Chapter 1
“ E ffie, Lass, you’re going too fast,” Dallan’s usual Scottish brogue was tight and strangled as he spoke, his face tilted toward the ceiling as the tentacles on his face writhed.
The normally brusque man only ever looked like this when we did this up in my tiny little apartment above the shop, and despite the reason for it, it never got old for me.
“Sorry,” I told him, my own voice high and thready as I pressed myself up against his length and shuddered as the usual lightning bolt sensations zinged up my spine. “But we’ve been putting it off the past couple of weeks and you’ve got a special client this afternoon that requires some nice, fresh enchanted ink.”
“It has been a while,” Dallan grumbled, his fingers digging into my thighs as he pushed up the skirt of the dress I hadn’t bothered to take off earlier to get a better look at where our bodies
were connected. “But that’s exactly why I want you to take your time.”
Our relationship definitely wasn’t the typical one a business owner should have with his resident bookkeeper-slash-witch, but it was one that kept our shop full of supernatural creatures looking to get inked up by our artists.
Before meeting me—and for about a decade afterward—Dallan made do with using the same ink that humans used with magical tattoo tools that were enchanted by a witch much older and skilled than me.
But one night, after far too much to drink, I’d asked him why he never considered using his own ink.
The Cthulhu race was rare and upon meeting him when I was seventeen years old, I’d scoured through every resource I could find about his species. While there wasn’t much to find, there had been information about his ink and its special properties. So I’d eventually risked it and brought up using it with him.
At first he’d refused to even consider the idea and it was months later that I learned that the reason he refused to let me use the ink was, well, because of the extraction process.
“Eff—” Dallan began as I lifted my hips and notched the thick head of Dallan’s cock at my entrance and began to bear down, holding in my own groan of pleasure as his ribbed length filled me.
Once I was fully seated, I glanced up at his face, my eyes going to the steadily leaking black ink that was coming from the place just underneath his jaw—normally hidden by the many tentacles on his face.
“You’re already letting out this much?” I couldn’t help but tease, reaching over to the table next to the chair we usually used. On it were several empty glass vials and I snatched two up, bringing them to the source of the dribbling ink, pleased that we’d probably get enough to last us the rest of the month if not two months.
“It’s been a minute, Lass,” Dallan grumbled impatiently as his hips jerked up to meet mine, nearly making me drop the vials I was holding.
It turns out that ink extraction with a Cthulhu can only occur during high emotion situations—fear, anger, and well, lust were some of the easiest ways to get his ink glands to express and give up the gold.
Scaring Dallan was out of the question—I wasn’t sure if the man was scared of anything—and anger? Let’s just say that while he wasn’t quick to it, the handful of times I’d seen him truly angry was not something I cared to repeat.
So, after gathering up my courage and giving in to the tiny crush I’d been nursing since the Cthulhu had pulled me off of the streets a decade earlier, I suggested a business-with-benefits relationship.
I would help him extract the ink with no strings attached and he would let me use it to practice my magic.
Somehow, he agreed to it. I thought for sure he would have given me a resounding Scottish ‘feck no,’ but when I brought it up he gave me a strange look before tentatively agreeing only as long as his ink was useful for business.
And, boy, was it.
Dallan’s ink, enchanted by yours truly, made the tattoos more vibrant, permanent and allowed us to tattoo and pierce a larger range of monsters than ever before. Because of it, supes came from all over the world to get inked by our artists and it was largely thanks to the ink that I was currently collecting from the man underneath me.
“We’ll have to make sure not to wait so long next time,” I told him, absentmindedly rolling my hips as I switched out the vials for two more. I tried to ignore the tingling sensation that the motion brought and as always, Dallan refused to let me.
Rough fingers slid up into my dress and I cursed inwardly as he cupped both of my breasts before giving my nipples a pinch. I should have worn a dress that didn’t stretch so easily.
This was the same song and dance we’d been doing for nearly forty years, but even then it never got old.
I would pretend that I didn’t feel anything, that what we were doing was strictly clinical—just business—and Dallan would do his utmost to prove me wrong.
It was even harder than usual today because we had been putting it off. So every twist of his fingers and jerk of his hips nearly sent my eyes rolling back in my head as I tried to focus on the task at hand.
My vines, which seemed to have a mind of their own, snaked out of the back of my dress and wrapped around the vials, freeing my hands so that I could get revenge.
While Dallan’s cock was firmly pressed inside of me, holding me in place, it wasn’t the most sensitive part of him. Not by a long shot .
Gripping the two largest tentacles on his face, I gave them a gentle tug, biting on my lower lip when I felt his length jump inside of me.
“Lass—” Dallan began in a warning that I quickly cut off with a kiss.
I was breaking my own rules right now. The ones that drew the line in the sand between us and screamed ‘do not cross!’ The ones that kept me and my emotions in a safe zone.
Forty years ago I’d been the one to make them up, and whether it was to make Dallan more comfortable about the whole thing or myself, I wasn’t sure.
Rule #1: No kissing. Kissing is something people in relationships do and we weren’t in a relationship.
