We stay connected this way until Hunter’s breathing has evened out, the tension leached from his shoulders. Once he’s gained control of himself, we separate. He collapses onto the leather loveseat across from his desk while I lean on the mahogany desktop.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Nix. I’ve neverfelt like this. There’s this… this…pullto her. A need to protect her radiating from my baser instincts.”
“Protect her from what?” I ask.
“Everything! Nothing! I don’t know!” His exasperation is clearly with himself more than Madison. I cross my arms and wait for him to gather his thoughts.
“I denied her doctoral thesis proposal to keep her safe.” The words are murmured so quietly I almost miss them.
My eyebrows rise to my hairline. “You what?”
“Gah! I denied her doctoral thesis proposal to keep her safe! No, I don’t know what from, just that I didn’t want her gallivanting around dangerous cliff faces and dark caves, looking for some lost underwater city that may never have existed. Not without me.” He admits.
“Hunt you ca?—”
“I know!” He growls. “I know I overstepped. It was an abuse of power, and I don’t know how to take it back.” He looks up at me, eyes pleading. “What the fuck do I do, Phoenix?”
I pick up a book from the floor, the one with the symbol he showed me. The exact page is lost after his tirade, but I close it and hand it to him gently.
“Maybe start here. And if you don’t want her to go alone,” I shrug, “go with her.”
11
So far, my mate and I have avoided talking about anything important. She hasn’t asked where I’m from, and I haven’t asked what she was doing alone in a dangerous cave that would have filled with water at high tide. We haven’t talked about our sudden bonding or what it means for our future.
Instead, we’ve pursued other, moreinterestingoutlets. I still haven’t knotted her, but I believe we’ve both enjoyed the wait, the build up. My Madi has had no shortage of orgasms. We did everything out of order, but I am trying to amend that by courting her now. As much as I can without any resources in this world of hers.
If we were in the ocean, I would bring her jewels and fine adornments. Here, I pick wild flowers for her on the way to class, and hand feed her whenever she’ll let me. I feast on her even more often.
My inability to speak the language comfortably has been a convenient excuse for avoiding the things we should discuss. But we both know it won’t hold up for muchlonger. I’ve been watching the box she calls a television when we aren’t wrapped up in each other, and I’m nearly proficient.
Right now, we’re in another of her classes, this one much smaller than the lecture taught by the attractive older male she called Dr. Anderson. With only seven people around a table, I stand out like a shark among a school of minnows. I hope it ends soon so I can get back to worshiping my new mate.
“But what about the unexplainable events at Lunara’s temple last spring? They said the torches lit themselves and the glow of the pools can’t be explained by any known phosphorescent. There are plenty of stranger things than Vito’s accounts of an underwater city.” Madison sits up a little straighter, the passion in her voice undeniable.
I perk up. Could she be talking of Ocearus?
“He meant that it was flooded, not that people lived there under the water,” a male with a pointy nose and a condescending air about him says. There’s something about the way he looks at my mate that has me clenching my fists.
“Have you read the original text?” Madi snaps back. She’s lovely when she’s fired up. I wish I could slip under this table and show her how much I think so. But I’m not sure she would appreciate that right now.
“Ocearus wasreal, and it wasright here.” She jams a finger into the table to punctuate her point.
“She is correct,” I say, joining the conversation without thinking.
The students around the table give me varying responses of surprise and indignation. Madi beams at my defense of her.
There’s a beat of silence that stretches uncomfortably long, like they’re waiting for me to say more, but I’m not sure what else to say. It’s clear they’re as ignorant of my people as I was of theirs. They wouldn’t believe me if I told them the truth. Would Madi?
“There are records of Ocearus among my people,” I say cautiously.
“And where is that again?” The man with the pointy nose leans forward. “You’re clearly not from around here.” He says it like everywhere other than here is beneath him.
“Shut up, Branson. Don’t make this personal.”
“Madison,” the professor uses a tone that is not to be argued with. “Perhaps we should get back to the focus of this class.”
After that, the conversation turns to another student’s thesis, but I can’t stop wondering what Madi meant by Branson making things personal. Do they have a history of some kind?
