Shouldn’t have given in to the morbid curiosity.
But she had to know.
“Nooo,” she moaned, hand clapping over her mouth to stifle a scream. Sinking her teeth into the meat of her thumb, Kore drew blood. Disrupted the lacy pattern that shouldn’t exist.
The sun vanished behind a cloud.
But the sea crept higher. Crashing against the shore, swirling around her thighs. And in a surge that was almost a caress, it washed over her hips. Seeping inside her to touch what had been desecrated by a monster.
Something inside responded.
At the touch of the sea, the seal inside her burst.
There was no warning.
Only a flood of sperm returning to the element it had been born of.
A strangled screech gurgled from her chest, and Kore convulsed. Eyes wide before they rolled white, belly flexing as a torrent of thick, pearlescent seed spilled out of her.
Climax roared through her with the force of a rogue wave. Her limbs flailing in the shallow water, pussy clenching in waves as a river rushed between her legs.
Panting, she lay in the shallows, dazed. Sightless gaze staring up at a looming storm cloud that offered blessed relief from the blinding morning light. Belly no longer swollen, pussy throbbing with aftershocks of the tectonic event that had just moved through her. Her heart pulsing beneath the corners of her jaw.
It wasn’t the horror of it.
The obscene thrill of being emptied.
It was the knowing.
Of what she’d just done. That he’d catch the scent of in the water…
… and return with the tide to put it back…
CHAPTER 17
Gills fluttering, Nyx hung suspended in the crushing embrace of the deep. Eyes closed. Brow furrowed. Cradled in the frigid dark at the bottom of the trench, he reveled in the balm of his element.
Soothed by the pressure.
Made whole by the depths he’d been born to rule.
Alone.
Recovery was slower this time. His lungs labouring, even now.
Cracking one eye, he watched the current take a handful of scales and scatter them across the sea floor.
There was a toll.
A price.
One he was willing to pay to claim his prize,yes, but expensive nevertheless.
The effort to breed her had flayed him, savaging sensitive skin, strip by agonizing strip. His every heaving breath acidic, every glint of the sun a flensing blade that had left him ragged and raw.
Lungs meant to sieve oxygen from brine sizzled with the surface’s wretched poison. Scales designed to protect sensitiveskin were scorched by the sun, dried out, and flaking off his hide in great, glittering sheets.
He coughed, a convulsion of muted agony. Lungs still dry, despite his return to the trench. Blood—thick and dark—spiraled from his gills in a lazy plume that curled in the current. Twisting before his eyes as the trench stitched him back together in silent judgment.
