Chapter 19
Vodyan
Z oe was wrapped up in me so thoroughly, not even an inch of her body was visible, just her face, her eyelids heavy, her mouth curving in a soft, languid smile. I was inside her, too, a tentacle plugging her pussy to keep my cum inside. It had to be that way. My instincts wouldn’t allow her to put any distance between us.
We’d had water and food, and she’d peed again, my tentacles supporting her, because she shook so hard. I couldn’t stop touching her.
“How are you feeling, baby?” she asked, her hand squirming somewhere beneath my coils to pet a big, trembling sucker. “Did it help?”
“Oh, yes. It helped,” I said, running my knuckle along her eyebrow with fascination.
She was just so pretty. I hadn’t noticed that at the start—she was passable then, I guessed. I didn’t even think about her appearance much since she was my human principal and nothing else.
But now, she was the center of my universe. Every single piece of her, every detail down to the tiny mole in the corner of her eye, had me enthralled .
Her smile widened, revealing that canine I was so obsessed with.
“I’m glad,” she said softly. “You… You deserve to feel good. To be happy. And free. You deserve all the best things in the world.”
“You’re the best thing in the world,” I said without thinking.
It was so natural to speak freely. My tongue loosened, and somehow, the pathway between my brain and my vocal cords shortened significantly when it came to Zoe. She made it safe to say what I thought. And still, I shivered, wondering how she’d answer.
“You, too,” she said with a pleasured sigh, making my heart lurch into a trembling stutter. “Baby, I… You have no idea. How good you are. How hot. You’re out of this world.”
“Good,” I said with relief.
“But you don’t know everything about me,” she continued, settling in more comfortably, her toes flexing somewhere inside the mass of me heaped all around her. “I am desperately clingy. I’m talking cuddles, baby. Constant touching. Sex a few times a day even after you get fed up with me. It’s always been a deal-breaker in the past, you know? Apparently, I’m too needy, too horny, too everything.”
I laughed incredulously, gently sliding my limbs all over her until she sighed with pleasure. I pumped a few times inside her, too, and she moaned brokenly, trying to arch her back in my tight embrace.
“You don’t know what clingy means. I literally won’t let you go to the bathroom alone,” I said, a weird pride filling me.
It looked like no one in her past had been able to fulfill her needs. I had another way to keep her with me, then, because my girl would never want for sex and cuddles.
Because I was desperate to keep touching her, too. Like I told her—she broke me. Or maybe I’d lied to myself all my life, thinking I didn’t need touch and closeness, and she exposed that lie .
Regardless, now that I could have those things, I’d greedily take from her. She was out of her mind if she thought I wouldn’t take advantage of her openness and generosity.
“You say that now,” she said, a bit of sadness stealing into her voice. “But six months from now…”
“I’ll carry you around and fuck you whenever you want. Probably more, though. You woke up a monster within me, sweetheart,” I said, thrusting inside her to prove my point. “You don’t seem to get it. What you did… It’s a life sentence. You won’t get rid of me.”
“What did I do?” she whispered, her eyes glazing as she blew out a harsh breath, beginning to shake.
My cock warmed, but I was satisfied just giving her pleasure for now.
“You dragged my deepest secret out of me,” I said, thrusting viciously deep until she cried out, her muscles spasming around the intrusion. “You got me hooked. You want me in a way no one else ever did. It’s game over, pretty human. I’m not letting you go.”
I turned my tentacle the way I’d done before that made her shatter. It had been a stroke of luck, and I hadn’t even known my suckers would latch on inside her like that, not to mention that it would make her come so hard. But now I knew and I used that knowledge ruthlessly.
“Fuck!” she cried, craning her neck back until her throat was bared to me in a gesture of absolute trust. “Like this! Oh, like this!”
I grinned and pushed my hand into the squirming mass of my eager limbs until I found the apex of her thighs and, after a moment of fumbling, her clit.
“No, no, no,” she chanted, shuddering all over.
It took me a moment to understand, and I froze, startled and instantly remorseful. Did I hurt her?
