Page 60 of Bloody Bargain
We braced the nape of her neck with one hand and fit our mouth to hers before she could speak.
Virginal sensations caused our breath to tremble.Ourlips touching another for the first time,ourhand gripping her neck,ourtongue licking the seam of her mouth. Her hands pushed on our chest to expel us, but we hadn’t lied. We were greedy.
Greedy forher.
We dissipated on the next sea breeze, out of breath and nearly out of time. D’abel would return soon, and with him, a true danger to our immortal soul.
Did b’adruokh take kindly to sharing?
We’d find out. For better or worse.
23
I sat on a picnic bench, kicking the stone wall dividing the pub’s back deck from the sandy beach, when D’abel walked out of the low tide like a warrior returning home. A swell of seawater shifted the boats baking in the afternoon sun, then his silvery hair caught the light. He walked through the water as if there was no more resistance than a field of wheat, two fat fish hanging from his claws by the gills as they swatted his thighs.
I stood, brushing my butt clean as Daffyd grilled some shrimp for his own lunch, mumbling about how odd it was that no one had come by yet.
“Even Ben hasn’t come round,” he wondered, shaking his head. “That old goat has a prawn sandwich like clockwork. Better’n a church bell. You want some, love?”
I glanced at the open roll in his meaty hand and smiled.
“No thanks. D’abel brought me lunch.”
Dafydd joined me in watching my b’adruokh walk up the beach in his tattered loincloth. It looked more colorful and distinct now as rivulets of water slid down his dry scales into the sand. He whipped his tail with a haughty smile.
“Seems a good lad,” Dafydd commented with a chuckle. “Found yourself a proper fisherman.”
“Something like that.”
“Wish me luck in hooking her heart for good,” D’abel commented, setting the two fish on a bloody cutting board beside a steel sink. He held out his hand and Dafydd gave him a cleaver. “She is as ferocious as a barracuda.”
Dafydd chuckled, biting the tail off one of his prawns with a crunch before laying it in his slathered roll. Then he pointed his sandwich at me with indignation. “Playing hard to get withthat?Please. If that snack had glanced my way when I was young, I’d have gotten on my knees behind that counter in a second.”
I sputtered in shock as a deep belly laugh rolled out of D’abel’s throat. His tail roiled over itself in amusement.
“Dafydd!”
The cook winked, took a bite of his lunch, and sat down at the picnic bench.
“What? It’s true. Only reason I wouldn’t now’s because my knees couldn’t take it.”
D’abel wrapped the tip of his tail around my ankle and squeezed, thoroughly enjoying himself and the heat blasting through my ears. “I appreciate your compliments very much, Dafydd. Perhaps they will sway mine Tessa.”
“No swaying necessary,” I grumbled, sitting next to Dafydd but backwards so I could watch D’abel rather than look out at the ocean. He used the cleaver to cut the heads off both fish, then unhinged his jaw and slurped them down with a crunch. He slit open their bellies next and ate every scrap from bones to lungs to fins. He scraped their scales with his tongue, stripping them raw, then arranged them on the grill.
“I can feel S’ba,” he said, massaging the haddock filets with his claws. He watched me out of one side pupil. “The fallen one visited while I was away, then.”
I sat up a little straighter, withdrawing it from its leather holster. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but I could make a new one. “You knew they’d come, didn’t you?”
D’abel looked back at me and his eyes fell to the blade, his irises shifting until they were squished together at the front of his stare, all four slitted pupils focused on the dagger.
“I thought they might, yes.”
“You weren’t worried about a fiend god trying to kill me?”
D’abel’s eyes flashed dangerously, his tail squeezing my ankle again.
“Gamil is no more god than a piece of driftwood. If their intentions had ever been to hurt you, they would not have stolen S’ba from theaufthat guarded it.”
