Chapter Eight

Marin

W ith a smirk on his face, Kert jumped to his feet and disappeared into the bedroom.

The t-shirt reached his mid-thigh, revealing his leanly-muscled legs with a dusting of hair that I was yearning to touch for hours. I loved it when he wore my clothes, marking himself as mine, even for a short period of time. My friend, of course. And lover?

Burying my hands in my tentacles, I groaned. What the fuck had I done?

What if I fell in love with him even more then he’d leave in a few weeks?

Kert was worth the heartbreak.

He came for me. Fuck. I hadn’t expected my reaction to him being in danger to be so visceral—my emotions took control of my body, leaving my brain behind. He’d been so damn close to that fire. The instant relief of his being unharmed ignited some primal instinct in me. I had to touch him, claim him, make him moan for me. Witness him be the most alive he’d ever been.

The way he’d fallen apart under my touch had been nothing short of magical. Terrifyingly addictive.

One taste of Kert’s lips on the ice skating rink had been enough to turn me into a needy teenager, jerking off every morning and night when Kert couldn’t see me.

Then the fucking couch incident. My instincts had lit on fire faster than the fabric and I had to make sure Kert was okay, then I couldn’t stop touching him and my tentacles went haywire on his body. Through the suckers I had tasted his sweat, his ass, his cum and reveled at the needy noises he’d made. Because of me. For me.

Deep in my gut, a vague sense of dread twirled. Our friendship was solid now, but with sex in the mix, it could all go tentacles up.

Unfortunately, I was stupid and I couldn’t have kept my hands and tentacles away from Kert unless he’d told me to. Which he hadn’t. So jeopardizing our friendship for the sake of getting to touch the sexy krampus had been my only option.

Now he wouldn’t let me avoid addressing my sick need to bury my tentacles in his hair, his ass, his dick.

The sound of Kert wheeling his suitcase into the room brought me back from my musings.

“I was afraid you’d see it, but now I think you should.” He opened the luggage and took out a hefty satin bag. Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his top hat, he retrieved a long, silicone tentacle.

“What is that?” My voice went so high that my Toothed Whale friends would be jealous.

Kert bit his bottom lip then flicked the hoop in it with his forked tongue. “A toy.”

Naughty little devil. “You brought this with you? On the plane?”

“Yup.”

“It’s the size of my tentacle. And similar colors too.” I poked it with my finger, and it wiggled in Kert’s hand.

“That’s the point. I couldn’t have you for all those years, so this was my fantasy toy.” Whenever Kert blushed, his cheeks went a barely-noticeable darker shade of red, but I could hear his reaction in the drop of his tone of voice.

“Years?” Here I was talking to whales again.

“I’ve had a crush on you since I first laid eyes on you, Marin. It didn’t take long before I discovered you were so much more than a tentacled hunk of muscle. My straight bestie without judgment who accepted my quirks, my sexuality, and my freezing feet. Who warmed me up on cold nights and carried me to our dorm room when I was too drunk to walk after a party.”

“I never knew. But sharing that cramped room with you was the highlight of my stay in Berlin.” I reached out to pull him into a hug, but he was still holding the toy like a proud fisherman would hold a fish. “You used toys back then too.”

His eyes blew wide. “Did you find some?”

“I knew not to look because I saw you using them. My sight is very good in the dark and you were quite obvious. They must have been smaller because you were able tohide them so quickly.” I pointed to the toy he was holding. “Can you fit that inside you?” My tentacles wiggled his way and I let them, wrapping one around his calf and another around his wrist.

“Yup. I’ve been training for depth for several years with smaller ones until I got to this.” He yeeted it back to the suitcase where it landed with a dull thump. “I want you to know I won’t freak out. I remember what happened to you with Denise.”

“Ah, yes. She liked showing me off like a zoo animal in the wild, but when it came to sex, she lost it.” I grimaced, recalling the look on her face when she saw me fully nude. “It took me a while to get over her disgust.”

“You burned through hookups like wildfire after that. And no one else complained as far as I recall.” He took the tentacle wrapped around his calf and hugged it as he sat down. “Which made watching you walk out that door when you had a date even harder.”

“If only I knew back then.” All the nights in the dorm room that we could have spent pleasuring each other.

