Guarded by the Kraken (Monster Security Agency, #4)

by Cassie Alexander

My ’qa had fully taken her in—and we were mated. I was suffused with her, and she was closer to me than the water I breathed. I knew her name was Elle. She was thirty-five years old. I knew she was very smart, very sad, and I was to be with her for the rest of my life—while at the same time, I ached with the knowledge that that was literally impossible. She was of the air and I was of the sea.

Elle trusted me enough to do as she was told . . . but that was it. There was no flare of new purpose from within her, no heat of love or lust. She was an unmated human and I was doomed. I was going to lose a second mate—and I already knew that it would kill me.

He was hovering, like he did in the water, but I was there too, and I was breathing—and dream-me was smart enough not to ask questions, especially when dream-Cepharius looked at me like that. Like I was the answer to all of his dreams. I couldn’t imagine that I could be, but what was the harm in indulging myself? How long had it been since I’d had a dream like that? Or since someone else had touched me, non-clinically?

His memory of bonding with me was just as traumatic in its own way as my memory of mine was, and being caught in a loop of drowning and suffocating, one after the other—it felt a lot like being in love. Which I realized he was. With me.

“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.

He wanted me—and I wanted to be wanted. I gave up on trying to be sexy and folded my bedding together and lay down, kicking out of my underwear before I could think about the fact that I was going to fuck myself with a dildo from a kraken. My kraken. The one who was so furiously—and beautifully—stroking himself right outside my window.

“Breeding hole’s okay, I think. It just sounds kind of dirty. But I like it.” “So dirt is good, in this case?” he asked, sounding lightly amused, and I pretended to glare out the window at him. “Keep stroking, mister.” “Anything you desire,” he promised, and I felt it echo inside my mind. He really did mean it when he said that. It wasn’t just the trite thing some human man would say to get into my pants—it was his truth, laid bare to me, and it might have scared me, if I weren’t so horny.

“Oh, because, little pearl,” he began, and I felt his heart thrill. “I know that if I found you and you found me and there were some true way for us to be together, a chance at that happiness is worth all the pain in your air, or in my sea. Because I know what it was like to have it once before—I am willing to risk it all, to have it once again. And if it doesn’t happen, then so be it, but at least I know I tried.”

“The bigger the arm, the heavier the seed burden,” he explained, as I picked the final, larger, carving up. Look at me, getting to play dick-Goldilocks in here.

I took Elle in all my tentacles and rocked us both back. Her breeding hole was exquisite. It was warm, and tight, but it stretched to take me like I knew it would. She was meant for me.

There was no way I was going to be able to go back to a man after this. If I had to get out of the water, I’d buy a house by the sea, with one of those widow’s walks, so I could look out at the ocean the whole time—or maybe I’d go down to the beach at night, take off my pants, and let the tide fuck me, pretending it was him.

I got the feeling that if someone interrupted Cepharius now, he’d kill them and then he’d go back to fucking me. It was intoxicating, especially because I could feel how all of his urges were surging through him on our ’qa. It was like doing one of those hot tub, cold-plunge things, except all the water was made of horny.

“Oh my God, Ceph,” she groaned. “Is your deity really involved so much with your breeding?” Her eyes flashed open. “No,” she said, then laughed. “Except for the fact that you’re the answer to all of my prayers.” “I like knowing that,” I told her, slowly winding.