Page 6 of Clutching Cthulhu’s Pearls (Time for Monsters)

My love’s eyes shine with joyous tears. The small bulge in her belly changes something in me. Seeing my eggs inside a female always pulls my heartstrings, but this time is different. Fatherly love, responsibility, and male pride share space with a fierce rage and surge of protectiveness. Papa won’t get these hatchlings. Harriett won’t let him take them from her body…and he won’t have access to her…because I’m stealing her away.

We will give the hatchling in that little egg a raft life, even if it costs me my life.

“I can’t hold them back,” I whisper through clenched jaws. My clumsy fingers work the button at the top of her opening, which makes her moan with pleasure. I must bring her to the brink of orgasm, so her squeezing will help usher the egg inside. If her body fights the egg, my shaft may tear her insides. We are joined tightly, or I would pleasure her entrance. If I withdraw, I doubt I will fit inside her again with the eggs lodged between us.

“Just get the eggs inside her,” Papa yells. Beads of sweat jump from his bald head and onto Hairy. The sight adds kindling to the fire burning within me. I don’t want any piece of him touching my precious Harriett. Never again. “Stop stalling and do it! Do it!”

“She must be ready, or her body won’t stretch!” Today I’ve yelled at Papa more than all my days combined. Is it my age or Harriett that inspires me to rebel against the only family I’ve ever known? My new family, strapped to a table and helpless, needs me more than the one buried in my memories. Mother is gone. Father was never one of us, was he? He’s our creator, a watchful figure in the shadows, but not a father.

“She stretched for one. Once a woman’s body is open, it doesn’t snap back into place. She’s ruined for men, but she’s perfect for experiments with eggs.”

Calling Harriett ruined pulls a growl from my belly.

“Move within me, Phin,” Harriett whispers, trembling from head to toe. “I’ll peak on your command and take your next egg. Please thrust into me.”

Oh, sweet heavens! My hips swing in tiny movements to give her what she wants without hurting her. Her body strangles my empty cock. Lust boils hot in my body, opening my egg sack to my enlarging shaft. The egg presses against Harriett’s opening, and I’m fascinated by the bulge between our bodies. Our hatchling stretches her opening with each of my pushes. As her body engulfs the egg, coated with my green fluid to ease the slide, she moans my name.

Papa leans over my shoulder. His smile is too large for his face. I press our bodies together to block his view.

“Phin! Yes, Phin! Push hard! Slam that big cock into me!” She screams, but for who’s ears—mine or Papa’s? She gets a rise out of both of us, but my heart sinks lower in my chest. Will she still love me when he’s not there to be jealous? Unable to deny her anything, I rock into her with enough force to bruise my legs on the table’s edge. The satisfying sway of her chin and quiver of her breasts is worth the ache on my thighs.

Anything for Hairy.

“Two eggs,” Papa murmurs as twin bulges push out of Harriett’s stomach.

“Three,” I whimper as the third bulge shifts from behind the second two. “I’m sorry, Hairy, I didn’t close the sack in time. I am a weak male.”

“I have three of your eggs, Phin? Why would you apologize for such a gift? You’ve given me pleasure beyond what I’ve experienced in life. I’m honored to be your chosen female, the mother to your hatchlings,” she says as sweat drips from her hair. The tone behind her voice is real, or at least I will pretend it is to fulfill my hunger for love.

Muddy water drips onto the table, and I’m suddenly offended. This whole room is wrong. Harriett’s tied wrists are wrong. Papa’s laughing eyes, bouncing pen, and written letters are wrong. We should be alone, on soft grass, under the stars. The crickets should sing for us as the waves applaud each egg’s arrival in their mother’s womb.

I hate Papa for taking this moment from us.

He will pay. We won’t just leave. We will take something of his first.

“Phin, where did you go? Please stay with me. I’m all alone if you don’t stay with me,” Harriett calls from a place beyond my anger.

“I’m here, beautiful. As long as I’m alive, I’ll be with my family,” I mumble, hating my lack of lips and the way my words come out.

Papa turns away from us to do something on his workbench. Can I hope he’s dropping off his notes to leave the room?

