He shared my grin, hesitated, then reached out, his hand hovering over mine. “May I?”
I nodded, and his fingers threaded through mine, warm and solid and real.
We lay like that for a long time. My body felt heavy and sated in a way it hadn’t in, well, ever, and despite everything, I felt… safe.
It was the most disturbing thought I’d had all day.
I didn’t pull away when he shifted closer, when his arm draped over my waist, when his breath warmed the back of my neck. I let myself be held, let myself be claimed, and fell asleep to the sound of his heartbeat and the distant, eternal song of the sea.
I wasn’t free. I knew that. But I wasn’t underground anymore, either, and as I drifted into dreams of blue water and weightless floating, I couldn’t decide which was more dangerous.
* * *
The days quickly settled into a pattern. Mornings in the room, usually joined by Tobias for breakfast, afternoons working, always under the watchful eye of Ben or one of the thousand cameras around. At first, the supervision was suffocating, but as the week wore on and I failed to make any escape attempts or throw myself into the intake pumps, the leash loosened.
Ben would leave me alone for ten, then twenty, then thirty minutes at a stretch, citing emails or conference calls or an urgent need for coffee. I knew it was a test, and I resented being so easily read, but I also wanted the trust. I wanted to prove I was more than a flight risk or a broken thing to be managed.
I lost track of the days, measuring time instead by feed cycles and maintenance logs, by the slow progress of the cuttlefish as it learned to hunt the live shrimp I’d started dropping into the tank. I named her Newton. The act of naming something, even a cephalopod, felt like a reclamation of agency.
Tobias visited every evening, and ate dinner with me. Sometimes he brought books— more marine biology texts, technical manuals, even the occasional battered novel with his own penciled annotations in the margins. Sometimes he wanted to talk. Then he made me come my brains out.
One night, he lingered in the doorway after we’d finished, his hand hovering uncertainly at his side.
“May I stay?” he asked, not quite meeting my eyes.
I nodded, surprised by how much I wanted him to. He sat at the end of the bed, hands folded like a child waiting for a reprimand.
“I used to think vulnerability was a weakness,” he said. “That if you allowed yourself to be known, you lost control of the narrative. But you—” He broke off, shaking his head. “You make me want to try.”
The words hung in the air, heavier than I expected. I didn’t know what to say, so I reached for his hand, threading my fingers through his. He flinched at the contact, then relaxed, letting his palm settle against mine.
We talked until the only illumination was the ghostly blue from the moonlight setting. I asked about his childhood, and he told me stories of growing up in a house that felt like a museum, every object curated, every conversation a negotiation. I told him about tidepooling with my dad in California, about the first time I saw an octopus squeeze through a gap the width of my thumb. We were both products of our environments, just in different ways.
When he finally kissed me, he let me lead, let me dictate the pace, and guided me to hump against his thigh until I spurted.
He left before sunrise, but not before tucking the blanket around my shoulders and brushing a strand of hair from my forehead. I lay there for a long time after he was gone, awake andalert, the shape of his absence etched into the mattress beside me.
By midweek, I found myself waiting for his knock. I hated myself for it, but I waited anyway.
And every night, I grew hard as the time to honor our agreement came.
After a few days of going through each of the silicone plugs, gradually stretching me, he brought a dildo to our session.
“I want you to take this for me. It’s the smallest dildo I have, so you should be fine.”
“Okay,” I exhaled, laying back with my head on my pillow.
Tobias sat beside me and put his hand on my thigh, and my eyes fluttered shut at the warmth of his touch.
Honestly, it was hard to remember that I wasn’t supposed to be liking all this. But why wouldn’t I like it? He made me come at least once a night, never hurt me, showering me in pleasure without ever taking anything for himself.
The heat of his palm radiated through my skin, grounding me as I let out a slow breath. My cock had was already hard and leaking against my belly, but Tobias wasn’t focused there yet. He reached for the bottle of lube on the nightstand, the soft click of the cap opening loud in the quiet room.
“Just relax for me,” he murmured, his voice soft and calming. “You’ve been so good with the plugs. This is just the next step.”
I nodded, biting my lip as he squeezed a generous amount of clear gel onto his fingers. The familiar coolness hit my rim as he pressed the first finger inside, circling gently. I let out a shaky exhale, my hips twitching instinctively. He worked me open with practiced patience—one finger, then two, scissoring and stretching until I was loose and pliant beneath his touch.
“Ready?” he asked, his dark eyes meeting mine.
