Page 2 of Taken By the Alien Triton King

That calm I’d felt before washed over me as suddenly as the lack of air had burned my lungs. For one peaceful moment, I could see him, take him in: the blue of the ocean as it closed over our heads, the way his short black-and-blue hair fanned in the current. His jaw was a sharp line, his expression forbidding. And then I saw it—a softening. I had to be imagining it, but it felt like there was recognition in his eyes, a connection that went beyond the differences of our origins and species, that transcended all that.

Then darkness claimed me.

Chapter 2

Kaerius

This morning, when I arrived at the designated meeting place with my guards, I felt nothing but disdain for the upcoming diplomacy. What did we need thesehumansfor? They were a land species that wanted to live on a predominantly ocean-covered world. They were idiots, and they needed to stay in their spaceships and keep moving—to find a planet more suitable to their needs than Sanos. That was this morning—before I held a human female in my arms.

Eyeing her slight form and the way her odd clothing clung to or billowed in the water, I felt my cock stir in its pouch where it resided when I was in my waterform. That was most of the time, and the sensation was familiar, if unwelcome. This human was a tempting little morsel, but I did not need such distractions. In the back of my head, a voice that sounded a suspicious lot like my dead brother whispered that maybe she was exactly what I needed. Morven tended to get philosophical like that, and I’d always laughed his strange musings off. Today, that was not so easy.

She was weak, I thought firmly. Look at her. She’d passed out when I’d taken the plunge into the deep, cool, calming sea. No scales protected her pale, silky-soft skin, nor did she have claws at the tips of her dainty little fingers to defend herself. I could only surmise that her toes, currently encased in heavy boots, were the same. With my thumb, I lifted her plump, pink lip and snarled in distaste when I discovered only straight, blunt teeth. She was utterly defenseless, and yet, at the touch of her lip, at the sight of her mouth, my cock swelled even more. What the krill? Why was I responding to her like this?

I had already applied the rebreather to help her gill-lacking body survive beneath the water. I had not lowered us rapidly under the weight of the water and had kept our altitude at a depth where she would not suffer damage from the water pressure. Such protections would never be required with an Ondrithar female; she’d krilling kill me if I so much as suggested she needed my help. That made this human female weak, and yet…

I flashed back to when I’d climbed onto land with the Ondrithar neighbor who hailed from the Sanos Abyss. Krak’zol, the deep-sea dweller, had not been interested in this meeting either, considering it a waste of time. We might have been pushing it with our timing just a little and had taken the safe way by coming from the other side of the island that was the designated meeting spot. We’d seen the two females before the phaser fire had started, and I hadn’t been the only one fascinated by the sight of the pair of land dwellers.

My guards showed up then, Bruinen and Aenon’s sleek blue bodies arrowing through the water to take up flanking positions on either side of me. From their inquisitive gazes, I knew they wanted to know what I was doing, hauling one of the delegatesaround in my arms. The way I was holding her was also far from impersonal—my tail coiled around her legs, fins moving just enough to keep our position steady in the currents. My arms were around her body, and my hand was still on her delicate throat so I could look into her face.

Her name was Samantha—at least, that’s what her human friend had shouted at her as the chaos had erupted. I did not know why Krak’zol had taken the loud one, but I knew that my taking of this strange, ever-so-curious female had nothing to do with treaties and diplomacy. I had well and truly fallen on barbaric instincts at that moment of danger, and I’d stolen her purely because I wanted her. My spacefaring ancestors would ride angry waves if they knew how far their descendants had fallen. Curling my lip, I decided I did not care.

Tucking her more comfortably against my chest, I freed the strap of her heavy, bulky case and handed it to Bruinen. “Let us return home,” I said. “We’ll have a meeting of our own inourterritory.” And silently, my mind added: In my bed. Great delight filled me at the thought of discovering what made this human different, what made her so tempting to all my senses. Yes, let the ancestors curse me for what I was going to do, but the human was not getting away. She was mine now.

Chapter 3

Samantha

I woke up in a panic, my heart pounding in my throat, adrenaline soaring through my system. Shooting upright, I raised my hands defensively in front of me, as if I were going to take that arrogant king on with my fists. There was nobody there—I was alone. Deflating on the spot, confusion filled me as I took in my new surroundings. Where the heck was I? Where had that Ondrithar male taken me?

The room I was in was blue—of course it was—and the walls curved softly, as if they undulated like waves. Light fixtures in the ceiling were sleek and glowed with a warm, yellow hue, like the sun. That was technology—it had to be. The bed I sat on was large—disconcertingly large, in fact—and covered in satin-soft black sheets. This was a bedroom, and a well-appointed one at that. Trunks lined one wall with thick iron locks and hinges, as if they were booty from a pirate’s treasure. But a wardrobe and dresser, much like the fancy ones I’d see in entertainment vids, sat against another wall. Then there was the large, round pool at the center of the room, right across from the bed. Blue lightemanated from it, and I had a feeling it was the only exit: there was no door.

On the upside, I wasn’t dead, and I was in a room with air. So that bastard of a king did know about my human limitations when it came to water. That did not make me feel better. Thinking about him made me feel torn in two—confused and tangled, like the knots of kelp that had washed onto the island’s shore.

