Chapter 29 Lyx
TWENTY-NINE
Lyx
If Cav wants a mark, she’ll give him one.
Lyx’s tentacles wrap around his wounded shoulder, clinging to his sides and the crevices between his scales. It’s like she’s a vine scaling a stone wall, finding the cracks inside of Cav where she can burrow in deep.
He pants beneath her, but she makes him wait.
His eyes are glassy, a whine building in his throat while he bucks.
It’s too good to stop him. She wonders if he would look like this if she dug her teeth in, if she peeled back his scales and licked at his blood, but that’s too much.
She’s shown him enough for one day, and his words have stirred a new hunger in her.
She wants to mark him.
A sting is not enough to satisfy her, but it’s close. It’s almost perfection when Cav spasms at the pain, head tipping back, throat exposed, breasts arching into the air. He clenches his teeth, but it doesn’t stop the moan that escapes.
She stings him again. He makes a needy sound she’s never heard, and through the dome of her tail, she can see lava pushing up through the cracks of his vent. It clings to both of them, a sticky mess as hot as her arousal.
She stirs her hips. “What does that mean?”
A blissful smile seeps across his face. “Means you’re fucking perfect.”
She wants to kiss the words right out of his mouth, to swallow them down so they can never be heard by anyone else.
When she withdraws her tendrils, they drag between his scales, and he groans and shudders.
Already, she can see welts forming on his body.
They’re not as deep as her scars, but they’re the same shape, lightning bolts across one of his shoulders.
Each mark is indented with details, the beads and ruffles of her tentacles embedded in him.
Like he’s hers.
Heat sizzles beneath her. When she grinds against him, water splashes onto the lava between his legs, cooling and hardening it to the same color of his scales. The dome nudges inside her, pressing deeper until she gasps.
“It keeps growing like that,” he murmurs. “As much as you want. The more you work me up, the more it builds.”
He lays on the sloping rock, wet hair tousled and slipping out around his crooked smile.
Lyx’s stomach clenches. No one has ever looked at her like this.
Not really. Not after she dropped her facade.
Not without her song. She has manufactured this look a hundred times, convinced dozens of pirates to adore her, but she used nothing on Cav.
Her pulse trips. She closes her hands around his throat just for something to hold onto, teeth scraping her lip when she moves against him. “So if I keep doing this, you’ll keep spilling.”
Cav follows the pace she sets. More lava leaks out of him, firming up beneath her, molding to the tender flesh of her cunt. She tries not to shudder, but the sight of Cav coils and strikes her. He’s losing himself to lust, rolling up into her and watching where they meet.
“Is it more sensitive like this?” There’s a cruel lilt in her voice, heightened when she drags against him.
Cav whimpers and writhes, and that’s all the answer Lyx needs. Every motion draws them together, her cunt suctioned to his like it can’t get enough. When Lyx shifts, their bodies fight to stay together, the delicious friction pulling them right back into place.
No one has dared to brave what lies beneath her tail — except for Cav. It’s like their bodies were made for this, molding together until she swears she can feel him against every inch of her.
He claws at her hips, his eyes rolling back. “You’re fucking gripping —”
It’s addictive seeing him like this, all minced thoughts and breathless words, so good she can almost taste it. “What if I don’t stop? If I keep riding until you’re a pitiful, writhing wreck? Would it keep growing?”
Cav’s curses when their foreheads brush. Neither of them can look away from where they meet, watching the ridges of his hardened shaft drag between her tentacles. It’s a mess, her slickness and his heat binding them closer together.
Her skin sparkles brilliantly. It doesn’t make sense. Gorging herself on chaos is the only way she knows, but Cav has never given her that. With him, it’s like he’s feeding morsels from his hand, placing them into her mouth so gently that she hadn’t realized she was eating.
And still, she’s hungrier than ever. All her instincts scream to destroy Cav, to tear him apart, but something isn’t right.
Her heart thuds behind her eyes. For so long, she has craved his destruction.
She has dreamt of prying him apart and scraping the marrow from his bones.
She has imagined fucking the soul out of his body so she could swallow it down.
All she knows is ruination, but what if something’s buried beneath it? What if her need to devour all the pieces of Cav is something more? What if she’s longing for the whole of him?
Her world tilts on its axis. The thought is so impossible and foreign that she can’t grasp it.
Her arms wobble, tugging her back into her body and reminding her where she is.
Cav looks up at her, but Lyx can’t face him.
She can’t face any of it. With renewed vengeance, she bares her teeth and tightens the circles of her hips.
“You’re hopeless,” she pants. Her voice is too shaky.
She grips him tighter to keep from trembling.
“I bet I could get you to say anything like this. I wouldn’t even need my song.
” The idea spreads like wildfire. With one hand, she drags her talons down Cav’s chest and pricks his nipple. “Tell me all of this is mine.”
“You fucking own it.”
No hesitation. Wanton desire surges through her, and her tail billows as she takes him deeper with every thrust. That hungry feeling brims dangerously inside her. She wants more. She wants to push the limits of what she knows, teasing the edges of her containment. “Tell me you’re my bitch.”
Cav laughs. “I’m your bitch,” he rasps, hotter than his skin. “I’ll do anything you want. Anything you let me.”
