Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Jackie
I've lost my mind.
That's the only explanation, really. The only rational conclusion available to a woman who just threw herself at a kraken at eleven o'clock at night while wearing her pajamas. There is no other framework. I've simply, cleanly, lost my mind.
The thought dissolves the second his arms come around me. In fact, all thoughts dissolve from my mind.
He kisses me back like he's been waiting for permission and finally has it, one large hand sliding into my hair, the other pressing flat against the small of my back and pulling me flush against him.
He's so much bigger than me that I have to tip my head all the way back, and the angle does something to me that I feel all the way down in my belly. His mouth is warm and sure as he presses his lips to mine. He’s careful at first, the way a man moves when he's afraid of frightening some skittish little animal.
But I don’t want careful, so I press closer, molding myself to his front. When I part my lips and my tongue darts out to slide along his bottom lip, I feel him shudder, and the carefulness starts to crack.
His tentacle beard is something I was not prepared for, even if it’s not the first time.
The strands curl toward my jaw, my cheeks, feather-soft and curious, moving with a life completely separate from his hands or his mouth.
One wraps loosely around my chin. Another traces down the side of my throat.
They're so warm, more than I expected. Smooth and strong and—oh.
Those tiny suckers latch on to my skin, delicate, barely there pressure points that drag across my face and do absolutely nothing to help with my composure.
I make a sound without conscious thought, somewhere between surrender and begging. Well, way more begging than anything else.
His hands tighten on me immediately.
The one at my lower back slides down to cup my ass and presses me up and into him.
I gasp into the kiss because there is no missing what's pressing against my stomach.
He's large everywhere, apparently. My nipples pebble against my thin shirt, my body apparently deciding we're fully on board with this, thank you, no further consultation required.
Heat and wetness pool between my thighs with an urgency that makes me grip the front of his shirt with both fists just to have something to hold on to.
He groans low against my mouth.
His free hand moves to my ribs, my waist, and then closes over my breast. Then he just stops.
His whole body goes very still, like he's remembering something. His forehead comes down to touch mine and his mouth frees mine. We’re both breathing each other’s air as my frazzled brain tries to understand what’s happening.
I don't want him to stop. I really, genuinely, desperately do not want him to stop.
"Touch me," I whisper. "I want you to."
He makes a sound that isn't quite human and isn't quite anything I have a name for, between animal and human.
Then he pulls back and I open my eyes to find him staring at me, his eyes dark and his bioluminescence painting both of us in shifting blue-green light.
The tentacles on his head drift around his face like something from the deep sea, and he is the most beautiful thing I have ever looked at in my life.
"You need to be certain before we continue," he says.
His voice has dropped to a low growl, something that moves through my chest and sends shoots of pleasure all the way to that needy place between my legs.
He seems to be having difficulty with his words.
I find this enormously endearing. "If we do this, the marks on your skin will become permanent.
You'll be bound to me, and I will be bound to you. It’s completely irreversible.
There will be no one else for me. Ever."
He stops, swallows, then tries again. "And I would never be able to let you go, even if you wanted to. It’s in my nature to hold on to my mate, to cherish her and keep her safe. You need to understand what you're agreeing to before we—"
I kiss him.
He freezes for half a second, then melts into it with a sound that vibrates all the way down my spine.
"Take me," I say against his mouth.
Somewhere in the back of my head, a very small, very reasonable voice whispers that this is perhaps the least considered decision I have ever made in my entire adult life.
That I have known this man for a matter of weeks.
That "permanent biological bond" are words that should probably prompt more deliberation than a three-second pause and a leap of faith.
I tell that voice to find something else to do.
Orvik picks me up.
Not with effort. Not with the grunt and adjustment of someone lifting a full-grown human being. He just picks me up like I'm made of seafoam, one arm under my knees, one behind my back, and carries me through the boathouse like it's the most natural thing he's ever done.
I decide immediately that I enjoy being carried.
