In the Grotto Cav
In the Grotto
Cav
Lyx doesn’t return the next morning.
If Cav were smarter, he would be saying his goodbyes. She said herself that she’s nursing him back to health just to have the thrill of killing him, but Cav has never let good sense get in the way of good faith. Lyx will return. Of that, he is certain.
His stomach groans. How many days has it been since he’s eaten? Time is impossible to keep track of with his eyes shut. Worst of all, he still hasn’t seen Lyx in all her glory, and he refuses to die without at least a glimpse.
With one arm, he reaches out beside him.
Glass bottles jostle under his fingertips, an algae net clinging to his palm.
He works by sound and touch alone, tugging Lyx’s bag closer to rifle through it.
One by one, he uncorks the bottles and holds them to his nose.
His nostrils flare at the sting of alcohol.
The next scent makes him gag, but finally, he finds one that seems tepid enough.
He presses his thumb to the mouth of the bottle and pours it onto his eyelids. Slowly, the crust dissolves until he can crack his eyes open. It’s so bright with the sunlight reflecting off the water that it takes five full minutes before he adjusts.
This grotto is much like a cave. Foliage grows around him in large fronds stretching over the mossy bank.
At his feet, a pool of ocean water has collected on a ledge.
It must be low tide now. No waves splash against the rocks; instead, he hears the ocean moving gently beneath the drop-off.
That water flows out of the cave entrance and continues into the sea.
His head tilts back. Above him, the rocky ceiling is solid, but light leaks through the natural holes worn into it.
One beam shines a few feet from him and glints off the glass bottles.
The vials are a variety of shapes and colors with faded labels, but he recognizes them, classic medicines and potions found on nearly every ship.
Behind the bottles is a jug of fresh water. His tongue scrapes his lips like sandpaper. It takes some maneuvering, but once he reaches it, he has to restrain himself from downing the whole thing.
Lyx doesn’t return all day. Eventually, the air around him grows chilly, forcing him to burrow beneath a few massive leaves. He wants to be awake when she arrives. He fights sleep like a child, but eventually, the soothing sounds of the ocean send him off.
In his dreams, he assembles Lyx with what pieces he knows. Her skin is slippery like a jellyfish. There’s a solid weight to her, her body far from frail when she sat atop of him and threatened to strangle him.
His fingers flex. His dream changes. This time when she pins him down, his hands move to her thighs. She lets him touch her until he reaches the width of her hips, and then, she closes her hands around his throat once more.
Beside Cav, something splashes. He ignores it and tries to sink back into the dream, but the splashing continues. It takes a while to realize what he hears are footsteps drawing closer and stopping next to his head.
He doesn’t want to wake up. He wants to keep dreaming about Lyx, but when his eyes flutter open, he half-believes he’s still asleep.
The woman standing over him looks like an illusion.
Her hair falls in wavy ribbons, colors shifting in the light.
The milky skin of her torso glows nearly translucent, darkening to blue and purple at her hips.
Scars wind around her arms and chest like thin ropes raised beneath her skin.
So this is a siren. She looks as divine as the stories say, but it’s strange seeing her walk on two legs.
All the tales depict sirens with tails that restrict them to water.
Is that a lie created for comfort, an assurance that some place is safe from sirens?
Or did sirens spread the fiction themselves, an easy way to move about unnoticed?
The siren watches him with a look that could almost be concern — until she catches him staring. Instantly, her expression shifts back to distaste. “You’re still alive.”
He can’t help but smile. It is Lyx. He knows that voice, the one that kept his mind afloat when his body tried to give up. “As long as you will it.”
She rolls her eyes and turns back to the ledge.
Her skin has dried impossibly fast, leaving only traces of water behind.
That’s when Cav realizes she’s as naked as him.
He watches her movement, following every curve and ripple of her flesh.
He wants to take in all of her, but when she turns back to face him, he forces his gaze to the ceiling.
She dumps out a new bag of supplies before she notes the bottles beside him. Her lip curls. “I see you’ve helped yourself to my bag.” She pulls a rag from the pile and sits to clean each bottle’s rim.
His laugh is rough. “Afraid you might catch something from me?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she spits. “Next to me, you’re an anchovy. You’re chum.” Indignantly, she reaches into her pile and tosses something toward him. “Here, you little fucking plankton.”
It lands with a wet slap beside him. He has to roll over to reach it, but the string of small fish is a welcome sight.
“You gutted them for me?” He doesn’t concern himself with eating politely, using his sharp teeth to rip meat from the bones.
Raw fish wouldn’t normally be his first choice, but he’s ravenous.
Before long, he’s polished them off, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand with a long drink of water. “Thank you.”
Lyx continues cleaning the bottles, monitoring him from the corner of her eye. “Are you a dragon?”
For the first time, there’s no threat coming from her, besides the steely sheen of her eyes. “Half,” he answers.
“Half-what?”
“Half-dragon, half-human.”
“Are you half-man and woman, too?”
