Quit Your Waning (Over the Moon #3)

SIZZLE

It hadn’t been anywhere near dawn when I first infiltrated one of the home towers, but it sure as fuck was by the time I figured out how to squeeze through the little glass room between the lobby doors and the hallway. I’d been stuck, twisted and tangled over my own limbs for the better part of a turn, my face smashed against the glass next to a cut out of a green human with a pointy hat.

“Warning, doors cannot open under pressure. Please clear the doorway,” BEO intoned from above for the tenth time.

Why did other species insist on putting an airlock in a building that wasn’t airtight? It leaked chemical air conditioners and had open balconies anyway. It was a pointless little room, and its only reason for existing now was to bar me from entry. At least I’d been smart enough to mark my trees first so I didn’t have the rough edge of the rut pounding in my ears.

When Aavar opened the door and I tumbled out ass first, I snorted at him, eyes half-lidded and disgruntled. He was too cheery, bouncing on the balls of his feet with a jesterly giggle. He pointed at his forehead and my ear twitched as I tried to see the top of my head. The green human had hitched a ride on my fur, holding a broom and cackling. I swiped her off with my tongue and spit her out.

“Not a word,” I snapped.

“Aw, come on, just one.” He held up one of his six fingers, his mane curling and twisting around his head.

“That was five.”

“Fine. Have fun stealing!”

The shil backed through the glass closet from hell with a little wave of both his left hands and gave me a wink as the door slid shut.

I crossed my ears over my head and let my tongue loll sideways out of my mouth. “Have fun stealing,” I mimed, flipping him the human “fuck you” bird sign I’d learned from his priya. Aavar’s laugh boomed through the muffled glass and he returned the gesture, whistling as he sauntered off to work.

I turned to find said priya staring at me with a steaming mug in one hand, her brow raised inquisitively, disappearing into a tangle of brown-and-straw-colored silk.

“Stealing, huh?” Bree asked, taking a slow sip of her mud water.

I licked my eyeball, adjusting my teeth. Click click click click. “Does it really count if it’s the supply closet?”

She licked her teeth, squinting in consideration. “Maybe it does. Maybe I should ask Hunar.”

“...I will give you one–one–of my fangs the next time one falls out.” I usually just ate them as they constantly grew in, but Bree had been dropping hints. She wanted one for Aavar. Her mouth thinned in a smug smile and she strode past, her mechanic’s belt tinkling with tools.

“You’re right, supply closets don’t count,” she decided, satisfied with my bribe. “Good luck. It’s a tight fuckin’ squeeze back there.”

And that’s how I ended up with my hips stuck between a potted plant and a wall corner.

After a humiliating crawl of shame marked by tracks of soil and broken pottery—which I still considered a triumph since I did, in fact, get the clean, unchipped dishes I’d been angling for—I decided it was best to hoof it up the side of the tower to Jihae’s balcony and go for gold.

As I balanced on the railing in the buffeting wind, I dragged in a deep breath of my spicy, earthy, floral mate.

My scrapyard here in Renata was worth more credits than everything inside the hangar combined. There were delicious delicacies, of course, but also hidden stockpiles of black market gear for emergencies. I had three bounce pods for trans-atmo escapes from the surface and several vantaplates from the hull of the Mummer, the ship I served on before coming to Yaspur. There were dangerous, precious, unique treasures in the scrapyard. Strategic and deadly and my absolute favorite things.

But Jihae was my crown jewel now. As I bent my head and peered into her unit, I licked my teeth. There were so many things of hers that I coveted. Her chairs and pillows, the stray silk in her brush, the dishcloth left to dry on a stool.

I slinked in through the balcony door, squeezing my hips together. I didn’t care that I knocked over a folded blanket and a lamp or that my claws left marks on the tiles. Let the soil stain her sofa and walls. She would know I was here regardless, and that’s what I wanted. It was becoming clearer to me that she wanted it too. Whether I was stalking her or sitting with her curled up against me, she felt safe when I was near. She slept better. My stalking comforted her. She accepted me for the monster I was.

So I was going full gremlin. It was time to rejoice like a degenerate beast. To lick everything and claim it all as mine.

And to steal a few essentials for the day very soon when our nest would be ready and Jihae and I could share space as she described. I closed my eyes and breathed her in again, letting my cock swell at the thought of our nest smelling like this. Her scent fit the hanok architecture and carved biria wood better than this sterile, chemically-chilled box. I would make her shudder and pant my name, then bathe my head between her legs and rub my muzzle on the tree trunks so she would always surround my senses.

“BEO, call a luggage drone.”

I pushed the table against the wall to give myself more space, then unfolded my shoulders and hips so I could sit cross-legged on the ground and work with my claws. I unloaded the new dishes from the pouches of tissue in my mouth, packing them with towels into a box. When the drone arrived, it slid into the unit and hovered near the collection on the table. I filled its flat cart with pillows, primarily. Soft goods. Those didn’t keep well outside, so I kept eating the ones I’d collected as I found stains and marks from the scrapyard and the rain. I took all of Jihae’s pillows and everything from her hallway closet. I could just reach it with my claws, too wide through my chest to squeeze into the tiny passage.

Both bedroom doors slid open, one with a decaying scent of candy and shampoo. It was the room where Soyeon used to sleep. It still had many of her things inside, little knick-knacks like posters and figurines. Humans were so very tactile, something the other species had lost over time. I left the room alone, even though the ship models looked tasty, tinkling the black charm on my mouth claw for the fun of hearing it.

Being so close to Jihae’s room was divine torture though, and soon I could think of nothing else but destroying the walls to get in there. It smelled intimate, and I knew that this was where she nursed her heat fever. A small pile of white towels leaned against the wardrobe, humming in its daily sterilization protocol, and I zeroed in on them. They were mouthwatering. If I ate one, mmm, I’d be able to taste her for days. Just suck on the towel in my throat and wring every last drop of her pussy out of it.

