**This blog contains adult language and description of...ahem...adult activities.**
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.
Book Description: Tattoo artist Catalina Brown falls head-over-tattoos for the stranger who asks for a tentacle tattoo on his...most sensitive body part. Normally mixing business with pleasure isn't her thing, but he's a sensual magnet she's instant attracted to, particularly after she experiences a wicked-hot artistic high while tattooing his every succulent inch. Tentacle shifter Calder Croft catches the female's scent when she passes his California marina, and he can't ignore the way she fires his blood. After meeting her, he's stunned to discover Cat has no idea she's a shifter about to come into her Change. It takes all his self-control to keep from taking the sexy woman right on the spot. Calder has to tell Cat the truth about her heritage. Will she accept her birthright as a shifter – or succumb to madness, forever losing their chance at love?
This book was published in 2016 and this is my first time reading it. I'm pretty sure it's my first octopus shifter as well. We've done sharks and that weird fish that swims up people's penises and crocodiles but never an octopus.
We begin with our protagonist Cat talking to her friend Misty. Cat tells her that some guy booked an appointment to have his....ahem....bald-headed hermit (if you know what I mean) tattooed. She hasn't decided whether or not she's doing it because she normally doesn't tattoo that particular body part, but the sketch he emailed her intrigues her. He wants an octopus on his stomach with tentacles going around his waist, down his legs, up his chest and around his back. He wants his....ahem....javelin (if you know what I mean) to look like the last tentacle.
Misty laughs and says that Cat is the perfect one for the job because she's always liked drawing sea creatures – particularly things with tentacles. It turns out to be deeper than a mere appreciation for the sea. Cat has an actual tentacle fetish. She literally can't have sex unless she has tentacles surrounding her. I'm not sure what this means. I don't know if pictures will do or if she has actual rubber tentacles that she likes to bring to bed. I wouldn't doubt the latter. I've been to Bad Dragon before.
(((I was going to link a picture here but decided I didn't want to be that graphic. 😄 )))
Misty asks her about the pain of tattooing such a sensitive part of a man's body and Cat says she'll use the “bamboo method” instead of her usual gun because it's faster and causes less pain. So I did some research and found out that bamboo tattooing is when the artist hand-pokes with the needle instead of using a machine. My research says tattoos done with this method lose color faster and “bleed” more (meaning the color spreads across skin, not actual bleeding). And despite what Cat says, they take longer because the machine can poke you much faster than an artist can by hand. This dude is going to pay for a huge tattoo that will probably be faded and illegible in about five years. Maybe sooner on the parts that move more like his waist and his....ahem....fishing pole (if you know what I mean).
Cat takes a moment to tell us she's nomadic. She's currently parked in an RV park visiting Misty who lives in California full time because she's an actress. Cat spends her time traveling along the oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico) because she doesn't like to be far from the water. She's loved the ocean and all its creatures for as long as she can remember. Her fifth wheel is where she lives and works. The sides are all painted with her logo and website address so she gets advertisement as she drives along the highway.
We skip to the next day. Cat's client arrives at the trailer and she's instantly attracted to him. He's good-looking with dark hair, green eyes and dimples. Cat forgets her own name when he smiles at her. She tells us that he has the most kissable lips that she's ever seen. They sit down to talk about his tattoo and he just immediately jumps in and states that she clearly has a tentacle fetish because most of the artwork in her trailer is of tentacles. Cat is embarrassed and says that she just likes drawing them. He asks her if she has any tattoos and she shows him the one on her wrist without mentioning that she's pretty much covered in tentacles herself.
They briefly discuss the details of the tattoo and the payment. The dude accepts her terms and asks if they can get started right away. She directs him toward the bathroom and tells him to undress from the waist down and then meet her in the “tattoo room”. I'm guessing it's the bedroom of the trailer and she sleeps in the living room portion. I don't know.
We head hop into the guy's head and that's when we finally learn his name is Calder. He tells us that all three of his hearts are pounding and his....ahem....tickle pickle (if you know what I mean) is long, thick and....ahem....standing at attention (if you know what I mean). He's not really used to being in his human form but he takes a moment to admire it. He wonders if Cat will like it. His research has shown that women prefer dimensions like his. He hopes she likes it because as soon as he smelled her, he knew she was his mate. The problem is, he can tell that she doesn't know she's a shifter. No, I don't know how. He tells us that some parents don't tell their children because not all offspring will be able to shift and they want to wait until they know for sure if their child will. Calder can tell that her first shift is coming soon and wonders how to tell her delicately before it does.
