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Perils of the Deep: A Fucking Pirate Prequel

by Tem-ve H'syan

Title: Perils of the Deep: A Fucking Pirate Prequel
Author: Tem-ve H'syan tem-ve@gmx.de
Pairing: Jinn/Octopus
Rating: NC-17
Archive: Am very tempted to say 'arrrrrr-chive' here. Anyway, my site, Emu's site, and MA if the guidelines permit.
Warnings: Here be tentacle sex; non-consensual but nevertheless not entirely unpleasant to either party. Still, if the idea of a man/octopus tangle squicks you, skip to the next fic along :)

Notes: Massive thanks for this one go to The Emu for inspiring it with her wonderful 'Fucking Pirate PWP', to which this is a prequel. Gloriana and an unnamed octopus at the Long Beach Aquarium helped birth this bunny (now there's a scary pairing!), Alex spotted the title (in an exhibition of children's-book art, no less!), and Emu gently betaed this piece into shape. Also, shhhh, she's writing a sequel, so there's more Fucking Pirates forthcoming... and now: avast, lads, and... float.

He would be happy if he never had to float again in his life. Truly happy. Although, all told, at present floating was the only option that would leave him with any length of life in which to potentially become happy again.

Sitting down certainly wasn't one.

Count your blessings, Jinn, he chanted to himself, at least sitting down would be possible where you are, if you had a plank or a thicker skin. At least the opportunity of sitting down arose from the proximity of something that could be defined as dry land, the first he had seen in God knew how many days.

Days that had been filled with floating in the shallow water, avoiding the needle-sharp outcrops of the reef. Gingerly lifting himself far enough out of the water to catch his own urine in a shell and drink it. It disgusted him, but it disgusted him less than the idea of sinking to the admittedly very close bottom of the sea and rotting there, food for the fish.

Wiping his dry mouth with a saltwater-damp hand for the hundredth time. Feeling the bristle of a beard beginning to grow, and wondering if he would catch dew in it. Rearranging his shirt on his rumbling stomach to avoid the worst of the sunburn. Even moving was usually enough to make him dizzy these days, and he suspected the only reason that he kept his own piss down was because it was likely the only non-salty water he would have for... well, possibly for the rest of his life.

However long that may be now.

The horizon shimmered with tiny waves, oceanic giggles promising a ship, a boat, even a piece of driftwood that would take him across to the nearest island, wherever that may be. This reef was almost certainly nowhere near it.

And yet, giving up was not his way, not on this God's earth and certainly not in the face of such adversity as he had only ever heard in sailors' tales. Which implied that some of them had lived to tell the tale.

Not while he could still draw breath and his body still floated.

He spun around, gasping at the slight dizziness that caused, and let his face fall forward into the water, gazing at the mild blue depth below. Why, he thought between hungry breaths, why is this place so alive below the surface and so dead above that not even a bird could live here? And yet down below, even a few inches into the ocean, swarms of silvery fish flitted to and fro, coloured ones rigged and arrayed like royal frigates cruising in-between, craggy shells clustered together in the crevices and the millions of little arms of strange sedentary sea-plants swaying in the currents?

They had stung him the moment he'd tried to grasp them, and the fish had darted away, puzzled at the intrusion of such a large and clumsy sun-burned hand into their quiet empire.

He had been reduced to picking the shellfish off the ground and devouring them raw, precious little bags of moisture seasoned with sea water. He had seen larger ones too, bigger than both his palms outstretched, but had been too weak to prise them off the reef. And if he could not do so now, chances were he would never taste them. He knew he would not be able to keep up his strength under the circumstances. What mattered was that he survive until something, anything came along.

Sweeping one hand through the clear blue water, he made a move towards finding some shell banks he hadn't yet depleted.

Shells were not immediately obvious, but the place seemed a good one, a very good one by the feel of it. In fact, so good that it took him a dizzy few moments to ascertain it wasn't the relentless sun that had baked his brain into believing in mirage. Solid mirages, underfoot. The water was shallow, and sheltered by the tiny inlet on the leeward side of the reef, a small flat mound of sand had gathered just below the surface, almost bared by the tide. Well, it would pass for sand, being as it was the remnants of the razor-sharp reef pounded into small pieces by the waves. He swam as close as he could, and then folded his legs under him, startling at the feel of something soft and yet solid jarring his knees. It wasn't much, and it might be drowned or washed away by the next high tide, but for now it was something, something solid. An illusion of land.

