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Just stick to the science, Elle. And English tea sets.
Luckily Ceph was right, I was exhausted, and sleep quickly caught up with me.
chapter 19
CEPHARIUS
I wound my tentacles around the offending stone, wriggling them down through the silt I’d tasted earlier. I needed to know just what kind of rock I was dealing with, so I could prepare the acids my suckers exuded appropriately, but now that I was concentrating, I realized it wasn’t stone at all, not really, just earth from the ocean floor in a mound. It’d been there long enough to have a thick crust, but it wasn’t hard. It didn’t need acid—which meant I could pulverize it.
With my hands.
I started doing so at once.
How good it was to get to take action.
I took out all my frustrations on the task, clawing and ripping as I had not since Cayoni died—and then thinking of losing her, I took that out on the sediment too. Why was I the unluckiest kraken there had ever been, in all of kraken-kind? I used my tentacles to grasp and excavate massive clots of sand, sending silt everywhere, feeling the ancient ground crumble and sift away, like the thoughts now running through my mind.
I knew Cayoni loved me. I knew she would want me to be happy—which was one of the reasons why I’d had to leave Thalassamur. Because to pretend that she would’ve wanted me to be alone and despondent for life when I was around other krakens would’ve been impossible.
She would’ve wanted for me to know joy again, if I could’ve managed it, and perhaps there was another world in which I’d made that choice—to stay behind, cope with my grief, becoming the greatest uncle of all time.
But instead, I had not, I had isolated myself, too scared to share any of my pain and now, here I was, about to have everything compounded further.
How was it that I was going to lose both the women I loved? My tentacles hit against the ridge of dirt that was disappearing and it was not enough to destroy that—I moved on and kept going, there was an entire length-wide area here and I was going to break it like my broken heart.
I was positively bestial for hours. Anyone watching me would have been frightened, and when I was finished, when I’d beaten down everything that might pose a threat to Elle and her precious cable for lengths around me, the only thing left to hurt was myself.
I stayed hidden in the swirling silt and sediment that my fury had freed and let my pumping arm descend, feeling it fill with heat and intent. It curved up, the skin on it shaded a heavy purple, begging for release, and for the first time in three years, I grasped it, feeling my fingers cinch its girth. The tiny sensitive muscles that lined the entire outside of my body came alive at the sensation, and my first stroke sent a tremor running through me as I groaned.
Five strokes in, I knew I wouldn’t stop. Ten strokes in, I started to speed up, curving my fingers against my pumping arm’s belly, to help move the seed up inside, enjoying the feel of restraining the pressure.
There was no going back now. Was there shame in this? I was certain of it. But I couldn’t keep being stoic in every facet of my life—the ground I’d beaten into submission proved it. My body craved release, and if I couldn’t give it Elle, then my hand was better than nothing.
Then I thought back to her hand on me, earlier today, when she’d been worried I’d punch the wall. Was that what she thought of me? That I was an animal?
If she saw me now, desperately rutting my own hand, what would she think?
Would she be terrified?
Or would it turn her on?
All I knew was that each stroke I took pushed me further from the life I’d known and pulled me closer to her. I loved feeling her joy and awe as she entered my world. I loved listening to her mind at the wall while she thought. And I loved feeding her my thoughts, with every stroke of each shared symbol, making her mind accommodate mine, bit by bit.
Other tentacles grasped lower on my pumping arm, helping my hand, all of my body working in synchrony, just like it had when I was new on the ’qa and dying to find someone, anyone, to let me hide my arm inside. It was a good thing everything was already encased in darkness; I was going to come so hard I would dye the entire plain around me black—and my chromophores on my pumping arm lit up, taking on a glowing sheen, letting me see myself stroke.
I threw my head back and hissed through my beak, so near release, being ridden by my urges—and closing my eyes let me picture Elle there, stroking my pumping arm along with me, her expression just as lost as mine. My pleasure chased my imagination, and I groaned and jutted, emptying myself, making my pumping arm twitch against my grasp like a separate living thing that I could barely hold onto.
Spasm after spasm flowed through me, and I came like a volcano, feeling the hot byproduct from my body trail down my hands before floating away, the blackness that was my seed clouding over my pumping arm’s glow, until I was finished.
Then I hovered there, feeling just as empty as the plain around me—just like I’d known I would, pumping alone.
But the tension was slowly releasing in my body.
Between that and tearing apart the ground, maybe I could sleep tonight, as long as I was close enough to sense Elle’s ’qa.
And as if thinking about her had given her a voice, I heard her call my name.
“Ceph, Ceph, Ceph!” she called out, but then there was silence. Terrorizing the ground had taken me too far out to truly feel her.
