Spines bristling, Nyx pulled her back. Possessive in a way that flirted with deranged. It was there, in the way his hands roamed across her scales. His touch tracing the blended edge joining scales to flesh, before shifting up. Cupping the swollen weight of her breasts, he squeezed her fat and dragged his thumbs down. Caught her nipples and pulled.
Head tilted, watching Nyxarion's hands map the ripe lines of her body, Thalos frowned.
It was obsessive.
Almost helpless.
And then, a cruel grin spread across his lips—for he understood. Knew just what he'd done. The sort of barb he'd lodged beneath Nyxarion's scales was the type to fester.
Thalassari tears.
He was searching for the tears. Desperately tryingnotto find them.
Pulling a breath between his lips, pausing to relish that slow poison as it festered, Thalos exhaled through his gills. Savoring the scent of a fear insidious enough to shake even Nyxarion to his monstrous core.
Because the second trimester had nearly expired, and Nyx had been left to drown in a quagmire of uncertainty. His composure riddled with cracks wide enough that doubt had flooded in and rotted the foundation.
The question of paternity. Such a delicious torment.
One that would go unanswered until the baby was born.
Laughing, Thalos met eyes that had gone flinty, and said, "Searching for anything in particular?"
A muscle flexed in Nyxarion's throat. Jaw tight, thumbs still drawing at her nipples, his lips wrinkled. Showing teeth. And then, "Nothing," he snapped, spines lifting in a full, bristling flare that reeked of poorly hidden deception.
The lie.
Turning, Kore tucked her face in the hollow beneath his jaw. Lips dragging at corded muscle and rigid tendon, she peppered his throat with tiny, distracting kisses and sent a wordless hum into his skin. Soothing. Tasting his gills, where the scars made them ugly.
And, even as Thalos watched, Nyxarion's eyes fluttered shut. A helpless surrender to that sound, to her touch.
Pathetic.
Thalos snaked through the lapse.
Bold, pushing at the restraint of a rival who could open his belly with a single swipe of his claws, Thalos reached.
His hands slid over her hips.
Greedy for the rounded swell of that belly, he let his fingers spread.
A thump struck at his palm.
And for a moment, Thalos went still. The only hint, a line of scales rippling down his spine in a cascade of shock. Eyes wide before a long, slow exhale leaked from his gills. "There you are," he whispered, stroking the firm swell just to feel it again.
It was stronger the second time.
Squirming beneath the drum of flesh stretched across her belly.
Thalos pulled her hips back and buried his face against her nape. Inhaling the scent that had grown warm and heavy in pregnancy, he drank her in. Oblivious to the lethal pillar of territorial rage lurking behind her, Thalos groaned.
Both hands pressed flat, indulging his most base impulse, he cradled the weight.
Chin tilted, Kore turned her head.
Pinning him with grey-gold eyes that shone, not with submission nor helpless need, but challenge.
A dare. Devious and defiant in equal measure.