Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

JIHAE

The Halloween Festival loomed closer each day, and though nearly everything was done along the trail, Sizzle hadn’t shown up to help me since admitting that he liked the scent of my… my pussy.

At first, I hadn’t been comfortable thinking about it in such bold terms as he did, but dancing around the subject wasn’t helping anyone. I’d made a concerted effort to call it that in my head. Not “between my legs,” not “channel.” He’d said his biology didn’t lie, and it seemed like mine didn’t either. Whatever he felt, apparently I felt it too, because each day he wasn’t with me left me more disturbed and distracted. I paced fifteen minutes of every hour, looking up at the trees as the aforementioned junction of my legs weeped, missing his antics and cursing him for being elusive.

Because Sizzle hadn’t lied. He’d never been far. Each morning, I’d returned to my spooky tasks to find a large chunk of the trail’s canopy complete. It had to be him, since I hadn’t felt safe going up into the trees with the ladder even once. I was too shaken, too tired from lusty dreams that kept me up and hot all night. This morning though, the levicart sat abandoned at the end of the trail, empty of its will-o-wisps and cobwebs…

And I was scared.

Now that Sizzle had no other tasks, would I not be able to take a midday nap on the levicart and smell where he’d been working overnight? I pressed my cheek to the empty levicart and breathed in his bonfire scent. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but it had gotten stronger over time. And just like every morning when I awoke tangled up in damp sheets and panties, the urge to spread my legs and work my clit over until the desperation faded nearly consumed me.

My eyes popped open. Maybe I could convince Tinsley that I needed to hang floating candles…

“Sleepin’ on the job, Jihae?” Wade called. I jumped up, spine ramrod straight, and blushed from my neck to my forehead. He laughed, waving big from halfway across the playfield as he, Kokebe, and Ngozi, two grey orc-like uids that he’d employed for a while, hauled over the witch’s house.

“Good morning!” I said brightly, pushing flyaway hairs off my forehead. Already, the gloomy humidity was pushing rivulets of sweat down the back of my neck. I unlatched my light jacket and tied it around my waist. “Sorry, I wasn’t—”

“Don’t stress, just takin’ the piss outta ya, sweetheart,” Wade said, clapping his heavy palm on my shoulder. He was a carpenter from Australia with sandy blond hair and leathery skin from years spent waxing his board and catching waves at the beach, and his English always made me feel a little carbonated with its colorful, mischievous character. Siobhan did the same, reminding me how big the world was we came from. I found comfort in not knowing everything they said but intuiting it by feel, like they gave me a little bit of the vastness of humanity back. Instantly, my desperation ebbed and my shoulders relaxed. Just a fraction, but it was a relief regardless. I smiled at Kokebe and Ngozi as I pushed flyaways out of my hair.

“Halfway down the loop, was it? For the witch’s cottage,” Wade asked as he guided their cart down the embankment where wooden poles had been laid into the muddy hill. Even if they floated, the carts still followed the angle of the ground. They were technically designed for hangars and docking bays in microgravity, not rough terrain.

I held onto the perfectly crumbling facade of a stone fence as it slid towards the edge of the platform and blew the hair from my face again. “Yes! Less than halfway from this side of the loop.”

“Bonza,” Wade huffed, shoving a heavy wall back into the center of the cart to level it out. “We can get outta ya hair in time for you to make it to ya story gig.”

I blinked, having completely forgotten about the meeting to plan our ghost story campfire. Good thing I’d prepared mine as soon as all the teachers decided to do it. I’d been so wrapped up in what was happening between Sizzle and I that I’d shirked all of my other responsibilities.

As the ground flattened out and Wade increased the levicart's speed, Ngozi pulled a sweatband off his forehead and held it out to me with a tusky smile. He winked his two right eyes and dipped his chin towards my forehead. “Your silk looks quite bothersome.”

“Oh, thank you.” Bewildered, I held out both of my hands to accept the sleek band. It was cool to the touch, spongy like neoprene but breathable like cotton. I shoved it over my head then pushed it back up, securing it just above my ears. Instantly, the humidity abated against the back of my neck and my forehead where the fabric cradled my hairline. “Ah, shiwonhae—It’s so nice!”

