Diving Under

When Leviathan came to her, seeking to share her bed, Rydia was not surprised. A great many monsters, she knew, harbored a desire to sport with mortals. There had been books when Rydia was a young that she was forbidden to read, but that she nevertheless devoured in secret with a child's passion for anything forbidden. Inside, there were illustrations of women -- callers, who were always women one way or another -- making love with monsters. Some of them were nearly human, but never quite -- Shiva's lips blue as a corpse and Ifrit horned and vast and burning, with a lustful caller desperately trying to impale herself on a scaled phallus that looked nearly as thick as her arm. Most were even more monstrous -- a woman on all fours teased into abandon by a cloud of tiny naked sylphs, a serpent with shimmering black scales sliding between ample breasts, the tentacles of a mind flayer buried and writhing between a caller's thighs.

Being young, Rydia did not quite understand the significance of the pictures she saw, but she had carried them with her and she was older now. They were still the only images of sex she had ever seen. She had thought, sometimes, that she might like to see how mortals made love with each other, but with each passing year in the Feymarch that had seemed less and less important.

Leviathan had made himself look younger to visit her, apparently understanding that humans typically preferred mates closer to their own age. Monsters swapped mortal bodies like clothing, but Leviathan did not have the imagination of his queen -- he always looked like Leviathan, with his long pale face and wet hair and seaweed-black eyes.

He was handsome enough like this, Rydia thought, as the lord of the Feymarch ran his fingers beneath the silk of her dress, dipping down to trace the curve of her waist. She could feel his erection pressed against the small of her back as he embraced her. She had never seen a man naked before, and it occurred to her that she had lost all curiosity for the sight. Rydia breathed in, smelling the tang of salt air and damp sand.

Leviathan sensed her hesitation. "Does this form not please you?" he asked, his breath warm and damp against her neck. Rydia sighed.

"It's very fine, your majesty, it's only that..." Rydia trailed off, but Leviathan ran his hands through her hair, leaving a trail of salt water behind, and chuckled, not unkindly.

"You are a Caller," he said. "You may make whatever demands of me you wish. I am yours to command. Say what you will."

"It's only that...this is not...your form. It's false," Rydia said. She twined her hand with his and turned to catch his eyes. They were the only thing about him that still seemed monstrous, as deep and vast as the sea, and the sight of them was the only thing about him right now that thrilled her.

Leviathan swallowed. "You've seen my true shape, Caller," he said. "I am the lord of all waters, little one. My nature is the storm and sea. I shatter ships in my coils." Rydia leaned against Leviathan, feeling the heat of his body, and we went on. "If you were to drown, or shatter against the rocks, no power on earth could save you."

At his words, Rydia felt heat pool between her legs for the first time.

"I've weathered your storm before, lord," she said. "I know you would not kill me."

"But I could do so," he said, pulling away from her ever so slightly.

"Yes," Rydia said, her voice breathless and far more eager than she intended. "Oh yes. You could."

Leviathan vanished from her bedroom not long after, his body dissolving into salt and bracken. Rydia fumbled under her skirts with her own hand, thinking of the illustrations she'd seen as a child -- callers dwarfed by the vastness of their monsters, unafraid, and of tiny sylphs crawling across bare skin like mountains.

When she and Leviathan met after, they were always in the water. It was not the ocean, or at least not the ocean as Rydia understood it, blue-grey and fishy and biting salt -- it was vast, clear water that tasted sweet on her tongue and reflected strange colors like a slick of oil. The sand was pure white, littered with shards of transparent crystal, and it clung to her bare feet as she stepped out into the waves. Unlike the harsh, cloudy waters of the surface's ocean, she could open her eyes without pain once the bright water closed over her head.

Her hair whipped itself into knots with the agitated motion of the sea, and she could feel the current kick up, caressing her bare skin as Leviathan approached. He loomed up from the depths, an indistinct dark shape in the water, and she kicked towards him until she could see the smooth wall of his blue-white scales, catching the light from above.

There was magic that could make her able to breathe the water like a fish, but Rydia always rejected it when she went diving with Leviathan. She was coming to the end of her breath now, as she pressed her tiny-seeming hands against Leviathan's flank, and the feeling made her dizzy. Leviathan turned, the force of his languid movement spinning her around in the water, and she looked down into the infinite depth as her chest started to ache. She could drown here so easily, in this strange forgotten sea -- she could swim back up to the surface, perhaps, but Leviathan's currents kept her down, buffeted her like helpless flotsam. The thought of skimming so close to death thrilled her, made her ready and eager for when Leviathan bore down on her with his gaping maw spread wide.

