7

Sabrina

“Stop.”

One word.

If he yelled like a petulant child, I could ignore him, but his quiet authority freezes me in place. With each step of his approach, my tentacles ball tighter beneath me. I shrink as he grows larger than life. Arguments die on my tongue. I should check for fishermen heading out at first light, but I can’t take my eyes off Teeth.

The breeze ruffles his hair, lifting tendrils around his face like seaweed dancing underwater. The muscles across his chest and over his shoulders bunch and release beneath his damp linen shirt. I can imagine him as a Kraken under the ocean. His torso is steady, as if he glides on tentacles, but the splashes of his boots kicking the water ruin the illusion.

My eyes roam down his body—to check for tentacles, yeah, right—and find the bulge in his leathers. He wants me, but more surprising is how much I want him. I hate the heat building in me as he nears. Whether it is spiteful or lustful passion, I can’t control my response to him. We could never go back to strangers in a tavern. A force would pull us together from across the barroom floor.

“I’m not done with you.” He stops just short of his body heat reaching me. The water swirls around his hips, so I get an enticing peek at my prize with each retreat of the tide, only to have it taken away by the next wave. His thumb and forefinger lift my chin. He doesn’t touch me anywhere else.

“Please.” I don’t know if I’m asking him to let me leave or to gather me into his embrace. Every second my Kraken form is possibly exposed to prying eyes is a threat to my life, and every second I spend with him is a threat to my heart.

“I intend to please you,” he says with a lazy half-smile.

I know he can. We both do. I burn everywhere he touched me in my human form all those years ago. My soulbeak tingles. The damn thing better stay in place and not sacrifice my life to his care. I’m not wearing clothes to contain it. What if he ingests my soulbeak—without understanding the commitment it initiates? He will choose his crew, piracy, and life as a human for both of us. I’ll be trapped on two legs roaming the earth in loneliness as one of his hearties. Or worse, he will sail away while I join Maude’s working girls to survive.

My lips tremble with unspoken protests as he draws me into his arms. His kiss is as hard and demanding as he is. I yield despite the warning bells clamoring in my head. My mouth opens before he can force his way in. It’s inevitable. He will own me. I slide my front tentacles up his legs in possessive coils. Devil may have me, but I can’t resist his offer. A third tentacle loops around the hand he rests at his side to guide it to my breast.

We aren’t friends or even acquaintances. I don’t know his favorite foods, memories, or friends. He likes piracy, drinking liquor, and whores. What a winner. However, from a safe distance in the sea, I’ve watched him coach his junior crew members, learn to read, and sail the boat at every position—from ratlines as a sailor to the helm as captain. Isn’t bettering oneself the biggest achievement of all? Could Captain Teeth be a mature version of Sailor Teeth, who abandoned me? Do I dare trust my intuition that says our paths crossed now because he’s ready to settle down?

“Climb up, Sabs,” he commands against my lips. His hand leaves my chin to untie his britches. “Take your pleasure and teach me how to quiff a Kraken.”

My name on his lips steals the breath from my lungs, but the risk is too big.

“I can’t be another conquest. Not here—”

“This might sound strange, but I believe you when you call me your mate. I went to a fortune teller whose cards said the octopus card represented my lady love. Chub—smartest hearty on the boat—said the octopus was an ace of diamonds and you’d be a rich lass. But here you are…half octopus. I’m not asking to conquer a Kraken . I’m asking my future wife to give me a banging farewell before she swims off to find my damn boat.”

“We don’t know each other. Mates are the way of Kraken but not humans—”

“I’ve sailed with magic bowls, a woman who weaves like a spider, a Hoodoo priestess, a vampiress…I have met the devil himself in Blackbeard. I lost my ties to humanity and prejudices against others long ago. I don’t question the mystical nature of our courtship, and neither should you, Sabs.”

Future wife. Sabs, a nickname. Courtship. Belonging. Damn him, I want them all.

My front tentacles glide up the hard planes of his body to wrap around his neck. They coil around one another to give me an anchor. I raise my weight out of the water until his tip pokes at my siphon’s pouch—inches from my soulbeak on my belly. The errant scale burns like the fires of hell. With two tentacles on the sandy bottom, two wrapped around his legs, and two squeezing my breasts as he watches with burning intensity, I position myself to join us.

“Will you bend so I can stick you between the tentacles?” His words come out like a marlin who escaped a Kraken’s grasp.

“You want your cock in my beaked mouth? You trust me not to snap it off with my beak and razor-sharp teeth?” I tease him because the terrified look on his face is priceless. I wrap my hands around his cock to intensify the threat. “How about I take you in my siphon slit where it’s warm, wet, and produces unbelievable suction?”

“Show me.” He’s bewildered but excited. His eyes dart up and down my body as if presented with a meal he doesn’t know how to devour.

My tentacles move his hands to my nipples again to coax his fingers to roll them how I like best. As he busies himself pleasing me, I breathe open my siphon’s pouch just above my pelvic bone. Saltwater rushes in. The chill zaps my feverish insides. My siphon muscles contract to squirt it out but freeze when he groans. Oops, the heated water blasted his cock. He bites his bottom lip with his chin tilted toward the sky.

“Stop teasing me,” he moans.

I guide his tip into my siphon and tighten the tentacles around his neck to push him inside to the hilt. A pelican flying overhead would make the same strangled squawk as Teeth. My siphon muscles contract and release in rhythmic pulses to mimic my swimming across the ocean. The intensity can propel my body almost a mile…or suck my mate’s cock harder than any human’s mouth. Any other man, I’d worry about injury, but my experienced mate has desensitized himself for me.

Proof we are physically a perfect match.

