GUARDED BY THE KRAMPUS

MONSTER SECURITY AGENCY

CASSIE ALEXANDER

Cascara Press

Copyright © 2024 by Cassie Alexander

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Intro & Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

About the Author

INTRO & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Hellllloooo Readers!

I know in the last MSA book I was all, “I need a break!”… Well, I took one, and I’m BACK.

That said, this book was a bit of a mad dash! As in: my PA Jackie gave me the title on Tuesday (thanks to her husband!), I had the idea for the book on Wednesday evening, wrote all day Thursday and Friday, worked 12-hour shifts Saturday and Sunday, and then finished it up just now at 1033 PM on Monday night—just in time to upload it to Amazon for you!

The whole book… in less than a week!

Normally, I’d have things a bit more coordinated—like having the audio ready for you (a big shoutout to Jonathan Lake, who is still taking this on—just give us a month!) and running it by my phenomenal copyeditor, Evan—and the interior would be gorgeous, thanks to Jackie’s hard work.

But because of the nature of this beast (so to speak) and me needing to get it out by Christmas—plus racing Amazon’s three-day upload process—

Time has been of the essence.

So please forgive any rogue commas or sneaky homophones (and my totally mid formatting) just let this cheerful little book bring you a monstrous amount of Wintertime Joy!

Xoxo,

Cassie

PS: also thank my husband, who when I told him, “I’m writing a book in two days” (my original plan) was all, “Okay, see you on Saturday!”

CHAPTER ONE

When you look like the devil, people tend to treat you like one.

Especially over the holidays.

I had my phone out, and was thumbing through profile responses on a monster dating site—it was bad enough on a day to day basis, me being a satyr, and us having a rep, but Christmastime made it twenty times more dire.

I’ve been a bad girl, Krampus! Come and whip me! popped up in my notifications, from a woman who had snakes in her hair, and I groaned.

“Everything all right over there, Ace?” Royce asked, from where he was putting the final few ornaments on the Monster Security Agency’s lobby tree.

“Just the usual,” I said, closing out my screen with a thick thumb, and tucking it into a pocket on my black leather kilt. “You missed a spot,” I said, jerking my chin at a blank space on the tree.

He grinned. “I know. Mostly so you could help,” he said, offering over an ornament box. He took pride in buying little blown glass ornaments that represented the locations of other MSA branches—Tokyo, Los Angeles, London and more—and used little blown glass knives and guns and grenades that looked like pinecones to fill in the extra space.

It was ridiculous, but it was also fitting.

“You can’t make me be festive, Royce,” I said, pushing the ornament box back in his direction. “And technically I’m off for the holidays in about thirty minutes.”

I was on walk-in duty, which, I hated. I much preferred taking well-organized, well-planned out missions—but sometimes the MSA needed someone to fill in for emergencies, and Royce made sure our branch always had someone waiting in the wings on staff. But in half an hour Sylas was taking over for me and then I was…free.

So to speak.

A mother was pulling a little boy along outside, through a fresh flurry of small drifting flakes, and he saw me through the window. I watched him gasp, and then hold his hands up to his ears to fan his fingers at me, as he stuck his tongue out—and then his mom spotted him, and me, practically grabbing him to haul him bodily along.

Summers were better than winters.

Mostly.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Royce said, coming up beside me.

“Easy for you to say. You can make it down a grocery aisle without people making the signs of the cross in your wake.”

And I didn’t want to get started on what it was like to date—or try to date, as the case may be. The last relationship I’d had had gone down in flames six months ago, when I caught my supposed girlfriend trying to film me coming out of the shower.

I knew I was well-endowed of course, but I didn’t want that shit on the internet.

“Do you have somewhere to go for the week?”

His voice brought me back to the present. “Yeah. Upstate. With my mom,” I lied—the same as I lied every winter, so people wouldn’t think I was spending the holidays alone. My mother had died a few years ago and ever since then, no one else needed to know I spent Christmas Eve playing Call of Duty or working out.

“That looks great, Dad!” Serena said, coming down the stairs, with two coats under one arm and a satchel beneath the other. She was wearing business casual in black, matching her old man, and she smiled warmly when she spotted me. “Are we going to see you at Ellum’s party this weekend, Ace?”

Ellum was a minotaur, who’d cut off his horns for reasons I couldn’t possibly understand, but he was kind enough—there was something about his short red fur and easy-going attitude that humans found charming.

Possibly because he didn’t have square pupils, like I did.

“No,” I said, running a hand through the shaggy black fur behind my head. “I’ll be out of town at my mom’s,” I lied again, then followed up quickly with, I’m not big into holidays, in my mind, since I knew she could read it. But I had to give her grudging respect—she was solid, for a telepath—she never told anyone else a thing.

She snorted and nodded, coming up beside me, the both of us watching her dad put the final touches on the tree. “We don’t celebrate it underwater, so I feel you. It’s as weird as having legs,” she said quietly.

“I don’t know if it’s that weird,” I muttered back. She elbowed me in the side, and then grunted.

“You’re like a fucking brick wall,” she complained, rubbing on her elbow.

“Language,” Royce said, stepping off the ladder, finally through. “An MSA agent only curses in appropriate combat situations.”

Serena looked up at me, and I looked down at her. I don’t know about that, I thought at her, and she laughed.

“In any case,” Royce went on, coming up, to take one of the coats she held, “we have places to be. You’ll check out with Sylas at six?”

“On the dot.” The smoky Nightmare Royce had hired was creepy, but never late.

And then the alarm that indicated someone was coming to the MSA lobby door started beeping softly. The three of us looked over, watching a beautiful blonde woman wearing entirely black clothing arrive. She was bundled up in a black wool coat that flared out from her hips like a cape, she had shiny black leggings on underneath tucked into stylish leather snowboots, and she was holding both a phone and a long thin cane in gloved hands as she reached for the door, feeling for the handle, before pushing her way in.

There were two things striking about her—one, her extreme elegance, she held herself like a dancer, or perhaps a marionette with a master at the strings—and the second was her blindfold, a strap of black satin stretched across her face, hiding both her eyes.

“Hello?” she asked archly, as the door slowly closed behind her. “I know you’re there. My phone has a heat sensor built in—” she said, waving it in front of herself.

Her talking made the three of us shift gears.

“Sorry about that—we were just caught off guard by your arrival,” Royce said, recovering first. “You’re in the lobby of the Monster Security Agency—can we help you?”

“I recognize you!” Serena blurted out.

The woman’s red lips curved up at their ends. “I’m not surprised,” she said coolly. “Although that does mean you’re a woman of taste.”

Serena gave a nervous giggle, and then looked to the two of us to step up. “Oh, come on!” she complained. “Do both of you live in caves?”

“Only my ancestors,” I said wryly.

Serena shook her head in profound disappointment. “This is Satin. She’s an internationally famous sculptor!” she went on, waving both of her arms. “She’s had shows at the MoMa, the Armory, and the Stutenberg!”

“Don’t forget the Auralis Conservatory,” Satin said, taking a few more steps up.

I’d never heard of her, but judging from Serena’s reaction, either she was ridiculously famous or had a cult following I’d somehow missed.

“Well then I am pleased to meet you—especially if my daughter’s a fan. But what can we do for you here, Miss Satin?”

The woman in question’s lips curved down slightly. As she began folding up her cane, I was surprised to realize that it wasn’t an affectation—and perhaps neither was her blindfold. “I believe I have need of your professional services,” she said, tucking her cane under her arm and offering a gloved hand out. Royce came up to give it a firm shake, and just then, Sylas arrived, seeping around the edges of the lobby door without setting off anything, before he coalesced.

“I’m here,” he announced, then flew across the room quickly, winding around the tree, before lifting off one of the pinecone grenades to inspect. “Christmas trees would make so much more sense if they doubled as a weapons rack.”

“Sylas,” Royce said, calling him to heel. “I think I have a job for you,” he said, giving Satin a meaningful nod.

“The hell you do,” I said out loud, surprising everyone else in the room—even me.

Satin tilted her head, and an imperious eyebrows arched over her blindfold.

“Aceon?” Royce asked, giving me a look.

“But I’m here now,” Sylas said, rising himself up to loom.

“And you can butt out—she got here at six-twenty-nine.”

“Don’t you need to visit your mommy?” Serena whispered, in a tone of voice that said she knew I never should’ve lied.

I glared at her, before deciding to ignore the three of them. “Not this year,” I said curtly. “What’s the job?”

Satin’s red lips puckered in amusement. “I’d rather tell you in private.”

“No. That’s not how we do things here—” Royce said, attempting to step in.

“I’ve got a jet waiting,” Satin said, like that was a sentence that anyone could say, at any time.

“I don’t care—” Royce went on—so I cut him off.

“Yeah. That’s fine.”

“Aceon!” he snapped.

I shook my head and moved to stand closer to her. There was something about her that felt magnetic to me—I couldn’t pull my eyes away from her. “Look, either she’s my next job and you get paid, or I’m on vacation and going freelancing,” I told him.

