Page 94 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
His gills fluttered, and he forced himself to huff breath through his mouth, his lungs. Gradually the extra teeth receded, his throat narrowed, and his jaw closed, locking back into place.
“Rake,” said Mai softly, and he flinched at her voice, a shiver rolling over his skin.
“Rake.” She laid a hand on his chest. “Do you want to eat me?”
“I want to consume you,” he said, low. “I want you to be wholly mine. But a stronger part of me craves you alive, existing, and near me, always.” His hips yearned toward hers, his bare body seaming itself to the shape of her. “I have to touch you and talk to you every day. You are my bones and blood. You are the saltwater soothing my skin, the current carrying my heart. Layers, like the ocean—wild and carefree at the surface, with beautiful depths beneath. You care so fiercely for so few—and the honor I feel at being one of those few is fathomless. When you set a goal, you will do anything to achieve it, anything. Monsters, hurricanes, a towering wall or a thousand teeth couldn’t turn you back. My soul is seasoned with the same salt as yours—pain, passion, and purpose. You will leave Feral,” he ended, with a savage gasp, “and you will come with me.”
Mai was staring into his eyes, quivering against him, lips parted and trembling. “Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll go with you. But you have to promise, Rake,promisethat you will stand with me this time. That you’ll be on my side, not theirs.”
“I will,” he said. “I was wrong before, when I balked at staying with you in Meroa. I will do it. I’ll do anything you need. Forgive me.”
“And you,” Mai said, “forgive me for going with Feral. For overlooking the terrible things he has done because I was so fixated on what I want. I knew it was a mistake the moment he shut me in here.” A guilty fear crept into her gaze. “Rake, I’m not sure he will let me go.”
“Oh,” said Rake softly. “He will, my pearl. He won’t have a choice.”
27
Feral was charting a new course.
Not that he regretted a moment of the years he’d invested in his father’s fleet. Far from it. In fact, he planned to use every contact, every alliance, every favor he’d amassed over the decades spent in service to the Magnate.
The old man was becoming more avaricious and unreasonable every year. He angered his captains by “punishing them” with higher tributes. And then that ridiculous business with Flay…
If Feral hadn’t stepped in—if the Magnate had let the full force of his ridiculous wrath fall on his own son—the other captains would have rebelled. They would have feared the same harsh penalties should they happen to be late on their routes. The entire empire could have collapsed, and all because Flay the little high-minded froglet had to stir the pot, and the bilious old man had to overreact.
The Magnate failed to see how tenuous his grip on the fleet actually was. And he refused to acknowledge how the slave trade was ebbing, becoming unpopular due to a rise in moralistic types in leadership throughout various port cities of the region.
Those same moralistic types didn’t seem to have a problem robbing and fighting each other, and so Feral had concocted a new kind of trade. He planned to manufacture unique weapons, based on Mai’s designs. He would build his own empire, with his father’s fleet as a stepping-stone to his goals.
Humans would always war with each other—and they always battled with special ferocity when deciding where the lines of morality should fall. Demand for weapons and war machines would never abate, and Feral planned for his products to be in the center of every conflict.
They would be Mai’s inventions, of course—but who needed to know the source, the mind from which the designs came? None of his prospective clients would care about that. They would only care about trouncing their enemies, and they would thank him for providing them with the tools to do so.
Feral finished writing the list of the people he planned to approach first. He set the pen back in its holder on the desk and blew on the paper to dry the ink.
After his divers had finished their initial inspection of the ruined cities, both above and below, he’d set out on a shortened version of his usual route. Along the way, he would meet with each contact on the list and propose a strategic friendship.
And while theAscendantvoyaged from city to city, he could pursue another plan—a thread that wound through his primary scheme. Feral could have pleasure whenever he wanted it, from countless women more beautiful and buxom than the little scientist. But he did not like being told ‘no.’ Or perhaps he did. It certainly tightened his trousers whenever a woman rejected him. And he never accepted a rejection as the final answer.
But he’d been truthful when he told Mai he wouldn’t force her. He had every intention of giving her what she wanted—because improving her skills and growing her knowledge benefited him.
So he wouldn’t pounce upon her like he usually did with women who refused him. He would wait, and enjoy the chase. And when she finally said ‘yes,’ he would take his fill, over and over. He would break her in every way, until she was raw and vulnerable in his hands, a leaking, crying, used toy at his feet.
The mere thought of it made him hard, and he reached for the buttons of his pants, imagining Mai bent over his desk, her small round ass bared to him.
But before he could indulge the fantasy, Feral heard two sounds from the cabin next door—a blood-curdling roar, and a savage scream.
He leaped up from his desk and lunged out of his cabin, snatching a one-handed mechanical crossbow that could fire multiple bolts in a row—another one of Mai’s designs. He shouted for his first mate, but his call was cut short as he stumbled over something on deck.
Why was the deck so dark? There should be more lanterns.
Swearing, he dove back into his cabin and seized a lantern from the wall, lighting it quickly. He charged back out and swung the lantern low over the thing that had tripped him.
The bodies of two sailors. Throats slashed to ribbons, not by a knife, but by claws.
He reached down and plucked something from the watery blood streaming across the deck. A long indigo hair, half-soaked in scarlet.
And Feral knew, with the first sliver of fear he’d felt in years—
