Chapter 29: Be a good girl

After stroking his tail, she reached for the delicate fins behind his ears.

Her eyes, however, refused to stay obedient. They drifted downward and locked onto Xander’s broad, pale chest—full, firm, and unmistakably sensual. Bare of any fabric, the muscles rose and fell with every quiet breath. The sight was almost criminal in its excess.

Why did a man need pecs that large?

She wondered how they would feel under her palms... and, more dangerously, how they might feel between her teeth.

The sudden wicked thought startled her so badly she nearly jumped.

Xander caught the direction of her gaze. The corner of his mouth curved.

"You can touch those too, if you want."

Bunny waved the offer away a little too quickly. "No need, really. I’m fine."

Why was his little guide always so restrained? Was he not appealing at all?

A rare flicker of self-doubt touched him. Never before had he questioned his looks or his body. His spirit form and eye color were both vanishingly rare; almost no guide would turn away a breathtaking merman beauty with a chest like his.

Almost no one—except Bunny.

Long before arriving on this planet, Xander had endured a stretch of captivity and torment that still lived in the darkest corners of his memory. Only his status as a 3S+ sentinel of exceptional talent had kept him from becoming a permanent plaything for the powerful. He had volunteered for the most vicious sector of the District 616 himself.

Those black days had warped something inside him, carving the colder, more twisted edges of the man he was now.

The gentleness he showed was only surface deep.

Like a siren who lured sailors with an entrancing song, then shed its beauty to reveal a gaping maw and tear flesh apart.

Bunny, clearly, had no idea what sort of creature he truly was.

"Bunny," he said, changing tactics, "want to swim?"

She shook her head at once. "I can’t. I’m a complete landlubber."

Xander’s long arm snaked out. In one smooth motion, she was pulled flush against his body.

"It’s all right. I’ll teach you."

His powerful tail swept once, carrying them both to the center of the pool. Water rose and fell around them. Without solid ground beneath her feet, Bunny’s fear spiked.

"Don’t be afraid. Relax your body. Breathe deeply."

He guided her legs together so the water’s buoyancy could support her. Bit by bit she practiced floating while he patiently corrected every awkward movement. After several clumsy attempts she finally managed a dog-paddle of sorts.

A spark of excitement lit her face. Xander floated nearby, chin propped on one hand, quietly watching the adorable guide splash her way forward.

As a beginner, though, she only managed a few meters before tension pulled her under. A sharp cry escaped her—"Xander!"

A cool, powerful tail slid around her waist in an instant. He hauled her up against him, and this time Bunny refused to let go.

In truth, he had allowed the moment on purpose.

Instinctively, she locked her legs around his midsection and clung to his neck, sticking to him like an octopus. The position was far too intimate.

"Bunny... don’t squeeze your hips so tightly."

His body was already reacting to her touch.

Only then did she realize how improper her hold was. "Sorry—I was scared of sinking."

Xander’s voice stayed soft. "It’s fine. A few more tries and you’ll get it."

One hand supported the curve of her backside, the other steadied her waist as he glided them toward the transparent edge of the pool.

Ninety-nine floors above the ground, the pool’s rim met the fading golden light in a single unbroken line. The setting sun painted the sky in fierce, blooming colors; beneath that burning canopy stretched an endless wasteland of scorched, silent earth.

In this forgotten corner of a dying world, only she remained at his side.

They floated together in the vast emptiness, two small figures against an infinite desolation.

"Xander... do you like watching the sunset?"

Bunny turned her head. Soft light blurred across the sharp planes of his face. Something unreadable moved in his eyes.

"I wouldn’t say I like it."

"Every sunset just means I’ve survived another day."

"Every sentinel who came here with me is already dead. The last one took his own life."

"The day he cut his throat, I was swimming in this same pool."

He spoke the words lightly, as though recounting something trivial.

Bunny fell silent, unsure how to answer. Her gaze drifted to the luminous blue of his tail and, unbidden, thoughts of the ocean rose.

"Have you ever seen the sea, Xander?"

The question left her lips before she could stop it. These sentinels had never even seen a living tree—how could they know the ocean?

"The sea? Only in old digital archives."

Centuries had passed, yet a few precious images and records from the old world still survived. Endless deep-blue water, white seabirds, rolling white foam stretching past the horizon.

As a sentinel whose spirit form belonged to the ocean, Xander carried a genetic longing for the sea. That instinct was part of why both he and Rain loved to swim.

But the true scent and taste of the ocean would forever remain something he could only imagine.

"It must be beautiful," she murmured.

For a fleeting second, the yearning and quiet confusion in his eyes struck straight through her chest.

That asteroid which had struck Earth had brought generation after generation of misfortune—and had strangled every generation’s future along with it.

She cupped his face and gently brushed the wet strands of hair back behind his fins.

"If there were still a sea in this world, you would be the most carefree little fish in it."

"You could swim wherever you wanted."

Her fingers traced the delicate fin at his ear. "Maybe you were always meant to belong to the open ocean."

Not to this narrow, confining pool.

Creatures locked too long inside an aquarium grew depressed. How much worse must it be for a sentinel?

Her voice was soft. The last light of the sun caught in her hair, turning the strands into a halo of gold. She looked at him with eyes clear as polished glass.

Another voice—harsh, hated—rose unbidden in Xander’s mind:

"You were born to be a plaything. Something pretty for people to look at and use."

His thick lashes trembled. He stared up at her for a long, dazed moment.

Then, without warning, he turned and pressed her back against the pool’s edge. His cool, powerful tail slid firmly between her thighs.

Beneath the scales, something dangerous stirred.

"Xander—what are you doing?"

Bunny had no idea that sirens were creatures of genuine malice.

Promiscuous by nature, they dragged the females they desired back to their dens and forced compliance. Refusal was answered with a single violent bite that removed the partner’s head—followed by the rest of the body.

One of Xander’s hands cradled the back of her head; the other lifted the bend of her knee.

His voice dropped into a low, magnetic rasp that slid under the skin.

"Bunny. Be a good girl. Don’t move."