“Hmm,” she said, then waved her phone my direction. I had no idea what it was telling her—or how—but my chest puffed out just in case. “I do think you’ll do.”

Somehow I managed to look over at Royce, and watched him shake his head, before narrowing his eyes. “Whatever this is—if we don’t sign official contracts—you’ll be off the books, Ace. You know the MSA can’t be seen rushing into things.”

I didn’t have even a moment of hesitation. “Understood,” I said, then looked to Satin, walking around her for the door. She trailed after me with her phone, but I got a glimpse of the screen—it really was just a heat reading, like someone might have with night-vision goggles, and it was probably vibrating the information over to her. “Shall we?” I asked, waiting till she was closer before opening the door.

“Lets,” she agreed, reaching under her arm to snap her cane back out. It seemed like a practiced move, one she’d done a million times.

“Make sure you bring him back in one piece!” Serena shouted after us, and I heard Sylas give a dark laugh.

CHAPTER TWO

I only barely fit in her driver’s Escalade, with my head tucked low so my horns didn’t ruin the upholstery. Maybe that was why Ellum had sawed off his horns, so he could fit into the van with all his kids easier.

We were still crowded, because of my size, but I didn’t mind—it meant that she was forced to ride slightly up against me, her knee against mine, and mine was two and a half times as wide as hers was. I fought not to concentrate on that small place where we touched, and keep my mind on business.

“So, what’s the gig? You got a stalker I need to dissuade?” I asked, clenching a meaningful hand.

“I wish my life were that simple. I’m being targeted by international assassins.”

I blinked. “How many?”

“How interesting that you would ask that, first, instead of why.”

“I’m a man of action,” I said, and then realized I should introduce myself properly. “I’m Aceon,” then I decided to add what I was, since she couldn’t see. “I’m a satyr.”

She gave me another one of her small, subtle smiles. “Well that explains why you smell a bit like a barn.”

“It’s my aftershave. Barn Fresh, for Men.”

That made her eyebrows rise precipitously above her blindfold, and she laughed aloud, before putting a hand to her chest like her reaction had surprised her.

And while it was true, I could perhaps never completely hide what it was I was, she smelled like the snow outside. Clean and fresh, with maybe just a hint of ozone, like a coming storm.

I reached forward to tap the back of the driver’s seat, and gave him my address.

“Why’re you doing that?” Satin asked, sitting up straighter, suddenly concerned.

“We need to take a detour by my place, so I can gear up.”

“Miss?” the driver asked, searching for confirmation of the change.

Satin appeared taken aback. “Yes—I guess so—certainly,” she agreed, and the driver wheeled the car around.

We rode in silence, and I figured if Satin wanted to tell me more about the job she would, but maybe she didn’t want her driver getting involved. Instead of looking out the window though, she kept her face straight ahead, which made sense seeing as she was blind. I kept my eye on our passing surroundings, but I couldn’t help but notice she was perfect in profile, and her ear, showcased beneath the blindfold’s tie, was delicate and shell-like.

She seemed to know that I was trying not to gawk. “I lost my sight when I was five,” she said. “My father was a diplomat. There was a riot at the embassy. The magnesium flares they used to disperse the crowd burned too bright. I was at the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

I was surprised by how matter-of-fact she sounded. “That’s—”

“Unfortunate,” she interrupted. “But it’s not the worst thing to happen to me.”

“Who the fuck was using magnesium for civilian crowd dispersal?”

Her lips curved up faintly, but it wasn’t a smile. “The kind of people who don’t worry about collateral damage.” She tilted her head back slightly, almost like she was remembering something distant. “Or maybe the kind of people who only think consequences are for other people.”

I leaned back in my seat, letting her words settle. I could pull out my phone and Google her—from the way Serena had acted, Satin at least had a wiki—but then the driver pulled to a stop in front of my apartment building’s lobby. I got out, quickly surveyed the area, and then moved to her side of the car, to open the door for her.

“What?” she asked.

“If you weren’t joking about the assassins, there’s no way you’re staying out here. You’re coming inside with me.”

Her red lips frowned. “I wasn’t joking.”

“Then you’re about to tour my mancave,” I said, offering my hand out.

She didn’t take it—because she didn’t see it—instead she went for her phone and her cane.

“I can tell you where the steps are,” I said.

“Nothing personal, but you have no idea how many times I’ve heard that line before,” she said, before boldly walking forward, her cane’s tip rattling over asphalt.

I held the lobby door open for her, and the elevator’s door as well. The elevator bounced a little when I got on after her, under the addition of my weight.

She noticed it too. “You must be a big boy,” she said, her lips going puckish again.

I grunted. “You’d be surprised how often I get told that,” I said—and then realized in this small metal room, without the witness of her driver, I was free to stare shamelessly. It wasn’t like she’d know. I couldn’t even begin to explain the way I felt protective of her already—it was maddening—and what was worse than that, was how obvious it was to me I wanted more. Satyrs had reputations for a reason—which was why I’d pierced the head of my cock with a Prince Albert, which I dutifully chained to a cuff on my thigh every morning, so it wouldn’t be obvious to everyone in the entire world what I was thinking—and that chain was pretty fucking tight right now.

Then the elevator door opened up and rescued…me? Her? One of us, from the other, I was certain—and I told her, “Right. Three doors down.”

She tapped her way there, sweeping her phone ahead of her, and then waited for me to open up the door.

My apartment was not set up for company, and I was glad she couldn’t see it. It wasn’t dirty, but it was messy, because why not have all the books you’re reading on a pile on the couch when you’re late taking them back to the library?

Same for the workout gear that occupied half the floor, seeing as there was no real reason to move it?

She slid her cane across the floor, encountering more than one obstruction, and I felt sheepish at once—a tall order for a massive goat-man.

“Uh, do me a favor and just stand there,” I said, before heading into my bedroom to pull out a pre-packaged duffle bag from my closet, tossing it on my bed to do a quick inventory of the items inside: my preferred guns, knives, and a case full of ammo, including tranquilizing flechettes. “Private jet means we get to skip the TSA, right?” I called out to her. “Are we going internationally? How about customs?”

“I’ve bribed the right people to look the other way,” she called back.

“Okay—just a minute then,” I said—and pulled out my own phone, to finally look her up.

“Satin” and “Sculptor” brought her up instantly, pictures of her at galas, wearing dramatically sweeping dresses, always with her tight black blindfold, although in some of the pictures her hair was up. There were multiple images of her standing in front of her sculptures, too—they appeared to be beautiful modern remakes of classical Greek and Roman statues—a little too avant-garde for my taste, but I could see why they were popular, especially when they were carved by her. And when I scrolled to the bottom, I got to a link that went to some Fancy Art People Magazine, where they’d done a tour of her working warehouse, a light-filled place that had massive pieces of marble in assorted disarray, with her, looking out of place wearing what were no doubt designer overalls, touching white stone.

The caption said, “Satin inspects all of her work tactically, first,” and I’d never been jealous of a piece of rock before, but here we were.

Then I realized that my formerly impatient client had been quiet for a long time—I hitched the duffle over my shoulder, and walked back to my living room, to catch her going through my things.

“Hey now,” I said, storming over to take the book she held away from her. “It’s not braille.”

“You…read?” she asked, her tone a little arch.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You have more of a ‘punch first, ask questions never’ kind of demeanor.”

“You’d be surprised how many books teach you where to punch,” I said, tossing it back on the couch—and then I wondered if I’d be back in time to turn it in. “How long’s this mission supposed to be? And, I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me about it?”

“I will,” she promised. “In the jet. Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I said—then picked up another book off the couch, to toss it into my bag, just in case.

I headed for the door, but she didn’t follow. “They want some information they think I have,” she said, when I turned around.

“Do you have it?”

She shrugged slightly. “Maybe?”

I answered her with a snort. “Ahhhh. Yeah. This is one of those rare situations where maybe means yes.” I opened the door up, and she finally stepped forward.

“For what it’s worth, your place isn’t as bad as I expected.”

“At the risk of stating the obvious, you’re blind.”

“Exactly,” she said, giving me a cool smile, before taking a left and striding down the hall.

CHAPTER THREE

We rode in the Escalade to the airport in silence, and true to Satin’s word, we were not bothered by the TSA—her car zoomed around a frontage road, then in through a gate that men in uniforms opened for us, so that we could drive to a hangar where a jet with a Bombardier Global logo on the side waited.

“Didn’t you pack?” I asked, pulling my bag out of the back.

“My luggage is already on board,” she said, and started walking for the jet’s extended stairway.

Once we were inside, the stairs folded up behind us, and the jet started wheeling out of the hanger at once. The pilots made announcements overhead, while I was trying to figure out how to get a seatbelt around my lap before realizing we were flying private, it didn’t matter, and giving up.

“They’re not exactly monster-sized. Sorry,” Satin said, hearing the buckle clatter as I dropped it. “Neither is the bathroom here—I probably should’ve warned you about that back at your place.”

