“You taste perfect,” Fian whispered.
And Kai was reminded they were still not done; Fian was still hard.“Hold on.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“I love you, Kai.”
Kai didn’t stop touching.He wanted to see Fian come.He thought,I think I can love you too.
It only took a few more seconds to make Fian’s orgasm explode out of him.He came a lot, and the curious part of Kai that was still there and well even after everything wondered what having that inside of him would feel like.
One day, he was sure, he’d know.One day, he was sure, the things that had been done to him would no longer matter, and he could be carefree again.
Kai woke like he had fallen asleep, tentacle-wrapped and with Fian’s breath slow and warm against his back.He heard the ocean and the gulls, and sunlight was creeping past the curtains.
“Hey, Fian.”
“Hmm.Am up.Five more minutes?”
Kai snuggled back against the demon and carefully peeled a tentacle off his arm to examine it closer.The suckers were big but also delicate, and when he poked them with a finger, they would close around the tip.The whole appendage tried coiling around his arm.
“You won’t give me five more minutes, will you?”
“I was just looking.”
“Such a guppy.”
“Did you just call me a fish?”
Fian’s color shifted, turned lighter before going dark again.“A cute little fish.”
“Uh-huh.We should head back to Salt Harbor.I want to see for myself that they got everyone.”
All of Fian’s tentacles roused.“Are you sure?”
Kai took a few deep breaths, then, “I’m sure.”
“I’ll call ahead though.”
This time around, it wasn’t Zazine who picked them up but a woman who introduced herself as Fangal.She drove a dark blue sedan and told Fian and Kai to get in the back.
On the drive, something cold and clawing built in Kai’s chest.Anxiety or dread?That doesn’t feel right.Nothing there can hurt me anymore.It’ll be fine.I have no reason to be anxious anymore.
Fian next to him was all tentacles again.Kai couldn’t miss the demon frown, and twice he thought Fian was going to say something, but he didn’t.He was just there, in anchor mode once more.
“Agent Mikano is in the town museum,” their driver said.
Kai cocked his head.“There’s a museum here?I never knew that.”
She nodded.“There was one before the witches came here.They made the original inhabitants leave, but the town was dying already.It’s a really small museum.”
She parked outside a building on Main, and the three of them got out of the car.The museum had dusty windows, but Kai could see people moving inside.Other people were out and about as well, most of them in dark suits like their driver and Mikano had been.They were in James’s café and in the bookshop, one talking to a woman who was crying her eyes out in front of the latter.
“That’s Maggie.She and her husband own the bookstore.”
The driver looked that way.“They weren’t married, and she didn’t want to be here either.”
