Whatever that guy had said to him, it wasn’t good. Mari could tell by the tightness in Ambrose’s expression, and the way he held himself when he came back into the room.
She quickly moved back from the door, trying not to feel guilty over listening to their conversation. Her legs were still present, so she couldn’t move back with the speed she’d become accustomed to.
Ambrose stared at her—or more like through her. His face was so pale it looked like chalk and his tail was back. In less than a minute, the mood was ruined and Mari felt more embarrassed than she ever had in her life.
The desire was still thrumming through her body. Where his hands had touched, fire burned. Her breasts were heavy and she could barely handle the pounding of her heart. Ambrose was...amazing. Perfect. And he didn’t want her anymore.
Mari peered up at him, crossing her arms over her chest, hiding how hard her nipples were.
“What did he say?” she asked.
“Nothing. Listen, ah... Calm down enough to be able to go in public—” She blushed at the way his eyes looked over her like he couldn’t help himself, before he turned away from her with a red face. Mari saw the faint glimmer of his legs beneath his aqua tail and she smiled before she could stop herself.
“Just come downstairs when you are ready.” He barely cast her a glance before shooting out of the door, closing it softly behind him.
Ambrose was a god in bed, yet he couldn’t face her afterwards?
She sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the door.
God, when the pounding on the door hard started, she thought they were about to be kicked out or attacked. Ambrose had been too caught up with her to even notice what was happening. But in seconds flat, when she’d finally gotten through to him even while she wanted to force him to keep going, he’d jumped into action.
And damn if that wasn’t hot.
Mari scrubbed a hand over her face. She really shouldn’t be thinking about this right now, not when Ambrose had told her to specifically to calm down. How could she? All she could think about was Ambrose’s mouth kissing more than just her mouth.
Puppies. Think about puppies. They had no relation to Ambrose and his sex-god persona at all. Except puppies played in water, water was what Ambrose was in, and Ambrose had some damn great hands… Mari groaned loudly, wrapping her arms around her waist and kicking her feet with frustration. Cows? Cows didn’t like water. They drank it, though, like Ambrose had tried to drink her.
“Oh my god,” she hissed, slapping a hand over her face. “Calm down, Mari. Just calm down and think of things that cannot be related to Ambrose….like what had happened to her when she’d passed out, and what had happened before she had.
Ambrose had done something to the men. She only just realized that him taking down that many men at once, all of whom were three times his size, seemed impossible. What had he done to take them out, and why was lead guy helping them? She remembered how Ambrose had looked right after the fight, and realized that his wounds were completely gone. She’d felt his back, and there were no open wounds. She’d kissed his lips, and they hadn’t been busted. She’d traced his face, and it hadn’t been bruised.
Would she heal just as quickly? For some reason, the thought made her shiver. Mari didn’t want to be some fishy freak who could regenerate body parts at will—although, if she had been a doctor, she could easily picture cutting her own arm just to see what would happen. Mari looked down at the limb in question, lifting it, pursing her lips?
Would she heal like Ambrose? She lifted it closer to her face, examining her arm. Then she narrowed her eyes. If she couldn’t, then she could hinder Ambrose. Species healed at certain rates purely for survival. If she couldn’t keep up with Ambrose, he would treat her like she wasn’t good enough and keep her in a padded area. And having lived in a padded area with Ray her whole life, she wasn’t going to go back to it.
Shrugging, and doing this only because she thought it was for their better good, she bit into her arm. The pain was slow in coming, but the second she tasted blood, she felt it. She pulled back, cursing, studying her arm.
Nothing.
The blood welled in little pits created by her teeth. Her shoulders slumped. Ambrose would have to know that she was a weak little fish and couldn’t heal herself like him—
She barely noticed it, but movement caught in the corner of her eye. Mari snapped to attention, staring at her arm.
The flesh was moving over her arm like it had a mind of it’s own. Like a make-shift Band-Aid, her own flesh began to separate from her body, only attached by a thin piece of skin.
And then it wiggled in the water.
Just…wiggled. Like a worm.
Mari stared for all of a second before flinging her arm out and screaming at the top of her lungs. A worm had invaded her body! “Get it out, get it out, getitthefuckout!”
Oh sweet god. She was infected and there were living worms in her body that were trying to steal her skin as their own and holy shit it was wiggling more and trying to enter her teeth marks.
Mari screeched even louder, jumping off of the bed. She was so terrified that she didn’t even notice as her tail began to form. The golden scales wound their way over her feet, calves, thighs, waist, then breasts. Soon, she was once again a mermaid and another worm had popped out of her arm, making a piece of her flesh stick up and wiggle.
The door slammed into the wall.
Mari didn’t care who it was. She was too panicked, to grossed out, too close to losing her mind.
“Get this damn worm out of me,” she screamed at whoever had entered, flinging herself at them and shoving her arm in their face. “Get it out!”
