“You’d be bored within another two weeks,” he said, chuckling softly. They were lying on their specially made beach chairs. allowing them to have their kraken half on the bottom with their tentacles reaching into the sea, while they could get a bit of a tan on their top half.
Although Luc had opted to stay in his fully human form this time, wearing nothing but a pair of briefs to prevent some unnecessary sunburn. “It’s always lovely when we’re here,” he said. “But the whole point of a private island is that it’s completely private. No one knows where we are. Nobody can come and visit.”
He flicked his long, dark hair back over one shoulder. “I wouldn’t mind that. In fact, I find it blessedly peaceful. But you would be driving me nuts if you didn’t have other people to interact with. You’re the social bunny between the pair of us.”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure that’s true anymore,” Nic said slowly. “I mean, I get it. Yeah. I love us having the hotel. I love the interaction with so many different people. But when I thinkabout going back this time…to another damn party. Don’t you ever get sick of it?”
“The parties?” Luc shrugged. “I could do without them. I always thought it was something that you enjoyed.”
“Most of the time I suppose I do,” Nic said. “But doesn’t it bother you? It doesn’t matter where we are, who we’re entertaining, or anything else. You just know that all those people around, at some point in the night, all they’re doing is waiting for us to get our tentacles out.”
He waggled a couple of his above the water. “It’s like we’re nothing more than toys for them to play with. And to be honest, it’s getting annoying. I’m actually starting to hate it.”
Luc had salt drying in his facial scruff, and he scratched at it, feeling the grit under his fingernails. “I didn’t notice you hating it,” he said. “At our Thanksgiving party, I saw you winding tentacles around multiple naked bodies. At one point, I thought you were going for a world record of how many you could touch at the same time.” Luc hoped his feelings on the topic were hidden from his partner.
“Would you believe me if I said I’d do that to actually keep them away from my face? If you think about it honestly, none of them wants anything to do with us as people. They just want to grope tentacles.”
Shit, he’s serious.It wasn’t that Luc hadn’t done the same thing on occasion, so it made sense that Nic would feel the same way, too. “You could just not do it at all.”
Nic’s tentacles disappeared as he sat up in the chair, crossing his long legs. “Who would we be, though, if we weren’t out and proud kraken shifters? What would they think of us if we didn’t have the ability to flop out our tentacles and tickle everybody within a ten-foot radius?”
“I don’t think they come for the tickling,” Luc said with a snort as he considered the question. It wasn’t like Nic to question their existence – he was usually the laid-back and sociable one who just took life day by day, a classic example of going with the flow. “We’re respectable hotel owners. We do really well in business. We have tentacles in multiple organizations all over the world, and people respect us for that.”
“Do they, though?” Nic asked. “Do they? Or do they just think, oh, those guys are rich, and they’re the subject of every tentacle porn movie available? Not us specifically, obviously, but did you see that last movie that got put out? It was so freaking ridiculous. The producers didn’t even try to get somebody with tentacles, actual tentacles, to fill the part. It was all CGI, or whatever it is they call it these days. And yet we’re associated with that all because we do have tentacles.”
Luc couldn’t help laughing. It had been a really pathetic movie they’d watched together after someone sent them a link to it on social media. “You know yourself that any tentacled shifter with any self-worth at all is not going to be posing with their tentacles in interesting places for movies. Most of us have better things to do, and it’s not like there’re a lot of us anyway. Please,” he added, because even after all the years they’d been together, sometimes Nic still had the power to surprise him. “Please, don’t ever, ever suggest to me you want to do something like that.”
Nic shuddered and shook his head. “Absolutely not. Not for a second. But see, that’s what I’ve been thinking about. What do you think would happen if, when we attend our New Year’s Eve party, we had our clothes on this time? And we keep them on. You know, a full suit or maybe a nice pair of dress jeans and a soft top or something. What if we actually stayed dressed until after our guests leave?”
YES!“I haven’t got a problem with that. I thought you were the one who liked to play with other people.” It upset Luc every time it happened, although he never said so. Neither of them had sex with other people – that was an absolute hard limit. But some people got a lot more carried away over Nic’s tentacles in particular than Luc was comfortable with.
Luc and Nic had known they were mates since they bumped into each other somewhere up near the Arctic shelf. Luc had gotten lost and was trying to find his way back to warmer waters when he bumped into Nic, who seemed to be trying to do... Well, actually, Luc wasn’t sure what Nic was trying to do, but thinking back, he was sure it involved a whale of some kind.
But anyway, the two men had recognized who they were to each other and quickly decamped to warmer waters to get to know each other. That had been more than fifty years ago. Through all that time, they still hadn’t claimed each other.
“Do you ever wish that we’d claimed each other when we met?” Nic asked, reminding Luc that because they’d been together for so long, they were often thinking along the same lines.
“I wish that every single day, but I’m still glad we didn’t, and I don’t say that to hurt you.” He reached over, touching Nic’s shoulder. “We’ve always known we’d have a third, and we both decided it wouldn’t be fair to our mate if we claimed each other before we’d even met them.”
“I think we both thought our third would make themselves known before this.”
Luc nodded. “That’s true, but our third is the reason why we come here every year, in the hopes that the Oracle will finally let us know that our hopes have been answered – that she’ll finally point us in the direction of the shifter we’re meant to be with.I’ve been looking forward to that since I met you, and that’s never going to change.”
“Until it happens,” Nic pointed out. “Who knows, maybe this year it will.” Rolling over onto his belly, he added, “What type of shifter are you hoping will be ours? What would be your favorite mate type?”
“Apart from you?” Luc relaxed. This was more like the type of conversation they were used to having. “It would be helpful if they had some affinity with the water,” he said, mimicking Nic’s position. “We know they’ll get the ability to swim underwater once we’re all claimed, no matter what shifter type they are. But I just think of something like maybe a poor wolf or a cat shifter getting stuck with a pair of krakens.” He waggled his eyebrows at his fellow kraken.
“Oh my goodness, yes. Every time we went swimming, the poor thing would have a hell of a job drying their fur.” Nic chuckled. “We’d have to start carrying hairdryers or something similar so we can fluffy up their fur again once we’re on land. That could be quite funny. So you’re thinking a water shifter?”
“I think it makes the most logical sense,” Luc said. “Although I am basing that on us being water shifters ourselves. But then, when you look at the history of our kind, that’s not guaranteed. Do you remember Harry over there in the deep trenches? What shifter type did he end up with?”
“Oh, oh, give me a minute. Didn’t he get a bird shifter as a mate?”
“Yep, he did. No one to swim with – he didn’t even have a second kraken to be with. Just his bird. I didn’t even think the bird was a seagull or another type used to water. I think it was a hummingbird, or something like that. How would that work if Harry wanted to go swimming? He’d have to go alone.”
“I’m not sure.” Nic shrugged. “He seems happy enough, last I heard.”
“I’m still going to say I believe he would’ve been happier if he had a second kraken mate as well. I couldn’t imagine spending my shifted time alone since I met you.” Not all krakens were mated in threes, although most of them were. It wasn’t possible for kraken shifters, particularly male ones, to bond with each other and have children. They could be sexually active with each other, but when it came to procreation, they always impregnated the non-kraken member of their mating group.
