Chapter 21
She was drowning.
The tide lapped soft against her skin, a glove of velvet deception that was almost… gentle. Close enough to sweet to be a believable lie.
Thunk.
Her throat opened around a scream—and the sea rushed in.
A shadow passed overhead. And then the splatter of something heavy splashed above her.
Rope.
A net.
The weight descended, folding around her like a shroud.
She was dragged up through the waves. Heavy and pulling against the current that clung to her every sodden inch and tried to keep her under.
And when she breached the surface, it was to the sound of a male voice grunting with the effort to haul her up from the abyss.
“Gods, half-drowned already,” the man grunted, bringing her alongside the tiny boat. The vessel rocked as he worked, wood groaning and creaking. “Heavy little relic, ain’t ya?” he asked, then pulled her up. Cursing and huffing as the boat rocked under her weight.
She hit the deck with a splat of waterlogged limbs. Trying to breathe, hardly able to lift her head as she blinked at the man who’d rescued her after hours of aimless swimming.
Coarse hands landed on her, then. Callused, roughened in the way of seafarers. Those hardened men who handled rope and seashells for an honest living.
He grabbed at her without reverence, pawing at slick skin and tattered robes that clung to her body and did absolutely nothing to shield her modesty.
“Ain’t the first thing I’ve pulled from these waters,” he murmured, thumbing the swell of her hip. Brushing the glitter of sunrise scales fanning out above her pubis. “But fuck me raw if you ain’t the prettiest.”
Kore blinked, but that was all. Unable to focus on his words. The dusk was too bright, the scent of fish—of rot and stale brine—curdled in her gut and promised to splash against the back of her throat.
“Roll for me, pretty thing,” he said, gruff as he shoved at her hip. Fingers taking liberties, he tugged aside the scraps of her robes and left her bound in the netting at the bottom of his dinghy. “Gods,” he rasped. “A real fine beaut.”
Breath rattling and wet, lungs soggy, Kore tried to protest. Tried to resist when blunt, rough fingers explored her body.
Her lips parted, but issued no sound.
Throat reedy and dry, breath a phantom whisper.
Beneath her, the net crunched. Salt crackling and coarse. Dried into the fibers.
His hand slid lower, tracing the shimmer on her ribs. The faint gleam dusted across her chest, the point of her nipples. Her thighs… her… sex.
Everywhere she’d been marked by a beast was explored with quiet reverence.
And then his hand slid lower still, two fingers parting the lips of her slit. Marveling at how bare she was. Hairless. How slick and smooth. “Already leaking,” he laughed, an incredulous lilt to his gruff voice. “Waiting on me, were ya?”
Curling around herself, Kore tried to twist. Gagging when her lungs seized and her breath strangled high at the back of her throat, aching beneath the corner of her jaws.
“Wai—” she hissed, voice a wisp of smoke and broken glass, throat too raw to muster a fragile protest, much less an outraged scream.
“Aye, treasure,” he said, hands prodding. “I’ll get ya sorted, beastie. Bet on that.”
An ache started low, a shuddering throb that wasn’t quite pain.
It was need.
Starvation.
Confusion flooded her brain when her womb clenched. Her pussy flushing wet and open, desperate for something she didn’t have, but needed more than the blistering air that ached when it sliced through her throat and burned in her lungs.
The fisherman laughed low, fingers working at her seam. “Oh, you’re a desperate little cunny, alright. Caught a proper Siren, eh?”
Kore gasped as pain spiked through her blood.
And then she knew.
Understood the particular sort of ache turning her blood to fire.
She was bound.
Not by rope, but… biology. By what the beast had done to her on that island.
What he’d made her.
She clenched—slick, grasping, obscene. Body starving, keening for what she’d come to need. The soothing burn of that fevered ecstasy that had been pumped into her body, remaking her as something monstrous.
Venom.
She’d fled when the tide was low.
The last taste of his venom was days ago… a barb in her palm.
Not nearly enough.
Already her body was breaking. Cracking at the seams that hadn’t been plugged in hours.
The fisherman didn’t notice the desperate twitching—he pressed a palm to her belly. Marveling at the fever heating her glittering skin.
Lips gaping, she arched into his touch. Starved for the toxin she’d come to crave.
“Aye, lass. I know. You need it, don’t you?
” he asked, more curious than cruel. And then, “You’ll sing for me.
Soon, treasure,” he crooned, slipping a finger back, twisting through her slick before he brought that digit to his lips and sucked.
