Chapter 17
He let his fingers tighten just to feel her swallow against his palm.
To know she was trapped.
That she could break, if he chose it.
But the foolish little thing had offered herself as a prize. A sacrifice.
She was desperate to survive.
Admittedly so.
Her honesty was… refreshing.
Beguiling.
Something that had his pulse pounding behind his gills. Shocked by her innocence. Her audacity. The way she'd pleaded and offered him every deranged thing he wanted.
"Do you think submission will save you?" he murmured, letting his claws trace her ribs. The elegant line of scales pulsing with Abyssari patterning.
"Yes," she admitted, submitting beneath his grip, tilting her chin back to expose the long line of a delicate throat. Unconscious submission. An aphrodisiac. "Because you're curious. Because you want to know."
Thalos hummed, trying to dress himself in a veil of disinterest, but… it was true.
Damn her.
Even now, he wasn't sure if he'd come to kill her quietly. Without witnesses. To restore order to his oceans. Or… to indulge.
Absently, his free hand moved. Cupping one delicate breast, his glacial eyes fixed to the way her skin grew taut. Peaked. Tiny scales glittering in the gloom as he circled her nipple with the point of his claw.
Her breath caught. High, at the back of her throat.
And he watched a net of bubbles trickle from her gills. Utterly taken by the way her pupils ballooned. Yawning wide. And her thighs—those grotesque, angular limbs so alien to everything he'd ever known—they pressed together. Rubbing, friction to ease the onset of estrus.
Vile.
Hideous, beguiling creature.
"One taste," he hummed, and tipped her chin back. His grip on her throat growing tighter. Greedy. "One chance. And what happens," he crooned, low and careful, "when I decide you're not worth what Nyxarion has sacrificed to claim you?"
Her eyes flashed in the gloom. Amused. "Are you asking permission, sovereign?" she hummed, a smile curling at the corner of her lips. "Already?"
Thalos' claws flexed, brushing her gills, a subtle threat. That if he chose, he could stop her breath with a single press of his fingers.
Bracing, her hands landed on his chest. Fingers spread across his collarbones, touching the dips and hollows. Exploring. Clinging.
It was… discovery.
Digits trembling as she followed the line of his ribs. The edge of his fins.
Jaw flexed, muscle bunching as he went utterly still and let her play. Because his brain was fogged with that damned scent.
Slick.
Citrus and ozone.
Bright and electric.
Etched with a musk that was all hers. Alien. A Siren.
The pheromone-addled, perfume of a body aching for a knot. A creature already marked by his venom.
Gills flaring, he took a breath.
Flooded his lungs with her scent.
Drinking it in. Shameless without an audience. Painting his gills with her scent as he filtered the heavy black waters, Thalos watched her.
Cock throbbing where it was trapped behind his slit, fingers wrapped around her throat, he pulled her closer.
And then, painting a whisper against her lips, he said, "You have no idea what you're doing."
"None," she agreed, giving him more of that maddening submission, before her hands drifted… lower.
Fins flaring, Thalos went still. Utterly. Lips parting when she traced his genital slit. Insistent. Her pretty grey eyes watching his face for any hint that she was succeeding. That her seduction was tempting him to taste his ruin.
Breath hissing through his gills, Thalos flashed his teeth. Deadly. Dangerous. Warning her not to push.
But she ignored him. Easily. "I know what men want of women," she murmured, and her touch grew bold. Pressing at his seam, letting her fingers slip inside—testing his restraint.
Bold. As if she'd done it before.
He flinched with a hiss. "I should kill you now," he snarled, voice cracking when another finger slipped inside.
But he didn't move.
Couldn't.
Because he wanted to know what she thought she knew—needed to know exactly how she thought she was going to ruin him.
She nodded, the preposterous thing. "You should," she murmured. "But then… you'll always wonder what it could've been like…"
Fingers flexing around her throat, Thalos' pulse hammered at his gills. Unable to draw a breath, frozen in place as she explored. And then, "You know nothing," he snapped, but his hips rolled. Flexing against that gentle touch.
But when her digits pressed deeper, buried to her knuckles, a ragged sound escaped his lips. Shameful. Shocked and helpless but to yield to her exploration.
Of his vent.
It was taboo.
Obscene.
Lewd in a way he couldn't explain to feel her knuckles inside him. Dainty little fingers wrapped around his girth. Inside. Where no one had ever dared touch before.
Pelagorn mated in beautiful choreography. Dances in the tide. Entwined bodies, rippling scales, slits aligned, bodies pressed.
It was never…
… this.
Never inside.