I grunted, and shrugged, a gesture she couldn’t see.

“But, this is safer,” she said, waving a hand up ahead of us. “The pilots have a bathroom up there, so they have no reason to be coming back here. And the steel doors mean they can’t hear us.”

I looked around at the jet’s opulent interior, all warm leather, brass, and glass, with tons of crevices some enterprising person could’ve shoved a bug in. “And you’re not worried about anyone having compromised the plane, since you were in it last?”

She shook her head briskly. “I’ve got a lot of tech in here,” she said, holding up her phone. “I’d know.”

“Interesting. Seeing as you carve with a hammer and chisel.”

She gave a soft snort. “I’m complicated. What can I say.”

“Well if we’re truly safe—you can start from the beginning.”

I watched her lick her lips. “I’ve acquired a list of very well off men and women who’ve been accepting bribes from a large criminal organization that I feel personally driven to bring down.”

I felt one of my furry eyebrows crawling up my forehead. “Could you be more specific? We’re not in a movie here.”

I watched her cheeks lift up beneath her blindfold as she squinted, presumably in anger. “My father refused to accept bribes, so they made an example out of him.”

It took me a moment after that, as I watched her compose herself, to realize that she wasn’t angry with me—but at what had happened in her past.

“The story I told you earlier was the one all the news accounts reported. But what happened in reality is that they burned him with magnesium alloy devices. Alive. And made me watch,” she said, pointing to the blindfold on her face.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But at the time, he was nowhere to be seen.” She took an inhale and continued ruefully. “I was kidnapped after that. My family had to pay a very large ransom for my return, but by then it was too late. With no subsequent medical care, I’d lost the ability to see.”

I weighed her, tilting my head, glad the ceiling height here allowed for my horns to move freely. “But not to want revenge.”

“Forgiveness is for people with weaker wills, Aceon—the kind of people who want to make excuses.”

“I get that. But…” I continued slowly. “Why me?”

“Out of all the somewhat lawless mercenary groups comprised of monsters out there—the Monster Security Agency was the only one that was bribe free. In all locations.”

I felt a moment of proprietary pride. “Glad to hear it. So, what’s the mission?”

“I have three encrypted dead drops lined up for my information. We need to get to all of them before Christmas Eve—and if everything goes according to plan, then everyone who’s participated in criminal activity on this organization’s behalf will be exposed—on three different continents. It has to be that way so it cannot be discredited, and no one can dismiss it as a prank or conspiracy.”

“Before Christmas Eve?” I said, a little stunned. “That’s only five days away.”

She gave a short laugh, as she undid her seatbelt. “Well, once you get across the Atlantic Ocean, the rest of the continents are a lot closer.” After that she stood, keeping a supporting hand on the backs of one seat after another as she made her way down the aisle. “I’m going into the back to sleep, there’s a bedroom. Your chair folds down—you should probably get some rest now, while you can. I’ll make sure we’re up with enough time for me to debrief you.”

“And just where are we going first?” I called after her.

“Moscow.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I watched Satin walk away, until the door to the back of the aircraft finally closed behind her.

It was hard to believe I’d gone from my normal holiday non-plans to starring in a spy thriller in under three hours.

Looking around the jet though, it wasn’t hard to see the weight of her wealth. Everything gleamed—leather seats, brass fixtures, thick Berber carpet underfoot. And after hearing her tell her story, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that her pain was genuine. I’d seen people do crazy things for revenge—hell, I’d stopped plenty of them before. For once, it would be interesting to be on the other side of the equation.

I stood, pacing the aisle awkwardly, my hooves scuffing the carpet despite my best efforts. A small fridge hummed softly in the corner, and I raided it for a bottle of water before admitting to myself that Satin was right. I needed rest. There wasn’t any point worrying about what I was up against until she told me.

The only problem with that was me.

I, like a significant portion of the single male population in America, liked to jack off before I went to sleep. It was part of my resting ritual, the final switch that turned my body off for the night. I honestly didn’t know if I’d be able to sleep without it.

I also really, really, indescribably badly, wanted to jack off, thinking of her. My upper lip lifted, testing the air—her fresh and clean scent was still all around me, and when I closed my eyes it was all too easy to conjure up the delectable swaying of her hips as she’d walked away, as utterly confident as she was oblivious to my gaze.

Also? Satyrs had massive balls, massive dicks, and massive loads. Clearing the pipes was less of a luxury and more of a biological necessity, especially if I didn’t want my brain fried by the constant pressure of my body’s instincts.

My upper lip curled again as I debated with myself. She wouldn’t see me—not with that blindfold. Hell, she wouldn’t even know…which didn’t make it right.

But it didn’t make it entirely wrong, either.

I shifted to a seat with a clear view of her door, just in case, and spread my furred thighs, lifting the edge of my leather kilt.

Underneath it, my long black cock was already getting hard, the hoop of the piercing at its end trying to tug free.

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, reaching down to unclip the short gold chain that trapped it to my leather thigh-cuff, and it rocketed straight up, like a prisoner reaching for freedom.

I slouched down in the seat, to circle it with my palm, biting back a sigh as skin touched skin. There was no planet on which someone like her wanted someone like me, but for just ten minutes or so, I wanted to pretend. I grabbed low and lightly pulled it up my chest, my dick’s metal jewelry hitting me right below my sternum, every piece of me already tight and at attention. I decided to bow my head and let my long tongue roll out, to make the whole process faster—I couldn’t blow myself, but I could lick my slit. I did so, and I closed my eyes, imagining it was her doing that instead. Her red lips parting as they moved to take me in, her fighting to handle my length and my girth, my hard on looking massive in her two small hands—and just what could she do with those hands, eh? Given that she was a sculptor? I imagined them roaming all over my body, strong and curious, before meeting around my shaft, one atop the other, to get me off.

And at the thought of giving her my spunk…something shifted in me, going slightly wild, becoming feral. I tasted my own pearlescent precum, and realized that if I were with Satin, I wouldn’t want to waste a drop. All of it needed to be in her—and it wouldn’t matter to me if I flooded her small womb. In fact, that would be preferrable, me filling her up so much that there wasn’t any space left for anything else—God, I would unleash a load in her like she had never seen, and then I would hoist her up by her ankles to keep it there while I lapped at her clit until she screamed.

I rocked my head back, realizing I was too-fucking-close—and I wasn’t in my own bedroom. I got up and stumbled down the aisle, until I found the bathroom, and she’d been right, I couldn’t close the door behind myself, I only barely fit in, but maybe that was better because then I wasn’t that far from where I needed to be, as I flipped the lid up to the toilet, placed an arm on the cold plastic wall behind it, and braced, biting my teeth together, fighting not to grunt as my balls lifted, spurting out hot shots of cum, again and again, spraying past my piercing, until all the water inside the bowl took on my cum’s ivory sheen.

I stood there for a moment when I was through, catching my breath, thinking strange-to-me thoughts that were completely inappropriate about mating and claming, when I heard Satin clear her throat.

I whirled in the bathroom’s small space as best I could, my leather kilt flapping down over my dick, which was still at half-mast and not-at-all being subtle about what I’d been doing.

“Glad you found the bathroom,” she said, wearing freaking black silk pajamas that matched her blindfold, her hair loose, all of her beautifully framed by her bedroom door. Then she angled around me and headed for the fridge herself, pulling out a bottle of water. “Help yourself,” she said, tilting it my direction.

“I already have,” I grunted, meaning the water I’d taken earlier, but knowing that it could mean about twenty other far more inopportune things.

“Hmm,” she said, without comment, although her lips subtly pursed. “Sleep tight.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The sound of the door clicking open jolted me out of sleep. My ears twitched before I even cracked my eyes open, catching the faint rustle of fabric and the soft tap of heels on the plane’s carpeted floor.

I blinked blearily, adjusting to the dim cabin lights, to find Satin standing there, fully dressed—and, holy hell, she looked like a goddess.

The black gown she wore hugged her in all the right places, flowing down her body in a way that was both elegant and devastatingly sensual. Her matching blindfold was tied behind her head in a bow this time, loose above her cascading blonde hair. It gave her an innocence the rest of her outfit denied.

“You’re already dressed?” I asked, my voice rough from sleep.

“I am,” she said, rounding me for the fridge again. “Would you like to eat?” she asked, pulling out a small box full of pastries. “I think there’s some vegetable crudites here.”

“No, I’m good.” I rubbed at my face and sat up, swinging my hooves to the floor. My kilt had bunched awkwardly in my sleep, and I adjusted it before standing, towering over her in the cramped cabin, before I could reach my duffle and pull out my overnight kit. “Anything special I should know about this gig? Or do I just have to look pretty and not frighten anyone?”

“The more frightening the better, honestly,” she replied smoothly, as I crammed myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Her voice carried down the narrow space. “But… do you?” she asked me.

“What?” I asked, stepping out, water still dripping from the fur beneath my chin.

