’d settled.

Miles finally stopped drumming his fingers and propped his chin on his hand thoughtfully, uttering a heavy sigh. “I don’t know.”

“Well … everything
felt
the same … except smaller,” Damien amended. “And aside from the fact that it’s pretty damned awkward trying to fuck without any buoyancy.”

“Or to try to entice the catkin with the dance,” Miles added.

Damien considered that. “I’m sure displaying didn’t have quite the impact it should’ve had, given the conditions, but I couldn’t help but think this went way beyond not being impressed. I know it doesn’t mean the same thing when she flashes, but she turned white … er. The only time I ever saw her turn that color was just before she used the sonic defense. And the eyes. Did you see how big her eyes got? Shouldn’t they narrow with at least speculation if not interest? I can’t help but think she looked dismayed, Miles. Maybe it’s just me, but that was the impression I got.”

Miles nodded. “It
was
a lot like when she crawled under the trap to hide, wasn’t it?”

After thinking it over in frowning silence for a time, Damien seemed to emerge from his anger sufficiently to recall the earlier comment Miles had made. He fixed Miles with a narrow eyed, speculative look. “What did you mean when you said mayhap she wasn’t in season?”

Miles shrugged uncomfortably. “The scan didn’t indicate that she was … or even that she was approaching her peak.”

“Well, what the fuck were you doing wallowing all over her for?” Damien demanded.

Miles blinked at him. “Actually … I’m not really sure. I was trying to gather data, and I discovered that she is particularly sensitive to touch in certain areas. Oddly enough, her reaction was to laugh—very disconcerting, I have to tell you—but it still intrigued me and the next thing I knew …. Well, she didn’t warn me away!” he ended defensively. “Granted, I wasn’t thinking very clearly—actually, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t thinking at
all
at that point—but you were there! Did you see her warn me off? She didn’t slap, bite, jolt me with current, or even use the sonic defense. I would’ve noticed that!”

He could see Damien was thinking it over.

He could also see that the incident wasn’t exactly clear in Damien’s mind either.

“It still doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said finally. “Why would she let either one of us approach her if she wasn’t in season?”

“That’s why I thought she must be.”

“Well, if she was, she sure as fuck isn’t acting like it now, and it was a damned short rite! That’s all I’m saying, gods damn it! This is
worse
than if she hadn’t allowed it at all! Now my cock is ready. My seed’s boiling in my balls, and I’ve got no fucking where to put it! And no hope of finding any fucking where to put it for another gods damned season!”

“We could always go to the gathering,” Miles suggested a little doubtfully.

Damien surged up from his stool and began pacing. “And what, exactly, do you suggest we do with Angie while we’re off hunting catkin? Take her with us? Leave her by herself to fend for herself?”

Miles frowned. “We wouldn’t be gone more than a week. A day to reach the gathering, three for the rites, and a day back. If we left plenty of food in the preserver …?”

“We’d have to allow her the run of the place for that to work,” Damien pointed out.

“I could lock up the lab.”

Damien stopped, staring at him thoughtfully for a few minutes but finally shook his head. “There’s too much that could go wrong. She doesn’t know what half of the things in the domicile are, or how they work. What if she accidentally opened the airlock and flooded the entire place? Or what if she decided it was the perfect opportunity to escape and
deliberately
opened the airlock, thinking she might be able to return to the
above
? She isn’t a mer, and we don’t know how well she understands the sea or what she knows or doesn’t know about it! Aside from the fact that there are any number of things that could swallow her out there in one gulp, she’s strictly an air breather. She’d die before she ever reached the
above
and she’d die
if
she did because of the difference in pressure.
We
know that from the experiments you’ve done before with other creatures from the
above
. She might know and she might not, but we sure as hell don’t know enough of her language to explain it, and there’s no saying she’d believe either one of us if we tried since she was unconscious the whole time we were stabilizing her pressure.”

Miles nodded. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. It wouldn’t be safe to leave her alone, and we sure as hell couldn’t take her …. Not that I’d consider it even if we could. Every okean in the territory would be swarming her! We’d be lucky if we managed to get close enough to
watch
her being bred, let alone take part.” He was silent for a time, thinking. “You should go. I’ll stay and keep her safe.”

Damien gave him a look. “Nice try.”

Miles tried to look bewildered.

Damien shook his head but suddenly stiffened. “Gods damn it! I got so distracted I forgot to feed her!”

Miles’ eyes narrowed suspiciously as Damien strode from the lab. He checked his chronometer and saw it
was
well past time for the noon meal, but he was doubtful Damien had food on his mind—not with his cock leading the way down the corridor!

Frowning, he turned his attention to the translator he’d been working on.

She wouldn’t let him, he thought, not when she’d hid from them when they’d displayed for her.

He really ought to get her down for another scan. Maybe if he compared the previous one with another, he’d have a better idea what was going on with her breeding clock?

When he’d carefully taken the translator apart, he took the memory chip and plugged it into his system, downloaded the file to his computer, and used the scrubbing program he’d written to remove the Pacifican language. He’d decided to use Angie’s voice speaking the words instead of recording his voice, pairing the vocabulary from her language to all of the words in theirs that he had matches for.

He glanced at his chronometer again when the alert sounded, letting him know the erase was complete.

Setting the translator down, he drummed his fingers on the desk, thinking. Gritting his teeth abruptly, he surged to his feet. That gods damned bastard wasn’t worried about feeding her. He thought he’d get another chance to try to entice her!

Stalking from the lab, he headed to Angie’s room.

* * * *

“What the hell?” Angie breathed shakily when she peered out from under the coverlet and discovered, with relief, that Damien and Miles had left.

She couldn’t seem to gather her wits to think at all for a while. The only thing tumbling through her mind over and over like a video on a loop was the way they’d looked when they’d stopped in front of her. She’d thought they were scary from the first, mostly because they weren’t human and they were big—tall and with muscles on top of muscles, but they hadn’t
behaved
in a way that had intimidated her—ever—before.

Why would they now? Why would they—puff themselves up like that to make themselves look even bigger?

And why
both
of them?

One
wouldn’t have been scary enough?

Her chin wobbled on the thought. They
had
scared her. She didn’t know what in the world they’d intended by that, but it had scared the shit out of her!

She felt an abrupt desperation to be home, to be anywhere but where she was where she was trapped in an environment completely hostile to her, all alone among a totally alien race of beings that she didn’t understand at all.