Bump in the Night Read online

  “Orgasm number one, 04:38. Amniotic fluid streaming from his rectum increasing.”

  I shuddered, collapsing against the metal frame as my balls emptied, my muscles as limp as overcooked pasta.

  The tentacles abruptly rose from my body and, woozy from the orgasm and the poison drugging my system from the inside out, I tried to lift my head, which was of course impossible. Keith had secured a collar at my throat far too tightly to allow that or any other inch of movement.

  The tentacles crashed down on the frame, the metal shaking hard against my flesh. I shrieked in alarm, but the assault wasn’t over because a crash resounded again, the shudder of the steel jarring me and making my stomach roll.

  “Attack on the birthing frame commences, 04:40.”

  Again and again, tentacles beat down on the frame holding me prisoner. Trapped against the steel, my body jerked with each pounding slap, my terrified screams tearing from my throat as the pummeling continued until, miraculously, the metal hugging my hip shrieked. A shard of steel stabbed into me, drawing blood. I cried out, still bound and unable to shift away from the metal tip embedding into my flesh, but the slapping, thundering tentacles didn’t relent. If anything, the beast beat at the frame harder.

  “Oh shit,” Keith’s voice echoed from the darkness beyond the edge of the lake. “The welds aren’t holding.”

  Another crashing thud later, I jerked my head free, though a length of pipe dangled awkwardly at my throat where the collar was still bolted. Another blow buried the tip inside my hip farther but also rocked my bloated stomach loose on one side, as well as my right thigh.

  Hurting too much, I weathered the fury of slapping tentacles as well as I could. Keith’s increasingly frantic but excited shouts resounded from the woods, but I couldn’t make out his words over the screech of protesting and rending metal, not to mention my own weak cries.

  When the storm ended, steel still encircled my wrists and ankles. The collar still hugged my throat, but the frame I’d been attached to was in jagged pieces, some of which trailed from the straps at my wrists and legs. The beast gently removed the jagged steel buried in my torn hip. Slick, syrupy wetness wrapped around my limp body once the metal that had impaled me slid free. The beast lifted me up and into the chill air.

  I groaned, reaching for my swollen and aching stomach, but the creature pulled my hands away.

  I was no longer Keith’s prisoner, but I remained a prisoner nonetheless.

  And as fluid gushed from my ass, rivers of it leaking down my numb legs, I knew that if the creature didn’t help me, now, I would die.

  “My stomach. Please,” I tried to say, but nothing emerged from my throat except an unintelligible garble.

  “The cephalopod has freed its mate from the birthing frame. 04:48, almost daylight. How ya doin’, Danny? Still hanging in there, man?”

  I shuddered and jerked, trying to pull away from that voice.

  The creature patted me, slimy tentacles drawing me closer to the water, slithering all over and around me. Thankfully, one worked into my ass, just the tip, but it felt so good, so right, that my muscles loosened, letting the beast do with me what it wanted. It dragged my ass into the glacially cold water, the lake closing around me almost up to my abruptly pebbled nipples. At the same time, the tentacle in my ass speared deeper. No bother with prepping or stretching me. There was no need. It simply shoved inside me like a speeding bullet, going deep. I grunted at the full sensation, momentarily distracted from the icy water, and soon wholly distracted by the tingling, suckling attention at my groin as the beast moved over my cock and balls more eagerly.

  “The cephalopod has moved the subject into the birthing shallows. If you can hear me, Danny, pay attention to this next part! I need to know if the offspring extracted from your colon emerge live.”

  Head bleary, I could only shiver and cry out at the attention on my dick and the uncomfortable stretch of my hole around the tentacle as it stuffed my rectum and shoved deeper inside me. I whimpered as the tentacle bumped into something else jammed in there—the infants implanted inside me. I jerked my head, trying to get my mouth to any of the tentacles restraining my arms and legs, and wept bitterly when they shifted away from my boldly seeking tongue.

  The tentacle began sliding the first infant from my ass. I gritted my teeth in hideous pain at the scrape of tiny tentacles clutching my hypersensitive rectum before stretching my hole impossibly wide to squeeze from it and burst free.