I clawed up the floor, gnashing my teeth, but no matter how I flexed my shoulders or wriggled, I couldn’t get myself close though. I stretched my tongue as far as I could, shooting it across the floor in a desperate last-ditch effort, but it flopped ineffectually halfway across the room. I whimpered like a wounded animal and huffed a melancholy sigh, going limp with my ass still stuck in the living room.

Once I’d managed to extract myself from the hallway, I prowled, my cock thick and heavy as it swung between my legs, a pendulum half-sheathed in its prepuce. I caught a whiff of Jihae’s palm oil on her countertop and latched onto it as if I was teething, chewing gouges straight out of the chrome surface like it was clay.

Then my eyes landed on her food bay, wishing I could print another tranq. I was near delirious, and though the look was a good one for me usually, the rut wasn’t something I wanted to lose control over. If only I could–

Wait. Duh.

I gripped my cock in one claw and squeezed with punishing force, a bead of precum leaking from the tip nearly constantly these days. I tugged my tight palm off the head, gathering up a small puddle, and brushed it across her counter.

Instantly, the building desperation in my gut eased. I removed my fangs from the counter and sprawled across the room, still man-shaped. As soon as my back was on the ground, my cock jutted from its sheath, a steel bar that pressed against my abdomen. I considered strangling it with my tongue, but then much of my seed would go to waste.

Pumping my hand slowly, I commed Jihae.

“Hello?” she asked, sounding brighter and more awake than when she’d been biting down on my claw. A murmur of people around her told me she was probably still at the campsite, packing away tents.

“Good morning, morsel. Did you sleep well?”

She cleared her throat, and I grinned. No question, she was blushing.

“Yes, thank you. Did you?”

How prim and proper. I squeezed the hard bulge swelling at the base of my shaft with the other hand, picking up a slow, deliberate rhythm. Seed dripped over my fingers like candle wax.

“Mm. I’m in your unit, and it doesn’t smell nearly enough like me.”

“What?” She laughed with confusion. I licked my fangs. “Eat it all. None of it is special. It’s all just new plas and boring.”

“None of it?” I paused, surprised by this. She took such care on the haunted trail, arranging everything just so, pouring her creativity into it like it was her calling.

“Well… There’s a little bag in the pantry. Just don’t eat that. Anything else is fair game.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not here to snack. I’m marking what’s yours so it smells like it’s mine. We’re going to share space, aren’t we?”

“Oh,” she murmured with realization. Was it just me or was there a fascination to her tone? “Yes, I’d like that. I, ah… I slept better last night than I have in a long time.”

“It’s the heat. My presence relieves it for you.”

“Not just that. I feel safer. I’ve told you before.”

“So you’d like to sleep together again. You’d like to nest with me.”

We both paused, and then her sweet little prey voice came through my ears.

“Yes.”

I moaned, my eyes rolling back in my head as my back bowed off the floor. My fist picked up speed, the unique spinning sensation twisting all the way through my groin as I slammed down and tugged up. I couldn’t wait to show her what was hers. Soon, so soon.

“I’m sending a gift to your printer bay,” I panted, stretching my spine with pleasure even as I snarled, working up a froth on my cock. “If you wear it, it means you really are mine.”

The twist of my oncoming climax was almost painful, making my tail curl and my mouth claws shiver.

“I will. Can you… can you reach my bed?” she asked in a muffled voice. How cute. She had a hand over her mouth, didn’t she?

“No,” I growled with sexual frustration. “But I’ll get creative.”

“So good, thank you,” she said in an abruptly bright and fumbling voice. Someone had obviously walked nearby, but oh fuck, hearing praise on her lips was a certain kind of excitement I wasn’t prepared for. I snarled, a jet of seed painting my belly. “Again.”

“So good?” she said with a questioning tone.

“Again.”

There was a pause. Uncertainty. Then, “Good boy, Sizzle.”

I came ropes and ropes, iridescent come painting her couch cushions and ceiling, the dining table and balcony glass. I howled long and low, no end in sight with my muzzle angled out of the open balcony.

Jihae gasped. “I can hear you!”

“Fuck yeah you can,” I growled. “Gift. Wear it. Be mine forever, morsel.”

After I ended the comm, I rolled to my feet, shaft still twitching. I rubbed my fluids into her furniture and the corners of the ceiling, onto her dishes and dish towels. And when the printer bay was done printing, I painted the throbbing plug toy and paired it to my holotab.

Then I thought of the pantry and crawled over the counter, knocking everything onto the floor.

I found the little bag easily, airtight. I took care not to prick it with my claws as I lifted it up. There was a pamphlet that my transitor couldn’t translate. Much of the ink had run and its edges were crinkled and yellow. A wadded up shirt fought for space. It was stained with blood and oil. It hadn’t been washed.

There were shoes too, the white soles smeared with a bit of black tar and little pebbles.

I sniffed the bag and whined.

It smelled otherworldly. There was a lingering petrichor that didn’t smell like any of the worlds I’d visited. Oil and some spice that Jihae enjoyed but wasn’t nearly as full or flavorful from the food bays as the scent soaked into the fabric of her shirt. I knew without a doubt what this was.

It’s what she’d been wearing her last day on Earth.

She’d squirreled it away like I did all of my own treasures, hiding it in a space that didn’t matter beneath a sink, because it was the thing that mattered most. I fought with myself, trembling over whether to bring it with me or not. To store it somewhere no one could ever open it on accident while on the hunt for dish soap.

But I set it down once more.

Someday, she might choose to bring it with her to our nest.

That’s the day I’d know she was mine forever.