Read Lords of the Deep Online

Authors: Kaitlyn O'Connor

Tags: #captive situation forced seductiondubious consensual sex mnage multiple sexual partners, #fantasy about merfolk, #captive fantasy, #mermen, #science fiction fantasy, #captive bride romance, #captive romance, #fantasy about shape shifters, #captive woman, #alien captive

Lords of the Deep (10 page)

Damien gave him a look filled with grim amusement. “I think she had a fair idea,” he said dryly.

* * * *

Angie settled uncomfortably in the corner when the two men had left, staring in consternation at the door while she mentally reviewed what she’d recorded, trying to think if she’d said anything embarrassing or potentially dangerous. It didn’t make her feel any better when she’d thought it over.

Everything
on the damned recording was potentially embarrassing and/or dangerous! She’d made observations about them that weren’t exactly scientific and beyond that, she’d been thinking
and
talking, and she couldn’t remember to save her life what she’d just thought as opposed to what she’d actually said and recorded.

She covered her face her hands. What had she been thinking? She should’ve
known
he hadn’t just given her the recorder!

Actually, she supposed she had. She just hadn’t really thought it through, hadn’t considered, until he came to demand it back, that he might have a very good chance of breaking down the language and translating it.

But then, she hadn’t fully grasped just how advanced they were until she’d looked out at the city and she’d been too excited by what she’d seen, then, to consider that they might not
want
humans to know about their existence! There must be
some
reason they hadn’t made their presence known!

There was a very good reason why humans didn’t know about them. They had a hard time coping with underwater conditions and the oceans were vast, many places too deep to probe with anything mankind had devised. They hadn’t actually explored more than a tiny percentage of the ocean, which left plenty of territory for the mer people to live, completely unnoticed.

Maybe the same was true for them? They were air breathing mammals, but maybe the conditions outside of the sea were too stressful for them and they kept to the sea?

Maybe, and maybe they knew about mankind, more than she’d supposed. Maybe they’d captured her because they needed to know more?

She considered that possibility carefully.

Neither of the men she was familiar with seemed militant, but then it seemed obvious that Miles was a scientist.
He
wouldn’t be, but that didn’t rule out that his experiments were connected to their military or that the government was sponsoring his research specifically to determine how much of a threat mankind was to them.

What would they make of her comments? Would they consider it spying, she wondered, feeling ill?

She tamped the panic trying to take hold and considered whether they seemed advanced enough to rapidly break down the language and translate, or if it might it take them weeks or maybe even months. She’d been chattering on the thing for hours! She had a bad feeling that she’d given them plenty to work with, maybe enough to figure out her language fairly quickly.

It occurred to her after a while that being able to communicate with them might put her in an even worse position than she was now, though that certainly hadn’t occurred to her before. If they could talk, they could ask questions—interrogate her.

It was almost worse to realize that she knew next to nothing about anything they might want to know.

Her closest encounters with the government had been trying to get grant money for college and applying for research grants afterwards—which she hadn’t gotten, although she had managed to hire on with Dr. Feinstein, who
had
a research grant.

She didn’t even
know
anyone, personally, who was in the military!

She managed to calm down after a while, mostly because she’d worn herself out with worrying, and considered that she might’ve let her imagination run away with her. Maybe she was seeing a threat that didn’t even exist?

They hadn’t tortured her … so far.

They hadn’t even been rough with her beyond the horror of being captured, underwater, to start with. She’d been too crazed with terror that she was drowning to really remember much beyond that, but she didn’t think Damien had actually hurt her then. She’d hurt herself fighting, and he’d done something that had knocked her out.

Which she was actually grateful for now that she thought about it. At least it had spared her the terror she would no doubt have experienced in all the time it had taken him to bring her here.

She studied Damien uneasily when he brought food again later. She couldn’t see anything about his expression, though, that seemed to indicate he might have some knowledge about what was on the recorder.

He settled the tray on the bed as he had before. Instead of sitting down opposite her, though, as he had, he sprawled on his side, propping himself with one elbow. “Why, I wonder, were you so reluctant to give up the recorder?” he asked, eyeing her speculatively.

Angie studied him, realizing he’d asked a question just from the way he’d spoken. It occurred to her that it might have to do with the incident earlier, but she didn’t know that for certain.

He picked up the remote, studying it thoughtfully. “You weren’t interested in this, were you? You knew what it was, didn’t you?”

Angie chewed her lip, dividing a look between him and the remote as it occurred to her that, just maybe, the road to safety wasn’t in convincing them that she was intelligent. She still thought it would have been hazardous to her health for them to believe she was nothing more than a lower order animal, but maybe she’d gone too far in allowing them to see that she not only understood electronics, but she was very familiar with them?

Should she pretend she was just possessive of the gadgets, she wondered? Too ignorant to know what it was, but possessive because they’d seemed to give it to her?

She wasn’t certain she could carry that off. Grab it and mash the buttons, grinning like a moron? Make like a monkey and bounce around with it? What would a primitive do, she wondered?

She didn’t think her dignity could handle that. Deciding to just ignore the questioning look he was giving her, she reached for the food. Either they just didn’t use utensils, she thought a little irritably, or the men who’d captured her were more in to ‘finger’ foods.

Or Damien didn’t want to risk being stabbed with a fork.

Possibly. Then again, she knew plenty of bachelors from her college days and they’d mostly been in to finger foods—fast food and freezer meals seemed to be their staple.

At least she hadn’t had any adverse effects, so far, from anything she’d eaten. She still couldn’t identify any of it beyond her certainty that a good bit of it contained some kind of fish—which almost went without saying. If they ate meat—or needed protein in their diet—that was all that was available. The rest was sea plants, but she had no idea if it was mostly wild plants, or cultivated, although now she was pretty certain that they farmed just as humans did.