  Destroyed voice or not, I shouted in relief.

  And release.

  Cum erupted from my molested cock as the now familiar mixture of pleasure and pain overwhelmed me. And when the tentacles sucking my balls vised to pump even more semen from me, to drain me dry, my bleary mind shut down.

  In went the tentacle.

  Out slid another infant from my wrecked ass.

  “Danny? The babies?” Keith called, his voice closer.

  Dangerously close.

  Stupidly close.

  Keith had kept me from my mate, limiting the creature’s access to me. Foolish, foolish man.

  My eyes closed, the beast prying the third and final baby from my body as Keith’s first agonized screams reached me.

  Mercifully, my task finished for the creature that had bred me, I passed out.

  I woke on the shore, turned on my side and still attached to the wreckage of the metal birthing frame. I’d been dragged free of the chilly water, though. Tentacles yet filled my ass, but the fat tube of cool flesh didn’t hurt. The weight inside me comforted me, as familiar to me now as the gentle suck at my dick, root to tip. No tentacles restrained my arms and legs, nor had the creature secured my waist and thighs. The freedom felt . . . nice. My muscles trembled and twitched, too weak to allow me to run away, even had I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. Instead, I wanted to open my mouth to the pebbly stretch of meat that brushed my dry, cracked lips. Whatever chemical in the creature’s goo had sedated me was wearing off, and I didn’t want that. I was so unbearably thirsty. I kissed the lightly questing tentacle and parted my lips.

  I was rewarded, richly, with the squirm of the beast threading that piece of it into my welcoming mouth.

  I slurped and sucked at the stingy length my mate would permit me while I lifted my lashes. Raw chunks of what had once been Keith seeped red blood only inches from where I lay, collapsed and spent.

  Good.

  Son of a bitch deserved it.

  Keith might’ve brought me to this place, introduced me to the creature that tenderly ministered to me with soft rubs to my back and silky pats to my gaping and still streaming asshole, but Keith had abused me too. My best friend’s betrayal had hurt me worse than the creature that now mastered me. I didn’t remember how long Keith had said the monster’s egg incubation lasted. Ten days? Ten days Keith had drugged me and dangled me as a tempting morsel to the beast that had bred me. Keith had strapped me to that frame too, away from my mate. Keith would’ve taken me from the monster in the lake as soon as he could. For more tests. More research. To monitor the eggs.

  I gulped at the sickly sweet liquid leaking from the tentacle that playfully fucked my mouth, and smiled around its girth as the creature gently maneuvered me onto my back in the dirt. The beast nudged my spread knees high against my chest. When I couldn’t hold them in place, my generous mate secured them there for me with cool tentacles hugging my ankles and thighs.

  Leaving my ruined butthole open and vulnerable.

  I sighed as the tentacle slithered from my mouth.

  “Please,” I rasped, awkwardly lifting my ass in offering. “Feed me. And fuck me.”

  This time, when the wet curl licked at my asshole, I arched my back and squirmed for more. I relaxed, opening up my ass to that press of flesh and moaning bleary delight as the creature gradually pushed more and still more into me. “Yes,” I hissed, enjoying the burn in my ass and especially the jolting tingle as the tentacle strummed my prostate. I thrust my hips when it began to fu
ck me.

  No, not fuck. This wasn’t just fucking.

  The monster had mated me, chosen me for its own.

  Once my cock had spit and my balls had drained dry, I knew the beast would jam its eggs inside me again. Three last time. Perhaps, with my ass now loosened, my mate would pack me more fully? The creature would surely feed me more and still more of the goo I craved if I managed to accept extra eggs. I lifted my head to watch my writhing belly as I fought to meet each of the tentacle’s thrusts in my hole and wondered, in awe, how large my stomach might swell and how pleased my mate might be with me if I took four this time. Or even five?

  Just the thought sent me over the edge and dark circles danced in front of my eyes as the beast yanked on my cock, pulling my last thin stream of cum from me. Panting hard, I rested, willing my heartbeat to slow as the tentacle slithered from my hole. I widened my spread legs, tipping my ass up, air escaping my lungs in a relieved whoosh when that tentacle returned with the first egg.