On the illusion of land, he knelt for a long time, relishing the weight on his legs, the burn in his thighs, the fact that his upper body was out of the water, his hands beginning to dry, their skin doing strange things on its way to its normal shape and size. For long moments, he was content to simply kneel, feeling the sun sting his dry skin, sucking the water from his body and spreading it in the air, air that suddenly surrounded most of his body. He felt himself swaying in that ocean of air and had to claw one hand into the wet sand to keep his balance. Standing up would be an ordeal, but it had to be done, for he had no idea when he would next get the chance to be six feet above the water... if ever.

He struggled to his feet, bracing his hands on his knees, keeping his head down until the dizziness subsided somewhat and the bright light no longer seared small red spots into his field of vision. Carefully, he looked around, but saw nothing but horizon, nothing but shimmering laughing waves in the distance. Nobody coming to rescue him above the water.

Below was probably a better bet.

Carefully, he set one foot in front of the other. The sand seemed solid, solid enough to bear his weight without shredding his feet. I'm willing to bet there's a lot less of me now than when we left Plymouth, he thought grimly. They saw me getting swept overboard, and if God wills it they survived the freak wave themselves.

It had come out of nowhere, and it had gone nowhere, leaving a lot of somewhere around what was left of the ship. Whatever was left of the ship -he hadn't even been able to tell up from down for the longest time, and had breathed anything that didn't slosh in his lungs, whether it came from above or below or from inside his shirt.

They had been out of sight when he regained the surface, his breath and his wits. Pray that they're sending help out, he thought grimly. I'm no longer kneeling, but if that's what it takes, I'll dig myself into this sand on my knees and pray to whatever god will listen. God knows how many more days of this I can live through.

And my hands are just serviceable enough for digging myself a pit in the soaked sand, he thought, staring at them for long moments. Long moments of careful blankness, of a thought waiting to happen but somehow shy of actually entering Jinn's mind. It had been forbidden to go there for a long time, and it was only his weakening resolve that allowed it to slip through.

His hands were mottled with sunburn and scabbed cuts and scrapes, the skin of his fingers dry, but still not quite shrunk back to its normal size, a leathery glove that was too large for his bones. Disgusted, he rubbed his hands against each other as if to speed their return to what they ought to be. They ought to be Jinn's hands, strong broad capable sailor's hands, coarse but deft, as befitted the man he was, the rude, righteous and reclusive seaman who had worked his way up from common sailor to near commanding rank. Well, that was what everyone else would see.

What he saw, what Jinn saw, in this moment of weakness, was an entirely different pair of hands altogether. A pair of mottled brown hands with wrinkled parchment-like skin he had last set eyes on just before he'd set sail for the first time. He had been young then, a twelve-year-old boy who nearly fell over the moment he set foot on a Naval ship, his ship, not because he'd been unsteady on his too-long legs or overawed by the noise and the uniforms and the piles of rope, no not that, but because he'd been so keen for the ship to leave shore that he would have pushed it off the pier himself had he had the strength.

Ah, he had made it out of there, leaving his life behind, tethering it on shore. He would have left his name behind too, had it not been for the fact that half the docklands knew him by it, and that included some of the sailors on that ship.

He had come to regard that name as his own, even though it wasn't the one his mother had given him, and that was another thing, another sting he usually managed to ignore. To those around him, his name meant no more and no less than Jinn, the mighty man that he was. It had become his name somewhere along the lines, lines that were torn now, leaving him to sink, to blotch and wrinkle and become more and more like... no. He was Jinn.

Jinn, fire-sprite - that sounded so much more exotic and powerful than the name he had been born with, so much so that he had, without questioning, been enlisted into the ship's books as William Jinn. No, it wasn't the name. It was the giver, and the vile taste of opium smoke, grimy fingers and a toothless mouth that came with the memory of... that time.

Do they not say that when a man nears death, he sees images of his past life pass before his eyes? Jinn shook his head, thighs trembling to keep his balance, keep himself upright, closed his eyes experimentally. Nothing but dancing red spots, and dancing red spots had not featured largely in his life, that much he knew.

