Page 12 of Hook, Line, and Tentacle

Misreading the Signs

I haven’t slept this well in years—or quite possibly ever. Who knew all it takes to get the best night’s sleep of your life is a good dicking? Or… tentacocking, I guess.

Cal is sleep-warm beside me with his arm draped heavy and possessive over my waist. I’ve got a tentacle pulled tight to my chest, curled against my collarbones like I’m cuddling a pet.

He stirs, the deep rumble of a sigh against my neck, and then he rolls closer, lips brushing my shoulder. “Good morning, love,” he murmurs, voice gravelly with sleep. He buries his face against my chest, one arm winding tighter around my waist.

Something squeezes behind my ribs. Not unpleasant, but sharp—like I’ve tripped a wire I didn’t know was there, which I suppose is the thing about tripwires. I run my fingers gently through his hair, stroking down the back of his head. “Is this how this is going to be now?”

He stills against me, tentacles pausing their slow, sleepy twitching. “What do you mean?”

I hum. “It’s just… this is quite fast, isn’t it? I guess I want to make sure we’re on the same page. Because—” I cut off with a hard swallow, because I know what I’m about to admit is absurd. “Well, I’m getting a little… attached.”

He lifts his head, gaze sharp and warm all at once, and then he rolls me beneath him. The shift is smooth and easy, his strength unbothered by my weight, and I gasp a little as my back hits the mattress.

Tentacles slide across my thighs, brushing and curling and teasing until I’m squirming underneath him. One slips between my legs, grazing against the heat already building there, and my back lifts.

“Little trespasser, are you already wet for me?” His voice drops to a low rasp, his smirk nothing short of sinful. “So needful. Do you ache for me, love? ”

I make a noise. I’m not sure what it is—the only thing I’m sure of is that he’s stolen my words again, and I don’t mind a bit.

He kisses me again and again, mouth brushing soft over mine like he’s trying to memorize the shape of it.

“Do you make a habit of worrying about misreading the signs?” he asks. “You asked me the same thing yesterday.”

A prickle rises under my skin. “It’s not a bad thing,” I say, a little more defensively than I mean to. “Asking for verbal reassurance. I’d say that’s quite a nice quality to have in a partner.”

His response is another kiss—but this one is hungrier, deeper.

His tongue licks into my mouth like he owns it.

The tentacles don’t stop moving. One loops under my thigh, hitching my leg up around his hip.

Another curves over my breast, slick and warm and careful as it strokes across my nipple.

His cock—already hard, already thick and heavy between us—rocks through my folds, dragging the swollen head against my clit.

“Yes,” he says, mouth against my jaw, “it is. And that’s what you are to me.

A partner. An equal.” He shifts his weight, bracing himself above me, his hips still rolling slow and deliberate, cock never quite pushing in.

“If you want reassurance, you only ever have to ask. But what I said to you—about you being mine—that wasn’t just heat talking. I meant it. Every word.”

My breath hitches. His cock drags lower, nudging at my entrance, but he doesn’t press forward. Not yet. Just enough to make my thighs tremble, to make me clutch at his arms, digging my nails into his shoulders.

“People say a lot of things during sex,” I murmur, not quite meeting his eyes. “I just wanted to check.”

He hums, a low, pleased sound that curls like smoke in my belly. “I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I’ve only ever been with you. And I will only ever be with you. Because you’re mine. And I belong to you in kind.”

The words ripple through me like a wave. Something inside me goes loose, liquid and unbearably aching. “Say it again,” I whisper.

He dips to kiss the hollow of my throat, then looks up, his eyes glowing low and violet. “I’m yours, dearest Neviah. My heart and every part of me belongs to you. ”

I laugh, nervous and breathless. “Even your not-a-tentacle-cock?”

He groans into my neck, chuckling as he pulls back just enough to look me in the eye. “Yes, love. Even that.”

I hook my ankles behind his back, dragging him closer, and he lets me.

“Good,” I breathe. “Then give it to me. You know, since it’s mine. Please.”

His laugh is low and rough and full of adoration as he pushes forward, sliding inside me with one smooth, perfect stroke.

The rest of the week passes in the same warm, dreamlike rhythm—waking up tangled in Cal’s limbs, pressed into his chest or curled around a tentacle draped lazily over my hips.

We spend most of our time in the shop together.

I sit on the counter with my knees drawn up, nursing tea and rambling about my old life—about tidal zones and coral structures and my favorite specimens from the lab.

He listens like the ocean itself has fallen silent to hear me talk.

