Page 46

As the last word of the spell fell from our lips, the metal of the manacles had heated to scorching hot. I cried out in pain, jerking my hand away.

Kurai howled in agony, straining his muscles and rattling the chain. He knew the time would come when he could no longer control himself. So he made sure I was safe, no matter what, by chaining himself to the pillar.

My trepidation faded, and my confidence grew.

“I trust you.” I kissed his arm, then touched the chain again to make sure it had cooled now, sparing him any added pain.

“Don’t…” he begged, gasping for air through his torment. “Don’t touch…me.”

I took my hand from him quickly, feeling confused.

“If I don’t touch you, how can I help you?”

“It hurts—” a groan of pain cut his words short.

I ran around the pillar to face him.

His hair had fallen out of its tie. The thick, wavy strands dropped over his forehead, slicked with sweat. His wide chest rose and fell with his heavy breathing. And his skirt in the front moved.

“It truly is happening,” I gasped in awe.

A golden glow filtered through the material of his skirt. Thin rays of light rose from above his belt. The skirt over his groin undulated, as if shrouding a nest of snakes.

When the pain seemed to let go a little, Kurai slumped in his restraints, dropping his head to his chest.

“We have to take this off.” I reached for the closure of his skirt. He jerked from my touch, and I held back. “Let me see it, baby. Let me help you.”

He lifted his head. Need warred with fear in his eyes directed at me.

“You want me” I pleaded with him. “You need me, Kurai. You don’t have to be afraid anymore. We made sure you won’t hurt me. Remember? We put a spell on you.”

A shadow of agony dimmed the light in his eyes. His muscles contorted in pain again.

“Release me!” he roared, making me jump a step away. “Let me…” he started reciting the spell in reverse, tripping over the sounds and missing some words.

The spell didn’t work to release him because I wasn’t reciting it with him.

“I need…” he begged. “Please, please, stop this…”

His voice descended into tortured moans of pain, and I couldn’t bear it any longer.

“Let’s do this.” I came closer and yanked his skirt away.

Then…stared in awe.

The area that had been so boringly and innocently smooth before had bloomed with a giant chrysanthemum of tentacle-like appendages.

Ink-black on the outside of the cluster, they shone with gold in the center of it.

And they were all prehensile, moving and undulating like marine life in the undercurrent of the ocean.

“It’s…beautiful,” I mumbled, stunned.

Despite Dawn’s warnings and instructions, I felt completely unprepared to deal with this. But Kurai groaned again. He stared at me and he no longer seemed to see me, blinded by torture.

It wasn’t fair that his kind were born to suffer like this. It wasn’t fair that our first time had to be like this. But this was our reality, and there was no time to lament the unfairness of it all.

Willing my hands not to shake, I reached for him.

As if sensing my movement, the slim tentacles shifted and stretched in my direction. I brushed their tips with my fingers, and Kurai roared in pain. My touch increased his agony. But touching was the only way for me to end this for him.

His eager, agile appendages trapped my hand, wrapping around my fingers and pulling me in. Slick and silky, they glided along my skin, prodding and searching.

Groaning and grinding his teeth, Kurai arched his back, blindly thrusting his hips toward me.

“Sex doesn’t need to be torture. It can bring pleasure too,” I whispered, sinking to my knees in front of him.

He was the one who proved it to me. He showed me how much pleasure a man could give a woman if he truly cared about her. And I wanted to do it for him too.

I tried to gather all his appendages in my hand, but they wiggled away from my grip, clinging to my wrist and fingers instead.

Their warm scent of honey and flowers made me wish I could bury my face in them.

Eager to taste him, I licked one of them, and they immediately aligned themselves, all aiming in my mouth now.

“He has to come from all of them at once,” Dawn had said.

They were too thick at their bases and too long for me to take them all in my mouth at once.

But they tapered at the tips, making the entire bundle thinner and far more manageable, as long as I didn’t let them all too deep into my mouth and choke me.

But with Kurai chained to the pillar, I had control.

I wiggled my tongue, stroking the tips of the feelers, then wrapped my lips around them all. Kurai panted, thrusting his hips toward me so hard, he risked wrenching his arms out of his shoulders.