Ngozi smirked. “It’s a cooling band. You can find them cheap on the holomarket. The delegates haven’t shown you?”

I smiled, jumping over a network of biria roots. “I’ve never seen them wear one, maybe because the shilpakaari like the humidity?”

Ngozi nodded with a grunt of contemplation. “And venandi like Vin thrive on the heat. I bet this is a cool autumn day for him.” He flashed me a grin, his bright tusks catching the pink morning as it filtered through the canopy while we waded through the fog. “Kokebe and I will share more tricks for the heat then. Uids must be closer in temperament to humans than the rest. It’s fortunate we’ve found sanctuary here.”

My obsessive preoccupation with Sizzle dissipated while the four of us navigated through the back end of the trail and erected the witch’s cabin. Ngozi and Kokebe were ferocious in appearance, but easy to talk to. They worked as a single unit, one picking up a conversation while the other concentrated on a difficult task. Partway through the morning, Kokebe offered me a canteen of cold water and motioned for me to take a break against a mossy tree while they secured the half-scale cabin’s roof.

“Wadda ya reckon, pretty sweet hey!” Wade awed, hands on his hips. He stood back while the uids hammered the fake dilapidated stone wall into the ground. “Maybe we should seal it, leave it up year round as a campsite. The kids’d love it–”

I stared at Wade as he continued to make plans, but his voice was distant and distorted by the rush of blood in my ears. Clutching the mossy tree trunk at my back with shaking fingers, I breathed in deep and my pussy pulsed. I wasn’t panicking…

I was coming.

This wasn’t like the hollow ache that haunted my nights or the thrust of a dildo. It was a full-body spasm that made my thighs quiver. If my jeans weren’t visibly wet, I’d eat my socks. Every pulse sent fresh fluids gushing from my channel at a sprinter’s pace, and the way the weave of my pants put pressure on my clit meant that it started again, and again, with no end in sight.

I leaned my head back on the tree and it took physical effort not to moan. The tree smelled so much like Sizzle that it bowled me over and immediately made my legs shake. His bonfire scent shrouded me like the jungle fog, so thick the moisture gently prickled my skin and moistened the insides of my nostrils. I instantly didn’t want to take a shower today or ever again. His smoky aroma was in my hair, all across my back, and seeping into my clothes. I was crushing it into my palms, rubbing the tree’s pink moss into my knees without realizing while the incessant pounding between my legs grew stronger and stronger—

Ngozi slowed, looking at my hands as they rubbed into my thighs, staining the front of my pants. I paused, breath hitched as he tilted his head and met my eye. He knew…

I opened my mouth to deny what I was thinking about, but he beat me, an easy smile pulling his lips across his tusks. “Think we’re done, Wade,” he called.

The Aussie nodded, knuckling his salty blond hair. “Yeah. Let’s break for lunch, boys. Then we’ll have a go at that fancy grave. That alright with ya, Jihae?”

“Ah? Oh, yes, of course,” I stammered, afraid my voice would crack on a desperate moan.

Ngozi strolled over and crouched in front of me, holding out his meaty palm for the canteen. My hand shook as I passed it over, and for the first time in years it wasn’t because of my thyroid.

“Are you in heat?” he asked in a murmur. “I’m happy to escort you to the clinic.”

Ngozi’s question didn’t register at first. Was I having a heat stroke? No, but he wasn’t checking my temperature, he was looking at my neck, where my pulse was running rampant. When I realized that “heat” was the English way of saying baljeonggi, I gasped, my cheeks turning red as my pussy throbbed with my heartbeat.

Oh my god…

“Am I?” I breathed, squirming with discomfort. Ngozi took a deep breath, his wide nostrils flaring. He huffed the breath away from me to dispel it in a different direction, fog blooming around the force of his exhale.

“You’re Sizzle’s lover, right?” He nodded to the tree. “His scent is all over the moss. Fresh. Likely marked it last night. A bilong’s seed will do that to the one they’ve attuned to.”

My eyes went wide. I sat up, desperate for information. “You know about bilongs? How?”

