Chapter 16
The sun woke her.
Pitiless heat. Merciless and cruel, it beat down upon her face where she lay sprawled on the beach, baking her into a crust of sand and dried fluids. Thigh throbbing where she’d been barbed with yet another dose of venom.
Kore groaned. Her voice a soundless, hollow rasp. And, sucking a breath through chapped and flaking lips, she cringed back from the harsh glare. Pulling her left arm from where it was glued to the beach, she tried to shield her eyes from the searing pain.
But her skin… it was caked in a thick layer of sand. Itchy and tight. Stiff and clumpy.
The flash of clenched knuckles flicked through her memory, and she remembered the ropes of burning white. The obscene sounds he’d made as he’d sprayed his mark across her skin… as she’d cupped that cooling seed in trembling hands and…
It clung to her thighs, her belly… her breasts—everywhere the ropes of burning hot seed had coated her. Everywhere the monster’s cum had gone from cream to pearly gel was now dried in a thick, clinging layer that refused to crumble or flake.
Groaning, sore from nipples to toenails, she tried to brush it off and found it stubborn enough to pull at her skin.
A stark reminder of what she’d done. How far she’d fallen.
She couldn’t bring herself to look.
No, the weight of her belly alone was enough.
Skin stretched taut, a grotesque mockery of middle pregnancy, she was swollen with shame. Bloated with monster cum. On full, lewd display where she’d been left in a puddle of cooling fluids on the beach. Exposed.
But there was no one to see her shame.
Only the harsh, unforgiving glare of the sun that never blinked.
Trying to roll, Kore twisted—and her belly shifted with her. Sloshing heat sealed inside her womb. Not a child, not a gluttonous meal… but the leavings of a leviathan too large for her body to contain.
Panting, she struggled to her hands and knees and let the sun scowl at her back. Sweat beading along her brow, she clenched her molars and hissed, “Get up. Now.”
There was work to be done.
Time to mark.
With a huff, she staggered to her feet—and fell. Wobbling with the change in her center of gravity, thrown off balance. Limbs shaking, her knees buckled.
The sun glowered at her back, mocking her effort.
Squinting against the brilliant glare, she clenched her eyes shut against that once-beloved golden radiance and shielded her face. Breath coming slow and thick.
Laboured.
Lungs squashed against the colossal weight pressing against her diaphragm, straining to draw a breath that wasn’t dry and thin, Kore gagged. Retching at the reek of rot bubbling in the heat, plagued by the memory of what she’d done.
That she could still taste him.
Still smell the brine.
Nothing but bile came up. Stringy and yellow, for her belly was empty. Gone was the desperation of yesterday. The need to fill her belly with something, anything that might wash the venom away.
Now, there was only him.
The bitter tang of salt. Sweet with the memory of the sea.
She lifted her head. Blinking glassy eyes at the glittering expanse sprawling out before her.
Was he there? Watching?
Lurking beneath the surface, biding his time.
Blood boiling with pure spite and self-loathing, she piled rocks atop the place she’d woken up—where the tide waters had been for his last visit. Marking an atoll in the sand, just so she could be ready to mark the next.
And the next.
Sweating freely in the heat, skin pale and blistered, she turned. One trembling hand raised to block the sun from her eyes, she waddled back. Away from the sea and all her dark promises. Away from the stabbing betrayal sending golden light slicing through her skull.
She fled.
Fast as she could.
Belly swollen, pendulous and shifting with every unsteady step, Kore wobbled back to the cave.
Her gait hesitant and wrong. Feet dragging in the sand, clumsy and unstable, she slogged toward the promise of shelter in the dark. Dodging slippery rocks wet with algae, shallow tide pools, and clumps of reeking beach rot, her ribs straining under the weight in her gut.
And when she was shielded in the gloom, hidden from the painful bite of searing heat, Kore allowed her gaze to stray. Inspecting her palm. The spot where a new barb had penetrated her flesh, where veins of toxic blue spidered out from a fresh wound.
Venom.
He was inside her, even now.
Lingering.
Blinking in the half-light, she stared at her feet. Seeing what wasn’t there.
Bruises.
Cuts and scrapes.
There should have been signs of the battle he’d waged upon her body. Evidence that she’d been fucked raw. Ravaged by scale and claw and greedy, ravenous appetite for every scrap of female flesh.
But there was only this.
A swollen belly, clumps of clinging sand glued to her skin, and a tiny wound pulsing blue.
It wasn’t natural, how quickly she’d healed.
