Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

ANGELA COULDN'T TAKE her gaze away from the swell of Riley's belly. How many fucking eggs were in there? It looked like twenty. Could twenty even fit? Fuckity fuck, why did it make her feel a taut, shivery feeling at the thought of trying?

They were in the lab, in the main area, where there were piles of other eggs, some of which looked slightly less translucent than other eggs, and some of which had been sliced in half—something that she didn't know how she felt about.

Both Riley and Jonathan were wearing lab coats and nothing else, which meant there were casual flashes of their nudity, which bothered her, too.

Everyone here has gone insane, she thought, and she didn't like that she was one of the mental patients.

"So, don't worry," Riley was saying to her. "You'll lay those soon. How long did it take for me, Jonathan?"

Jonathan was poking around in one of the sliced-open eggs. "Not long, love. It did vary, I think. The second time was quicker than the first."

"Our bodies are making an attempt to fertilize them, but it's not working," said Riley. "Jonathan and I are working on that. He thinks we might make another injection, maybe for him or maybe for me, or maybe for both, if we want to have viable offspring."

"What?" said Luther. "Are you serious?"

Angela clutched her stomach. "So, these eggs, they're… duds?"

"Total duds," said Riley. "We're not sure what's going on, exactly."

"Right, we need to do more tests," said Jonathan. "We can definitely say that the females—you and Angela—have ovaries that have turned to testes. So we—Luther and me—might technically be female at this point. The theory that we're inserting eggs into the women to be fertilized, it seems to be correct. It's somewhat similar to seahorses."

"But if it were similar to seahorses, we would gestate the eggs," said Riley. "And we don't really know, do we, Jonathan? Maybe I'm laying the eggs because they're not properly fertilized. Maybe if I could fertilize them, I'd keep them and gestate them."

"Well, you are trying to fertilize them, and something's happening," said Jonathan. "These are altered." He poked around in the egg he'd dissected.

"Amphibians don't gestate to maturity, though. They lay the eggs and leave," said Riley.

"Not all amphibians," said Jonathan.

"Right, there are some with live birth."

"Mmm," he said. "Gastric brooding frogs swallow their young and gestate them in their stomach. They can't eat the whole time, and then—when they give birth—the babies hop right out of their mouths."

"Fascinating!" said Riley.

"Eew," said Angela.

"Totally," said Luther.

"And there are some species of salamanders who retain their eggs in the oviducts until maturity," said Jonathan.

"It's a good thing we're not actually giving birth," said Angela.

Both Riley and Jonathan looked up at that. They glanced at each other, considering.

"Well, from a perspective of pure sexual gratification, perhaps that's true," said Riley.

"Right, I mean, we could just keep doing this, I suppose," said Jonathan. "I lay eggs in you, you lay the eggs, and then we do it again and again, and it sounds—"

"Fantastic," said Riley with a sigh.

"But I suppose I am wondering why your testes aren't working. Why can't we get a viable egg?"

"I know," said Riley. "That'll bother me."

Angela tugged on Luther. "Let's, um, let's…"

"Yeah," said Luther. "You guys do whatever, I guess?"

"If you haven't eaten, though, I recommend that," said Angela.

"Food," said Jonathan in a completely different voice.

"Oh, yes, I think I'm starving," said Riley.

Angela pulled Luther out of the room.

"Wait," called Jonathan. "I saw Peter Mann earlier, and he indicated to me he'd killed Nathan Robinson."

Angela poked her head back into the lab. "Well, that's all of them, then."

"What?" said Jonathan.

"I shot Mann because he begged me to," she said. "And I had to protect myself from Harris and Lee."

Jonathan sighed heavily. "So, just the four of us, then?"

"Yes," said Angela. "And I guess there's no reason to sequester ourselves in the lab anymore. There's no danger."

"Right," said Jonathan, blinking.

"How about we meet back here tomorrow?" said Luther. "To try to discuss whatever we want to discuss about Anderson Scott?"

"Sure," said Riley, from within the lab. "Tomorrow!"

Angela and Luther left them in there and trudged through the darkness in silence.

He directed her to his cabin, as they got closer. "No one was shot to death in mine," he said. "Or outside it, either." Mann's body was still there.

"Good point," she said.

When they got there, Luther still had beer.

She sat down on his couch and he handed her a beer, making a joke about how he guessed she wasn't pregnant after all.

She took the beer and he got one, too.

They drank long, long swigs.

"They're… not well," said Luther.

"I didn't think so either," she whispered.

"But also," said Luther, "something's wrong with us."

"True," she said.

"And I have to admit this idea of you laying eggs… I'm into it."

She snickered. "What? Seriously?"

"You're not?"

"I…" She drank more beer. "No. It's weird. Everything about all of this is weird ."

"I'm very into you, Angela, I should say." His voice deepened. "I thought it was because you were carrying my spawn or something, but I just found out you're going to expel them and nothing will have happened, and it didn't change how much I'm, you know, sort of devoted to you, so…" He tilted the beer into his mouth.

She surveyed him. Even though he was all scaled and gilled, he still looked like himself. His body had the same general shape and his features were intact. She'd always thought he was attractive, but now…

"I mean, maybe I shouldn't say it," he said. "Maybe it's making you feel weird, and I'm not trying to put any more pressure on you, not after I already pressured you into taking my eggs inside you when that was seriously fucked up. I don't want to hurt you, that's what I'm saying? I want to protect you. I want… I feel…"

"I don't mind that you're into me," she said.

"But you're not into me?"

"I didn't say that," she said, running her gaze up and down his body. "I didn't say anything like that."

