4. Chapter 4 #2
Lilo had one card left, and Daren three.
After suctioning the center one from Daren’s hand with a tentacle tip and turning it around to see, Lilo squealed in delight.
“Pair! Lilo win! Lilo win first time!” He tossed the cards onto the deck with the rest of his pairs, tentacles flailing wildly enough to splash some of the frigid water into the boat.
“Hey!” Daren laughed. “Keep the water in the ocean, will you?”
“But Lilo win! Lilo win first time!” He batted his long lashes at Daren coyly. “Daren give prize?”
“You want a prize for winning? Okay. What would you like?”
Lilo licked his lips, lifted out of the water, and leaned closer to Daren like he usually only did when they first met for the day. Their morning entanglements had gotten longer, but they had still been confined to the morning.
“You want another kiss?” Daren asked.
“Yes, please. If Daren want.”
“I want to. Always…” Daren really couldn’t imagine saying no to Lilo.
He shifted closer too and pressed their lips together, with his slightly parted.
He expected the enthusiastic plunge of Lilo’s tongue.
He expected the curl of a tentacle around his forearm.
He did not expect for another tentacle to slide across his thigh and attempt to slip up beneath the hem of his jacket.
Daren shuddered and flinched back. There was no mistaking the response that caused. The heat. The want.
The pulse between his legs.
Lilo didn’t seem to notice the flinch, pulling the added tentacle away after the briefest press of his smaller suckers to Daren’s shirt.
The shirt was tucked in, so without being a bit more dexterous with that tentacle—which he probably could be—Lilo wasn’t getting under it.
He lazily let the appendage retreat across Daren’s thigh, very lazy and slow, like a clear tease and hint at what he really wanted.
Maybe Daren wasn't as content with taking things slow as he’d thought, because he wanted that too, even if he didn’t know what it would entail.
Then Lilo suddenly frowned, scanning the deck in frustration.
“What’s wrong?” Daren asked.
“Lilo want… Lilo wish…”
Daren glanced around at his small boat’s meager deck too, which was already crowded with various items and the fish they had caught, leaving very little room for a creature whose tentacles made him at least twice the size of a normal man. “You wish you could join me on the boat?”
Lilo huffed.
“Sorry, you might be a little too large and heavy for that to work.”
Lilo huffed again, adorably dejected. When he pouted like that, his three-pointed ears drooped like a puppy’s.
Daren couldn’t be sure how heavy Lilo was, but given how easily he could rock the boat when he lifted himself on the ledge, he had to be well over two-hundred pounds of man and octopus.
With all the fish already adding weight, even if the boat technically could hold more, the skewed distribution would risk them being capsized.
Daren was tempted to paraphrase Jaws and say, “I’m gonna need a bigger boat!” but Lilo might take that literally and expect a bigger boat tomorrow.
Then, just as suddenly as he sagged, Lilo brightened, shark teeth gleaming in the winter sun. “Lilo too big for boat, but Daren not too big for rock!”
“What?”
“Follow! Daren follow! Come!”
Before Daren could question what Lilo meant, the creature dove back into the water and started to swim out closer to the rocky cliffside.
Daren had explained to Lilo that the boat needed to be cautious around rocks, but although it was motored, he did have oars for emergencies and could get nearer to larger rocks if he was careful.
He really hoped Lilo remembered all that and guided him safely.
Daren still weighed anchor and started up the motor to turn the boat around and followed Lilo as far as he dared.
Thankfully, as he drew a little too close for comfort to some of the more jagged rocks, Lilo waved at him with a stopping motion.
Daren cut the motor again, finally spotting where Lilo had wanted to bring him.
There was a rock all right. Huge, flat, and enough above the tideline, that its surface looked entirely dry.
It was just so dark that, from afar, it had melded with the waves.
Worst case scenario, Daren did have a sea creature lifeguard, so he dropped anchor again, stopping the boat close enough so he could leap onto the rock from the boat’s deck.
It was even larger than Daren had first realized once he was atop it.
The portion above the water was two to three times his size.
He could easily lounge on it without getting wet, but it was like an iceberg, declining far beneath the water where it must eventually connect with the cliff face.
If any boats had used their motors too close to it, they would have been wrecked for sure. Maybe that was even the real reason fishermen had been warned away.
Or the octopi people.
“Lilo?” Daren realized he had lost sight of his…
well, friend didn’t seem quite right, but labels had never come easily for Daren.
He was about to call out again when, from the depths where the rock became a sharp decline beneath the surface, Lilo burst forth like the Little Mermaid, flinging back his wet hair with a grin.
Lilo was better than any mermaid, and having him crawl up beside Daren, as close as he had ever been able to get, was better than being in the boat.
There was never much wind in the estuary, and lying on the rock, still mostly bundled up against the winter cold, Daren could feel the sun warming him.
He was still a little chilly where the water dripping from Lilo seeped into his clothes, since at first Lilo climbed closer by way of his webbed hands and leaned over Daren like a triumphant predator.
But if this was how Daren finally perished, he really didn’t think he’d mind.
Lilo kissed him, getting Daren even wetter—embarrassingly so in places—and the tentacle that had dared tease his thigh and beneath his jacket before returned to its newfound places of interest, with other tentacles following.
A couple wrapped around Daren’s thighs, a couple around his arms, and one even gently lifted his head to cradle it like a pillow, massaging his neck as it lifted him closer to Lilo.
Daren honestly lost track of the rest, because he was soon engulfed, surrounded and embraced by their possessive mass. Lilo’s skin had the loveliest salty sea scent, like the freshest of ocean water in summer.
It was getting very difficult to not grind up against the body above him, however, making Daren feel more feverish and turned on than he’d been in years.
When the gyrations of one of those thigh-winding tentacles brushed the edge of his erection, he whimpered.
He could not take his pants off out here.
It was winter! In Nova Scotia! The high for the day was barely above freezing, and yet…
Daren felt so remarkably warm with Lilo all around him.
He realized that, with both of them on the same surface for the first time, he could also touch more of Lilo.
Up until now Daren had been able to touch so little of him, and only briefly any of his tentacles.
He had touched Lilo’s face, his neck, his chest. Now he could wrap an arm around Lilo’s waist and explore with the other the long, numerous appendages holding him.
Daren had removed his gloves like usual, but as cold as his fingers had been even a moment ago, now they felt like they were thawing.
Lilo was as warm as if he had been lying in the sun this entire time.
His tentacles felt so smooth and powerful.
They could probably crush him, yet they were so gentle with how they wriggled and held him.
Lilo in general was so gentle, kissing Daren deep but carefully, always aware of his teeth, and almost tentative with how he placed one of his hands on the center of Daren’s chest and gripped his jacket.
Daren’s blind groping of Lilo’s tentacles had led him to some of the suckers. They were delicate near their tips but got larger and firmer where the tentacles became girthier. Not quite rubbery, but very interesting beneath his searching fingers.