Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JONATHAN HEARD THE beep of the intercom at the lab and it roused him from sleep.

Riley was still asleep, naked, her body lush and lovely there, her belly still swollen with the evidence of their joining, and he ran his hand over her there, feeling his eggs in her and getting hard.

Shit.

He got out of bed and buzzed back at whoever was at the door. "Luther? Angela?"

"It's Mann," said a ravaged voice.

Peter Mann was not one of Jonathan's favorite people, even when they'd been humans and not strange webbed creatures, and even when they hadn't started doing whatever they were doing sexually to women, which couldn't probably be termed consensual. Not in Nancy Manes case, certainly. And whatever it was that Jonathan was doing...

Well, Jonathan wasn't sure what the fuck that was, but he knew he and Riley had gone into it with an agreement, and he knew he'd coerced her into breaking it. And now, he was really fucking proud of himself for getting as many eggs into her as he had. Weird shit.

"You can't come in, Mann," said Jonathan.

"I just want that injection, that's all. Will it stop me from… getting…?"

"I've had the injection, too, and I think it only slowed things down," said Jonathan. "We're all off the deep end, Mann."

"I killed Robinson," said Mann, his voice breaking. "I killed him with my… my other needle cock, whatever the fuck it is. I held him down and put it up his ass and I fucked him until he burst, just like Nancy. He begged me to stop, and he struggled, and I just did it anyway, and what the fuck is going on with us, Greyson? Make it stop ."

Jonathan didn't know what to say.

"At least give me a gun, for fuck's sake, so that I can shoot myself," said Mann. "Can you do that?"

"No, the women are the only ones who know where the guns are," said Jonathan softly. "We probably shouldn't…"

"Fuck you, Greyson. Thanks for nothing."

Jonathan waited, and then went out of the room. He looked out a window to see that Mann was trudging off, away from the lab. It was growing dark. He shuddered. What happened now? Did he lose his head like that? Was he going to kill Riley?

He definitely wanted to fuck her again with his ovipositor, that was the thing. How many times could he do that? How many eggs could she really handle in there?

He went back into the room to find Riley stirring on the bed.

He came closer, and she was writhing a little, her legs open, moving her hips, sighing, but he realized she wasn't awake.

Was she just having a sexy dream?

He maybe didn't mind. He settled down to watch her, looking at her egg-filled belly, at her wide open legs, at her new, scaled pussy.

She let out a long, breathy sigh, and then she said his name. "Jonathan?"

"Yeah, Riley?" he was staring into her open thighs.

"I think… something's happening," she groaned.

"Something bad?" he said. God, he had a fucking hard on. He wanted to play with himself and watch her do this, whatever it was, which he was hoping was not bad.

"It feels good," she said in a throaty voice. "It feels…" Her hips jutted up and her pussy swelled and…

An egg appeared, stretching against her vaginal opening.

"Oh, fuck, it feels amazing ," she groaned, and she pushed the egg out.

That was crazy hot. He liked watching her lay his eggs. He started jerking himself, both his cock and his stinger. "Well, that looks amazing," he said.

"Mmm, I want to push them all out, I think," she said with a little moan. "Can I?"

"Yes, definitely, yes," he breathed.

She lifted her head. "You like it?"

He nodded vigorously.

Her back arched, and she pressed her breasts into the air. She started to touch herself, to play with one of her nipples and to rub her clitoris.

He watched as she writhed and sighed and moaned and teased herself to an orgasm that culminated with another egg pushing its way out of her body.

She did it for all five of them.

And while she did it, he jerked two eggs out of himself, which felt fantastic. It hurt a little when the egg came out of the tip of his ovipositor, but it was also the best feeling on earth, better than orgasms he used to have. His cock did actually come a little, he'd noticed, sympathetic jerks of some liquid out of the head of it. He'd have to study it, see if there was sperm in it anymore.

For now, he was distracted.

After she was finished laying all the eggs, he went to her and rubbed his hand over her body.

"Mmm, empty," she said, tugging him down on top of her. "Put some more in me, Jonathan."

"Abso-fucking-lutely," he groaned, and inserted his stinger right into the sweet, tight, wondrously gripping center of her.

LUTHER SHOULD HAVE probably woken up with her.

Everything was weird in a way he didn't know how to parse. He was pretty sure he'd, you know, taken advantage of her. He couldn't deny that sex was that on some level. There was a desire, somewhere in him, to do that.

There was a reason it was a backseat-of-the-car-teenage cliche, after all, the guy pushing the girl for more and more while she tried to halt the entire thing.

It was always like this in some way. Sex for men had less stakes than it did for women, but this was blatant. He'd talked her into the eggs, and they both knew about Nancy. They'd seen that body. What the fuck?

