Page 46 of Sucker For You

Her own hand went into the tank.

The octopus’s reaction to her reappearance in the water was instantaneous.

Though she left the tip of one arm suctioned to Wes’s thumb, the juvenile’s false eyespots flashed and she extended her seven other tentacles across the aquarium to wrap around Isabel’s fingers. She was very dexterous. But the width of the tank wasstill a long reach for a young octopus. She pulled hard at them both to ease the tension in her body, drawing their hands toward each other with irresistible force.

Toward—and then, with a yank of impatient arms,together.

Beneath the water, Isabel’s palm against his was warm.

Instead of jerking back from their contact, his fiancée froze. Her frown arrested in a ridge over her nose. But as the inquisitive two-spot left delicate suction kisses along her thumb? That frown slowly softened, melted. A smile parted her lips on a soundless gasp, her eyelids fluttering over a shine of awe. . . When she raised her head after a minute, an hour, or an eternity of octopus-time, when her fingers twitched and her hooded gaze acknowledged him again, her joy was blinding.

His pulse roared in his ears; her radiance left him breathless.

Stupid, too.

Wes’s unoccupied, un-octopused hand reached toward a strand of salt-crusted hair falling loose over Isabel’s temple.Slowly. Very slowly.His knuckles almost grazed her cheek. She remained so still as he trapped the silvery wisp between his fingers, soothed it back behind her ear. His thumb whispered against her heartbeat humming in her throat. It was nothing but an accidental, feather-light collision of calluses and skin—but an inhale shuddered across the aquarium. Hers, or his? Did her focus dart down for a moment, toward his mouth?

Closer.

He was no more than an inch distant from brushing his lips over hers, from sating his impulsive, unthinking, almost overpowering desire to taste and explore the enigma of Isabel Wright, to know her with the same intense, sensory intimacy that the octopus now possessed of them both, when:

Splash!

A cold spout erupted from the reef tank to hit Wes squarely in the nose.

“Ah!” Isabel lurched away, gasping. Water streamed from her eyelashes.

“What the h-hell—” He swore and coughed at this painful saline injection into his nasal cavities. Snorting hard, swiping a palm that should have been cradling Isabel into a kiss over the water running down his chin, he narrowed his stinging eyes at the aquarium.

The octopus wriggled her siphon at him.

Playful, unrepentant.

“Jesus, peanut butter, and jelly.” He mopped his face with his rash guard. He snorted again—but this time, somehow irresistibly despite his salty, tingling irritation, with laughter.

What had Isabel said about cephalopod personality types?

Shy, brave, or curious. Sneaky, sly.

Sneakyandsly.

The two-spot had swiveled upward the flexible, funnel-like tube that protruded from her mantle, and squeezed a breath of water through the hose. Choosing her moment for maximum chaos—he hadn’t imagined that brief shiver of Isabel’s eyes over his mouth—she’d soaked them.

He poked a finger into one of the octopus’s suckers. “You little devil—”

“—fish.” Isabel’s voice was suspiciously muffled behind the hem of her turtle-printed sarong, which she’d raised up to dry her face. Now she released the wet fabric. Her ears were pink, but she gave him the facts. “Octopuses were once calleddevilfish. They aren’t devils or fish. Just misunderstood.”

“What? Did I misunderstand that jet she sent up my nose?”

Her lips trembled, almost as if she were stifling her ownsilent laughter. Though when the two-spot gave another tug at her fingers, she turned away from him, back toward the tank. Her attention dropped to its devious (not devilish) occupant. A rogue drop of water slipped from the corner of her mouth to her chin, down to puncture the barrier between air and fluid with a tiny, musicalplonk. From below, the octopus blew bubbles in answer.

“We don’t always know why they turn their siphons on other fauna in their environment. It’s difficult to assign motivations without anthropomorphizing them. Which it’s important not to do. Octopuses aren’t like humans. Researchers have to remember the distinction between our two species’ behaviors and needs, and not compromise our ability to interact appropriately with them. That’s why I referred to the specimens at the Seattle Aquarium by their tank numbers. Not names.”

C-189, she’d called her snacking subject, when she’d shown Wes her lab video at Loulou’s.

NotMarcellus McSquiddlesorKali.

Maybe she’d already labeled this octopusC-190.