Whispers of the Deep (Deep Waters, #1)

by Emma Hamm

For all my nerdy girls out there - You can’t tell me you weren’t thinking this while you played Bioshock.

Please suspend your disbelief for this monster fucker book. It’s a book about fucking mermen. Let’s not get into a scientific conversation about whether the bends would happen or if she could die doing half the stuff she does. K? K. *smooches*

His twin hearts fluttered in his chest and he felt a flash of oil slick his skin. The panic reaction was meant to make him glide faster through the water that would no longer pull upon him, but there was nowhere for him to go. Only darkness surrounded him.

This is fantastic! It was predicated on a video game and it’s done with actual scientific forethought. Yes, yes, yes. I think I am going to enjoy this one.

Arges, you are the first to find one unafraid of our kind. Draw her to us.”

But she felt like a magnet pulled her closer to the glass and then he put his hand flat against it. She stared at that palm, so unlike her own.

she’d made a device that allowed her to breathe underwater without a tank of air.

She let out a frustrated noise and glared at him. Oh, how he adored that expression. She wanted to fight him. He could see that. She wanted to reach into the water, rip him out of it, and gut him just like he’d gutted the fish for her. Thankfully, it would take a lot more than her meager claws to do that to him. Still, he couldn’t help but goad her.

This woman was his. He’d hunted her. He’d bested her. And now, she was his to do with as he wished.

She’d officially reached the “depression” stage of being kidnapped days ago. Denial had taken quite a while, and then she wasn’t sure if now this was acceptance or if she was back to drowning herself before he came back.

Apathy hung over her head, dripping down the back of her skull and into her spine with wet plops.

She watched with strange fascination. The sight of that gray hand, with the glimmering rainbow webs, touching her? It should have been disgusting and instead it just... was. Like anyone else touching her shin.

They were too different. Barely fit together. They were puzzle pieces from two separate boxes and no matter how hard they tried to jam themselves together, it wouldn’t work.

She had to remind herself that he didn’t think she could understand him. That he only said the next words because he didn’t realize that she understood every single word, and the hatred in each and every one of them.

He hadn’t taken her because he was interested in who she was, or that she had captivated him in some way. Of course he hadn’t. She’d fooled herself into thinking this monster had feelings when he didn’t in the slightest.

“No one has ever beaten their own fate.”

Because he wanted that future with her. But he also wanted to see her city fall.

“For us, it is a fleeting but crucial moment. An ephemeral rightness of time and place. A moment that brings you to where you were supposed to be.”

He inhaled deeply, those gills fluttering against her stomach, where he was suddenly very obviously excited. “Fuck, woman. You shouldn’t react like that when I tell you I murdered someone for you.”