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Twenty-Six

L eonie couldn’t look away.

He stood before her like a living statue carved from moonlight and shadow, his features regal, alien, and achingly beautiful. The pale, luminous skin, the obsidian eyes with no whites, the silken black hair that fell past his shoulders—he didn’t just look like a god.

He was one.

And he was looking at her as though she were a miracle.

Heat flared within her. It made no sense—none of this made sense—but it was real. The way he looked at her. The way he held himself still, as though one wrong move might shatter the moment.

She swallowed hard, heart thundering, and raised her hand again—this time not to explore his face, but to touch his chest. Even through his tunic, he radiated heat. Strength. Restraint.

“I want to feel you,” she said, voice low, breathy. “All of you.”

His black eyes widened slightly, and for the first time, she saw something like uncertainty flicker across his features.

She reached down and took his hand... and then deliberately moved it to her waist. "Touch me."

And then, almost shyly, almost teasingly, she whispered, "With the others, too."

For a second, he didn’t move. It was as if she’d frozen him in time.

And then his tentacles stirred—slowly, reverently—rising from beneath the folds of his robes. Seven in total. They moved with grace, like extensions of his thoughts, and when the first one coiled gently around her wrist, she gasped.

It didn’t feel slimy. Or cold. Or wrong.

It felt... exquisite. Like warm silk wrapped in electric heat.

Another one slid around her waist. Another brushed lightly over her shoulder, then her collarbone, circling her neck without pressure, as though learning her shape. It was overwhelming—and yet not at all frightening. She felt enclosed, cradled, worshipped.

A strange thrill pulsed through her, stronger than anything she’d ever known. Karian, for all his power, seemed... captivated. Helpless.

That helplessness—his vulnerability in this moment—made her feel something she hadn’t expected: control.

She had undone him.

How could she—a human, a captive, someone far from everything she’d known—do this to a being like him?

And as one of his tentacles slid slowly under the hem of her dress, teasing her thigh, her skin erupted in goosebumps.

She knew what was coming.

And she didn’t stop him.