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My pumping arm inverted at once, and I raced back through the sea.
chapter 20
ELLE
I found out my imagination wasn’t finished with me when I was sleeping, because I had the most wondrous dream.
You know how when you watch modern dance or ice skating, sometimes there’s a moment when the whole stage is black and then just one person gets a spotlight?
It was kind of like that.
Everything was emptiness...and then there was Ceph. He was hovering, like he did in the water, but I was there too, and I was breathing—and dream-me was smart enough not to ask questions, especially when dream-Cepharius looked at me like that.
Like I was the answer to all of his dreams.
I couldn’t imagine that I could be, but what was the harm in indulging myself? How long had it been since I’d had a dream like that?
Or since someone else had touched me, non-clinically?
You never knew how alone you were until you were in bed with someone who left you to yourself.
And so as the spotlights drew us closer, I followed, like a moth to a welcome flame, until they merged, and then somehow we were together, without any clothes. He didn’t have his belt, and I didn’t have to explain why my breasts were missing, or what I wanted—he just knew—and he was fearless. I was surrounded by him, his tentacles grasping and pulling me in a million different delicious directions, and then I felt his thick fingers parting me. He slid one in, and crooked it, as if calling me closer, and I came so hard, so fast, I didn’t even get to warn him. Just one moment he was in me and the next I was thrashing, which would’ve been embarrassing except that I could tell it pleased him, and he kept going, thrusting his finger into me while his tentacles held me still, and I could watch myself being taken by his exceptional hand, attached to his marvelous arm, working on me like he’d worked on my cable and I squeezed my thighs together, shouting his name as I came a second time.
“Ceph, Ceph, Ceph!” I howled in my dream, right before waking up sweaty, slick, and uncomfortable.
It took a moment for me to get my bearings again in my unfamiliar room.
Oh yeah, Elle. You’re still at the bottom of the ocean. And you’re getting it bad for a kraken.
I closed my eyes to try to settle myself, and when I realized I wouldn’t find sleep again, I picked up my tablet and brought it back to bed with me.
A few minutes later I felt Cepharius’s mind. “Elle?” he asked, sounding worried. “Are you all right?”
I rubbed one of my eyes with the back of a hand. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re not sleeping, for one.”
I glared in the direction of my window. “Neither are you, apparently.”
“I can go for days without sleep. You cannot.”
“Can too,” I muttered, turning my back to him.
I thought I could feel his frustration with me—or maybe I was just projecting—but then he asked, “Would you like me to help you?”
“How?”
“Let me back into your mind.”
I sighed, put the tablet down, and then tried to relax. I felt his thoughts brush against mine, and I realized why I liked him—because he made me feel like Lena had when she was near. Like there was someone else strong, intelligent, and dependable in my life.
But I knew that feeling was temporary. Fresh sorrow hollowed me, until a hummed melody trickled into my mind, like a lifeline. It sounded entirely foreign, like background music at a restaurant whose cuisine you’d never eaten before, but I recognized its purpose just before he started singing.
In the deep where darkness sleeps,
And the ocean's secret keeps,
Gentle waves do softly sway,
