AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His Brigid.
A shot of sheer joy lanced through him, making him arch his back and flex his shoulders in a fundamentally masculine display. Like a dominant sea lion drawing itself up to its full impressive…girth.
She blinked up at him like a baby owl, her mouth slightly rounded in a small “O.”
Hmm. Perhaps the mating rituals of sea lions wouldn’t work as well on Lady Brigid.
Perhaps he ought to take example from the Mobula ray instead. Where mating males charged through choppy waves and picked exactly the right time to shoot into the air, then belly flopped with the loudest smack possible back into the water.
She tilted her head slightly, her gaze roving down the column of his neck to his shoulders, chest and stomach. Just like she did before she left his chamber in the real world, her eyes took on a glistening sheen.
As if she saw something that spiked her interest.
As if she wanted to feast her eyes on him.
It must be his merman form, Sai thought. Human women, in particular, always seemed fascinated by it. Perhaps because he was a giant, half-naked fish. If they only knew some of the more exotic creatures in the deep seas, they wouldn’t give him another thought.
Anglerfish, in particular, made even Sai pause and gawk.
She fixated there for a good long while, simply staring at his navel. Or perhaps she was looking at the twin lines of muscles over his hipbones. They pointed like an arrow to the smooth patch of skin above his groin, before the scales of his fishtail took over.
Sai had always had the ability to transform into merman. His physical forms were dragon, merman, and man. He’d never taken the two-legged form until the Master forced him to when they sent him on the mission.
Once in a while, before his imprisonment, he’d shifted to merman when he encountered humans he needed to communicate with. They seemed more willing to accept that their shipwreck was salvaged by a man, half of one though he appeared to be, than a serpent.
But back to courtship.
Sai was no longer trying to win Brigid’s heart for the Master’s nefarious plots. He did, however, want to share his world with her. As repayment, in a way, for the world she’d shared with him all these years.
And he wanted her toloveit. As much as he did. It was somehow important.
Maybe he could be like the pufferfish, he thought, staying on the topic of courtship.
Perhaps he ought to spend a few hours or days on the ocean floor, scratching out a complex, symmetrical design with a stick for the lady he wished to impress. If she were a female pufferfish, she might fancy his concentric circles and decide to lay an egg in their center. Pufferfish were both artisticandromantic.
Not just showoffs like the Mobula ray. Or aggressive, loud, barking brutes like the sea lion.
But the best role model, Sai thought through his wide array of aquatic friends, must be the seahorse.
Why, their ritualistic dances to greet each other, moving through intricate, rhythmic sequences of twists and twirls, took hours each day. As if they were pledging their love to one another over and over again, renewing their vows every day.
Most pertinent of all, they often put their snouts together as they danced, tails curled around one another, chest to chest. Often, their tangled bodies formed the shape of a heart.
Sai recalled a brief moment in the real world when Brigid had stood on tiptoe before him, looking expectantly into his eyes. Then his mouth. Her arms had wound tightly around his neck, her torso pressed to his.
Perhaps she’d been waiting for a meeting of snouts. Er…mouths.
Yes, Sai thought, he could definitely take a few notes from the seahorses.
Although, why he thought of mating at all rather confounded him.
Dragons were solitary creatures, as far as he knew. He was the very first sea dragon. Rai was the first sky dragon, and Kai was the first earth dragon.
Toward the end, before the War of the Gods, Rai had found his Mate in the Eagle King’s son, Sol. Kai had always been Kai, more content to hibernate like a rock (literallyasa rock) than socialize.
And Sai had his sea creature friends.
He’d never felt the lack of a mate of his own, though his friends paired off as soon as they came of age. Some formed harems with more than one mate. Others chose only one for the rest of their days.