  I didn’t stiffen this time. Or maybe it was because after the birth, my ring gaped grotesquely huge? Either way, my mate’s egg slid right in. I groaned my pleasure at the pulsing fullness as my beautiful monster pushed the egg deeper into me. I didn’t even gasp when I felt that weight lodging in my colon.

  The beast returned with yet another egg, and another still.

  My abdomen swelled, the bump of my mate’s children easily discernible, though not as large as a woman’s stomach yet. “More,” I pleaded with my mate, my monster. The noonday sun lit the sky overhead, warming my face and the solid, writhing lump under my skin that pushed my belly button out atop the hill of my gut as a fifth egg was inserted into my ass. Glistening, pale gray tentacles reached from the black waters of the shallows in tangled, pulsating ropes, the rest of my monster still hidden from me in the murky depths of the lake. “Give me more.”

  The beast rewarded me by threading a gooey, sweet tentacle back into my mouth. My monster packed its children into my guts while I sucked and slurped in bleary joy.

  The beast had given me everything I’d wanted for my life, fulfilling my mundane desires in strange but lavish abundance. I had a job. The lake would be my home. I had no wife, but children aplenty, as many as I could trade to the beast who richly fed me.

  Keith was right.

  Finally, I was wanted, needed, and useful again.

  Noah Rose leaned on the railing of his sloop and gazed out across the stretch of gently rolling turquoise swells to the tiny, horseshoe-shaped island. Beyond the blue-green bay and brilliant white beaches, a thick green forest rose to a bare, rocky gray peak in the middle.

  It looked like a postcard. Noah had sailed all over the Caribbean, but he’d never seen anyplace so stunning. The complete lack of human occupation made it even more so.

  No. Wait.

  Shading his eyes with his hand, he squinted against the morning glare on the water and tried to make out the details of the dark figure moving from the greenery and onto the beach. It looked like a person, but he couldn’t be sure. He was still too far away.

  Fetching the binoculars from the cockpit only took a moment. He raised them to his eyes. Adjusted them. Found the unexpected figure, and let out a breathy oh.

  He hadn’t expected people. He especially hadn’t expected a naked man.

  He’d expected to find La Terre de la Belle Mort, though. He’d never doubted that he’d reach his goal. Stumbling on the island by accident rather than because of all his long and careful planning, however, galled him. Not least because all the men who’d refused to help him on his quest—out of fear, skepticism, or simply because they didn’t want to spend months at sea with a man they wanted to own but couldn’t—had insisted that those who deliberately sought the island would not find it. Noah, in turn, had insisted that bit of the legend was simply exaggeration.

  He clung to that idea, even now. Even though he’d sailed every square mile of the triangle between Haiti, Aruba, and the Grenadines in the ten years since he’d left Miami for South America, and he’d never encountered this island before. More importantly, neither had anyone else that he knew of.

  Of course, it was a very tiny island, and easy to miss. Hell, he hadn’t even known it was there until the sun had risen this morning after the squall that had brought him here.

  He laughed as he stirred up a mug of instant coffee in the galley. He’d cursed the freak storm as it’d tossed his beloved Ligia like a child’s toy and kept him cold, hungry, and exhausted while he’d used every ounce of his physical and mental strength to prevent the premature demise of both himself and his beloved sloop. All he’d thought of for the last day and a half was survival. Waking up after a much-deserved post-storm sleep to find that in last night’s cloudy, moonless darkness he’d anchored offshore from the place he’d been seeking for the last eight months came as a bit of a shock.

  Not that it mattered, really. However it had happened, here he was, facing the island the old men swore would give you your heart’s most secret desire. For a price.

  Not that Noah believed in ridiculous old legends, of course. But whispered stories plus a place no one knew how to find usually meant something worth having at the other end—money, an archeological find, a new place to explore. If nothing else, he’d have the adventure. Sometimes, the joy lay in the journey itself.

  Back on deck, a quick inspection of the water between Ligia and the island told Noah that an offshore reef was guarding the lovely little bay. The waves rolled over the coral without breaking, but that didn’t necessarily mean he could sail across it without tearing open his keel. The depth over a reef could be difficult to judge in a calm like this.

