When you’ve been broken for so long, it’s strange to finally feel whole again. Staring down at Nemea’s big, dark eyes that look so earnestly back at me, I feel complete for the first time in my entire long life. She’s glowing and gorgeous, my power filling her as if she’s a dragon soaking up the magic from my orgasm. Didn’t Vesh say she was a chimera? Which means she must be part dragon, which explains some of why her need for us has such a strong physical aspect. My need for her is just as strong on many levels.
I lift a hand and brush my thumb across her lower lip, gathering the droplet of my semen that still lingers at the corner. Grazing the moisture across her supple pink flesh, I’m somehow not prepared for her to dart her tongue out and taste, then grab my hand and pull my thumb fully into her mouth. It only takes one gentle suck for my cock to harden again.
I’d happily bend her over and nail her like a void demon, I’m that eager to be inside her. But after our exchange, that would be wholly inappropriate.
“I’m going to make love to you. But first we need to get you undressed.”
It takes serious restraint to retrieve my thumb from her mouth, which I do with a sigh. I bend and start to unbuckle my boots, feeling supremely silly that I left them on. Her light touch on my shoulder makes me pause.
“Leave them on, they’re hot.”
My eyebrows shoot up and I smirk. “You’re into me in nothing but boots?”
“I like hardware on a guy, I guess.” She gestures to the many darkened iron buckles that line my boots, as well as the pair of daggers sheathed on either one. The way her gaze skims up my dick again emphasizes how much she likes my other hardware too.
“Whatever my pretty girl desires,” I say.
I reach for the hem of her shirt, and she obediently lifts her arms for me to pull it over her head. Then I squat and begin unbuckling her boots. I’d leave them on her too, but her pants are tucked into them, so they have to go. They’re flimsier than mine, but their hardware is no less elaborate, minus any weapons.
“We’ll have to get you some sturdier boots if you’re going to be fighting with us. These look nice, but aren’t quite practical. Are they even real leather?” I peer inside one when I get it off her, eyeing the fabric layer adhered to its interior.
“Pleather,” she says. “Much cheaper than the real thing. So does this mean I’m actually going to get to join a fight?”
I curse inwardly for suggesting it. I have no idea what Vesh’s plans are for her, but if she’s this talented with her magic in the bedroom after only a couple days, it won’t take long for her to be ready to join us when we face off against the Titans.
“Makes sense to be prepared,” I say. “The kind of focus you had when you used your power on me a moment ago suggests you’re already figuring things out. The fact that you’re intuitively using it in non-combat situations is especially promising.”
“You mean like for sex? You liked what I did? It felt like manifesting an extension of whatever I was touching. Like your little rod thingie.” She glances to the side and finds my little rod thingie, then hooks the hoop over her finger, dangling the shining void glass sounding plug off it while she leans back and smiles down at me.
My breath leaves my lungs and I stop unbuckling her other boot for a moment just to absorb her presence. She’s still wearing a black brassiere, her full breasts lush and round, her hard nipples jutting against the lace. So delicate a garment for a woman who is decidedly not delicate after the things I’ve seen her do thus far. I get a better view of the splotch of purple I saw on her side the day before, and the intricate detail of the large octopus is astonishing. It’s almost as if it watches me, guarding its mistress.
Returning to my task, I yank off her other boot and set it by the first, then reach for her buttons. She leans back farther, tilting her hips up and biting her lip.
“I loved what you did,” I finally answer. “But I’d like to take this slowly. Prove to you how much it means to me that you’re even here.”
I get her pants off and look at her from where I’m kneeling. We are at eye-level, and she sits forward again, scooting to the edge of my bed while she holds my gaze. She’s looking at me so intently, I feel her boring into my soul. My vision shifts strangely under her scrutiny, and I rock back, disconcerted for a moment.
“Do you feel that?” she whispers. “I almost forgot to test our bond now that I’ve tasted you. But it’s there, isn’t it?”
“Don’t…” I blurt, stomach lurching at the sliding sensation that’s taking over me, like my mind has slipped out from under me and is skidding down into an abyss.
I scramble back and wind up on my ass, blinking up at her. She stares with wide-eyed concern. “I—I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to be bonded too.”
Confusion sends a wash of clammy prickles over my body, and I do my best to shake it off and sit up again. “I do. But that felt like…” Like being dragged to Tartarus the first time.
“Did I do it wrong? With the others, I just opened my mind, and they were there. They’re not right now, but they can come and go. Maybe I pulled too hard? I just want to do this right.”
Her voice wavers, and my stomach sinks at the disappointment in her tone. I return to my knees and rest my hands on her thighs. “I doubt it was you. And hell yes, I want to be bonded with you, but can we put that on hold for now? I just want to be here with you. Let me make you feel good, pretty girl.”
