The Goblin Bride (Beneath Sands Book 1)

the queen’s favorite interpreter, the man did have a point. Ruric himself had gone without bathing when necessary but a female shouldn’t have to.
He stepped back to seat himself on another ledge, taking his time unwinding the leather strappings that bound his feet to his knees. The entire time he watched her as she raised the light above her head and squinted in the darkness.
She couldn’t see anything at all, he realized. He’d have to make some changes to his own lifestyle to make it easier for her. She was not just under his protection but was also meant to be his mate. The word both terrified and excited him. Ruric had been among the many who never would have known what it meant to have a companion other than another male. To have the opportunity to know the soft touch of a woman?
He would treat her like a queen.
She turned towards him then, her strange eyes nearly glinting in the light of her globe. As much as his unnerved her, he found hers to be pitiful. She was like a child in that she could do nothing without his help. Those eyes were a clear example of that.
“What was the old man talking about Ruric? What ceremony?”
It was not precisely how he had wanted to break that news to her. She needed to settle into her surroundings before she knew she was going to be tied to a goblin for the rest of her life. Ruric had his duty. He wasn’t going to complain about before forced to mate with a human. But he understood that she was going to have difficulties with this.
“Clean.” He replied to her.
Speaking in this language was very difficult for his kind. Ruric understood the words well enough. Most of them he could decipher if he didn’t know exactly what they meant. But he had never before made these sounds. Never before had his lips been forced to move in such strange patterns.
At least she seemed to understand him well enough. She seemed to think that he was bartering with her. Clean herself for information.
It was the only explanation he could get for the way she stripped her shirt and pants off with lightning speed and dunked herself into the water.
She came up spluttering even as he folded the last of the leather strappings next to him and ducked his feet into the water.
He didn’t know if the others found her as beautiful as he did. To him, Jane was like some unearthly creature that he had never seen before. She was so dark compared to him, at least all the skin he had seen so far. Yet now that he could see more of her exposed, he realized she was just as pale as he was. Whatever skin had not been exposed to her sun was a completely different color than the rest.
His hands itched to touch that skin. To see whether the darker tones had a different temperature than the rest. And, if he was being honest with himself, to see if he scrubbed her hard enough that the darkness would go away.
“Ruric, the ceremony?”
He snapped out of staring at her, thankful for the moment that she couldn’t see him.
“Binding.” He managed, hating the way his lips stretched over the word.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Her arms were crossed firmly over her chest, dunked under the water as she was. “What does binding mean.”
“Binding, protect.”
“Well that’s more words than you’ve managed before, but I still don’t know what you mean.”
It was as frustrating for him as it was her. Ruric felt inadequate. His lips couldn’t form the words fast enough to answer her questions, nor had he ever spoken the words this often. His throat longed for the ease of his own language. It was a pity that she could not be taught their words. Even Micah with all his experience and knowledge butchered the beauty of the goblin songs.
“I can protect.” He had to pause between each words, his tongue sliding against sharp teeth.
She sunk to her shoulders in the heated water, her foot brushing against the bioluminescent algae that coated the bottom. He watched her flinch as she was startled by the glow that came from the bottom of the pool.
It gave him a chance to look her over more. She was still dirty, but without the blood on her face, Jane was much more approachable. He admired the strong arch of her cheekbones, followed the line of her jaw with his eyes. He had only seen a few females in his lifetime. Jane was an oddity to him as well. The two of them were a strange pair.
“Why do you need to be bound to me to protect me? Is that not what you are doing now?”
He shook his head. “Others want.”
“Others want me? Or others want to protect me?”
She was asking too many questions. “Both.”
He watched as she sunk lower into the water, her braid curling around her like a snake. This species was entirely new to him, so he did not understand the expressions that played across her face. Humans would be easy to read if only he knew what each muscle twitch meant.
It was not too far of a stretch to guess that she was nervous or perhaps profoundly uncomfortable by what he had told her.
“What am I doing here.” She muttered to herself. But the sound carried across the water and he could hear her well. Ruric reached into his pocket and pulled out a small chunk of crystal. It was softer than the other stones, easy enough to carve.
“Am I in danger here?”
“No.” The words made him bristle, the muscles along his shoulders and back rippling at the thought. “Females safe.”
“Then why do you need to bind yourself to me to protect me? Why is there a ceremony?”
“No more questions.” He wasn’t certain he said the words correctly, but their meaning was clear.
She stilled in the water, looking at him with wide eyes that