“Look pretty,” she said, licking some icing off her thumb. My thoughts stalled. I didn’t want to be a rock anymore—now I wanted to be well-whipped sugar-water.

“It’s okay,” she continued, smirking faintly. “You can lie to me.” She gestured lightly to her blindfold. “It’s not like I’ll ever know.”

I had no idea how to respond. Was she curious, or something more? Either way, seeing as MSA’s reputation was on the line, I figured I’d better keep my nose clean. “I’m not sure it matters.”

She gave me a tight smile in response. “Quite right. And in any case,” she went on, setting the pastry box aside, “let’s figure out our game plan for the evening.”

Satin explained as we were landing, that we were going to a Winter Gala at a private home with an exclusive art gallery, where all sorts of wealthy people would be hobnobbing.

I felt out of place already.

“And my job is?”

“To protect me, of course. I’m going to ask to hold a Fabergé egg.”

“And…they just allow that? For anybody?”

“They do if you’re me,” she said with a small laugh. “And while I’m touching it, I’m going to put a small microchip inside some of the detailing. I just need you to make sure that no one stops me. This will help,” she said, opening up her purse. She pulled out something that looked like a hearing aid, and gestured for me to lean forward.

I did, and she reached her hand out to touch me, it landed on my cheek. A shiver ran over my entire body at the contact, making all of my skin flinch, like I was shaking off a fly, and then as she smoothed her hand over and up, running against my fur in the wrong direction, rising past my eye, I felt my chain tugging.

I wanted to ask her what-the-fuck she was doing, but I absolutely did not want her to stop.

Her fingers found my ear and circled it, rubbing her thumb against the soft velvet inside, a place on my body which I’d never realized could be erogenous before, but I would’ve killed armies and moved mountains if it would’ve kept her hand there.

Then she put something in my ear, and I fought not to jerk away, as she played with my fur right after, presumably hiding whatever it was she’d just given me, before pulling back.

“What was that?” I asked, trying to ignore the presence of the gizmo at the same time as I tried to forget what it’d felt like when she’d touched me. My chain was as tight as a guitar string.

“A translation device. You won’t be able to speak Russian—it’s input only, not output. But you’ll understand what people are saying, once I turn it on,” she said, gesturing to a gold bangle around her wrist. “Just pretend that you can’t, all right?”

“Da,” I said, with my best attempt at a Russian accent.

“Please do not do that,” she groaned, and I gave a dark chuckle.

“Are you implying that I’m not international?” I asked lightly, before sobering. “But, actually—uh—just so you know—I’m only wearing a kilt right now.” Pants weren’t exactly satyr’s style.

“That’s fine. I want people to notice you. The more they’re looking at you, the less they’ll be looking at me,” she said, getting up to head into the back again.

I found that hard to believe.

Who would look at me, when you could look at her?

She returned in a floor-length fur mink coat, the kind that would have made her the most dramatic figure in any room. “Cousin of mine?” I asked as I stood, adjusting my kilt while the flight crew extended the jet’s staircase.

“It’s vintage.”

“Oh, so it’s a hand-me-down murder.”

She huffed, running her hands down both lapels with deliberate flair. “It was my mother’s. And, for the record, it’s older than you are.”

I gave her a lopsided smile she couldn’t see. “Well, as long as we’re getting things on the record—I’m not vegetarian.”

The air between us hung heavier than I expected, her hands pausing on the fur for just a beat too long.

“That’s… good to hear,” she said finally, her tone perfectly diplomatic. But I didn’t miss the way the corners of her lips twitched, like she was holding back a smile.

CHAPTER SIX

We drove in whatever the version of a Russian Escalade was through the city—Moscow was a place I’d never been before, so my neck was craning, as much as my horns would let me. It’d snowed recently and the skies looked like they would keep it up so it would be a white Christmas, for anyone who celebrated.

“We’re heading to Khamovniki.” She said the word easily, like she’d been speaking Russian her whole life. “If Moscow is a chessboard, Khamovniki is where all the power players live between moves.”

As we got closer to our destination, I began to understand why. Unlike the chaotic wealth of central Moscow that we’d just driven through, Khamovniki offered its elite privacy—aristocratic homes, where secrets could stay hidden behind tall walls and iron fences.

The car stopped in front of an elegant multi-story home, with old world grace, and windows lit up warmly from within. Our driver had a short conversation with someone on the other side of a gate, and then it rolled open, allowing us entrance inside.

He parked as close to the home as he could, then got out and ran around to open up Satin’s door. She began talking to him, then tapped her bangle half-way through a sentence, and suddenly I could understand.

“…and keep the car warm enough that you don’t freeze,” she told the driver, kindly.

“Of course, Miss Satin,” the driver agreed.

I got my own door, and clambered out after her, giving the driver a companionable nod, before noticing that Satin was waiting.

“I try not to use my cane at formal events,” she explained. “Also, I’m in heels, and it’s so cold—there’s snow everywhere, isn’t there?”

“There is,” I said, coming up beside her. “And ice.” I offered my arm out, and then realized she couldn’t see it, so I reached down for her nearest small hand, picking it up to put it on my forearm, so she would have me to steady her, no matter the terrain. Her lips parted as her fingers reached my fur, playing into it, then she looked briefly down—I would’ve sworn I saw pink grace her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she said, shaking her head as if to regain her composure. I reached across myself to clasp my free hand down on hers, solely because I could.

“Twenty paces forward, and then there’s stairs. They’ve swept the snow away. Ready?” I asked her, then felt her hand squeeze my arm.

It sent a jolt of something primal straight through me. I wanted to bellow—and the second I had private time again, I would be taking out three more links on my chain, just in case.

“Of course,” she went on, and I began to lead her.

We made it inside the building easily, and people began recognizing Satin at once, chattering at her before the servants could even take her coat away.

“My dear! How long has it been? Your beauty is a bright light in a dark winter!”

“Beautiful dove, how are your exquisite fingers? Have you brought art to share?”

“Or news, of my commission?”

The voices came rapid-fire, the original Russian ringing in my ears before the translator chimed in with its quick, clipped phrasing. The words felt formal, more poetic than I was used to, as befit a language from another country. Satin handled it all with ease, tilting her head toward each speaker in turn, her posture unruffled, like she’d been born to this kind of attention.

“I’ve been well, thank you. The fingers are intact, and the art, as always, is a work in progress,” she replied, her voice polite but effortlessly warm. “I’ll send pictures of it tonight—my assistant has taken some for me. It feels—” She pulled her hand away from my arm, making a gesture in front of herself, her thumbs stroking across her fingertips like she was shaping something unseen. “Good. The marble sings to me. It will soon be complete.”

“I’m so glad to hear it!” the nearest man exclaimed, his voice booming with enthusiasm. He moved to slap her heartily on her back, and I stopped him without thinking, my hand clamping around his wrist before it made contact.

The room froze.

The man’s face registered shock, and I saw three others step forward, clearly his men, and my fingers twitched, ready for a fight, but Satin had seen nothing, and he chose not to comment on it.

“So who is this brutish beast you’ve brought inside my home?” he asked, staring me down.

Satin laughed like a wind chime. “Please ignore him Roskov. I just needed someone strong enough to carry me if I broke an ankle in the snow outside. But don’t mind him—he doesn’t understand a thing.”

“Hmmph,” the man complained. “I would be better at ignoring him, if you had a drink in your hand.”

“Then by all means,” Satin said, taking an alluring step closer to the man. “You should get me one.”

After that, I was basically tortured for the rest of the evening. People kept coming up to Satin, far too familiar, and far too close, and I could see it grating on her slowly as the night went on, people not announcing their presence in a timely fashion, instead surprising her over and over again. She hid it well, but I could see it in the way her knuckles went white around the flute of champagne she held—and I noticed she’d been milking just one drink, for most of the time.

Luckily for everyone else, being overly worried for her—and making sure that none of the people surrounding us were threats—meant I missed most of the insults directed at me. I heard more than one joke about the ‘club’ I must’ve been swinging between my legs, and how my balls were probably as big as a newborn calf’s head.

I mean, they weren’t wrong, but the comments were still rude.

But finally, things were winding down, and most of the remaining guests’ opinions on the night were tainted with enough alcohol to pickle a fish.

I had yet to see a Faberge egg on display, however—but then the man named Roskov started clinking a caviar spoon on the edge of his glass.

“Is it time?” a woman asked, giving him an indulgent smile and batting her eyes.

Thank God Satin had merely stayed polite with other party-goers tonight—if I’d seen her looking like that at another man I would’ve crawled out of my own skin if I had to, to murder him.

“It is!” he cheerfully announced, hoisting his glass up high, and continuing to clink it, as everyone followed him down one of his house’s many grand halls, before he waved his hands for everyone to stand back. Satin’s hand was on my arm again—where it belonged—but I angled myself in front of her, ready to take on all comers. “Beware the dogs!” Roskov shouted, and then laughed with his whole chest. “No—beware the lasers,” he went on, then turned, to do something with an electrical panel beside a door behind him and…

The entire back half of the hallway opened like a curtain, sliding either way, accordioning up, one aggressive clack of most-likely bullet and bomb-proof metal at a time.