The bedroom is at the far end of the boathouse, and I gasp as we enter it.
The walls curve inward, round, and three sides are floor-to-ceiling windows facing open water.
The ocean is black and silver outside, the harbor lights scattered in the distance, and the room is lit entirely by Orvik's bioluminescence.
The bed is low and wide and set on a platform, covered in something dark and soft that I don't get a good look at before he sets me on my feet in front of it.
He looks at me for a moment. Just looks.
“You’re so beautiful.” His voice is low and controlled and his chest heaves up and down as he speaks. “I want to see all of you. Will you allow me to see you?”
I want to answer, but my voice is gone, so all I can do is nod. It’s enough for him, though.
He reaches for the hem of my pajama top.
He's slow. Unbearably, deliberately slow, sliding the fabric up and over my arms like this is something he intends to remember.
His hands skim my sides as he goes, leaving warm trails on my skin.
Then my top is gone. Then my bra, unclasped with more competence than I have managed alone at the end of a long day.
Then the pajama pants, thumbs hooked in the waistband, guided down over my hips and to the floor.
I’m not wearing any underwear. Pajamas, remember?
He stands back.
I stand, completely naked in a room made of windows and I find, somewhat to my own surprise, that I don't feel exposed. I feel seen. He's looking at me the way people look at a masterpiece in a museum. With reverence and something akin to awe.
"Perfect," he says with a low, soft tone. "You are perfect."
"My turn," I say and reach for the buttons on his shirt.
I take my time unbuttoning it, then pushing the cotton fabric aside until it falls off his shoulders and to the ground behind him.
His chest is muscular, warm, and smooth with a texture that reminds me of supple leather.
Thicker and smoother than a human, more resilient perhaps.
His patterns are alight in luminous lines and whorls that shift and pulse as I run my fingertips over them, spreading brighter where I touch and lighting up patterns on my own skin.
I look up to see him staring at me with an expression of such male hunger, my entire body pulses with need.
I hold his gaze as I trace the lines down his sternum, over his ribs, past his navel and to the waist of his pants. He goes very still as my palm moves down to cup an impressive erection.
“May I?” I ask, surprised to find my voice steady despite the whirlwind of arousal that makes it hard to think.
I guess he can’t find his words anymore, so it’s his turn to just nod.
Oh. Oh, that does things to me, to have this powerful, controlled man be rendered speechless by my touch.
I never lose his gaze as I unbuckle his belt and unbutton his trousers. He’s panting now, his magnificent chest heaving up and down as he stares, paralyzed and under my power.
I reach into his pants and underneath his black boxer briefs and he hisses a breath as my hand comes into contact with the hot, hard length of his cock.
I blink in surprise. I expected kraken cock to be different, but this is a whole new level of different. I swallow and remove my hand, then hook my fingers to his boxer briefs and push the whole thing down.
I take a step back, and a flutter that’s equal parts fear and lust shoots right to my needy, aching core.
He's long and thick, his cock smooth and rounded at the tip.
The bioluminescence runs all the way down the shaft, pulsing.
And surrounding it, wriggling in slow, deliberate motion, are tentacles.
Numerous. Sinuous. Moving with that same separate intelligence as the others, curious and reaching, lit from within with blue-green light.
"Am I too much?" His voice is careful as he watches my face. "We don't have to keep going if I am."
"No," I say as I look back up at him. "You're not too much, just different."
He holds very still as I reach up again to run one finger along the length of him.
He inhales sharply through his teeth. His skin here is the same smooth-resilient warmth, but warmer, and the tentacles around the base stir toward my hand the way his beard did toward my face.
When I close my hand around him, testing the weight of him, the tentacles curl against my wrist and the tiny suction is the same feather-soft pressure I felt on my jaw.
My clit pulses as I think of all the wonderful sensations those tiny suckers are capable of.
"Interesting," I say.
He makes that sound again, the inhuman one. I smile at him as I squeeze his balls just a little. That seems to do it for him.