“No, don’t stop,” she mewled so pitifully, my heart wrenched.
“You said no.” I was confused and still didn’t move.
“Because it’s too good!” she choked out. “Please, ignore it! Keep going! ”
I blinked heavily, uncertain, but she made a noise of pure suffering, and that jolted me into action. I fucked her gently, though, carefully thumbing her clit. She released a growling noise of frustration.
“Harder.”
But I didn’t speed up. “Zoe, if you want me to ignore you when you say no, I need another way of knowing if I’m hurting you. I’m bigger and stronger than you. There are many ways I could hurt you without meaning to.”
“Fine!” she spat out, her eyes opening to shoot me a baleful look. I reared back. She was furious with me.
“My safe word is tabasco, and if you don’t make me come right now, I’ll never talk to you again!”
I stared at her, taken aback, until she growled in that cute, completely non-threatening way of hers. I laughed, rubbing her clit faster while I pushed my tentacle deep, stuffing her full before I let the suckers latch on.
“You’re cute when you’re angry,” I told her, pinching her clit experimentally.
She howled, arching, and I shook my head with a wide grin.
“Such a greedy girl,” I said, adjusting until a sucker found her nipple. “Filthy, like I said. You know what I want to do now? Make you come so many times you actually use that word. That would be fun.”
“You can… try…” she breathed before collapsing into a shuddering, moaning heap of a pleasured woman.
Her sweet cunt spasmed around my tentacle, and I let her ride it out before I pulled out and brought her up, arranging her legs so they straddled my hips. I pushed inside her, still not all the way in, but it was for the best.
If I was going to shoot my plug inside her, she’d better be off her birth control by then.
“Oh, already?” she panted into the crook of my neck, and I laughed, feeling smug and powerful.
“You told me to try. ”
Quivering from pleasure, I slid a tentacle inside myself for lubrication and penetrated her ass with a smooth glide.
She threw her head back, sweaty and deliciously flushed.
I fucked her hard, came inside her, and then fucked her with my tentacles until, five orgasms later, she gave in.
“Tabasco! Please! Tabasco!” she cried out desperately when I put my mouth around her swollen, pulsing clit right after I’d made her come.
I smiled, giving her a gentle kiss that made her jolt, and let her go, pulling out of her sated body. She lay buried in a bed of me, so relaxed, all her muscles were soft, her pulse fluttering madly in her bared throat.
And still, I could have kept going. I’d never been so insatiable before. But I was also satisfied in a bone-deep, glowing way that suffused my every cell. It felt so good, and in that overwhelming, ubiquitous ease, I found the will to tell her everything.
“My grandfather was a separatist,” I said, stroking her sweaty hair off her face. “One of the last ones. He believed in the separatist principles in a way that bordered on insanity.”
“What’s a separatist?” she murmured.
“Someone who believes organized society is based on flawed logic and weakness. Rot , he called it. According to him, vodniks were meant to live the way lamias do. In a way, he respected them. Lamias are anarchists. They have no laws, and since the law from the surface has little reach down here, our species govern themselves.”
She nodded. I thought she was sleepy, but her eyes were bright and curious as she looked at me.
“So, your grandfather chose to live outside society?”
I nodded. “He did. It was a stupid choice, considering lamias don’t care if the meat they eat comes from a sentient species or not. They hunt vodniks out here, but my grandfather was a zealot. Soon after his daughter was born, he took his family out of the city so she wouldn’t grow up poisoned by civilization.”
The tension inside me grew, anger buzzing at the unnecessary suffering my grandfather caused. It was all his fault, yet if not for his choices, I wouldn’t have been born. What an irony.
Zoe was quiet and still, the way I needed her to be. She didn’t even have to be prompted now. Gratitude welled in my heart, and I stroked her hair with affection.
“His wife was torn apart by lamias a year later. That shattered whatever was left of his sanity. He didn’t even see the fault in himself—lamias became the ultimate enemy. He brought up his daughter in total isolation, teaching her to kill lamias to avenge her mother. I don’t know how he was with her, because he loved her, but if it was anything like he was with me, it’s no wonder she ran away.”