Ngozi’s four eyes twinkled. “Uids are from the Outer Rim, not the union. Bilongs don’t mate often, but the uid homeworld is a safe haven for their pups when they do.”

He stood, and I clutched his pant leg, desperate for answers. He didn’t try to shake me off, but took a long drag from the canteen. Kokebe chomped his tusks together twice, and Ngozi answered with his own jaw knock before handing the canteen back to me. My fingers slipped, and it tumbled into my lap, drizzling water across my thighs. “Sizzle is a good man and an effective monster. I enthusiastically approve of the union.”

Blazing embarrassment coursed back up my spine and into my cheeks, sending my skin prickling with nerves. I licked my lips and hugged the canteen as I looked up at him with pleading eyes. “How do I stop the… the heat?”

Wade called to us and I jolted, having forgotten the others were there. “You wanna join us, sweetheart? We can give ya a ride on the cart if the heat’s gettin’ to ya.”

If only he knew.

Ngozi looked over his shoulder, first at Wade, then settling heavily on Kokebe. “She has plans. A date.”

Wade whistled with appreciation, tossing tools on the levicart. “We won’t get in ya way then. C’mon, Kebab, Goatsy, let’s pack it up.”

Ngozi looked down at me one more time and grinned with a feral edge that fit his features too perfectly for comfort. “If you want to ease your heat, call on the bilong. He will happily relieve you of your symptoms.”

They walked away, Kokebe and Ngozi taking up the rear, staring up into the trees with knowing smiles. The hum of the levicart faded around a bend of giant magenta palm fronds and aubergine moss dripping with condensation as the fog turned to steam and rose into the eerie red canopy. I sat just where Ngozi had left me, hugging the canteen upside-down and empty, hardly able to draw breath. Now that the boys had left…

I realized that the jungle was as silent as death.

I slid my tongue out to taste the sweat beaded on my upper lip in thought.

Well, not so much thought as carnal madness.

I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against the moss. I opened my mouth, the word poised in my throat.

“Sizzle,” I rasped, so quietly I was sure the fog devoured the word before it reached him.

A low, electric hum rumbled through my aching skin, sending my clit into a fit of excitement.

“I’m here,” he murmured like thunder on the horizon.

I opened my eyes to find him staring upside down at me from above, claws sunk deep into the biria’s bark, crawling down the same tree I pressed my back into with shaking legs and arms. His red and black fur blended with the bloody tree trunk like camouflage, tail wrapped around its girth and his head mere feet above mine. Massive black claws kept him aloft, leaving deep ravines in the soft bark as if it were warm butter. He watched me sideways with one dilated yellow eye, and though I couldn’t see his throat teeth, I heard them click and realign, muffled against the moss and bark.

“Is it like this for you?” I asked, lower abdomen clenching painfully in anticipation.

He grinned, fangs glinting in the pink light. “Worse.”

I groaned, and the tree creaked as his hold on it tightened.

“Don’t make noises like that unless you mean it, morsel.”

I swallowed hard. Did I mean it? Had I done it on purpose?

“I’ve had fevers and dreams every night,” I admitted. “You’re all I think about.”

“Mhmm—”

He didn’t sound surprised. In fact, he sounded distracted, a string of saliva falling from his largest left canine as he stared down my body. The hot dollop landed on my surgical scar and descended into my shirt, leaving a trail across my sweat-soaked skin.

“What have you done to me?” I whimpered.

His attention returned like the crack of a whip. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“You don’t know?”

“My instincts do.” His grin faded. “The clinic has heat suppressants in stock. Dr Zarabi can alleviate the nightmares just as well as I.”

My brow furrowed, offended on Sizzle’s behalf. “They’re not nightmares.”

Sizzle crawled off the tree, his face staying perfectly still, rotating until he looked me dead in the eye and his body was crouched low on the ground, ready to pounce. He looked at me with such intensity, it was a challenge. “I want you forever, morsel. That’s not a nightmare?”

“No, just… intimidating. Fast. Really fast.”