Calder definitely wants to....ahem....complete the jigsaw puzzle with her (if you know what I mean) but prefers to do it as octopuses in the ocean because female octopuses are “instinctual” about sex and female humans aren't. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean but whatever.
We skip back to Cat now. Calder comes in and she puts him in her tattoo chair. His feet go in stirrups like he's about to have a pap smear and she pushes his legs far enough apart that she can sit in between them. She tells him that they'll start by measuring his “main tentacle”. Turns out it's 10 inches because of course it is.
Cat definitely wants to do things to him that she's not licensed for but she tries to keep it professional, making small talk and taking measurements. Then she has to disinfect him and her thoughts go all kinds of places as she cleans him off with a cleansing wipe. She enjoys it. He enjoys it. She considers....ahem....licking his lollipop (if you know what I mean) but manages to control her hormones.
You know.....I'm just going to say that I don't know if she should have done her measurements when he was....ahem....happy (if you know what I mean). He won't be happy all the time and his measurements probably change at least a little when he's not (or a lot if he's a grower, not a shower). And, as far as that goes, how do you do a tattoo that looks okay when things are down and up? This seems way too complicated.
Cat grabs some shaving cream so she can shave the area. Removing hair lessens the risk of infection when you get a tattoo. Calder REALLY enjoys the shaving. So does Cat. She really wants to jump this guy. That would totally undo all the disinfecting she's done. She thinks he smells like the ocean which I'm not sure is a compliment. I've been to the Gulf of Mexico at least and it just smelled like fish. Maybe that's Cat's thing.
Cat fantasizes about swimming naked in the ocean with him and is so distracted that she doesn't even realize she's drawing the outline on his skin until he comments that he likes it. She's a little freaked out about the automatic drawing but tries to hide it. She thinks she had some kind of “artistic high” and considers it some kind of mystical sign. Or...you know....she could be possessed.
That would be a fun book.
We hop back into Calder's head. He noticed Cat's trance as she drew and takes it as another indication that she's going to shift soon. They get started on the tattoo and clearly the author didn't do the kind of research I did because she has Cat using actual bamboo. From what I read, they don't really do that. The method is just named after a method used by monks. Anyway, Calder doesn't mind the pain. Cat is fantasizing about undressing in front of him and then suddenly she just is.
The usual stuff happens. Except it doesn't. It was all in Cat's head. She looks down and realizes she's tattooed his entire tentacle. It should have been a project that took her days but she did it in four hours while fantasizing about....ahem....dipping the wick (if you know what I mean). She doesn't remember any of the tattoo and it freaks her out.
Calder can tell she's internally panicking and he wonders if he should tell her that “erotic spells” are normal before a female shifts. He decides that he needs to wait for her to notice more changes because then she'll be more receptive to what he has to say.
Cat goes into aftercare and, again, the author's lack of research shows. With a bamboo tattoo, you have to wait at least a day before you can swim. Cat tells him to wait an hour. She lubes him up with some cream and then tells him he can get dressed.
What do you think this tattoo is going to look like when he's in octopus form? Does it just disappear? Or will he be an octopus with an octopus tattooed on it? Will the other octopuses laugh at him? I like to imagine they will.
Cat meets up with Misty the next day on the beach. They sunbathe a little and talk about Calder. Misty wants Cat to pursue him but Cat thinks he has a girlfriend so she's pretty much written off a romantic relationship with him. After awhile, Cat goes into the water. She also has an octopus tattooed on her. It's on her back but the tentacles come around her front. As she gazes at them in the water, she imagines that they are real and that she's turning into some kind of squid. Then she treats us to a full-fledged fantasy about having sex with an octopus while she remains mostly human. It's....an experience. There's lots of tentacles in places.
There's a sentence I've never had to type before.
So just out of curiosity I looked up how octopuses have sex and found this on livescience.com.
So that sounds.....pleasant.
Apparently it's a good thing that octopuses have eight tentacles because Cat really wants them in every single orifice. I don't know....I feel like the suction cups would definitely be a problem in this scenario. I also feel like the fact she keeps calling them....and I quote.... “swollen tentacles” is a problem. At least for me. {{{shudder}}}
The fantasy goes on FOREVER. At some point, the other octopus morphs into Calder and she imagines that they're both still mostly human (head, neck, torso, genitals) but their arms and legs have morphed into tentacles. He uses his in her mouth, front door and back door while she uses hers around his....ahem....third right arm??? That can't be good for the tattoo, by the way. At some point they both finish and then she opens her eyes and realizes she on the ocean floor with Calder but she's breathing.