Zoe breathed evenly, her eyes wide open, lips pressed together, her body soft and motionless. I sighed deeply, closing my eyes.
“She ran to the city. I don’t know what exactly happened, because grandfather never told me, but she returned to him a year later with a baby. She was sixteen. Fifteen when she got pregnant.”
Zoe swallowed thickly, evidently distressed, but I had this craving to bare the truth completely so she’d see what she was getting into. A morbid curiosity urged me on, too. Would she finally get disgusted and push me away? What would it take?
“He hated me from the start. I don’t remember much from that time, I was too young, but I have some vague recollections. Of hunger and cold. Of helplessness. I can’t say for certain, but over the years, I figured out either my mother didn’t want to care for my needs or didn’t know how, or, more likely, he forbade her. If she wasn’t allowed to feed me enough or hold me… That would make sense, considering everything that’s wrong with me.”
“There is nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect,” Zoe whispered hoarsely.
I shook my head, dismissing her.
“No, I’m not, but I will be,” I promised her .
She didn’t contradict me, and I was grateful for that. The way she listened was so helpful. She didn’t judge me for how I felt, and that allowed me to show her honestly.
“This house was his,” I continued after a moment of silence. “Living on land was a huge advantage. He had a few hiding spots, huts deep in the lake, but ever since he made hunting lamias his mission, they hunted him back. And since lamias loathe coming up to the surface and are much weaker on land, he pushed for us to live here. But I was too young yet.”
I looked around the cold room, instantly noticing the rusty cracks between the stones were the metal hooks for ropes had been lodged. I’d pulled them out once I claimed this house as mine, but the rust gave the spots away.
“I don’t know if you know, but baby vodniks can only survive underwater. It’s the same with human-vodnik hybrids, because the vodnik race is essentially a human-vodnik hybrid. That’s why we… can reproduce with humans.”
She said nothing, looking at me with steady openness that made me shiver. I took a bracing breath and stopped delaying the truth.
“Vodnik children can come to the surface around age five, at first just for a few minutes at a time to train their breathing apparatus. It’s discouraged for them to emerge completely, since their skin is too delicate to handle it.
“The first time my grandfather took me to the surface, it was already after my mom’s death. I was five. He kept me in this room for a full hour, completely dry. I was sick for two weeks after that.”
She shivered, her face tightening in pain, and I looked away, swallowing with difficulty.
“He kept extending the time. It was… Training, he said. He was getting old, and a few times, lamias banded up on him. He’d lost a tentacle, had scars that hurt from those fights. He wanted to stay up on the surface so they couldn’t ambush him, but I prevented that.
“I remember I begged him to send me away when I was seven. He loathed me so much, Zoe, and I wanted to go away to make him happy. Funny, right? He never let me forget how much of a problem I was, what a huge burden, and I thought if I was out of his life, at least he’d have it easier. Children are idiots.”
She closed her eyes, tears spilling from underneath her lashes. I wiped them gently away.
“But he wouldn’t. He said no blood of his would be poisoned by the city or given to lamias. So he kept me, trained me, until he almost killed me.”
She sobbed once, clenching her jaw as if trying to keep that in. I watched her, hurting that she was hurt but numb about my own suffering.
“He kept me tied up here, in this room, for so long. There were sores all over my body, and I was suffocating. My lungs gave out. I wasn’t ready. Vodniks are able to stay on the surface for longer periods in adolescence. I was eight.”
She shook, and I stroked her hair, my tentacles sliding over her naked skin in a desperate attempt to give her comfort.
“Shh, sweet girl. It’s okay. It really is. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry!” she blurted out, crying fully now. Hot, fat tears fell down her cheeks, and I couldn’t keep up swiping them away. “Don’t you ever be sorry! You went through so much, and you will fucking never apologize to me again!”
