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“But your shield?”
“I’ll disable it when we’re in the water,” he says, then laughs as he looks down at me. “You couldn’t overpower me even if you tried.”
It’s a joke—obviously—but I still feel a chill go down my spine. This isn’t us going for a swim, this is Atlas trying to figure out if he can trust me. This is a test.
I have no weapons on me and Atlas is twice my size. There are guards watching us closely. If he activates his shield, one of us is going to get electrocuted, and it’s not going to be him. And he’s right. I couldn’t overpower him. I’m fast, and a good swimmer, but I don’t think he’s going to let me get close enough to him to touch him.
But he still has to feel extremely comfortable to let me get close enough to him without the shield, and I can’t help but feel a stab of guilt as he waves at me from the water. “Get in,” he says, splashing at my feet.
I take a deep breath. “One second.”
“Coward.”
I’m not going to take that level of slander. I take my dress off until it falls into a heap at my feet.
I jump into the water. Atlas swims away, until he’s a few feet away from me, the water slicking his hair against his face. When I look at his face, I can only focus on his cheekbones, on the way I can see the barely visible scales shining like sequins on his golden skin.
And then there’s that fucking smile.
He’sgrinning.
And my heart flips in my chest, my stomach dropping as I realize that I might be falling in love.
I swim toward him, but he remains far enough away that I can’t touch him. He’s a strong swimmer; I wonder if it has something to do with the whole lizardman thing, but I’m not sure. “I thought you said your forcefield wouldn’t hurt me,” I call out. “So why won’t you let me any closer?”
He treads water, cocking his head at me. “Because I had a different idea about that,” he says. “I brought you here to offer you a…proposition, of a sort.”
That sparks my attention. I tread water with him, still trying to get just a bit closer. “I’m interested.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet,” he teases.
“It’s you,” I say. “I don’t have to know all the details to be interested.”
I feel something slide against my foot, and at first I think it must be Atlas reaching out. But when I look down, I realize it’s a fish—glowing, so it must be what he called adottu.
He chuckles low in his throat when I jerk my head down, jumping a little. It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t know how deep this lake is, and even if Atlas is comfortable, that doesn’t mean much on an alien planet.
“In that case,” he says, “I want to finally consummate our marriage, Penn.”
I lock eyes with him, swallowing hard. I’m surrounded by water, but my mouth is impossibly dry.
“You do?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, “but I have some conditions that must be met, and it will require some…maneuvering, one could say, on your part.”
I quirk my lips in a smile. “It’s a good thing I’m flexible,” I say.
“It is indeed,” Atlas says.
He swims around me, toward the shore, so fast that I can’t keep up with him. I’m still paddling in his wake when he reaches out to haul himself over the edge, his whole body glistening gold and dripping with water. Within a few moments, his shield is up again, flickering blue and slightly obscuring my view of his gorgeous muscles.
I’m fucking salivating at the thought of finally getting my hands on him.
And it would disappoint the Widow, but what I want from him has nothing to do with murder.
He’s already stepped into his slacks when I climb out of the water after him, and he turns to look at me with a lazy smile. He’s getting relaxed around me; if I were still on task, this would be the time that I start plotting my next move, preparing to strike. But I’m so distracted by how charming he is that it’s made me soft, sensitive.
I kind of just want to see where this goes…at least for now.
