No sign of the octopus in this pool either. But there was a slippery fur of kelp waving its streamers in and out with the push of the tide and Leda rested in its tickling arms for a moment, luxuriating in all the sensuous movement of the
sea. She tracked the pattern made by the school of little fish, a figure-eight of infinity, and just by easing her body forward Leda could put her chest in their path, so that the little creatures would brush against her nipples. When she lay back against the fingers of seaweed and stretched her legs forward she could feel the tickle of tails and fins clip though the v of her legs.
The next pool was larger. This was where the female octopus lived. She was a pretty creature, slightly smaller than her suitor. Her tentacles, as she tiptoed on curling lacy feet from nook to nook, looked more delicate. She liked the darker recesses of the rocks and had rarely reached out to Leda when, during her hours of study, she would wiggle a gloved hand to tempt her with a little yellow worm.
Leda secured the snorkel firmly, slipped under the awning of the rock ledge. There was a small breathing space above her and Leda made sure to hover at a level where her snorkel wouldn’t dip under the rise of the waves. She found the little girl, a pale grey tangle of limbs the colour of the sand that blanketed the hiding hole in the rocks.
Leda took a fish out of the bag, waved it gently back and forth in front of the shy creature. The tide washed her closer to the rock wall and it was as if the ocean itself were offering encouragement. She moved closer. Held the treat between her fingers. Even the little sideways movements of the octopus’s tentacles seemed sexual to Leda. She wanted nothing more than to hold the fish between her teeth just as she had in her
dream. But the female was less forward than the male. Leda would have to tempt it out inch by inch onto her skin.
She felt the ocean with the whole of her body. It was as if all of her skin had become an erogenous organ, her excitement rippling out from slightly engorged labia to thighs, hips, stomach. Her breasts ached for just a touch of one suckered finger. Her mouth would abandon the snorkel and the practicalities of breath for a single tentacle snaking up behind her teeth, curling its suctioned surface around her tongue.
When the fish was snatched from her hands she kicked back in surprise. There was a scatter of sand flung like fog into the sudden disturbance of water. The little female hadn’t moved an inch but remained curled shyly in her ledge of rock. Leda waited till the sand had settled and then she saw him, the male—darker, browner—spidering up on top of the female’s ledge. The fish had vanished, but Leda knew that he had taken it.
She reached into the bag for another. She held the silvery morsel against her chest. Her nipples pulsed with blood, aching for some kind of touch. She swam forward, pressed her chest close to where the octopuses hung, one over and one under the dividing ledge.
It was the male, of course, who snaked a tentacle out to catch it. Leda held the fish tightly between her fingers, pressed just under the hard protrusion of her nipple. The creature launched himself onto her suddenly, one tentacle curling up and around Leda’s arm, the other seven clutched around
her ribcage, and, exquisitely, she felt the suctioned creep of a tentacle curling around a nipple.
The thrill of that strange touch, half mouth, half finger, was almost too much for Leda. She relinquished the fish too quickly and the octopus climbed across her body and back to its position on the rock wall.
Two more fish. Leda knew she would have to use them strategically. She felt that heady mix of pheromones making her body feel heavy and light all at once, the chill buoyancy of the water melding with the sleepy warmth of desire. She cinched her knees up towards her chest. She was wet with her own juices already: thicker, more viscous than the sea water, slicking the edges of her cunt with the slipperiness of seaweed, the briny reek of kelp.
She carefully slipped the fish between her labia, a quick cold shock of slippery silver. She was careful to hold on to the tiny head. It was difficult to push her hips forward, offering herself to the octopus’s tentacles while keeping her head clear of the water. She managed to hook her toes onto the rock wall, her other hand paddling through the water like a fin of her own to keep her steady and upright. From this position she lost sight of them both; then a shiver coursed down her spine as she felt the weight of the male’s body slip comfortably over one of her thighs.
Octopuses are clever. She had seen one open a screw-top flask with a quick curl of the leg. She felt a tentacle slip easily into the thatch of coarse hair around the lips of her vagina
and, in an instant, popped the bait inside herself. She felt the tight lips close over the fish like a press-seal. Held her breath for a moment hoping that the octopus would not be deterred by its inability to see the reward.