Steam billowed out of Sizzle’s nostrils, his tongue surfing up the seam of his y-shaped mouth in hunger. “I am overly possessive, obsessive. I will covet you if you let me. What is that animal of human legend… a drahgun? I will destroy civilizations to keep you once I get a taste, Jihae, and that’s not an exaggeration. I’ve already devoured more than a thousand souls in my lifetime, and none of them for any reason of my own. Boredom. Money.”

“Where I’m from, dragons aren’t greedy or destructive. They’re protectors and symbols of hope.”

Sizzle snapped his jaws at me. “The only hope I represent is a quick death.”

“Are you sure?” I licked my upper lip again, taking a deep whiff of his fiery scent as I looked up into the trees. “Because I’ve hoped every day that you’d be here.”

Sizzle’s posturing softened thoughtfully, but the tension was still as taut as a bowstring. He reached a long, curved claw towards my knee and dragged it across my pants, stuttering over every thread. My breath hitched, waiting for the fabric to give, for blood to well across my thigh.

“Not nightmares then,” he asked without really asking.

I shook my head. “No.”

He turned his head sideways, and his round yellow eye caught mine. “Fantasies.”

My abdomen stung with adrenaline, too intense to call it a flutter. “Yes,” I breathed.

That claw hooked in the crux of my knee and pulled wide, coaxing my legs open. My heels dug into the soft roots, still crouching, as the heat between my legs yawned. Sizzle breathed in deep, then licked his snout as if tasting the scent, but never blinked.

“So hungry…” he purred, saliva dripping from his teeth. He leaned forward on one hand as his tongue teased the seam of his throat, approaching me without a sound. Not a single leaf or splinter of bark snapped beneath his weight. His other claw slid up the inseam of my pants and my pussy pulsed. I swallowed hard, clutching the mulch, stock still and lightheaded.

Sizzle loomed over me, three times my size. He was so big and overwhelming. How was this going to work?

Oh god…

My spiral of thoughts ended with a gasp as his claw traced the seam of my slit through my pants. He paused, staring me in the eye. Go ahead, his focused gaze said, tell me no.

I bit my lip and gave him the smallest nod of permission.

He pressed that claw a little harder, and the fabric gave way, splitting open along the length of my groin. Goosebumps erupted across my forearms and neck as he hooked my underwear, pulled, and sliced it in half.

As I inhaled a sharp breath, Sizzle pressed his forehead against my sternum and growled with desperation, his nose flaring. A claw sank into the bark by my face and his shoulders hunched, curling in close, enveloping me in his scent and fur. I was beginning to pant, caught between sublime fear and impatience. Like rolling over the highest summit of a rollercoaster with no safety bar or seatbelt.

Then Sizzle’s slick, hot tongue covered my exposed slit from start to end and dragged slowly back into his mouth, taking my soul with it. My voice broke on a high-pitched moan, nearly a whimper, and his fur stood on end, even the sleek black coat of his arms and face, as if I gave him goosebumps for a change. His deep lungs pumped, ragged, as he did it again.

I strained my legs wider and pushed my hips out, balancing on the balls of my feet beneath my pelvis. Yes, this is what I needed. My heat-addled brain eased, even as the desperation for relief ramped up. In what felt like a death-defying stunt, I unclenched one fist in the dirt and clapped it to the back of Sizzle’s head, clutching the fur at the base of one ear.

“Yesssss…” he snarled, his voice so bass that it vibrated my chest near the lowest register of my hearing. The ferns around us vibrated like we were next to subwoofers at a concert.

Sizzle hooked his claws beneath my butt and pulled me off balance. My back hit the ground cover with a thump as he dragged me beneath him. My hair snagged in dead leaves and twigs, shirt riding up my spine and catching on my breasts as he pushed my legs open under his claws. The seat of my pants ripped further and he bared his teeth in a snarl.

Not just the teeth in his muzzle, but all of his teeth. A line of pearly white like dissection stitches traveled down the long length of his neck, ending at his sternum. His mouth opened as the skin around his nose and eyes bunched with a feral, possessive growl. I propped myself up on my elbows to look down his clenching abdominal wall towards his prepuce, where a swollen, purple cock protruded from its black sheath.

My thighs ached at the sight of it, my toes curling in my boots. But the glimpse was fleeting, lacking in delicious detail, because in the next second, Sizzle dove forward, pressing the top of his snout into my pussy before he ascended my body, his tongue delving deep into my channel to get at the taste he’d been waiting for.