He moves carefully. Orvik is always careful.
He lifts me in his arms, our naked skin lighting up in the bioluminescent patterns, then walks to his bed and lays me against the soft bedding.
His gaze is pure male hunger as he spreads my thighs with two large, warm hands, and he looks at me there with an expression of absolute focus.
"I want to drown in your ocean," he says.
He doesn't give me a chance to respond.
His mouth closes on me and the sound I make is involuntary and I don't apologize for it.
He knows exactly what he's doing. His tongue moves through my folds, deliberate and thorough, and his beard tentacles move with him, curling and softly suctioning at the tender skin of my inner thighs, my pussy lips, everywhere at once.
It's too much. It's exactly enough.
My hands find the bedding and grip. I lose track of time.
I lose track of most things, honestly. The windows. The harbor lights. My name.
All I care about is Orvik’s mouth on me and the rising sensations that wipe my mind clear.
The tentacle that enters me as Orvik’s tongue circles my clit comes as a surprise, slick and warm and curving exactly right.
I cry out and press into it, and he growls against me, the vibration alone almost enough to push me over the edge.
Then a second tentacle joins the first, and the pressure builds, enormous and unavoidable, and I'm pressing my head back into the pillow, eyes shut, every nerve in my body converging on a single point.
When he closes his lips over my clit and sucks, I scream.
I scream his name as the orgasm breaks through me in waves that go on longer than should be physically possible.
He doesn't stop until I've gone completely limp against the bed. Until my hands have released the bedding and my whole body is loose and dazed and the only thing I'm aware of is the distant sound of the ocean.
Then he moves up over me, and all I can do is stare at him.
He's magnificent like this, every muscle on full display, tentacle hair loose and drifting, the bioluminescent patterns at full blaze. He looks like something the sea made on purpose. Something it sent up specifically for this.
He positions himself between my thighs. A drop of luminescent precum catches the light as he presses against my entrance, and he looks at my face.
"Jackie, are you sure?"
"Orvik." I look straight back at him. "Fuck me already."
He pushes inside me.
The invasion is sudden, the pressure enormous, and I moan long and loud at both, my back arching off the bed as he seats himself fully and holds there, giving me a moment to adjust. I feel every inch of him.
I feel the tentacles settle against my hips, tiny suckers holding on to my skin, keeping me in place.
Then he begins to move, slowly at first. He undulates his hips in deep, rolling strokes that drag against every nerve ending inside my body.
I meet him thrust for thrust, already hungry for him, for more pleasure.
I never thought I could be ready for another orgasm so soon after the mind-bending one I just had, but it seems my body disagrees.
I stare up at him. I can't not.
He looks like a sea god. His muscles are magnificent in motion, his face fierce with concentration as he observes my every reaction. His tentacle hair drifts wild around his head and his beard curls and moves with the rhythm. I am absolutely certain I have lost my mind and I could not care less.
He changes the angle, bringing my knees high up against my chest, resting over his shoulders. I’m wide open like this and utterly and completely vulnerable as he keeps fucking me with relentless focus.
The tentacles around his cock shift in the new position.
They find my clit. The suction, the new angle, and the depth all arrive at the same moment. I don't scream this time. I don't have the breath for it. I just come apart, clenching around him, my nails in his shoulders, every muscle in my body going rigid.
He follows me with a sound that fills the room, deep and raw and entirely not human. I feel him pulse inside me as his tentacles squeeze and suck convulsively on my body.
And then we're both still.
For a long moment there's nothing but the ocean and our breathing.
He gathers me against him carefully, like something precious. I tuck my face against his chest and feel the bioluminescence warm and slow under my cheek, his heartbeat steady and comforting.
Outside, the last of the sun bleeds into the horizon over Saltford Bay.
I listen to the harbor. The creak of the boathouse settling into the tide. The rhythm of his breathing slowing toward something like peace.
I am exactly where I want to be.
Maybe for the first time in my life, I am exactly where I want to be.