Attraction for him was a primal, driving thing inside me, thrumming through my pulse and between my thighs just from conjuring up his image in my mind. Anger followed hot on its heels, furious at the way he’d treated me so far—how little interest he’d shown me as a person. And now he’d locked me in a room with no possible way to escape; I was a prisoner. I wanted to fume and say that if the big bosses up at the USSLegacyheard of this, they’d bust his ass, but the truth was, they wouldn’t dare. We needed a treaty and land too badly for them to anger any of the factions. I was on my own.

Another reason to be mad: Someone had undressed me. Granted, I was still wearing my very demure underwear consisting of boyshorts and a tanktop with a built-in bra, but it meant someone had touched me while I’d been out. That felt icky, but my stomach twisted with something that came frustratingly close to desire again. Had it been him? Had he taken off my shirt and pants?

Getting out of bed, I firmly resolved to be ready for him when he returned. Depending on how long I’d been out, that could be any minute now. I hoped so, because while I was good at sitting still in a lab, I wasn’t so good at it when I had nothing to occupy myalways-active mind. Exploring what little there was was my only option. He had locked me in here, so I was going to look in every single drawer and behind every door. What I found only upset me more.

The big wardrobe housed a harness stand with an intricate set of armor and a huge, ornate trident. The chests were all locked, and lockpicking was not one of my skills. In a discreet alcove, I discovered a bathroom-type area, and there, a dress of shimmering, pearlescent fabric hung. Considering this room and its contents made me think it belonged to a man; the dress could be meant for me, or it belonged to the jerk king’s girlfriend. I only had to glance at my scantily clad self in the floor-to-ceiling mirror to make a decision.

The fabric was possibly the softest I’d ever touched in my life, and it flowed down my body like water. Then it pooled around my ankles, too long to fit me properly. While the top was far too snug to look decent around my busty chest, the bottom of the dress made me look like a child. “This thing is completely disproportionate,” I muttered in frustration. At least the bottom of the dress was made of flirty panels, and I resorted to tying knots in the bottom parts to shorten their length. It struck me that this was a dress made for a woman with a tail—flirty and ethereal, it would wisp around her tail. Ah, shucks. It probably belonged to his girlfriend.

A splashing coming from the bedroom drew my attention with a swooping in my stomach. Damn it, I was not cut out for this adventuring stuff. I wanted my plant specimens and a lab, not this… whatever this was right now. Casting my eyes about, I searched for a weapon, but all I saw was another trident hanging from the wall—too big for me to carry easily. In the end, I pickedup a sharp-edged seashell thing from the counter and clutched it tightly in my hand as I peered around the corner. The alcove was giving me a bit of cover, and the person who had entered via the pool hadn’t seen me yet. That gave me ample opportunity to study them, which was just the way I liked it. It was a woman—tanned, statuesque, beautiful. Her hair was long and black with striking green highlights. She wore a dress just like the one I had just pilfered, but on her, the fabric draped in lovely ways and pooled elegantly around her long legs. She was the kind of woman who made me feel like my frumpy, nerdy self and wish that I wasn’t me. I was willing to bet that when she shifted into her waterform, she’d be even more stunning. Had to be the girlfriend. Or, wait—wife? Had I just stolen the dress of the Ondrithar Queen?

My horrified gasp made her lift her green gaze from the rumpled black sheets to the alcove I was hiding in. No. Get a grip. I was going to have to do better than this if I wanted to make it out alive. Show no fear; pretend you thought you had the upper hand; never let them see how much they intimidated you. I wished I didn’t have such a good memory, and I really wished I hadn’t memorized the diplomatic handbook I’d been given. Maybe she was a perfectly lovely woman; maybe she was simply a servant. But she still scared the shit out of me, and I couldn’t even explain why. She wasn’tthatmuch taller than I was, and she was unarmed.

Raising my chin, I balled my fists around the sharp seashell behind my back, then stepped out of the alcove to confront her. When she smiled and revealed sharp, predatory fangs, I was pretty sure I’d screwed up.

Chapter 4

Kaerius

Sitting on my throne inside the glass-domed throne room, I gazed up at the ceiling and the water held back by the glass. Shapes darted left and right inside the big blue—Ondrithar males and females hurrying home from work or harvesting food and resources from the nearby cliff and reef. Normally, the sight of all that business made me happy, but today, nothing appealed. My thoughts kept straying to a certain female currently sleeping in my bed inside my private chambers.

Not even the report my head guard gave me about the shadowy enemy that had made our harvests fail and our resources dwindle could keep my attention. For the first time, I wondered if a treaty with these humans could aid us in our problems. We had fought the Shadefins before, back when the Ondrithar had first arrived on Sanos several hundred years ago. To defeat them, the fuel inside the engines of our ship had been sacrificed; we could not do that a second time. What if the humans had more such fuel?

I jerked upright from my slouch and ignored the surprised expression on my head guard’s face. “I need to attend to a more pressing matter,” I snapped, then growled because I didn’t need to explain myself. The female was addling my brain, and now I was acting oddly. My men were going to take note, and then they were going to gossip like old wives because soldiers loved nothing better. I hid a wince as I considered the ramifications of such news, my bare feet slapping against the metal floor as I rushed past the male without another word.

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