Page 82 of A Reckless Indulgence

Lyx meets Cav’s eyes when she closes her teeth around the base of the scale and pulls. He arches and bites his lip, panting and blurry-eyed when he stares at the rough, triangular patch missing from his body.

Lyx turns the scale over in her mouth. Her eyes slip closed, and a hum rises from her throat, so deep and wanton that Cav’s vent clenches around her fingers.

He touches her lips. She opens her eyes again — possessive, like an animal guarding a meal — but she doesn’t hold back from him. She parts her lips and extends her tongue to show off her prize. There, amidst the cool colors of her mouth, sits his burnt red scale awash in blood.

The sight of her holding him so reverently sends heat scorching through him. He digs his heels into the sheets, urging her to move faster, but her strokes are slow and deep. She curls her fingers and lowers to him, kissing him open-mouthed and filthy. Every ridge and divot of the scale slides across his tongue. His mouth is a forge, molding the taste of both of them into one molten flavor. Her tongue rolls against his and matches the pace of her slick fingers. Every touch heats him beyond his melting point, drawing out his desire and shaping it into something thick and heavy.

Lyx doesn’t stop until he comes. His claws tangle in her hair, his mouth dragging helplessly against hers when lava spurts over her wrist. She fucks him all the way through it, and only once he’s a writhing, pitiful mess does she lick the scale out of his mouth. Gently, she presses it to the roof of her mouth, holding onto it like she doesn’t want to lose it, like she doesn’t want this to end…until finally, she swallows.

Cav traces a hand down the column of her throat to follow the scale’s path. He can’t describe the feeling. Part of him is inside her. It belongs to her. Impossible as it seems, he’s still connected to it. No matter what becomes of the scale now, Cav will still be there. He and Lyx are entwined. Nothing can unravel that.

With weakened fingers, he traces the curve of her cheek. “What do I taste like?”

Every emotion has been wrung from the depths of his body. He can barely move in the midst of the blissful cool of her. No matter how he tries to keep his eyes open, exhaustion creeps in so easily. He remembers this feeling, drowsiness pouring over him like the last night in her grotto. But this time, there is no potion. This time, she can’t send him away.

Lyx’s fingers trail hesitantly through his hair, brushing tendrils behind his horns, unsure if she should touch him so softly. Sleep wraps its arms around him to pull him under, but he tries to stay afloat. He wants to hear her, even as exhaustion threatens to overtake him.

Lyx’s voice is barely a whisper, precarious and halting. “You taste like…a rogue fruit splashing into the ocean. A bed of seagrass in the sun.”

It’s not a taste, but Cav understands. He imagines that warmth, the sway of the waves, the tickle of grass against his skin. Slowly, he drifts, until he can barely hear her. Until he can’t be sure she’s speaking at all.

“The first step into the ocean after years of dry land.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Lyx

She has to settle for a piece of him.

Lyx has dreamt of destroying Cav for so long, of tearing him apart, but maybe it was never about that. Maybe she was always looking for an excuse to consume him. A way to keep him with her always.

Never has she eaten someone because she wanted them closer. Only because she wanted them gone.

But Cav has found a way to satisfy all her hungers. With him, the need for discord is quelled. It doesn’t claw and scratch and leave her itching to fight; it sates her without sickening her, something she’d long believed was impossible.

For hours, Cav and Lyx are in a haze, drifting in and out of sleep until they can’t help but touch each other again. Cav buries his face between her legs while his tail wraps around her mouth, and she groans and pries one of his scales off with her teeth. Lyx rides his vent until it’s a hot and sticky mess, both of them panting and shivering when they come again and again. She drags her tongue over his body, soaking in every sight and smell and sound.

This is what it’s like to drown.

Pale morning light glints into the cabin. Overhead, footsteps move across the deck as the Indulgence jostles into a new dock. Cav’s sleeping breath teases Lyx’s neck. Her mouth is still warm from the taste of him, a smoky, coppery cinnamon. She trails her tongue over her lips. Now, she’ll have a part of Cav forever, but it isn’t enough to ease the aching hole inside her. The hollow place left behind by her song is nothing compared to lying next to Cav and knowing she has to leave.

For a moment, she pretends that she can stay here. That no one else controls her. That Cav is not endangered by her presence.

Then she slips out from beneath his arm.

Her head spins when she stands. She braces against the hanging desk and silently tugs on her clothing, stuffing a few other pieces into a bag. Everything is unfinished. Instinct prickles her scales. You dreamt of killing him for years, yet you leave him intact? You take a bite, but not all of him? Did you learn nothing when you spared him the first time?

Lyx squeezes her eyes shut. She has to set Cav free. It was the kindest thing she did in the grotto, and she must do it again. If she tells him how she’s trapped, he’ll endanger himself. He’ll put himself close to Tidus, and that is one of the most dangerous places he can be.

And if Lyx’s song has begun calling out on its own, she needs to take it far away from Cav. She knows what will happen if other sirens emerge. Like Sinoe, they will see the way she looks at Cav. They will watch with covetous eyes. They will sense Lyx’s weakness. If she stays, she will lose Cav in a worse way than she’s ever imagined.

She fumbles for a scrap of parchment on the desk. Cav stirs and rolls toward the place Lyx left behind. She watches him for a long moment, tracing the lines of his body with her eyes before she finds a quill and dips it into the inkwell.

If love is real, then I have to leave.

She writes the word slowly. Love. It’s unfamiliar, a notion she never desired, and an abstraction always out of reach. It never had a place among sirens. Love could never satisfy her the way chaos did. There was no reason to seek it.

But what if love is what she’s been chasing all along? What if that’s why she’s been looking for Cav? Not hate, not revenge, but something else that devoured her completely. A desperate obsession. A bottomless longing. A reckless indulgence.