I smirk and raise an eyebrow at her as I slide my hands higher up her thighs and lean between her knees. The vertigo she caused disappears when I’m in contact with her and I let out a slow breath of relief. I slide my arms around her torso, and she hooks both her arms around my neck, closing in for a tight embrace.
It’s unexpectedly desperate, not the embrace of a woman craving sex, but of one craving simple touch, which is a desire I know all too well. She presses her face into my neck and inhales deeply, then heaves a shuddering sigh, holding me even tighter.
“What is it?” I ask, lifting a hand to stroke her hair.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she whispers. “I’m just trying to go with it, but I’m not used to feeling useless. At home all I did was work, which was one of the reasons I left. At the school I worked too, but it was the first time in my life I felt like that work was all for me and not a response to the expectations of my elders. For the first time, I was part of a community that placed more focus on individual goals, but it was still a community, you know? A family.”
I don’t actually know, but I hold her tighter and make what I hope are understanding sounds. “You aren’t useless,” I offer.
She huffs and pulls back, a dark scowl marring her pretty features. “Ugh, seriously? All I’ve done since I’ve been here is fuck. Not that it hasn’t been mind-blowing every time, but I want to do something. Train me. Put me to work. Make me feel like I’m making a difference.”
I raise my eyebrows at this and I drop my gaze to her barely covered breasts and soaked panties. “Not the sort of begging I’d have hoped for the first time in thousands of years I get a girl into my bed.”
She lets out an ironic snort, her shoulders sagging. “I know, right? I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. This is something I can absolutely help with, but it seems to me that you have been practicing and training during sex, and it’s working for you.”
I look at the ceiling trying to find the words to explain why this is significant. When it comes to me, I look into her eyes again.
“Focus during distraction is a crucial skill during a fight. When emotions are high, being able to perform despite fear of death is important. Testing your magic in the middle of sex is just the opposite side of the coin. Fighting, after all, is not all that different from fucking. It can be a dance. Emotions are often high. In a good fight—or bad, depending on perspective—you’re connected to your opponent in a very visceral way. The same goes for sex.”
She tilts her head and gives me a dubious look. “I don’t need talking into it, if that’s what you’re trying to do here.”
I let out a laugh. “I promise it’s not a line. I felt it first-hand. Not to mention if you got the big guy off with your magic, that had to take serious skill and focus. So until you’ve bonded with all of us maybe consider every tryst an opportunity to test your magic. Or we can get dressed again and go hit the dummies for a bit. I might have a sword you can wield.”
She stares at my practice space for a moment, then back at me. Lifting her hands to my face, she looks intently into my eyes. “I don’t just want to fuck you, Chry. I want to bond with you. I want us inside each other the way I am with Vesh and Pan and Erebus and Asterius and Typhon. Every time I’ve been with them has been one of the deepest, most intimate experiences of my life. I want to figure out how to do that with you in a way that doesn’t make you want to run away.”
I frown down at her, trying to get a grip on her shifting desires. “Which is it? Do you want to become one of us, just a useful cog in this fucked-up machine we live in? Or do you want to be more? Because if it’s really bonding you want before anything else, we aren’t going to leave this room until that happens. We aren’t going to leave this bed until I figure out how to let you inside me without freaking out.”
I swallow at her apprehensive look, then her eyes brighten and a mischievous glint joins the light within her. “For the nymphaea, it’s the exchange that’s necessary, isn’t it? And so far, I’ve just tasted you. Maybe all you need is to taste me back?”
“This I can do,” I say, marveling at her wicked mind.
I lean in to kiss her again while I push the straps off her shoulders and tug the front of her bra down, then descend on her breasts, sucking one nipple to a rigid peak before switching to the other. She reaches behind her back and her bra suddenly falls free, giving me full access to both her luscious mounds. Nemea leans back on her elbows and thrusts her chest up, moaning when I devote my full attention to them both for several seconds. Then she sighs as I begin to kiss my way down her belly.
My hands are wrapped around both sides of her waist, and something shifts oddly beneath one. A second later the sensation moves, and something slides around my wrist, tugging my hand lower.
“What the fuck?” I mutter, sitting back and staring down at the violet tentacle wrapped around my wrist.
“Hmm?” Nemea glances down at me through lowered lashes, her gaze fevered.
“Care to explain?” I ask, looking pointedly at the octopus rising halfway out of her flesh to try to guide my hand… where? It tugs farther and places my palm right over her mound.
