Chapter 7
Marisol
Ifinally got a cell signal the next day, which I discovered by accident when I climbed up to look at the tide pools and my phone suddenly exploded with three days of accumulated notifications like a very stressed assistant who had been waiting for me to come back from lunch.
Seventeen texts from Destiny. Four voicemails. Two emails from my boss with subject lines that started with Quick question — which meant they were not quick questions. One Las Palmas reschedule offer sitting in my inbox like a golden retriever waiting patiently by the door.
I sat on a warm flat rock and called Destiny first because Destiny was my best friend and she had been texting escalating variations of hello??? are you dead??? Marisol I will contact the embassy for three days and she deserved to know I was alive.
She picked up on the first ring.
"Oh my god," she said.
"I'm alive."
"I know you're alive, I could see your read receipts, I meant oh my god as in: you are on a different island with a mysterious blue man and you have been on a communication blackout for THREE DAYS—"
"I didn't have a signal."
"I didn't have a signal," she repeated, in the tone she used when she was imitating me and wanted me to know she found it insufficient as an explanation. "Marisol. Start from the beginning."
So I did.
I told her about the ferry and the wrong dock and Tina and Casa Oscura.
I told her about the black sand and the drink and the shape in the water that first night.
I told her about the beach and the tentacles resting in the sand and asking him about coffee — she made a sound here — and about the ink on his arm when I grabbed it, and the tentacle that curled toward my fingers, and the cave.
Except I left out the tentacle sex bits.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
"Destiny."
"I'm processing," she said. Her voice was careful and deliberate in the way that meant she had a great deal of feelings and was deciding which ones to lead with. "I'm processing. Okay. Okay I have questions."
A pause. Then, softer: "You like him."
"I'm not—"
"You like him like like him. …Like like him."
"Maybe."
The Las Palmas email was still in my inbox when I hung up.
I opened it. I looked at it — the sunset terrace, the complimentary breakfast, the swim-up bar I had originally booked all of this for.
It looked nice. It looked exactly like what I had wanted when I planned this vacation, which was before I understood what I actually wanted, which was apparently this: a black sand beach and a cave full of phosphorescent water and a kraken who called me by my full name like it meant something.
I closed the email without replying.
I looked at the tide pool instead, which was full of tiny translucent shrimp and one very committed sea urchin and a small crab who was clearly having a difficult morning. I know how you feel, I thought to the crab. Everything is a lot.
I was left with my own thoughts for a while, wondering how time passed on this tiny island paradise. It felt so different from the hustle of my HR life. Just those texts and emails were enough to make my stomach turn. Here felt like a true escape.
I heard him before I saw him. Maro sat down on the rocks a few feet from me and looked at the tide pool.
“You seem to be in thought,” he said instead of a greeting.
"How does it feel?" I asked. "All of it. Being here this long."
He was quiet for a moment. "It does not feel like anything consistently," he said.
"There are decades I remember in full detail and decades that have the quality of deep water — present but not surface.
The island changing. The people." He paused.
"The last fifty years have been the loudest. More boats. More sound in the water."
"Do you mind it?"
"I mind some of it." He looked at the cove. "The resort. The boats that come too close. The way the water tastes different near the marina." A pause. "I do not mind this side."
"Have you ever—" I stopped. Started again. "Has there ever been anyone else? Someone like — someone who knew what you were and stayed anyway? Not romantically, but in general."
He was quiet for long enough that I looked at him.
"Once," he said. "Two hundred years ago, approximately. He was a sailor who lost his boat on the reef and I brought him ashore." A pause. "He was not afraid. He stayed through the season." Maro looked at the water. "And then he left. He had a life elsewhere. He went back to it."
He said it simply.
I was quiet for a moment.
"Did it — was it—" I stopped, because I wasn't sure what question I was asking. Was it enough. Was it worth it. Did it hurt when it was over. I could hear all three versions and none of them felt like the right one to say out loud.
"It was what it was," he said. "I did not expect permanence. Permanence is not a thing humans generally offer." He paused. "I stopped expecting it. It was simpler. Now I enjoy each generation who lives on this island, knowing that human lives are brief but warm. The island accepts me as who I am."
I looked at his profile. The line of his jaw, the shell necklace against his throat, the two tentacles resting against his lower back in the afternoon light.
Two hundred years of not expecting anyone to stay.
Two hundred years of fine, of the channel in the morning, of Tina's coffee and the kids at the reef and the generator fixed in the dark before dawn.
I reached over and took his hand.
"I'm not going to pretend this is a normal situation," I said.
"No," he said.
"But I'm here." I looked at our joined hands — my warm brown against his deep blue, his fingers large and careful around mine. "I only have a few days, but I'm not spending them pretending I don't want to be."
He looked at our hands. Then he looked at me. "I know," he said softly.
We sat on the rocks with the tide pool between us and the cove below and the afternoon going long and golden, and I held his hand. His tentacle curled around my arm and I leaned against him.
***
We ended up in my room without a decision exactly, more like a direction both of us had been facing long enough that arriving there was just the natural conclusion.
He was standing in the middle of my room and he was looking at me with his dark eyes and the ink was already moving under his skin, deepening, the way it did when he was, well, horny.
I crossed the room and kissed him.
He kissed me back like he had been thinking about it. Like unhurried was always going to end up here.
"I want—" I started.
"I know," he said.
"I want your hands on me," I said. "And your mouth. And I want—" I held his gaze, "all of it. All of you. Don't hold back."
The ink bloomed dark across his chest. His tentacles uncurled from his lower back and the room fuller, warmer, with the specific charge of him present and focused and here.
"All of it?"
"All of it," I confirmed.
He undressed me slowly, like every inch of skin was worth careful study. His hands moved over my stomach, my hips, the full curves of my thighs, warm and certain, spanning me completely. He was blue-skinned and beautiful in the low light.
