Breathless (12 page)

I opened my mouth, but the question died on my tongue. Something stirred in the distance. A barely audible swish as it pushed through the dry grass down shore.

Bastin leapt to his feet before I’d had a chance to move. “Humans!” he hissed in alarm.

I crouched behind him, my muscles tense with the urge to flee. “Who would be out here this time of night? Wel , besides us.” I peeked around his legs. Whoever they were, they were too far away to make out more than a silhouette. But even from this distance, I could see their stumbling legs and grasping arms.

Oh.
Relieved that it wasn’t Sir leading a search party, I sat down and smothered a giggle behind my hand.

Bastin looked at me and frowned. “What is it?”

Down shore the couple dropped onto the sand in a tangled heap. “Um, I don’t think they’re going to bother us.”

Bastin’s look was disbelieving. “How can you be sure?” He turned his head back to the couple. “What are they doing, anyway?”

I couldn’t help but laugh, drawing another narrow-eyed glance from Bastin. “You can’t tel ? They’re kissing.” The figures were now pressed so closely that they shared the same shadow. “Okay. Maybe that’s not
all
they’re doing.” I held my hand in front of my eyes before the PG rating turned R. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Are you kidding?” His voice held a hint of excitement and he craned his neck as if to get a better look. “We can’t leave now. I’ve always wanted to see a kiss.” He stared at the couple with unblinking eyes. “Fascinating.”

I couldn’t believe it. “You’ve never seen anyone kiss before?”

“No. Mers don’t kiss.” He sat back down next to me and leaned forward like an eager student. “Explain it to me.”

Explain kissing? I might as wel explain nuclear fission because I had the same amount of experience in the subject. “Um . . . when two people like each other . . . they just . . . press their lips together,”
said the girl who’d never kissed a guy
. Sure, I’d simplified it. But how much more to it could there be? They were only lips. Everyone had them. They weren’t special.

Or at least I hadn’t thought so. But now that I studied the soft curve of Bastin’s mouth, I wasn’t so sure. I leaned in for a closer look. His lips were ful , yet wide, complimenting the line of his jaw. I couldn’t help but wonder what they would feel like against mine, if they would taste as salty-sweet as Bastin smel ed.

A slow burn spread from my chest into my limbs until my entire body was consumed with uncomfortable warmth. I jerked back, stopping myself just before I could . . . wel , I had no idea what I was about to do but I’m sure it would have been embarrassing. “Anyway,” I pretended to study a star just above Bastin’s shoulder—as if that had been my reason for moving closer. “That’s pretty much al there is to kissing.”

“It’s a sign of affection, right?”

I nodded.

With superhuman speed, Bastin leaned over me, trapping me between his arms. Before I could so much as blink, his head lowered, so I could smel the ocean on his skin and feel the heat of his breath against my cheek.

Instinctively, I flattened myself against the dock which enabled him to swing his leg over mine and pin me down. “Um, Bastin, what are you doing?” I tried to sound casual but my voice came out a pitch higher than normal.

He tilted his head so that his hair slid over his shoulder, cutting me off from the rest of the world in a curtain of silver. “I’m going to kiss you.”

My breath hitched in my throat as a shockwave of shivers tingled down my spine. “W-w-what?” I swal owed several times but stil couldn’t generate enough saliva to coat my suddenly dry throat. “Why?”

His lips stopped a breath away from mine and his eyes opened. Two shimmering black pools—deep enough to drown in. “Why not?” His voice was amused.

Why not? Why not? Why not?
The question replayed over and over in my mind. “It’s not that I don’t want you to . . .” Because, boy did I want him to. I bit my lip and fought the urge to squirm. His hips hovered inches above my own. A strange ache ignited within me, low and forbidden. I wondered what would kil me first; drowning is his eyes or burning in our heat? “But we’ve only just met. Don’t you think we should get to know each other better?” I knew it was a load of crap but it was the best my melted pudding-brain could come up with.

But the real reason I didn’t want Bastin to kiss me was that I was scared—scared to let him get closer to me than he already had. What if I let him kiss me and whatever magic spel had been cast that brought him to my door each night unraveled? I knew that if I lost another person I cared about it would undo me—and there was so little holding me together to begin with.