But webbed fingers—notably absent claws—wrapped around his girth and pulled. Coaxing him out with disgusting, beseeching pulls.
His cock burst forth.
Thick.
Already achingly swollen.
Leaking syrupy pulses into the tide.
Ridged with bulging pearls, flushed and engorged with need.
And his breath. It stuttered in his chest. Bubbles pressed through clenched teeth when she shifted her grip and worked him properly.
Pumping him with long, greedy strokes. One hand twisting around his head, while the other…
the other pressed back inside. Rolling his heavy, tender balls, before she drew those out too.
Spines flared, shocked right down to the tip of his fluke, Thalos went catatonic.
Pure, scandalized reflex.
Fins spread to catch the current, his chromatic scales rippled with a wave of blazing, pristine color. His every instinct screaming at him to strike, defend.
His balls flexed in her palm.
Cock twisting in her grip, seeking warmth. Friction. Heat.
Begging for more.
Lips parted, a tiny sound escaped her, then. Fascination, perhaps. Morbid curiosity to see the difference between trench-filth and true royalty. She stroked. Root to tip. Twisting around his swollen end, it was a deliberate action. Practiced. One that saw her palm drag across his pearls.
As if she knew.
As if she'd done it before.
But then…
… of course she had.
Nyxarion had taught her, in his own way.
Made her into this… this creature built from human flesh and lust.
Throat working to smother a groan, Thalos choked.
But his hips lurched, and he drove his cock through the circle of tight fingers.
Sliding down, slipping from his grip, Kore descended. Down, until her face was level with his prick. Stroking, still rolling his heavy, churning balls.
And then she glanced up, haunting eyes glassy with pupils blown wide.
She smiled.
Lips parting.
Opening.
Thalos' breath hitched in his chest.
She wouldn't.
She—
She pulled him inside.
Hot.
Soft.
Velvet, obscene suction.
Right hand darting out, Thalos' fingers tangled in her hair with a scandalized hiss. Claws heavy against her scalp. Gripping the silken strands, seeking an anchor as her tongue rolled. Pulling him deeper, writhing against him.
It was… nothing like a cunt. Absent the muscular squeeze that would milk his knot and trigger the instinct to breed. To rut.
But… his spines flared. Leaking a pulse of venom into the current.
Pure sensation rippled through him. His scales lifted, shivering. A cascade of mortified pleasure that drew a strangled sound from his gills. A curse.
Fingers tangling, gripping hard enough to hurt, his lips parted. "You vile creature—"
She hummed.
A bolt of pure sensation shot through his weeping glans, straight to his heavy balls. The vibration was electric. Forced a pulse of brine from his slit.
Gills flaring wide enough to show the crimson filaments, Kore pulled back. Lips and tongue dragging down his shaft. Teeth scraping over each of his pearls.
And then she hollowed her cheeks.
The suction made him flinch. Breath stuttering, tail flicking as she sank back down. Working him deeper inside, over the velvet grip of her tongue. Past the ridge of her palate.
Until his crown bumped that tight ring at the back of her throat and she stopped. Forced by biology.
Panting, he flashed his teeth. "You are obscene—"
Eyes lifting, pupils blown, she met his gaze and didn't blink.
And then she swallowed.
"Sun fucked… little…" Thalos' vision went grey.
Hazy at the edges. Snarling when his prick moved down her throat.
Bumping over the ridges of cartilage. A squeeze rippling over his shaft.
Pulsing against his pearls. One that dragged him deeper before she pulled back, she pulled a sound from his chest.
A broken thing.
A sound he'd never so much as heard, in all the years of his life, much less one that came from his own lips.
It was slow agony.
Lips and teeth. The drag of molten heat over his ridges. Her tongue pressed flat against the underside of his cock until only the crown remained.
Something wicked stretched her lips. A smile.
Grinning, she worked him deeper. Floating beneath him, yet still somehow… above him. Even as she took him to the root, her nose pressed against his slit. Pretty against his scales. Her gills flaring wide as she adjusted.
Fuck.
Claws scoring her scalp, Thalos' grip grew unforgiving as he clung to his restraint. To the effort to resist her.
Watching, enthralled, when she did it again.
And again.
Falling into a rhythm that left him shivering.
One dainty hand wrapped around his base, where his knot had begun to bulge, while the other rolled his heavy balls in her palm.
Helpless, Thalos watched his cock vanish down her throat.
Over and over and over again.
Obsessing over the stretch, the clench. The way her webbed fingers stroked and rolled and touched. Unblinking as he watched her work him, her throat bulging.
But it was the sounds that forced his hips to move.