Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Ellie
Ellie still had no idea what she had done to be given gifts like this. Truly, it was the most incredible thing she had ever seen in her life. Being able to float above the fish, watching them dart around each other, had made her rethink everything.
Sure, it had only been one experience. And she'd seen fish before.
Malcolm, the scientist who worked with her in Tau, loved to look at the fish he kept in tanks in his office.
She'd watch them swim around for ages until he yelled at her that she had work to do.
But that wasn't the same as seeing them in their natural environment.
Somehow, watching them live in this world made her feel like they were more than just pets. They were real, impressive creatures who had so much personality. They darted around each other, clearly getting into little spats and arguments, but then heading back to their homes.
Every fish on this reef seemed to know its place in the world. They all had jobs and had relationships with other fish that they knew or recognized from daily life. They lived in such a way that it was very obvious they were all a functioning part of a whole.
So when Proteus said he wanted to show her more, she wasn't going to say no. How could she?
"A place of worship?" she asked as they darted through the water.
They were so close to the surface, she could see when the rain reached them. The water above her head went from wavelike patterns to holes made by the rain that drilled into it. She was so enthralled by the texture that she didn't notice when they'd arrived until Proteus laughed in her ear.
"Come on, Sisu," he said with another chuckle. "I think you'll like this better than the rain."
A flash of lightning illuminated the sunken building.
It was impressive, with columns easily three stories tall that were still white as bone.
It looked like buildings she'd seen in old myths and legends.
The kind of building where gods would be worshipped, and statues would be built that were ten men tall.
But as Proteus headed inside, she realized that it was quite modern.
A door had been sealed long ago, and as Proteus entered a pattern of complicated numbers, it slid open with a rush of air bubbles that made it hard for her to see anything at all. She threw an arm up, trying to keep her rebreather in place while Proteus forced the two of them into the airspace.
The door must have sealed behind them, because they were tossed into a space that suddenly had air.
She blinked a few times underneath her goggles, trying to reconcile the fact that she had just been in the ocean, but was now very much in a space that almost felt like it was... heated.
Proteus had gathered her in his arms, making sure that she wasn't ever thrown too far or injured. But now she was lying on top of a god, while realizing that the floor beneath him was entirely gold. Not just gold in color, but the metal that reflected the expression of shock on her own face.
She lifted her head, staring at the wealth surrounding them. Everything in here was coated in gold. The floor, the ceiling, the walls. All of it. They were inside a gold box, essentially, with very few items left.
But she could see there were areas where more feet had tarnished the gold.
Smudges were still in certain areas where people had likely knelt to worship the god of the sun.
There were benches against the far wall, all of them equally coated in what she could only assume was gold leaf. But those benches looked old.
The walls were mostly left bare, plain, reflecting the people who were within the temple rather than having any murals or artwork that depicted the god itself. Except one wall was entirely glass.
She stared out into the sea, knowing that this likely wasn't what the people who were here before her had looked at.
A massive drop off plummeted from the base of the windows, leaving her staring into an abyss, while what the previous worshippers must have seen was the surface of the sea itself.
They must have stared into the glittering light of the sun reflected upon the waves that made this whole room glow.
The more she stared into that dark void, the more nervous she became. It felt like something was staring back at her. Something she could not see.
Proteus rolled onto his stomach, helping her stand as he did so and then bracing himself on his arms to look out the window with her.
"Ah," he murmured. "So it's still alive."
"What is still alive?"
But then she saw it. The tentacles that were waving in the sea.
She hadn't noticed them because her mind skittered away from the possibility that something like that was real.
It couldn't be real. She wasn't looking at a real life sea monster that was sunken into the bottom of the abyss, just waiting for unfortunate prey.
"Your people used to call it the kraken," Proteus murmured as his arms came around her. He'd coiled his tail beneath him like a snake, using the weight of his lower body to allow him to almost sit up straight.
Her back hit his chest as his words rushed over her. "A kraken?" she murmured. "Like..."
"It's a species of squid. Usually only in the deep sea, but as the water levels rose, they came to the surface more often.
" He pointed with a long finger, and she followed the way his claw traced the outline of the tentacles so far out to sea.
"Its prey moved closer to the surface, and so did the beast."
"You know it?"
"In a sense. It's an animal, not a mythical creature. It cannot speak or converse in the way you are assuming, but yes. I have interacted with it, and I know that it will not harm me if I swim past." He tightened his grip on her. "We swam past it to get here. I was surprised you didn't see it."
A spark of fear ignited in her chest. "You took me right past a monster like that?"
"Monster seems like a harsh word."
She spun, slamming her palm against his chest. "You swam right past a kraken, which I have heard of, by the way, and you thought I would be okay with that?"
"I didn't ask if you were okay. And you didn't see it."
His hands were warm on her waist. He didn't seem to care in the slightest that she was hitting him with her tiny fists. In fact, if she had to guess, she thought he might enjoy that she was striking him.
But that grin made it hard to focus on anything other than the man in front of her. Even though she knew there was a terrifying sea creature in the water right behind her, and some part of her mind wanted to focus on that, the rest of her wanted to look at him.
When had he stopped being scary to her? This god had nearly chewed her arm off right in front of her.
He'd attacked her in a fit of rage, and yet, now she could only remember the good things he had done.
How gentle he was. How much he wanted to make sure she was fed.
And how angry he got whenever she wasn't treated right.
Things had changed between them.
Her hands slapped him one more time, but this time her palms lingered on his arm. The undine that she had seen before were all cold, but he was burning up. Like a furnace, he heated her palms.