But damn did I love it. I could probably count on both hands and all eight vines the amount of times I’d let myself initiate a kiss with him. Dallan, of course, usually ignored Rule #1. In fact, kissing seemed to be his favorite thing to do and he did it despite my constant scoldings.
I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me today—maybe something was in the air… or maybe it was the fact that it was my sixty-seventh birthday.
Sixty-seven years earthside and all I had to show for it was crippling trauma and a business-with-benefits relationship that I wished more than anything I could change… and yet I wasn’t anywhere near brave enough to do so.
Dallan’s lips moved against mine, the tentacles I was hanging onto like a pair of reins jerking in my hands .
When I finally pulled away and opened my eyes I found his normally pallid green skin flushed a warm pink, the color gathering in his cheeks like ink clouds as he searched my face like he always did when I kissed him first.
Then the ink in the vials started to overflow and I was back in it again.
“We’re going to lose ink if I let the vines have their way,” I told him, my voice raspy as I corked the now too-full vials of the blackest ink in existence and grabbed more, shooing the vines away with my hands.
While they always tried to be helpful, more often than not they just made a mess.
Dallan looked as if he wanted to argue, but I knew him too well. He was close, I could tell by the tightening of his fingers on my breasts and the harsh rise and fall of his chest as his two sets of lungs—one for land and the other for under the water—worked overtime to try and help him regain control over himself.
Putting the last of the vials down in case I dropped them with what was about to happen next, I reached up and put my hands on his shoulders. His skin, which was normally cool to the touch, quickly warmed under my fingers as I shifted in his lap.
“Do I have your full attention now, Lass?” Dallan’s eyes crinkled in the corners as they met mine, glowing almost gold in the dim light of my living room.
I frowned. “What do you mea— ”
I yelped as Dallan stood up off of the kitchen chair where we usually did our ink extraction, taking me with him.
“What are you doing ?” I squeaked, my vines snaking up to wrap around both of his biceps as I tried my best not to get dropped on the floor which would assuredly alert all of the artists working below of our shenanigans.
“I’m ancient, Lass, and my back hurts every time we fuck on that chair,” Dallan told me gruffly as he walked us through the beaded curtain that separated the living room of my little apartment from the bedroom.
While I did most of my work in the living room, the bedroom was and had always been my sanctuary. When Dallan had brought me here almost fifty years ago it had been run down, only ever used when he and Cash first bought the shop, but even still the window bench that took up nearly an entire wall had been there since the start.
There had been many an evening spent sitting there, staring out over the foggy bay with a cup of tea in my hand as I tried to figure out my place in the world.
February in Port Haven usually meant an extension of those foggy days and night falling far too soon, bringing my mood down along with it.
Even now the light outside was starting to dim despite it being late afternoon.
Dallan didn’t seem to be perturbed by it, though, as he put a knee on the bed and lowered me down onto it before wrapping one of my legs around his waist. He was studiously ignoring my questioning look as he slid deep again, the bracelets on his wrist tinkling together as he moved.
He was pushing things today. I should have known he would when he practically dragged me up the stairs earlier despite it being in the middle of the day. Our usual routine was to wait until after the shop was closed completely because, despite the rest of the shop being fully aware how we stock the ink they used on their clients, we’d come to an agreement to never talk about it.
Only Daphne had ever brought it up in the barest of terms and I’d nearly bitten her head off for it.
I wasn’t embarrassed by what we did. Dallan and I were both consenting adults. But even still, somewhere deep inside of me, if we talked about it out loud with other people, then it would mean something that I still, almost forty years later, wasn’t ready to admit to.
“You’re a million miles away, Lass,” Dallan’s voice brought me out of my morose thoughts as he gently pinched my chin and guided my gaze to his again. “And now I need you to focus on me before my feelings get hurt.”
Dallan’s hips pushed forward, reminding me of exactly what I needed to focus on.
It was easy to compartmentalize when I was busy collecting ink, but as soon as that was done Dallan always made sure that the ‘benefits’ part of our relationship was completed to the fullest .
The motion brought a moan to my lips before I could catch it and I watched his eyes crinkle with mirth as he moved above me.
Without the ink extraction to distract me I could feel every ridge on his cock and see the way each thrust sent different colors shuddering underneath his skin.
Dallan always filled me to the point of overfullness, stretching me around him and making sure it was hard to think of anything else.
“Wait—” I managed to gasp, my scalp tingling as my vines snaked around my back and down to his waist, and contrary to my words, they began to urge him on. The traitors.
“No,” Dallan told me simply with a shake of his head, reaching up to run a finger down one of the long green appendages tethering us together. I could count on one hand the number of people I let touch my overly sensitive vines like this, and none had ever been buried inside of me before. “You don’t really want me to wait, do you? At least these are honest.”
Dallan dropped his face close to mine, the tentacles lining his jaw gently caressing my face as our eyes met—gold to green—and he grinned before pressing his lips to mine again.