She felt the slow creep of the suckers, the tacky pull of them grabbing her flesh in little circular love-bites, the muscular tip of the tentacle searching for the opening, finding the place between her cunt-lips.
Two tentacles now, parting the flesh, and a sudden stabbing entry. The octopus leg slipped quickly inside her. She felt the curl of it grabbing at the fish that was lodged there, the finger becoming a fist as it wrapped around the little treat.
Leda gulped at the air and then abandoned the idea of breathing, curling her body downward so that she could concentrate on the sight of the creature lodging there. The octopus was cradled at the top of her thigh, its limbs snaking out and around her leg, caressing the cleft between her buttocks. She could see the single elegant leg disappearing into her body, her thick lips parted; the muscular tentacle buried deep within her body. The knot of flesh felt bigger than the hardening in a dog’s penis.
She watched as the creature retracted its arm, the lips of her vagina gaping so wide she imagined she might tear, the sticky slip of the tentacle retreating, curling back and up into the beak nestled at the place where all the tentacles met. The eyes stared towards her, expressionless. The mantle took in water, swelling, then exhaled like a lung gasping for air.
Leda had never slept with a man, but there had been one excited night of fumbling with a first-year student that had ended quite abruptly as the boy, unable to contain his desire, ejaculated against her leg. The sight of the octopus swelling and contracting reminded her of the young man’s ball sack, which had fascinated her enough to kiss and lick it while the boy himself was fumbling with his condom.
She felt a similar urge now. But it would be impossible. She watched the little muscular tube beside the octopus’s head suck water in and out and imagined her own clitoris caught in this kind of aquatic breath. She was on the edge and could plunge over it at any second. Leda felt her lungs burning, and kicked up towards the surface a fraction. She blew the seawater from her breathing tube and gulping down a lungful of air.
One more fish.
When she settled back under the surface she realised her companion had not let go of her thigh. He clung there, still breathing, still inflating and deflating. Still tight and muscular. Leda bit down on the mouthpiece as a jet of saliva spurted into her mouth. She imagined his texture on her tongue, the tentacle of her fantasy pressing at the back of her teeth. She reached into the bag and quickly slipped the fish inside her vagina. Come and get it, she thought and lay back, head tilted to catch the air in her snorkel, eyes on her own vagina, avid to watch the next tentacled entry.
A grey scatter of sand: she would have gasped if she was able. The female, the shy cautious girl of the clan, had
scooted forward and without preamble had shoved her small pale tentacle as far as it would go into Leda’s body. Leda felt the entry like an electric shock, the curling of the suckers, rubbing against the sensitive inner walls of her vagina, the curl of the finger tightening on the bait.
The octopus settled across Leda’s crotch, its beak directly above her slippery vulva, legs curled, some about Leda’s leg and one slipping up to tap at her navel as the wonderful suction of the underside clung to her clitoris. Leda felt the surge of her desire swell though her body, her whole being seemingly focused on the place where the two octopuses weighed her down. And then, just as her climax hit her, she saw the pale pink arm of the male snake out and settle into the female’s mantle. Her leg retracted suddenly and Leda’s body convulsed as the creature removed the thick tangle of fish and leg.
Her eyes still wide, her body lost to the pulsations in her groin, she watched the female deposit the fish, thick with the mucus of Leda’s desire, into her beak. She felt the slow dance of octopus legs begin to scale her torso, the female, then the male, the pink leg still depositing its parcel of sperm inside the female’s cavity, the two locked together in their first coupling as they undulated over Leda’s breast. Sixteen legs plucking at her nipples, one suction cup at a time.
She let the snorkel fall from her mouth. Her taut nipples ached under the plucking of the many-armed harpist, as the creatures continued their sensual motion across her face and over her hair.
Leda raced for the surface. She gasped, groaned, the sound low and deep, half pain and half pleasure. She felt the slow balletic creep of the mating pair down her back, parting the cheeks of her arse, the sticky pull of a tentacle sucking at her anus briefly before they abandoned her body for the ocean floor.