The muscles of his chest were so intriguing. They were flat, like a human's, but so pronounced. She could feel the power in him, and the way that each muscle fiber twitched when her fingers played over them.
Ellie dragged her fingers lower. The rough bumps of his abs created hills and valleys that were so.
.. intriguing. She had never looked at a man's body and wondered much about it at all.
Humans were simply human. She had never been created for pleasure or to be interested in it, but he had woken something in her that made every part of her want to explore.
"What you did to me a week ago," she whispered, her voice a little rough at the thought of his tongue and his touch. "I can't stop thinking about it."
He hummed low under his breath. She could feel the gills along his ribs moving with that breath, the softness of them sliding through her fingers as she traced her touch around his torso.
Proteus said nothing else, so she kept talking as she explored the soft filaments of his gills. "It made me think, is there a way I can give you the same experience? It hardly feels fair that I could take all that from you and you got nothing in return."
"We both have struggled to find pleasure in these forms," he murmured, his gaze like a brand on her. "I am uncertain I am even capable of such things."
"You've never?"
"Never."
Her gaze flicked up to his, surprise written across every feature of her face. "You've never?"
So many implications were in those words, but she was thoroughly surprised. People had worshipped him. He was a god. Surely there had been at least a few moments where he had indulged in pleasure.
But he hadn't, she realized. He didn't even know if he could.
She supposed there was a chance here for her to show him.
She knew he liked it when she kissed his chest, so she figured she would start there.
Ellie pressed kisses to his skin, laving her tongue over his muscles to taste the salt that lingered there.
She allowed him to pull her onto him, not even realizing that he had drawn her down onto his chest so that they were both lying down until she could fully relax on him.
Every kiss felt right. It made her body warm, her skin tingle, and she could so easily feel that wondrous sensation that he had woken in her a week ago.
Pleasure, she reminded herself. Lust. There were words for this, even if she wasn't very good at remembering them. She would soon, though. Already her skin was both too hot and too tight.
Her hands danced down his sides, trying to listen to the soft sounds he made when he liked what she was doing. But it wasn't entirely the same noises that she had made. He wasn't necessarily making sounds of pleasure, but of comfort and relaxation.
But when she licked in between his abs, she swore there was a hiss of breath he made that was different from the others.
Glancing up, she saw the same expression on his face that he had when he'd seen her walk out in the wetsuit.
That was what she wanted. The heat in his gaze, the need that seemed to burn up from inside of him.
He had it in him. She was certain of it. He just hadn't ever been given the gift of discovering the pleasure that could make him see stars.
Leaning up, she straddled him as she pulled the zipper down from her wetsuit. The expression he had was of a man who coveted the creature above him, and she thought perhaps her body would be enough to intrigue him.
The zipper moved, inch by inch, revealing miles of her flesh until her breasts were free. Her nipples tightened as the air hit them. His gaze never moved from her chest, and those dark eyes seemed to darken even further.
His hip fins were mostly tentacles along the edges, but she had never seen them move like they did right now.
They were usually limp, like the fins on a regular undine, unless he was swimming of course.
But right now they reached for her, all those little suckers flaring as though he wanted. .. wanted...
"Oh," she whispered. "You want to touch me."
"Dreadfully so," he murmured.
She grabbed onto his fins and brought them up to her exposed skin. With a groan, her head fell back as she felt a hundred tiny mouths latch onto her skin. His tentacles played across her breasts, many of them wrapping around her skin, layering around each other.
His head tilted back as well, and the sound he made was one of pure rapture.
"You taste so good," he murmured. That long tongue came out to lick his lips, and she realized he could actually taste through the suckers of his tentacles.
This was easily the strangest interaction she'd ever had with another living being, and she could not suffer it ending any time soon.
One of his tentacles pushed at the zipper of her wetsuit, sliding down her belly and delving between her legs. It suctioned onto her clit with what seemed like almost impossible accuracy, but she couldn't think much after that.
She was so wet. So needy. Ellie rocked against his hip bones, making little sounds that were both embarrassing and needy. This wasn't about her, though. It wasn't meant to be about her.
It was meant to be about... about...
Ellie slid her hips back again, and her bottom came up against something hard behind her. Something hard and impossibly large.
Her eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she realized he did, in fact, have a cock. He could get hard, and therefore, he could most certainly experience pleasure.
But then it was hard to think again because another tentacle slithered between her legs, and this one seemed a little thicker than the other.
She could tell what he wanted. He wanted to plunge inside her, to delve into the wet depths of her body and make her forget that she had a point to all of this.
Well, two things could be true at the same time.
With a wicked grin, she stood. She hoped it wasn't hurting him for her heels to dig into his tail, but he didn't look like he was in any state to complain as she pulled her wetsuit off.
His gaze followed every movement, devouring every inch of skin revealed until she turned around. His hands came up to frame her hips, holding onto her and bringing her down so that he could watch every movement of his tentacles as they attacked her slit once more.
But now she was facing his cocks. Plural.
Now she could stare at the monumental challenge before her, both of them glistening in the golden light of the room. As one of his tentacles slipped inside of her, the feeling both foreign and immensely welcome, she let out a little groan.
"These will be difficult," she murmured, knowing that she had only watched someone get fucked before, but had never experienced that herself. She had seen many people naked in her life, though. And she knew damn well what he had was larger than any that she would ever see again.
Still, she leaned forward and licked the closest one from base to tip, and grinned when he arched into her. A challenge, yes, but worth every second of it.