She closed her eyes as Leviathan's mouth closed over her, her hands fumbling for one of his many enormous teeth. Rydia wrapped her arms around a yellowed fang that stood as tall as a man, down close to the soft wetness of Leviathan's gums; she held herself there, heart pounding and lungs screaming with need and until she felt the water burst around her as Leviathan surfaced. Rydia gasped desperately for air, her whole body shuddering with effort and relief, and just as quickly Leviathan's mouth snapped shut and she was in darkness. There was a crash of water and waves from somewhere outside the cage of his teeth as Leviathan descended again.

Just as when he had carried her as a child, there was air inside the chamber of his maw -- and he was vast enough that Rydia could pull herself upright with the top of her head barely brushing the arched roof of his mouth. Sometimes, when they dove together like this, Rydia wore silken gowns that clung to her body as the water soaked her through; some other days, like today, she entered the water naked, wanting to feel nothing on her skin but the sea and its lord.

It was pitch dark inside, and silent as death except for the roar of Leviathan's heartbeat -- a steady, slow pulse that thrummed through every surface. Rydia pulled herself onto his tongue and laid down on her back, stretching herself languidly along the breadth of it. Leviathan's tongue thrummed beneath her buttocks and thighs and back -- what seemed to Leviathan to be the tiniest of movements were great rocking motions to Rydia, small as she was in comparison.

He could swallow her whole like this. She moaned, feeling the ridges of his tongue curve against her bare skin, and pulled herself sitting. Leviathan's tongue curved upwards ever so slightly as she spread her legs and slipped over the ridge, her thighs forced wide -- almost too wide -- by the arch of muscle between them. With one hand, she caressed the roof of his mouth, drawing a rumble from somewhere deep within Leviathan's endless gullet -- she was facing backwards, towards his shuttered throat, towards the darkness that could swallow her whole if Leviathan so much as tilted his head.

The soft bumps of Leviathan's tongue pressed into her labia, and she could feel every inch of it keenly. The wetness between her legs was lost in the greater wetness of Leviathan's mouth, but Rydia knew Leviathan could taste it on his tongue as she slid back and forth, slicking herself along it. The sound of Leviathan's heartbeat was faster now, though it still seemed ages longer than her own -- the fragile flutter in her chest made her feel tiny in comparison to the great monster, a mouse caught in between the teeth of a hunting cat.

Rydia gasped as she pressed down harder into the yielding curve of Leviathan's tongue, rolling her hips to grind her clitoris roughly against him. She let her hand wander up to cup her breast, streaking her flesh with Leviathan's saliva, making her smell of seaweed and salt as though she were swallowed up already, chewed up and spit out and making a home for curious fish in her shattered skull.

Leviathan made a low, pleased keening as Rydia increased her pace, thrusting herself against Leviathan's tongue with such force that she was certain he could feel the shock of it. She was riding him roughly enough that she knew she'd be sore tomorrow, her thighs rubbed raw and her muscles aching, but she hardly cared. She could feel her climax building in the pit of her belly and she drove towards it relentlessly, twisting and bucking against Leviathan with a vigor that she knew he could feel. Soon -- too soon, she could never last long inside the lord of the Feymarch -- Rydia felt herself hovering on the edge of orgasm and lifted herself up so that she barely brushed the sopping surface of Leviathan's tongue before crushing down again with enough force to send a shock up her spine, pushing herself over that last precipice with a shout that was audible even above the roar of Leviathan's blood in his veins. Rydia collapsed forward to lie full-length along Leviathan's tongue as she came, to let him feel her body tremble and writhe with it. She lay like that for what seemed like a long while with her eyes closed, Leviathan's saliva seeping wet and sticky into her hair, until his jaws opened, sunlight burst in on her, and she tumbled laughing out of his mouth and onto the sand.

When Rydia looked up he was human again, kneeling next to her as she lay on the beach. Rydia smiled at him, a bit sadly -- Leviathan knew by now that Rydia did not burn for his human shape, so usually that meant their sport was at an end for the day.

The Lord of All Waters sat beside her on the sand. He was robed in green and gold, lordly and regal, and she was naked and sticky and all in disarray, but Rydia had never felt self-conscious in Leviathan's presence even like this.

"I have existed a very long time," he said finally, a slow and small smile starting to creep its way onto his lips, "and have heeded the voice of many Callers, but none of them have quite been like you."

Rydia laughed. "And I've met a small handful of lords and kings," she said, "And you are not like any of those either."

Rydia's hand found Leviathan's, and though it was a very human hand at the moment, coated with sand and not at all monstrous or frightening, it was well enough.