So, on the first level, it was disturbing, because he'd never been that kind of guy, anyway. He was not the kind of guy who tried to talk girls into things. He wasn't a scam artist. He didn't practice negging. That was not him at all .

Things had changed within him besides his appearance, clearly.

Except, not exactly, either.

Because it had made him… well, this was fucked up, but this was how it felt… It had made him fall in love with her.

He'd urged her to take more and more of him, and that had been irresponsible of him. He'd put his pleasure above her safety. Except now, here she was in his arms, still asleep, and her belly was all full of his eggs and he felt this deep tug of responsibility towards her, and it wasn't bad at all. It was nice, a kind of crimson-edged sense of destiny and ancient duty.

That thing that certain men were always decrying that feminism had taken from them, maybe? The provider/protector thing? It felt like that. And he liked it a lot .

So, he did what men did in that situation and left.

She was still asleep in the bed in her cabin, and he got up, carefully and quietly, and edged his way out of the room and out of the cabin and outside, where it was growing dark, and the air was warm and muggy and the trees dangled dark foliage against the lines of angry color in the sky as the sun was setting.

That was when he knew he couldn't leave her. Such a thing was unthinkable and ultimately painful. The draw, the tug, the connection between them, it was forged and set. It was done now.

So, he decided to go to the mess and get them some food. It had been a while since they'd eaten, he realized, but he hadn't been hungry.

What if they didn't eat human food anymore?

One way to find out, he guessed.

He brought back frozen things and let himself back into Angela's cabin, which was when he realized that he hadn't locked the door. You left her here, asleep, unprotected, and there are crazed guards running around, you fuckwad.

He rushed back to her bedroom.

She was fine.

Still asleep.

No one was in here.

Shit. He would not leave her again. Why had he left before?

It was the injustice of it, really. The lack of choice. He was Black and he knew all about being pigeonholed. He knew all about repressing his learned social behavior to pretend to fit into a white narrative. Behave how they want you to behave; pretend they're the default. His whole fucking life had been running into brick walls, choices lost, narrow paths…

This—being changed, turned into a creature, having his sexual drive coerced, and then finally falling in love with a woman seemingly against his fucking will—it was too much. He needed control over his life. Some kind of control. It seemed like all his control had been taken away.

He started heating up food.

Angela smelled it and appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a sheet from the bed.

He guessed he didn't wear clothes anymore. What was the point, really? His new skin was different, tougher.

"You got us breakfast, huh?" she said with a little smile.

His gaze went to the swell in her belly. "Thought you might be hungry."

"Feeding your spawn?"

"Don't say that shit." He sighed.

"Yeah, we're living in a nightmare, all right."

"It's not breakfast," he said. "Because it's dusk. The sun's going down."

"Right," she said, sitting down on a couch in her living room area. "You're probably hungry. I mean, it must take something out of you to make those eggs, right?"

He considered. Where the fuck were they coming from? He wasn't storing them inside his body, so they must sort of come together when they pushed into his stinger. It was all very weird. "Yeah, I guess I could eat."

They ate. He was starving, he realized. He was going to have to get more food, and this was something they were going to have to think about—feeding themselves. They couldn't just live down here, all on their own.

Anyway, it was just as likely that Anderson Scott figured out they were there and blew the whole place up, he thought.

He was lost in thought, and he didn't say much. Angela seemed hungry too. She ate quickly.

"You still hungry?" he said. "Because I can go back and get more."

"We'll go together," she said.

"No," he said. "I got this. Seriously. Least I can do after…" He gestured at her swollen belly.

She put a hand on it. "You know, I think I begged for a bunch of these. It felt fucking awesome. I never had sex like that."

"Yeah," he muttered. "It was… wow."

Movement.

Outside the window.

Luther stood up.

The doorknob rattled.

He lurched across the room just as the door opened. Hadn't he fucking locked it? What the fuck was wrong with him? He'd thought about locking it.

Mann staggered inside. "God, I can smell her on the other side of the damned path."

Luther shoved him back outside. "You stay away from her."

"Won't share?" said Mann. "Why do you get one of the women, huh?"

"Because when you had a woman, you fucking killed her," said Luther.

Mann backed away. "No, that's true. I guess that's true." He staggered again and then he went down on his knees. "Greyson says the women have the guns. That true?"

Angela appeared in the doorway. "You want me to put you out of your misery, Mann?"

"Please," said Mann in a garbled voice. " Please. "

Angela disappeared into the cabin.

"No, if you make me wander around like this, smelling you, you bitch, I swear I will have my fucking vengeance on you, you cunt!" Mann was getting to his feet, his voice a growl.

Luther shoved him. "Back," he said.

Angela reappeared in the doorway, with the gun. "Get clear, Thompson," she said.

Mann turned to face her.

The sound of the gunshot echoed through the twilight and Mann's head jerked back, blood arcing out of the hole in his head.

He crumpled to the ground, lifeless.