Page 24 of Call of the Fathoms (Deep Waters #4)
Twenty-Four
Fortis
F ortis didn’t touch her. Not the entire time that her siren song called him with the way her body moved and how her entire being swayed with passion. He’d wanted to. He’d wanted to press his mouth between her legs and taste her passion, but he didn’t.
She was an achromo. He had no interest in her kind and he never would. But, somewhere deep inside his chest, he knew that was a lie.
He’d been enraptured from the first moment she’d admitted to wanting him. She’d dragged that zipper down her chest and he thought the world would end right there. The red blush that had stained her chest, the bright pink tips of her breasts, the undulating way she had shifted her hips, all of which made him salivate. He hadn’t even realized her people could move like that, but suddenly he wanted to see her do it more. On him. He wanted her to grind like that on his tail, to slide his webbed fingers between her thighs and know what she felt like.
Warm and wet, she’d gasped when he’d asked her. Those words would now live forever in his mind.
Whenever someone said them, he would only think of the way she ground hard against her hand. How her thighs had spread wide, and that wetsuit had parted to reveal her stunning body. All those scars, laid bare for only his eyes to see. He had wanted to lick each and every one of them. To trace them with his tongue and erase every memory of pain that came along with them.
His cocks hadn’t ached like that in years. Fortis had planned for the interaction to be short and to the point. An experiment, in his mind, to see what it was that achromos did when they were lost in passion. Another lie he had told himself so he could watch her writhe before him.
He had fooled himself into thinking he could remain separate from her pleasure and then his cocks had punched through his scales so quickly he hadn’t even noticed until the top one was in his fist.
And fuck, it had felt good. So incredibly good to watch her while he was thrusting into his fist. She only opened her eyes at the end, but he could feel her gaze on him. Her eyes had widened in surprise at the sight of what he held, and he’d wanted to tell her that soon enough, she would take him.
But he couldn’t. She couldn’t. They weren’t doing this because he was using her as a means to an end. Nothing more. Nothing less. She would bring about a new age with him, then he would die at her hands, and it would all end there.
The plan was simple, and it was one he had to uphold. Fortis knew the end of this, and he knew his path.
But now Alexia’s voice echoed in his mind. If she knew she was going to die, she would want to live as much as she could before it was over.
Slipping into the water without catching her eye, he knew very well that he hadn’t been living. Not since his wife died. Not since his entire purpose had turned into getting to the end so that he could return to her.
Life was so much more complicated than death.
The icy water helped relieve his mind. As he left the facility to breathe in the salty air, he felt a bit more like himself. Until he scented her in the water and everything went right back to the madness that had claimed him before. He could feel the beast in his chest crying out for him to return to her and plunge inside of that warmth.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
It wasn’t helping. The ocean wasn’t calming the fiery need that burned through every inch of him. He just... wanted. Needed. Desired.
Now that he’d been so close to connection with another living creature, he couldn’t stop wanting it. He needed to run his hands along her warm skin. He craved to seek out all the pleasure he’d denied himself for far too long.
Tilting his head back, he breathed in the sea and tried to let the icy waters cool him yet again.
“Sea mother,” he murmured, his voice low and quiet. “Please send me a sign that I do not need this. I am tempting myself with what I can only have for a short time. I will find all that I seek in the afterlife once I make it there. And Alexia is wrong. All wrong. Every part of her is that which I hate, and I will not fall apart simply because I have not had the touch of a woman in a long time.”
The sea was no help. A current shoved him back toward the building where he had left a panting creature who tempted him more than anyone else had in years. He couldn’t go back there. Not when his mind was still so full of her bright red features, how her eyes had squeezed shut, and the sounds she made that rolled out of her throat as she finally discovered what passion meant.
“I have concerns,” he told the sea. “So many concerns. She is larger than most achromo, but I am bigger than any of my people. We are not compatible.”
On the tail of that thought, he had the image of Daios and Anya pressed into his mind. It was almost like a vision. The sea wanted him to remember that Daios and Anya likely had an even bigger size difference than he and Alexia did.
“But it is wrong,” he argued. “Their kind were never meant to be with us. It is unnatural to consider her anything other than an enemy.”
More images were pressed into his mind. The memory of Mira helping him find Tau and how hard she had worked to get all the information they could find. Anya patching him up when he’d been scraped by a passing ship, or even when he had just injured himself seeking out this city. Even Ace showing him how to work with droids and teasing him that he deserved to have a little helper. Having one that wasn’t alive meant he might actually keep it longer.
There were so many good achromos that were in his life. There were bad ones, but there were good ones as well.
And then one last memory. Of his son and Ace’s sister. The two of them working side by side, their heads nearly pressed together as they poured over a projected map of the sea floor that a droid had mapped out.
At the time, he’d thought the image disgusting. He’d taught his son better than to be interested in the thoughts and mind of an achromo. If Aulax wanted to know what she knew, then he should have just taken her memories and gotten on with it. But his son hadn’t, because he had seen something in their people that Fortis had never noticed.
Until now.
Until this warrior woman crashed into his life and he realized that maybe he did want to live for a little longer. Ironic, considering he would die at her hands.
Blowing the air out of his gills, he decided Alexia was right. And in some way, the ghost of his wife was right as well. He would live for a little while longer. He would fill his life with as many good things as he could and then, when it was finally his time, he would feel no guilt at leaving this place.
