Kore went boneless between them.
Every rigid line of resistance dissolved as the haze swamped her bloodstream. Pliant. Wrenched open. Muscles unlocking around them both as her body surrendered to the narcotic frost of Asterion venom bleeding through her veins.
A whimper bled from her gills. Soft and drugged and helpless—but that was all.
Coming unhinged, Nyxarion tipped his head. Lips closing over one swollen nipple, he drank. Pulling at her breast, throat working, he swallowed that sweet milk in crude gulps.
But he didn’t stop. Chasing his own end, careless of the way his cock moved against Thalos’, he fucked her. Pace dissolving, his strokes ragged and uneven.
And when Nyxarion came, Thalos felt every pulse.
Each thick, shuddering throb traveled through shared flesh. It bled through the impossibly tight seal of Kore's body. Oozing and thick. Every jet pumped against Thalos' oversensitive cock until Nyxarion's release gushed around him. Searing hot, impossibly lewd. He filled her in rolling waves that seemed to have no end.
Thalos shuddered. Teeth still buried in her shoulder, venom spent, he hung there. Wrecked. Hollowed out. Feeling a king's victory echo through his own body while blue milk clouded the water around them.
When Nyx’s hips finally began to slow as he worked through the last shuddering ropes and let it ebb into nothing, Thalos unclenched.
Forced his jaws to part and released his hold on her nape. Crooning, he nuzzled into her pulse. Tongue dragging across the wounds he’d left, lapping at the ragged edges where scale met torn skin.
Hips rocking in lazy, contented strokes, he sluiced through the mess. Dragging it out. Reveling in the messy froth. Creamy. Filthy. Utterly perfect.
He loosed a breath against her pulse, heart hammering behind his ribs.
And then he felt it.
Temperature plummeting against his lips.
Wrong.
Pulling back, brow furrowed, Thalos looked.
The sunset was dying.
Gold bled to ash. Violet drained to grey. Every gorgeous, impossible color that marked her asalivewas leeching from her scales in a slow, creeping tide that spread from her scalp. A frost creeping through the divine flame.
Wrong.
White.
Sickly, translucent white.
Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong—
"Nyx"—his voice cracked—"Nyxarion."
CHAPTER 21
Bleaching.
Death’s pallor.
It was what happened to coral when it died. To stunned fish when they were struck with a killing blow.
“Kore,” he said, barking it. Too loud. A thread of something desperate blooming behind his ribs. “Kore. Look at me.Here.”
Cupping her jaw, Nyxarion’s fingers trembled as he searched her face. Tilting her chin back, seeking any tiny wisp of hope that might argue what his eyes were telling him. Anything at all to contradict the horrible spread spilling down from pale cheeks, bleeding through her scales as her skin blanched white, draining of the storm of color that had been singing through her scales only moments before.
The milk didn't matter.