I missed our connection. I desperately wished he could feel how much pleasure touching him brought me, how much I enjoyed his scent, and how much I loved being close to him.

The intense desire for my soul to merge with his flooded me.

It grew beyond my physical being, reaching out to encompass us both.

I felt the smooth warm skin on his chest and the muscles in his strong shoulders.

I smoothed his tangled hair and stroked his beloved face…

all while standing on my knees in front of him, with the cluster of his tentacles in my mouth.

How was it possible ?

How could I have reached so high?

The realization struck me. I opened my eyes. Soft, smoky tendrils slid up Kurai’s body, caressing his skin and cradling his head. One curled to the back of his neck. Another one slipped behind him to his back. And four more spiraled up his arms with their flared ends hovering over his scars.

These weren’t his tendrils. I’d cut his off to save his life. It’d take time for the new ones to form and grow. The tendrils that had wrapped themselves around Kurai, seeking to connect, came from the leilathas of my harness.

I had no idea how I got them, but these tendrils were mine. It was as if my fervent desire to connect with Kurai had materialized, giving me the way. Sucking gently on the tips of his cluster, I gave a mental push, and my tendrils merged with the wounds on his arms, back, and neck, uniting us.

As my emotions rushed to him, his flooded back me too. His pain slammed into my body, twisting my muscles and crushing my bones. At the same time, need exploded though my lower belly with unbearable pressure and heat.

My body tensed, seized by agony. I fisted my hand, involuntarily squeezing his tentacle cluster, and closed my teeth around the tips as my jaw locked.

He roared in pain that zigzagged through us both, and he came, shaking violently. He felt no pleasure as he orgasmed. But the pain receded, and the pressure eased a little.

A bouquet of warmth and flavor exploded on my tongue. His release filled my mouth and escaped it, trickling out between my lips. It was fragrant like flower nectar and sweet like honey, and I licked it off him, savoring it like the finest dessert.

“Can you feel it, baby?” I murmured, licking him clean. “Can you feel how much I’m enjoying you?”

I looked up at him and found him staring down at me.

His emerald eyes darkened to the deep pine green.

With the orgasm taking the edge off the pain, his desire felt sharper and more intense.

It reverberated through my body, tingling in my breasts.

My nipples tightened. Heat pooled in my lower belly.

Blood rushed, swelling between my legs with a throbbing need.

My breathing grew heavier. Air rushed in and out of my lungs in desperate pants that echoed Kurai’s raspy breaths. The touch of fabric against my skin felt like a scrape of sandpaper.

I rose to my feet, then ripped my new dress off over my head. I remembered how glad I was to get a bra and proper underwear after the bath. Now, the undergarments felt heavy like chains on my body and more restrictive than a straitjacket. I tore them off, too, then came to Kurai.

“I need you more than I ever needed anyone,” I rasped, leaning against him to rub my hypersensitive nipples against the hard washboard of his abs.

He growled, dipping his head down to reach me. His feet slid on the marble floor. His knees bent, letting him slide down into a sitting position on the floor. I put a knee on each side of his thighs, then took his face between my hands, and kissed him.

It was a greedy, messy, hurried kiss that I needed more than air, more than life itself right now. But it wasn’t enough.

“More,” he groaned in plea, echoing my need.

I brought a breast to his mouth.

“Taste,” I ordered.

Suddenly, that was the only word I could squeeze through my throat that was closing up with all-consuming need. I feared I would die if I didn’t come soon.

He sucked in the nipple, flicking the tip of his tongue against the hardened bud. His fangs scraped my skin. The sting of pain made me shrink back, but only for a moment. I didn’t believe anything could keep me away from him now, not even if he bit me in earnest, not even if he devoured me whole.

“More,” echoed through the bedroom, and I wasn’t sure who said it, he or I.

His words were mine now. His feelings were mine too. As was his desire that rolled through me, pulsed in my blood, and throbbed between my legs .

He bit down on my nipple, and I cried out both from pain and pleasure. With my legs spread, my core hovered over his needy cluster. The tentacles reached up, eager to get inside me. The stroke over my hot, swollen clit, driving me mad with lust.