"Marisol," he said, low, like my name was something he had been keeping careful.
"Still here," I said.
I reached for him and found that he was — okay, so this was a thing I had not fully considered when I said all of you, but I was considering it now and my overall assessment was: yes, absolutely, no notes. He was warm and solid and very, very present.
Two thick tentacles curled around my thighs spreading me exactly how he wanted, holding me open. The difference from the cave was immediate. In the cave there was a surprise. Here there was only centuries-deep want.
His mouth found me first.
And then his hair joined in.
The living tentacles amongst the locs that made up his hair slid over my skin like curious blue silk, cool at the tips but warming quickly against me.
Two of them curled around my breasts, the tapered ends teasing my nipples into tight, aching peaks with slow, deliberate strokes and gentle suction.
Another one slipped lower, joining his tongue at my clit — licking, circling, fluttering in perfect counterpoint while his mouth sucked and licked me open with devastating patience.
He was thorough in the way of something that had all the time in the world and had decided this was worth every second.
His tongue stroked deep inside me, fucking me with slow, wet thrusts, then flattened and dragged up through my folds while a hair tentacle flicked rapidly over my swollen clit.
Another slid slickly along my entrance before pressing just inside, stretching me gently while his mouth devoured every drop of me.
"Like that," I told him, voice already shaking. "Right there — fuck — don't stop."
He didn't stop.
"Such a good girl," he murmured against me, voice low and rough, the vibration making me jolt. "So fucking wet already. You taste perfect, Marisol. I could stay here for hours listening to these pretty sounds you make."
Every time I gave him direction his control slipped a fraction — the tentacles around my thighs tightened, the ones in his hair pulsed and sucked gently at my nipples, ink blooming darker across his blue skin. I filed every reaction away like useful data I intended to use later.
The first time I came it was hard and loud, with his mouth sealed over my clit and his hair tentacles working my nipples and sliding against my entrance.
I didn't manage the sounds I made. The shutters did nothing to contain them and I did not care even slightly.
He held me through every pulsing wave, tongue and tentacles never stopping until I was trembling and gasping.
He waited, just long enough for me to come down a fraction.
Then he moved up my body — blue skin warm and solid against mine, his hands framing my hips, his hair tentacles still lazily teasing my breasts. Then I felt the thick, tapered head of his cock pressed against me.
He was huge. The flushed, blue length was massive, heavily ribbed along the top, slippery with his own warm slick, and so warm it almost burned as the broad head nudged inside me.
Two more tentacles — equally huge, slippery, and pulsing with heat — slid between us, one circling my clit, the other pressing lightly against my ass, teasing.
"Good?" he asked, low at my ear, voice rough with restraint. "You're doing so well, Marisol. Taking the head already like you were made for it."
"So good," I breathed. "More. Give me all of it."
He gave me more.
He sank into me slowly, relentlessly, that huge ribbed cock stretching me impossibly wide with every slippery, warm inch.
The ridges dragged against every sensitive place inside me, making my eyes roll back.
At the same time one thick, slippery tentacle pushed into my mouth — huge and warm, filling me there too — while another slid deep into my ass in one slick, careful glide. Full. Everywhere. Completely taken.
The sound I made around the tentacle in my mouth was broken and filthy.
"Fuck, listen to you," he groaned against my jaw. "Such a perfect, greedy little thing. Taking my cock and two tentacles at once. You're squeezing me so tight I can barely move."
He fucked me with deep, powerful strokes that made the ridges on his massive cock catch and rub perfectly inside me while the huge tentacle in my ass moved in perfect counterpoint, both of them slippery and scalding hot.
The ones in his hair kept sucking and stroking my nipples. The one at my clit circled faster.
I was loud. I was specific. I told him exactly how good it felt, how full I was, how I wanted it harder, deeper, more.
Every word made his control fracture a little more — his thrusts got rougher, his tentacles pulsed thicker and hotter inside me, the ink spread darker across both of us until I was painted in shifting blue patterns.
“Maro,” I whimpered.
"You—" he growled against my jaw, wrecked. "When you say my name like that — fuck, you're going to make me fill you up. Such a good fucking girl for me."
I said it again. Louder. Filthier.
He lost the last thread of patience.
The rhythm turned punishing and perfect.
His huge ribbed cock slammed into me, the ridges dragging relentlessly against that spot inside until I was screaming.
The one in my ass thickened and stroked in time.
I came again so hard my vision whited out, clenching and fluttering around every huge, slippery inch of him.
He fucked me through it without mercy, praising me the whole time. "That's it — come on my cock like that. So beautiful. So fucking wet. I'm going to give you so much, Marisol. Every drop."
When he finally came it was with a deep, guttural sound against my throat.
His massive cock pulsed hard, flooding me with thick, hot spurts that overflowed almost immediately, leaking out around his shaft with every thrust. The tentacle in my ass swelled and pumped me full of ink too, warm and endless.
He kept moving through every wave, filling me until I was dripping and overflowing with him.
By the time it was over I was completely undone.
The ink covered me from throat to thighs, dark and living.
His blue skin was almost fully black with it across his chest and shoulders.
I was boneless against him, wrung out and glowing, soaked in him and still feeling it slowly leaking out of me as one of his tentacles traced slow, absent patterns on my hip like it physically could not stop touching me.
I looked at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe.
“You ok?” He asked.
I laughed and snuggled into him, not caring about the ink and cum mess we’d made.
I thought about this briefly and then I thought about his arm around me and the specific weight of it and how I had been tense for two years, how I had not noticed how tense until I stopped being it, and I thought: this is the most rested I have been in two years.
I fell asleep to the sound of the water and the warmth of him around me and I was pretty sure I knew what it meant.