Cat completely panics and then Calder grabs her and hurtles her toward the surface. She comes up, gasping and realizes that it's now dark outside. There's a man beside her on a surfboard and he tells her that he's here to rescue her and take her back to the first aid station on the beach. Cat starts to get up on his surfboard so he can paddle her to shore but her bikini is completely gone. She confesses her situation to the rescuer, blaming her lack of bikini on an undertow pulling it off. He agrees to go to shore and get her coverup for her while she stays in the water.
Cat thinks about what just happened and manages to mostly convince herself that some kind of creature pulled her under and the lack of oxygen is what caused her to have the weird fantasy about Calder and the tentacles. Only part of her believes it, though. The other part of her thinks that Calder is under the water out there waiting for her to come back to him.
We hop into Calder's head and he tells us all three of his hearts are pounding again. This seems like a reoccurring problem for him. He should probably see a vet. Or a marine biologist. He tells us his houseboat was anchored nearby when Misty and Cat arrived at the beach. He watched them from a distance for awhile before he felt himself start to shift because of his mate being so close. He slipped into the water and it wasn't long before Cat came into the water for her swim. She started to shift as well but she wasn't aware it was real because her human brain still hadn't caught up yet. When she slipped underwater, he realized that her gills had formed and he joined her and they did all the tentacle things. Afterwards, she started to shift into human again so he propelled her to the surface so she wouldn't drown. Apparently a lot of new shifters drown because they shift back into human too deep in the water to save themselves. This sounds extremely inconvenient.
By the way, they can also die if they shift into “Octoposeidon” form while on land with no water nearby. Being an octopus shifter seems way more dangerous than being a werebear.
So this shift thing seems to happen based on the sun. Which makes NO sense because it was daylight when Calder said he started to shift on his houseboat. But now he says that they shift into octopus at night and human at sunrise. But wait.....in Cat's RV earlier, he told us he wasn't used to being in human form. According to this, he's in human form for half the damn day every day. I wish Springer would follow her own rules here. She gets to make them up so it shouldn't be so damn difficult to follow them. Anyway, he's bummed that he can't go explain things to Cat because he'll be an octopus until the sun comes back up. He knows she's probably confused and scared and it makes him sad that he can't be there for her.
Calder finds Cat's bikini and holds it like a teddy bear for the rest of the night.
Weird behavior, sir.
We're back with Cat now. She still isn't sure what happened but keeps trying to convince herself that it was all imaginary. Maybe she hit her head and blacked out. Maybe she got pulled under by some kind of sea life and passed out due to lack of oxygen. Maybe she has a brain tumor. She goes back to her RV to shower and warm up. Just outside her bathroom, she finds Calder's credit card on her floor. She realizes that it must have fallen out of his pants when he took them off to get his tattoo. She calls his phone but gets no answer so she leaves him a voicemail and then heads off to bed.
The next morning, Cat goes off to find Calder's houseboat. When she gets there, no one answers her knock. She decides to just slip the credit card under the door but checks it first to make sure it's locked. She doesn't want to leave the credit card if the door is unlocked. The door opens and, for some reason, she just walks inside. She justifies to herself that she's going to leave the credit card and a note on his table or something but this doesn't make a lot of sense. The entire reason she checked the door was to see if some random person could walk in and steal Calder's credit card off the floor. Couldn't some random person walk in and steal it off his table? Make it make sense, Cat.
Cat hears the shower and heads that way. No, I don't know why. She gets to the open bathroom door just as Calder steps out of the shower. She describes his....ahem....thunderstick (if you know what I mean) as “big, juicy and long”. Thanks, I hate that. Also, juicy? I think he should have that checked out really. It doesn't sound sanitary.
Calder looks up and sees her and Cat is instantly embarrassed. Good. She should be. You don't just walk into people's houses like that. She tells him that she's there to return his credit card and then one thing leads to another and they end up in bed together. They do the deed several times and then Cat falls asleep and we hop into Calder's head.
So apparently this Octoposeidon thing works like a mermaid. Their upper half remains human while their arms and legs turn into tentacles just like in Cat's “fantasy”. Seems weird, but okay. The species originated when Poseidon mated with an octopus. Unfortunately, males outnumber females so the species is going extinct.
Calder spends the day boinking Cat so he never gets around to telling her she's a shifter. As night approaches, he makes an excuse about working the night shift to get rid of her. She leaves and he drives his houseboat out to an excluded area and drops anchor. He jumps into the water and shifts, missing Cat already.
We hop back into Cat's head. She goes back to her trailer where Misty is waiting for her. They have dinner together and talk. Cat admits that she spend the entire day letting Calder spelunk her caves if you know what I mean and Misty is happy for her but worried that Cat is moving a little fast.
You think?
