Chapter 72 - Seventy-Two: The Guest

Chapter 72: Chapter Seventy-Two: The Guest

Light.

Soft, filtered light was on my eyelids.

I pried them open. A high, vaulted ceiling of dark wood beams swam into focus. I was in a bed... a ridiculously soft, enormous bed with silken sheets that smelled of lavender and something faintly metallic. The room was opulent in a severe way... dark furniture, thick rugs, no clutter.

"You fucking son of a bitch. Are you alright?"

I turned my head. Vesper was sitting in a high-backed chair by the window, silhouetted by the afternoon sun. She was wearing a sleek, black dress today, one that hugged her curves and made her look like a dagger sheathed in shadow. Her heterochromatic eyes were fixed on me, filled with a mixture of annoyance and... grudging concern?

"Where... am I?" My voice was a dry croak.

"My guest suite. The one not covered in bunny spunk and broken china," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She stood up and paced over to the foot of the bed. "You over-fucking-did it with that bunny whore and collapsed. Passed the fuck out right on my dining room floor, in a puddle of your own... achievements." She shuddered. "Seriously, what type of fucking degenerate stamina do you have? I thought you’d killed yourself. Or her. Or both. Rina’s fine, by the way. A little... distended, but walking. She’s already planning the nursery. Rabbitkin pregnancy take only couple of weeks after all..."

The memories were fuzzy, shrouded in a red haze of lust and a pounding headache. I remembered the feel of Rina’s body. The overwhelming need. The... voice? That part felt like a bad dream.

But looking at Vesper now, clean, put-together, and vibrating with a pissed-off energy, the haze cleared for a new, more immediate thought.

’Fuck, she looks hot today.’

The dress. The way it hugged her hips. The line of her collarbone. The memory of her touching herself while cursing me out flashed in my mind.

"Hey, Vesper—" I started, pushing myself up on my elbows.

"Really?" she cut me off, her eyes flashing. "You fucking pervert. You are still in the fucking mode? Even after you literally fucked yourself into a coma? Even after I had to have you dragged up here by two ogre-kin who are now probably traumatized? Your brain is a one-track dirt road leading directly to your dick, isn’t it?"

"..."

Damn.

Well, I can’t argue back...

She started pacing again, her heels clicking on the hardwood. "I mean, I hired you to be a stud, not a fucking berserker! There’s a difference between productive breeding and turning my dining hall into a Jackson Pollock painting made of cum! You broke a Limoges gravy boat! A family heirloom! Do you have any idea how much it costs to get ghost-fired porcelain repaired by a dwarven artisan? No, of course you don’t, because you’re too busy trying to see how many gallons of jizz you can pump into a single bunny before your heart explodes!"

She stopped, whirling to face me, her chest heaving. "And don’t think I didn’t notice! You were... different. At the end. It wasn’t just horny. It was... angry. Like you wanted to break her. What the fuck was that about? Did she insult your technique? Offer you a carrot instead of a head? Or did your tiny commoner brain just finally overload and decide the only setting is ’smash’?"

"..."

I didn’t care much for her words but she...

She was hot.

Her tirade was a thing of beauty. Every curse was precise, every insult landed with the force of a slap, and the sheer, aristocratic fury she infused into words like "jizz" and "cock-brain" was almost artful. It was a lewd, furious symphony, and I found myself just watching her, a faint, dazed smile on my face, captivated by the flush on her cheeks and the flash of her strange, beautiful eyes.

I let her verbal lashing wash over me, the insults bouncing off a strange, post-coital calm. I just lay back against the pillows, the ghost of a smile on my lips. She was magnificent when she was this angry.

Eventually, she ran out of steam, crossing her arms and glaring at me as if I were a particularly stubborn cat.

After a moment of charged silence, she let out a sharp sigh. "Fine. Whatever. Just... try not to die before you’ve earned back the cost of my china." She turned to leave, then paused at the door. "Oh, and my fiancé’s sister is arriving later today for an extended visit. So for the love of whatever walls you commoners pray to, behave yourself. No public fucking. No property damage. Keep your dick in your pants unless you’re in an assigned stall with a contracted employee. Are we clear?"

I blinked. ’Huh. Didn’t know that asshole had a sister.’

The thought of Dorian having any family beyond his own ego was vaguely interesting. "What type of person is she?" I asked, my voice still rough.

Vesper’s expression shifted from annoyed to a familiar, sneering disdain. She leaned against the doorframe. "Lyra Lysander. Dorian’s twin. The fifth in the Lysander line." She said the words like they left a bad taste in her mouth. "Her reputation is... carefully managed. The official line is she’s delicate. Sheltered. Devoted to charitable works and fine arts."

