Chapter 26
T hey didn’t have time to swim for shelter.
The timer inside Greta was a living, vicious thing, twisting tighter behind her ribs with every heartbeat.
The flickering in his markings slowed slightly, steadied by the contact. “We do this here.”
She’d already known that. She’d known it from the moment she felt the first scale fade at her fingertip. She reached up and took his face in both hands — her thinning, barely-webbed fingers against his jaw — and pulled him down to her.
He made a low sound against her mouth. Not surprise. Relief. Gratitude.
His arm banded tight around her waist, holding her pinned gently but possessively against the cold hull. Their tails remained tightly woven from the moment he’d pulled her close, the sensitive lengths stroking and caressing each other in slow, needy glides that had been building since the rescue.
Blood from his fresh wounds drifted between them in lazy red ribbons, catching the faint light from the wreck’s failing power core and turning the water around them into something almost beautiful. Neither of them looked away from the other.
She kissed him once, deep and unhurried despite the urgency, tasting salt and the warmth of him. Then she pulled back just enough to look at his face — at the blown-wide pupils, the markings still flickering but slower now.
Responding to her.
Her hand slid down the hard planes of his chest, claws scraping lightly over his scales in a way she’d learned made his breath catch. She traced the ridged muscle of his stomach, felt it contract under her touch, kept going until her fingers wrapped around the thick, heavy base of his cock.
It was already fully emerged for her — hot, ridged, and throbbing hard against her palm, the head leaking steadily into the water, slick and warm against her fingers. She stroked him once, slowly, root to tip, just to feel him shudder.
His forehead dropped to hers. “Greta?—”
“Now,” she whispered, voice raw and husky. “Klari, I need you inside me right now.”
He didn’t answer with words.
He simply hooked one of her legs higher around his hip, opening her with careful, devastating efficiency, and slid two fingers through her folds first — checking, she understood, making sure she was ready.
She’d been ready since the moment he’d arrived and torn the rival off her. His fingers stroked once, twice, spreading her slick heat, and she bit down on his shoulder to muffle the sound she made.
“Now,” she said again against his skin. “I mean it.”
He spread her open with his fingers one last time. The blunt, leaking head of his cock dragged slowly through her slick folds, teasing her swollen clit with deliberate precision until she whimpered and dug her claws into his back. Then he pushed in.
Slow.
Inch by thick, ridged inch.
Greta’s head fell back against the scarred metal hull with a choked gasp. The stretch was exquisite — almost too much, exactly what her body was screaming for, the rightness of it that she’d been turning over in her mind since the cave with equal parts wonder and alarm.
She felt every single ridge as he sank deeper, the textured length dragging along her inner walls and lighting up every nerve ending in sequence.
Her gills flared wide, sucking in water as the transformation reignited with sudden, liquid heat — not the violent rewriting of the original serum, but something warmer and more specific. His biology recognizing hers.
Pink scales surged back across her body in shimmering waves, bright and vivid, racing outward from her core like electricity finding a path. They rippled over her breasts, her stomach, down her hips and thighs, locking her fully into her aquatic form again.
Her tail strengthened beneath her, the powerful length tightening around his with possessive force. Her claws sharpened, digging into his shoulders hard enough to reopen one of the wounds she’d patched on the island what felt like a lifetime ago.
Klari groaned, low and deep, the sound vibrating through both their chests and out into the water around them.
He kept pushing until he bottomed out, buried to the hilt with the thick head of his cock pressed right against that perfect spot deep inside her that he’d found in the cave and memorized.
His hips rolled once, grinding deep, slow, letting her feel every inch of him filling her completely.
“Feel that?” he rasped against her mouth, voice wrecked and rough. “That’s me claiming every fucking inch of you again.”
“I feel it,” she managed. “Give it to me.”
He started to move.
Not frantic. Not brutal. This was slow, deep, and devastatingly thorough — the same patient attention he gave to everything, turned on her completely.
He pulled back until only the flared head remained inside her, the ridges catching at her entrance, and then sank in again with a long, powerful stroke that dragged every textured inch along her inner walls.