“No. You had to follow your journey.” He rolled his eyes and released a sigh like a prelude. “Maybe you were right. We both weren’t ready then. Not for each other. Now we can fool around and remain friends.”

Fool around? Now that we agreed on getting intimate, I wanted to ruin him for anyone else. So once he left he’d be thinking of me every time he fucked someone. Knowing the end was near hurt, but I was ready to make the best of it.

“Come here.” I opened my arms and tentacles and welcomed his body as he snuggled into me, his tail waving in the air until it settled on his leg.

He belonged in my embrace. I closed my eyes and released a sigh as John Lennon’s voice sailed through the speakers in the background. Yes, I could definitely imagine a better world right now.

“When you admitted you were into kink you said I didn’t tell you either.” He placed one of his tentacles on his lap and played with the suckers. “Back then you were a cute vanilla boy running after girls. And you had no interest in my sex life, so how did you know about my preferences?”

I caressed his back with a tentacle as I gathered my thoughts to tell him what I imagined admitting to knowing for years. “The evening before the final art history exam, I was worried when you didn’t arrive back at the dorm, so I asked around if anyone saw you. Carl from next door told me you went to this house party in the suburbs.”

Kert’s eyes blew wide. “Which party?” He wiggled around to look at me, his much smaller body remaining in the cradle of my crossed legs and tentacles.

“Carl gave me the address and told me to say I was a member of Das Wolf-Gang Club at the entrance. He was quite surprised I didn’t know where you went. That scared me even more. I thought you were in trouble, since you usually would leave me a note if you went to visit someone.”

“Yeah. But just like you, I didn’t leave you the address when I went looking for sex. I would tell Carl. What did you do then?” His apprehension was showing in his tight grip on my tentacle.

“I took a bus there and by the time I found the house, I thought it was too late for you to still be in there. The lights were off like no one was home. I knocked anyway. Some guy approached me and ogled my tentacles with appreciation. I told him I was a part of the club and he took me through the back door and into the basement.”

Kert covered his mouth. “Schei?e. I remember that night. What did you see?”

“You were tied to a bench with someone’s dick in your mouth.” I got semi-hard recalling the moment, poking Kert in the ass. “A muscled orc was fucking you, and four other guys were jerking off on your chest. I stood frozen, unable to look away. The dude you were giving head to, squeezed you by the throat. He was choking you. When your eyes rolled back, I rushed to stop them, but screeched into a halt when you came all over yourself then screamed for more.”

Kert buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he mumbled through his fingers.

I tugged his hands down. “Don’t be.”

He shook his head, confusion marring his brow. “Why did you stay friends with me? And why haven’t you told me?”

“When I witnessed you willingly subjecting yourself to all that and enjoying it, something snapped in me. Kert…” I kissed the inside of his palm and put it on my chest. “The ecstasy on your face was proof of how much you enjoyed it. It was the most erotic experience of my life, and I was only watching from a distance. Not only did I realize that I wanted you, but it also hit me that I wasn’t equipped to give you what you needed, even if you wanted me back.”

“That’s not true. You gave me so much then without sex.”

“Yeah. I could be your friend but not more. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t ready to be what you needed.” I pulled a blanket over his legs, tucking his cold feet under it.

“And now you are?”

“I don’t know. But I left vanilla behind that night. I’ve never seen an expression as happy on your face as then. That’s when I knew.”

“What exactly did you know?” He slid his hand to my neck and caressed the edge of my gills with gentle strokes, filling me with courage.

“That I want to put that expression on your face one day.” I saw Kert open his mouth to respond, and placed a tentacle over his lips to silence him. “Let me say this. Please. I wasn’t ready to come out to you then without figuring out what I was into first. Seeing you in that basement was more than a sexual awakening. I was beginning to understand what I was looking for in sex with so many female partners before. That realization helped me find myself as a person. My awakening was thanks to you, but it was just the start.” I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Those last months in Berlin my head was a mess. I knew there were two sides to my Kert and I loved my friend, but I was also turned on by the feisty submissive side of you. If I’d told you, I would have blown our friendship because I was not ready to do anything with that knowledge. When I moved to New York, I researched clubs. As it turned out, experimenting with kinks in a BDSM environment got me hard. So I began my training.”

Kert opened his mouth and I nodded for him to ask his question. “Training for what?”

