Chapter 358: What is That?!

I told Lyra about the lie before I told her I wanted to leave for three months, which wasn’t the smoothest romantic opening I had ever attempted.

Harden stayed secured downstairs while the contractor and local security sorted the immediate recovery claims. I had not promised him release, forgiveness, or access to any money, and I left him with guards while I kept the conversation I owed the women upstairs.

Lukas’s route plan lay on Bridget’s phone beside supply estimates and ordinary stopover contacts. It was a real journey across remote salvage grounds, expected to take ten to twelve weeks, with delays possible because distance didn’t care how impatient I became.

Just Lukas and me would travel. No dancers, no hired escort, no Horass, no Dazza, and no girlfriend quietly added as an emergency chaperone.

Old Mate remained the private drunk koala inside my System, which unfortunately did not count as luggage I could leave behind.

[System: Two blokes, a route map, and several months to discover whose cooking qualifies as a hostile act. That’s a proper holiday, mate, provided your spider friend doesn’t fall in love with the first woman holding a bloody wrench.]

I wasn’t confident enough in either of us to promise that outcome.

Cherry asked whether the portals would let me come home for dinner. I explained the visible twenty-meter range again, along with the pressure limits. The ability could cross a room or a short obstruction; it couldn’t join Ami to somewhere I couldn’t see across a continent.

That answer made the trip feel real in a way the map hadn’t.

Bridget wanted contact plans for the places with ordinary signal, and Lyra wanted a return window we would update instead of pretending a missed date was a surprise nobody could have expected.

I agreed to both. The girls would stay home, choosing their own travel between Ami and Twawi rather than being assigned permanent posts like furniture. The casino had relief staff, the club had Tasmin and its paid team, and our existing home didn’t need to become a waiting room.

Dazza’s keeper accepted continued care, with fees paid from my private account as they came due and a standing contact if the containment situation changed. He wasn’t joining two idiots on a long route merely because I liked calling him a dog.

I expected an argument about danger. What I got was Cherry asking whether I actually wanted the trip or wanted to run away after hurting someone.

That question deserved more than a joke.

"I wanted the journey before today, and I still wanted it. I also knew I was angry enough to enjoy leaving the mess behind, so I wasn’t going to pretend those things couldn’t both be true."

Bridget said she would miss me. Lyra took longer to answer, then said she would miss the ordinary afternoons we had finally started having.

I promised more of them when I returned, and she told me to put a date beside the promise once we knew the route properly.

Lukas sent a picture of the crawler’s two seats while we talked, with one labeled Driver and the other labeled Reason We Need Insurance. Cherry saved it immediately. Bridget asked whether he had assigned those permanently, and I admitted the positions would probably change depending on who met a suspicious stranger with an interesting offer first.

We spent the afternoon together without turning it into a farewell performance. Cherry packed snacks and mocked my taste, Bridget checked the practical items, and Lyra took me out onto the serviced promenade before the apartment became too full of preparations.

The new red body drew stares. One passerby asked whether I was an advertisement for a drink, and Lyra said I was the warning printed on the back.

[System: She’s got your number, mate. Bright red, questionable contents, and should never be consumed before operating machinery.]

You had encouraged me to operate eighty tons of machinery while angry, which weakened your position considerably.

Lyra took my tail as we moved. She asked whether the new body felt like me yet, and I admitted I was still learning how much pressure to use when the tendrils touched anything fragile.

She put her palm against my head and let me settle there without making the moment into a test. Her gentleness quieted me more effectively than any lecture could have.

"I loved you before the new paint, sweetheart, and I intended to keep making that obvious after the novelty stopped entertaining strangers."

"Then come back with stories you can tell while staying in the room," she said. "I like the adventure, but I also like having you here afterward."

That evening belonged to the two of us. Bridget and Cherry chose their own outing downstairs, leaving us alone without treating the arrangement as a contest anybody had lost.

Lyra kissed me at the apartment door, laughed when a drifting tendril caught the curtain, and helped me free it before my attempt at charm became an argument with fabric.

I stopped trying to be impressive. She stopped giving me chances to hide behind jokes, and the door closed on the parts of our evening that belonged only to us.

Lyra lay spread beneath me, her breath hitching as the cool air kissed her bare skin. The room smelled of her arousal, musky and sweet, thick enough to taste on my forked tongue, mixed with the faint metal tang of my own damp form.

My cocks, both of them, throbbed beneath their glistening sheath, ghosting through my slime at the sight of her cunt already glistening, lips parted and swollen.

Two thick tendrils of slime snapped out from my body, wide as beer cans and solid as gelatin. They coiled around her wrists with a wet squelch, yanking her arms above her head and pinning them to the headboard. Two more lashed around her ankles, spreading her thighs wide until her knees nearly touched the mattress. Her pink folds winked open, juices trickling down the crack of her ass to soak the sheets beneath her.

"Matt, fuck, yes, what is this?!" she moaned, voice thick with need, not fear. Her inner walls fluttered visibly, hungry for me.

I didn’t answer with words. A thinner, ridged tendril shot forward from my mass and shoved straight into her open mouth. It plunged deep, stretching her lips wide, bulging her throat as I fucked it in and out with wet, obscene sounds. She gagged around it, eyes watering, but her tongue curled and sucked greedily, spit and my slime drooling down her chin in shiny strings. The vibration of her moan traveled up the tendril straight to my core.