Other party goers gasped, and I had to admit that I was impressed—and what it hid in the room beyond….

It was like a throne room’s worth of treasure.

In fact—I thought there really was a throne, somewhere beneath a collection of historical tapestries, under a chandelier seemingly made of diamonds. There were paintings on each wall that I was sure cost several fortunes, suits of armor no doubt worn by nefarious men, and an entire table with a place setting on it fit for a king.

“Well?” Satin asked, as the rest of the crowd moved past us, eager to inspect Roskov’s maximalist collection. “Is it as amazing as they say?”

I looked down, at her beautiful doll-like face, with her elegantly blindfolded eyes.

“I’ve seen prettier things.”

She bit her lips, and then quickly tugged me forward.

“Some of the Tsar’s finest China,” Roskov said, noticing me checking out the dinnerware—before remembering I shouldn’t be able to understand him. “Lovely Satin, please tell your brute why what he’s looking at is special.”

“It’s the dinnerware that survived Tsar Alexander II’s assassination attempt,” she told me, in English.

“And that none of the blood the servants had to scrub off of it was his,” Roskov went on in Russian, and then clicked his tongue to shout at a countryman. “Hey Andrei! I see you! Stop groping the case! I’ll open it in a minute!”

He huffed back through the room, and Satin nudged me after, so we followed him. She stayed close enough to me that she could mimic my movements, almost before I made them, but it was hard to maneuver—there wasn’t much space between the priceless objects of art.

I felt like a goat in a china shop.

But being beside Satin was worth it. Her hand on my arm was still thrilling—although the more I thought on her, the more my chain tugged. I cleared my throat to center myself quickly—I couldn’t put her life in danger because I was proverbially, and satyr-esquely, horny.

“All right, you heathens. Time for the main attraction,” Roskov said, standing in front of a solid black case, and waving everyone else present back. He used three different biometrics on it—spit, palm, and eye—before pulling out a final archaic key from a pocket inside his waistcoat, and with that, the case rocked back, allowing the priceless egg inside to be fully seen.

It looked like something someone had stolen from heaven. I was so stunned by its beauty it took me a moment to recognize that it was a scene from a perfect garden, at night—the top half of it was sapphire-blue enamel dotted with tiny diamond stars, and below that were delicate roses growing up, their petals carved from rubies so rich they looked wet, supported by thin veins of emerald green, mimicking vines wrapping tenderly around the egg’s curves.

And at the top, a small golden crown rested, encasing a perfectly round pearl—a perfect moon for a perfect evening.

“Oh,” Satin breathed into the sudden silence the egg’s reveal had caused. “May I, Roskov?”

“Of course, my winter rose. But you and only you. Everyone else here merely gets to feast with their eyes.”

Satin strode toward the sound of his voice, and I followed behind her. She held her hands out, and he put the egg in both of them.

“Turn around so we can see it!” one of the other partygoers shouted, and Satin did as she was told, cupping it against herself with one safe hand, while letting the other roam, feeling each individual element with her fingertips.

“It’s so lovely,” Satin whispered, holding it up to her face to press against her skin.

“Does it speak to you like your marble?” Roskov asked.

She nodded quietly. “Yes,” she whispered, as a tear appeared beneath her blindfold, to roll down her beautiful cheek. She made a soft, sad sound, and wiped underneath her blindfold, touching that tear against the crown. “It has affected me just like it always does, my general,” she said, reluctantly handing it back. “I could listen to it for a thousand days.”

The crowd murmured, enchanted by her emotion. Even I was momentarily caught, my mind spinning between wanting to protect her and wanting—

Movement snapped me out of it. A man I didn’t recognize from the party earlier, near the edge of the crowd, his hand dipping into his coat. It wasn’t one of Roskov’s men—and I caught the shape of a gun.

I grabbed Satin and plunged her to the ground, egg and all, shoving her behind the throne. “Stay here,” I commanded, and then ran to fight, as other partygoers screamed.

His first shot went wide, his second landed—but too bad for him, satyr-hide was ridiculously tough, and the force of such a small caliber bullet was only like getting punched by a child.

“You fucked up,” I said, grabbing him by his throat, and yanking him to my full height. That was when another man tried to stab me—his knife was sharp, it did make it through my side. Not as deeply as he would’ve liked though—its serrated blade caught on a rib. “You, too,” I said, throwing the first man away like he was garbage, before leaning back and kicking the other, crushing his chest with the force of my hoof, sending him flying across the room.

By then Roskov’s men had caught up, quickly finishing the remaining three intruders.

“How did they get in here?” he angrily demanded.

All I cared about was that they were dead.

And—Satin.

I ran up to where I’d left her, and found her shaking behind the throne, her entire body curved around the egg. In my haste to protect her, I’d set her blindfold askew, and I thought I saw a glint of something behind it, before I offered her my hand.

Which she couldn’t see.

I knelt down in front of her. “You’re safe. I’m here.”

She cradled the egg in one arm and hastily straightened the line of fabric across her face.

“And…those men?” she asked, unable to call them assassins in mixed company.

I glanced behind me. “Done for.”

“Good,” she said, and then Roskov barged up.

“My dear!” he cried out—and then reached for the egg. “Are you all right?”

She relinquished it to him. “They must’ve been coming for it!” she exclaimed, with more spirit than she’d shown earlier in the evening.

“But you,” Roskov began, quickly inspecting his piece. “It’s not damaged a bit—you saved it!”

“Of course I did,” Satin said. She grabbed hold of the throne beside her, and used it to leverage herself up, which was good, because if it’d been up to me, I would’ve picked her up and ran her back into her car. “I would sooner die than let anyone hurt such a priceless piece.”

He set the egg back in its case then took her hands, one by one, and with tears in his eyes, he kissed them. “It is because of this that you are a true artist. But as for everything else that happened tonight—” he closed the case around the egg. “I will move it to my bank’s vault, immediately,” he told her, then looked past me, to the remaining crowd. “Is everyone all right?”

“No! You are out of caviar!” a brash friend of his shouted back, and Roskov laughed.

“You see?” Roskov said to me, then turned to Satin to translate. “Tell your friend that while we appreciate his services, that we, too, are used to danger—and we know how to put it in its place.” Before she could translate for him though, he shouted, “Ehh! I see you Ilya! Get that fork out of your pocket! I’ll be shaking down every one of you wealthy pricks before you leave my house, at this rate!”

“I will,” Satin promised, as I meaningfully took her hand and placed it again on my forearm.

“We’re leaving. Now.”

She didn’t argue, her fingers tightening around my arm as I led her out of the room.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Satin let me lead the way, and we found our driver thoughtfully smoking outside the car. “Five men just went in that house,” he said, then looked at me, and spotted the blood on my chest that Satin had missed. “I take it they will not be coming out?”

“The less you know, the better,” she said, as she slid into the backseat of the car.

I got in on my side, and was doing my best not to bleed on anything expensive. The driver handed me back a handkerchief of dubious provenance, but bleeding beggars could not be bleeding choosers, and I wedged it beneath my elbow.

We drove back to the tarmac in silence, me feeling antsy, still flooded with adrenaline from the evening’s activities, and her staring straight ahead.

I wondered what was going on inside her mind, since she couldn’t see—was all that free time just filled up with thinking?

If so, no wonder she’d been so hellbent on revenge.

I had no idea if she’d managed it though—she’d had a long moment with the egg alone, behind the throne, but I couldn’t ask her until we were back inside the safety of the jet.

The staircase to the jet was already extended, and one of the pilots was up above, bundled up and waiting for us. Satin took my arm until I could put her hand on the safety of the stair railing, and the second she reached the top stair she told the pilot, “I’d like to depart. And—we may be in the air for quite some time. Please sleep in shifts.”

“Of course, Miss Satin,” he said, hauling the stairs up and the doors to the jet closed before locking himself up front again.

“That doesn’t sound safe,” I said, following her back to the comfortable leather seats in the aisle.

“It’s not. But for the most part, my enemies are on the ground, and don’t have fighter jets. So it’s safer for me to be in the sky.”

“But can’t they trace you? Flight plans and all that?”

“ADSB data is notoriously unreliable—and it’s not unusual for private craft to turn their transponders off over conflict zones,” she said, as she flung her fur coat across a chair before falling into the chair beside it. She seemed back in her element now and I realized the version of her that I’d seen with Roskov, all soft and teary-eyed, had been too perfect.

Too precise.

“How much of that was real?”

She gave a low chuckle, before stretching out. “Enough for normal men.”

“And did you manage to complete your mission?”

“I did,” she said, heaving a pleased seeming sigh. “Roskov will have the egg in a vault at his bank by dawn—which is where a bank manager known to my people will get the microchip and forward the information on it on.”

