Chapter 37

chapter 37

ELLE

I rode the high of my orgasm for several minutes, trying to catch my breath on the floor, while Ceph watched me, apparently perfectly content.

And I couldn't quite believe what I was going to say next.

"Did you come?"

Because I'd come so hard I'd forgotten half of my PhD thesis.

I felt Ceph's amusement before I heard him. "No."

"No?" I complained, moving to sit up. "Why not? I thought I was perfect!"

"You are—which is why I wanted to appreciate you."

I collapsed against the sheets again. Up until now I never would've called myself a selfish lover, but?—

"You are not selfish. If anything, I was. I wanted to bask in you."

I gave the window glass a dreamy smile. "It's kind of cheating if you always know the right thing to say because you're in my mind."

"It is a good thing you like me, then."

I couldn't help it, I laughed. "Well okay, mister—Ceph of the Sea—whip it out again."

"It was never un-whipped. "

"Fine," I said, sticking my tongue out. "Show me."

He went back to his beautiful phosphorescent hue, and I could see where he was still stroking himself, albeit slower than he had been.

I moved onto my knees and put the middle of his carvings to the glass. I was sure there was some refraction involved, but the "pumping arm" outside looked bigger than the one I'd just been putting into my body.

"The bigger the arm, the heavier the seed burden," he explained, as I picked the final, larger, carving up.

Look at me, getting to play dick-Goldilocks in here.

I put a curious hand up to the window. "Does that make it feel different for you?"

He considered this. "Honestly, no. I would prefer to be the size of the one you're holding now. But—I have let a lot of seed build up."

"When's the last time you, uh, pumped?"

"The other night," he answered plainly. "But there were years before that, and you never express as much alone as you do with a partner."

I was learning so many interesting things about kraken physiology this evening.

"Does being with me like this count?" I wondered.

His stroking paused. "I—I don't know."

"Should we find out?" I asked, settling back down.

"You would want to go again?" he asked, and I felt his fascination. "I assumed that humans were too frail for multiple breeding sessions."

"Well, you assumed wrong, at least where this human was concerned," I said. "Just keep pumping yourself like that, and let me catch up to you."

This carving was bigger than the rest had been, but I was nice and wet now. It was cold—but I knew it'd warm up, once I got it in.

I felt him stop pumping, and I pouted. "What did I tell you?" His mind was so close to the surface with mine— that was how I knew he stopped, even before I saw it. "What?" I asked him, stopping too.

"I love you, little pearl," he said simply. "I just wanted you to know it."

And while I already knew that truth from him, I felt it unfold a thousand times over in my heart, like an unending blossom, echoing from his mind to mine and back again.

"Ceph," I whispered—and there wasn't any point in trying to slow down anymore. "I love you, too."

I felt him thrill at this, my final acquiescence, and I knew I'd never take it back.

Whatever future we were hurtling towards, we were going there together.

A shudder ran through him, and I felt it in me. "Pump yourself, Elle. Pump yourself for your mate."

I didn't want to say that the intellectual parts of me disappeared at him thinking that, so much as every single part of my mind surrendered at once.

Any fears or doubts or bashfulness—any reason I'd ever thought I'd had to hide—went right out the window at him naming me.

It was what I wanted to be.

And I would do anything for him.

I nodded quickly and reached both hands down between my legs, trying to shove the largest of the three stones in.

He made a sound inside my mind, a cross between a purr and a growl and it ended in a click of his beak. "Good. Just like that. Pump hard."

I groaned, and rearranged myself so that I was on my back and thrusting my hips up towards him in the window. This final carving was too wide for me to lie on my side anyhow, but also this was how I wanted him to take me, at least the first time we did this—I wanted to see and be seen.

"I can feel you stretching. You're trying so hard."

I watched his tentacles wrap and stroke the arm that was shadowed by his glow—and then they switched from stroking up, to stroking down, as though that arm were trying to pierce something.

"All I want to do is fit you, Elle. I know if I could just get my tip inside you, it would be enough."

I swallowed and rolled my head back, while scooping my hips forward. "I could take you," I promised him.

"I know you could," he said, and I felt him all around me, surrounding me inside my head. He became both the blanket I was lying on and the air that I breathed and all the waters in all the oceans outside. "You were meant for me. Let me fill you. You're so close to taking all of me now, down to the ring, Elle—good—good?—"

I pulled the stone almost all the way out and then slammed it inside, squealing internally.

He grunted as though I'd punched him.

"Do you feel that?" I asked, because he was inside of me, feeling everything.

"Yes," he growled.

"And that—and that—and that?" I started fucking myself with his carved cock now, sliding it deeper into me each time.

"Elle," he said, and it reverberated through me, sending shivers down my spine and making my thighs clench.

"I want you to feel me coming," I said, slamming him into me, more turned on by the moment, my calves tense, my ass high, my hips aching. I was on the cusp of another orgasm, but I didn't want to go without him. "And—I want to feel you," I said, pleading through gritted teeth.

"You—you—" he started to promise, "you—will!"

My orgasm shot through me, starting from someplace deep inside that'd never squeezed before, rippling out to every part of me. I only barely managed to throw an arm across my face before I screamed, but I could sense Ceph still working, and then— oh God— if I thought I was coming hard, Ceph's orgasm snatched my soul from my body.

I heard him on our 'qa making feral, animalistic sounds, and saw a geyser of shadowed seed spurting out from his pumping arm, and at the thought of him being in me and me keeping all that in—I moaned low, putting a palm across my belly.

"You are my mate. I would fill you until you spilled," he told me, still experiencing sharp, short, afterbursts of his orgasm that traveled to me like someone gently pinching my clit.

I lay there, trying to breathe the air I was in and come back to my body.

All I wanted to do was—all of that —again.

I would crawl over glass to get it.

I would face down death again for it.

I wanted to be his, and he was always mine.

I pulled the carving out and put it aside, sitting up, panting.

"My beautiful Elle," Cepharius said, the colors on his surface now drifting in soothing patterns of light.

I reached out to touch the glass. "My pretty kraken," I whispered to him, with a soft smile.