I ask once what it is he finds so interesting about marine biology. He just shrugs, casual and unreadable as always, but then he murmurs, “You light up when you talk about it. That’s what I like.”

On Friday, he closes the shop early. Apparently, that’s not something he does.

The way the townspeople blink at the CLOSED sign like it’s an omen makes that pretty clear.

But Cal doesn’t seem to care. He takes me upstairs, wraps me in one of his soft, oversized hoodies—I consider that a successful theft—and we curl up on his worn-out sofa, ostensibly to watch a movie.

We aren’t really watching. He’s got one tentacle wrapped loosely around my calf, another sliding lazily up and down my spine, and I’ve got one curled against my chest like a security blanket.

My fingers stroke over the warm, slick surface, slow and steady. He lets out a little hum, like it soothes him, and leans in closer, resting his chin on my shoulder.

I turn my head to nose against his cheek, breathing him in. “Can I ask you something?”

He kisses the curve of my jaw. “You can ask me anything.”

“Have you always been like this?” I gesture vaguely at the tentacles, the glowing eyes, the whole package. “Were you born this way?”

He stiffens almost imperceptibly. The tentacle in my hand stills. But then he leans in again, exhaling softly. “No.”

I wait. He doesn’t say more right away, and a hot feeling rises in my throat. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. If it’s too hard, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter to me. I like you now. Like this.”

That earns a small smile. He huffs out a breath, and it ruffles my hair. “I got drunk one night. On the beach. I’d had a bad day.”

He hesitates, like he’s trying to decide whether or not to say the rest. I stay quiet, letting him have the space.

“I was lonely,” he admits eventually. “And then I blacked out. It’s a blur. But I woke up like this.”

My fingers stroke over the tentacle again, gentler now, and I huff a small, surprised laugh. “I mean, I would say this seems like the worst hangover ever…” I gesture vaguely at him, the tentacles, the eyes, the monstrous breadth of him. “But I quite like this, actually.”

He chuckles softly, a low sound against my hair, and presses a kiss to my temple. “Yeah. That’s how I felt at the time. And… well, for the last hundred and twenty-one years.” His voice drops. “Until I met you.”

I nudge his side with my elbow. “So let me get this straight. You turned into a tentacle man when you were forty-three. You’ve had over a century to figure out this whole… whatever this is. And you’ve never been with anyone, even before?”

He glances down at me with a slow blink. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I say flatly, “you’re hot , Cal.”

He lets out a bark of laughter, startled and a little disbelieving. “I’m also reclusive. Not very friendly. Bit of a shut-in. Apparently, I can even be scary.”

“Well,” I murmur, snuggling closer, “you’ve been a very good landlord to me. The orgasms are a nice touch, I have to say. Really above and beyond.”

He growls, deep in his chest, and kisses me—hard, hungry, like he needs the taste of me just to keep his balance. When he pulls back, his eyes are glowing again. “I am not your landlord, and you are not my tenant. You’re mine , and you’ll be staying exactly where you belong. ”

“Which is…?” I grin up at him, already knowing.

He slides a hand over my stomach, one tentacle curling possessively around my thigh. “Right here. In my home. In my bed. With me.”

“I think I can agree to that,” I say solemnly, like I haven’t been sleeping in his bed the past week. The warmth in my chest swells so fast I almost say it then.

The real thing. The big thing that’s far too big to say after only a week.

Instead, I blurt, “I can’t have kids.”

Cal stills instantly, but his eyes stay steady on mine. “Okay.”

I swallow, rushing to fill the silence. “I just… I thought I should say it. Because this feels serious. Like, very serious. And I didn’t want—”

“It’s all right,” he says, gently but firmly, his hand smoothing up and down my back. “It’s okay, love.”

I nod, once. Then again, because it’s hard to stop. “I was pretty sure I didn’t want them anyway. I always thought… the world’s kind of a mess, you know? And I didn’t want to raise a kid in it. But when I found out I couldn’t—”

I break off, breath shivering.

He tilts my face to his with one hand, eyes searching. “You wanted it to be a choice,” he murmurs. “You wanted it to be your choice.”

“Yeah,” I whisper. “Exactly.”

And the look he gives me then is so full of understanding it almost breaks me wide open. He pulls me into his arms, every inch of him curling around me, like the ocean closing in. Safe and endless and dark and warm.

I press my face into his chest, breathing in the salt-warm scent of his skin, the faint ozone crackle that always seems to cling to him like a storm barely held at bay.

“Do you feel that way?” I ask softly.

He hums low. “What way?”