But then… was there anything natural about drowning in the Aegean Sea, only to be crushed beneath an Athenian trireme, revived by a son of Poseidon, and remade as his chalice?
A humorless laugh bubbled between chapped lips.
She remembered it in flashes. The pulse of him grinding inside her. His girth swelling, stretching her rim when he’d climaxed, pumping an impossible pressure into her womb. The splash of seed when he tore himself free with an inhuman roar…
She was covered in it.
Itchy with sand and clotted cream.
It had hardened while she lay unconscious on the beach. A cast of itching shame she couldn’t simply brush away.
Because she was unclean.
Filthy.
A monster’s whore.
She staggered to her feet with a single, desperate thought screaming in her mind.
Clean.
She had to get clean.
Even if it meant braving the sea to do it. Even if she had to endure the scornful, unblinking gaze of the sun, she would wash herself clean of the monster’s sperm.
Splashing into the shallows, she collapsed in the surf with a hiccuping sob. Eyes leaking painful tears as the light stabbed into her skull.
The sea greeted her with a cool embrace, lapping gently at sensitive skin.
Stooping, Kore splashed her face. Scooped water over her arms and chest. Scrubbing every inch she could reach.
Still, the sand clung.
Falling away in stubborn clumps.
Wading just a little deeper, shins wet with lapping waves, she kept her eyes fixed to any hint of what lay beneath the surface, and bent to work.
“Come on,” she hissed, clawing at the grime. Scrubbing until her skin was raw and unblemished. Pristine, despite what she’d endured beneath the bulk of a colossus rutting above her.
Hands flashing, Kore scooped water over her belly. Her thighs.
And then, taking a steadying breath, she splashed that cool relief between her legs. Too afraid to touch what was swollen, not with abuse…
… but need.
Teeth flashing white, she abandoned her cleft and scrubbed her belly.
Ignoring everything but the drive to be scoured clean.
Her nails turned to claws, leaving streaks of raised flesh where his grip had been cruelest—where her hip met the crease of her thigh, and seed had pooled when he’d finished defiling her.
There was grit there, too.
Scowling, Kore scratched at the filth until her fingernail caught at something sharp.
Something embedded in her skin.
She yelped. Cursing as her lip curled, she pinched the speck between thumb and forefinger and pulled. Prying it loose with a sharp pang and a hiss of held breath.
Sharp. Tiny and thin.
She frowned against the blinding light, trying to see through eyes that couldn’t bear the light.
“A shell?” she murmured, squinting at the fragment caught between her fingers. A bit of flotsam driven into her skin by his weight. His merciless, punishing thrusts.
Prodding it, turning it in her palm, Kore’s brow grew furrowed at the razor edges and pretty shimmer.
It wasn’t a shell.
Her breath hitched as the glitter of iridescent color slithered through her memory. Color scattering and sparkling across the cave walls, sliding together with a smooth glide as he’d moved to mount her.
A scale.
He’d fucked her hard enough to leave a scale embedded in her thigh.
Staggering back, collapsing into wet sand, Kore twisted so she might inspect the tiny wound it had left behind. Peering down at the tendril of crimson trailing down her leg.
The sun pounded against her back.
Eyes throbbing in their sockets, a headache flared inside her skull with every blink, making her foggy and slow.
How long did she have before the beast returned? Before the tide rolled in and brought another wave of abuse and pleasure?
Absent-minded, she scratched at the itch nagging at her wrist.
Would he take her throat again? Occupy himself with the treacherous seam between her legs? Or… invent some new horror to visit upon her?
With a shudder, Kore blinked. Itching until a flicker of pain tore her gaze from the sea.
She frowned at the spot.
Letting the pad of her fingers drift over the sharp edge, her brows drawn tight. Vision blurred and warped by the white-hot ache pulsing behind her eyes.
But even through the blistering pain of a blooming migraine, she knew.
Half sunken into her skin, the razor edge of a tiny fan flashed in the sunlight.
Prying it loose, Kore tore it free. Hardly bothering to hiss at the sting, ignoring the bead of blood welling in the wound, she smeared the tiny thing across the heel of her palm.
Pretty.
Soft gold at the center, fading to an ember-orange, with pink edges. Shot through with streaks of rose. A sunset.
Beautiful.
Delicate.
Feminine.
Lip curling, Kore flicked it into the surf.
She didn’t see where it landed before the sea took it. Gulping it down. Greedy and immediate. There and gone before she might look again.
It was bad enough that he’d fucked her hard enough to leave her swollen and raw, but to leave pieces of himself lodged in her skin?