It was a good thing that he'd told her to stay back and watch, because she didn't have the energy right that second to do much more than that. He was fast! Faster than Kytana, and he didn't even look 'winded'! Of course that was probably a short jaunt to someone used to being in the open ocean all his life like Cris.
So Juliet floated where he left her, gills opening and closing furiously as she worked to catch her breath and recover, tail flicking occasionally to keep her in place.
Then he took that vest off and gah! The man really was a gorgeous specimen, from the top of his head down to the end of his tailfin. And when had she started thinking of a scaled tail as sexy? It hit her that the island really had changed her fundamentally: not just swapped one species for another but changed body, mind, and soul. There was no way this was temporary.
"Speed and turn," she echoed, wondering if he noticed any of the thoughts whirling in her head as he looked at her. "I'll remember that."