Filed To Story: The Saltwater Curse Book PDF Free
There.
I said what I said.
I’m not ashamed—yes, I am—to admit that for one embarrassingly long second, I was imagining how it would feel to have the real deal inside me.
Don’t get me wrong, the tentacle dildo in my bedside drawer doesn’t have a bulb on it, but I did potentially make an impulse purchase last week after reading one too many shifter romances. One thing led to another, and I have a knot waiting for me if I ever make it back to the house.
I keep throwing glances at all the limbs wrapped around me, but I can’t for the life of me figure out which one is his dick.
Or why kraken dick isn’t as scary as human dick.
I yawn against his chest, fighting wave after wave of exhaustion as I tighten my grip around the knife he gave me. His weird purring sound is going to make me lose the war against sleep.
A particularly loud snore has my eyes snapping up to his face, and I scowl at the memory of how his stupidly pretty face looked as he got himself off. How the muscle in his jaw feathered. The tendons in his arms rippled. His heaving chest paired with rasping breaths. The way the opalescent liquid beaded at the tapered tip before spilling onto my chilled skin. I can still feel the thick residue coating my thighs.
He was my only semblance of warmth, both inside and out.
It was a mortifying, exhilarating, partially heartbreaking experience I still haven’t got a clue how to process.
On the one hand, fuck him, the piece of shit, for forcing that situation on me.
On the other, holy fuck, I know he’s a sea creature, but how dare he get me wet like that?
And lastly, most disconcertingly, the guilt riddled on his face made me almost… I don’t know. Pity him? Sympathize with him? I truly believe he didn’t want to do it, didn’t have a choice.
I don’t give a shit if he couldn’t help himself. After the shit I’ve gone through, everything is a choice, and he made the wrong fucking one—as sexually enlightening as it was.
I want to absolutely despise him, hate every fiber of his being and gut him a thousand times to fix every wrong, but he’s making it hard for me to place him on the shelf Tommy is on.
They’re in the same building, but not the same room. I’m not sure how to make sense of it.
Everything this monster has done was with a gentleness I haven’t been afforded in a long time. Ordus’ hands might be larger than my face, but there was never a moment of hurt as he dabbed at my wounds with a delicateness I didn’t think would be possible by a man—
monster
—of his stature.
He wrapped my feet with so much care—care I wouldn’t have given myself. I was certain he was going to say something horrific to balance it out, make him a true monster, inside and out, but it never came.
He never told me I was pathetic, stupid for hurting myself, useless for not staying put. There was no inkling of disappointment or disgust, no displeasure over having to deal with my injury.
He never raised his hand against me. Put his tentacles around my throat. Yanked me around.
No snide remarks have come over my injured hand either. I expected… I don’t know what I expected him to say when he noticed it. Maybe talk about how weak I am? Laugh at it? Goad me. Tease me. Tell me I deserved what happened, and I wouldn’t be sore if I hadn’t pushed him to do what he did.
None of that has come.
He’s a monster, but he’s not acting like one.
When he was raging so hard, he left to calm himself down. Then later, he forced himself to breathe through his anger. His touch was soft, and even though I could tell he wanted more, he didn’t even try to take his pleasure out on me, didn’t ask or suggest. He could’ve pulled my dress down or spread me wide and taken what he wanted, but he didn’t.
And I don’t know how to deal with that.
I don’t know how to deal with any of this.
Not how gentle he’s been. Not the weird, romantic, creepy shit he’s been saying. Not the fact that he’s taken me “to bed,” which apparently involves zero funny business. The man—
kraken
—slithered us over to the side-cave, lowered us to the moss, wrapped both versions of his arms around me, closed his eyes, and started snoring ten seconds later.
I was gobsmacked.
I’ve been fighting sleep for the past two hours; this fa?ade of his is bound to break soon. He’s luring me into a false sense of comfort before he does whatever it is he plans on doing with me.
Tommy’s needs never waited for daylight or full consciousness. Even if I was fast asleep, anything went. If there is a way to stay awake forever, to avoid opening myself up to that vulnerability, I would do it.
I don’t want to be around to find out what Ordus’ true intentions are. I don’t want to find out when it’s being forced upon me.
No one kidnaps people from their home if they’re a good person. Maybe this is a common occurrence amongst his kind—if there are more of him—but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not an excuse. Every creature is capable of good and evil. He’s choosing the latter.
With nothing to do and every intention of watching him like a hawk in case his plan was to fake sleep then pounce, he’s been my sole focus.
Light trickles in through from the ribbons of bioluminescent algae. It’s hard to pinpoint Ordus’ exact shade, other than the fact that it’s very distinctly not quite human. Sometimes his skin holds a blue coloring, while other times, it’s a medium tan over the center of his body that radiates into a reddish brown along his shoulders, arms, forehead, and the bottom half of his body. The light, spotted markings are more prominent along his tentacles like the local reef octopuses, dotted around his brow bones, beneath his eyes, along his shoulders and arms.
I’ve noticed his tentacles sometimes change colors as they move over the ground, darkening over the grey stone before shifting to a lighter brown over the driftwood and coconuts, then glimmering blue close to the algae. Even now, there’s a greenish tinge to the tentacles resting on the moss or over my damp teal dress.
It’s fascinating.
In Ordus’ sleep, he carefully wrapped his tentacle around my injured arm, keeping it slightly bent at the elbow, the wrist cushioned over the thick limb. Maybe I’m losing my mind, but the appendage seems warmer than all the others. The suckers might also be puckering slightly—I can’t really tell from the pins and needles. Either way, the combination is weirdly soothing.
I would rather be knocked out by painkillers, though.
Movement sounds from the main cavern, jolting me out of my half-asleep state. I whip my attention toward the noise, unsure whether I should wake Ordus up or hope to whatever god listening that nothing bad is about to happen.
There’s a steady clack, clack, clack of claws against stone, and before I know it, the shark-dog is flopping himself against my back, shoving closer so he’s flat against me, sandwiched between me and Ordus.
I hesitate. “Can you really understand me?”
His tail thumps the ground.
I’ll take that as a yes.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.