Page 15 of Hook, Line, and Tentacle

At some point, my arms rise of their own accord, covering my face.

I think that’s when I start crying again, breath shuddering.

It isn’t until he shifts to lean over me and turn the water off that I realize he’s still drenched and ice-cold.

He hasn’t stepped under the spray at all, like he’s afraid of using up too much of it and making me go without.

My hands circle his waist, sliding over the soaked fabric .

The tremble in his limbs borders on violent. “Love, don’t—”

“You need to get warm too,” I whisper.

“No,” he murmurs. “You’re what matters. I just—”

“Cal.” I touch his face, and he goes still. My touch slides over the stubble at the line of his jaw, and his eyes close. “Please, baby. I need you to be warm too.”

The word hangs between us, something soft electric. His breath catches at it. Baby.

He blinks, lashes spiked with water, and something cracks open behind his eyes.

He plants a hand on my back and lowers me carefully to the tiled bench inside the shower and strips off his sodden clothes in silence.

When he cranks the water back on and steps under the spray, it’s warmer now.

I watch him press his face into his hands for a moment, just letting the water rush over his body.

Then he sinks to his knees in front of me quite abruptly, wraps his arms around my waist, and buries his face against my stomach.

I thread my fingers into his soaked curls.

One of his tentacles wraps loosely around my ankle.

Another rests at the dip of my hip, right at the top of my thigh.

I stroke his hair for what feels like a long time.

When we emerge from the bathroom, dripping and silent, the apartment is warm and quiet.

The only sounds are him moving around to gather supplies, and the electrical hum of his refrigerator in the kitchen.

He moves on instinct to grab every blanket and towel he can find.

His hoodie drapes over my shoulders—my favorite one, with the dark blue trim that’s soft on the inside—and he swaddles me until I’m cocooned and dry, then tucks me onto the sofa in a veritable nest.

He’s still shaking, but I don’t think it’s from the cold anymore. His shoulders twitch once. Then again, harder. Like something in him is short-circuiting.

I reach out and tug on his wrist. “Come here.”

He shakes his head—barely—but doesn’t resist when I take his hand and guide him into the blanket fort he built for me. The moment I pull him into my arms, he folds like a cheap suit. No resistance, no pride, just total undoing .

He curls around me, and I feel the shudders tearing through him. His breath hitches high and sharp in his throat, but stifled like he’s trying to quell it. His body vibrates.

“Cal.” I dip my chin, resting it in the crook of his neck and shoulder.

He draws in a shallow breath, but his voice breaks on the first word. “I—”

I thread my fingers into his hair again. His chest stutters like he’s swallowing down sobs, but they come anyway. Silent at first, then not.

“I thought—fuck, Neviah, I thought I lost you—” He chokes on the words. I press a kiss to his throat, where his pulse is a frantic shiver under his warm skin. “I felt it. God, love, I felt it like a knife in my ribs, and I couldn’t—”

He snaps his mouth shut and his huge shoulders heave with an unproductive, airless breath.

My hand strokes up and down his back as he fists the edge of the hoodie I’m wearing. “Breathe.” I dot a kiss to his jaw, then another, and another. “Breathe first, then talk, baby.”

His exhale is just as frantic as the rain lashing the windows, but as I continue to draw a silent path up and down the curve of his spine, his breaths even.

When a tentacle lifts from the blanket nest tangle of all of our limbs, reaching toward my face, I lean in and drop a kiss to it as it curls over my collarbone. Cal chuffs a little sound that could be a laugh or the end of a sob, I’m not sure.

“It wasn’t just—” He breaks off, turning his head against my chest to inhale deeply. “It wasn’t just the water or the cold or the storm. It was me. I left you. I pushed you away, and that’s why you went down there, and I—fuck, fuck , I should’ve known—”

“Cal.”

“I left you,” he gasps. “I said it was a mistake , and I knew it wasn’t true, and I hurt you. You went into the water, and I wasn’t there. It was my fault. I did this, I did all of it, I don’t deserve you, and I hate myself for—”

“Cal,” I say, firmer this time. I cup his face, but his eyes are wild and wet and unfocused, like he can’t stop the helpless little spiral he’s slipped into. I lean in and press my lips to his, like I can breathe something into him that will make this stop.