  In the end, he elected to ease his lady closer to the reef—though not close enough to cause her damage if she should drift—drop anchor, and take the dinghy to shore. A knapsack full of food, water, and other essentials went with him, having been packed and ready for weeks.

  “Good-bye, sweetheart,” he said, leaning over the dinghy’s side to stroke the luscious curve of Ligia’s hull. “I’ll be back soon.”

  His answer came in the creak of wood and the solid snap of the breeze in Ligia’s furled sails. He smiled. She’d wait for him, patiently, like she’d done since she’d first become his on his seventeenth birthday.

  Getting a firm grip on the oars, he began the long pull to shore. Navigating over the reef made him glad he’d anchored Ligia in the deeper water. His little rowboat barely made it, in spite of its shallow draft.

  Once he’d gotten clear of the reef, he stopped rowing and glanced over his left shoulder, then his right. Palms swayed at the back of a beach so white it glowed in the sun. He couldn’t see the man he’d spotted through his binoculars.

  Not that it mattered. Noah hadn’t come here for sex. He could get that anytime he wanted back home in Costa Rica where he ran his high-end surf holiday business, or on any of the islands where he stopped on his frequent sailing trips. The mysterious stranger might be gorgeous, but right now Noah was frankly relieved not to have a human complication to deal with. He had enough on his plate.

  When the dinghy’s keel ran aground, Noah jumped out and dragged the wooden boat more firmly onto the beach. The waves hadn’t been large beyond the reef. Here, they’d diminished to tiny, transparent ripples. Still, Noah preferred to play it safe. Just because the island resembled a poet’s vision didn’t mean he wanted to get stranded here. All he wanted was . . .

  That was the question, wasn’t it? He’d told himself he wanted the adventure, and whatever profit he could gain, but the truth was he didn’t know what he wanted. Couldn’t define the cause of the vague ache inside him that grew stronger year by year, and had no clue how to ease it, regardless of how much money he made, how many new horizons he explored or how many men he fucked. Thus his quest for this place. Hoping to fill the vacuum inside him with sensation. Experience. New things.

  Even the island’s name—Land of Beautiful Death, as they’d called it in Haiti, where
he’d first learned of it—had intrigued him. It had never occurred to him to be afraid. What did he have to fear?

  With his transportation secured, Noah shouldered his knapsack and turned to survey his surroundings. Beyond the beach and the initial scattering of palms, the ridge he’d seen from Ligia’s deck rose in an unbroken emerald slope on all sides. Leaves rustled, and birds called to one another deep in the forest. The breeze carried a sharp, wild smell like damp earth and flowering vines.

  Noah dug his toes into the fine, cool sand. The island felt undiscovered. Untamed. The explorer in him itched to plunge directly into the green gloom beneath the trees and search out its secrets. The treasures hiding in the virgin forest must be spectacular indeed, to warrant the legends that had grown up around this place.

  First, however, he needed to secure his campsite. If he got into trouble and didn’t return until close to—or after—dark, he wanted his tent set up and a fire pit ready to go.

  Hoisting his pack more firmly onto his back, he strode up the beach and into the shade beneath the palms.

  After he set up his tent, he put on his hiking boots and took a canvas bag out into the woods to look for firewood. Unlike the quiet, peaceful beach, the forest echoed with sounds—birdsong, insects buzzing, the crack and shuffle of branches and leaves and ancient tree trunks moving in the wind, or with the weight of animals, or under their own power for all Noah knew. A strange magic hummed in the air, making impossible things seem probable.

  When he caught the first strains of a faint musical lilt from somewhere deeper in the woods, he thought it was a bird. He’d already picked out several calls he’d never heard on any other island. One more wouldn’t surprise him.

  Except that this one was unusual. Compelling in a different way than the pretty but meaningless tunes of the birds. The more Noah listened, the more the flow of the enchanting sounds reminded him of words. Fascinated, he set his bag of firewood at the base of a tremendous boulder and slipped through the jungle, following the voice.