Free A Mermaid's Ransom by Joey W. Hill

your mother--"
    "I killed her."
    While his expression didn't change, Lex felt something from him, her senses grasping through her fear to find it. It wasn't regret, but it was loss. Muted, dulled, but there. The truth was more than a cold-blooded life taking. She just wasn't brave enough to pursue it further at this second.
    Plus, she was picking up a strong yearning. He did want to touch her. It wasn't a sexual need, though there was a component of that there. It was more like he craved something he'd had for far too short a time, and he wanted more of it.
    "All right," she said quietly. "I'm going to try to live in the moment, but you're going to have to help me, because we don't do that in my world. And I am very frightened, Dante. You scare me, and those creatures, they scare me even worse."
    "They will not touch you." The change in his expression and voice was instant. Strong, deadly, and his hand closed into a fist on his thigh. "They should not have tried. They will not do so again."
    She nodded, digesting that. Knowing her pulse was leaping in her throat like a bird about to keel over dead from stress, she flexed her hands on the wet stone. She winced at the slimy texture, the stronger waft of odor making her stomach turn over again. "Do I have to stay in this circle?"
    "It was to keep you from running away, and them from getting to you. I have warded the door, but you would be able to leave."
    "I won't leave," she said, and meant it. She knew what was outside that door and no way in hell was she going out of it. "But it would really help if I could get out of this blood and clean up. Is there water? My tail needs to stay moist. It won't fall off or anything, but the scales get brittle if they dry out, and it's painful."
    He held her gaze again, that penetrating stare. It was astounding, how handsome he truly was. Knowing she might be dealing with a sociopath of a magnitude even humankind didn't have the circumstances to produce was beyond unsettling. "You want to touch me, too," he observed.
    "It's a biological reaction, not an emotional one," she snapped. His brow raised and she pressed her hands to her face, trying to calm herself. It smeared more blood on her cheeks. "Please, let me out of this. I can't bear it."
    He leaned forward in his kneeling position, one foot entering the pool. She flinched as he slid his hands under her body. "I don't want you touching me."
    "Yes. But you can't walk, and you are too weak to fly or pull yourself across the chamber."
    Gazing over his shoulder as he strode across the room, she saw his bare foot leaving a trail of bloody prints. As he moved into a separate, smaller area, she tried to wrap her mind around what she was seeing before her.
    It looked like a miniature replica of an aboveground small pond, complete with tall grasses clustered around it, colorful, sparkling flowers peeking through their strands, rocks piled around the base to hold them. There was a butterfly in a sphere of light, floating over the water like a bubble.
    "The water comes from our ice. I cut it into chunks and put it here, and it melts. It is not very clean, but I was making one of your ponds."
    "That's what it looks like," she said. His surge of satisfaction was instant, though it was guarded, bound up tightly in other emotions she couldn't read.
    As they moved closer, she saw the reality of what he'd created. The vat was a large piece of metal roughly molded into something capable of holding water. The edges were sharp, unfinished. What appeared to be grass were tendrils of hair, waxed and textured to emulate the wheaten blades. The flowers were precious jewels bound with pieces of the hair to slender black twigs so they bent like flowers. The butterfly in the sphere was real but dead, its wings forever spread.
    It was macabre, but an undeniable artistic accomplishment. She tried to focus on the latter as he lowered her into the water. It had a terrible sulfur smell, but at least it wasn't blood. She