Page 32 of Moist!
chapter three
LYRA
I watch Nefkenir at least three nights a week. It always starts the same. I eat dinner, I go to bed, I lie there wondering if the damn chimera in the lake is lonely, and I end up right here on a giant rock overlooking the water.
Tonight’s like all the other nights. The girls’ friends have entirely deserted her, disappearing back toward town.
Nefkenir hauls the woman into the water and pleasures her with lips and teeth and tongue until her screams ring out over the lake’s glossy ripples.
He takes her again and again, his pleasure joining hers.
But after hours of that, he sends her on her way and watches in utter silence as she goes.
And she goes the way they all do, with a tentative, thoughtful backward glance. She’ll never return, though. They never do.
Once she has gone, Nefkenir hovers in the shallow water for another hour, swirling his tail and looking morose.
It pains my heart to see him like this. We have no other water monsters in the lake, so there’s no community for him below the surface.
No mer, no water dragons…nothing. Rainbow trout and longnose gar. I can’t imagine they’re talkative.
Eventually, Nefkenir lets out an irritated sounding growl and disappears into the darker water.
All the books say that a shipwreck rests on the lake floor and that’s where he lives.
I’ve got questions about that. Who put it there?
Did they put it there for him? Did Selah do this when she cast him aside for spurning her love?
Gods, what a story.
In that moment, I make a determination I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I’m going to be his friend. Gods know he could use one. And I’m going to start tomorrow.
The following evening, nerves slosh around my lower stomach as I carry a takeout bag of egg drop soup and egg rolls down toward the lake.
Not a single ripple mars the glassy surface as I perch on a small rock and set the food down.
I know how the tourists shout for Nefkenir, but it feels odd to do that. Tossing a rock in seems equally rude.
Standing, I cup my hands around my mouth.
“Hello? Nefkenir? Do you have a moment, please?”
Nothing happens for a solid ten minutes. Then tapered black and green ears and luminous white eyes appear off in the deeper water.
I wave. “Hi! I…umm, could you come a bit closer?”
He does, swimming until his humanoid top half emerges from the water.
I try not to gape and stare even though he’d tower over me if he was closer.
His body is lean with muscle and covered in scales down the sides of his abs and up over powerfully stacked shoulders.
His skin is the palest green, morphing to emerald and forest and finally black at the tips of his fingers and ears.
Black hair is matted to his head, cascading long to the middle of his back and clinging to his abs. It’s full of knots, too.
He’s uncared for, that much is clear. I suppose it’s hard to manage long hair when you’re in water twenty-three hours a day. This male needs deep conditioning for those poor locks .
But there’s a deadly intelligence in pure black eyes. He flares slitted nostrils at me as his gaze falls to the bag.
“I’m Lyra,” I offer. “I live in town, and I thought you might like some dinner.”
He cocks his head to the side. “You didn’t come here to get your pussy licked?”
I bark out a laugh, although the idea of doing things with him is a saucy secret I’ll keep in my head until I die.
“I didn’t come here for that,” I clarify, sitting back down on the rock. “I just brought you dinner.”
He slinks closer, falling forward onto his hands as he slithers partially up the beach.
The thick dragon tail below his waist curls into giant piles.
It’s so long I bet it stretches halfway across the lake.
When he falls forward, the triangular shark fin at his back waves slightly, as if it’s hard to hold up this far out of water.
“What is it?” His tone is suspicious, and I suppose he has every right to be, given I said I didn’t come here for physical reasons.
“Egg drop soup and egg rolls, my fave from the place around the corner from my apartment.”
He crawls forward until he’s close enough to pile up part of his tail and use it as a bench.
I’m fucking fascinated by the sight of it. I was right when I assumed he’d tower over me like this.
One black brow curls up. “I think, perhaps, you came here to ogle me, if not to get your taint tickled.”
That comment pulls another laugh from my belly, and I open the takeout bag. Grabbing an egg roll, I hold it out to him. “I really just came to bring dinner.”
I wasn’t sure if you’ve ever even had a regular dinner.
Those are the words I don’t say as his dark brows pull into a suspicious-looking vee, his focus on the egg roll in my outstretched hand.