Damien plucked at her shirt, drawing her attention. She looked down at his hand and then at him, lifting her brows questioningly. He sat up. Picking up the tray, he leaned over the side of the bed and set it on the floor.

Angie’s belly tightened. A warm fluttery feeling began in the same region when he straightened again and looked at her. She blushed when he tugged at her shirt once more, wondering if he was demanding that she take it off. After a moment, he lifted one hand to her face, touching her nose, chin, and brow and repeating the words for them—in English.

She reddened even more when she finally realized they were playing the ‘game’ they’d played before.

He wasn’t carrying a recorder, though.

“Shirt,” she said finally. “T-shirt … at least it was. I suppose since you or Miles cut it up its more of a halter top now.”

“Why wear?”

Angie felt her jaw slide to half mast. She closed it with an effort, sucking in a shaky breath. As
if
she could explain it when he had maybe three words in English and she didn’t understand
any
of his language! She clutched the knot between her breasts in a fist. “Because.”

He frowned. She could see he was trying to figure out what ‘because’ might mean. “No … wear,” he said finally.

Angie narrowed her eyes at him even though she abruptly felt like she had a golf ball stuck in her throat. “Yes, wear!”

He gestured toward the tray. “No wear.”

She gave him a look. “Nice try! But I’m not worried about dripping anything on it, thank you very much!”

His glaze flickered over her face and then, abruptly, he grinned, almost seemed to shrug. “It was worth a try,” he murmured, leaning down to retrieve the tray and setting it on the bed again.

Chapter Five

 

Angie was almost sorry that Damien left after she’d eaten. As unnerving as it was to be around him for so very many reasons, even though she knew she should be frightened when her future was so uncertain, it was just plain boring to be confined to one suite with nothing to do but think—particularly when so many of her thoughts were disturbing.

The recorder had at least given her something to do, a sense that she was doing something worth doing, although, in retrospect, she was deeply sorry she’d gotten so wrapped up in her little ‘project’.

That thought prompted her to move to the window again. Opening the shutters, she leaned close enough to penetrate the reflection from the room behind her and scanned the area immediately around her prison.

Damien swam by, but it took her a moment to realize it was him, because a shockwave went all the way through her at her first glimpse. Awe, similar to what she’d felt when she’d first seen the city, filled her, an almost childish sense of wonder.

He looked just like images she’d seen of merfolk—beautiful, graceful, fantastical. His lower body no longer looked like two legs and feet, but like the long, graceful tail of a merman, the blue/green markings on his lower body almost iridescent like the beautifully colored tropical fish. The fins, barely noticeable before, had fanned out, seeming far larger, though she couldn’t tell if they actually were or just seemed that way because they were open wide, waving in the currents stirred by his movements.

Spying her at the window, he paused, seemed to consider, and then moved closer. Her heart thudded uncomfortably hard and fast in her chest as he did, but the sense of wonder didn’t abate. As she studied him, she almost felt as if she was caught up in some sort of fantastic dream, scanning the long mane of black ‘hair’, which she knew for a certainty wasn’t hair at all, at least not like hers. It didn’t move like human hair in the water.

There were fins on either side of his neck, or maybe just behind his shoulders that she hadn’t noticed before, maybe because they’d been lying flat against him. Fanned now, the same blue-green of his lower body, they framed his handsome face, looking like the elegant collar of a cape with the cascading black hair being the cape itself.

Some sort of belts crisscrossed his chest, though she couldn’t tell what their purpose was.

He was wearing something belted around his waist, she discovered as her gaze drifted lower. The pouch threaded along the belt covered his groin, but she didn’t think that was the main purpose of it.

She discovered when she met his gaze again that he was studying her face as she examined him and discomfort moved through her.

“Angie come out?”

Angie felt her jaw sag. She blinked at him rapidly, staring at his lips. He repeated the sounds, sending them through the water and the material that covered the window. It wasn’t words that formed in her head, like telepathy. It was sound waves.

Slowly her shock at hearing him make sounds in the water receded and she focused on what he’d said. The moment it settled in her that he was asking if she wanted to come outside, she shook her vigorously.

He gave her a look as if to ask why not.

She returned his look with one that said he was crazy and moved away from the window. When she glanced back at the window, she saw that he was peering in at her, a look of amusement on his face. He disappeared abruptly and she moved to the window again in time to see his form dwindling in the gloom of distance.

She breathed in a sharp breath of surprise that he could move so fast, watching until she couldn’t see him at all anymore. For a few moments, she wondered where he might be going, but finally pulled away from the window and settled in the corner, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them.

It was strange, but even though she’d surmised that they were probably the source of the myths about merfolk she hadn’t thought they really looked that much like the depictions—not until she’d seen Damien in the water. Her mind flickered to Miles after a few moments, no doubt toiling away in his lab trying to figure out what she’d said into the damned recorder, and she tried to imagine what he’d look like in his element.

They were remarkable even as she’d seen them to begin with, tall, with beautifully sculpted bodies, handsome enough that she felt almost uncomfortable, appreciating their eye appeal and at the same time almost intimidated about being around such physical perfection. Though, to be truthful, there was something about the way both of them looked at her, even the absentminded scientist, Miles, that was so appreciative that she didn’t feel unlovely—far from it.

In the water, though, Damien had passed beyond mortal beauty into the realm of fantasy, inspiring awe. She almost felt as if she’d watched dragons and unicorns pop from the imaginative corners of her mind into reality.

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