No, better not die now. Stand up, stand up and be touched by nothing but the air and the sun. Its sting was nothing compared to the shivers of revulsion at the memory of the old man's touch. Oh, he was like a kind master to him, indeed he was, to all and sundry, keeping the orphan boy from a life on the streets and employing him as his servant, to fetch him tea, to cook and wash and run errands for him, carrying whatever vile and secretive matters ensured the old Arab's income. His name, he had pushed the name from his mind the day the old man had died, died and lain there like a pathetic pile of smelly robes and skin like parchment, his big beak-like nose going purple at the tip and his ridiculous moustache catching the last drop of drool from that mouth. He would not think about the mouth - he felt sick enough as it was.

Slowly, he turned to face away from the reef, gingerly stretching one foot out to determine the firmness of the little shoal he was standing on. The water reached just above his ankles here - either he had inadvertently moved up or the tide was falling. And the sand seemed to go on for a bit, a narrow shallow slope disappearing into the blue depths about two steps from where he stood. Cautiously, he took one step in that direction, struggled to retain his balance as his foot slipped on the coarse sand, coming to rest on the familiar craggy rock that made up the coral reef. Sighing, he dropped into the shallow water, half-seated, half lying down, propping himself up on his hands, waiting for the dizziness to fade. Damned sun.

He spat on his hand and wiped his cracked lips, wincing at the sting. There's no part of me that's not salty now, he thought. And if I don't find at least some mussels I'll be the saltiest of them all soon, down on the ocean floor, food for the fish.

As it was, he was surprised he hadn't been attacked yet. He hoped the water immediately around the reef was too shallow for sharks, but he wasn't willing to bet on it, or even think on it for too long. Gingerly, he lowered one foot down the sandy slope that had made him slip.

Rock, of course. The flit of a fish, an annoyed red spot swishing past. A hard ribbed surface, possibly the shell of something edible. It didn't move, and he scooted closer to catch a glimpse, but could not make the shape out through the rippling reflecting surface of the water.

Further down there was smoother rock, not covered by sand. Slightly slippery but firm. Wood, perhaps? Could there be a piece of driftwood wedged between the rocks and sand? He stomped his foot experimentally, and found it sinking ankle-deep into something soft and clingy. A ragged edge cut into his calf, no doubt leaving a score mark to match the ones on his back and arms from scrambling up the reef or drifting too close to it.

Whatever it was, it seemed to regard him as food and tightened its grip painfully. He stood up in an attempt to dislodge the creature from his ankle, and only succeeded in driving the other edge of its shell into his shin. A clam, some sort of gigantic clam, his hands told him as he scrabbled for a hold on its shell. It was bigger than anything he had seen - had to be, to summarily swallow his foot and not let go again.

"You can't eat that, you bastard - let go!"

Only the pain in his dry throat told him that he had indeed shouted that out loud as he flailed in the shallow water, trying to get as much leverage on the stubborn beast as he could without slipping into deeper water. Not that he was in danger of drowning, what with the clam firmly embedded in the reef, but the prospect of hanging by a severely torn ankle was not one he liked to dwell upon either.

Cursing the clam under his breath, he scrabbled for rocks, loose pieces of coral, handfuls of sand - anything that might move the beast to let go of his foot. When none of his attempts yielded anything but agitated waters and a tightening of the stubborn shell, he buried his head in his hands and breathed deeply, willing himself to calm.

He would not die yet. And he had to keep those spots from forming patterns, patterns that laughed at him as the clam shell cut serrated lines into his ankle. Patterns of bruises, small bruises bleeding into one another, with a large gap in the middle. They had faded underneath his skin, faded under the warm bronze burn of the tan he had acquired on the ship, faded under the slaps and hard manly pats of his comrades. He wondered if thy had embedded themselves into his flesh though, under his skin, or if he was imagining that. Not his ankle, there was no flesh on that. But... almost everywhere else, the join of neck and shoulder a favourite spot, just barely hidden by the collar of his shirt, rows of small bruises with a big gap in the middle.

The old man had lost all his front teeth a long time ago, the better to fit the opium pipe in the gap. Jinn shuddered. Better the cuts on today's skin than the bruises on yesterday's.

Beneath the surface, he was sure he could make out a thin ribbon of blood swirling out into a veil and then into nothing more than a scent. Yes, the water was shallow, behind him at least, but he had nowhere to run to, nothing to run with, with his foot in the vice grip of the man-eating clam.

Sooner or later they would come for him. Only now, 'they' were more likely to want to eat him rather than rescue him.

