The tide rises faster than expected. Within an hour, I'm scrambling up coral spires, trying to find purchase on the sharp surface. My thighs are slick with constant arousal, making climbing difficult. Every position presses or pulls something sensitive. The coral seems to reach for me, glowing brighter where my wetness touches it.
Twelve feet up, I wedge myself between two spires. The position forces my legs apart, exposing my dripping pussy to the night air. I can't close my legs without falling. Can't adjust without risking the drop into water where flesh-renders wait.
He surfaces properly then.
The full sight breaks my ability to process. The tentacles I saw were just the beginning. Maybe a dozen of them, all different sizes, spreading from a lower body that defies anatomy. Where they join, there's a torso that could almost be human if humans were carved from moonlight and ocean depth. Scaled in patternsthat glow like his captured stars. Arms that end in hands with too many joints, webbed between fingers that end in claws. His face is angular, beautiful in the way storms are beautiful—terrible and magnificent.
“Female displays herself,” he observes, and two tentacles rise from the water, tips swaying like they're scenting the air. “Spread for ocean to see. Dripping need into sacred waters. Calling to every hunter for miles.”
I try to close my legs but nearly slip. The movement makes more wetness escape, dripping down into the rising tide.
“Can't... can't stop it,” I gasp.
“Not meant to stop. Meant to announce. To prepare. To beckon.” He moves closer, until he's directly below my perch. If I fell now, I'd land in his tentacles. “This one could make the ache stop. Could fill the emptiness that torments. Female only needs to let go. Fall into waiting embrace.”
A tentacle rises beside me, not touching but close enough that I can see the suckers along its underside. They pulse with bioluminescence, hypnotic patterns that make my eyes lose focus. The tip hovers near my spread thighs, and I can feel the water droplets from it hitting my heated skin.
“So swollen,” he observes clinically. “So ready. Modified flesh begging for specific touch. This one has breeding tentacle that would fit perfectly in female's desperate emptiness. Has smaller ones to attend the swollen bud that throbs so visibly.”
My clit is pulsing visibly, enlarged and desperate. He can see everything from his position. Every clench of my empty pussy. Every drop of arousal that falls toward him.
“Please,” escapes before I can stop it.
“Please what? Please touch? Please fill? Please make the burning stop?” His main tentacle moves closer, close enough I can smell him—ozone and deep ocean and something male.“Not tonight. Tonight female learns her body's new truth. Learns what she was modified to crave.”
He sinks lower, but I know he stays close. Keeping the flesh-renders away while tormenting me with possibility.
The tide peaks just below my perch. I spend the night in that position, legs spread, pussy dripping steadily into his ocean. Sometimes I see tentacles break the surface. Sometimes bioluminescence flares beneath me like he's tasting what I'm dropping into his domain. My shoulders cramp. My thighs burn. But worse is the ache between my legs that never stops, never eases, just builds and builds with nowhere to go.
When dawn finally comes, I can barely climb down. My legs shake so badly I fall the last three feet, landing hard on newly exposed sand. Every muscle is cramped except the ones that won't stop clenching inside me.
He surfaces as I struggle to stand, far enough away to seem safe. Nothing about him is safe.
“Female survived first night. Good. This one would dislike claiming damaged goods.” His eyes track over my naked body, noting every detail. “The need will grow worse. Each tide that touches modified flesh will increase emptiness. By night three, female will swim to this one voluntarily.”
“Never,” I manage.
“Female's pussy says otherwise.” The crude word sounds strange in his formal syntax. “Look how it clenches on nothing. How it weeps for what only this one can provide. The tonic has made female specific. Shaped for tentacles, not human flesh. Own fingers bring no relief, yes?”
I don't answer but he knows.
“Tomorrow this one will be closer. Will let female see what she needs. Perhaps touch, briefly. Enough to show what relief could feel like.” He starts to disappear, then pauses. “The scalegrows warm when this one is near. Female will know when being hunted properly.”
He's gone, but I still feel watched. The scale in my hand grew warm, confirming he's still close. Still tasting my pheromones in his water. Still waiting.
I look around the island that shrinks with every tide. At the coral that broadcasts my arousal in light. At the water that carries my chemical need directly to my hunter.
But he's right. I'll break long before the portal opens again. My body is already breaking, producing more wetness as I think about those tentacles, about how they'd feel filling the emptiness that's driving me insane. The tonic has rewired me completely. Made me into something that needs exactly what waits in the water.
I press the warm scale between my legs, trying to use its smooth surface for any relief. But it just makes everything worse, makes my pussy clench harder on nothing.
Soon I'll be desperate enough to swim to him.
We both know it.
AYLTH
The female's essence spreads through this one's territory like blood in water, but sweeter. More potent. Forty seasons of empty Hunts, of watching inferior males claim incompatible females, and now she arrives. Perfect. The chemical signature strikes every receptor this one possesses, announcing what the deep currents have whispered for years: the matched one exists.
