“Can we talk a little?” I ask. “If you want to know what would make me feel better, I’d love to know more about my future as your wife.”

His gaze flicks over me and he goes back to wiping my skin, this time taking a clean corner of the lacy material and mopping my cheek and chin with it. He’s quiet for a long moment and I worry he’s going to ignore my request, but he finally speaks. “Tell me what you wish to know.”

“Well…is this where we’re going to live? Here in this grotto?” I gesture at our cluttered surroundings. It’s not the most ideal house, but I’m already thinking of ways I can make it more like a home. A makeshift hearth of some kind. A bed. An area that I can set up a loom in…

“Here?” He huffs, as if the idea is ridiculous. “No.”

“Oh.” I’m disappointed, strangely. Sure, it’s a cave, but it’s cozy enough and I feel safe, especially given that the only way in and out is through the tunnel in the water.

“It’s too isolated,” he adds.

“I don’t mind isolated. Not after running into those scoundrels on the beach.”

Ranan’s expression darkens and he shakes his head. He takes the fabric he used to clean me and drags it over his cocks, cleaning himself off, and I watch him discreetly, eyeing the still-solidly enormous lengths of him. “We’re going to the flotilla once you’ve recovered.”

I look up at his face in surprise. “We are?”

He nods. “We are going to visit my parents once you can swim again.” He eyes me as he finishes cleaning himself off and then tosses the priceless lace aside, adding, “Once you can swim properly.”

That might take a little time. No rush, then. I relax a bit. “So I’m to meet your family? Will they like that you have a human bride instead of a sea-ogre bride?”

“We call ourselves the seakind, not ogres. That’s a human term.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” Gods, I’m glad I didn’t say that in front of his family. “A seakind bride, then.”

He reaches out and touches my ear again, stroking my earlobe as if to comfort me. His face remains stony, but that small touch reassures me. “My uncle has a human partner.”

“And they like him? Your family?”

Ranan just keeps stroking my ear.

As the moments creep past and he doesn’t reassure me, I grow worried. I put my hand over his to stop his caresses and repeat my concerns. “Your family likes your uncle’s partner? They won’t mind that you have a human bride?”

“It is what I want.”

I study his face. “Is it?”

Ranan scowls and tugs his hand from mine. He gets to his feet, pacing away. “You ask too many questions.”

“I do,” I admit, keeping my voice light. “It’s gotten me slapped in the mouth a lot.”

That makes him stop in his tracks. He turns around, scowling. “I would not hit you.”

“Didn’t say you would. Just said it’s happened a lot in the past.”

“I don’t want you scared around me.”

I arch a brow at him, tossing my hair. “Then don’t act scary.”

His hands go to his hips and he shakes his head. I can’t decide if he’s annoyed or amused at my retort. Probably doesn’t know how to respond.

That’s fine, I’m a champion at carrying a conversation away from an awkward spot. “Once my menses are done, you’ll teach me how to swim, then?”

Ranan’s posture relaxes a bit. “Aye. So you can get Vor a fish. I haven’t forgotten.”

I beam at him. Honestly, a man that doesn’t beat me and remembers the small things I tell him? Lady Dywan never had it so good.

Chapter

Fifteen

RANAN

Ihate that I am so easy to please. So pathetically obvious.

Because I am in a good mood for the rest of the day after Valessa touches me. I am in a good mood when I trawl through my underwater caches, looking for bits to trade in. I am in a good mood when I hunt through the waters, looking for just the right location for a large school of fish. Not that it’ll be there in a week from now when Vali can join me in the waters, but it doesn’t hurt to search.

I’m in a good mood the next day when I wake up with her curving bottom snugged up against my cocks. I’m in an even better mood when she rolls over and starts to touch me, and as she strokes my cocks and mouths them, she grinds her hips and moans. She tells me she enjoys herself, but…it feels too easy. Too simple. Surely she wants something out of this?

I hate that I am so susceptible to being touched. That a pretty woman runs her fingers over my cocks and suddenly I am ready to smile…almost.

It makes me wonder, though. Even as the days pass and the pinch of discomfort is no longer on her face, Vali does not ask for anything from me. She kisses me all over my chest. She strokes my arms, my legs, and most especially my cocks.

Yet it doesn’t always have to be about me. I like it, of course. No sane male would be displeased at a woman who attempts to pleasure him every chance she can. I enjoy it, even as it doesn’t sit right for me. Vali should want more from me than just some fabric and a few trinkets, shouldn’t she?

But what do I give her? Any jewels that she wants, she can simply take from my grotto. The same for fabrics, or statues, or other shiny things. Those do not count as gifts, as far as I am concerned. Nor is food a gift, because she needs to eat. If I make a meal a gift, I worry she will feel she will need to buy each mouthful from me, and I do not like that idea.

Yet if I let her continue to pleasure me in bed, I am using her.

My thoughts trouble me, almost as much as the weather troubles me. It is unbearably hot over the next few days, and the fish that normally teem off the reefs here seek cooler waters. Hunting is bad near the cave, so I swim farther out, into the deep blue depths after several days of poor meals. Akara’s mind touches mine with worry, but I send her thoughts of reassurance and an image of Vali. Even if I am gone all day, she needs to stay with my human female, who has proven to be more fragile and vulnerable than I’d hoped.

And thus lies another problem. How can Vali be the mate to a sea-ogre when my world does not welcome her? She does not swim. The endless sun blisters her fishbelly-colored skin. The people on shore hunt her, and she bleeds heavily at least once a month. How can she live upon Akara’s back at my side as I rob the human ships that sail up and down the shipping lanes here? It’s not safe.

My uncle has a human mate, but his is male. There is no monthly bleeding there. My mother sheds an egg once a month so that must be similar.

The smartest thing would be to take Vali to the innkeeper with the daughter and ask them to help her find a home. To accept that I cannot have a human wife and leave her with people I trust.

Yet…I find I cannot bring myself to entertain the idea. Every time I consider it, I think of Vali’s smile of pleasure as she tongues one of my cocks…

…and I am a selfish, rotten bastard, because I am going to keep her.

I swim along the sea floor, distracted by thoughts of Vali and her warm, enticing, eager mouth. The corals grow thick here, with colorful fish darting around me as I move. I prefer the more open waters, as a rogue wave can slam me up against the sharp corals and scrape a layer off my skin, but I don’t want to go out so far that it’s impossible for me to return to Vali at the end of the day. I glide past the thick wall of corals and dive deeper, to the shelf of deep blue waters behind it. If Vali wants a large fish to please Vor, I’m going to have to lure them closer to the surface. She can’t dive this far.

But if I’m going to lure, I need to be familiar with the waters. I breathe out, letting the remainder of the air in my lungs escape to the surface, and dive deeper. The light from the surface grows distant, and the protective membrane that slides over my eyes when I swim flattens everything I see. I rely on my underwater senses instead, where I can “feel” the positions and sizes of other things in the waters around me by how they affect the waters we swim in. I can feel the fluttering movements of a school of fish off to one side, and the slower, more thoughtful movements of a large predator across from them.