Dark Abyss (10 page)

“Ah … Simon reminded you that she didn’t seem too keen on mutants, huh?”

“Did she seem to you like she was … repulsed? Or she hated mutants?”

Joshua shrugged. “She seemed pretty fascinated with Simon’s ass … or maybe his back, but I’m thinking ass. I suppose she might’ve been staring at the fins, though. I didn’t see anything on her face that looked like revulsion, but I have to tell you I’ve got my own doubts she’ll go for it. I don’t think she hates mutants—not like her father does.

She just isn’t that kind of person, to my thinking, and I think she was all right with us once she discovered we weren’t going to hurt her, but that doesn’t mean she likes any of us. Or that she might feel more than like. If she’d put herself on the market, we’d at least know that she was willing to settle with mutants. As it is, all we do know for certain is that she doesn’t approve of the practice and it seems to me that that means she won’t be easy to convince to make the change.”

“That doesn’t mean she can’t be convinced,” Caleb said doggedly.

“That’s going to be hard to do from out here,” Joshua retorted wryly.

“That’s why I don’t plan on staying out here.”

Joshua stared at him. “Man you’ve got it bad! You’re going to risk suspension or worse?”

“I could use a little vacation time … maybe I’ll spend it with Anna.”

Joshua thought it over a moment and grinned. “I haven’t had a vacation in a while if it comes to that.”

Anna began to feel the beginnings of deep depression as soon as the glow from Caleb’s kiss began to wear off. Shaking herself, she headed to her garden to check on her plants since she hadn’t been able to in several days. To her relief, the automatic drip feed hadn’t let her down. The plants were still hardy and had burgeoned with a bumper crop of the nutritious but horribly nasty produce.

Heading back into her kitchen, she grabbed a large bowl and went back into the garden to pick what seemed to be ripe. When she’d washed them, she remembered she’d been looking for a recipe that might make the food more palatable before she’d been whisked off to the magical land of mermen. Deciding there was no sense in completely giving up on the still unnamed vegetable she’d invented before she’d at least tried cooking it every way she could think of, she settled to looking for recipes again.

She didn’t actually have a lot of them in her book, though, that she thought were worth a try and when she saw she’d already tried most of the promising ones, she went to her media center and connected with the net to look up others.

She started with the fish, since Paul had pointed out that it had a faintly fishy taste—which it did—which led her to Atlantis since the territorial fish farms were now the biggest supplier of the fish distributed in the U.S. She hesitated. After a few moments indecision, instead of pursuing the recipes that had brought her to research the net to start with, she veered off to see what sort of information was available. It wasn’t until the light came on in the living area that she realized she’d been sitting in front of her media center for hours.

The board of tourism and colonization had offered far more information than anything else she’d found, although she suspected, like most places, their main objective was to make the spot as enticing as possible. It had pretty much glossed over the customs she’d found so unsettling beyond comparing it to a nudist colony.

It was certainly that, she thought as she headed to the kitchen and began chopping up some of the ‘franken-veggies’! Not that it didn’t make perfect sense! As disturbing as she’d found it, she could see the reasoning behind it. It was a matter of practicality.

She supposed that was one of the main reasons why people tended to dismiss the territory as a wild, uncivilized, decadent place—because they didn’t have enough sense, or just didn’t care, that the custom had evolved out of purely practical considerations.

The marriage practices were another matter! After reading all about it, she was obliged to admit that that, too, had clearly evolved from necessity, and she still found it shocking—intriguing, but scandalous!

It just supported her case, though! If times weren’t so hard people wouldn’t feel compelled to help to support their families by placing themselves on the Atlantis marriage market for sale! It was sad, really, for everyone concerned. Sad to think the colonists were so desperate for families, for women, that they paid a fortune for them and sad to think the women’s families were so financially crippled that they had to offer up their daughters just to survive!

Her genetically engineered food would go a long way toward solving some of the worst problems, she knew … if she could ever get it right. The recipe she finally decided on was a complete disaster, though!

Shuddering after her first bite, she set her fork down and studied the casserole speculatively, wondering if the vegetable was that salty or if she’d just added too much salt. She really hadn’t noticed that the vegetable tasted salty when she’d tried it before, though.