He didn’t even have to speak after that, what he desired for me to do next abundantly clear as his hips slammed roughly into mine and the tips of his fingers gripped my sides in an almost bruising grip.
Come for me, Lass .
The words rang in my head as if he’d said them out loud .
My eyes rolled back in my head as I felt myself clamp down and come, a muffled shout leaking from in between our joined lips.
My thighs joined the vines wrapped around his waist, drawing him further into me as I felt him spill deep inside and my vision swam before going black.
Later, though I wasn’t sure how much later, I came to with my ear pressed into Dallan’s chest and I was listening to the dual heartbeats of his two hearts while he traced patterns into my skin.
At some point during my little nap he’d pulled my dress from my body and had also disrobed himself, so our naked bodies were pressed into each other as we lay in my bed… breaking my second rule for our time together.
Sleeping in my bed with Dallan felt nice—too nice—and it was a boundary I’d put in place early on.
We didn’t sleep over at each other’s places. Dallan was always supposed to leave and go back to his little grotto that lay underneath the shop and I stayed in my apartment above.
“What are you still doing here?” I asked after blinking away the rest of my grogginess.
There was a pause and I could practically feel Dallan’s discontent at my words as he shifted underneath me. “You were sleeping so soundly I figured I’d let you rest and then we could go for another round. My ink glands still feel pretty full. ”
His words were so logical that I nearly fell for them, but then I tilted my chin up to look in his face and I found a softness there that was jarring.
It made me want to kiss him and agree.
But then I reminded myself that we weren’t real lovers—just business partners. Just how we’d been for the last forty years and how we should be for the next forty.
Using his chest, I pushed myself up into a sitting position and frowned down at him. “Dallan…”
He cut me off, catching my free hand and pulling it up to his lips. “Effie, when are you going to realize that there’s more to this than a business-with-benefits relationship. I’ve been patient with you but you and I both know you’re my Anam Ca—”
I slipped away from him and to my feet, wrapping one of the soft blankets around my body as I held a hand up to stop him from saying it. “You should leave, I’ve got a long night of ink enchanting ahead of me. We can collect the rest later.”
Dallan looked like he wanted to argue, the muscles in his arms tightening as he gripped the sheets before throwing them aside and giving me a full look at his naked body as he rolled out of my bed and started to dress.
Dark splotches of discontent gathered along the pale green expanse of his skin, almost blacking out the tattoos that covered nearly every inch of his body as he pulled on his pants, the tiny little wings hanging from his back—completely vestigial and incapable of flight at this point—twitching with the strength of his emotions as he kept throwing glances over his shoulders at me.
But I wouldn’t let myself give in no matter how much I wanted to.
Truthfully, waking up in his arms had filled me with a warmth I so rarely allowed myself… which was exactly the problem.
“Are you sure, Effie?” he asked once he’d shrugged the red plaid shirt he’d been wearing earlier over his shoulders again. He looked hurt, his gold eyes were filled with it as he searched my face for any sign that I was going to let him stay.
“Yes, I have a lot of work to do, so shoo ,” I tried to imbue my voice with a teasing lightness, like we were two friends sharing an inside joke.
Dallan frowned, the tentacles on his face twitching as he sighed. “You can’t run from this forever, Lass, and I’m tired of pretending that we only do this for the sake of ink collection.”
What did he mean by that? Was he ending our agreement?
I wanted to stop him and ask what his words meant, but my pride kept me from opening my mouth or reaching out to grab his arm.
Instead, I watched him leave with a heavy pit forming in my stomach as the front door of my apartment slammed with an echoing thud.
Sitting on the edge of my bed I contemplated his words, trying my best to shake them off.
I was doing the right thing .
Anam Cara . That was what he almost called me. His soul mate.
But I couldn’t be anyone’s soul mate. That meant that I was his true other half, but I couldn’t be anyone’s other half.
I was an abomination—an affront to nature that should never have been created. A halfling, but not only that, the only one of my kind.
How was I supposed to be the piece that matched Dallan’s when I’d never belonged anywhere in the first place? My pieces were all jagged and misshapen.
No, I told myself as I pulled on a set of silk pajamas and got to work at my makeshift witch’s workbench which more resembled a mad scientist’s workshop than anything particularly magical.
It’s because you keep breaking the rules. It’s giving him the wrong idea. I continued to berate myself as I measured out black ink into test tubes, my fingers grazing the glass that had been pre-charged with my magic, causing it to start to glow green.
Somewhere, deep down, a little tiny voice asked if I actually wanted him to get the wrong idea. If I’d secretly wanted him to push me when I’d been so adamant that there couldn’t be anymore to us than what there already was.
I shook those thoughts away, focusing on the ink in front of me. If I let my mind wander too much I risked ruining this entire batch and the shop needed it for the upcoming busy season .
There was a long night of ink enchanting ahead of me and thinking about the source of the ink would only make it that much longer.
So, I shoved all thoughts of Dallan and his sad gold eyes from my mind and focused on the bubbling ink in front of me, pretending like waking up in his arms hadn’t been the best feeling in the world.