Chapter 17 #2
Approaching with a graceful flick, Nyxarion went to her. Drinking her in. The way she floated in the cradle, her knees drawn up. Fingers laced in the polyps of Raskoril, unconsciously anchoring herself while she slumbered.
The place where he had kept her bent and breeding. Used her scent to entice his people to join his cause.
He hadn’t known, then. What she was.
That she wasn’t merely a prize, nor his most cherished possession.
She was something far more deadly.
Settling behind her, without daring to disturb even a hair on her glorious head, Nyx hooked his spines into the gruesome throne of bone and claimed his place at her back.
A tiny sound escaped her lips. Tiny bubbles issued forth, dancing toward the ceiling as she sighed.
He didn’t give her a chance to wake. Didn’t allow her to rouse and pepper him with questions.
He needed this moment.
With her.
Vulnerable and delicate. Helplessly at his mercy.
Nyxarion purred. Thrumming deep in the barrel of his chest, he poured his mate song into her skull. Forcing her to submit, so he could center himself in her peace. Claim a piece of her, just for himself. Tend what no other living thing could ever see.
The lines etched between her brows smoothed as the tension in her muscles went lax. Pliant. Her breaths slowed, growing deep and rhythmic as some primitive part of her heart his song and submitted. Sagging against him.
Trusting him.
And for a long, selfish moment, he merely watched her. Obsessing over the fan of dark lashes, the dainty spread of gills he had forced upon her. Cherishing each and every breath that passed between her lips from a current he had reshaped to suit her.
Thalos fed her sun clams.
But Nyxarion had given her the sea.
Nyxarion would give her everything.
All she had to do was give him… milk.
Proof that his venom had taken root. That his seed was thriving.
Lifting one hand, he traced the swell of her breast.
Delicate.
Pretty little nipples growing plump in pregnancy. Edged in tiny, sunset scales that sparkled with an iridescent sheen.
Warm. A delicious weight, even here, where weight was meaningless. The thrum of her tiny Siren heart pulsing beneath his palm. The rhythm a stark aberration from his own steady vitality.
Squeezing, tentative at first, he began to knead. Working the fat, he let his thumb sweep down. From the top of that plush globe, dragging down. To her nipple. Offering a gentle, yet firm pull at that peak only to release it, just to watch it spring back.
Her skin grew tight. Elastic and pebbled.
Redoubling his purr, Nyx crooned for her. Rewarding, even as he grew bold. Pressing and releasing. Pulling her delicate skin taut and let it relax.
Even sedated, lulled by the weight of his song, her breath hitched. A tiny bubble of sound caught behind her gills.
Tracing her edges, he swept his other hand beneath her. Touched her belly long enough to watch her biolume ripple, before he claimed her other breast.
Cupping and squeezing, increasing the pressure as he worked the glands deep inside.
There was not plume of milk.
Nothing beading at the tip of pretty nipples.
He hadn’t expected it. Not really. Not so soon, and before the second trimester had truly begun. And yet… he continued to milk her. Palms moving in that ancient rhythm. Until it became something meditative. Soothing.
A hushed sort of intimacy he’d taken all for himself.
Something private.
Hidden.
His cock stirred.
Pressing at his seam, it grew in measured pulses. Emerging from his vent in perfect sync with his languid milking. It was a slow unfurling. The flush of arousal building against his spine without the fervor of desperate breeding.
Slower.
Yet somehow… more desperate. Primal.
Exhaling a ragged breath, forcing the current through his gills, Nyx let one hand sweep down.
Over her belly, the swell of their child.
Catching her thigh, he draped it over his hip, pulling her open.
Repositioning her with a glacial slowness.
Eyes fixed to the flutter of her lashes as he purred.
The frequency a thing she had no hope of fighting against.
Not really.
Hips shifting, he pulled back. Cock burrowing, seeking heat. Already greased with oily need, he caught her rim.
Crooning low in his throat, he pressed inside flesh already rendered pliant and soft. Muscles slack in forced sleep, she yielded for him. Made to embrace it.
He claimed an inch.
Spine twisting, she clenched. Brow wrinkled.
Going still, Nyx let his song drop into a range meant to bypass instinct. Pulling her thighs wider, he pushed a little deeper.
Another inch.
And then one more.
His pearls popping inside her, one by one. Catching on swollen tissue, stimulating nerves that made her hum even in the depths of her absence. It was instinct, the way she clenched around him. Milking him in return in elegant little flutters that made his vision whiten. Blurring at the edges.
Only when he found her end, when his cock kissed the mouth of her womb and nuzzled at the spongey gate he could not breach, did he release that frozen breath.
Luxury.
She was an extravagance he’d never thought he could know. An opulence unmatched by anything in any sea.
Hips moving, he withdrew.
Resuming his kneading, he began to measure her milking against his strokes. Timing her breaths. Retreating until only the ridged head of his glans remained, before he drove into her.
Absent urgency or frenzy.
Just a steady claiming.
The anxiety bled from his chest with every thrust. At last.
In the way he’d expected from his return to Vorynthar, she drained his disquiet every time he slid home.
"Nyx…"
His name slipped from her lips. Slurred, a sound mangled by sleep. Lashes fluttered for an instant, showing him a glimpse of glassy grey-gold caught the faint biolume before she was dragged back into submission.
Teeth found her throat, lips tracing the delicate gills.
Inhaling her breath. "That's it," he whispered. "You don’t have to do anything, except take it. Every inch.” Every slow thrust brought him closer as he milked her.
"So good for me. Taking me so deep." Tasting her gills, he licked her, drunk on the way she shuddered.
"Going to fill my little queen until she drips. "
Cock thickening, growing fat with the languid pace, he felt his pearls throb. Flushing with heat as he neared the end of his restraint. Chasing it. Selfish while she was open for him, he used her pretty little body to pacify his heart. Seeking calm.
Until that slow, aching calm began to shudder. Giving way to something crude. Raw and exposed.
Fucking her in earnest now, he felt his mind empty of everything else.
No Thalos throwing poisoned barbs.
No thoughts of treaties or the cowardice of his own inadequate shortfalls.
Only this.
Flesh remade to suit his needs. Tight and hot and ready to take.
Climax twisted his spine as he bottomed out. Spilling great, shuddering pulses of cream, he groaned. The deep drone of his purr gutturing out. Falling silent as ecstasy crashed through his skull. Echoing through his fins and spines.
Fingers biting into her flesh, he crushed her against his chest. Trying to stuff his knot inside, to drag every last drop of pleasure he might take from her willing cunt—but the angle was awkward.
But it was enough.
Its own kind of rapture to give her a bellyful without knotting her in place.
Pressing a croon to her temple, sluicing through a sheath gone slick with the abundance of his seed, he kissed her.
"Good girl," he whispered, enjoying the pulsing aftershocks.
Emptying himself inside her, this perfect creature who tasted like home.
“My sweet, perfect bride. So good. So… so fucking good.”
Lips moving around some senseless plea, Kore tilted her chin and bared her throat.
Yielding.
Even now…
Giving.