“By the drowned gods…” he groaned, fisting a bulge in his pants with his free hand. “Sweetest cunny I ever tasted.”
Kore could only tremble. Arching, her hips canting into that touch without meaning to do it. Her thighs grew slick, flushed with a desperate want she didn’t own. Didn’t understand.
Pulling at his bloated little prick, he laughed, cheeks flushed.
“Your tricks ain’t gonna work, treasure.
Not on me. I know your sort. Heard the tales all my life, understand?
I know ye will try to drag me under with that sweet little trap between your legs.
I know,” he said, and didn’t pull himself free of his pants.
“Know what you’re about. Luring good men into the sea by their cocks with a cursed cunny, begging to be fucked.
Draggin’ honest men into the dark, screamin’.
Sent to their deaths for nothin’ but the want of a taste of pussy they earned. Honest day’s work.”
Kore’s lips parted when she tried to deny his fantasy. She wasn’t a Siren! Just a woman in need of rescue.
But his fingers didn’t stop.
And the ache grew, blooming into agony.
First two fingers, then three. Rubbing circles into her clit as her pussy gushed slick and her hips rocked against the friction.
She whimpered, a hoarse, cracked sound dragged from the bottom of soggy lungs, too ruined to scream. Teeth clenching, slicing, aching pain erupted behind the corner of her jaw.
“Wetter than the sea,” he breathed, setting the sail to catch the wind.
And then he shoved two fingers inside. Slick gushing around his digits, obscene and eager and not meant for him.
“Oh, yeah,” he crowed, watching her writhe with a sick, brown grin stretched wide over rotten teeth.
“Made for this, ain’t that right? Made to be bred, huh? ”
She shook her head when her voice failed her.
A twitch of denial too small to matter, for it didn’t stop him.
He only drove his fingers faster, working tight, graceless circles around the base of her clit.
Delighting in her hips jerking and dancing at his command as he sailed toward a destination she could not see.
A sob tore free of her throat—silent and reedy—a gurgle of horror for the monstrous hunger consuming her in unholy flames.
Her body convulsed, forced toward the cliff of a climax she didn’t want but couldn’t resist.
Because it wouldn’t help.
“Gonna ride you good,” he groaned, still circling her clit. “Fuck you like a man. On land. Where you can’t give me to some cursed sea demon.”
Curling into the bottom of his boat, net digging into tender skin, Kore shuddered through a weak climax that only ignited the desperate need in her nerves.
“Almost there,” he hummed, abandoning her slit to haul on the rudder.
They hit the shore with a thud.
Cursing, the fisherman jumped into the shallow water, huffing as he dragged the boat higher on the sandy beach.
Kore tried to thrash, tried to fight the netting as the last of the sun’s heat retreated across the sea. As night curled around her with a velvet hiss, a distant glimmer of stars twinkled in the endless black high above.
Reaching into the boat, the fisherman snagged the netting and hauled her up. Out. Sweating, he pulled her over the edge of the gunwale with a careless thump of soggy, boneless limbs.
She hit the sand hard.
“Hush now, beastie,” he hummed, stooping to bind her tighter in the netting, then dragged her across the shore. Taking delight in her ragged breaths, in the wide, glassy eyes with pupils blown wide.
Impact.
Her belly hit a log of driftwood with a splat.
Grunting, the fisherman bent her in half, adjusting her hips until she was, “Perfect. Aye,” he murmured, agreeing with whatever it was he saw. “Exactly the treasure I thought ye to be.”
Lips sagging, Kore hissed a wordless protest as the net cut into her wrists and elbows, chaffing her hips, her ribs. Digging into tender flesh as she was positioned across a log, hips raised for only one thing.
There was a moment of stillness.
The wind blew through her, chilling wet flesh, and she looked back. Turning wide, helpless eyes upon the man, she saw it.
Scales. A sea of stars glittering in the night, sprinkled across her thighs and wrists. Her lower back and upturned ass.
And there, beneath her skin…
… pulsing blue veins, throbbing in time with her frantic heart.
She was changed.
Alien.
A… a Siren.
Stepping back, admiring his handiwork, a smirk split the fisherman’s weathered face. “Now that’s a sight, ain’t it?”
Kore didn’t respond. Couldn’t beg around a throat shredded by desperate want of the sea. She understood now.
Too late.
The man didn’t care.