And it does. When our mouths meet, everything does. Even the wind outside seems to soften. The rain dulls. The storm hushes. Cal’s chest heaves as the air whooshes out of him.

I pull back just enough to whisper against his lips. “Don’t hate yourself. I don’t. I love you. So don’t you dare say that. Not ever. Not about the man I love.”

He makes a sound—half-sob, half-laugh—and buries his face in the curve of my neck again.

His arms come around me. Tentacles, too, wrapping me up so tight I can barely move, but I don’t want to. I just hold him and let him break the way he needs to for however long he needs to. I think we all need that sometimes.

He mouths against my throat like he’s trying to memorize the rhythm of my pulse, and slowly, his trembling ebbs, but I feel the tension that remains under his skin—tight and wary.

Braced for something awful, even now. Even here, with me kissing his jaw, stroking my fingers gently over the back of his neck.

“I’m right here,” I whisper. “I’m not going anywhere.”

His voice is muffled in my hair. “I don’t know how to stop being scared.”

“So don’t. You can be scared.” I press my lips to the hinge of his jaw. “Be scared and still choose to touch me.”

His gaze lifts, and a hand ghosts over my waist, still clearly unsure. “Love—”

“I’m not going to break, Cal,” I say softly. “And it’d be a real shame if you didn’t fuck me after all that drama.”

He groans, one hand sliding up to cup my face without lifting his head from my chest. “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he murmurs. There’s conviction in his voice, but also softness. Like he’s so exhausted by the whole ordeal but still needs to reprimand me a little.

I shift my weight, rolling us with a thigh over his hips, tucking us together until I’m on top, straddling him. He shudders and exhales hard. I nuzzle under his ear and nip lightly at the lobe.

“I need you,” I murmur. “I want you to hold me. I want you to fuck me. I want to feel your tentacock inside me, baby.”

His laugh bursts out, high and bright and so full of light it’s like it’s overflowing. He chokes on it, a watery sound catching at the edges.

“God,” he whispers. “Neviah, love.”

“I’ve got you,” I whisper, pressing my palm to his chest. His heart stutters under my hand, its beat still erratic.

Tentacles slide across the blankets, still slightly hesitant. He’s afraid I’m going to flinch again, but I don’t. I won’t. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and tilt his face up to mine, kissing him again, hoping I can hush the storm in his head.

His hand cups my face. His thumb runs along my cheekbone, a whisper of pressure, then down to trace my bottom lip when our kiss breaks apart. One tentacle curls loosely around my wrist, linking us.

“You’re so beautiful,” I tell him. I want him to hear it over and over. “I adore you. All of you. Nothing can change that.”

He lets out a soft, aching sound, resting his forehead to mine. The tip of his nose brushes mine. “You say things like that, dearest Neviah, with no concern over how I’ll survive them.”

“You aren’t supposed to survive me,” I murmur. “You’re just meant to love me. And right now, I’d love if you’d fuck me. I want to feel close to you. Please, Cal.”

His hand skims down over the curve of my waist. Another tentacle glides along my thigh, stroking upward. He presses a kiss to the center of my chest, right over my heart.

He shifts us so he’s above me, fitting his body to mine. The blankets pool around us, holding the heat in. His tentacles curl in closer, forming a warm cocoon, protective and possessive and claiming.

Cal’s hands move slowly, learning me all over again. The way I shiver when his fingertips ghost over my ribs. The way I arch when his thumb strokes the dip of my hip. His touch is worshipful and demanding, intent on reminding me that I am here, with him, and I’m safe.

That I’m his.

I know that I am .

When his mouth finds mine again, it’s unhurried and soft, the kind of kiss that says everything his voice can’t carry right now. It’s clear to me that he struggles with putting things into words, but he’s never failed to show me how he feels.

“Cal.” My hips roll up. I need him closer, not just to feel good, not just to come, but to connect. To belong to something again. I need to belong to him .

He groans, low and rough, pressing his forehead to mine. His eyes are closed, and he looks like he’s fighting with himself.

“You nearly drowned.” The words shudder out of him, aching to speak aloud.

“I need you.” I drag my fingers through his hair. “I need to feel your heart beating inside me.”

He exhales shakily, muttering a curse under his breath, and when I reach down to slip my hand under the waistband of his sweatpants, guiding him to me, he simply follows my lead like he’s helpless to resist.