The next morning, Cat goes back to Calder's houseboat for breakfast. She finds a note on the table telling her that he's up on the roof where there's a small pool. She makes plates of fruit and goes to join him, removing her clothes and putting on a robe. On a chair by the door she finds her missing bikini and she can't figure out how it got there.
We hop into Calder's head now. He's cleaning out the rooftop pool when Cat arrives. She's pissed about the bikini and accuses him of drugging her that first day in her RV. She thinks that's why she's been having all the “hallucinations”. She accuses him of kidnapping her from the beach, drugging her again, having sex with her and then dumping her back in the water to be rescued. He tells her that he's a shifter and she is as well and her change is coming soon but she doesn't believe him and she leaves.
We're back in Cat's head now. She tells Misty that she's decided to leave town early and go to her next stop. Misty is alarmed because Cat said she was staying a month and it's only been a few days. Misty rightly guesses that it has something to do with Calder and asks Cat if she wants her to beat him up. They talk and eat junk food and watch bad movies together until dark. Misty finally leaves and Cat notices that her skin has become over sensitive. She longs to take a soothing bath but her RV only has a shower so she decides to go swimming in the ocean. Naked.
Calder smells her as soon as she hits the water. He follows her scent until he finds her laying on the bottom of the ocean floor. She seems wary of him but he knows he needs to mate with her so that the other Octoposeidons will smell his sperm mixing with her scent and know that she's claimed. Even so, females are a hot commodity among the species so he knows he might eventually have to fight for her. He's prepared to fight to the death. He tells us that if he loses, the other male will suck his sperm from Cat's body and put his own in there.
I hate everything.
Cat wakes up the next morning in her bed with Calder. She freaks out thinking he's pulling some serial killer shit but he again tries to tell her that they're both shifters. He brought her home from the ocean when she shifted at dawn. She still doesn't believe him. She makes a run for it, screaming, but when she opens the RV door she finds that he's moved at some point and they're in the middle of nowhere.
Calder sounds tired as he tells her that she's slept the entire day and it's almost sunset. He'll be shifting soon and he hopes that will make her believe him. He seems really sad and she feels sorry for him despite the fact that he's kidnapped her. He tells her that there's a chance her mind won't be able to handle what she sees. She still thinks he's insane so she's not really worried about going insane herself. He tells her there's a website about their kind and gives her the URL to check out after he's shifted because he won't be able to shift back until daylight. She humors him but figures she'll take off as soon as he's in the water.
Calder notices her tentacle tattoos aren't shimmering so tells her she isn't going to shift tonight. He points out that his is and she wonders if he somehow put body glitter on himself without her seeing. He walks her down to the water's edge and asks if she'll come in with him a little ways. He wants to be holding her hand when he shifts but if he's not in at least two feet of water he won't be able to breathe. Her brain tells her not to go but her instincts have her following him into the water. Suddenly he starts breathing erratically and he falls to his knees in the water.
Cat watches in horrified fascination as his arms and legs turn into tentacles. He tilts his head and shows her the gills behind his ears before telling her he needs to get underwater because he can't breathe air in this form. Cat watches him slip under the water and wonders if he drugged her again. She's afraid to trust what she sees so she reaches for the piece of paper he gave her with the URL.
Calder waits out the night convinced that Cat will be gone when he shifts back into human form. She's not. She's spent the night on the website and has fully come to accept what they are and how they need to protect themselves from humans. She is especially cognizant of the fact that other males might try to fight, and possibly kill, Calder because of her and she doesn't want that to happen so she's closed all the windows in her RV to help contain her scent.
She accepted that really fast. Too fast. I think Springer just noticed her book was supposed to end so she rushed through this last bit.
Cat tells him that her childhood makes more sense now. Her parents were never at home at night. They told her they both worked the night shift and she always had babysitters but now she knows the truth. She doesn't understand why they didn't tell her though. Calder tells her that sometimes the child remains human and therefore it would have been dangerous to tell her before they were sure she was a shifter herself.
Calder tells Cat he loves her and she tells him she loves him back. He asks when he can get the rest of his tattoo but she's more interested in inhaling his tentacles if you know what I mean. And then the book just ends there. Abruptly. Kind of in the middle of the story. I thought maybe it was the first of a series and there's definitely more books about this species but they seem to focus on other people. Maybe Calder and Cat make periodic appearances in the other books but I honestly don't care enough to buy any of the others.
So that's that. We survived our first octopus shifting book.
Mostly.
I'm a little scarred but no more so than the cow books. Those were really something. At least this time I learned a little about bamboo tattooing and octopus sex.
I'm sure that will come in handy someday.
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