He murmurs something to me, his eyes locked on mine.
I hear it then: the unmistakable trickle of water. When I turn toward the sound, I realize the glimmering wasn’t the floor after all, but a long, narrow pool spanning the length of the back of the room. Water streams from an opening, and I step closer to get a better look.
“Fuck,” I say, cringing back. It’s not just an opening, but a huge snake’s mouth, the stone jaw unhinged wide to allow the water to pour out. “That’s really off-putting, to be perfectly honest.” Especially after seeing how big the snakes get on Sueva.
Less than ideal for someone who isn’t a big fan of all things scaled.
Kanuz’s hand closes around mine though, and I realize I’m going to have to make a slight correction to that assumption.
I might be a fan of one scaled thing, after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
KANUZ
Gen makes me laugh. It is so good to see some lightness back in her step, her eyes glimmering as she discovers the oddities of the swamp temple.
It makes me feel marginally better for nearly getting us both eaten by the Crigomar.
The giant snake attack bought us barely enough time to get inside the temple, and I send up a quick prayer of thanks to the goddess for the timing of the massive beast’s arrival. I never thought I believed the stories about this place, about a temple guardian, but a gargantuan snake might make a full believer of me yet.
Perhaps we have curried the goddess’ favor.
Or perhaps my superstitions run deeper under my scales than I would like.
Still, I have found the fresh water of the temple, and the fountain and drainage system, no matter how antiquated, appear to be working. The Crigomar have been deterred from pursuit. We have a crumbling roof over our heads, and for that, I am thankful.
And for Gen’s smiles, I am more than thankful—I am fully blessed.
“Is it safe to drink?” she asks, squatting near the rippling surface.
“Yes,” I say in Suevan, then sigh once more. “Here.” I crouch next to her, cupping my hand and bringing some of the crystal-clear water to my mouth and drinking. “These old temples had advanced filtration systems for the worshippers that lived here, monks, priestesses and the like—understand?”
She watches me carefully as I drink, and I keep talking to her in a soothing voice, knowing she doesn’t understand a thing, but trying to calm her all the same.
“If the fountain were not running—” I point to the unhinged jaws of the snake, the defender of this place. “—then it would not be safe, because that would mean the filtration system had failed. But our ancients built this place to withstand time.” I drink deeply from the pool, relishing the fresh water, the cool zip of it across my tongue. A ragged laugh trickles out of me as I run my hand across the smooth bark of one of the huge zitsu trees that’s taken up residence in the main temple.
“I suppose even the ancients didn’t plan for the tenacity of the zitsu.” I motion to the tree, then settle my back against it and watch my pretty female. Tentative, she dips her hand in the water, scooping it out and drinking from it as I did.
“Oh god,” she moans. “This tastes so good.”
My cock grows hard at the noise of her simple pleasure, and I grunt. What I wouldn’t give to be the one causing her to make that small sound.
Her throat moves as she swallows. Her gaze drifts from the pool to the water rushing from the snake statue.
“It’s some kind of filtration system, isn’t it?” Her eyes narrow, and she stands, brushing her palms off on her filthy pants. “I don’t want to muck up our drinking water, but I need to wash this stuff off. I could really use a bath.” The words trickle out of her, murmured so quietly I know she’s mostly talking to herself and not to me.
I don’t mind. I’m relieved she’s talking at all. I’m relieved she isn’t terrified and shaking on the floor after the Crigomar attack.
I’m pleased she has relaxed enough around me that she even considers it.
I stretch my arms behind my head and give her a toothy smile, the kind I saved for females at Suevan settlements, though none of those other species were half as enticing as this human creature before me. Her smooth, unblemished skin, the color of a ripe quarn fruit, the pink tinge across her cheeks and nose that makes me want to nibble on it, to see if she tastes as sweet.
I know she does.
I drink her in, as though she is what will quench my unslaked thirst: the full berry-red lips, her ample muscled curves, the lush fall of her yellow-gold hair. I wrinkle my nose. It’s not quite as lush or yellow now, what with the muck of the swamp sticking to it.
Immediately, shame fills me.
My little human is filthy. I have not taken very good care of her.
“You should bathe in it.” I don’t have anything for her to get clean with. I glance around, as though some sort of cleansing oils will appear, but this isn’t my palace at Perzovir. There are no servants here to wait on us, to treat my little wife as the princess she is.
“What do you think?” she asks me, pretending to rub her arms. The algae from the water around the temple crusts across her skin, flaking off as she grazes her fingertips over it.
Not for the first time, I want to find the tech that assured us the translators would be safe and effective and shake him.
“Yes,” I say, nodding my head.
She repeats the Suevan word, mangling the guttural syllable, nodding her head, her eyes narrowed.
A smile breaks across my face, and I stare at her, astonished and inordinately pleased.
She says it again, and a happy laugh comes out of her. “God, I am beyond excited to get clean. This stuff—” She pulls a sheet of green muck off the back of her hand. “—smells rancid.”
Sighing contentedly, she yanks her shirt off, then her pants, and I go stone still.
Gen’s been shy about her body, more shy than other species I’ve been with before, but now? Now her body is bare save a scrap of fabric around her chest and another between her legs. She splashes into the pool, a blissful smile on her face.
“It’s so deep,” she muses. “Much deeper than I thought it would be.”
I cannot bring myself to look away from her. I want her to say that about me. I want to be deep inside her.
She doesn’t mean that, though. She does not know what she does to me, doesn’t know that I have spent the last week and a half lusting over her, loving the chase, loving her feistiness. It is not often that a female resists my advances. It will only make it that much sweeter when she finally sees how happy I can make her.
I must be patient… but I am a prince. Patience was never a part of my lessons. My hands fist at my sides.
“I wish you could talk to me,” Gen says, scrubbing at the dirt on her arms. “I want to know what this place is. Did you know I went to school for history?” She stares, waiting for a response, a response that she will not understand.
I grunt. “I would like to hear more,” I tell her.
“Right,” she says, and her smile turns sad, and a little lonely.
“I can hear you. I understand you.” I point to my ears, then lower myself into the water. Her gaze focuses on me, and I wade out to where she floats in the middle of the pool. “I know you cannot understand me, my wife, but I want to hear more of this history you studied. History is important to my people, sacred and interwoven with our beliefs.”