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It was a completely smooth and particularly shaped piece of stone.
I upended the bag at once, and one data sleeve, one kraken figurine, one piece of now-dead coral, and two more of those kind of stones fell out, in slightly different sizes.
And the one I was holding was the smallest of the set.
“Ceph,” I asked, doing my best to keep an open mind. “What are these?”
“The rest of my gifts,” he said, as if that should be self-explanatory—and when it was clear it wasn’t, he continued. “The males of my species have the ability to change the size of our pumping arm. When we court, it is customary to provide the ones you’re courting with replicas, so they can see what is on offer, if they choose you.”
I felt myself turning bright red. “Oh.”
“Obviously, when you pump just to pump, without courting, everyone just does the best they can,” he went on. “But this is the older, more official way, and seeing as I did not know what type of girth you could accommodate, I thought I would start small with you, just in case.”
Small was not the first adjective that I would use for the apparent kraken dildo I was holding in my hand.
“Well, thank you. They’re very . . . nice.”
“I made them with my suckers,” he informed me, sounding pleased. “They can excrete acid. It took me some time last night to find the correct kind of stone. I had to wander quite far off.”
I had an opportunity to let it lie there. I could have just appreciated them for what they were, and taken them home to use as bookends and have a very good story, in my imaginary future where I did sane things.
Too bad that future was never going to exist.
“And this is . . . uh . . . accurate?”
All three of them had one tip that was a little blunted with a short spiraling ridge about an inch down. And they all went on in a slow flare until there was another circular ridge, about an inch from their bases.
I set them on the corner of my blanket. They went up in size like a set of Allen wrenches.
“Entirely. The ring on the bottom is to mark how deep I would need to be inside you for satisfactory insemination to occur. You want to know that your future mate can accommodate you—it is especially important for certain portions of the kraken breeding cycle. Sometimes courtings are called off, because the pieces won’t fit,” he went on, like he was David Attenborough on a science program.
“Uh-huh.” Nothing in any of my prior education or research had quite prepared me for this moment. “And...you say sometimes krakens pump just to pump?” I asked, having acquired his term for it.
“Certainly. For us, it feels good,” he said, then asked with concern. “Does it not feel good for you?”
My hand flew to my forehead. Oh Lord, I am not strong enough.
“And not all of those krakens wind up mated for life?”
“Oh no. I mean, that happens, of course, some people pump their mate accidentally, their first time—but mostly there is a process of trial and error, until you find the right one. Some krakens never do.”
chapter 34
CEPHARIUS
“And some krakens find them twice,” I thought, but managed to keep that from her, barely.
I had no idea if she was asking me things out of sheer curiosity, with her bright mind, or if she was considering it.
If so, then I was glad I’d gone so far to find the right rock.
I watched her trail her fingertip around on top of one of the stones, following the spiral there, and my pumping arm descended at once.
It was all I could do not to project my heat at her—and I was so glad I’d taken myself in hand the other night—if I hadn’t done that, I would have had no control at all.
“And so sometimes you pump and it doesn’t mean anything?” she said, slightly pouting.
“Yes.”