I squinted at her, dabbing at myself with the handkerchief under my elbow. I’d stopped bleeding, but my fur was sticky, and I could’ve probably used some stitches. “Pardon me for questioning, but I find it hard to believe that there’s a journalist in Russia who’s going to be rewarded for reporting your claims.”

“As well you should—but my bank manager’s reporting it to London, and trust me, Scotland Yard will be far, far more gravely concerned,” she said, stroking her hand repeatedly against the nearby mink.

“Then why didn’t you just go to London?”

“Because I didn’t have a reason to go there—which meant that my enemies in London would’ve been expecting me, if I took a sudden detour. And besides, old KGB data routes are just as good.”

I wasn’t sure which was hotter—watching her pet fur, or listening to her be self-assured. All I knew was that after she went to bed, I was going to have to jerk off three times before I even thought of sleeping, and it still might not be enough.

“But—enough crowing about tonight. I need to get this dress off,” she said, standing up and turning away from me to lift her hair. “Can you help? Getting into it by myself was murder.”

I stood up with a soft grunt from the sharp pain in my side. I made sure to stay far enough behind her that she wouldn’t get tapped by my dick’s attempts to free itself, then I took hold of the top of her zipper between my blunt thumb and forefinger, slowly pulling it down.

The black fabric opened, revealing a deep V of creamy white skin, creating a path I wanted to lick, pointing down to places I wanted to visit.

“Much better,” she said, reaching up to tug away her collar, letting her hair drop.

I stepped far enough back that I’d be safe if my dick broke its chain.

“Good night, Aceon,” she said, looking over her shoulder, and I was so stunned by the moment I almost forgot to ask—

“Hey, before you go—where’s this jet’s med kit?” I didn’t want to use the supplies inside my duffle bag, in case I needed them later.

She turned around to gasp. “Why?” and then her jaw dropped in horror. “Ace—were you injured?”

I was pretty sure that was the first time she’d said my name. “No. Not really. I mean—it’s not bad, just annoying—”

“What? Where?” she demanded, flying up the aisle.

I stepped back, because there was still a six inch no-go zone in front of me, where my hard on was pushing out my kilt.

“Just a small cut. I’m really looking for suture stuff, if you have any.”

She appeared aghast, and then pointed up to one of the latches above. “There should be a kit up there.”

“Great. Thanks,” I said, turning around quickly, to open the berth and pull it down. There was a red duffle bag with a little bit of everything in it. “I’ll keep track of what I use, so you can have them replace it,” I told her, pulling out some alcohol, gauze, and a flat pack of Ethilon sutures in gauges fit for monster hides, complete with a curved needle. “This is perfect,” I assured her, but that didn’t stop her from hovering.

“Let me help?”

Her concern was as embarrassing as it was charming. “Not to make you feel bad, but, how?”

I watched her bite her lower lip, as she offered her hand out. “I don’t know.”

“I’m fine,” I said, but I couldn’t resist the chance to take it. And when she stepped closer, I let her, bringing her hand to the blood-soaked fur by the cut on me. “See? It’s mostly dry now. I wouldn’t even suture it, if we weren’t going into action again—but I don’t want to start leaving behind DNA if I can help it.”

Her fingertips tamped against the slightly crusted fur, as she licked her lips. “And…you’re not worried about DNA from shedding?” she teased.

“Not anymore than you are,” I said, jerking my chin at her hair. “I mean—with your hair and all, you know?”

“I gathered,” she said, giving me a slight smile. “Still though. Before you close yourself up—you should get clean.”

I didn’t disagree—although I wasn’t looking forward to pouring alcohol over a cut on my body.

“There’s a shower in my bathroom, in the back. You should use it.”

I recoiled. “I couldn’t,” I said, as her hands patted me down, sending bolts of electricity through me every place they touched—until she found my hand and pulled.

“You can.”

“No—I’ll definitely shed in there. And your cleaners will not be prepared for it.”

Her brows furrowed and she gave a loud snort. “Do you know how many extensions I’ve had in my hair before? Trust me—they’re used to it,” she said, still pulling.

I planted my hooves, letting her hand tug at mine, just to test her resolve. She didn’t let go.

So I did what any other self-respecting bodyguard would do—I followed orders.

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Satin got into the back bedroom, she turned the lights on—although I wondered why, if she couldn’t see—and then she went to the bed to take off her heels, after gesturing for me. “The bathroom’s in there,” she said, gesturing to the back, and I went forward to peek in.

The bathroom was just as nice as the rest of her plane—with marble and chrome—and it was bigger than mine, in my monster-sized apartment.

I looked back into her bedroom, and saw her puttering around—her bedroom was all black velvet, and black silk. Soft things for her to touch, I figured—and I went for the door to separate the two rooms, and found it didn’t have one.

Why would it, when the entire space was hers?

I hesitated.

It…wasn’t like she would be able to see me.

“Use any of my stuff you want!” she called out, taking off her earrings and putting them on a small desk.

I reached back into the shower and turned the water on before I lost my resolve. And then I undid the latch of my leather kilt, stepping out of it quickly, so that the only things on me anymore were the cuff on my thigh and the chain to the piercing on my dick.

I was just about to fully commit and step in, when I looked back, and…while Satin had turned away from me, she was slowly shimmying the rest of her floor length black dress off, leaving her in just her blindfold and a black thong that I wanted to eat out of the way to get to her. I watched her start to turn, exposing the side of one cuppable breast, and the tip of one pink nipple, and reached down to hold my dick down, so my piercing wouldn’t rip out of me.

I spun the shower dial to cold and got inside of it at once.

I stayed in the shower long enough to regain my sanity, and by the time I got out, she was in her black silk pajamas again, sitting cross legged on her bed.

“What’s that clanking sound?” she asked, after I toweled myself off.

“Uh…my hooves,” I lied ineptly.

“Do you need my blow dryer?”

“What for?” I asked—and then shook myself off.

Tiny drops of water that my towel hadn’t gotten went in all directions—including out at her. She squealed. “For that, I think,” she said, crawling quickly backwards on her bed.

“Habit. Sorry.”

“It’s quite all right. I’m sure your equally furry girlfriend is used to it already.”

Her comment gave me pause. If she’d been able to see my apartment, she’d have realized there was no such thing. “I don’t have one,” I said, then realized why she was guessing. “You thought the books were someone else’s. You thought I didn’t read.”

She flushed a little. “For most men, it’s a reasonable assumption.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not most men,” I said, buckling my leather kilt back around me. “For instance, I’ve hung my towel up on your towel rack.”

Her jaw dropped in an expression of delight, and she laughed—it was true laughter.

I wanted to hear it again.

“What do you read then, if I can ask? Assuming they’re not all punching books?” she asked, crawling forward to the edge of the bed, as I carefully walked out to meet her.

“Things that interest me. I’m on a Renaissance kick right now, so I’m reading Wolf Hall—and it was kind of wild, seeing art on the walls at your friend’s house, that was probably from that century.”

“Roskov’s got a piece from Hans Holbein the Younger, so you’re not wrong.”

A moment flowed between us, during which the almost seven feet of me thought I should maintain the MSA’s stellar honor and walk away—while the fourteen inches between my legs urged me closer. “So, uh—I’ll be fine—thanks for the shower—”

“No—get over here,” she said, patting the space beside her on her bed, before giving me a lopsided smile. “And show me where it hurts.”

I stepped over without consciously thinking, then caught myself. “That’s not a good idea.”

She looked taken aback. “Why?”

I didn’t want to explain to her what being around her did to me. I was ready to give my life for any of my clients—it was part of the job—but with her….

My thoughts drifted, and I saw her swallow.

“Aceon—can I call you Ace?” she asked, and I quickly nodded. “Look, tonight was only the first stage of things—and now that they know that you’re with me, next time they’ll send more men. With bigger guns.”

“Of course,” I agreed, not understanding where she was headed.

Her pink tongue darted out to lick her lips thoughtfully, doing devastating things to my self-control.

“So…maybe I’ll just get to the point then,” she said, with a short laugh, shaking her head, before tilting her head up at me. “We’re going to be in danger tomorrow, Ace. Wouldn’t it be nice to get to feel good, tonight?”

I let go of a rough breath and moved to join her.

CHAPTER NINE

Satin’s bed groaned underneath my greater weight. She tumbled over to me, like I’d created a sudden black hole, and I caught her by her shoulders.

“Should we sew you up first?” she asked.

“No,” I said, certain. “But—have you ever been with a satyr before?” I was well aware that I was fetishized by certain corners of the internet. There were size-queens—and then there was whatever you had to be to take all of me.

“No,” she said, then turned the tables. “Have you ever been with a human?”

“No.”

“That’s fair then, I guess,” she said, bringing her hands up and reaching for me. They landed on my chest, first, and I let her push me down, so she could feel like she could be in charge. I had a V of shaggier fur there, with shorter fur all around it, and she inspected every inch of me with her fingertips, tracing muscles, tracing scars. My breathing deepened, and I knew she felt that too, as I rocked my head back, and felt my horns catch on her pillows behind me. “So…you have two nipples,” she said, investigating each one individually.

