Her back hit his chest as his words rushed over her. "A kraken?" she murmured. "Like..."
"It's a species of squid. Usually only in the deep sea, but as the water levels rose, they came to the surface more often." He pointed with a long finger, and she followed the way his claw traced the outline of the tentacles so far out to sea. "Its prey moved closer to the surface, and so did the beast."
"You know it?"
"In a sense. It's an animal, not a mythical creature. It cannot speak or converse in the way you are assuming, but yes. I have interacted with it, and I know that it will not harm me if I swim past." He tightened his grip on her. "We swam past it to get here. I was surprised you didn't see it."
A spark of fear ignited in her chest. "You took me right past a monster like that?"
"Monster seems like a harsh word."
She spun, slamming her palm against his chest. "You swam right past a kraken, which I have heard of, by the way, and you thought I would be okay with that?"
"I didn't ask if you were okay. And you didn't see it."
His hands were warm on her waist. He didn't seem to care in the slightest that she was hitting him with her tiny fists. In fact, if she had to guess, she thought he might enjoy that she was striking him.
But that grin made it hard to focus on anything other than the man in front of her. Even though she knew there was a terrifying sea creature in the water right behind her, and some part of her mind wanted to focus on that, the rest of her wanted to look at him.
When had he stopped being scary to her? This god had nearly chewed her arm off right in front of her. He'd attacked her in a fit of rage, and yet, now she could only remember the good things he had done. How gentle he was. How much he wanted to make sure she was fed. And how angry he got whenever she wasn't treated right.
Things had changed between them.
Her hands slapped him one more time, but this time her palms lingered on his arm. The undine that she had seen before were all cold, but he was burning up. Like a furnace, he heated her palms.
The muscles of his chest were so intriguing. They were flat, like a human's, but so pronounced. She could feel the power in him, and the way that each muscle fiber twitched when her fingers played over them.
Ellie dragged her fingers lower. The rough bumps of his abs created hills and valleys that were so... intriguing. She had never looked at a man's body and wondered much about it at all. Humans were simply human. She had never been created for pleasure or to be interested in it, but he had woken something in her that made every part of her want to explore.
"What you did to me a week ago," she whispered, her voice a little rough at the thought of his tongue and his touch. "I can't stop thinking about it."
He hummed low under his breath. She could feel the gills along his ribs moving with that breath, the softness of them sliding through her fingers as she traced her touch around his torso.
Proteus said nothing else, so she kept talking as she explored the soft filaments of his gills. "It made me think, is there a way I can give you the same experience? It hardly feels fair that I could take all that from you and you got nothing in return."
"We both have struggled to find pleasure in these forms," he murmured, his gaze like a brand on her. "I am uncertain I am even capable of such things."
"You've never?"
"Never."
Her gaze flicked up to his, surprise written across every feature of her face. "You've never?"
So many implications were in those words, but she was thoroughly surprised. People had worshipped him. He was a god. Surely there had been at least a few moments where he had indulged in pleasure.
But he hadn't, she realized. He didn't even know if he could.
She supposed there was a chance here for her to show him.
She knew he liked it when she kissed his chest, so she figured she would start there. Ellie pressed kisses to his skin, laving her tongue over his muscles to taste the salt that lingered there. She allowed him to pull her onto him, not even realizing that he had drawn her down onto his chest so that they were both lying down until she could fully relax on him.
Every kiss felt right. It made her body warm, her skin tingle, and she could so easily feel that wondrous sensation that he had woken in her a week ago.
Pleasure, she reminded herself. Lust. There were words for this, even if she wasn't very good at remembering them. She would soon, though. Already her skin was both too hot and too tight.
Her hands danced down his sides, trying to listen to the soft sounds he made when he liked what she was doing. But it wasn't entirely the same noises that she had made. He wasn'tnecessarily making sounds of pleasure, but of comfort and relaxation.
But when she licked in between his abs, she swore there was a hiss of breath he made that was different from the others. Glancing up, she saw the same expression on his face that he had when he'd seen her walk out in the wetsuit. That was what she wanted. The heat in his gaze, the need that seemed to burn up from inside of him.
