Page 34 of An Inheritance of Monsters

I tried to draw my eyes upwards from the luminescence painting her full breasts, but my body couldn’t help but touch, sensitive suckers tasting her as my tentacles wandered.

She didn’t seem to mind; if anything, she curled closer, still touching me.

Hands wandered from my cheek, over my jaw, and down to my chest that looked similar enough to a human male’s.

And her hair was still displaying pink, showing me that this whole time, I hadn’t frightened her, and she was attainable and looking for a mate.

It was pleasing that she was so receptive to a mate of our kind.

“It doesn’t bother me,” she finally said, and let out a small laugh. “Although it’d make my life much easier if everyone else could see you, too.”

No, I said firmly, wrapping a tentacle around her wrist and squeezing gently.Mortal minds are fragile. They break at the sight of the Void.

“I’m mortal,” she said quietly. “I haven’t broken.”

A soft laugh escaped me, the noise unlike the one she’d made. But she didn’t draw back from it.

No, you haven’t. You cameseekingfor us… and we came when you called. The Void desires you, and no one else.

Chapter10

Juno

It was easy to forget the rage that had been bubbling under my skin all day when I was in a place like this.

A place where all my worries seemed so… well,human.

Insignificant against the vastness of this sea and sky.

The lap of warm water, the bed of soft coral, the scent of salt and night, even the slick, soft tentacles curling against my skin—it was all confirmation that I wasn’t crazy.

I wasn’t losing my mind; this was all real, and I felt it right now. Every sense told me that what Zirin said was true.

There was a whole world on the other side of Duskwood Manor’s dark doorways, and I could step through one of them at any time and end up here in the Void.

With monsters who looked like things out of nightmares, but spoke to me gently and caressed me with curiosity.

I hadn’t gotten a good look at Zirin the first time I’d dropped into the Void. Now, the glimmering lights on the ceiling of the grotto illuminated him for me, and I couldn’t keep my hands away.

A real-life monster. Who could’ve imagined such a thing?

Outside of the water, his colors were a little muted. His rings gleamed and pulsed with pale blues and pinks, mimicking my hair. The humanoid torso culminated in two enormous tentacles, wreathed with thinner ones that were six feet long.

The webbing between his clawed fingers fascinated me. If not for the iridescence of his purple-black skin, he almost could’ve passed as human from the waist up… and the chin down.

There was a small part of me that was a little nervous about the fact that I was naked and very, very close to him.

One minute I’d been showering, swearing about Eloise and Sierra, and the next… the tiles beneath my feet had vanished.

All that was left was a perfect square of darkness that seemed to swallow my feet inch by inch—and Zirin’s tentacles rising from that square to wrap around me.

But at the same time, I didn’t feel nervousness, or shame.

There was that hot, sickening tingle of excitement flowering low in my belly as he touched me in return, examining my hair and face, his tentacles caressing and tickling.

I wondered if there was something wrong with me for being attracted to him, with his alien features, but… if I was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.

He was more intriguing to me than any human man I’d been with before. Sometimes you just have to own your weirdness.

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