Page 41 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
With an answering grin, Rake pried off his shoes. Mai held out the string of fish and he took one, sinking the points of his teeth into the scaly flesh with a sigh of satisfaction. Mai watched curiously as he pulled a huge bite free, scales and bones and all, and ground it in his teeth briefly before swallowing most of it whole.
“Your stomach must be tougher than a human’s,” she said. “And there must be stronger acids in it, to digest everything.”
His lashes lifted, dark eyes meeting hers. “Perhaps.”
“I remember your tongue is thicker and tougher than most human tongues, since your teeth are so sharp. Otherwise you’d cut yourself.”
In response he let his tongue slither out between his jaws, and Mai sucked in a quick breath. Some of the moths in her chest seemed to have migrated to lower parts of her, and they were fluttering strongly, in a very distracting way.
She reached out a finger sticky from the breakfast buns, and she touched it to his tongue. Rake wrapped the tip of his tongue around her finger before sliding it back into his mouth.
“You taste sweet,” he said, looking into her eyes.
Mai’s mouth felt dry as sand. “Would you—would you like to try one?” She held out a breakfast bun.
“Last time I ate human food, I vomited.”
“That’s because it was heavy stew with unfamiliar spices, and you were stressed. A little bread might settle all right.” She pulled off a bit of bun. He opened his wide mouth obediently, and she reached between those sharp teeth and set the morsel on his tongue. When she withdrew her fingers, he chewed slowly.
“It’s good,” he said. “Mai, may I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“You were afraid of me the first night, when I arrived.”
“I was in shock. And you killed two men without blinking an eye.”
“Blinking an eye?”
“It means without caring or having second thoughts. Without reluctance.”
“Oh. Well, they were hurting you. Threatening you with a kind of harm I despise. You know what I endured in the Realm Below.” He stared ahead, at one of the strange ships in the bay.
“I know,” she said quietly. “And thank you for helping me. If you hadn’t been there, I—I’m not sure how that would have ended.”
“They would have mated with you against your will,” he said.
“I suppose.” She shrank into herself a little and took a comforting bite of bun.
At that moment, Rake pulled up his goggles and set them in place over his large eyes, and Mai giggled, relieved at the distraction.
“Do I look ridiculous?” he asked.
“You couldn’t look ridiculous,” she said. “Charming, maybe. Less savage.”
His faint smile vanished altogether. “You know I wouldn’t harm you.”
“I know.” She laid a hand just above his knee. “I’ve always known that, I think. Even the other night, I knew it. But you had been dead, and I was drunk, and I was—more scared of myself than of you, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
Mai rolled her lips together and popped them out again. She couldn’t tell him how he stirred a place inside her that no one else had been able to touch. It was too new, too frightening.
“Look at that ship, over there,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to have sails, just those podlike structures branching from the mast. I wonder how it sails. And its prow looks odd, with those two giant bulbous lumps. Like insect eyes.”
Rake took another giant mouthful of fish and chased it with swallows of saltwater. “And that one. See how water pours from those spouts in its sides? As if it sucks up the ocean, churns the water through itself, and pours it out again in neverending waterfalls.”
“That one has holes for oars.” Mai indicated a third ship. “See those triangular sails? And the carvings along its sides? It’s enormous.”