"So, you're not not into me?" He gave her a little smile and drank more beer.

"I'm freaked out, Luther, and you're…" She bowed her head. Her mind was swimming, things all at the edges, things that wanted to take over her body. But she couldn't let them—they would make her panic. What happened to them now? And could they ever expect anything after this to be good?

At least the sex part… at least that felt good.

She tipped the beer into her mouth and just drank the rest of it, swallowing and swallowing and—

"Hey, there's liquor if you just want to get drunk," he said.

She set the beer down. "I'm into you. I'm glad you're here. I like your penis. And your other penis, that long stinger-thing, the thing that puts eggs in me. I really like that. I just wish I didn't, I guess."

"No, I get that."

"Not because of you, because—"

"No, right, just because it's fucked up, whatever is happening to us, and we have no control over it, and it just keeps getting weirder and—"

"Yeah, but at least there are orgasms," she said.

"True," he said.

She furrowed her brow, as she felt a lurch within her body, a ripple deep inside, a nice ripple. She let out a noisy moaning breath.

"What?" He sat up straight. "You all right?"

"I think… it's the laying thing. I think it's going to be… good."

"Oh," he said in a different voice. "Well, fuck yes, then." He sucked in breath—through his nose, through his gills. She liked watching them move.

"Can you feel the air in your gills?" she breathed. "Can you swim in the water? Why haven't we even tried to figure this out?"

"The sex stuff has been pretty distracting," he said. "But totally. You lay the eggs, then we'll go for a midnight swim and maybe fuck in the water. You want to try that?"

She let out a helpless laugh.

"Will you, like, take off your clothes and lay the eggs naked for me?" His voice was deep and a little scratchy, and she liked the sound of it.

"That's what you want?"

"I like looking at your pussy a lot," he said. "They're going to come out there, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah, definitely." Another wave of sensation went through her. She was going to need to take off her bottoms at the very least. She got up and stripped off her shirt and bra and then pushed out of her pants.

"That was really quick," said Luther. "Is it too much to ask for a nice, slow striptease?"

She threw her clothes at his face. "Fuck you, Luther."

"You know, I really think you could be nicer to me, don't you?"

"No, you like it when I'm not nice to you," she said.

"Do I?"

"Uh huh. You're totally attracted to me because I don't take shit."

"That's not entirely inaccurate, but I think I'm attracted to you because you have boobs, if you want to know the truth."

"If I had another article of clothing, I would throw it—" She broke off as her body contracted in the most delicious and wondrous of ways. She threw her head back.

"You okay?" He was off the couch, his hands on her, rubbing over her hips, her back.

"Mmm," she said, rubbing her face into his chest. "I need…" She moved, over to the wall. She bent over, hands out, legs spread, like she was getting frisked or something.

His hands were still on her.

She wriggled her hips at him as it started to crest. Shit, that felt amazing, the egg working itself out of her, working out of her pussy like that. She let out little breathy sighs. It was intense. There was a stretch, but it was so good.

"Fuck, Angela," said Luther. His hands were on her ass cheeks. He tugged them apart, parting her labia too. "This is… this is the fucking sexiest thing in the fucking universe."

He'd put this egg in her and now she was giving it back to him. Weird, so weird, but good.

She panted, and the egg came all the way out. She had a tiny little orgasm, tremors through her, but she needed more. She straightened up, pressing backwards, into his chest.

"Hey," he breathed in her ear. His hands roamed over her body, cupping her breasts, touching her nipples, and straying down to tease her clit. He was hard and his stinger was out, but he tucked that up against her back.

The heat of his erection settled between her ass cheeks, tucked in there, just nestled against her, no attempt to penetrate.

He rubbed into her, and he must have been pre-coming or something. She didn't know, but it was slippery enough that he was rubbing up and down the crack of her, and another egg was coming out of her and his fingers were on her clit and it was out-of-this-world good.

She laid the next egg like that, and they went down on their knees for the next one.

She came hard when it came out, as much from the way he was toying with her clit as from the sensation of his cock rubbing her outside her body as the egg rubbed her from within.

The orgasm felt like the fucking sunrise, like the light stealing into her body after a long darkness. It was so good, it felt like hope. And that was fucked, because everything was actually hopeless.

He expelled an egg, which plopped out with the ones she'd laid on the floor, and it did look different than the ones that had been inside her.

They rested for a bit, kissing, rubbing each other, his voice rough in her ear, telling her he could watch her laying eggs for the rest of his damned life, and she felt something in her break because she liked it, too, liked the intimacy of it and the pleasure and the strangeness of the way it bonded them.

It was filthy in some way—the way sex was always filthy—because it was instinctive and animal and primitive.

But maybe love was that, too, even though people liked to pretend it was some higher-order, human-only emotion. Everyone knew that dogs and cats could love their owners. Everyone knew that it was just as animal as anything else, that deep attachment.

So, as the fourth egg began to crest inside her pelvis, as she rubbed her taut nipples into the scales on his chest, she said it to him. She groaned it into his skin. "Love you, Luther."

And he said it back. "I love you, too, Angela. Lay my eggs, pretty girl. Get them all out for me. You're doing such a good job."

She looked up at him. "You want to lick me while I lay this one, Luther?"

"Yes," he said fiercely, pushing her down onto her back.

She settled there and lifted her hips and he put his hands under her ass and lifted her to feast, his tongue gentling over her clit and then going down to taste her opening, to lap at her as the egg stretched her, as it worked its way out.

She came again.

And again.

And the pleasure went all through her, twining with the strange filthy, primitive elements of it, elevating all of it to something else , something almost sacred.