Page 69 of A Reckless Indulgence

Bubbles spill from his mouth. Lyx watches them before she opens her mouth. She swallows each of them, following them to the source until her lips crush against his. It starts as a collision, tongues rough against fangs. Her kiss is halting and sloppy, torn between uncertainty and diving deeper. This version of her isn’t used to this. Cav realizes it in the scrape of her claws, all her sharp parts meeting his flesh and jerking back in surprise. Her siren form has only been used to fight, to destroy, to create a barbed defense against the rest of the world.

Cav doesn’t swim away. He wraps his arms around her waist to pull her in, and she freezes. He half-expects her to pry out of his grasp, but she doesn’t; instead, her frenzied movements ease. She stops gnashing her teeth. The tension in her jaw melts. Slowly, her mouth molds against his and gives into the slide of his tongue. Her sharpened teeth prick his lip, drawing out his moan when she sucks the wound into her mouth.

His lungs burn. He needs to breathe, but he doesn’t want to pull away, even when his brain flickers. He doesn’t want to escape. He doesn’t want the safety of the shoreline. He wants to be here, in the grips of a siren, swirling in this feeling. He could drown like this and be completely happy.

Before he can succumb, Lyx drags them both to the surface.

He gasps when she eases him back against the sloping rock. Their breathing entwines, and he swears she’s tugging his soul out between his lips, their mouths still sliding against each other. Underwater, a tentacle curls coyly around his wrist. He spreads his fingers to reach for her, exploring the nubs and ridges of her tendrils. She takes a shaky breath.

“Sensitive?” he whispers.

Hot electricity jolts through him, leaving a tingling trail between his scales. It pulses and crackles long after she stops stinging. Cav shudders, lifting his hand to his weakened shoulder and draping her tentacle down his neck.

It’s wet and sticky, like the churning low in his gut. Her tendril curls around his bicep, and he understands how easily sailors could get trapped in this, their arms and legs entangled and numb.

He can’t think of anything better. With both hands freed, he pulls her closer by the waist. “Show off for me.”

Her gills flutter anxiously when he lowers his mouth to her neck, but he takes his time, gently brushing them with his lips. Her breathing picks up, talons scraping his chest. When he teases the edge of one slit with his tongue, a moan vibrates through her throat.

“Show me what you can do,” he breathes. He laves his tongue over the swell of her breasts. She is cool and smooth and salty, and he holds her in the heat of his mouth, watching her face when he drags his lips over her hardening nipple. She tightens a fist in his hair. It spurs him on to tease his teeth against her nipple, flicking both tips of his tongue against it.

Tentacles flutter on his shoulder, and delicious pain whizzes through him again. It steals his breath. His tongue spasms, and her whimper binds up with his in a chain reaction. If he thought her slap was divine, he can’t put words to what this is. She is otherworldly, dipping him into delectable pain and showing him her power. Cav has never been afraid, even when he should be. He has never favored the certainty of land. He has always craved the depths and everything that waits there.

He wants to sink into Lyx. He wants to drown in her. She is an oasis, and he is dying of thirst. He will drink every drop of her before she vanishes.

He carries her toward the sloping ramp into the pool, licking saltwater from her body. His shoulders crest the water, and he lies back against the smooth bank to keep his lower half submerged.

Now he can truly see her. Sunlight shines on the large tentacles of her hair slipping off her shoulder. Her skin is brighter than he’s seen it. When he pulls her toward him, she eases onto his lap, the dome of her tail spreading like a ballgown over his hips.

Her translucent skin lets him see through her, the warm red of his body pressed against the translucent blue of hers. She’s watching it, too. Her tentacles splay around them, draped over his chest and trailing in the water.

It drips from her and lands with a sizzle on his glowing chest. His body is made up of layers, scales over skin with pockets of magma between. That magma has grown hot and viscous, rising up between his scales like it’s breaking through the crust of the earth. It’s hottest between his legs, beaming nearly white where Lyx grinds down against him.

His back arches. He feels the burn of her acid, but he’s not sure where it’s coming from. She no longer has the sex organs he’s come to expect. He remembers what she told him in the crow’s nest. They’re only there on land to fool pirates.

He wants to know this new part of her, but before he can, Lyx makes his head spin. She reaches under her skirt to stroke the soft scales between his legs. All Cav can do is shiver while the light from his body follows her touch. His pelvis looks much like the rest of him, a patch of scales gathered between his legs. The difference is, everything is heightened here. His scales are softer and more responsive, the molten rock beneath rising faster than anywhere else.

Experimentally, Lyx slides the pad of her finger between two scales. “What do you call this part of you?”

It’s so fucking sensitive. Cav’s hips rut. “Fuck.”

“That’s not it,” she chides, and he would laugh if he could catch his breath. She keeps teasing him, trailing her talons through the mess of building magma. Every touch brings more to the surface until her fingers are sticky with it. She lifts them to her mouth, and he could die at the sight of it. Lyx, terrifying and beautiful, licking remnants of him from her hand. When she sucks her fingers between her lips, her eyes close for a long moment before they open again. “It tastes just like you.”

He wants to ask what that means, how she knows, but she’s moving against him now. Beneath the umbrella of her tail, he can see where the tentacles sprout from her body. They’re a mass of ruffles and ribbons, but they part around him until his scales are settled against her delicate core.

“What do you call it, Cav?” she asks again.

It’s all he can do to get the words out. “Vent. Shaft. Cunt. Anything, just —”

Satisfied, she winds her hips. They both draw in a breath, and Lyx nearly loses her balance. Cav can’t blame her. It’s unlike anything else, like there’s a gelatinous clover between her tentacles, and he’s pressing into the very center. Her viscid core fits itself around him, drawing him into her with suction that seals over every inch of his scales.

He can feel her everywhere. His eyes roll back, chest heaving under the tentacles draped across his shoulder. “Yes,” he rasps. “Sting me — while you —”

It zaps through him, delectable pain and sweet relief soothing the deepest strain of his wounded shoulder. He doesn’t know how it works. All he knows is he’s gasping for breath when another tentacle drapes across his chest.

This sting cascades over him like a wave. Everywhere, he burns for her. Each shock pumps more desire through him, threatening to make his heart spill out of his mouth. He knows what he wants to tell her. He knows why he can’t. Only a fool would fall for a siren, but he’d rather drown in this feeling than be adrift without her.

He can’t help but want more of her. He knows what her tentacles are capable of; he wants to feel it for himself. Carefully, he traces the scars on her torso. “Please leave a mark.”