“Yes.”
“What does female choose?”
I know what he wants to hear. Know what my body needs me to say. But saying it feels like crossing a line I can't come back from.
“I choose... I need...”
His hand touches my inner thigh, just barely. The contact makes my pussy clench so hard it hurts.
“Say it.”
“I need you to breed me. Properly. Completely. Please.”
“Female understands what that means? Primary tentacle will lock inside. Will not release until breeding is complete. Could be hours.”
“I understand.”
“Female accepts the bond? The secretions will change her permanently. Make her body crave this one always.”
“Yes.”
But instead of taking me, he does something unexpected. His hand cups my face, and he kisses me. Not the breathing kiss from before, but something softer. His lips are surprisingly warm, tasting of ocean and ozone. When his tongue touches mine, it's slightly forked, and the sensation makes me moan into his mouth.
“Not tonight,” he says when he pulls away. “Female is exhausted. Storm-weak. Breeding requires strength.”
“No, please, I can't?—”
His finger presses against my lips, silencing me. “Tomorrow. This one promises. Tonight, female rests. Learns one more thing.”
He pulls me into the water with him. I expect cold, but his tentacles have warmed it somehow. He arranges me against his chest, my back to him, his arms around me. Safe. Contained.
“Breathe deep,” he commands.
I do, and he submerges us both. But I can still breathe. The water enters my lungs but doesn't hurt. Doesn't drown. His arms tighten around me, and he swims deeper into the cave system, through tunnels I couldn't navigate alone.
We surface in another chamber, smaller, more intimate. The walls are covered in bioluminescent coral that pulses in slow waves. There's a ledge here too, wider, covered in something softer than moss. Almost like a bed.
“Female sleeps here tonight,” he says, lifting me onto it. “Safe from storm. Safe from rivals. Safe from everything except this one.”
“But I need?—”
“Female needs rest. Soon, breeding. Soon, relief. Tomorrow, everything female's body craves.” His hand strokes my hair, gentle despite his strength. “Tonight, only this.”
A thin tentacle rises from the water, secreting something different. When it touches my lips, the taste is sweet, almost floral.
“Calming secretion,” he explains. “Will ease the worst of need. Not satisfaction, but... quieting.”
I lick the secretion from the tentacle, and immediately feel the edge of desperation soften. Not gone, but manageable. The constant clench of my pussy eases to pulses instead of spasms. The ache remains but doesn't consume.
“Sleep,” he commands, and somehow, impossibly, I do.
The last thing I feel is his hand stroking my hair, his tentacles creating a protective barrier around the ledge, and his voice humming something that might be a song in a language the translator can't parse.
Tomorrow he'll show me his world beneath the waves. Tomorrow I'll learn what those smaller tentacles can do, what relief feels like without the breeding I crave.
Tonight, I learn what it means to trust a monster who saved me from drowning only to drown me in need.
NAIA