Bastin settled his knees between mine, crossed his arms over my chest, and rested his chin on his clasped hands. He looked entirely too comfortable while I, on the other hand, felt like a fly twisted in a web. As if reading my mind, he said, “You warm-bloods and your complex feelings.

How do you stand it?”

I could taste my own heartbeat, thick and frantic on the back of my tongue. The world shifted around me, spinning from the blood rushing through my head. What was happening? What did I
want
to happen? Both questions unraveled until they were nothing but a tangle of threads. “It’s not easy,”

I said.

He shook his head, the movement spil ing some of his silver hair across my cheek. Its weight surprised me—so much heavier than it looked. “I’m glad I’m a mer. We don’t need to express ourselves the way you humans do.”

“Obviously. You have no concept of personal space.” I bal ed my hands at my sides. My fingers couldn’t be trusted—so badly they itched to explore the muscles along his wide shoulders.

He smirked but made no attempt to let me up.

“And what do you mean, you don’t need to express yourselves?” I tried squirming out from under him, but it was useless. The weight of his body kept me trapped. “You guys reproduce, right? How do you choose the person you want to do that with? Are you tel ing me there’s no dating or romance involved?”

“Nope.” He lifted a lock of my hair and wrapped it around his finger. “We don’t choose mates, Edith. That’s what I’ve been trying to tel you. We’re not people—we’re fish.” He let go of my hair, rol ed off me, and swung his legs off the end of the dock. His eyes stared off into the blue-black horizon.

What just happened?
I pul ed myself up, careful to move slowly as I was stil reeling from having Bastin pressed against me.

“Our procreation is purely for species survival,” he continued. “Our females lay eggs and the males fertilize them. Simple as that.”

“Wow. That sounds . . .”
Horrible
was my first thought. But then I thought about it. If humans behaved that way, then my mom wouldn’t have been so devastated when my real dad took off. She wouldn’t have felt the need to marry Sir. I might have had a normal life. That didn’t sound horrible at al .

Bastin looked at me, waiting.

“That’s sounds wonderful y uncomplicated,” I finished.

“It was.” He nodded. “
Life
was—until the pol ution started. That’s when our kind divided on how to handle the situation and formed different tribes.

At first, my father wanted nothing to do with the other tribes’ plan to flood the earth. But now, I’m not so sure.”

A lump formed in my throat, jagged and hard. “But if your father changes his mind . . .” I tried to make sense of not only what Bastin had said but what he left hanging in the air. “Bastin, why are you here?”

His shoulders stiffened and he returned his gaze to the ocean.

“If what you’ve said is true,” I prodded, “and your father decides he wants to kil off humans, then, that includes me. So what’s the point of you being here?”

He was quiet a moment before answering, “I was curious.”

Curious
? Angry heat burned up my neck into my cheeks as I tried and failed to keep my words even. “So, what? I’m like some sort of science experiment to you?”

He appeared to think about it before nodding. “Yes.”

I pressed my lips together. Wasn’t that nice? His every move had been a calculated effort to gauge my reaction, and, like the idiot I was, I’d fal en for it. I ran my fingers through my hair and smoothed the wrinkles in my shirt, trying as best I could to regain some dignity for al owing myself to be mounted like an animal
by
an animal. Stupid teenage hormones.

“You don’t understand, Edith,” Bastin continued. “Our kind do not touch. We live in tribes only for the sake of hunting and species survival. In fact, the males of our species raise the young because our females are vicious predators and can’t be trusted not to kil their own offspring. We don’t form attachments or bonds.” He leaned toward me and I backed away until I had nowhere to go but in the water. “At least I didn’t think so. But now . .

. everything is so strange and confusing. When I am with you, Edith, my stomach twists—like I’ve eaten bad shrimp.”

I glanced at the water and back at Bastin. Somehow he’d managed to trap me again. “So what are you tel ing me, exactly?”

He laughed. “I have no idea! Isn’t that great? Everything I’ve been taught you’re proving wrong.”

I clung to the dock, the wood damp and sponge-like under my fingernails. “And . . . that’s a good thing?”

