Chapter Nine #2
“It was a juvenile octopus,” I find myself saying, the words flowing with ease.
“It was shortly after I came to live in Saltford Bay, long before I became harbormaster.
I was working for an old selkie fisherman named Barnak.
The poor thing had become entangled in an old fishing trap.
I freed it, but before swimming away, it shifted through every shade in the spectrum, right there in front of my eyes.
Barnak told me it was the octopus's way of saying thank you.”
Jackie turns to me, surprise and pleasure mingling in her expression.
“That's beautiful. Do you think that's what it was?”
I shrug, suddenly self-conscious about sharing the memory. I usually keep my past to myself, but it's so easy to speak to Jackie when I'm not fighting the bioluminescence, I forgot to keep my mouth shut.
“Perhaps. Or just a stress response. Either way, it was my first rescue. I've never forgotten it.”
“My first rescue was a sparrow chick. I was eight,” she says softly.
“I kept it in a shoebox in my room and fed it with an eyedropper. I fed it until it was ready to leave, and then my father and I freed it in the park with the other sparrows. It was magical to see the baby I saved just take to the sky.”
The mention of her father brings a fleeting shadow to her eyes. Without thinking, I reach out, my hand stopping just short of touching her arm.
“Your father would be proud of the work you do now,” I say quietly.
Her eyes meet mine, vulnerable and surprised.
“Thank you, Orvik. That means a lot.”
The air between us shifts, charged with something I've been fighting since the moment I found her in the lighthouse. I pull my hand back and turn to start the engine.
“We should head back,” I say, though I find myself reluctant to end this moment.
Jackie nods and returns to her seat as I navigate away from Gannet Rock. As we pick up speed, heading back toward Saltford Bay, I notice she seems more relaxed, her grip on the railing looser, her posture less rigid.
“How long have you been harbormaster?” she asks over the engine noise, her question catching me off guard.
“Seven years,” I answer after a moment. “I worked for old Barnak until he retired, and I was out of a job once he sold his ship. The previous harbormaster was retiring, and they needed someone with specialized abilities in the water. I was that man.”
“Don't your kind live in the open ocean on ship-islands? I've never heard of krakens living permanently on land. Don't you miss it? Living on the ocean.” There's genuine interest in her voice, not just polite conversation. “Sorry, that's probably too personal.”
I stare ahead at the horizon, considering how to answer. The truth is complicated, and I've spent most of my adult life trying to forget the reasons I left my home aboard the Nautilus. The reason for my exile and my shame.
But something about Jackie's open expression makes me want to offer at least a partial explanation.
“Sometimes,” I admit, though I feel my tentacle hair pull closer to my scalp in a defensive gesture. “There's a freedom out there for one such as me that has no equivalent on land. But even freedom has its cost. Anyway, Saltford Bay is my home now, and I'm grateful for it.”
“So we're both building something new here, are we?”
She smiles, a small, warm expression that seems to understand more than I've said. She doesn't push, doesn't question more. She just accepts the bits of information I gave her.
It's a gift I don't think she understands. That acceptance I've craved for decades.
We lapse into a more comfortable silence as the boat speeds across the water.
The lighthouse comes into view, then the Flippers and Feathers buildings beyond it.
Jackie gets up from her seat and comes to stand beside me near the wheel, her shoulder occasionally brushing against mine as the boat navigates small swells.
Each brief contact sends a wave of bioluminescence rippling beneath my skin. I no longer try to suppress it, letting the patterns flow across my forearms where my uniform sleeves are rolled up against the morning heat.
Jackie watches with unconcealed fascination but doesn't comment. Instead, she simply moves a fraction closer, until her arm is a steady pressure against mine. The contact sets off a continuous pulse of blue-green light that flows from the point of connection up my arm and across my chest.
It should be embarrassing, this visible evidence of my body's response to her. Instead, I find it almost a relief to stop fighting it, to allow my biology to express what I've been denying.
The dock comes into view, and I gradually reduce speed, maneuvering carefully into the slip. As I cut the engine, the sudden silence feels heavy with possibility. Jackie gathers her backpack and stands, moving to help me secure the mooring lines.
“Thank you for taking me,” she says, turning to face me as I finish tying off the bow line. “It was special, seeing Captain Peck return to his colony.”
She stands in a shaft of sunlight that turns her hair to molten gold, her blue eyes bright and her skin smooth and luminous. There's a smudge of kelp on her cheek where a spray of water splashed her, and without thinking, I reach up to brush it away.
The moment my fingers touch her skin, bioluminescence races up my arm in a brilliant wave. My tentacle hair, tightly bound all morning, suddenly loosens and unfurls, the strands stretching toward her of their own accord.
Jackie doesn't pull away. Instead, she reaches up and lightly touches one tentacle as it curls toward her face. The sensation is electric, intimate in a way I've never experienced. My bioluminescent patterns pulse in time with my racing heart.
“Orvik,” she whispers, her eyes never leaving mine.
I step forward, cupping her face in my hands. Her skin is warm and soft beneath my webbed fingers. I pause for a heartbeat, giving her time to pull away, but she leans into my touch, her eyes drifting closed.
I am lost. Utterly, completely lost. And for once in my life, I don't care about the consequences.
I lower my head and kiss her.
The contact is like diving into the deepest ocean trench, a pressure that surrounds completely, that changes everything it touches.
My tentacle hair wraps gently around her shoulders, some strands caressing her cheeks, her neck, drawing her closer.
My beard tentacles curl around her jaw in an instinctive mating embrace I can no longer suppress.
Her lips are soft, and as she parts them, I invade her mouth with my tongue.
Her taste floods my senses, sweet and clean.
Her tongue slides alongside mine as I deepen the kiss, totally lost in the madness that blooms inside my blood and pools underneath my skin, lighting up the patterns all over my body.
My hands roam over her eager body as she presses those soft curves to my hardness. My cock is so hard it pulses, and my sanity is washed away.
When she moans into my mouth, lust flows through me like a tide, inescapable. It takes all my willpower to pull away from her, to refrain from dragging her underneath the waves and making her mine like my instincts scream at me.
But no. I am not a monster. I am Orvik, harbormaster of Saltford Bay. A man of the law, and I will not take her without her full consent.
Not until she understands the depth of my commitment to her.
When we finally part, breathless, I can only stare at her in wonder. Her lips are slightly swollen from our kiss, her cheeks flushed pink, and delicate patterns of blue-green light trace across her skin like ghostly fingerprints.
The sight sends a jolt of panic through me. What have I done? The mating bond is already spreading to her, growing stronger with each contact. If this continues, if we consummate the connection, it will be permanent, an irreversible biological link that would bind her to me for life.
She deserves to know. She deserves a choice.
And I need time to think, to consider what this means for both of us.
She speaks, my name on her lips and something else as she calls after me. But I don't stop. Because if I do, I won't be able to refrain from linking her to me. From making her mine in ways that cannot be undone.
Without a word, I step back and dive over the side of the boat. The water embraces me instantly, my gills flaring open, fins extending along my forearms as I transform partially into my kraken form. With powerful strokes, I swim away from the dock, away from Jackie.
But even as the cold depth envelops me, I can still feel the warmth of her lips on mine, the softness of her stomach against my hardness.
I want her so much, not even the crushing pressure of the trench could relieve me of my lust.