“Fuck me, sweetheart,” Kurai pleaded. “Fuck me or I fear I’ll die.”

I feared I’d die, too, if I didn’t feel him inside me this very minute.

Hooking my arm around his neck, I lowered my hips for his cluster to enter me.

The tentacles wiggled under me, jostling each other out of the way in their hurry to get in.

In their struggle, they rubbed harder against my swollen, hypersensitive clit.

Sharp pleasure rushed through me, almost making me come at once.

“Oh God,” I gasped, jerking my hips.

Kurai gasped, and I found his lips with mine.

“Feel it…” I moaned against his mouth. “Can you feel it, my love?”

“I feel everything. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

I couldn’t stop now even if someone held a knife to my throat.

With the tips of his cluster buried inside me, I rolled back my hips, rubbing my clit against the thick base of his feelers.

Riding him, I controlled exactly how much or how little of their length I took.

But as my need grew, my control slipped, I moved closer, taking more.

As the cluster got thicker at the base, it stretched me wider to the point of being too painful to enjoy.

Our joint need blinded me. But as I moved forward, Kurai jerked his hips back, adjusting our position to bring more pleasure to us both.

The orgasm slammed into me, knocking the breath out of me. Tension snapped, like an overstrained chain, flooding my senses with relief and pleasure. My body trembled. I pressed my forehead into his chest, coming all over his tentacle cluster.

With a deafening roar, Kurai came too. His release squirted out of me, slicking our thighs and pooling on the marble mosaic floor under us.

My inner muscles quivered, milking his climax. My limbs felt weak. I draped my arms over his shoulders and dropped my head against his chest, trying to catch the breath that our wild sex had stolen.

Then, I felt his lips pressing a kiss to the crown of my head.

“You got rid of your braids,” he said in that deep, gentle voice I knew and loved.

I lifted my head to meet his warm gaze.

“I did. Do you miss them?” I asked, waiting for his answer with a tendril of apprehension.

He shook his head. “I missed you . Every minute away from you has been a torture. I’ll take you in any way you let me, with or without the braids, with or without your hair, I’d take you with a bucket on your head if that’s what you choose to wear.”

I laughed.

“For someone who derives no pleasure from humor, you make funny jokes, my dear,” I teased, before kissing him. “I’m so happy to have you back, Kurai.”

“I knew you loved me, even when you wouldn’t say it,” he said with a smug smile. I cupped his cheek, and he turned his head to kiss my wrist. “I’m so sorry I scared you.”

“You sure did. And when this is over, you’ll have to explain the Watcher thing to me and how you’re one of them,” I said.

“I will,” he promised.

“There can’t be any secrets between us if we want this to work, Kurai.”

“No more secrets,” he echoed, his voice turning tense again.

I ran my hand down his chest, sensing his desire tingle and spread in the wake of my touch.

“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” I asked.

“It is. But at least I can breathe now. Thank you.” He pressed his temple to the side of my head. “You can release me now, sweetheart. I have a much better grip on my urges when you’re connected to me.” He slid his gaze down my tendrils in his arms in wonder. “By what miracle did this even happen?”

“I’ve no idea. But I love it.” I smiled .

Eager to finally be able to feel his hands on me, I reached behind him and found the chain restraining his wrists. Together, we recited the spell in reverse for the restraints to fall off.

“Ahhhh, yes.” He stretched his shoulders before wrapping me in his arms tightly.

My body tingled with anticipation in response.

“It’ll last for three days, Dawn said,” I murmured as he carried me to bed. “I think I can do this for three days. I’m actually really looking forward to it now.”

“Let me do this first, before the mating fever makes us fuck again.” He laid me on my back and spread my thighs, exposing me to him. “I’ll get to taste me on you. That’s a special treat.”

He licked his lips, kneeling between my legs.

Excitement fizzled in me like bubbles in a glass with Champagne. He sensed it through my tendrils and lifted his head.

“Can you feel me now the way I feel you?” he asked.

“Yes, my love. I missed our connection. But this is even better than before because I can share your emotions the way you’re sharing mine. I love to know how you feel, and I love being able to comfort you with my joy.”

“Then I’ll make it my mission to fill you with joy, for as long as I live.”