Chapter 107 Gratification.

Chapter 107: 107 Gratification.

I called up Miller the next morning while the girls were fighting over the shower. Elsa had barricaded herself inside and was on minute thirty-seven of what she’d promised would be a brief rinse, apparently. To be fair, by her standards that was pretty short.

While I was looking for Miller’s card, Ayra was outside the bathroom door whimpering like a puppy, which made me feel inexplicably sad. The sound was just so pathetic.

Clementine had given up on the bathroom for the time being and was eating cereal on the porch in a red flannel shirt—mine.

"Hey Coleman," Miller said, picking up on the second ring. "Was starting to think you’d lost my number."

"I’m a busy man, Sheriff. Lots of monsters to kill, lots of magical women to be magically, sexually harassed by. You said you could set up a meeting with the Countess?"

"I did say that." I heard him take a sip of something. Probably that cocky fucking coffee that thinks it’s better than me. I was thinking about that coffee all night last night, and to be honest, I had no idea why I hadn’t bought a better coffee maker yet. Just too lazy, I guess.

"Give me a couple days. I’ll reach out through my channels and get back to you."

"Appreciate it."

"Don’t thank me yet. Beaumont’s not exactly known for being a sweetheart." He paused. "But she’s even handed for a kid."

He hung up without a goodbye. You know, like they do in the movies? It felt kind of like a power move. I grumbled a little under my breath and went back to making breakfast. The multiverse could wait but Elsa’s pancake tower could not.

The days after that went by comfortably. The routine was basically food, video games, sex, food video games, K-drama on TV, sex, food, sex, and then kill a monster. Then sex.

I also trained with Clementine in the mornings, helped Wilkinson with the silo when he showed up, cooked for five, took occasional naps on a three-million-dollar mattress surrounded by supernatural women, and so on.

Miller hadn’t called back yet, but I figured the vampire teenager in question probably had high school classes to attend or something.

It was one particular evening that broke the pattern and brought on something brand new. Or rather, Juniper’s tits broke the pattern, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I do that sometimes. I digress.

The others had gone to bed after a routine portal fight, a huge goblin-like variant that we put down in two minutes without anyone taking a scratch.

Elsa didn’t even wake up in time to see the fight or land the finishing blow. She only woke up to enjoy the trip back inside, clinging to my back.

"Onward, Champion!" she said, like I was the horse and not—No, I’d better not say that.

Elsa was already unconscious and wrapped around my pillow upstairs, her tiny body curled possessively around it in the way she would have preferred to curl around me, and honestly the pillow was getting a good deal.

Ayra had collapsed on the couch before we even made it upstairs after midnight pizza. She mumbled something in her sleep that everyone wished she didn’t. "Master, no, no—please don’t spank me so hard. Nooo. But yes. Actually, yes. Do it. Do it!"

Her butt kept twitching, so that was a fun little detail.

Clementine had claimed her weekly night two days prior and was sleeping in her own room, maybe dreaming about carrots and sugar cubes, though I felt a little bad about that thought as soon as I had it.

I was in the kitchen cleaning my sword and armor when Juniper’s tail made a soft sound across the floor behind me. Twenty-something feet of serpent was hard not to hear even when she was trying to be subtle.

"Stay up with me a bit longer, Grey." It wasn’t posed as a suggestion, but it wasn’t a full-on demand either. It was a request dressed as a statement.

I set the sword down, smiling. "Sure. Something on your mind?"

She’d made tea for both of us. I didn’t even know we had tea, but she’d found some in the back of a cabinet behind a box of Pop-Tarts that I was pretty sure predated Elsa and definitely needed to be tossed out—AKA quietly eaten when no one was looking.

We settled into the living room together, me on the couch and her coiled beside it with her upper body at my eye level. The lamp was off and a little pearly moonlight came through the window, lighting up her coils and the gold caps on her horns. She looked like a Renaissance painting of a big tiddy demoness. I wish the Renaissance was like that. Instead we got fuckin’ Shakespeare and lots of statues of naked Greek dudes with tiny penises.

For a while we just sat there, saying nothing. I sipped my tea, waiting for something. She sipped hers, offering nothing so far. It was nice anyway. It was the kind of nice I didn’t know I needed until I had it.

Then Juniper set her mug down and ruined it in the best possible way.

"I need to tell you something," she said. "And I need you to not make it weird."

My brows wiggled and did the worm dance. "I cannot promise that. But go ahead."

She folded her hands in her lap. Through the bond I could feel something layered underneath. It was... nervousness and some anticipation and a thin thread of embarrassment.

"Demonkin women... some of us are born with somewhat larger than average breasts, as I’m sure you noticed."

Lord Almighty, the battle my eyes fought not to look down at her jiggly-wiggly wambo-jambos was an epic one. "Oh? Are they?" I said innocently. "Hmm. Now that you mention it..."

"That is because we have the ability to lactate at will," she said calmly. "It is not tied to pregnancy or nursing. It’s a voluntary biological function, activated through emotional and physical stimulus, and most often used for... sexual gratification."

I stared at her. She stared at me. My penis stared at her boobs.

"I have never activated it," she continued, her crimson eyes fixed on a spot approximately six inches to the left of my face. "It typically requires hand-expression or... the assistance of a partner. Specifically, it does particularly well with oral stimulation from someone I trust completely."

She paused. "That’s you."