She snorted. "The unofficial rumors among the noble circles are... spicier. Whispers that she’s unnaturally close to her brother. That she’s been seen leaving certain... establishments... in the lower merchant quarter late at night. That she has a collection of ’artistic’ literature that would make a succubus blush. But that’s just hot tea, as they say."

She waved a dismissive hand. "But then again, the same circles whisper that Dorian’s other sisters are just as bad. Elara, the eldest, is supposedly fucking her own bodyguard—a man from a disgraced knightly house, no less. Selene, the middle one, is rumored to prefer the company of her handmaidens to any suitor. Their mother, Lady Lysander..." Vesper’s lips curled into a grimace of pure contempt. "Now there’s a piece of work. A harpy who married into the name and then spent the next thirty years trying to pretend her blood isn’t three-quarters commoner’s gutter and one-quarter cheap perfume. She keeps those girls on a tight leash, but the leashes are fraying. The whole lot of them are a nest of vipers and sluts, honestly. Dorian is the only one with any real... polish. The only one worth the alliance."

She said it with conviction, but there was a flicker in her heterochromatic eyes... a concern? She was marrying the ’polished’ one, after all. The rest were just messy, inconvenient baggage.

"So," she concluded, pushing off from the doorframe, "Lyra will be here. She’s my guest, and by extension, under my protection. You will not look at her. You will not speak to her unless directly ordered. You will not so much as breathe in her direction with intent. Understood? My deal with you does not extend to noble house drama, especially not with the family I’m marrying into. Their sluts are their own problem."

With that final, disdainful decree, she left, closing the door behind her with a firm click. I was left alone in the lavish room, the image of a sheltered, rumored-to-be-deviant noble girl now floating in my mind alongside the more pressing, visceral memory of Rina’s well-used body.

Was fucking her too really out of the question?

◇◇◇

The cage was a little taller than usual, stretching up into a vaulted ceiling of the warehouse’s upper reaches, with thick perches and rope nets woven between metal beams. The air smelled of clean straw, oiled leather, and a faint, sharp tang of ozone.

Vesper was occupied with her noble guest. Instead, it was Rina who led me there today. She moved with a slight, contented waddle, her swollen belly more pronounced, a smug little smile on her face. She’d recovered remarkably... bunnykin physiology was no joke.

"Here you are, stud~" she chirped, unlocking a heavy, barred door. "Your next assignment! One of the sluttiest sex-crazed beastkins! The harpy! Be careful though~ she’s been pent up!"

I stepped inside, the door closing behind me with a heavy, final clang.

E-Eeeeeh?

Wait wait wait--

Why the fuck did she lock it!?

I turned. Rina hadn’t followed. She was on the other side of the bars, grinning, holding the key. "...!!!?... Eh?" A spike of unease shot through me.

"Hehehe~" she giggled, her pink ears twitching. "That’s a little payback for you, Noel~ Harpy sex sessions last hours at least... and days at maximum. She hasn’t been serviced in a while. Have fun!" She blew me a kiss, turned, and waddled away, leaving me locked in.

’What the actual fuck?’

That crazy bitch...

I gulped and turned to face the Harpy.

She was perched on a high beam, watching me with unblinking crimson eyes. Her hair was a wild, untamed mane of inky black, streaked with feathers of the same dark shade. Her body was... insane. Lithe, powerful, with the defined musculature of a predator. Her breasts were full and heavy, tipped with dusky nipples. From the waist down, her legs were covered in sleek, black feathers that gave way to powerful, scaled talons.

A pair of vast, obsidian-black wings were folded against her back. Her face was sharp, beautiful in a fierce way, with high cheekbones and those piercing, intelligent crimson irises that tracked my every micro-movement.

She didn’t speak. She just stared at me with a lustful look.

Then, slowly, she unfolded her wings with a soft rustle of feathers. They were enormous, blocking out the light from the high windows for a moment. She hopped down from her perch, landing silently on the straw-covered floor. She took a step toward me, her talons clicking on the stone.

I took a step back, my back hitting the cold bars of the cage.

A slow, dangerous smile spread across her lips. It showed sharp, white teeth. "A new hubby!" she said, her voice a low, husky rasp that vibrated with a predatory amusement. "The rabbit-women said you were amazing!"

She circled me, her wings held slightly open for balance, her crimson eyes never leaving mine. "Hubby hubby A new hubby! It’s been so long!" The harpy stopped in front of me, so close I could smell her musk. "I need babies! Let’s make lots of them Okay?"