Sykora peers with disdain into the tube’s yonic opening.

“I really don’t understand why I can’t just do a little suck-and-spit sort of thing.” She opens his thighs further and perches between them . “Taiikari saliva can’t possibly be hard to extract from Maekyonite semen. Seems like laziness.”

“Maybe,” he allows. “We are asking her to break the laws of nature.”

“Yes, we are, but I don’t like her. And I enjoy being unfair.” She tugs her shirt open. “Let’s get you something to look at, hmm?”

Her black cotton brassiere is simple and unadorned. Somehow that excites him. This is spontaneous, what they’re doing. Unplanned. He tugs her closer and slips a strap down her shoulder. “Just look?”

“Or whatever you like. Just don’t distract me, dove.” She lines the container up with his cock and slides it down around him. “I’m doing medicine.”

He hisses out between his teeth as she works him.

“You always get so red when I’m on top, you know,” she coos. “It makes the extra effort worth it—oh”

The oh is because he’s sucking on her breast, now, fingers aligning with her spine as it arches in response. Her nipple goes warm and firm in his mouth.

“Grant,” she giggles. “I said no distractions.” The container speeds up. “Though I suppose you’ll have competition for these before long. Must let you get your licks in.”

A particularly deep stroke leaves him gasping.

“Maybe I have competition,” she observes, swiveling the container. “You think we should get one of these?”

“It’s a little, uh—” He cages his fluttering breath. “Little lighter than my usual cocksleeve.”

“Grant.” She lets out a scandalized laugh. “You beast. You’re talking about the mother of your children, you know.”

“My mistake.” He kisses her sternum, buries his face in the curve from her neck to her breasts. You’re very light.”

“Not for too much longer, I’m not.” She presses flush to his body, as much as she’s able. Her thighs straddling his stomach, her chest in his face. “You’re gonna find out why your wife’s so stretchy. We can handle up to ten at once, you know.”

His hips roll involuntarily. He goes back to what he was doing, kissing and tasting.

“But I like three,” she murmurs. Her body is swiveling now, to the rhythm of her “medicine.” “I think three, yes? One son, two daughters. That’s what I think. If we’re doing this for them, they should let us pick.”

His lips release their hold on her darkly blushing nipple. “Three is good.”

“I’m going to get so round.” She brushes her stomach with the hand that isn’t fucking him. “I’ll look quite ridiculous, I think. No making fun, okay?”

He blinks against the sweat as he laughs. “Never,” he says.

She passes the container from hand to tail. She crawls further onto him. “Do they quicken, Maekyonite babies? Can you feel them kick?”

“Uh huh.”

“Taiikari, too.” She stands up on the chair, feet planted on either side of his waist. Her tail doesn’t let up. “When I’m far enough along, you’ll be able to lay your head right here.” She lifts his face to her stomach and presses his ear to her belly button. “And listen,” she whispers. “To your children, growing inside of me.”

He nods against her stomach. His jaw is clenched so tight he can barely speak.

“And I’ll be yours.” Her fingers lace through his hair. “I’ll be your prisoner again. Yours forever. But I want it this time. I want it. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”

The thwipping of her tail speeds up. His mind is dribbling out his ears.

“And we’ll take care of them. We’ll start it all over together. Our family. Nobody else’s. None of the pain, none of the absence. And I won’t be like Inadama. You won’t be like Richard. We’ll all be something new, together.” Her soft, scratchy voice pouring into his ear. “A new life. A life we make. A life you make.”

The fizzing pressure is coursing through his spine now with such force that his skull is tingling. He’s gone nonvocal; a breathless whimper is all he can manage.

“Use my body.” Her heart is beating so hard he can feel it on the crown of his head. “Make it in me.”

He folds his arms around her hips and hugs her closer still. He feels the heat coming off her, the wet need under her clothes.

“Make a mother out of me, Grant.” She laces her fingers through his hair. He looks up into her eyes as they spark and flash. “Knock your wife up. Breed me. Get me pregnant. Let go.”

With a final gasp of “Sykora” into her abdomen, he lets go.

It’s not his wife he’s filling up. It’s a little coffee thermos thing given to him by a maniac. But his overheated brain can barely tell the difference.

She falls back into his lap as his hips roll and buck, and she kisses his chest, and then his neck, and with every gasping pump her kiss tracks higher until she’s making out with him as he rides out the last of the shocks.

He collapses backward, bearing her down with him. With a licentious sound that draws a laugh from both of them, the container slides off him.

“Well, now.” His wife is practically purring with satisfaction. “If Axyna can’t cook something up with this much material, I daresay she’s a fraud.” Her tail deposits the canister on the counter and then drapes to stroke his stomach. “My manly Maekyonite,” she whispers, and kisses him again.

Grant leans back and rests his hand on his perspiring forehead as he tries to remember how to talk.

“Rest.” She slips off his chest. “I’ll be—”

He pulls her into his lap and tugs her pants off.

She gasps. “Grant—”

She’s got a thong on, the same black as her bra, unadorned but for a little bow on its band that he felt through her tight breeches. He takes a moment to admire them—so damp with need that he can see the contours of her vulva beneath them—then yanks them down her kicking legs.

