Dark Abyss by Kaitlyn O'Connor (classic novels for teens .txt) 📕

and he obviously didn’t want the others to know. Was that to keep her from being embarrassed and uncomfortable, though, or to keep himself from being embarrassed and uncomfortable?

Moving to the bed, she plopped down on it, trying to remember if she’d read anything about their customs that might help her understand what was going on. The little she’d found hadn’t really gone into that much depth, though. Apparently, land dwellers found the sea folk’s marriage practices so titillating that they didn’t actually put any effort into discovering how they went about making those arrangements.

She distinctly remembered it had said that it was usually men that were already partners of some kind—quite often miners that shared a claim who would then extend that claim to their woman and ‘co-own’ her in a sense since they all pitched in to pay the bride’s family.

She realized uncomfortably that she hadn’t actually gotten any sort of indication from any of them that they even had an interest in that direction. Not that she was sure herself that she was interested. She was in a way and she wasn’t. It was hard to look at them and be around them and not covet them, but there was no getting around the ‘big problem’. They were water people and she was a land dweller, and the sea unnerved her.

She hadn’t honestly gotten much beyond lusting after them. She hadn’t even put a lot of thought into that. She’d just let them do whatever they wanted, because that was the only thing she harbored no doubts at all about. She wanted them and she wasn’t about to put up a fight if they showed any interest in that direction.

Was it completely against their customs, though? As weird as it seemed to her that it would be given their marriage practices, she didn’t know how they felt about sex outside of commitment. Nobody where she came from worried about it. They were probably a hundred times more likely to commit themselves to a roll just for fun, and maybe only the one time, than they were to consider a longer term commitment. It would be bizarre if the sea folk were just the opposite regarding sex outside of marriage, but it wasn’t inconceivable.

So maybe what they’d done was taboo? Maybe that was why Ian had been so anxious to shove her out the door?

Or maybe Caleb had made some kind of claim on her and he’d wanted to avoid conflict?

Somehow she couldn’t picture it. Ian didn’t strike her as the sort of man who worried a lot about defending himself. Actually, none of them did. She didn’t think they would be watchmen if they were. But maybe it was because he was a very close friend of Caleb’s?

She still didn’t think that was it, mostly because Caleb hadn’t tried to have sex with her since and she’d decided he just wasn’t interested. He still gave her those ‘I could eat you alive’ looks now and then, just enough to keep her quivering with hopefulness, but he hadn’t done more and never around any of the others—which meant practically never at all since there wasn’t much chance of being alone with anybody in a household like theirs. At least half the time, all four of them were in the house, the rest of the time at least two.

Her thoughts didn’t make her particularly happy. In fact, they left her feeling less than happy and off-kilter. The only thing that seemed certain was that she wasn’t supposed to behave as if they’d just fucked each other nearly senseless and since she wasn’t sure she could carry that off very well, she decided to hide in her room until she thought she could.

Unfortunately, Joshua tapped on her door only a short time later and told her there was food if she was hungry. She debated just skipping the meal, but she was hungry and besides that, she usually joined them. Well, she’d only been with them a few days, but she certainly hadn’t established a habit of skipping meals.

She’d had time to calm down, she assured herself. She could do this. All she had to do was pretend nothing had happened!

It was a lot more disconcerting to sit down with four men when she’d had sex with two of them, she discovered, than she’d thought it would be and nearly impossible to pretend a nonchalance she didn’t feel. She absolutely could not resist flicking several glances at Ian, however, just to see if he was as completely unmoved as she’d thought he might be. The second time she glanced at him, she discovered he was studying her through narrowed eyes with a smoldering intensity that set her on fire. She felt her face flood with color, squirmed in her seat, and trained her gaze on her plate when she managed to break eye contact with him. The third time she looked up, she discovered Caleb was staring at Ian—hard. He followed Ian’s gaze to her even as she glanced that way.

She knew the minute her gaze locked with Caleb’s that he knew exactly what had happened between them. She flicked a wary glance at Simon and Joshua to see if they’d noticed and saw they were studying her and Ian speculatively.

So much for being discreet!

Well! It wasn’t her fault—not entirely, anyway! If Ian didn’t want them to know he shouldn’t have been looking at her as if he was contemplating tossing his plate aside and chewing on her instead!

“How goes the case?” he drawled after a strained moment.

The indifference in his voice seemed to antagonize Simon. “Like I said, Paul Warner died.”

It was news to Anna. Jolted, she sent Simon a look of shock. “He died?”

He grunted.