Of course, she’d barely stuck her tongue to it.

Taking another out of the cooling unit, she sliced a piece off and popped it into her mouth. Almost the instant she sucked on it, her mouth filled with a salty, fishy taste and she dashed to the trash and spat it out.

Maybe she could soak it before she cooked it and remove some of the salt? She really hated to just chuck the lot and start over from scratch! It had so much potential! It thrived in seawater contaminated soil. The plants were hardy and prolific producers.

The meat was nutritious. It had everything but an appealing taste.

Deciding to mull over it a while, she raked out the casserole she’d cooked, cleaned the kitchen, and found something more edible to nibble on, heading back to her media center. Instead of looking up more possibilities for her veggies, though, she went back to researching Atlantis and eventually found an article written by a man who claimed to have traveled extensively through the territory and lived among the natives, whom he pointed out didn’t like to be called mutants by outsiders since they knew very well that land dwellers considered it a derogatory term. They might, and frequently did, refer to themselves as mutants, but outsiders shouldn’t unless they just wanted to piss them off—which he didn’t recommend since they tended to be twice as strong as a ‘normal’ human being and were accustomed to settling disputes physically if the mood struck them.

That was unsettling, but at least it explained why they always gave her evil looks when she used the word! Of course, it would’ve been more helpful to know this sort of thing
before
rather than after an encounter!

The territories, according to the author, were vastly more civilized now than they had been even a decade earlier, but it was still a bit more like the ‘wild west’ of the late 1800’s than ‘air-breathers’ were accustomed to—which was a derogatory term they used for land dwellers.

Anna gaped at that, recalling all too well that Simon was in the habit of referring to her as an ‘air breather’. That ass! Of all the damned nerve to insult her and everybody else and then call
her
a bigot! Of course she hadn’t actually felt insulted because she hadn’t realized that was what he’d intended, but that was beside the point! No wonder he’d been so nasty to her! He just disliked land dwellers in general and went around with a damned chip on his shoulder! How unfair was that?

The anger didn’t last. It flared and died, leaving her tired and blue. She didn’t know why she’d spent most of her day trying to find out what she could about Atlantis.

It wasn’t as if it mattered. She was never going to go there again. From what she could see they disliked ‘air-breathers’ as heartily as land dwellers despised mutants. And she was her father’s daughter, as Simon had pointed out so nastily. They figured they had even more reason to dislike her.

Simon certainly did. She didn’t know why she cared about his opinion anyway!

If she’d had any damned sense she would’ve focused on trying to find another sponsor and someplace to live. She couldn’t just stay where she was and bury her head in the sand. She couldn’t pretend her father wasn’t a murderer or that working for him didn’t taint her and everything she did.

She didn’t understand why Simon couldn’t see that what her father had done went against everything she believed in and everything she was working for. She wanted to save people! She wanted to make their lives better!

Trying to push it from her mind, she checked her doors and windows to make sure everything was locked up and went to prepare herself for bed. She was exhausted.

If she hadn’t done anything more useful with her day anyway than reading about Atlantis, she thought glumly, she would’ve been better off trying to catch up on her sleep.

Settling at last, she stretched the kinks from her muscles and closed her eyes, beginning her sleep chant. She learned long ago that her mind was too often too active, no matter how tired she got, to allow her to sleep without help. The sleep chant helped, gave her something boring and repetitive to focus on until she could drop off.

Eventually, it worked and she dozed off. She woke to sheer terror as something heavy settled on top of her, pressing the breath from her lungs. A hand was clamped over her mouth. A mouth brushed her ear and then his heated breath on a whisper of sound.

“It’s Caleb.”

The chaos her mind had erupted into prevented instant recognition but even as he eased his hand from her mouth her heart stopped hammering with fear and took up a happier cadence. “What …?”

He clamped his hand over her mouth again. “We’re sweeping your house for bugs. Don’t talk.”

Bugs? She didn’t have bugs, damn it! Ok, so a few garden bugs, but why in the hell would they be sweeping up her bugs? And who was ‘we’? Certainly not Caleb!

The big lug was crushing her lungs!

