A fun anonymous monster commission! Not something I think I usually write, but it was a ball all the same! Tentacles await...
The taboo nature of Tucker's evenings made them all the more tempting. There was something to sneaking under the shadows of the tall Georgia pines to the estuarine banks of the river still warm with the faded southern sun that only built his anticipation. His eagerness. That he should be so eager for the night ahead should have worried him, but somehow that worry made the thoughts and promises of the full moon's light all the more exciting.
It had to be the full moon, when the tide downriver was high and she could come to him again. She, the arbiter of his desires, who appeared to him months ago while he fished under the cover of darkness. There were legends, for legends were as limitless as stars in the south, but of course he had not believed them until she appeared.
Three times, three full moons, before he convinced himself it was more than fantasy.
Yet, of course, this was a fantasy. It just wasn't one he could have thought of by himself.
He had brought something for her this time, and would not bear to let himself think of it as foolish despite the prickle building in his skin as the river came into view. Under the moonlight, the river appeared as glass. He barely disturbed the sheen of its ripples even as he waded into them. Tucker turned back to the bank only once, realizing in his eagerness that he'd forgotten to remove his shoes, socks, and his clothes. He had simply gone without thought and stood now in the growing damp, cradled by the river. Waiting.
As so many things in dark water, he imagined her touch before he acknowledged it. It was easy to, when touch was all he really had. The shades of night obscured much, and it wasn't until a cloud moved over the moon that he was certain the touch against his shins was insistent, and real.
He turned slowly in the waters, careful not to disturb the sense of eminent peace flowing through him and around him. Then the cloud moved, and he smiled.
She was still real, after all. Her touch, her smile as she emerged from the water, and her voice as silky and sweet as they swaying honeysuckle fronds on the bank were all real. She swirled before him in the water, golden eyes with wide pupils in a face of pale blue with black, damp hair hanging down into the water. Her teeth, when she smiled, were all sharp and needlelike. But her smile was not threatening. If anything, Tucker found it was the most tempting gesture he had ever seen.
"Hey there, Pinetree," she said.
"H-Hi," Tucker managed. He swallowed. "Hi, Pearl."
Pearl giggled, and Tucker felt himself flush for just how much he enjoyed the noise. The had given each other the silly little nicknames on their second meeting. He had asked her then if she was a dream, and in response she had only asked him to tell her what a dream with her in it was like. She had always been too persuasive, too confident in herself. But that was what made her so endearing and so limitlessly, inescapably enthralling. By the end of his explanation, he had finally asked her name. She told him it was something he wouldn't be able to pronounce, and he called her "Pearl."
"Alright," she concluded. "Pine for you, then."
She learned his real name later that night, anyway, when she asked it so she could whisper it into his ear when at last he--
Tucker shook himself.
Pearl's smile grew. "I was hoping you'd come back," she said. "A month is a long time, and you never know with how dangerous life on land can be." Pearl sighed and reclined in the water. Something tugged at Tucker's ankles. "But here you are."
"Here I am," Tucker said. His mouth felt oddly dry then, and he could only stammer out his next point: "I-I brought you something."
"Oh..." Pearl's eyes sparkled. "Whatever for?"
"I saw it and thought of you," Tucker said. "I've been saving it for you tonight."
"What is it?"
"Ah-ah. Close your eyes."
Pearl pouted, but closed her eyes all the same. She extended a hand towards him. Tucker examined her skin closely. The light blue of knee-deep seawater, paling to a kind of pristine sand-white underneath. Its touch was soft, softer than human skin, though her fingers held more force than he could ever imagine as she took the small, round object from him.
"Open your eyes," Tucker said.
Pearl's eyes snapped open and settled on the pearl Tucker had placed in her palm. Her smile grew wider then he thought possible, and she rushed to embrace him, giggling all the while.
Tucker fell backward and got drenched in the process. Pearl did not seem to care in the slightest, seemed intent only on burying him in kisses and wrapping him tight in her arms. They emerged a few moments later on the shore, Tucker panting with his nearly drowned breaths and Pearl gaping at her namesake now nestled between two fingers.
"It's so thoughtful!" she said.
"I almost thought it was kinda dumb," Tucker admitted, trying to wring out his shirt while still wearing it. "Figure you could find them in the sea or whatever."
"You ever try getting an oyster open? Not worth it even for us." She set it gingerly on the sand between them and gazed deeply into Tucker's eyes. "And from the land no less... you do know how to treat a lady."
Tucker blushed and looked up into the night sky. The full moon slid by, the stars swirling endlessly around it.
"I like you something fierce," he said. "I'm sorry I can't see you more."
"Now, now..." Pearl said. "None of that. I'll take every moment we can share, precious as pearls."
"Shucks," Tucker said.
"That is how you open oysters, Pine," Pearl said.
Tucker snorted, then let the laughter overtake him. Pearl laughed with him, the sound warm and comforting in the night air. When it died, something tugged on Tucker's shorts. He looked down.
Pearl's legs were not really legs, not in the sense of, say, human legs. She had far too many by a person's reckoning--eight in fact--and they were nearly twice as long as Tucker was tall. They were flexible, and soft, covered underneath with never-ending rows of sensitive, probing suction cups that were themselves more deft and nimble than fingers. No less deft were the tips, prehensile and probing and always seeming to reveal Pearls' endless curiosity about people, and Tucker in particular.
Not for nothing were those probing tips gingerly working their way up Tucker's thigh and under the hem of his shorts.
His breath caught.
"I was thinking..." Peal purred, "about your dream."
"Uh-huh," Tucker coughed.
"I'm just worried you won't be able to handle it."
"I... uh. Well." Tucker cleared his throat. "You want to?"
"Oh yes..." Pearl drew her 'yes' out into a hiss that sent shivers up Tucker's spine. "There's so much more I want to experience of you, Pine. You get so..." her tentacles worked further up, "wiggly. Loud, too. Lucky we're alone."
"Lucky, yeah..." Tucker's throat tightened. "I uh... Yeah. Yes. If you're sure."
"You've given me a wonderful gift tonight, and I figure we should make the most of the time we do get together. Of course I'm sure. I'm as sure that you want me to take the lead on this?" She leaned in close, her breath tickling Tucker's ear. "But, Piney, I think you need to help me with these... coverings."
Tucker's fingers had never worked so quickly, nor quite so deftly. He was out of his pants as though they burned him, and his shirt nearly as quick. The cool waters of the river swirled around his bare skin, as did the encroaching, sensuous evaluation offered by Pearl's tentacle legs. She seemed as eager as she was hesitant, almost entranced by the sensations Tucker's bare body offered her.
It would be unfair to say that Tucker was himself not lost in some kind of spell. There was that pervasive deftness to Pearl's touch--a familiarity if not of form, than of desire. He gasped while the small cups on the undersides of her legs found his skin and worked slowly, almost like kisses, up his thighs and in between his legs. Two more found his shoulders and pressed harder, almost massaging him. He groaned, then hitched as the tips of them found his now exposed nipples. They held fast and sucked harder and yet somehow more delicately than any mouth. More knowing, and the humming laugh Pearl offered him told Tucker she knew far more than he. There was little he could do but lose himself in her grip and power, and that was something of the dream he had shared with her. The dream they shared.
Though, it was only something of the dream, and when Pearl's tentacles reached the hem of Tucker's rapidly tightening undergarments, they slowed.
"You want everything?" she asked.
Tucker flushed and closed his eyes. "Take me," he said. "I want to be yours."
"You are mine," Pearl said. "Tell me again, Pine, at the end. Remind me always."
