Page 57 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
His only experiences with mating had involved shame and pain blended with unwilling pleasure. He longed for something softer, kinder, something beautiful like the act he’d witnessed briefly between Flay and Kestra, through the half-covered window of the captain’s cabin.
The few surviving females of his race were faraway in the waters around Kiken Island, and they were savage creatures, as likely to bite him as bed him. He’d had enough of his own kind.
Yet if he did find a human woman willing to mate with him, she would have to be someone “twisted,” someone with strange affinities. He would only be an exotic lay to her, something to whisper about to her friends. He’d never find someone who cared for him deeply, as Kestra did for Flay.
He stayed in the tank for a long time, while Mai sat with scarlet cheeks and read a book, or pretended to. At last she set the book aside, came to the tank, and dipped thin fingers into the water.
“Rake,” she said, and he heard her soft voice through the ripples.
He swirled onto his back, but did not surface. Instead he snapped his teeth at her fingertips, a teasing bite. She did not flinch, so Rake broke the surface and rose until his torso was clear of the water. Her fingers were nearly touching his belly, and her face, upturned to his, was so close he could practically feel the warmth of her breath.
“I shouldn’t have said that to you,” she said. “I didn’t think how it would sound, how it could hurt you. I’m sorry.”
“Your words were true,” he replied. “The truth needs no forgiveness.”
“If you’re willing, I’d like to examine your gills and your jaws now,” she said. “And—the other parts.”
“Very well. How do you want me?”
Mai’s lips parted, and her eyes widened.
“Belt on or off? Here in the tank, or elsewhere?” he clarified.
“Oh, um—belt off. Is it possible for you to get on the table with your tail?”
“Maybe, if you’ll push it nearer to the tank.”
She did, and he managed to hoist himself ungracefully from the tank onto the table’s surface. He lay there, his skin wet and shining, his great golden tail a heavy mass weighing him down. His broad fin trailed off one end of the table while his hair dripped from the other.
Mai began with the gills in his neck, guiding one open and touching the spongy material underneath the flap, the filter for the water. Then her fingers probed along the slopes of Rake’s throat. She coaxed his mouth open, then stretched his jaws wide and slid a finger between his gums and his lower lip, feeling the roots of his fangs. She asked him questions about the secondary and tertiary rows of teeth that popped out when his feeding frenzy was triggered, and she inspected the length of his tongue.
Next she moved to his chest, measuring its width, listening to his heart, counting his ribs. Rake’s heartbeat was faster than usual during the entire examination, and it quickened still more as her fingers passed over the scars thatched so plentifully across his torso. Marks of his failure to please the Queens. Marks of their rage and disgust, a disgust that human women apparently shared for him, for his body. Agony and self-loathing coiled in his gut, and Rake angled his face away from Mai, his jaw set, shame heating his skin.
Perhaps Mai noticed, for she stroked a hand down his bicep and forearm, and she said, “You’re a beautiful specimen, you know that?”
“Too savage.”
“Beautiful anyway.”
“Scarred.”
“A survivor,” Mai said gently. “That’s something to be proud of.”
Rake closed his eyes as Mai moved her hand lower. Since he’d killed Queen Acrid, he hadn’t felt the same level of panic when someone touched his stomach. And certainly no one had ever touched him as Mai did. Her slim fingers rippled over the ridges of muscle along his abdomen, not caressing exactly, but something akin to it. She traced the area where his scales began, testing them with a fingertip. “Are you all right?” she asked, low. “Is this too much?”
Every muscle in Rake’s body was strained, pulled taut. He barely dared to unlock his jaw and respond. “I haven’t eaten you yet.”
“We don’t have to do any more today.” Her hands left his body and she picked up her notebook. “We can stop.”
His hand flashed out, closing around her wrist, careful not to nick her with the claws. “Please,” he said. “Keep going. I need to know if I can handle this—being touched.”
Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated, but she nodded. Rake lay still and focused on breathing steadily while Mai measured the length of his tail and its immense caudal fin, then took more measurements of his shoulder span and waist. She talked as she worked, explaining why she wanted each piece of information.
At last the only part of him left to examine lay under the scale-flap just below his belly.
“Here?” Mai asked, her cheeks scarlet again.
He nodded.
