Page 94 of Fallen from the Stars

Heat flooded her core, and her inner walls contracted around his shaft. Vasil growled and slammed his mouth over hers, drinking in her cries as he ravaged her mouth. He quickened his pace, driving his cock deeper and faster into her body, pushing her to new heights, extending her release as his took hold of him.

With a final thrust, he drove into her as deep as he could go. The pressure inside him became too great at that moment; he burst. His seed filled her as his muscles tensed. He wrapped Theo in arms and tentacles, turning on the bed so he wouldn’t crush her, and held her with their bodies entwined, connected. One.

Theo broke the kiss and pressed her face against his neck. Her rapid breaths were warm against his skin, which was dampened by her sweat. Vasil did not release her; he ground his cock inside her, tendrils caressing her slit, eliciting another moan from her.

The pounding of their hearts eased over time. Vasil ran the tips of his fingers and claws through her hair and down the curve of her spine. He breathed in their combined scents as his suction cups kissed her flesh, granting fresh tastes of her.

Never in his life had he felt more content.

They lay together for a long while, the room silent save for their soft breathing. Part of Vasil worried that to speak might spoil the moment; what words could encompass the feelings shared between them, theexperience? But he knew it was a foolish notion. What he and Theo had was not this moment, it wasallmoments, each as precious as the last and the next.

“We should travel to The Watch tomorrow,” he said.

She inhaled deeply and released the breath in a sleepy, soft, “Okay.”

There was no question in her answer. She trusted him to take her, to protect her.

He knew no delicate way to tell her what he needed to say next. “I have a youngling there.”

For a moment, she was quiet and still; the sudden tensing of her body told him when his words penetrated the pleasure-induced fog that must have settled over her mind.

“A what?” she asked.

“A youngling. A…child.”

Theo’s head bolted up, nearly clipping his chin as she propped herself over him with her palms on his chest. “Achild? And you…we…” Her brows fell, and her eyes narrowed. “You had better not tell me you have another mate waiting for you in The Watch, or I swear I’ll rip your god damned co—”

Vasil’s eyes flared. “Theo—”

“I don’t know what kind of lives you kraken live, but I don’t share! Got it?”

Grasping her upper arms, Vasil flipped Theo onto her back and rolled to position himself over her. He covered her mouth with one hand, unable to keep an amused smirk from his lips; her jealousy was oddly satisfying.

“Listen well, human,” he said. “Youare my mate. Myonlymate. Now and forever after. I only learned she is my daughter without a doubt just before I met you, but she is nine years old. My time with her mother was long ago and brief. It was the fulfillment of my duty to my people. Nothing more. Do you understand?”

The fire had gone out of Theo’s eyes as he spoke. She nodded.

He removed his hand from her mouth and cupped her cheek. “You are the only one I have ever connected with, Theo. The only one I have ever been truly close to.”

She searched his gaze and placed a hand on his forearm. “What’s her name?”

“Melaina.”

“How did you only just find out she’s yours?”

“I have suspected for a time, but things were different before we made peace with the humans. Our kind was designed to have difficulty reproducing. Female kraken took many mates, rarely keeping one for long, in the hope of conceiving a youngling. We have been on the brink of dying off without human intervention for generations. Younglings were always raised by the females in isolation, where they could be safe until the males were old enough to learn from the hunters. We were never told who had sired the children.”

Theo’s brows furrowed. “What a shitty way to live.”

“It was the only way for us to survive.”

“But why the separation? Why not tell the males so they could be fathers? So you could have families?”

Vasil stroked her leg with the tip of his tentacle. “Because such was not our way, Theo. Younglings are rare and precious, females even more so. They needed to be protected, to be kept safe. We all took on that responsibility. It did not matter who sired a youngling, only that a youngling had been born.”

“You said you only found out without a doubt recently, but how long have you suspected that Melaina was yours?”

He slid his cock out of Theo, rolled off her, and lay on his back, keeping his tentacle around her leg. She turned on her side to face him. His gaze wandered to the ceiling as he sifted through his memories, searching for that first suspicion, the first time he’d put the clues together.

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