That made me laugh. “I am mammalian,” I said, then wondered. “Is this how you carve your statues?”

“A little,” she said. “People let me touch art other people don’t get to. Some of it is imagination. And some of it’s from memory. Other people I’ve touched. Other lovers.”

Lovers sounded so far removed from what I wanted this to be.

But if I told her what I was hoping this was—or admitted it to myself—she would think I was insane.

“Ahh,” I said, taking one of her hands and bringing it up to my face to lick.

She squealed when she felt my warm tongue tasting the salt of her palm. “Oh my God! Your tongue is so long!”

I pulled up the sleeve of her pajamas so I could lick a broad stretch up her smooth white arm. “It is, isn’t it,” I stated meaningfully.

Her jaw dropped slightly, as I reached for her waist. “You want to take these off?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, nodding quickly, and rising up on her knees to do so at once.

A wall of her ready scent hit me the second the silk came down, dark and delectable, promising me everything I could ever want. My lips rose without thinking, longing to taste her, and the second she’d stripped her silk top from herself—not undoing the buttons, just pulling it off—I was hauling her aboard, holding her above my face.

“C’mere,” I said. “Hold my horns.”

She patted around until she found them, but when she did, when I felt her grab on—God I should’ve unchained my dick before starting anything with her, my raging hard on was gonna tear me.

I paused to appreciate the moment, just taking being with her in, the wild way she was trusting me, anticipating the way she’d taste—and what I could see of her from this angle, the pea of her pink clit trapped under its almond-sized hood, up her body to where her full breasts bounced, wrapped by golden trails of blonde—and then I brought her down on me.

I was enraptured by everything about her. I started stroking her with all of my broad instrument—I knew my tongue was a little rough, and so long as to almost be prehensile—just letting myself bathe in her presence on top of me. She tasted like fresh hay eaten under clear stars on a warm night and I licked her again and again, unwilling to give even a drop of her up.

“Ace,” she sighed, and it sounded like surrender.

I made a pleasured sound beneath her—and started thrusting my tongue in.

She squeaked at that, but then spread her thighs wider, leaning harder into my horns, which put ideas inside my head that’d never, ever, been there before. The warm tunnel I pressed in to, the way she moaned and squirmed, the depth my tongue reached—I did everything on instinct, kissing her with my lips, grinding my chin against her, and above all else sending my fat tongue searching in and out, in and out—

Because I wanted to make her ready for me.

More ready than any woman had ever been before.

I wanted her to be my mate.

I bucked us both up long enough for me to reach down and unchain my throbbing cock, possessed by a current level of insanity I couldn’t conceptualize, much less understand.

But me moving startled her to speaking. “Oh, Ace,” she said quietly, as her breathing began to speed up and she started to rock, once she was back in place. “Ace—I need that—don’t take it away—”

I couldn’t tell her I would never seeing as she was riding on my face, but I hoped she understood it. If I had my way, I would be by her side until the end of time—be that tomorrow, or eighty years from now, swinging on a porch.

“Ace,” she moaned again, and her hips started to flutter. I felt her pussy squeeze, winding up, and her juices were covering my fur now. “Ace—Ace, I’m gonna—I’m gonna—” she warned, and then she cried out at the same time as she shoved her hips down.

She came hard, and her pussy taking my tongue, wrapping it tight, again and again, was the hottest thing that’d ever happened to me. Her hips twitched and fluttered with aftershocks, and I was deeply, deeply pleased.

I wanted to leave my mate quaking.

And then she sagged on top of me, curling over and brushing the top of my head with her gorgeous breasts.

“Ace,” she whispered, one more time, and I carefully pulled her off of me, bringing her carefully over to my side. I tasted like her, and if I had my druthers my fur would smell like her for days. My cock had pushed my kilt aside, and was now bobbing above my stomach, its tip changing altitude with each of my breaths, like a plant searching for the sun.

I took her cheek with my hand and brought it toward me. “Did I make you feel good?” I asked her. I already knew, I just wanted to hear it.

She lightly laughed and trailed lazy hands across her body. “Obviously.”

CHAPTER TEN

Satin gave a satisfied hum, and I was so shamelessly enamored with her now, I would’ve been okay just lying there forever.

“You know, I’ve never been with a monster before,” she offered up. “Of any kind.”

I tilted my head as best I could without ruining her pillows. “You know what they say.”

“No—what’s that?”

“Uh…monsters are a roar—and never a bore.”

She laughed, and then she pushed me. “No one says that.”

I laughed back. “You’re right. I just didn’t expect you to call me out. I panicked.”

She giggled again, and I knew it was genuine, this softer, less polished side of her. “Well—if we’re going to die tomorrow, Ace—I have to say, you gave me a hell of a big O.”

“That makes sense. Everything on a satyr is big.”

“Yeah?” she asked, making the word long enough to turn it into a tease.

“Uhhhh…yeahhhh…” I said, suddenly more concerned than horny.

I’d gotten into more than one situation where girls had taken one look at my junk and decided to opt out of the experience entirely.

Just because Satin hadn’t seen what I was packing yet, didn’t mean she’d be entirely on board.

Her hand, which’d been on my rib cage, began to sneak over, but I caught her wrist in time. “I know it sounds like I’m bragging, Satin…but really, I’m not.”

She rose up on one elbow. “You know, I have groped some very authentic feeling pieces of classical art.”

“Yeah, well, there’s that, and then there’s reality.”

She made a face and hovered over mine. “I’m an international spy. I think I can handle a big dick.”

It was now or never. I pulled her hand forward to my cock’s base, where she tried to circle it and failed.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly hesitant.

I grunted—and her hand sank, rather than rising like I assumed it would. Her fingers found the seam of my sack and followed it down, sending maddening shivers through my entire body—and then she tried to pick my balls up.

They overflowed her hand.

“See what I mean?” I said lightly, nervous.

“Shh,” she hushed me. “I’m learning.”

She carefully set my balls back down, and then worked on stroking each pleat of skin—then dipped her fingers into her mouth, and went back to doing it, only this time her fingers were wet.

I groaned. I couldn’t help it. I was scared for her to know how much I needed her—but I was also just a monster, running on instinct.

“Yeah?” she breathed. “You like that?” And then she was struck by inspiration, getting up and moving around my tall, curved thighs, to tuck herself between my legs.

“What’re you doing?” I asked her, looking down my belly.

“You’ll see,” she said—and her small pink tongue came out to lick me.

I about flew out of my skin. “Fuck,” I whispered.

“Oooh, so you like that, too,” she said, and did it again.

Her hands spread my thigh-fur out of her way, as her mouth went in, her tongue lapping and lolling against me, licking me like my ball sack had just become her most favorite thing.

“Fuck—fuck—fuck—” I intoned, torn between throwing my head back and looking down at her beautiful head bobbing between my thighs.

“Hmmmhmmm,” she agreed, before starting to pull at my loose skin with her lips. She couldn’t even take one of my testicles entirely in her mouth, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

“I’ve gotta come, Satin.” I knew it was true the second I said it. “Like—now.”

“Then you should,” she said, continuing to lick. “Come for me, Ace. Come for me.”

I wrapped two hands around my dick and pulled. It only took three strokes—and she stayed down there by my sack the entire time. “Oh, I feel you,” she said, as my balls twitched and spurted, my reservoir of cum seemingly endless. I grunted wildly through my load, wanting to put a show on for her, hoping she would realize how virile I was—more so than any other satyr that had ever lived, surely—while trying not to dig my hooves into her soft, silk sheets.

And when I was done, I shivered, as she rose up to kneeling between my thighs, holding my balls up with both hands. “I liked that,” she said, giving me a conquering gaze.

“Yeah,” I said, catching my breath. “Me too.” The moment had been perfect, but I wanted round two. “Just give me a second—” I started to explain, as she scooted backwards to stand at the foot of the bed.

“Goodnight Ace,” she said.

My chest was still heaving, my balls had apparently accessed some other cum-filled dimension to refuel from, and my cock ached.

“You can take another shower if you need to,” she went on, suddenly all business—and I realized I’d been an idiot.

There was no way this beautiful, delicate human could be my mate. She was internationally famous and I…was me. Hulking, sarcastic, and definitely not runway ready. My body was just all jumbled up for some reason—I’d had too long a dry spell—my hormones were wrong…

My mind ran through a litany of all the ways that I’d made a mistake—right down to the concussion I’d gotten my last mission out—because any of those being true were better than the realization that my mate didn’t want me.

I rocked out of her bed without saying anything, walked around her, and got back in the shower, letting the water blast all the cum she didn’t want away.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Satin said, right after opening up her bedroom door. She was in business casual today, a large breezy white blouse, tied neatly on one hip, matched with slender black leggings and spike heels. Her hair was half-up, half-down, she had on her golden cuff, and her very red lipstick was applied absolutely perfectly.