A laugh startles out of him, but Lyx’s expression doesn’t change. Her words are neither a joke nor an insult. Most people prefer to see him as one or the other, but Cav has never done well with constraints. No one’s ever put it as concisely as she does. Slowly, he nods. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“Do you breathe fire?”
He clears his throat to stir the weakened ember in his chest. “Not when I’ve swallowed two gallons of sea water.”
She lifts her chin to scrutinize him. “You don’t have wings.”
“And you don’t have a fishtail.”
Her eyes simmer, but then his stomach rumbles loud enough that it can’t be ignored.
Without a word, Lyx rises to her feet and moves away.
He wonders if he’s offended her, if she’s leaving already, but she returns moments later with a bundle of flora picked from the bank.
Cav relishes the sea peas and samphire, and when he finishes them off, his stomach remembers what it’s like to be satisfied.
The whole time, Lyx watches him, repolishing the same bottles over and over. “You say you don’t hunt sirens.” She speaks like she doesn’t believe it, eyes following him like a hawk. “So what do you do?”
“Curious about me?”
That gets under her skin. She pushes to her feet, leaving Cav scrambling to answer.
“I work on an escort vessel. We convoy another ship to guarantee its safe passage.”
Lyx remains standing, but she doesn’t leave. It’s the best he could hope for. Finally, she corrects him. “You worked on an escort vessel. Don’t forget you’re dying here, pirate.”
The corner of Cav’s lip lifts. “My mistake.”
They remain in silence for a few minutes before Lyx speaks again. “Will the rest of your ship come looking for you?”
There’s something chilling in her voice, a reminder that Cav is trapped here. That there is no one to save him. That his fate is in her hands alone.
He should say yes. He should insist that he’s invaluable, that Captain Prodeus and his crew will sail the entire ocean looking for him, but Cav rests on his uninjured shoulder.
“Honestly?” He blows out a breath. “I’ve only been with them a few months.
I doubt my captain knows I’m missing; I don’t even think he knows my name. ”
It’s foolish to admit, but maybe he wants Lyx to know they’re alone. Maybe he wants her to have free reign of him. Maybe he wants her to take him apart in any way she desires. When he shifts the leaf blanket lower, Lyx’s eyes flick toward his chest.
His heart hammers. He’s pinned beneath the gaze of a predator, but he doesn’t want to run. He wants something else. He takes a deep breath in and lets his breasts rise and fall.
She follows the motion. There’s a glassy look in her eyes, a hunger that Cav wants to feed, but Lyx rises abruptly to her feet. “I won’t be back for a while. Maybe never.” Her voice is clipped as she tosses a heap of wet fabric toward him. “You can keep these.” Then she hurries toward the ledge.
“Wait!” Cav scrambles to sit up and grunts as his shoulder spasms. His heart keeps up its rapid pace.
He barely notices the clothing she’s thrown at him.
It’s not Cav’s survival he fears for if she never returns; it’s this feeling inside him, like a wick has been lit and he needs to see it explode.
He searches for any reason to keep her here even a moment longer.
“If you lay those clothes out in the sun, they can dry. Maybe some driftwood, too. Then I can show you my fire.”
Lyx stops in her tracks. The air around her bristles like she’s warring with some part of herself. Slowly, she looks at him over her shoulder. “Don’t instruct me.”
It shivers through him. His tongue sweeps over his lips. They’re wet for the first time in days, and Lyx notices it, too. Her gaze jumps from his mouth to his eyes and back, drawn in despite herself.
Heat flares through his body. As cautiously as he can, he pushes up to sit.
Any sudden motion might frighten her away.
“My most tolerant captor…” His voice is raspy with salt and something else, scratching low in his throat.
“Will you set my clothes out in the sun? Please? Or should I wait for you like this?”
Something slick and dangerous twists in his gut. He lets the leaf fall away, exposing his naked body to her. He leans back against the rocks, hand wandering between his breasts and raking through the soft scales trailing the lower part of his stomach.
What is he thinking? Why is he playing this game? Why is he risking his life for a thrill? But it’s not just that. He wants more.
From the look in Lyx’s eyes, so does she.
Her eyes are hot and angry, doing everything they can to remain on his face. He might even believe she hates him if the light didn’t reflect off her supple thighs clenching together.
The needy sound in the back of his throat makes her grit her teeth and storm back to him.
He isn’t sure if she’ll fuck him or kill him. He isn’t sure he’d say no to either, and he knows he should be afraid, but his body hums when she presses her wet foot to his sternum.
It shoves him back against the wall. A rivulet of water trails up the inside of her thigh, following gravity’s course between her legs.
She knows where his gaze goes. The sight of her cunt makes his mouth water.
He wants to drag his tongue between her lips, he wants to delve his tongue inside her, he wants to make her come against his mouth —
She leans down closer to him. “I’m keeping you alive for my amusement. Be careful how you entertain me.”
With every beat of his heart, his chest glows and spreads heat where their bodies connect. She watches light spread between his scales before she moves back and disappears off the ledge.
The droplets on Cav’s chest sizzle long after she’s gone, and no amount of water can quench his thirst.