But then… there was no one watching…
CHAPTER 2
Endlessly greedy, Nyxarion’s hands traced her dainty body. Mapping her.
Every ridge. Each new scale and delicate fin. Memorizing the impossible reality of what his venom had wrought and what she had become. Jaw tight, fingers trailing down the curve of her waist, he edged the flare of her hips. Outlined the divide between sunset scales and soft, human flesh.
She was a marvel.
Truly.
Elegant and alien. A creature he’d crafted for himself. Driven by instinct. Obsession.
Gripping her hips, he paused to simply… look. Drinking her in.
Small. She was so small.
It was a poison of its own, the obsession. One that trawled through the muck in his dark, selfish heart with something approaching madness. A greed he’d never known. And, as he pressed his palm to her belly and let his fingers spread from hip to hip, he knew. How deep she’d already gone. Exactly which parts of him this glorious creature had claimed.
Movement.
A flutter beneath his palm. The slightest squirming presence that pressed against her skin, and Nyxarion’s breath hitched. Caught in tattered gills as his scales lifted. Venting heat, his biolume flared violent and bright as a greedy triumph ignited in his blood. "There," he breathed, and the word was a prayer whispered into the abyss.
Groaning, her fingers curled around his wrist as he worked. Holding him right where she needed him. Hips gliding against his grip, slick and warm. The perfume of frantic need rolled off her skin in a wave of wanton demand.
Begging with her body.
Absent cunning strategy, or hidden motive, she pleaded for him.
To be bred.
Touched.
Need pulsed through his veins, hot and relentless. A demand to see her stained with his mark. Soiled with seed. Cock throbbing behind his vent, growing swollen and thick, it burst from his slit. Snaking through dark waters to find where she wept for him.
Pearls already beaded along his shaft, glowing in the gloom, he kissed her. Letting every rational thought fade beneath the crushing weight of base, screaming need. Drowning out the festering poison worse than any venom.
Thalos.
The Shallow King had had her, too. His venom was threaded through Kore’s blood, woven into the shimmer of sunset scales.
Nyx could smell it on her. The stink of Asterion’s touch, lingering even now.
Begging to be washed out. Desperate to fill her with him, until nothing of Thalos remained to tarnish his claim.
The fury was a tempest. A beast starved.
And Kore was the only thing that might quiet the hunger.
Lips finding her pulse, he sucked at the tender spot beneath her jaw just to make her melt. “You handed me the victory,” he reminded her, letting his lips drag over the gill slits fluttering with the truth of her hitching breath. “Made yourself mine. And I let you suffer,” he murmured, nipping at her pulse with the edge of pointed teeth.
She shivered. Thighs flexing against his wrist as her biolume brightened. Sunset scales flushed a deep gold along her collarbones.
"So greedy, my flame," he drawled, addicted to the way she reacted to his touch. That she was just as enslaved to it as he was. "My impossible, furious bride. So sweet for me. So desperate."
Without marking her skin, he pinched her shoulder. Just enough to feel the resistance, to listen to her squeal. To taste the dense weave of muscle that hadn't existed before he’d taken what she was and dragged it to the bottom of the sea. Made her stronger. Harder. Rebuilt her for depths that would crush a human.
Remade forhim.