Leda grabbed for her snorkel. She was clumsy with newly won pleasure but she knew this opportunity would not be repeated. This was the first of many matings and then the male, that deep-brown, muscular instrument of her pleasure, would die.
She refitted her mask, turned onto her stomach and hovered above the pair. They walked on the bottom of the rock pool entwined, the male clutching tight to the female’s back, its tentacle still slipped inside the female’s mantle. Leda wondered at the pleasure they might be experiencing so soon after hers. Her vagina was slick with her juices despite the wash of seawater. Did octopuses feel that kind of overwhelming joy?
She watched the spidery chase, the legs skipping over each other, stirring up a little trail of sand. The female seemed to leap up suddenly, her legs fanning out, dislodging the male in this single movement.
An orgasm of sorts? Somehow Leda doubted it. And yet the first ever deed was done. Each of them crept silently away to its side of the rock pool.
Rachel looked different now. Taller, of course, but also more tense. The softly curved outline of the child Leda remembered was completely effaced by this new, more angular body. Leda, hugging her, felt the prickly push of her shoulderblades, the hard angles of her hips.
‘It’s been too long,’ Rachel’s grin was unchanged at any rate. She held her hands out, palms upward. ‘Still here? Still living with your folks?’
‘Yeah. Well, I was never quite as wild as you.’
‘Huh! And where am I now?’
‘On the farm, I hear.’ And then Leda felt herself smile. She took her friend’s hand. It had been a long time since they had seen each other; too long, perhaps. And all that water under the bridge, separating her world from Rachel’s.
Leda picked up the heavy suitcase and dragged it into her bedroom. She had pulled her brother’s old mattress out of the storeroom, hit it with a stick as it hung over the veranda railing, aired it, exposed it to the light. Her own mattress, if she pressed her nose into the ticking and breathed in hard, still smelled very faintly of Paul.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Rachel said as Leda deposited her suitcase on the mattress. She looked around the room sadly and Leda realised she must have been remembering Paul, the way he would greet her every afternoon, the leaping and the snuffling and then that one time, the way they had made love.
‘Yeah,’ said Leda, ‘I’ve missed you too.’ Surprised by the
truth of the words, she held out her hand and linked her fingers with Rachel’s.
‘You never did come back out to the farm to visit me.’
‘One day,’ she said, ‘I promise you I will.’
They left the door open because the house was theirs. Leda’s parents were away at a conference, her brother was long gone. They could have settled in the loungeroom but Leda liked her own territory, and the two of them dragged the bottle of wine and glasses onto the bedroom floor. Rachel glanced up at her framed prints.
‘How come I have never seen that one anywhere before?’
‘Hokusai.’
‘It’s awesome. Honestly Leda, I want one.’
‘I thought you were stuck on mammals.’
‘And you’re not?’
Leda sighed. ‘You know, I think I’ve been in marine biology too long.’
‘Too many fish.’ Rachel upended the last of the wine into her mouth. ‘Not enough fur.’
Leda lay back on the pillow. It felt good to have a warm knee pressing into the arch of her back. It was impossible not to think of Paul, but now there was the buffer of the years between her and the loss of him.
‘Guess what?’ Rachel leaned closer, whispered into her ear and Leda felt the warm breath disturbing the down at the nape of her neck. ‘I’ve found a human lover.’
‘Really?’
‘A man. A man like us.’
‘What?’ Leda rolled over towards Rachel.
‘I found him on the internet.’ She laughed. ‘As you do. Zoophiles. That’s what we’re called.’
Leda sat up, cocked her head to one side. ‘You mean there’s a word for it?’
Rachel reached for Leda’s laptop and dragged it down off the bed. She clicked onto the browser.
‘Watch this. I bet we can find someone close by, people for you to meet.’
‘I don’t think I want people to meet.’
Rachel rested her hand on Leda’s knee and the warmth of her palm dragged up memories from the depths of childhood. She watched as a face appeared on the screen. A man with a big bushy beard; she knew this because the lower part of his face was in frame. Mostly she was looking at a chest covered in a mat of wiry hair, a slightly distended belly and, beneath this, a small human penis. He was masturbating. Leda stared. She held her hand up over her mouth.