Growling, he lashed out at the clam, tried to ram bits of rock into the leathery flesh between the closing shells that were threatening to crush his ankle. He felt the twitch of pain in the mindless beast's body, but could not muster the strength to pull the halves of its shell far enough apart to get his foot out. In despair, he even jabbed his toes into the yielding mass, to no effect at all.

Stomping his other foot hard on the sand for leverage, he slipped and fell, landing on his back on the flat slope of sand that had once been a miniature lagoon. It was sliding under him, slowly. So far, he was still above water from the waist upwards, but... well, it looked like his wish had been granted and he would indeed never float again in his whole life.

That was when he felt a touch on his other foot. Not the swish of a fish's fin or the sting of the strange, many-armed plants. This was a touch much like the leathery one of the clam, only his foot was nowhere near the ground, and there definitely wasn't another one of those monstrous clams around.

It was a ticklish touch, and he jerked his foot away in reflex. The touch came back, more insistently, swirling around his toes, curling around the ridge of his foot. Like small leathery hands it felt, and he pulled his foot away again.

Only to find that he couldn't.

It held him in place, firmly but not painfully, a tight sucking grip much like the clam's, but without the sharp edges. And there was another... another of these hands, fingers, whatever they were, playing around his trapped ankle, insinuating itself between the biting shell and his skin, testing, feeling, nudging. Slowly, he felt the narrow space between the clam shells get crowded. Even more slowly, he felt the sharp edges move apart, trembling, as if under tremendous strain. He felt his foot pushed out of the clam's vice grip, felt his calf roughly stroked by something that stung on the fresh cuts, something salty and tough.

For long moments, his mind refused to put the sensory impressions together. His eyes certainly refused to look.

When he felt something squirming its way up his trouser leg, he knew he could no longer look away. His skin, his well-remembering skin was telling him what his eyes would not have believed even if he had ever seen a creature such as this. Which he hadn't, because to him, they were the stuff of legend and fairy tale. They did not belong in a sailor's life.

They did not belong in a sailor's trousers.

It was a long muscular arm of something that was wrapped around his ankle, both of his ankles now, one of them twining past the bloody gash on his shin and slinking up his leg inside his trousers. Jinn felt his face twist in a grimace of disgust. What a sick joke the last god of this reef must have thought up, to send those touches that he was so deliberately not thinking of. There was no mistaking where that arm was headed, the one place that always had him curl up in horror at being touched there, for all he could see was that half-mummified hand, clutching in an opium dream, clutching and crushing what it could not have...

The creature's arm had reached mid-thigh already and still would not stop going - it felt long, and thin, and cool and agile and it stung just a little where it held on to pull itself further up. Down on his other foot Jinn could see why that was - small round suckers clung to his skin, the fingers of an arm that had no hands, had nothing but muscles and length and strength, and what was more, he knew the thing had to have at least six more of these...

As if to prove him right, the octopus pulled itself closer, the top of its bulbous head just breaking the surface of the deeper water at Jinn's feet. Its skin was wrinkled, pale red and soft-looking, like thin leather crumpled over thick elastic rope, its whole body coiling and curling like a mass of ropes on the deck of some ship of fools... and it was closing in, the arms intent on touching, tugging him down.

Galvanised by the touch of more arms to his skin, Jinn jerked his feet, gasping at the tightness of those limbs holding him. It would not crush him, it would not touch him - he was stronger now, and this was but a beast! Digging his hands into the yielding sand behind his back, he kicked with all his might, hoping to dislodge the clinging tentacles that held his ankles and encroached upon his legs. It was no use. They held on, undulating softly, their muscular length sending small ripples of touch into his flesh that made him squirm, squirm to get away from the touching, the soft hard flesh gripping him so strangely. It was tugging at him again, and he kicked at the loops of tentacle around his ankle with the heel of the other foot, as hard as he could. The creature didn't even flinch and continued to wind its way up his thigh. He could feel its ticklish tip reaching the soft skin of his upper thigh, and tried to push away the sensation, the better to fight.

He found he couldn't. It wasn't a sensation he could push away. That was because he had never felt it, this touch just this side of discomfort, feathery and stinging and alien and above all slow. I must be going mad with the sun, he thought, or with whatever poison this beast's skin is covered in. Grasping the thick tentacle that had wound itself around his injured ankle, he tugged at it with all his might, felt his fingers digging into the creature's soft wrinkly skin but achieving nothing against the steel rope of muscle underneath.