I release the table and slow my thrusts to reach for her. My dark green fingers rub the sensitive insides of her thighs. I cup her mound and then each egg on my ascent up her body. My long tentacles rearrange and recoil around her breasts and tease her nipples with flicks and light rubbing. Their abused purple points can’t take the power of my red suckers. I would fold inside like a wilted plant if I damaged her perfect body.

My bent waist strains our connection, collapsing my cock like a pinched reed, but I reach for my prize. Replacing my tentacles with my softer barbels, I tease her lips open and stroke her tongue with my tentacles. Her moans and groans grow in volume as I stuff four of them inside, withdrawing one to allow another to barge inside.

Harriett

My eyes roll back with bliss. Phin tastes of salt, grass, and desire. I duel with his tentacles invading my mouth. My tongue tickles the space between the suckers and the muscle of his appendages. He growls with pleasure. Despite just meeting him tonight, my body knows his body like a lifelong friend. I hollow my cheeks and suck on his writhing tentacles with all my might.

He lifts my thighs as far as my restraints allow, changing the angle of his impalement. He rams his cock into my sore body. The table rocks, screeching in agony, as he tests the limit of the furniture. The legs he’s knocked loose from their moorings on the floor stomp along as if keeping a beat for our song.

“Careful!” Leopold yells as his hanging torture instruments clang against the wall. The clatter of them hitting the floor fills me with pride. We will survive because Phin will reduce this house of horrors to rubble and free his family. “Don’t break the glass!”

Phin ignores Leopold.

The fourth egg glides into me like a boat approaching the dock on flat, calm seas. Perhaps Leopold was right. When my governesses warned me that I’d be ruined if I let a boy take my purity, I thought it would be in reputation only. How silly! They couldn’t have imagined that I’d be ruined because my cervix stretched beyond repair accepting eggs from a swamp man! After a marriage of denial and starvation, Phin feeds me a feast. I wish I could bring myself to care that my body is reconfigured to desire eggs instead of a man’s fluids.

“Only one,” Leopold sneers. He holds a tape measure over my belly to compare the curvature to his initial marks. “You said there were six. She had three. Why did you only release one? Is something wrong with the others? Get on with it! I have notes to write. I don’t have all day.”

“Slow for Hairy. Hairy must survive,” Phin snaps, batting Leopold’s hands off my body. He rips the tape measure from Leopold’s grip and throws it on the floor. I whimper with each yank and twist of his oviscape with his movements. The barbels slip from my mouth, and I mourn the loss. It’s like Phin’s rage at Leopold limits our contact.

“She looks to be taking them just fine. She’s your slut. Now release the eggs! All of them!”

“You don’t get to touch Har—”

“She’s my wife! She’s my property, which is why you’re wedged inside her. One more word, and I’ll end her after she delivers your eggs. You will be exterminated as an abomination while she’s executed for being the whore she is!” Leopold glares at me as he uses words too sophisticated for Phin. I’m sure Phin gets the gist of what he’s saying, but the meaning was meant for me. He wants an ally—albeit a coerced one—because he can no longer count on Phin’s obedience.

“Phin, darling, I’m ready for another egg. I must have all the eggs before your arousal fluid wears off,” I say sweetly, rolling my hips. How I wish I could caress his face the way a tentacle swept down my cheek?! “My love, I want all our hatchlings in my belly.”

Both males furrow their brows at my compliance to the other.

I quickly flick my eyes to the door and back to Phin, risking Leopold’s suspicions. As usual, my husband misses my cues because his focus is on his work—in this case, my belly.

“I will give you more,” Phin says, jerking his smaller cock until it spills over my stretched cunt.

Direct hit on my extended clit. I writhe as the fire ignites in the tiny bundle of nerves and radiates outward. As the fluid drips through my folds, my hips dance to obtain friction. I need. My breasts bounce wildly, filling the room with an obscene slapping. Phin’s eyes are wide with fear, his mouth set in a firm line, but his cock continues to gush. I don’t dare look at Leopold. His expression would probably disgust me to dryness.

“More! More! More!” I yell and bare my teeth like an animal.

“Unbelievable,” murmurs Leopold, earning a glare from Phin. “Extraordinary.”

