Page 59 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
“Never mind.” She laughed, breathless, and hopped onto the table herself, swinging her legs up. She reached under her skirts and pulled off a scrap of lacy material, and then she drew the dress up slowly, revealing knees, thighs, and then—
“There’s usually more hair,” Mai said faintly. “But I shave it sometimes.”
“That looks nothing like the females of my race,” he said. “They had a plain slot between scales—but this—this is beautiful.” He moved closer, inspecting her as she spread her legs a little wider. Her genitals looked like a flower, tinted a delicate rosy pink, with petals surrounding a glistening slit. Lower down, beyond the slit, was a tiny puckered hole, also pink.
“I’ve caught glimpses of human female parts before, in the Horror’s memories, but I’ve never seen an entire—what is it called?”
“Sex. Vulva.” She swallowed. “Pussy, if you want to be crude.”
“Is it always so wet and shining?”
Mai covered her face with one hand. “No,” she whispered. “That’s new for me.”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course!” she snapped. “It’s arousal. Like your penis growing longer in my hand.”
“But I haven’t touched you,” he said quietly.
“No.”
“And yet you reacted to me in this way.”
She gave an embarrassed squeal and pushed her skirts down again. “That’s quite enough science for one day.”
16
Mai hopped off the table, her face flaming at what she had just done. Stupid, stupid.
She could feel Rake’s gaze on her, and when she straightened he was there, in her space, with his exquisitely muscled body, his beautiful knife-sharp face, and those immense eyes, liquid and deep. He smelled freshly of saltwater.
“Do you want me?” he asked.
“You’re my friend.” She put a hand against his chest to push him away, but then she forgot the pushing part and her hand simply rested over his heart, registering the too-quick rhythm. She’d unsettled him as much as he’d unsettled her.
“Friends cannot want each other?”
“No—yes? I don’t know. I don’t like this kind of thing.” She wanted to cry, and scream, and run a very long distance into a deep, deep forest.
“I need to go,” she exclaimed, collecting her things and tumbling them into her satchel. “I have work to do, designs to make. Tell Kestra I’ll be working in the back corner of the inn’s common room if anyone needs me.”
She hustled past Rake and out of the warehouse. Two of Flay’s men were lounging by the door, playing a game of dice, and her stomach jolted at the realization that they could have walked in at any moment.
“Rake is almost done in there,” she told the sailors. “I’ll head back to the inn now. You can escort him when he’s ready.”
Mai marched down the street without waiting for them to protest. She needed to be alone, to think.
Clearly, she was out of control. Something had changed inside her, and it had started when Rake stalked out of the darkness on that pier. She hadn’t expected the compulsion to be so strong. Hadn’t expected the slippery wetness between her legs or the tingling, ticklish sensation that accompanied it.
She hadn’t expected to want Rake so badly, to feel as if every particle of her body was screaming to be against his, to be encircled and filled by him.
A voice at her elbow startled her—a crisp, smooth voice, cool as the ocean depths. “You walk quickly.”
Rake was beside her, shrouded in a long blue cloak, tinted goggles protecting his large eyes from the setting sun.
She glanced backward. “Where are Flay’s men?”
“I asked them to change out the saltwater in the tank. They’ll be along later.”