He moved his hand again. She sucked in a breath to ask him what was going on, but he apparently decided on a more interesting way to keep her quiet. He planted his mouth firmly over hers. As disoriented as she already was, it took her mind a few heartbeats to shift gears, but the moment pleasure registered, she instantly forgot everything else. As if hours hadn’t passed since he’d kissed her, her body leapt almost instantaneously to the same level of drunken euphoria where they’d left off. She struggled to free her arms from the coverlet binding her and clutch him more tightly.

He broke the kiss, lifting his head to stare down at her questioningly, his breath puffing raggedly against her face and throat. The shifting of his weight gave her enough room to free her arms, though, and she caught his shoulders, trying to pull him back. He leaned toward her and then changed his mind, rolling away instead. Dismay and disappointment filled her until he grasped the coverlet and tossed it away. Cool air wafted over her and then he settled his chest against hers again and she felt the coolness of his skin, the dampness that told her he’d only just come from the water.

It flickered through her mind to wonder how he’d gotten in and why he’d climbed into her bed with her, but she dismissed it as soon as his lips met hers again in hungry assault. It sent a fresh thrill through her. She shifted closer to him, rolling her hips and curling one of her legs around his, sucking at his tongue greedily to absorb the taste of him more fully as he explored her mouth.

He caught her thigh, holding it as he shifted his hips between her legs. Her kegels clapped together in anticipation, her mind instantly leaping to the realization that that was what she needed, to feel him inside of her. Instead of entering her, though, he broke the kiss and stroked a hand over her, searching for a way beneath her nightie. Goosebumps broke out all over her, making her nipples rise to hard points when he found the hem and delved beneath it. The coast of his hand upwards to cup one breast created goosebumps on top of goosebumps, made her skin feel too tight and so exquisitely sensitive it was almost painful.

She couldn’t catch her breath! The struggle to do so produced only pants that made her dizzier. She clutched at him as he broke the kiss at last, half afraid he’d stop.

Instead, he pushed her gown up and covered the tip of one breast with the heat of his mouth. She gasped. Her eyeballs rolled back in her head. She thought she was going to pass out from the sensation pouring through her with every tug of his mouth on her.

She arched against him mindlessly, pressing her mound against him rhythmically in a silent demand, sinking her fingers into his hair when he moved to her other breast instead.

Now! Now! Now, she thought deliriously, struggling with the urge to voice her demand. She felt like weeping when he ceased to tease her breasts at last, but instead of giving her what she needed, he tugged her gown off and pressed his chest to hers, rubbing restlessly against her as he explored her throat with his mouth.

It drove her to the brink of madness. She’d begun to despair that she would climax the moment he touched her sex if he didn’t enter her soon, or come before he ever touched her when he lifted away from her and slid one hand down between her thighs.

Cupping her sex, he stroked her lightly with his hand and leaned down to kiss her again.

Her panties were wet from the moisture seeping from her. She grasped his arm, tugging his hand away and then shoving it beneath her panties, groaning when she felt his fingers gently parting the sensitive flesh, stroking her cleft.

Breaking the kiss with a hoarse gasp, he withdrew his hand and grasped his cock, trying to push past the leg of her panties and enter her. For several moments, they struggled with the barrier. Abruptly, he reared upward onto his knees, grasped the waist of her panties and snatched them down her legs.

She disentangled her feet from them and planted her bent legs on either side of his, lifting her arms to him in invitation, in supplication. He surged over her, seeking.

She reached down, catching his buttocks in both hands and bumping her pelvis against his until they finally managed the connection they’d both been desperately seeking.

Caleb, she thought in a mental supplication and praise she didn’t dare voice as she felt his cock stretching her, slowly delving a little deeper inside of her with each bold thrust. The friction of his flesh against the inner walls of her sex produced the most divine heat imaginable, each thrust generating more until she felt as if she would be consumed by it.

And then she felt her body stir, begin to vibrate as her body reached a surfeit and could contain no more. Groaning as the first shockwave of her climax traveled through her and her body tensed, she burrowed her face against his chest and clutched him more tightly. As if he felt the vibrations of her climax, he shuddered and began to drive more swiftly into her until he reached his peak and trembled with it as she had, shuddered, groaned with the intensity of the pleasure.

A sublime sense of rightness wafted through her as she held him tightly to her, stroking his back as the shudders tapered off to nothing and he relaxed limply against her.