Turning back toward the building, he was surprised to see Alexia had slipped back into the water. In the spears of sunlight, she swam ever so slowly through the entrance to where he’d brought her.
Frowning, he started toward her. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” she grumbled, grabbing onto the sides of the stones and using her grip to propel herself faster.
Leaving? Why would she be leaving? He just brought her here, and after what they had shared... Taking in a deep breath, he could taste her rage in the water. It was like getting punched in the nose, all metallic and oddly painful.
She had finally reached the end of the tunnel and then used her feet to kick off the edge. He’d thought she might go to the surface, but no. She propelled herself deeper into the darkness of the abyss. She went down , not up.
Frowning even more, he watched her descend. She was an impressive swimmer, he’d give her that. She knew the right cadence to bring her arms up and propel herself ever deeper, not even kicking her legs now, but just keeping her body in a straight line that sank nearly out of sight before he remembered that he shouldn’t let her do that.
Flicking his tail, he followed her. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the ship.”
“Why?” Or better yet, “How?”
Suddenly, he was angry. They had shared a passionate moment with each other and he was not going to let her disappear into the sea after it. He had questions. Thoughts. Things he wanted to talk to her about.
He’d enjoyed telling her stories about his son and all the mischief the two of them had gotten into. There were more stories he could tell, more pieces of his life that he wanted her to know. And now she was going back to the ship ?
Rage made all the lights on his body flicker to life, casting her face in harsh shadows that only made her appear to be even more angry. He wouldn’t let her keep doing this. So he moved in front of her, forcing her to stop or she would crash into his massive bulk.
“Fortis,” she snarled. “Get out of my way.”
“No. Go back to where I put you.”
Even he heard how awful that sounded. He ordered her around like he had any right to do so, but he was so angry at her. Her safety was all he cared about. That ship wasn’t safe anymore. He could give her the final battery back, but even that wasn’t going to power the ship. One battery wasn’t enough. She had another week in that cold, dark tomb at most. If the second battery even worked after being in the cold for so long.
This facility was safer for her. It was better. At the very least, until he knew what he was going to do with her.
She’d agreed to help him. That meant he could bring her back to the others, where there were more minds who understood how the achromos worked. She could be back in a city, safe with her own people.
But he didn’t tell her any of this. He was so angry, all that came out was, “Or I will make you.”
The glare on her face when she turned was enough to set him on fire. “You have nothing to say to me right now. After what you just pulled? I have no interest in you, Fortis. Not in the slightest.”
“What I just pulled?”
“You were the one who started all that,” she hissed, pointing at him with her gloved finger. “You were the one who made me want... anything at all. Your words. Your plan. Your guidance. And then all of a sudden, as soon as it’s over, you up and leave? Without a word. You just slide into the water and pretend that nothing happened between the two of us. I don’t care what you have to say or what you want me to do, you giant asshole. You can rot in the ocean for all I care.”
And then she kicked her feet and moved around him. But she didn’t have her flippers on, so she was damn slow. It was far too easy for him to grab her shoulder and reel her right back into his arms. “Absolutely not. You don’t even know where the ship is.”
She punched him in the throat. The water slowed her movements, but it was still enough of a jab that he hissed. His gills were sensitive, and she’d hit them hard enough to hurt. It only made him tighten his grip on her, though.
He squeezed her arms down, fighting through the pain. “What was that for?”
“I know where my own ship is! I have a link to it that I can follow. Now let me go.”
“Not until we talk about this. I needed to cool off in the water. Why do you think I left?”
“Because you wanted to!” she shouted. Her face was turning red beneath her air mask. He knew her expression when she was angry, and she was beyond pissed.
“Are you listening to me at all? I just told you I needed to cool down.” Should he tell her that he wanted to crawl inside of her skin? That he’d left because he feared what he would do to her next, and she deserved to be slowly introduced to the world of passion and desire?
He didn’t have time to consider what he would say, because she jammed her hand into his rib gills. Fortis froze as she grabbed a handful of them, pain vibrating throughout his entire body.
“Let me go,” she hissed. “I have a beacon. I can get back to the ship without you.”
“I did not intend to bring you back to the ship at all,” he wheezed, trying very hard to remain still so his gills wouldn’t hurt even more than they currently did.
“There are things I need from there. Useful items. If you want me to help you, then I need them.” The moment his arms loosened, so did her grip. She kicked off of him to get away, creating space between them that he suddenly realized he didn’t like. Not at all.
The space reminded him that he was alone. No, that wasn’t even right. It wasn’t that he cared about being lonely, because he didn’t. He cared that he wasn’t with her. He liked spending time with her. He liked pushing Alexia’s boundaries and talking with her.
Fortis hated that. He was most upset that he couldn’t talk with her more and tell her more stories. The sound of her laughter had been so enjoyable.
And now she was swimming away from him. Heading off into the sea where he could not protect her, or even make sure that she actually made it. So he swam behind her, hoping that she wouldn’t notice.
Until she turned with all that rage floating off of her and coating his gills with a metallic bite.
“Fortis!” she shouted. “I need space, for fuck’s sake! Get off my ass and go do whatever it is fish do. I’ll meet you back at the ship.”
“It is dangerous to go alone.”
“It’s the ocean! There’s nothing here.” She gestured around her. “Nothing but my own thoughts. So please, for the love of god, fuck off.”
He supposed he had no other choice than to honor what she wished. Even though he had no idea what had gone wrong.