Page 23 of Fathom

I moved to the control panel and slid the curtains shut. The room dimmed, and I flipped on the lights, flooding the apartment with quiet warmth.

There, much better.

I needed to think of a way to keep the windows shut. Worry gnawed at me. What if she didn't listen? What if I didn't find a way to communicate well enough? I wasn't going to be living here; I would stay at my old apartment. If she opened the door to the wrong person, I wouldn't be there to protect her.

She came out of one of the bedrooms and showed me all her teeth, indicating hostility. If I were another prey animal, it would be a positive social sign, but because I wasn't, the gesture was not friendly.

She didn't like it.

I needed to figure out what the problem was so I could find her a place she liked better, but that was going to have to wait. For now, even if she disliked it, it was better than sharing the small space of a studio apartment with a creep of a predator that couldn't keep his mind off the way her hand curled around him.

"Me?" she asked, pointing at one of the doors of the rooms.

"Yes," I said. "Both rooms are for you. This apartment is for you."

I took a deep breath, and for the first time, I was grateful that she didn't understand what I said because I needed to get it off my chest just as much as I needed her not to understand me, so I let the words come out in a fast rush, tumbling out over one another. "I wanted to eat you so badly last night, and then I wanted to fuck you just as bad, and I am extremely confused by that. I feel strange, like I’m too small, like I’m compressed and just being around you makes me hungry, not just for you but to protect you but I’m the one I have to protect you from. It isn't safe for you to stay with me, not in a small room like that. Not when my cock swells if I get within a few feet of you. The urge to touch you, to feel your softness, and find out the taste of your cunt is a madness all on its own. I don't want to hurt you, on purpose or by accident, so I had to get you your own place if I want to keep you safe, so this whole place is for you, but now that I got it, I'm worried. What if someone sees you from the street? You don't know anything. You could open the door to someone else, and then I'd lose you. I just found you. I must keep you safe. Being around you is driving me crazy, but the thought of not knowing where you are is worse."

The thought of someone else coming up here when she was here by herself caused a tight fury to coil inside of me. How could I leave her here by herself every day?

She was mine.

The thought startled me, filling me with self-disgust at how obscene I was to even think that. I had to stop thinking of her as mine. She wasn't prey I could hunt and own.

Her fingers slipped gently into mine, shocking my shame into silence.

It was like being struck by lightning. Every hair on my arm stood on end as her touch slid across my skin, a soft echo of the way her hand had wrapped around me the night before. Heat flared beneath my ribs, sudden and scorching, and I drew in a sharp breath as her scent enveloped me, warm, wild, and utterly her. It curled into my senses, wrapping around my mind like a promise I hadn’t dared to want. The largest strand of hair I had, at the base of my spine, reached out and wrapped around her waist, pushing the unpleasant fabric of her shirt up so it could brush against the bare skin of her belly.

I didn't pull it back, and she didn't push it away.

Instead, her lips parted as I tasted the flavor of the patch of skin just inside the curve of her hipbone.

Mine to envelop, something inside me whispered, and for a moment, I relished it.

But it was a lie.

She wasn’t mine. She couldn’t be. She was delicate, prey, by nature if not intent. And what I felt… it wasn’t real. It was instinct, hunger, the beast in me dressing up possession as protection. A trick of biology meant to wear down my restraint until I did something I couldn’t undo.

"Fuck?" she asked, her skin turning a soft pink as she looked down at the ground and then glanced up through her eyelashes at me.

"What did you say?" I gasped out.

"What is the fuck?" she asked, a glimmer in her eyes.

Relief washed through me as I realized she didn't actually understand what I said. I was a deviant, but she didn't know it. Not yet. I had to keep myself away from her so I didn't expose her to any more of my... urges. Except now she was asking me to explain a word I was educated in but not experienced with. I knew what I was supposed to do with a female; I had taken theexpected courses and used the practice dummies to ensure proper licking technique, but I hadn't had the chance to practice my skills on a real person. It wasn't that I didn't have ample opportunity. There were always females who offered themselves to me, but I always knew they were there for the connection to my family.

Plus, I could smell the blood under their skin, and it smelled rotten.

Leija didn't smell that way. She didn't smell like she had consumed flesh and blood. She smelled like the sunlight had broken through the cool mist of the morning, heating the droplets that waited on the small flowers in a field, sending the soft scent of life awakening in the air. She smelled like I always thought coming home should be like.

No, I couldn't focus on all of that. She smelled like prey.

She was the confirmation of the root of my deviance. I was attracted to my prey.

"What is the fuck?" she demanded, stepping in towards me as she looked up at me, the slender line of her throat exposed to me, delicate and oh so biteable. I could see the throbbing vein underneath her skin, and she was so close to me, her body inches away from mine.

I swallowed hard and realized it wasn't just my swallows that were hard again.

The hunger awoke within me, rolling around in her scent and the awareness of the soft lines of her body.