THE BILLIONAIRE'S FORBIDDEN OBSESSION

THE GIRL'S EYES AND THE SUN

The strange girl simply stared at him in silence.

Then, for the briefest second, Gabriel's heart stopped.

A distortion rippled beneath the smooth flesh of her forearm. It wasn't the glint of seaspray or a trick of the midday sun. It was alive. Tiny, silver-green scales flared against her skin like cold lightning, only to melt back into flawless human flesh a heartbeat later.

Gabriel’s vision blurred as he forced a breath into his lungs. Thinking that maybe he was hallucinating many things, but no.. It had to be.

But the girl only tilted her head, locking him under a chillingly perceptive gaze.

"I... no one," she murmured. Her voice carried an unnatural resonance, sounding less like human vocal cords and more like the heavy, echoing depths of the deep ocean.

Gabriel swallowed hard, his throat dry. "What do you mean?"

The girl with unblinking eyes answered. "I. not... your kind. Not human."

"But you save me," Gabriel stammered, his mind racing to bridge the gap between what he was seeing and what he knew to be real.

"I am Gabriel, how about you? Don't you have a name? How do I call you?"

The girl stepped closer, the air around her smelling faintly of salt and ancient depths.

"No. name."

Gabriel shook his head, pushing back against the surreal weight of her words. "Yeah, of course you helped me out of there. But I want to know... what kind are you?"

But no words followed from the blonde girl, she just shook her head, and waited for something from him to ask.

Gabriel's mind spun in total confusion. He struggled to process what was happening right in front of him, but despite his sheer panic, a wild thought forced its way to the surface. Those gleaming scales on her skin were undeniable proof. She belonged to the sea. But she looked completely like a human. She has an ancient depths smell, but yet the creature standing before him was the living form of a human.

He takes a deep breath. Bringing the reality of childhood fairy tales and ancient legends of mermaids.

"But it's impossible!" Gabriel whispered, in his cracking voices.

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For the next two weeks, this became Gabriel's reality.

The mysterious girl tended to him with a quiet, efficient precision. Her herbal remedies worked effectively, soon, Gabriel was able to sit up and walk short distances around the tiny cabin. Yet, she remained completely distant. She never stayed in the cabin for more than one hour at a time, disappearing into the dense surrounding jungle the moment her tasks were done.

Every interaction felt like catching a glimpse of a phantom. She would glide into the room, place a steaming bowl of crushed leaves by his bedside, and leave before the vapor even cleared from the air.

Gabriel tried to speak to her, to catch her eye, or to ask again about the scales he had seen, but his questions were met only with the heavy rustle of the jungle leaves outside as the doorway emptied. She was his lifeline, yet she was as unreachable like the deep ocean.

Moreover, Gabriel noticed a pattern of her ways regarding his sustenance. Because every morning and every evening, the strange girl would silently place a wooden bowl beside his wooden bed. But the food never changed, it's a crispy and raw wild vegetable, bitter roots, and highly succulent, strange tropical fruits that he had never seen before. And sometimes she adds some sea weeds to it.

Nothing was cooked. Nothing had ever touched a fire.

"Do you have a stove?" Gabriel asked on the fifth morning, holding up a raw, unpeeled root. He offered a polite smile, trying to bridge the vast, silent gulf between them.

"I’m incredibly grateful to you for saving my life. And now, I’m gaining my strength back, and I’d love to prepare a proper meal. I want to cook a food for you"

Gabriel continued, his voice echoing slightly in the quiet cabin.

The girl stopped in her tracks, her hand hovering just above the wooden table. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him. She stared at the raw root in his hand, then up at his face, her unblinking eyes filled with a profound, blank confusion. The very concept of fire, stoves, and cooked food seemed completely foreign to her.. as if he were asking her to craft something from the stars.

"Don't. know what food you eat. Scared. of fire," she said, in her dropping and flat voices.

Gabriel froze, the raw root still heavy in his hand. The casual warmth of his smile faltered under the gravity of her confession.

"I. eat, but. not use fire," the girl said

Her admission hung heavily in the air of the cabin. To her, fire was not a tool for comfort or survival... it was a destructive, and terrifying force.

Gabriel looked from her wide, unblinking eyes down to the bowl of leafy vegetables. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to click together in his mind. A creature of the deep ocean, living in this unknown island, and untouched by human civilization, would have absolutely no use for flame. In this place, fire did not exist.

Gabriel softened his stance, carefully lowering the raw root back into the wooden bowl. He did not want to frighten her away, not when she was finally standing still and speaking to him.

"Hey, it's okay," Gabriel said, dropping his voices for reassuring murmur. He held his hands open in a universal gesture of peace.

And the girl's eyes follow his gestures, as he tried to explain.

"You don't have to be scared. I won't bring anything dangerous near you." Gabriel added.

The girl remained completely still, her intense gaze tracking the movement of his hands.

"Fire can be frightening, I know. It burns, and it destroys things if it gets out of hand," Gabriel explained softly, trying to bridge the gap between their worlds.

"But for me, humans, it is also a safe tool. It's incredibly important for our daily lives. We use just a tiny, controlled spark to warm our bodies when it's freezing, to bring light into the dark night, and to make our food safe and soft to eat." Gabriel looked at her, searching her eyes for any sign of understanding.

"It is like the sun, but small enough for us to hold and use to survive. I can show you how to use it safely, if you'll let me." Gabriel continued.

The girl did not answer right away. Instead, she slowly turned her head and looked out the small cabin window toward the sun, which was blazing brilliantly over the open ocean. She squinted slightly, her deep eyes reflecting the golden light as she tried to connect his words to the world she knew.

To her, the sun was the ultimate source of warmth, the great eye that lit the reef and heated the shallows.

Gabriel watched her quietly, noticing how her posture softened just a fraction. For the first time, she wasn't looking at him with sheer suspicion or detachment; she was genuinely contemplating his words.

The strange girl looked back and forth between the brilliant sky outside and the cold, dark floorboards of the cabin, trying to imagine a piece of that solar fire brought down to earth, trapped and tamed inside the room.

"Sun..." she murmured.