Water churned around them with each thrust. Greta moaned loudly, the sound bubbling through the sea as her back arched away from the hull, pressing her chest against his.
Her tail squeezed his tighter, the sensitive lengths stroking and caressing with every roll of his hips, an intimacy she’d given up pretending to ignore.
Klari’s markings flared bright and erratic across his chest, silver threads pulsing wildly in time with each deep roll of his hips, the patterns shifting and moving.
His forehead pressed to hers, golden eyes locked on her face so he could watch every flicker of pleasure cross it. He’d always done that. Watched her like she was the most interesting thing in any room, any ocean, any burning wreck.
“Beautiful,” he growled, voice rough with hunger. “Look at you taking me so deep. So perfect for me.”
He angled his hips and hit that spot again, harder this time. Greta cried out, the sound raw and unguarded in a way she’d stopped being embarrassed about, and her claws raked down his back.
Fresh blood clouded the water between them in faint pink swirls that caught the wreck’s dying light, but the sting of reopening wounds only sharpened everything, pulled them both closer to the edge faster.
She rocked her hips to meet every thrust, matching his rhythm, chasing the friction, needing more pressure, more depth. Just more.
One of his hands slid between their bodies. Two thick fingers found her swollen clit and rubbed tight, slick circles in perfect time with his thrusts, unhurried and precise, like he was solving a problem he’d been thinking about for a while.
The dual sensation — his cock dragging those ridges inside her, his fingers working her clit in those slow deliberate circles — sent sparks shooting up her spine and behind her eyes.
The wreck hummed faintly beside them, a low ancient vibration that resonated through the metal and into her back.
The dark hull loomed behind her like a silent witness as Klari fucked her slow and deep against it, his markings blazing against the dark water, lighting up the space between them.
Greta’s inner walls began to flutter around him.
“Klari — I’m close —”
“I know. I can feel it.” He thrust deeper, harder, the last threads of that careful restraint finally fraying. “Come for me. Let me feel you fall apart on my cock like you were made to.”
She shattered .
Her orgasm crashed through her in powerful, pulsing waves that started where they were joined and radiated outward through every inch of her transformed body.
Her tail thrashed hard against his, clamping down with the full strength of her aquatic form as her inner walls clenched rhythmically around every thick inch of him.
A raw, broken cry tore from her throat and bubbled up through the water, entirely beyond her control, and she stopped caring about that approximately three seconds into the orgasm.
Klari followed her over the edge with a deep, guttural groan that she felt as much as heard.
He buried himself to the hilt and came hard — thick, hot pulses flooding deep inside her in waves that matched the clenching of her body around him.
The heat of his release triggered a final rush of transformation: her scales brightened to vivid pink, her tail grew stronger beneath her, her gills flared wide as the change locked fully and completely into place.
They stayed locked together afterward, floating in the dark water beside the wreck.
Neither spoke.
Klari’s arm stayed banded around her waist, holding her close against his chest. Her hand rested over his heart, feeling the heavy, exhausted thud beneath his scales gradually slow toward something closer to calm.
Their tails remained tightly woven, the sensitive lengths gently stroking each other in slow, soothing movements that neither of them was directing consciously anymore.
Blood still drifted lazily from his wounds, dispersing in the current, but the water around them felt strangely peaceful for a flooded alien shipwreck at the bottom of an artificial ocean .
The last rival was still out there somewhere. But he couldn’t be close or he would have attacked them now, while they were vulnerable.
After a long, quiet moment — longer than they should have allowed themselves — Greta lifted her head from his chest. She looked past his shoulder at the dark, hulking shape of the wreck looming behind them.
The power core’s faint pulse was visible through the damaged hull, a low, irregular glow.
Her gaze came back to his.
“I know how to fix it,” she said softly, voice still husky. “The ship. I know what it needs. We don’t know if the Malquarans will really let us go or not if we win. If they won’t, then at least we have this. Our Plan B.”
Klari followed her gaze to the scarred hull. His markings pulsed once — slow, warm, and steady.
“Show me,” he said.