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“Our clothes will cause a drag, so it is better for us to strip first.”
I turned back to him, my eyes narrowing. “Is that so?”
“It is.” The grin on his face widened. “If you are going to have the experience, you must do it right.”
“Will all the things you show me in the future require me to take off my clothes.”
“If I can help it,” he said, already removing his shirt, exposing all of his hard abs. He tossed his shirt onto a higher tree branch before moving to take off his pants, my gaze immediately following. “Will you continue to gawk, or will you join me?”
“I was not gawking,” I lied, turning around. I took off my bloodstained blouse and tossed it to where his clothes were before taking off my pants, as well. When I turned around, he was completely naked, and my mouth opened at the sight of his—
“Still not gawking?”
“Did you have to remove your boxers?” I questioned.
“The better question is will you keep this on,” he questioned, pulling on the straps of my bra.
“I’m sure the drag won’t be too much for it.”
“It is intriguing to see you so timid. Lady Godiva had no such issues—”
“I will push you out of this tree!” I snapped at him, causing him to laugh at me. He was teasing me on purpose, and I was mad I was allowing him to do so. And I was even more annoyed at myself for taking off my underwear. So mad I could not bring myself to look him in the eye. “Are we going or not?”
“Momentarily. Allow me to take in this breathtaking sight once more.”
The sight he meant was me, of course, as he looked over my body. Unable to stand it anymore, I took off running toward the edge of the cliff, and with no difficulty, he caught up to me. Right before I jumped, he took hold of me and spun me into his body, his arms wrapping around me as we crashed deep into the dark waters below, bubbles and water spinning around us. It took me a second to adjust to the different light under the sea. However, when I did, it looked just as clear as it would have been during the day in shallow waters for mortals.
A school of pink-colored fish swam right by my head. There was a turtle shell on the seafloor, and I could hear the turtle within it sleeping. It was amazing. I looked back to Theseus, and he, of course, was still watching me. He stretched out his hand for mine, which I gave him, and he kissed the back of it before guiding me forward through the water. I did not have words for how beautiful it was, how peaceful. My ears picked up every sound, and when I didn’t know what I was hearing, I would look, only to be happily surprised, like the sound of two crabs fighting over a seashell at the very bottom of the seafloor.
I didn’t know how far we were from shore, but it must have been a distance because it didn’t take long for me to hear what sounded like moaning—no, it was like a song without words. Like an opera singer who kept raising their octave to the music of a symphony, and when I turned to see what could possibly be making such a beautiful sound, I was met by ten sperm whales. There were eight of them so big that they looked like sunken ships, while the other two smaller ones were still relatively large, but they were the babies. Just as Theseus had said, like all the other sea creatures, they did not seem concerned with us. Like all of them knew that we were not their predators. They swam past overhead, blocking light from the surface, and when I swam closer, I was sure one of them met my gaze as I could see my reflection in its round eye.
And just like that, they moved on. Sensing Theseus beside me, I faced him, far too excited and grinning wide, and he grinned, too. We couldn’t speak underwater, so I indicated for him to go up before I swam to the surface as fast as possible.
However, I shouldn’t have. Or at the very least, I should have checked around the waters more because I broke through the surface of the water only to hear the gasp and the racing heart of a human.
He wasn’t directly above me, or I would have seen the shadow of the boat, but he wasn’t that far away, either. He stared at me, mouth wide, from the surface of his fishing boat, and I stared back, shocked any human was out this far.
He began to yell, almost tripping over himself as he ran back into the boat. Feeling hands on my legs, I was gently pulled back down under the waters. Coming face-to-face with Theseus, who gave me look like he could not believe I could be so foolish. Taking my hand, we swam farther away from the boat toward a rocky ridge in the distance before breaking through the surface.
“Young one,” he began his lecture almost immediately.
“What are the odds of a human being out here catchi
ng me in this big sea!” I said quickly in my defense.
He pursed his lips. “The odds would be much slimmer if you first listened to your surroundings.”
“You live and learn?” I said sheepishly.
He chuckled as he turned to face the boat in the distance, where the man had returned to the deck of his boat with a few other men. I could hear him speaking but did not understand what he was saying.
“And this is how the tales of the mermaids spread.” Theseus shook his head as he listened.
“They believe I am mermaid?” I grinned, not sure why that made me so happy. But it did.
“Well, the one who saw you is certain. While the rest of his crew believe he is drunk,” Theseus said, and I listened to the man trying desperately to explain what he had seen to his crew.
“Wait,” I said quickly, realizing what this meant. “How the tales of the mermaids spreads? As in they are real?”
