Catching his wrist, both hands wrapped around the dense muscle of his forearm, she held him fast. "Stop," she whispered, and she reached. Cupping his face, fingers brushing the hard line of his jaw, she traced the ridge of bone beneath midnight scales. "Please."
A growl rolled up from the bottom of his chest, making the water between them shiver and dance.
"It… it hurts," she whispered, her voice laden with that dual harmonic, human vowels threaded with something deeper. Tugging at his arm, drawing his knuckles down, toward her belly, she said, "Nyx.Please."
The current between them grew thick.
Citrus and ozone.
Lightning trapped in honey.
The Trident's hum faltered.
Nyxarion's pupils ballooned wide, nostrils flaring as he drank in her scent.
Slick.
It perfumed the water.
Unmistakable. Heavy with the scent of early pregnancy, it curled through the current in ribbons that demanded his service.
His eyes grew slitted, gills flaring wide as he pulled the black waters between his lips and groaned.
That obsidian mask, etched into hard lines of territorial wrath, cracked. Fracturing as something far,farolder surged to the fore.
Something ravenous.
Something that made Kore's lips twitch even before she reached for his hand.
Before she guided him. Directing thick, clawed digits flat against the gentle, sloping curve of her belly. Pressing his palm flat, she bade them spread.
At his touch, her biolume flared in reckless greeting.
Gold bleeding into violet, before the light rippled out from the point of contact.
Going still, Nyxarion's breath caught.
Eyes wide, rimmed in white.
Every fin, every spine, every ridge of armored scale locked in place. All that territorial rage, and her apex predator was rendered motionless by the shiver of light that kissed his palm.
"Please," she whispered, fingers tightening on his wrist, before she dragged his hand… lower. Past the swell of her abdomen, past the delicate ridge of scales that traced her pubic bone, until his knuckles grazed the slick heat pooling between her thighs.
The sound that bubbled from his gills was guttural. Heavy.
A subsonic pulse laced with promise.
Beyond hearing, it rattled the coral and sent the nearest Abyssari fleeing into the dark.
Utterly absent shame, Kore didn't blink. "I need you," she whispered, and it was less a plea than a dark, insistentcommand. One he could taste, for as she guided his fingers, her slick perfumed the water. Thick and sweet. "Not vengeance or Thalos.You."
Silver eyes grew molten before they were swallowed by the black.
Flexing on a long, rough swallow, Nyx's throat worked. His ravaged gills hissing as he fought the command.
Resisting the pull of her scent.
"Please," she whispered again, and the word hummed in the current. "It hurts, Nyx. Everything hurts and you won't—you haven't?—"