Lords of the Deep Read Online Free Page B

he couldn’t understand why she would hide them.
    “She didn’t like us looking at her,” Miles observed almost as if he’d shared Damien’s thoughts, his voice meditative.
    It was the fact that he’d referred to her as ‘she’ for the first time, though, that caught Damien’s attention.
    “You might as well come out. I don’t think she’s interested in the food—not right now, anyway.”
    Damien discovered he didn’t particularly want to leave. “I think I’ll sit with her for a little longer. She seems to be getting used to me. She isn’t as skittish as she was.”
    Miles frowned. Damien could see he wanted to order him out. Finally, he seemed to shrug. “I’m going to get the recorder. See if you can get her to make more sounds. I think it might be speech. Maybe we can get enough the computer can decipher it.”
    Relieved that Miles wasn’t going to challenge him on his decision, he relaxed fractionally, staring at her speculatively. “Why?” he asked, waving a hand over his own chest and then pointing to hers.
    She stared back at him blankly, but he could see something flicker in her eyes.
    He smiled faintly, trying to reassure her. “Pretty,” he said, pointing at her globes.
    She frowned in confusion, followed the direction of his finger and then lifted her head and glared at him.
    Surprised, he lifted his brows at her. “I think Miles might be right,” he murmured ruefully. “I’d still like to see them.” He considered that thoughtfully for a moment. “Actually, I’d like to examine you all over a lot more thoroughly.”
    “I heard that,” Miles snapped.
    “And I give a fuck!” Damien shot back at him. “She’s no more an animal than we are.”
    “She does seem a lot more intelligent that I would’ve credited,” Miles admitted reluctantly. “But she’s still probably very primitive.”
    Grudgingly, Damien admitted the possibility, but there no getting around the fact that it made him feel a hell of a lot better that she was of higher intelligence since he couldn’t seem to control his lust for her.
    And it was lust, there was no getting around that.
    She was beautiful in a totally exotic way. Odd that her strange coloration didn’t really bother him, in fact, just the opposite—it fascinated him almost as much as her little face did with its big blue eyes, and the graceful lines of her body. He studied the bright caplet on her head that ended just at the top of her globes, trying not to think about the matching thatch between her legs.
    Their catkins certainly didn’t have anything like that—not that color. He’d never seen anything like it. “I wonder if they all look like she does?” he said musingly.
    “You may get to find out … if she doesn’t survive.”
    Anger and denial flashed through Damien. He turned to glare at Miles, ready to blast him with his temper. The look on Miles’ face stopped him.
    Miles dragged his gaze from her with an effort and looked at Damien. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but you have to face the fact that we don’t know a damned thing about her. Look how fragile she is. What if she won’t eat? She isn’t going to last long if she refuses the food … or if we can’t figure out what she needs.”
    Feeling his throat close at the comment, Damien turned to look at her again. After a moment, he looked down at the food on the tray. “What is this shit, anyway, Miles?” he asked, irritated.
    “I just grabbed some leftovers out of the preserver,” Miles said, indignation clear in his voice.
    Damien picked up a dried, unidentifiable ‘thing’ and looked it over. “Gods! I wouldn’t eat this shit, myself. Is this murrs ?”
    Miles leaned closer to the glass and peered at it. “Hmm, maybe.”
    Damien rolled his eyes. “This looks like one of your experiments—that didn’t make it. The scavengers might eat it, but I doubt any of this would appeal to her. Isn’t there anything in the myths about what they