His cock nudges at my entrance, thick and flushed. My whole body softens around the pressure. The stretch is perfect, familiar, and right. My head tips back on a gasp, falling into the soft cushion of blankets beneath me.

His lips trail along my jaw, to the shell of my ear, where his breath is hot on my skin. “You feel like coming home. So warm, so soft—mine, mine, mine . Every time I slide into you, I think this must be what heaven feels like.”

I moan, clenching around him.

He thrusts slow and deep, and I gasp again, gripping his shoulders. “God, Cal —”

“I’ve got you, little trespasser,” he whispers.

His hips roll in a rhythm that’s more reverence than need, burying him deep before drawing back just enough to do it again. Each stroke is deliberate, unhurried, and devastatingly tender. He’s not chasing release, he’s just feeling this, me, us.

My fingers trace the slope of his shoulders, the strong line of his back, the knots of tension that still haven’t quite eased beneath his skin—and I resolve to give him a proper massage later, maybe even with a happy ending, if he’s lucky .

I press soft kisses to his throat, his jaw, the corner of his mouth. Anywhere I can reach.

“You’re beautiful,” I whisper, and his breath stalls against my cheek.

“I’m not.” His response is automatic, worn with belief.

I frame his face in both hands, my thumbs brushing his cheekbones. “You are. I wish you could see what I see when I look at you.”

His eyes go glassy again—still storm-lit and glowing—and he kisses me hard, like he doesn’t know what else to do with the weight in his chest.

A tentacle slides along my thigh, curling there.

One strokes my ribs. I match him with touches of my own, though I feel at a disadvantage with far fewer limbs—the pads of my fingertips ghosting down his spine, across his sides, up into his hair.

I tug gently, and he groans into my mouth, fucking just a little deeper.

“I love the way you feel inside me,” I whisper, panting now as pleasure starts to build like a slow tide to take me. “You fit me perfectly.”

“You were made for me,” he rasps. “No one else. Just you. My heart, my soul, Neviah— everything . Mine, all mine.”

The words wrap around my heart and squeeze like a fucking tentacle.

“Yours,” I echo in a breath. “All yours.”

He groans, the sound breaking in his throat. “Say it again.”

“Yours,” I repeat, holding his face. “Always. You’re mine, and I’m yours.”

His thrusts deepen—not faster yet, but surer, like something is untangling inside him. His voice drops low and hoarse. “You will never be alone again. Never lonely. Not you. Not while I’m breathing. Not while I’m alive.”

The rhythm between us changes, subtly at first—Cal’s hips pressing deeper, his thrusts more insistent, the tension in his arms pulling taut. He’s still holding back, though. I can feel it, because I know what it’s like when he doesn’t.

But I don’t want his restraint. I’m not breakable. Not with him.

I slide my hands down his back. “Don’t hold back. I want all of you.”

A shudder wracks through him. His tentacles tighten everywhere they grip.

One curves around my waist. Another cradles the back of my knee, gently spreading me wider beneath him, tilting the angle of my hips so he can fuck me deeper.

One slips between our bodies to rub circles against my clit, firm and unrelenting until my breath shakes apart.

He groans low and broken, burying his face in my neck.

“Perfect, perfect love,” he pants. “Hot and tight and mine. I could live here. I want to live here.” His control unravels, slowly first, then all at once.

The rhythm grows harder, faster. My name spills from his mouth again and again, like a delirious sort of chant.

My body arches into his, chasing him with every thrust.

“ Look at me,” I gasp. “Cal, look at me when you come.”

He does. His eyes lock on mine—bright, burning, and wild with violet light.

“I love you,” I tell him, voice cracking with it. “Come with me, Cal. Please. I need to feel it. Need to feel you . Need to be yours.”

The sound he makes is torn from someplace deep. His hips punch down, slamming into mine one last time, and he comes with a low moan. I feel his knot swell inside me, anchoring him.

Pleasure cracks through me seconds later, curling my spine, flooding my limbs, trembling tectonic. I fall after him, gasping and held in the warm press of his skin. He stays inside me, buried deep, tentacles curling protectively around us both as he collapses his weight over me.

Cal kisses me like I’m drowning again, only this time it’s with something like relief, because I’m drowning in him , and he’s drowning in me too.