“Chebal!” I begged in a cracked mewl. My eyes rolled back as his tongue drove into me, strong and dextrous, hitting my cervix and curling over itself to fill me up. The pressure was exactly what my body wanted as it built and his tongue rolled over itself. He pressed the long muscle against my clit too, undulating pressure into the bud while his mouth claws spread my thighs wider. I sobbed and clutched his ears, pulling him into me, recklessly addicted to his cocktail of fear and pleasure.

It didn’t take much. My knees shook and my brow creased. I begged in a shaky whisper. “I’m–I’m–” Then my voice was wrenched from me as a forceful orgasm clenched every muscle in my abdomen, squeezing his tongue and drenching it anew.

Sizzle’s mouth opened down the length of his esophagus, exposing strong throat muscles similar to the pillowy mouth of a viper or python. He crawled up my body, brushing his face over my belly, dragging it across the mounds of my breasts, all while his tongue stayed between my legs, milking me until the last ounce of my climax left me a wobbly mess.

I raked my fingers through his steaming fur, wet with fog and pollen as his lower jaw unhinged like a snake, and he cradled my throat from ear to ear while he purred. The sound vibrated all the way through his mouth and neck, through each fang that gently pricked my flesh from groin to collar. He let go of the crushing grip he’d had on my knees and slipped one claw beneath the small of my back, tensing his mouth muscles until the vacuum of his most dangerous asset sucked lightly on my skin and clothing.

I blinked breathlessly, then huffed a small smile. “Are you… hugging me?” I asked with disbelief. His forearm bound me tighter as he rubbed my cheek with his snout.

That was as close to confirmation as I would get with his mouth preoccupied, so I hugged his neck and ran my fingers through the silky fur around his collar. His tongue slowly receded from between my legs and his mouth closed from bottom to top like a zipper pull. Click click click click…

The haze of need faded as he pressed the heel of his hand into my back and lifted me to my feet. He pulled his mouth away from my neck and rehinged his lower jaw, kneading the inside of his mouth with his tongue and gums in an eerie, inhuman way. It was fascinating, terrifying… Is this what he was like unrestrained and completely himself? Knees still weak, I held onto his shoulder for balance as he crouched so he could meet my eye, a bright red blush completely overcoming my face. He smirked, tongue lolling from his jaw with a suggestive pulse of muscle.

“Mmm… Delicious.” He cocked his head thoughtfully. “And filling.”

I opened my mouth to respond with a lame thank you, but my holotab vibrated against the bone of my thumb. Sizzle’s ear twitched. I lifted my arm to see the holographic display implanted there and gasped.

“My meeting! Mang hesso, mang hesso!”

Sizzle eyed me sideways, looking at the alarm blaring beneath my skin. I had ten minutes to get to the school pod to lead a meeting I’d volunteered for weeks go. Even if I ran, I’d never make it, and the anxiety of showing up sweaty and out of breath to a room full of calm and collected colleagues rose up like a monster in my gut.

With a whine of disappointment, I turned off the alarm, worrying my lip, bouncing from foot to foot, feeling all the sticks and twigs in my hair. Sizzle covered my holotab before I could send a message off to Siobhan to see if she could cover for me.

“Shake out your silk, then I’ll take you. If they ask, tell them it’s because my head was between your thighs.”

“Sizzle!” I admonished. He chuckled, then pointed to the canopy.

“Ladder, remember? You have such a dirty mind, morsel.”

I squeezed my thighs together and shook my head. Even now, the rip in the crotch seam of my pants slipped over my ruined underwear. I couldn’t go anywhere remotely proper like that, much less storytime. Sizzle glanced down at his handiwork, then swiped something from the ground. He looped my light jacket around my waist and tied a knot.

“It’ll be our little secret,” he hummed, pleased with the idea. “Now hurry with your silk.”

“Aysh…” Swearing colorfully in Korean and in complete denial that I was about to go to my job with my pants split open beneath my jacket, I pulled my hair out of its tie, flipped it over my head, and shook it with vigor.