Page 160 of Monsters in Love

She shrugged. Perhaps there was something to that, but it didn’t matter. “Ifeelsafer with you, though,” she clarified.

His ears flicked and she could see in the shift of his eyes that although he was uncomfortable with her request, he was at least considering it.

“I must think on it. I have brought down one of the deep-dwellers. We will cook what we can eat tonight, and I will smoke the rest. Its meat should give us a reprieve for a few days while I consider how best to do so that will be safest for you.”

Giving him a grateful smile, she slipped from his embrace and crawled off the bed. At the same time, she tried not to watch too closely as he stepped out of their sanctuary to retrieve his prey. One look at it and, as expected, she wanted to hurl. Of course, any creature that he called “deep” would be some kind of monster!

A pale, leathery creature, it had a head armored with plating so that only a tri-serrated beak was visible. She couldn’t see any eyes. Instead, it had four horns, one of which was broken, that rose up from its brow and the general area where the eyes might have been. Just above the second set of horns, a long bony crest spiked outward before flattening just above its neck and extending down in overlapping armor partially down its swollen body. From those plates, large gray spines jutted out, making it vaguely resemble a sea anemone if not for the dozens of long legs and the two thin tails dragging behind it as Asterion hauled it through the main chamber into the tunnel that led to the slaughter room.

As much as she wanted to be plastered at his side, she wrinkled her nose and sat back down on the edge of the bed. It didn’t bother her to see game butchered, but there was no way she was going to be able to stomach witnessingthatand still be able to eat. As it was, she would be lucky with however much she managed to force down if she didn’t think too closely where it came from. Even from where she sat, however, Vicky could hear the sickening crunch of its natural armor being broken.

Once, when she was a child, her uncle had visited and treated the entire family to a lobster dinner. Daddy had said that he was just splashing money around, but she had been eager to try something so adult and new. Lobsters were what fancy ladies ate—the ones on the TV who dated successful boyfriends. She had been beside herself with excitement as she personally picked out her lobster from the tank before taking her place at the table in the fancy restaurant. That was until the lobsters were brought to the table, stretched across her platter looking quite like it had in the tank except very dead. She had swallowed, praying not throw up. She failed the moment her uncle had picked the big metal cracker and began to work at breaking the shell. She had thrown up all over the table, ruining everyone’s dinner.

That was how she felt now as she listened to the shell cracking and popping in the distant tunnel.

Pressing a fur to her mouth, she gagged and squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, please not let cave lobsters became a regular item on the menu.”

To her relief, she managed to hold down her meal without too much effort. In fact, she ate until her stomach was comfortably full under Asterion’s approving eye. Unlike the lobsters of her childhood, the meat resembled grilled chicken and, true to the bizarre nature of human tastebuds, tasted like it as far as she could tell.

She couldn’t believe that she actually ate it. In retrospect, it made her skin crawl, but thankfully her stomach did not rebel despite the fact. She would have hated to have thrown up all over him when he was beaming with pleasure at her appetite. She had been slow to eat bear and hadn’t cared much for the gamey, half-starved deer that he had cooked for her previously. It wasn’t that she was a picky eater, and she still ate her fill, but it was hard to be enthusiastic, especially when she knew that there were far tastier bunnies that scurried around through the corridors.

She hated to admit it, it seemed like this deep-dweller had even rabbits beat. She wondered if he could find any more of it instead whenever he felt the need to supplement their rabbit-heavy diet to give the population a chance to recover. Vicky chuckled to herself. He certainly could pack away roast rabbit too.

“Would you like more?” Asterion inquired, his eyes gleaming with warmth as he lifted another piece of meat to her.

Patting her belly contently, Vicky closed her eyes, waved away the meat and sighed. “Nope. I’m so full, I don’t think I can move. You might have to roll me over to the bed.”

A deep chuckle greeted her words that had her prying one eye open to grin over at him. It was a positive sign that he was becoming more comfortable with her. Just a couple of days ago, she could barely get a dry chuff and faint smile from him. It was definitely progress, and in that moment she felt closer to him than she had to anyone else since striking out on her own.

“I would be pleased to carry you,” he rumbled. “You need not ask.” With that he rose, scooping her carefully into his arms so that she didn’t violently pitch, which was a good thing given how full her belly was.

Snuggling into his arms, she would have purred if she could. Her stomach comfortably full and a warm minotaur who didn’t seem to mind her leeching onto him as he carried her to their shared bed was all that it took to set her world right for the time being.

