Page 18 of Pucking Billionaire

Nope. I’m morbidly curious now, so I pick up my pace until I clear the shrubs and see the source of the noise… and kind of wish I’d taken Effie’s offer.

A giant turtle is mounting another giant turtle from the back, and it’s as hilarious as it is intimidating. He—I presume—is using an appendage that is more like a tentacle from anime porn than a penis. It’s longer than his very long neck, and he is fully dedicated to the act, thrusting much faster than you’d expect from such a famously slow creature. He must love this too, because his reptilian mouth is open wide, and there’s drool dripping onto the shell of the female—again, I presume the gender.

I stare at them, speechless, and not just because I’m witnessing the literal meaning of “drooling over you.”

“Yes! Just like that,” shouts a woman in a white coat, making me notice her for the first time. “You’re doing an amazing job, Don! You’re almost there. Keep giving it to her. Hard.”

All right, I had my pronouns correct.

Don—which must be short for Donatello—appears encouraged because his moans grow louder and his drool more plentiful.

Effie angrily clears her throat.

The woman in the white coat glares at the butler. “Hush,” she hisses. “Don is about to ejaculate into April.”

Okay, I’m not one to kink-shame but?—

Just then, Don reaches an orgasm—or again, so I assume—with a sound that will forever haunt me. As he slowly moves off April, I find myself worried that she didn’t enjoy the experience. Unlike Don, she was pretty Zen through the whole thing. Also, I wonder if turtles—or any animals—can fall in love, and therefore can be said to have “made love?” For that matter, can they consent to sex, the way humans do? If?—

“Good job,” the woman in the lab coat says boisterously, interrupting my philosophical musings. She turns to Effie. “Now you can speak.”

“I’m here to introduce you to Mistress Papachristodoulopoulou,” Effie says sternly. “You know, the person who now pays for all this.” She gestures around the habitat.

The other woman seems to notice me for the first time. “You’re Theo’s daughter?”

I nod. “You must be Dr. Kelpcon.”

“Call me Acadia.” She extends her rubber-gloved hand.

“I’m Sophia.” I shake the hand cautiously, praying it wasn’t utilized to assist the turtles with the mating in any way.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Acadia says. “And if you’re free at the moment, I’d like to tell you all the reasons you should keep the breeding program going.”

I cock my head. “Breeding program?” Please, pretty please, let this be about turtles and only turtles.

Acadia blinks at me. “You don’t know about the program?”

“Not everyone’s life revolves around the tortoises,” Effie says sternly.

“That’s true,” Acadia says, and it’s clear she means “but it should.” She turns back to me. “Your father made it his personal goal to bring this rare species of tortoise back from the brink of extinction.” She looks lovingly at Romeo—I mean, Donatello—who is now blissfully grazing on the nearby grass. “Don has personally sired two hundred and seventy offspring.”

“That sounds like a lot,” I say.

“It’s a start,” Acadia says. “We need the population to reach over fifteen hundred.”

“That is a lot of turtles doing the beast with two backs,” I say with a grin. “And two carapaces.”

“Tortoises,” Acadia corrects in a professorial tone.

Oh. “What’s the difference?”

“Turtles live in the ocean, while tortoises live exclusively on land. Turtles are usually omnivores, while tortoises are mostly herbivores. The shells of?—”

I tune the rest of it out, as I’ve been doing with other minutia lately, because I’m worried the extra info might push one of the philosophy-related terms from my brain before finals. All I know is, the Ninja Turtles must really be turtles because they eat pizza with chicken and pepperoni, so they’re omnivores all the way.

At some point mid-lecture, Effie butts in to say that we have some important business back at the mansion.

“Ah,” Acadia says. “I guess I’ll go over the basics of testudines another time.”

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