I shook my head with a faint smile, watching as she wailed over me. And it was so strange. It felt like her grief for me, her outrage and sadness, made something ease inside me. She cried over me, and it meant my pain was validated, my suffering witnessed.
“Come here,” I whispered, hot relief loosening something inside me that had been tight and numb for many years, and now it flared to life. “Hold me.”
I brought her up, and she wrapped around me with all limbs, shaking and crying into my collarbone.
“He left me here to die,” I said to wrap up the story. She wailed, clutching me to herself. “But I managed to get out of the ropes. I fled to the lake and never saw him again until he was dead. So it ends well. And now, I have you.”
“Yeah, you do,” she said, running her hands up my nape and head. “You have me. ”
It took some time until she calmed down, but I was happy to comfort her through it. I felt oddly empty and buoyant, as if telling her had released huge amounts of pressure, and I was so much lighter without it.
When she finally fell asleep wrapped up in me, fed and watered, I sighed deeply and looked out at the lake, thinking. The goal now was to keep her alive until the trial, and then, find out the names of Carver’s people who were after her so I could pick them off one by one. I would leave nothing to chance.
With all threats gone, I would resign. Move, possibly. I had many lamia enemies in Lake Superior, but there was a thriving vodnik community in Lake Erie, so that was one possibility. We’d have a fresh start, and I had enough savings to make it work.
Zoe would want for nothing.
The vibration of my comm set jolted me out of my plans. We’d agreed on minimal contact, because even the most secured channel could give away my position, so if Malgeri was calling, it had to be serious.
“What’s up?” I asked, tapping my ear.
“Carver’s out,” he said without preamble, sounding grim. “And the feds didn’t admit to anything, but it looks fishy. He just went poof out of his supermax cell, and it makes me think he has someone on the inside pulling strings for him.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, glancing at Zoe. “It makes sense. He knows we’re in the lake. There must be a mole.”
Malgeri was silent for a few seconds until he exploded, “The fuck you mean, he knows where you are? Since when? Why the fuck didn’t you report it?”
Oh, shit. He was right. I clenched my jaw as realization hit me. That was why it was forbidden to fuck your principal. Because my head was completely off the job, and I’d fucked up in a major way.
“Lamias attacked us yesterday. I learned a human was ready to pay them for Zoe,” I said, keeping my voice cool, even though I was jolted by the realization it was only yesterday. “We were too deep for comms to work, and then we spent hours trapped until I managed to get us out. But you’re right. I could have called you a few hours ago, after we got closer to the surface.”
“Why didn’t you?” Malgeri spat, his fury spilling over. As a demon, he could never hold his temper in check.
Well, there was nothing for it.
“Because I fell for her,” I said. I probably should have faked contrition to avoid more shouting, but I didn’t care. “And if you take me off the case, I’ll resign and keep protecting her, so you might as well fire me.”
Silence fell, so complete, it was ominous.
“Do you understand you’ve already compromised your principal’s safety?” Malgeri said, his voice deceptively cool.
“Yes. It was a mistake that I won’t make again. I also saved her life by giving her my cock, though.”
He sputtered, and I clenched my jaw. Too far. Shouldn’t have taunted him like that.
When my demon boss was done cursing, he took a deep breath, his voice tense, though he seemed calmer. “I see. Because of your special stuff, yes?”
“The mating adaptation process,” I supplied helpfully. “It’s something no one else can use to help her survive underwater unless you have another vodnik on retainer.”
Even just saying that made my chest squeeze with anger. No one else would touch my Zoe.
Malgeri sighed deeply. Another fraught silence fell as he thought through his options.
“I don’t have anyone else. Very well. You’ll stay on the job, and I’ll prepare a team to support you. Keep hiding. Carver is a dangerous fucker and the brain of his little venture, and with him out, you have your work cut out for you. You’re on your own for now. The feds sent a request to Yeseera to hand over any suspicious human divers, but that will do fuck all. That lake is big, and Yeseera is just a small part of it. ”
That was a great piece of news if I ever saw one. I grinned, already knowing how I would keep Zoe safe.
“Thank you for an excellent idea.”