Nemea looks confused for a second. Then her eyes widen and she goes absolutely still, staring in disbelief at her tattoo that has just come alive. Her mouth drops open and she rolls to the side a little, twisting to stare more intently at it.
“That’s my tattoo. What the fuck?”
“Your tattoo seems to have a mind of its own.” I rest my palm where the tentacle just placed it and press the heel of my hand against her. She lets out a gasp.
“I was just thinking how I couldn’t wait until you got my panties off.”
“Ah, so it is obeying your will. Then I guess I’d better do what it wants.”
I hook my fingers into her waistband and tug while two of the tentacles assist by grabbing the panties at either hip and pushing. They splay across her belly, coiling and uncoiling in what seems to be an impatient gesture.
“I don’t know. This is so fucking weird,” she muses. “I should be totally freaking out, shouldn’t I?”
“It’s your tattoo,” I offer with a shrug. I toss her panties aside and push her knees wider. The two helpful tentacles move to the center again and Nemea inhales sharply when they part her folds, displaying her swollen clit for me.
The other six arms are still static, two-dimensional designs coiling up her side and along the column of her throat, but the three-dimensional eyes of the creature blink at me as if to say, “Here it is, idiot.”
I chuckle at it and delicately remove the small appendages from her nethers. One wraps itself around my finger before retreating.
“I know what I’m doing, I promise,” I tell it. I part her with my fingers, then lower my mouth to her glistening core, capture her swollen clit between my lips, and suck.
“Oh, fuck yes you do,” she breathes, tilting her hips up against me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the tentacles move. This time they wrap around my head, applying the slightest pressure.
I don’t really care anymore, though. She tastes like heaven, and I indulge, flicking my tongue over her clit before plunging it deep inside her. I can taste remnants of the others on her, which arouses me further. It’s been a long time since we’ve been in a sharing frame of mind. Perhaps if we’d been more attuned to each other three years ago, we’d have won that fight against the goddess. Tasting them on her means we’re finally sharing again, which is everything.
She’s already so primed it takes a few flicks of my tongue before she’s writhing and crying out with her climax. I peer up at her, flexing my tongue against her clit before pushing it inside and pressing the tip into her G-spot, loving the way her channel tightens around me in dozens of small spasms, her delicious fluid gushing over my tastebuds. The little octopus’ arms coil and release over and over.
Before she can come down entirely, I hook both arms beneath her thighs, sliding my hands up to her lower back. I lift her then, keeping her splayed open and hold her against my mouth as I rise to my feet and climb all the way onto the bed. The octopus holds onto my head and she manages to stay balanced, a laugh escaping her before I lay her down again and move up to hover over her.
She’s smiling up at me, then glances down between us.
“He’s into this, I guess,” she says.
“He’s part of you so I would hope so.”
The octopus has more tentacles out, two of them pushing her breasts together while two more spread her open again. A fifth and sixth tentacle reach for my cock and aim me right at her sopping slit.
I jerk in surprise when they coil around me, but it feels good, so I go with it. She bites her lower lip eagerly and raises her legs, sliding them across my hips and digging her heels in the slightest bit, but the tentacles’ pull on my shaft is more than enough for me to know what she’s after.
Her clit is a hard bud at the top of her opening, even more pronounced when I press my tip against her and stretch her wide as I push in. I’m compelled to watch myself disappear into her, if only because this moment is monumental. She’s mine—a mate made for me. It doesn’t even matter that she’s for all of us; I love my fellow guards of Tartarus. But the fact that she belongs here with us means everything.
My piercings bump past the edges of her flesh one by one, and when I’m halfway in and still moving, she lets out a soft moan.
“Oh, that’s good. I didn’t expect to be able to feel it so much.”
“You like?” I pull out just a little and push back in, watching her face now. She’s flushed and beautiful, and the tiny thrust of her hips gives me my answer.
Looking into her eyes, I realize what she meant about wanting to bond. Being buried inside her with my cock isn’t enough. Now that I’ve tasted her too, maybe that’s enough to have it all?
Plunging in and out of her is a rhythm that’s easy to find without thought. Our bodies are in sync, moving in response to our desires. Our minds, however, are separate, and that needs to change.
Holding Nemea’s gaze, I tentatively drop my mental barriers and explore, reaching for her in that space she tried to bring me to before. It feels less like an abyss now than a simple portal into the unknown, but when she realizes I’m there, she eagerly opens up for me, and what I see inside her is a wonderland, I’m more than happy to step into.
My body shudders with pleasure as my orgasm takes me unaware, her body spasming and her cries filling my ears at the same time. I roll us onto our sides, hooking her leg over my hip and pushing into her one last time. Then I just hold her tight against me and surrender.