Three men were standing in the door, none of which were Ambrose. As her eyes began to sting and her lip tremble, they stared at her, looking completely lost.
“God damn it!” she cried, shoving her arm at them again. “Worms! Get them out! I’m too young to be invaded by parasites—just get them out!” By the time she was done screaming at them, Mari stood there with her arm in their faces, tears floating out of her eyes, and chest heaving from all of the effort that it took to be so terrified.
“We must get Ambr—“
“No,” she screamed in their faces, stabbing a finger at the wiggling worm that was covered in her skin. “This thing is trying to steal my skin. And you cod-sucking bastards need to fix it! Now!”
“She can’t be serious…” one of the men whispered.
“I think she is.”
“I’m right here.”
“We’ll—”
“Just get it out!”
Another rush of tears started, and the mens’ face blanched completely. The one in the very back took one look at her and then shot down the hall, leaving the other two to her devastated wrath.
Mari was about to open her mouth to scream again when she felt the squirming, wiggling thing split into four little lines, forming a web-like covering. Before she could pass out at the sight, it speared into the bloody indentions that her teeth had made and, right before her eyes, bound itself to her arm completely.
No pain.
No blood.
No wiggling worms sticking out of her arm.
“What the fu—”
“Mari?” Ambrose shot into the room, shoving past all of the men and grabbing her shoulders. “You screamed—”
She shoved a pointy, enraged finger at his chest and he immediately let go. Fury flashed in her narrowed eyes as she held up her arm for him to view. “You infected me.”
“I what?”
“You.” She stabbed his chest. “Infected.” Again. “Me.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked quietly, waving out the men who gratefully, and as fast as the speed of light, shot out of the room.
Mari’s chest pumped frantically as the terror turned to a similar form of hysteria. “I bit my arm and then this—”
“Why were you biting your arm?”
“Worm was just wiggling it’s way through my skin, like a noodle finger or something, and then those guys! They just stood there, and now it’s traveling through my body and it’s going to eat my intestines and then I’m done for.”
“Done? For what? Mari—why in the reef would you bite yourself?” He grabbed her shoulders when she began to swam, tail going as limp as her shoulders.
“I needed to know,” she said, leaning into his hands. All of the fight drained out of her, and all she could do was close her eyes. “But now I have a worm living inside of me and I don’t know if you have medicine to kill it...”
“Did you bleed? When you bit yourself?” he clarified, taking her chin in his hand and making her look at him.
Mari nodded sadly, sighing. “And then the worm-web invaded my skin.”
Ambrose was silent for so long that she glanced up at him, beginning to frown. That is, until she saw the look of barely concealed humor in his eyes.
“You poor mortal,” he said, then burst out laughing. Mari stared up at him, confused.
“Don’t laugh about this!” she demanded, shoving her arm in his face. “I need to get this thing out of me before it does some serious damage!”
“Oh, sweet Atlantis. Do not bite yourself again, and that won’t happen, okay?”
“You know why the worm invaded me?” she asked.
“Well, besides being a fish underwater—creatures that are almost always infected with something—” he paused at her gasp, then nodded all-knowingly. “There’s also a parasite roaming the ocean. It’s been around for thousands of years. First, you have to eat something—like those mangos that Akrina got you. It enters your body that way.
“Then it just starts growing. Stress can cause it,” he said. Mari’s eyes widened to the point where they almost didn’t fit on her face. All of the blood drained to her fin. “It seems that you have caught the case really badly...”
Her stomach heaved. Going by all the crap she’d been through and seen the past day, she couldn’t doubt what Ambrose was saying.
“...or, you know, that’s just how Atlanteans heal themselves.”
She froze.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Ambrose burst into laughter, dropping her shoulders and holding his stomach. “No, I’m really not. A worm, Mari? In your skin, underwater? Out of all the things you could have thought of, that was your assumption?”
She stamped her fin against the ground, glaring at him. “It was wiggling like it had a mind of it’s own!”
He laughed harder, before seeing the look in her eyes. The one that said, “I wish I had a bonfire and a skew so I could cook some fish.”
Ambrose stopped laughing, straightening. “I’m sorry for upsetting you, Mari. Forgive me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, raising a brow at him.
He sighed.
“I bet I know how to make it up to you...” A slow, charming smile spread across his face, and her eyes narrowed.
“Highly doubt you could make that up to me. I made myself look stupid in front of those guys! And I cried! I sobbed, Ambrose,” she hissed, stamping her fin again.
“What if I said we could go to Atl—”
“We’re going to Atlantis?” she screamed, instantly tackling him. Finally! Something cool to see underwater!
Ambrose nodded, hesitantly wrapping his arms around her waist to catch her. “Yes, we are, but I need you to follow some rules while we are there—”
“Dude, fuck rules! This is going to be awesome!”