“Give Hairy eggs! Give Harry eggs,” Phin chants as he breaks a sweat. It rains onto my heated belly, and I wish I could rub it in like a brand.

His movements are arhythmic pulses of varying force, which drive my body into a frenzy. I’m impaling myself on him as much as he’s pushing. My eyes bug out with the tidal wave of orgasmic bliss that floods my brain. The fifth egg climbs my vagina, rolling at my hyperextended cervix. Phin jabs it into place with a sting of pain.

He stops when my face crumples with the sting.

“We’re done,” he announces.

Leopold brings his tape measure and lays it over my lumpy belly. He holds Phin’s wrist in one hand as the other manipulates the tape over his marks. “That’s five eggs, not six. You aren’t done.”

“Hairy hurts. I won’t give her pain—even if it means dropping an egg,” Phin says, yanking his wrist out of Leopold’s grip.

“This is my experiment, and you aren’t done until I say you’re done!” Leopold’s hands shake with fury as he screams at us. He has the maniacal gleam in his eyes he gets when he thinks someone is spying on him. “Implant it in her, or I’ll kill you, remove the egg, and shove it inside her myself!”

“He’s telling the truth,” I wail. Tears mingle with sweat as I calculate the amount of pain I’m about to feel. I’d rather have more of Phin’s hormone goop and loving sex than Leopold’s surgery. Who knows what else he will do to my body while I’m at his mercy? And Phin, I can’t lose Phin when we just found one another. “Please, Phin—”

“I won’t hurt you,” he says, shaking his head. “You can’t die like the others.”

“I need you to hurt me. He will hurt me more—”

“I won’t kill you like the others!” Phin roars.

My heart stutters. Others died on this table? Phin’s announcement vacuums the room’s sound, so we sit motionless in a void.

“Did you stand up to Papa for those women—the ones who died trying to take your eggs?” My muted tone resembles a shout in the silent room.

Leopold snatches a scalpel from his instrument table, forces Phin’s head to the side, and holds it to Phin’s neck. His open shirt waves and his nostrils flare with each forced exhale. He didn’t sleep before following me into the swamp, for his outfit is the same as at breakfast this morning. His disheveled state confirms he would kill women with Phin’s eggs. If he slips or if Phin jerks, he may amputate one of Phin’s sensitive tentacles.

No need to ask anything except for the level of Phin’s involvement. Phin has a bead of blood as Leopold’s knife indents his flesh, but was every prior fertilization reduced to violence?

“I never argued before,” Phin whispers. His mouth curves downward in a severe frown that can’t catch the drool at the corners without lips. A barbel wipes his face before he continues. “Papa brought them. They screamed. They hated Phin. I thought making Papa happy was my best chance at love, but when Hairy lives, I’ll have family.”

“Give me family, Phin,” I whisper with love and courage coursing through my veins. Phin isn’t a rapist or killer. He’s Leopold’s pawn. Whether he’s a simpleton who the scientist took advantage of or just someone starved for human contact who was manipulated doesn’t matter.

“I can’t,” he replies through a torrent of tears. “I’m scared.”

“So am I, but we do hard things. We survive. We parent. We love.”

“We survive. We parent. We love,” Phin repeats. We say the words together in unison. The three sentences become our battle cry as the table marches with Phin’s thrusts. His ass bumps into Leopold, who topples out of my view. I’m happy he’s ousted from our private moment.

No hormone-induced fever. No excitement over novelty or the forbidden. I lock eyes with my chosen male and relax my sore, battered lower half to receive the last egg. I gather determination from his stare as he harvests strength from mine. My hips raise to meet his as our frenzied sex morphs into making love. Our offspring travels from father to mother in a cocoon of love. I hope they feel as cherished later as they are now.

Phin and I release tears of joy as his tentacles caress the hatchlings within my belly. He lowers my thighs with infinite care and caresses my feet on the metal stirrups. I can’t believe we lived. I open my mouth to spill loving nonsense to Phin when Leopold appears behind him with a long syringe. The needle pierces Phin beneath the ear as my screams fill the room. He falls to the floor with a chorus of thuds. Leopold’s looming figure over me is the last thing I remember before a prick at my neck makes everything go black.