Page 18 of Darkest Dredge

“T-this isn’t funny. You’re freaking me out…” My brain was pudding the moment his tentacles encircled both my breasts and squeezed them so tight they turned red, then a concerning shade of purple. “Ungh—Ow! That fucking hurts!”

Again, my protests went ignored.

His knee nudged my legs apart, just as Noah’s had before he’d put on the mask. This version of him wasn't so gentle.

While his tentacles prodded my breasts and face, his hands skimmed lower between my legs.

No. I wasn’t ready. Not yet. I needed to know Noah was in there. I needed to know he was watching over me, keeping me safe from whatever it was holding.

"Fhtagn," I sputtered, remembering my safe word. It was stupid, thinking it would work.

This creature hadn't shown any sign of caring about what I said, whether he understood or not.

So when all five of his eyes flashed with recognition at the Akloword Noah had given me for a safe word, I froze.

He grumbled something back to me, words I couldn't grasp. His voice came out disembodied and rife with annoyance. It was almost like he wasn't having a conversation with me. But a voice in his own head.

Maybe it was. Maybe Noah was inside it. Begging, threatening, pleading. Whatever it was he had to say to keep this thing from hurting me. After what was now clearly an internal debate, a scathing growl sounded in my skull, making my bones rattle.

He climbed off the bed, and the eye over the gaping hole where a nose should have been flicked to the abandoned tentacle toy. Vague disdain emanated from the creature. He picked it up, turned it over and…

Sniffed it… Why did everyone keep doing that?

The nose cavity twitched with a deep inhale. His tentacles coiled around the silicone, annoyance turning to curiosity, morphing quickly to pleasure. The scent from the toy had him muttering in my head again, the deep pleasure of his roiling voice coming forth as a chant. Ancient and unholy.

I swallowed as it seemed to taste the toy. His eyes fluttered and rolled back into his head for a moment. All five of them.

"If you like the taste of that, you can just go ahead and keep that. Suck on it like a lollipop and then let my captain go. Okay?"

My attempt at diplomacy failed miserably as it laughed again.

He spoke once more, and this time I picked up on one of the words uttered. Quiet, or more accurately, silence.

It was a command. Telling me to be quiet.

Had this only been my captain issuing the order, I would have launched into my usual bratty routine.

Not this time. Survival instincts told me to obey, because there was no telling just how much of Noah was left inside this thing.

When he spoke again, it uttered a single, barely-convievable word in English, in an accent I could barely comprehend, it was so thick.

“Mate.”

Chapter Ten

Noah

Nothing made sense.

The moment I lifted the mask over my face, a burst of dark and cryptic energy shot forth like an electric shock. Everything was a whirl of terrifying sound and vision.

And Cthulhu spare me, the pain. The unbridled agony of feeling my body cracking apart and rebuilding itself would have been pure hell if it didn’t feel so oddly distant. Like all my senses were being run through a filter, muffling the world around me.

It scrambled my head while my body grew heavy and frenzied.

Like it was becoming less my own with every tick of passing time.

Oh sweet fucking depths.