My tentacles on the ocean floor wrap around his ankles to replace the ones climbing his legs and into his britches. His hands learn my body with tender caresses as I hold myself in his care. Our kisses are slow swipes and gentle nips at one another’s lips as if we have a lifetime to demonstrate our love for one another. The reality that we are strangers drifts away on the morning tide. The suckers on my tentacles flare open to taste every inch of him.

The destined bond between us sings in my heart as joy floods my veins. A tentacle slithers to the apex of his thighs to writhe against his nutmegs and nudge his windward passage with each sway of our bodies. Ink swirls around us in the water as my thrusts accelerate. He groans in my mouth as I penetrate him, locking us together in an infinite loop. Pleasure blooms along the edges of my siphon pouch as they plump with arousal. We’re so close, I’m lost as to where I end and he begins. I’m overwhelmed with a sense of my fate aligning with his.

“Peak for me, Sabs,” he whispers. He bites my ear. I see stars as my body lets go. My tentacles mimic the pulsing of my siphon. I bury my face in his chest to muffle my cries of rapture. He floods my body with his release, triggering another storm inside me. Tears gather at the corners of my eyes as I fight my mind for control. Sensations zip through my body with alarming speed, so I’m bombarded by pleasure from head to tentacle tip.

“Kinky minx,” he whispers with a grunt as I withdraw my tentacle from him. “If I didn’t believe your prophecy before, I do now.”

“Does that mean you will take the time to get to know me?” I hate how needy I sound, but my soulbeak has more power over my mouth than my air-starved brain.

“I won’t rest until we find a way to be together,” he whispers against my lips. His hands tangle in my hair as our kiss deepens.

The stirrings of love within me churn like stormy seas. I wish I could stay in this moment forever, but the burning of someone watching me returns with the rush of blood back to my head. I must flee to the depths where humans won’t go. The Caribbean is a small place for a Kraken, and I have found his boat repeatedly over the years. I will find him again. Self-preservation finally overpowers my soulbond, and I lower my tentacles into the cold ocean.

“Then I’m confident in leaving you for now. I’ll look for Patricia’s Wish on the seas while you look in the harbor. If you find her first, set sail, so we can meet again.”

“Stay in my arms for a few more minutes—”

“The sun is high in the sky. Someone will see me,” I say with a whimper.

“I can protect you. I’ll slice them to ribbons.” By the fates, I believe him. Even if his fervent promises are just for today, he means the sweet words. It’s in the reverent way he lowers me into the water. My tentacles spread out on the seafloor to cool themselves. He pets my hair as I lean against his thigh.

Why do my insides cry? Is this tryst different from the last one? He may wipe my feelings from his memory like the first time I fell for him. I’ve been more honest with who I am and my intentions, but has he? We crashed together like sea animals in a mating frenzy, but is that enough to tempt him to get to know me?

“Go on, Sabs,” he says quietly. “Swim off so I know you’re safe.”

“You walk away first,” I reply. “I’ll hear anyone approaching in the water.”

“You’re the one who is worried that we’re being watched. I’ve always fancied myself an erotic showman—”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“I could fall in love with you, you know,” he says before bending over to capture my lips one last time. He stomps through the surf, lacing his pants as he returns to land. Strands of his hair dance around his head in a chaotic halo. The sand beneath his boots crunches as if greeting him as underlings. His glance over his shoulder and soft, half smile melt my heart. It isn’t the farewell smirk of a conquest, but the shy grin of someone in a new relationship.

I sink under the water to wet my hair. If he looks back again, his last glimpse of me won’t be as frightening. I finger-comb the locks the best I can. When I emerge once more, he’s vanished—presumably to the opposite side of the boulders. It’s just as well. The sooner we part, the sooner we will reunite. The next time he talks to his lady love over the side of the boat, I’ll answer. He won’t pour liquor into the sea; he’ll lick it off my tentacle’s suckers.

In two weeks, I’ll have legs again. Maybe he will give me a tour of his boat and introduce me to his crew…as his lady love. Maybe we will wed. He’s talked about his anxieties over marrying his quartermaster to his cook. Would marrying me make him nervous too? After I explain my soulbeak, he won’t have reason to be. He has part-time freedom unless he takes it. The future and power in our relationship is in his hands…like it always has been.

Maybe nothing has changed after all.

Ouch!

A net falls over me, tangling in my tentacles. A second net crisscrosses over the first. I unsheathe my knife and saw at the ropes of the first net. Why didn’t I take my knife to be sharpened two weeks ago when I was last human? The dull blade wastes valuable seconds gliding over the strands instead of cutting through them. I give up on cutting my way out.

I lean toward the deep. My tentacles dig into the sand as far out as I can reach. They bend to drag my body…and the bodies on the other end of the ropes…into the ocean. Curses and whistles beckon me to stare down my attackers, but I must focus on returning to the ocean. If I stop pulling with all my might for even a second, they will yank the closing cords on the nets and drag my tentacles from the sand . I’ll seal my doom. Pull. Pull .

“Gotcha now,” says a masculine voice. Two black, beady eyes lock with mine before a sharp-smelling rag is forced over my nose and mouth.

“Gills, you bastard,” I shout from behind the rag. As long as my gills are submerged, I can bring rich seawater through my vocal cords to speak. Each exhale soaks the rag and dilutes the foul liquid on it. “You can’t poison me this way.”

“Only I’m not alone,” he says with an evil laugh. A group of men gather around me, holding the ropes to the net. They dislodge my tentacles from the sand. I struggle, but each man wrestles a tentacle. There are too many of them. They lift my body from the water. I hold my breath as I twist and writhe to escape their punishing grip.

After minutes, I’m forced to inhale, and everything goes black.