His huge palm shoves her thighs apart. She lets out a squeak of shock.

“Here?” she breathes.

He nods into the top of her head, where her horns are firm and high. “Here.”

“This isn’t—you don’t have to do this.” Her hands land on his.

“You did me, I do you.”

“Dove.” She squirms and tries to climb out of his lap. He tugs her tail-first back in. The yelp and the full-body jerk that summons from her would have frozen him in his tracks once. But that was before he knew her. Sykora is never afraid to say their word when she needs it. Right now she needs something else.

She stops her feigned resistance. Her body melts into his touch, the frayed nerves reknitting, the muscles relaxing, opening for its favorite guest, his heat and his scent. She’s so wet and ready it’s as though her body is sucking his fingers in. He obliges it, and sinks knuckle-deep into her with a silky, erotic squelch.

“Oh, my G—” She stammers another disbelieving laugh. “Grant you beast—”

“Shhh.” He covers her mouth. “Hold still, okay?”

She worms further into his lap, the shelter of his arms. He kisses the top of her head. “Good girl.”

She nips his hand. He tugs it away as she snickers. “Bad girl,” she says.

“You’re gonna pay for that.” He fans his hand across her chest. She’s been getting bitier and bitier lately, he notices. Her usual sex kitten routine getting rawer and more primal as they get closer to the night that will change everything.

His neck tingled at the thought. You’ll bear it, soon, he thinks. Her mark.

Her lips hang open, fangs glinting. Her head arcs backward, looking upside down at him, her eyes fluttering and tightening as she rides the motions of her husband’s fingers. She’s so greedy for him.

Let’s try something.

He waits for his moment, for her walls to tighten around his curling come-hither motion, for her breaths to come out in those feathery squeaks. For every line of her six-pack to stand out on her gleaming stomach. It doesn’t take long. She’s been ready for this since she came in.

Right on that cliff, just before she tips over, he pops one of her horns into his mouth and closes his teeth on it. Not hard. Just a nibble. A little receipt for the one she gave him.

“GRANT,” she yowls, and cums like a little blue fire hydrant.

Oh, shit. The office. He claps both his hands down on her as she wails and thrashes, eyes rolling into the back of her head, and manages to get most of it on his palms.

Sykora sprawls across him, her gasping face turned and pressed against his stomach, the blushing bloom of her vulva twitching against his palm, her drool spreading on his uniform.

“There we go,” he says.

She responds with a broken little half-word that bears some resemblance to his name.

He releases his bearhug on her and she slides down his body a few inches, into a dripping, undignified heap in his lap. She twitches and moans as he rearranges her so she’s sitting halfway up. “Do you see your panties?” he asks.

She flops her hand toward his foot. Somehow her little black lacy underthings ended up draped over it.

He wiggles his toes. “How did that happen.”

She lets out a little whine as his shifting leg nudges her. He retrieves the thong and places it in her lap.

“It’s not fair,” she mumbles. “You’re too big. It’s unfair.”

He buckles his hands across her stomach as she shimmies her panties back on. “Someone told me size didn’t matter.”

“God, Grant,” she whines. “Look what you did.”

“Look what you did.”

“Insufferable.” She pulls her pants up. “Though our hostess is more insufferable. Perhaps you’re off the hook.”

He finds some paper towels and does what he can for the wetness his wife left on Axyna’s chair. “I hope she doesn’t get too mad.”

“She’s mad already.” Sykora climbs shakily off the seat. “I hope she knows what she’s doing.”

He grimaces as he washes his hands. “Yeah.”

She glances his way. Her tail comes up to caress his hip. “You’re frowning, dove.”

He watches the tap water go for a few seconds, then shuts it off and shrugs. “I guess… I guess I don’t want our son to be some kind of—science project, or something. After he’s born.”

An urgent tug brings him down to a kneel, and into Sykora’s embrace.

She touches his face. “We will never allow that,” she says. “Don’t worry, dove. We—”

Her voice trembles.

“We’ll keep them safe,” she whispers. “The entire Pike will. If they want our boy’s blood, if they want to run their little tests, they can come to us.” She scans the corners of the room. “I don’t care if Axyna is listening to this. I will not bring my babies here. Not when we have a whole ship for our little princelings to grow up in. To be surrounded by love. We’re going to love them so, so much. Our children.” She lets out a breathy laugh of disbelief and wipes her eyes. “Ourchildren, Grantyde. Ours.”

Grant wills the twist in his stomach to smooth itself out. He wants so badly to believe Sykora is right. He takes a deep, fortifying breath, and rests his hands on her, and stares into her fervent, teary face, and decides he will.

“Ours,” he replies.

In the skies above Taiqan, she put aside her doubt, for him, and now it’s his turn. The Empire will not stop the woman in his arms, or separate her from what she wants. She’ll have three amazing kids, and she’ll give them amazing childhoods, and she’ll be an amazing mother. And he’ll be with her the whole way.

And all they have to do first is track down a digital nightmare in a box.