He wrapped a fist around his grubby little cock and stroked himself at the sight of her. Taking her in.
“Gonna give you exactly what you need, pretty thing,” he said, stepping forward. “None o’that now,” he murmured when she thrashed and showed her teeth. “Gonna take what I’m owed.” His cock nudged her entrance. Prodding. Pressing against a slit that had betrayed her, time and again.
The head pushed in.
It was shameful, the way she gushed. Appalling just how desperate she was for the stretch, the primal command that had sent her to her knees in the sand, daring to feast at the beast’s cock. Drinking down every last gulp of cream until her belly was swollen with it.
Oblivious, the fisherman stood behind her, mashing his rigid digit into her clenching slit. Small. Pathetic. Nowhere near enough.
He was grinning.
Rapturous.
Rutting at her upturned ass, spoiling the treasure he’d found with reckless abandon—because he didn’t know. That the mess between her legs wasn’t for him. That she’d been reshaped for another, and this trespass?
It was nothing.
A fingertip through a spiderweb.
An irritant she hadn’t invited, one that served only to inflame her need for the leviathan lurking in the deep.
Kore sobbed, soundless. Keening as he slipped inside and fluttered about in the cream inspired by another.
Head dropping forward, hair hanging about her face in a veil of salt-crusted netting, she flushed. Warm and needy.
Fingers twisting in silent plea, the action familiar. As if she’d done it all her life.
With a hand on her nape, pinning her to the driftwood, he fucked her.
Fast.
Clumsy.
Letting the netting bite her skin, dragging against scales that hadn’t broken the surface, he pushed into her on a wave of slick arousal he hadn’t earned.
Hips rolling to meet inadequate thrusts, body screaming for more, Kore moaned.
Rasping and silent.
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned, gripping her hips tighter. “Waiting for me, weren’t you? Little cunt is singing for it.”
Kore gagged, her throat raw. Voice gone. There was only desperate grief, and the longing for the touch of her monster.
Silent, shaking sobs wracked her body as the mortal bucked and grunted. His cock punching uselessly into her.
And then he came.
Short, pitiful jerk of his hips. Cock spewing a sip of seed that couldn’t reach her womb.
But he didn’t slow.
Stayed hard, kept rutting.
“Oh, shitte. By the gods,” he rasped, “still so tight. Such a hungry slut. So good…”
Clawing at the netting, Kore bloodied her fingers. Empty and furious, her womb spasmed in search of something thicker.
But there was nothing.
Nothing but this sorry excuse of a man, with his watery, unworthy seed. A beast with sweaty skin and pale bravado.
Panting as he muttered, “You’ll thank me, Siren. Sure as the tides,” he gasped, fingers slipping against her skin. “I’ll train ye up good. Give ye everything ye could ever want. Endless cock to feed such a hungry slit. You’ll see. That’s it, girlie. Such a good whore…”
Kore turned blackened eyes back. Pinning him with an ominous glare that reflected the silver moonlight.
Inhuman. Eyes meant for the deep.
He didn’t notice. Blind to the threat, he pumped her with the sort of enthusiasm few might ever know. Indulging his wildest fantasies, crafting a tale few could believe as he worked himself into a foam.
And she saw it.
Moonlight shining on the crest of a towering wave.
Her eyes went wide as she tracked up, up, up.
Impossibly high.
And there, beneath the water’s skin, she could hear the drums of war rushing in her direction.
The fisherman bucked against her, spearing her glittering pussy in shallow thrusts. Deaf to everything but the slap of skin on scales. “Take it,” he groaned. “Take it all, you gorgeous fucking thing.”
Hands fisting in her hair, he wrenched her head back as his cock kicked. “You’re mine, beastie. All mine.”
Pain sliced at the corner of Kore’s jaw when he forced her head back. Blinding, suffocating anguish that saw her jaws gape wide around a breath she couldn’t suck through her teeth.
The air grew heavy with the shadow looming over them. A dull roar humming through the night air.
Still, he didn’t see it. Couldn’t hear anything above his own selfish need. “That’s it,” he breathed, jerking and kicking inside her. “Gods, you’re perfect.”
Kore flailed, chest hollowing out around her stolen breath. The pain behind her ears almost enough to consume her.
But she didn’t fight or thrash. Didn’t move or plead or beg.
She twisted.
Looked back.
Watching the storm rise from the sea in a wall of glinting, silver fury.
And then… she smiled.
And it was dreadful.