Page 52 of Brine and Bone
Kore's eyes flew open on a gasp. Startled. Clinging to him as he swam into a strange current.
A helical, twisting stream, at once spinning toward the surface and into the dark abyss.
Drawing them down in a dizzying spiral that made the descent bearable.
Distracting her, still knotted inside her, Nyx maintained that unhurried rhythm as the current took them down. Crooning as seed and slick swirled between her thighs, brightening the current with the scent.
Of them.
A perfume that would be carried up. Into the shallows.
Where Thalos would taste it.
Where they wouldalltaste what Nyxarion had claimed.
Below them, black coral spires reached up from the gloom. Pulsing in the abyss. And as they emerged from the riptide, still joined, polyps extended rubbery fingers in a shiver of primitive greeting. The entire reef brightened with a lazy, satisfied light before it bloomed.
A riot of color that leapt in gaudy salute as they returned to the city.
The tunnels swallowed them whole.
Nyxarion navigated the winding passages with practiced ease—coils scraping through tight tunnels that forced her flush against his chest.
Humming. Content as her king ferried her into the dark that had once been her prison. She was… happy, even when he slipped free, and the ache of his absence drew a wet sound from her throat.
A complaint.
Seed spilled free, clouding their wake with milky tendrils.
Before she could sulk, his lips found hers.
It was soft. Almost gentle, if Nyxarion was capable of such a thing.
Not the frantic, possessive claiming from the mid-ground. A grasping blur she remembered in stills. His tongue swept past her lips with the same unhurried dominance he'd just written into her flesh. Tasting every last inch, he inhaled her breath and filled her lungs with a low groan.
She kissed him back.
Of course she did.
Cupping his jaw, taking what she was made to accept, she opened for him. Wider. Letting him devour everything he'd conquered.
Because there was something burning inside her. In that spot she hadn't realized was hollow, before he'd filled it with something warm.
It was a perfect moment.
Just one.
Fleeting.
Doomed.
Which made it all the more precious, for when they entered the throne room, Nyxarion went rigid.
Stiff.
Every muscle locked, tight with a particular blend of coiled violence and seething temper. Beneath her fingers, his spines lifted. A rattling cascade spread in deadly warning.
She felt the shift between one blink and the next.