She was half-asleep when he set her on the bed, the stuffed mattress dipping under his weight as he crawled in beside her. Claws plucked at her hair, lightly weaving locks together with such a tender touch that she melted into the furs beneath her. There she dozed listening to Asterion’s voice as he spoke of a festival for the queen of the heavens that he once saw in his youth where so many bulls had been sacrificed that the altar had been piled high with bones, hide, and fat and the air thick with the fragrant perfume of cooking meat.

Hiding her smile in the furs, she noted that most of his best memories were food related. She filed that little bit of information away and listened contently as he spun a picture for her of how life was thousands of years ago.

If it weren’t for the sheer hell of the majority of the day, she could use more that were spent exactly like this.

Asterion smiled in his sleep as he instinctively reached for the female curled up beside him, needing that contact. Although she had clung tightly to him in the aftermath of the nightmares that terrorized her nightly, at some point she had rolled away until he sought her out again in his sleep. Curling his large frame around hers, he sighed contently as her sweet feminine heat and scent encompassed him. In the deepest night and early morning hours when his world was narrowed to only her wrapped in his arms, he could allow the moment of vulnerability to admit to himself that he loved her.

In his dreams, he whispered the words, telling her over and over every feeling trapped within his heart. In his dreams, he did not have to fear that she too would reject him and want to leave him. In the end, everyone turned away from him. His parents had at his birth. Ariadne had betrayed him and left him alone in his prison for the male she loved. The love he felt for Vicky had caught him off-guard, kindling within him so slowly that he had barely noticed until the fire had ignited and burned away everything else but his love and deep, continuous hunger for her. In his dreams, it was safe to allow himself to enjoy it. Sleepily, he nuzzled her, caught up in the stories of her world drifting through his dreams.

He often dreamed of it now, that he could leave the labyrinth with her and for the first time in centuries feel the warmth of the sun on his fur and fresh air filling his lungs. Even with the devastation of the Ravening that she told him of, he would treasure every day out in that world with her. That was a world that held a possible future rather than endless years of bleak imprisonment. Soon their shared stories of their respective worlds would dry up. As it was, his stories were few enough already. He did not recall much of the Kingdom of Minos since he was still quite young when he had been thrown into the labyrinth, and even before then, he had not been permitted out into the city. All he had to offer her were views he recalled from his window and the feast day parades of gods through the streets to holy sites and back to their temples.

For that reason, it was not the shadows of the distantly remembered past, or the echoes of his sister’s laugher that he dreamed of anymore. Instead, it was Vicky’s world that haunted his dreams, and along with it the hope of experiencing it with his female at his side if she should have him and be agreeable. He would no longer feel the oppressive darkness of the labyrinth surrounding him at all hours. To hunt knowing that prey hadn’t been lured in to feed the labyrinth’s own monstrous appetite.

In the end, he was still a monster that people would fear. But it did not matter to him what they thought. All that mattered to him was his Vicky. They would fulfill each other’s lives, and he would be a protector to her out there just as much as he was here.

Asterion smiled in his sleep as he dreamed of the home they might make, one with plenty of open land around them, far from anything that would feel confining. Mountains rose in the distance in his dream, the scent of the harvest on the air, and he did not miss the walls that had been his only companion for centuries. He would make a good life for his Vicky, and in his dream, she loved him as much as his own love was growing for her.

She whispered his name, a note of longing in her voice as he dreamed of touching her body, awakening her need and stirring her desire up to rival his own. How he needed his mate. She welcomed him, her thighs parting eagerly for him. He moaned as he watched his cock slide deep into her sheath, his every thrust jiggling her breasts.

“Asterion,” she panted.

Curled around his female, Asterion stirred sleepily in response, still half-caught in his dream, his cock swollen and his testicles aching as he thrust forward, his cloth-covered phallus rubbing against warm feminine heat as her bottom canted back toward him, lining his cock up more perfectly with her cunt barred from him by both his chiton and the small scrap of fabric she wore. He growled deep in his chest, needing more than anything to feel that silky heat around his sex.

Vicky let out a heated breath as she writhed against him in an instinctive dance that they had played more than once. His cock jerked against her, and a damp pearling of cum at the head of his of his cock made him moan, his body quivering against hers as his hips rutted against her bottom, his claws digging into the furs around her belly. His female wriggled, soft moans filling the air around them mingling with his own deep moans and grunts. One hand gripped her hip, dragging an excited squeak from her as he increased his speed, his mind adrift on the warm sea of lust. He wanted nothing more to yank her up on to her knees so that he could shove in hard, fast and deep.

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