Page 18 of Possessed By the Leonid King

“It might raise your body temperature a bit, but that should be short-lived. As for the state of arousal—”

“We’ll handle it,” Rupex snarled, tail lashing.

Layla stared at it and remembered the way it had smacked her pussy like a feathery whip, how it had held her leg captive like a sentient, possessive vine.

I don’t even need the booster to go into heat around him, she found herself thinking.

Marcus swabbed her arm with an antiseptic wipe and grinned. “Nothing you two can’t manage. Thank you, Layla. Here we go.”

She felt a sharp little pinch.

“To the future of our species and the best of luck.” Marcus slapped an adhesive patch over the puncture on her arm and turned away. “We might need it.”

Chapter Nine

Hours later, Marcus came to her quarters with an embarrassed expression and a white plastic bag, the kind they put medical waste in. Seeing her shocked expression, he held up one paw. “I’m sorry, it’s just what I had to paw that would give you a little measure of privacy.”

Layla yawned as she stepped back to let him in. “Well, if we’re talking about privacy, Leonids seem better at it than some other species I’ve heard about. But if you think I can get pregnant with any kind of privacy, I have news for you about how this whole human pregnancy thing works.” She smirked and whispered, “You can’t keep your pants on.”

“No, believe me, I realized that based on the Leonid-human compatibility and my limited knowledge. I understand that you will be attempting pregnancy in the ‘old-fashioned’ way. As far as I know, you two will be the groundbreaking couple. Normally, our two species' chromosomes aren’t compatible. Leonid sperm would be seen as a foreign object, rejected by the human immune system. This is a problem that has plagued other interspecies couples. It wasn’t until immunology research related to Queen Fever was made public to lowly medical officers like myself that I decided to try making something that would help humans carry Leonid cubs.”

“For a guy who says he’s not good with reproductive medicine, you sure seem to be doing okay,” Layla took the bag and placed it on her bed. It clanked. Metal? She turned, one eyebrow arched, back to Marcus.

He seemed ignorant of her confusion, opening the closet and sighing when he saw a mixture of discarded uniforms and simple white robes and slippers. “Science was my first love, Miss Layla, not medicine. I found carrying out the tasks of guiding the crew through the ravages of a plague completely—if you’ll forgive the pun—alien to me. A medical officer is supposed to administer the annual physicals for the crew, help with minor ailments between planets, that sort of thing. When I signed on, I was told I’d have plenty of time to pursue my own studies—chromosomal compatibility, interspecies genome sequencing, that sort of thing.”

Layla opened the bag while he was talking. Big words tended to make her shut down and tune out. He could have just as easily said, “I’m the science end of baby-making, lady. Good luck getting knocked up and popping out cubs.” It wasn’t that she lacked intelligence. One particularly harsh matron at the group home had informed her that she had too much of it, seeing as how she’d never do anything with it. “What a waste you are” was the exact phrase, if Layla recalled. (Of course she did. You don’t forget the insults people in power heap on you, no matter how many of them there are.)

“I’m sure you can figure out what those are. You seem very intelligent, if uninformed.” Marcus stopped perusing the closet and turned back to face her just as she dumped out two long metal cylinders.

Probes. Fucking probes. Every old Pre-Contact Earth urban legend come true. Layla looked at Marcus and put her hands on her hips. “If you tell me you want to probe me for science, I’m calling you a dirty old lion-man.”

“Rupex would kill me,” he muttered, with a complacent shrug. “In scientific terms, your body is small where Rupex is large. He needs to get inside without difficulty. Leonids won’t ejaculate properly unless a portion of the soft spiny protrusions on the base of the penis are snugly gripping your vaginal canal.”

Layla blushed. Somehow the blunt, clinical terms made her more squirmy than the actual sex she’d already experienced. “Okay... Don’t you guys ever have a little quality time with a Hot Queens video or whatever?”

“Different amounts and qualities of sperm. I believe it’s more like what humans produce as an arousal fluid.”

Pre-cum. He could write a book on interspecies sexy times.

Marcus considered the small talk portion of their meeting over. “Those are the closest things I have to sexual aids. I thought maybe you could stimulate yourself with them and work on your tolerance to bigger objects—like a Leonid male. I put medical-grade lubricant in there, too. It’s what we have. If we weren’t headed for a semi-deserted planetoid, I’d say we could stop off at a pleasure shop somewhere.”

“Wait? Deserted planetoid?” Rupex hadn’t mentioned deserted. Then again, when he said he was the only one with a house there, what had she expected?

“It’s near civilization. It’s just that we might be grounded for four to six weeks if... Well. History won’t repeat itself, I hope to Bastet.” Marcus gave a grave shake of his head and vanished through the sliding doors.

LAYLA ATE HER EVENING meal (was it actually evening?) in her room and turned on the media viewer. Almost every station was showing news updates. Every channel was full of panicked cat-people.

I have to stop calling them that.

Tigerites were solitary and worked through networks of relatives in their jungle-like planets. Their spokesman was gruff and unconcerned, mentioning that Tigerite domains had fared the best of all the other planets in the Felix Orbus Galaxy during Queen Fever.

The Servali female reading the news was barely holding her shit together. Layla could tell a look of fake calm when she saw it.

Finally, she found the Leopardine stations were the only ones not showing a bad news marathon. She watched a Leopardine drama that she couldn’t follow, but there was some serious romantic tension unfolding.

Instead of a big make out session, the male Leopardine pulled the female to him so that his chest was pressed against her back and bit her neck. The Leopardine female moaned and undulated against him, their paws coasting down her exotic dress and luxurious spotted fur.

Layla’s pussy throbbed. Is that what Rupex wants? Biting? Snarling? Does he want to come up behind me and stick that big cock in me while I’m bending over?

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