Instead, he felt another of its arms wrap around his wrist and hold on, felt it before he could see it, and saw it before he thought to fight it. Too slow, too alien was this touch, too soft to tell his limbs to fight it, and too hard to allow his limbs to fight it. He jerked his arm up, felt it getting tugged down again, clasped in the elastic embrace of the beast's arm. Absently, he noticed the touch on his leg firming as something wrapped around the top of his thigh, searching as if it knew not what lay there, just beyond.

Oh, he knew what lay there, and he would rather not be reminded. Dead meat for all he knew, squeezed to death by the opium rages of a filthy, half-dead man whose only excuse was that he had none of that flesh to crush on himself. The thought of a hand, even his own, on that abused flesh, was quite enough to make those urges wither away, urges that evidently made so many other sailors' lives hell. Or heaven, depending on the company.

But this was no hand. This was... nothing he could even name. This was strangely slow and purposeful as it slid up his captive arm and around his chest in slinky slow motion as if savouring the rare feast of a live man's flesh. Another, thicker tentacle swept his remaining free hand off the sand, sending him crashing onto his back, cushioned in the grip of thick rubbery flesh, helpless to resist.

I am not a boy any more, and this is no dirty old man stinking of opium!

Mustering all his fury and strength, Jinn lashed out at the creature's arms, digging his fingers into the folds of its flesh, intending to bruise, to hurt before he got bruised, by what he knew not. The creature had nothing to bruise him with. It had no teeth with a gap in them. He was not a boy any more. He fell back, catching his breath. The mindless ripples of thick flesh against his sunburned skin continued, a dumb singsong of pressure and tightness and sensation, sensation without the edge of pain. No, not just that. Sensation without that face. Keep your eyes open, Jinn, see the blinding sun, see the soft red of these arms. If they be what takes you under, then so be it, and it will not be with the horror of what has been. I am not a boy any more, though I am weaker than one now. Resigning himself to his fate, he let his limbs relax into the shallow water, into the insistent soft touch of this thing that could kill him no more than anything else. This thing that, above all, had no hands.

He felt the tip of a tentacle burrowing in the folds of his barely-serviceable shirt, finding the entrance and latching on to the skin beneath, the tentacle's long length lashing and tearing away at the fabric until his chest was fully exposed. He watched as if from miles away as the tip patted his skin, tiny suckers looking for purchase, visibly irritated at his chest hair. He felt the thickness of the tentacles that went with those questing tips, wrapped tightly around his chest, crushing his upper arms to his sides, tense in the creature's brutal embrace, as if he was expecting the thing to sprout a sting from the tip of that tentacle and stab him through the heart with it. It did no such thing.

It latched on to his nipple, the tiny tip curling around it, fastening its suckers and tightening. Jinn couldn't hold back a gasp of surprise. The thing tightened further, almost to the point of pain, the faint sting so small and bright next to the tight grasp of the creature's arms pinning him in place.

Was this... Something so bright lived under his skin?

Next to all the bruises, something bright and liquid that rippled under his skin as the thick tentacles rippled over it, winding around his limbs, touching without asking, touching without... without thinking.

It felt... strange. Good, almost.

Another tentacle tip seemed to get interested, this one slightly more direct, going for a nipple Jinn was shocked to find erect, and pinching it hard, wrenching another desperate gasp from his parched throat. Oh, but what was the creature playing at? Was that how they toyed with their next meal? Or was there something other... no, he dared not think of it.

The creature, however, appeared to be thinking just that: the squirming thing that had slithered up the leg of his trousers had reached his waistband and wriggled past it, circling in search of something to latch on to, patting the skin of Jinn's stomach, brushing the other tentacles that crushed his chest and pinned his arms to his sides, then grasping hold of the end of the tentacle that had held his good ankle, and tugging with all its might.

He heard the fabric of his trousers rip, felt the improbably cool brush of seawater on his exposed genitals, thought he felt... but no...

Yes. Felt the tip of a tentacle brushing the length of his cock, tapping it gently, playing its tiny suckers across its soft skin, the tip burrowing under his foreskin until he could not hold out any longer and thrust his hips, half in the hope of dislodging the ticklish presence, half in the hope of getting more of that touch.