This is going to her head. She can’t stop herself, words spilling out of control. “Tell me you love me.”
“I’m in love with you.”
It’s so easy, it steals her breath. A thousand others have said those same words, but this is nothing like that. Cav is not under her spell, but that’s not all. This time, she feels different. When he says it, her heart stops. Her thoughts vanish. There is nothing but him.
Water drips back into the pool and ripples across its surface. Cav’s chest rises and falls beneath her palm. His pulse thrums, as strong and certain as the way he looks at her. Her fingers flex. This has gone too far. She’s gotten all she needs. She has tormented both of them enough, and yet…
“Show me what it’s like,” she whispers. It is the fantasy she’s never allowed herself, something she would only say to be cruel, but there’s nothing vicious about it. Nothing except the way her lungs burn, like the words have been trapped inside and desperate to come up for air.
When he kisses her, it’s a relief. Her body moves without thinking, tentacles winding around him to pull him closer.
His lips leave her dizzy, heady, intoxicated, until terrifying pleasure jolts through her.
Her mind and body are at odds. She asked for this, but the unknown makes her shiver above him.
With an arm around her waist, he eases her back into the pool.
Water laps at her shoulders, but it can’t disguise her trembling.
Frantically, she reaches for him, coiling tendrils around his breasts and hips before she stings again.
She shouldn’t have asked for this. She’s running from something — running to something.
Escaping it. Chasing it. She doesn’t know where she’s headed, but if she stops, she’ll have to acknowledge it.
She’ll have to look it straight in the face.
The look in Cav’s eyes calms her. “I want to take my time,” he murmurs. He takes in the details of her face like he’s memorizing every feature, standing at the cliff’s edge of her being and diving into her depths.
Only then does he close the space between them. Her back meets the rock wall, and he holds onto it to keep himself afloat. With his other hand, he runs along her tail, brushing the lining before he reaches beneath it.
There are dozens of tentacles, but Cav finds the center.
His fingers trace her core, still sticky with the mix of their desire.
When she gasps, her tentacles sting, but Cav barely winces.
The touch of his hand is so different. She loved the solid press of his hardened scales, but his fingers are so delicate.
So vulnerable. He gives them to her freely, no matter how her tendrils jitter.
There is no fear on his face, only sincerity.
Certainty. An offering. It’s decadent and tender and intimate, and she doesn’t know how to repay it.
“Slow,” he breathes.
She remembers what Cav said at the dartboard. Slow. Deep. Languid. Their chests press together, bodies intertwined, her back against the wall. This is both her fantasy and his bound into one.
Yet all she can see are their differences. Lyx’s heart trips over itself, but Cav’s pulse remains steady. Her breathing is short and sharp through her nose, but he opens his mouth to inhale deeply. “Slow.”
She stares at his lips forming a circle, her eyes slipping closed when she takes a ragged breath.
Their bodies fall into sync, and every feeling heightens.
The pads of his fingers dip into the rings between her tentacles.
He explores her, watching the flutter of her eyelashes and the part of her lips.
Her talons rake down his arm. His mouth brushes hers and hovers out of reach.
Her teeth grit. “Cav —”
“I want you here with me,” he murmurs. “I want you to feel everything.”
He delves deeper. When she gasps, his nose brushes her cheek, and it pulls on her like a riptide sucking her away.
Her tentacles curl around his forearm. When she stings, he groans and palms the expanse of her cunt, grinding the heel of his hand into her core.
She makes a pathetic sound and tries to hide it against his neck, but Cav keeps her pinned open.
A wave crests in the pit of her stomach. “What does it feel like?” she gasps. It’s foolish. She shouldn’t ask, but the need builds to a fever pitch inside her. “What does it feel like — when you love me?”
His chest glows, and the water around them warms. “It feels like…” His pupils blow wide and focused on her.
“The sun on the horizon.” The scales of his chest tease hers.
“The first sight of land in the middle of the sea.” His smile brushes her mouth.
“The first step into the ocean after years of dry land.”
White heat drips down her spine and melts into her limbs.
She can’t look away from him. He’s given her the answer, but her craving grows.
How can she be satisfied just hearing the words?
She wants to taste it. She wants to hold love on her tongue until she can name every flavor, every tang, every hint of what he means.
The wave builds inside her, drawing her hopelessly toward the peak.
Her tentacles wrap around his legs and weave between his scales until they’re locked together.
She digs her claws into his back, but nothing is close enough.
She wants to bury herself in his skin. She wants to sear her being into his.
“There you go,” he pants. “There you go…”
His hand keeps moving against her. This pleasure is so different.
It is not the climax she’s used to; it submerges her, engulfs her, swallows her whole.
It sucks her in until she can see only Cav, her mind swirling around him.
She’s drawn to him like he’s the center of a whirlpool, and she doesn’t want to escape.
She doesn’t want to come up for air. She wants to follow him all the way down.
She cries out when she comes. Her tentacles sting uncontrollably, and Cav bucks and shivers, but his rhythm never wanes. He follows the rise and fall of her body, dragging their open mouths together so he can drink in every drop of her.
“Do you feel it?” he asks. His forehead rests against hers when he presses kisses to her fangs. “This is what it’s like. This is what it feels like.”
For the first time, Lyx understands what it means to drown.