“Not real y.” His smile was slow and sad. “But that doesn’t matter. I’m next in line for the throne. Then it wil be up to me to decide how to proceed against the human threat. I had to find out for myself if you were real y as bad as I’ve been told.”

“Are we?”

“Not you.” He lowered his head to mine so that his nose was only inches from my own. His eyelashes glittered in the moonlight, like strands of a spider web. “I know humans talk about love—how would I know if I love you?”

It was as if the world itself had slipped out from under me. One minute I’d been holding on to the dock and the next I’d been so stunned by Bastin’s words that I’d lost my grip on the edge and tumbled into the bayou. I couldn’t see. Worse, I couldn’t move. The water wasn’t freezing but just cold enough to tighten my muscles. Just treading through the water, it felt like I was pushing myself through a vat of peanut butter.

Before I could panic, two arms wrapped around my waist and pul ed me forward.

I broke the surface, then gasped. My feet found footing in the soft claylike marsh. Bastin held me against him. Standing this close I had to crane my neck to look up at him, his eyes the same color as the night sky that framed him. Water glittered on his face like stars. So bril iant, it was as if he swal owed the moon and it glowed through his skin. Leaving me breathless.

“Tel me, Edith,” Bastin said, “What does love feel like?”

Using the last of the air in my lungs, I whispered, “I don’t know.”

He tightened his hold so there was nothing left between us but thin wet cotton. “Then how do you know that I’m not in love right now?”

It took me several tries before I could answer. “That would be impossible.”

“Why?”

So much heat. It burned through my blood until I thought that my fingertips might sear the skin on Bastin’s chest or bring the water around us to a boil. “Because we just met. You can’t love someone you don’t know.”

He smiled, causing me to sway lightly in his arms. “I think I know you wel enough.”

He slid a finger under my chin and lowered his head.

And then I knew—I was about to receive my first kiss.

Terror coursed through my body. I wasn’t ready! I had no idea how to move my head, my lips, not to mention I had no clue what to do with my hands. Bastin would realize al this and be disappointed.

Scarier stil were the words he’d spoken. Did he real y love me? Or was this just another one of his
experiments
? Did I love him back? Was that even possible? If there real y was a heart beating underneath my scars and Bastin uncovered it, what would stop him from destroying what little bit existed?

His lips were so close I could almost taste the salt on his skin.

“You’re going to hurt me,” I whispered.

He paused, his breath a cool breeze on my skin. “Kissing hurts?”

“No. Love does.”

He brought his free hand up and wove his fingers into my hair. “I’l risk it.” Before I could protest further, his lips were on mine. A soft brush of velvet. His tongue whisked against my bottom lip, tentative, then bolder until it slid further in my mouth where it was met with my own. His fingers curled against my scalp, entwining my hair in the same way that our tongues did in our mouths.

Something heavy and cold broke inside of me, and I pul ed away from Bastin with a gasp.

He lifted his hand and brushed away the tears I hadn’t known I cried. “Are you okay?” he asked.

No, I wanted to answer.

No. No. No. No. No.

Instead, I bit my trembling lip and wrapped my arms around his waist, digging my nails into his flesh, unable to get close enough, wanting only to sink inside of his skin. It’d only taken one kiss, but Bastin had not only found my heart, he’d stolen it.

We stayed that way, wrapped in each other’s arms and standing waist deep in the water, for what felt like hours. Only when the stars disappeared did I unwind from Bastin like a string pul ed loose from a knot.

“I have to go,” I said.

He frowned, tucking my now tussled hair behind my ears. “I know. I do, too. Before the others notice how long I’ve been gone.”

I gazed at the bayou, stil shimmering in the faint moonlight, and wondered what it would be like to live beneath its surface.

Bastin, as if reading my mind, said, “I wish I there was a way I could take you with me without—”

“Without?” I whipped my head back around so I could search his face. “Without what?”

His chin ruffled my hair as he shook it back and forth. “Forget I said anything. It is impossible.”

I sighed, deflated. Of course it was. I could no more learn to breathe underwater than Bastin could grow permanent legs. Then a thought crossed my mind; if Bastin couldn’t survive out of the water and I couldn’t survive in it how could we ever real y . . .