It was making him hard, impossibly so - something no touch, no hand had ever managed without pain before. He felt himself flush from his cheeks down to his softly throbbing cock. No hand. He would never have let one near himself, though not for want of offers... that I should be like all other men after all, he thought, his face twisting in a grimace of pain his skin did not feel. Nearly dead, and hard for the first time in my life...

His body convulsed in a dry sob, uncertain whether to be disgusted or grateful or desperate. His mind knew nothing of that sort - and before he could engage a thought, his world tilted as he found himself spun around and slammed hard onto his chest into the sandy ground, arms still bound within the tentacles' brutal embrace, legs flailing where the creature held him by his ankles, the legs of his trousers now flapping uselessly. The water reached up to his shoulders now, and the creature was closing in. He felt its bulk brushing heavily against the backs of his thighs, felt more arms testing the waters, testing the feel of his skin, felt the suckers that clung to his chest and back tightening their grip, stinging, abrading his skin. He was hard. The thought made him laugh, a desperate croak tearing free from his dry throat and seeping into the sand.

Something tangled in his hair at the back of his head and tugged, hard, pulling his face off the ground, making him arch back in pain, trying in vain to evade the hard grip. Too late, he saw a coil of tentacle flying at him, whipped out from behind him - the gasp of shock had barely left his throat before it crowded into his mouth, filling it with squirming salty flesh, effectively stifling all but the most muffled of protests. God, it was thick - it stretched his mouth, the salt water running down his cracked lips stinging harshly. How much of it must be curled up inside his mouth now? The thought made him retch, and immediately the thing retreated, rearranged itself away from the back of his throat, giving him just enough room to breathe without giving up its complete possession of his mouth.

He shuddered, and he felt the rub of soft leathery skin against the back of his thighs. There were some more arms still... and not many more places to go. It wasn't... was it? He was not a boy any more... and he had not been used that way as a boy, not by a man without teeth and without a cock, and not by sailors who had learnt the weight of the overgrown boy's fists. And now... now he was hard, with tears stinging his eyes, and the beast was going to take it all from him, take him, all for its own dumb pleasure, and the thought terrified him less than it should, and that thought terrified him more.

With a sort of leaden inevitability, he felt the creature grab hold of his thighs and spread them, slowly but inexorably, much as it had done with the clam shell but so much less welcome. As if on cue, the tiny tentacle tip on Jinn's penis squirmed into life again, wrapping itself more firmly around the man's flesh, squeezing it to an embarrassing desperate hardness while the creature rubbed its soft body against Jinn's rump, thick tentacles tightening around his thighs and lower back, rows of suckers setting his skin ablaze.

If I bit down now, he thought... but could I even hope to live if I did? As if the beast had read his thoughts, it tightened all its arms with a jerk, making Jinn groan in pain from the tightness as well as in pleasure from the pressure on his throbbing cock. The muffled groan seemed to arouse the creature further, for it slipped between Jinn's legs, tentacles undulating madly, stealing his breath away between the sheer pressure on his chest, the fat curl of tentacle stuffing his mouth and the sharp suckered tips wrapped around his nipples. Down below, it was homing in for the kill.

Nothing could have prepared Jinn for the entry. Nothing, even if he hadn't been a virgin to this act, could have made him expect it, much less want it. The thing that thrust into him without preamble felt longer, thicker and harder than anything a human body could muster, much less take. It speared him, split him open and filled him full of stiff hard flesh, flesh that felt cool to the touch, cool and slippery and so fat it touched all of him inside, all of him, and it would not budge as he struggled to push himself off it, to expel that intruder, to get away from it regardless whatever its arms were doing to his cock, regardless of how damned hard he was. Flailing wildly, he scrabbled to grasp the root of one tentacle near his thigh, clawed at it with fingers gone half-numb from the creature's tight hold on his upper arms, clawing at the beast's soft skin and steel-hard muscle, clawing at the fading strength of his own thigh, no longer sure which was which, they were all the same skin, all the same temperature, all the same twitching stretched flesh.