“To be a Dom. To acquaint myself with the ins and outs of BDSM.”

“Wait.” He sat up and grinned. “Are you saying you did that for me?”

“No.” I smirked. “I did it because of you and because it fascinated me. But I couldn’t even hope to use my knowledge with you back then.”

“Now you can.” He thrust his chin up like he had when I had wrapped my tentacle around his throat before he’d come.

“Would you want me to?” I was fucking with him now. His arousal was in the air and in the tent he’d made of the blanket on his lap.

“Marin, my pretty tentacled himbo.” Kert gave me an exasperated look. “If your vanilla ass way back then told me you were attracted to me even a little bit, I’d impale myself on those tentacles faster than you could say rollkragenpullover .”

I snorted. “What’s that?”

He waved his slender hand in dismissal. “The sweater with the standing neck thing.”

“A turtleneck sweater.”

“You get my point.” He flicked the end of his tail like a bull whip.

“I didn’t know you were attracted to me. You joked about my muscles, but it was just our banter—your usual Kert stuff. How was I supposed to know I was special?” I sneaked a tentacle under the blanket and stroked his thigh.

“Oh, I don’t know.” He pursed his lips in a very kissable way. “You carried me around like I was royalty and let me snuggle with you in bed. How was I not supposed to not crush on you?”

“You were always cold. And you’re very compact, fitting in my arms so well. I just thought you were touchy-feely like that. It was nice. Freeing. Being at ease with each other without expectations.”

Kert shook his head. “I was so smitten.” He covered his eyes with my tentacle then cradled it in his hands. “You were chasing pussy day in and day out. Well, more like girls fell on your lap and your dick like it was magical.”

“Dicks.”

“What?” He sat straighter and I repositioned my tentacles around him.

I shrugged. “I have two.”

Kert’s laughter filled the room. “I thought that was a rumor that you just never corrected for shits and giggles!”

“The first evening at the dorm, one guy made a weird-ass comment when he saw me in the shower and his buddies sniggered. I wasn’t ashamed of my body, but people can be weird. So, after that, I’d wear boxers to the communal shower and try to score the ones that still had shower curtains on when I could.”

“Assholes. I’m jealous of them, though.” Kert absent-mindedly played with the suckers on my tentacle, giving me his scent and taste. “I slept in the same room as Two-dicked Marin without knowing how accurate the nickname was. Okay. So it really was magical. I don’t blame those girls, then. Were they after DP?”

“Oh, yeah.” My tentacle wiggled up Marin’s leg and he parted them, letting me taste the warm skin of his inner thigh with my suckers.

“Fuck me, Marin. How come we never talked like that back then?”

“I was high on fucking, but never stopped to think why. Only after I saw you that night, it hit me. Being around you made me horny. So I took that pent-up energy and pumped it into anyone who wanted it. I liked girls, so being anything but straight didn’t cross my mind.”

“And after that?”

“I sampled everyone at the BDSM club in New York who wanted to kneel for me.”

“Kneel huh?” Kert smirked. “How about bend over? Spread legs? I’m game for all of it.”

“This time I know you’re serious.”

“Like a heart attack.” Kert lifted a finger. “I have one condition—exclusivity. I don’t want to share you if I only have a few weeks.”

“That’s fair.” My cocks had lost their appetite for anyone else since Kert announced he was coming to visit. So much so, I canceled my ticket to Greece for family Christmas and told him to spend it with me. I’d never missed the celebration before, but this time I needed the time with Kert. It had already paid off. I’d finally confessed my secrets.

He wiggled in my tentacle nest, ending up with his face against my pec and his ass over my right thigh. Nuzzling my chest, he reached back to lift his t-shirt, exposing his bare cheeks.

I wiggled my tentacle between them. “Is that okay?”

He let out a guttural purr. “Oh, yes. Remember that time your British girlfriend of the week brought fruitcake?”

“Weird change of subject, but okay. I remember. It was nasty.”

“Yup. My safeword is fruitcake.”

I burst out laughing. “That will be easy to remember. It will be mine, too.”

“So now that we have that over with, don’t treat me like I’ll break. I know my limits and I’ll let you know when I don’t like something or when we’re in the yellow territory—way before we reach safewordland.”

I kissed his smart mouth. His confidence was hot. And I was more than ready to oblige my devilish brat.