It moved within him, or he moved around it, his spread thighs struggling to close, to squeeze that thick thing that impaled him, squeeze it out or squeeze it between his legs and... oh... hold it there. No, not hold it, leave it to move... out of him, yes, out of him. And in again. If anything, it felt even thicker now, stretching him impossibly, rubbing against his insides that were as hard and hot as his cock, and as desperate to be touched. And touch him the creature did, its arms possessing him entirely, caressing and binding and filling and fucking, fucking hard and deep and hot and impossibly good, so good it brought tears to his eyes, tears he never knew he had in him still, and still the beast filled him and stroked him and held him as he cried out his pain and his sheer animal lust at every thrust, not caring whether it was the creature's tentacles or his own thighs that powered them, as long as they went on and went on and went harder and hotter and more, just more...

He could hear himself moan, thick needy sounds trying to escape through his stuffed mouth, sounds that in turn fed the creature's excitement as it squirmed around him, tightening its limbs around his body in a frenzy of possession until he felt he had no breath left to scream with. Not that he would have - he was full, so full of flesh and blood and life, so little life left but so thick and strong in him. He would not regret dying like this, the insistent madness of his own body, the pain on his skin and the sheer boiling pleasure under it drowning out the images he had feared to see close to his death. Here, there was just the moment, just the thoughtless lusty embrace of a creature that was squeezing the breath from him in a last helpless moan of pleasure.

Rearing up in a desperate attempt at drawing some breath through his nose, he felt the whipcord-thin tentacle around his cock rippling, saw the red spots return as it squeezed his last ounce of life from him and he fell limp in the squirming mass of tentacles, speared on the creature's flesh, filled with its base animal lust to the point that there was no more room for breath in his body, and it was right, and it was good, and it was over...

Soft darkness enveloped Jinn, and he welcomed it.

"What? Seagull ate your brain? Did I tell you I didn't want to be disturbed, or did I? Scurvy cur!"

With another curse muttered under his breath, the captain of the Serpent brushed aside the hapless boy whose duty it had been to alert him to anything odd... and, well, this would be odd. If it was true. Which it most definitely wasn't, not in this part of the Indies, with days of full-sail travel between here and the next habitable island.

A man, and not yet eaten by the sharks! Who had ever heard such a thing? The bastards must be playing tricks on him. Ah, they would feel the outcome of that. Hard enough against their backs, the blood on the cat-o'nine barely dry from the last time they'd tried.

Fumbling with his belt, his sheathed cutlass bobbing against his thigh, he rushed to the starboard side of the deck, where a young midshipman had already lowered himself down by a rope to inspect the drifting body, so perilously close to the reef. They had called him away from his game of... cards to have him witness the hauling-in of a dead body?

"He's breathing!" the lad shouted from the water, struggling to fasten the rope around the limp man's chest. The captain squinted at the stranger's sun-ravaged mottled skin, his pale lips, the dark rings under his eyes almost matching his hair.

"Dozen devils, he's nearly naked - how long do you think he could've made it out here? They can't be far, bloody Navy, I tell ya. Better hurry!"

The midshipman shouted assent, tugged on the rope to signal to the men aboard to haul. There was grunting and swearing as the men struggled to pull the dead weight aboard. Much grunting and swearing.

"What's he doing heaving a half-dead Navy cur aboard our ship? He ain't eating my bread, that's for sure!"

A sharp smack of the cutlass's sheath across his back told the unruly sailor that his captain had heard that remark.

"He is a man, Bullock. That's what counts. Any man alive will do."

"Yeah, do what?" a different voice sneered from the knot of sailors who had gathered at the railing to see the midshipman's latest catch being hauled aboard.

"Do whatever I tell him to," the captain replied, the menace in his voice hard enough to cut steel. The men were silent, for all that nobody believed the man at the end of the rope was alive, or would be for longer than it took them to make all the bets on how long he would be. Privately, not even the captain believed what the soaked midshipman had shouted from below. The swell of the ocean, that much he knew, could imitate the movement of a live man's chest all to well.

And yet, when they had hauled the man aboard, the captain saw with his own eyes what he had not believed moments before. What he had indeed never believed for all his long seafaring life.

The man lived. Opened bleary bloodshot blue eyes and gasped, coughed, held his chest and his throat, his mouth as he tried to retch up the contents of an empty stomach. His skin was covered in bright red suction marks, some bruised, the skin torn open by the sheer brute force that the legendary beast must have unleashed on him.

And yet, the man lived.

The captain had the soaked midshipman bring water and a rag. But the jacket that covered the stranger's abused skin and hid his horrific tale from the prying eyes of the rest of the crew was the captain's own.