I was surprised to find I’d managed to go to sleep the night before. Not for lack of sexual activity, but because I’d spent far too long thinking on non-mission-critical things.

“What timezone are we in?” I asked, waking up.

“Such a good question!” she said, before raiding the fridge. “We flew to Bejing, in an effort to make the men after me waste their resources—but now we’re landing in Morocco. Want anything?”

I had helped myself to some of the food in the fridge the prior night, in between bouts of pacing—it was a good thing Satin couldn’t see all the little cloven dents my hooves had left in her jet’s carpeting.

“I’m good.”

“You sure?” she said…prettily.

The was the only word for it, as she slouched into a seat and smiled winningly, seemingly without artifice, and it broke me.

“Yeah. But—you know—just because last night was good—I’m not just some switch you can flip.” My truth tumbled out before I could stop it. “You may not know this, I’m not really sure how much time you spend online,” I went on, ruffling the fur at the back of my head with a hand. “But—I get fetishized. Like, a lot. People make assumptions about me—and my dick—all the time.”

Her demeanor became chilly again. “And you think I’m doing that to you?”

“To be honest, I don’t know what you’re doing. But I think we’d probably better keep this clinical, from here on out.”

She set the box of pastries she’d pulled out aside. “I see.”

“I don’t want to upset you,” I said, diving my head sideways, trying not to take out a nearby seat with a horn.

“Trust me. You haven’t,” she said primly. “Now…shall we discuss the mission?”

I grunted, and she pulled out her phone.

It took her a moment to find what she was looking for—how did she know?—but eventually she managed, and handed it over to me.

“That’s the blueprint for the Marjazan Resort Casino. I’ve got an invitation for the high stakes lounge. We’ll go in, and when we’re there, we’ll spend this,” she said, pulling a red and black casino chip out of her cleavage. “My people will be waiting for it, and then Euronews’s report of people who accepted bribes will be ready to go.”

I frowned at her. “Won’t people find it odd that a blind woman wants to play?”

Her expression instantly became even icier. “That’s where you come in. This time you’ll be my recent bodyguard-turned-boyfriend, and I’ll merely be candy for your arm.”

I opened my mouth, and then closed it, before anything could come out.

“Wheels down in thirty,” she said, quickly readjusting the blindfold’s bow beneath her hair. “If you need to brush your teeth or comb your fur, you should hurry.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Marjazan Resort Casino was a palace-like structure, located right against the Atlantic, and I felt like we were in Casablanca.

Hopefully, if anyone ever made a movie of our lives, it would have a happier ending.

Our driver dropped us off, and a bellboy came up, as did a concierge—and a wave of strangers, taking photos.

“Satin!” the suited concierge exclaimed—while she jumped at the sound of the first photo’s shot.

I leaned over her and snarled at them—then they took pictures of me.

“I’m so sorry,” the man apologized, offering his suit out to protect her, while I rushed her into the casino. I forgot to warn her about the steps though in my hurry, and she would’ve tripped, if I hadn’t simply picked her up and then planted her again, behind the casino’s thick glass doors.

Satin glared at me, but then turned in the other man’s direction. “Charles—who told them I was coming?”

“No one, they’re just opportunistic vultures—the Princess of Rhöndal is flying in today, and they’ve been camped out here, ever since her affair was announced. Or denied. I lose track with that woman,” he said, apologetically.

She settled herself quickly. “It’s unbecoming.”

“I know—I have my men chase them off—but paparazzi are like flies—you swat one and three more show up.” And then he gave me a strong look—like, I, as a satyr, might’ve brought some flies in with me as well.

I lowered my head and stared at him ominously, while giving a snort—and Satin placed a calming hand on my chest, like she might do with any man who was her boyfriend.

Or just her lover.

“I would like to gamble some,” I announced. There was no point in pretending I was suave since I was not—and the sooner we got this portion of our mission over with the better.

Charles led us through a casino that dripped with opulence, up to a set of discreet black-and-gold double doors flanked by tall, uniformed attendants who greeted us with silent nods. Inside, the lighting was low but luxurious, emanating from a crystal chandelier with countless faceted drops overhead. One whole wall was a dark wooden bar that looked like a shrine to alcoholism, with multi-colored liquors in bottles I both did and did not recognize behind it, and while none of the surrounding players looked like an actual princess to me, I would believe that many of them could be royalty-adjacent.

“Feeling lucky?” I asked Satin. Her eyebrows rose in surprise—and I leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “It’s called acting.”

“Oh, is it?” she said afterwards, leaning back. I got the feeling that if she still had eyes, they would be rolling at me.

“Which game do you want?” I asked her.

“Roulette,” she said, and then looked over to where Charles had last been. “My usual, please?”

“Of course, Miss Satin,” he said, quickly departing from view.

I assumed he was going to get her a drink—not come back with a small, gilded sack full of chips. She took them, and then handed them to me, as I navigated her toward the chairs on the roulette wheels table’s far side. “You know red’s my favorite color, right?”

“What a shame,” I said, with feigned disappointment. “Black matches my fur.”

I set the chips out in front of me—where Satin would follow her hand down my arm and touch them, knowing what denominations they were from their grooves.

“Corner bets, four of each of these, please,” she said, pushing a tall stack of chips forward.

I did as I was told, allocating four chips to each of the corners on the board, while other players took their turns, and then the dealer waved their hand and spun the dial.

It was hard not to sympathize with the ball inside the wheel.

It, too, was feeling bounced around, it didn’t know where it was going, and some people would be disappointed in it no matter where it landed.

The ball clattered to a stop, and the dealer called out, “Thirty-two! Red! Even!”

Satin tilted her head slightly, her lips curving into a faint smile. “I suppose I can’t win them all,” she said. The dealer started raking chips in, as another player, a sharply dressed man with an air of quiet confidence, joined the table.

He slid a single black chip onto the board once it was clear, tapping it lightly before saying, “Seventeen. Straight up.”

The number seemed to spark something in Satin. She straightened, her fingers resting briefly on my arm before she gave the man a polite nod. “Interesting choice,” she murmured.

I leaned in close to her ear. “Something I should know?”

“Not yet,” she said, her voice low. “But I think it’s time for a different game. Shall we?” She stood smoothly, her hand reaching to hold mine with an intimacy that killed me. “Let’s see how good your poker face is.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I feel like I should tell you all my cards,” I said, as the dealer dealt me in. I was sitting down, but Satin was standing, leaning against me like a cat.

Satin chuckled. “I have faith in you.”

It took every fiber of strength I had in my body not to tell her, You shouldn’t. A Call of Duty tournament would one thing. But poker was not my scene.

And, sure enough, I lost the first three hands.

Satin laughed, and leaned forward to whisper in my ear in Russian—which the device still inside my ear translated for me. “You’re trying too hard—you’re here to play for the game, not the money. Act like these chips don’t matter to you.”

“How much are they worth?” I murmured back.

“You don’t want to know,” she said, her red lips curving up into a wicked smile. “But—here—my secret weapon,” she said, finally fishing the chip out of her cleavage that she’d shown me on the plane.

It was a perfect match for every chip that was on the table. I took it, added it to my betting pile—and promptly lost again.

“Baby,” she purred, rocking against me in disappointment.

I wasn’t sure what cue I should take from that. Was this version of Satin likely to date someone who was an asshole? Should I bellow and throw the table against the wall? Or should I just wrap my arm around her indulgently and ask if we could leave now, with my metaphorical tail between my legs?

Before I could decide what to do next, though, the decision was taken away from us—men with guns out burst through the high-stakes door.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I picked her up without thinking, shielding her with my entire frame, as I ran for the bar and leapt over it—on her blueprint the bar led to a kitchen, that would lead to us getting the hell out—except we weren’t the only ones who knew that. We made it into a small, steel-walled room, only to find ourselves trapped by another set of men with guns—and I noticed the caliber of all of theirs were significantly higher than the ones I’d faced the prior night.

I kicked one of the kitchen stainless steel counters loose, before picking it up to hold it up in front of us, to use like a battering ram as I dragged her along beside me, keeping her wrapped in one protective arm—then I realized that they weren’t shooting—yet.

Most likely because they needed Satin alive.

And I would die before letting that happen.

I’d bellowed a warning to hopefully scare some of them before I charged, when Satin yelled, “Stop!”

I made an animalistic sound of frustration, and dared a glance down. Satin was plucking at herself—there was a splash of red on her white blouse—had she been hurt? Had I hurt her?

And then realized the blood was mine—from the wound we hadn’t gotten around to suturing the prior night. I was bleeding on her, and she knew it.

She made the world’s saddest expression at me, and then banged on our side of the metal. “Who’s in charge out there?”

There was a dark chuckle. “Salvio. Welcome back, broken bird.”

I watched the color drain out of Satin’s already pale face. “If I come out…will you let him live?”

“I’m fine,” I growled at her, and then out to the men at large. “Go fuck yourself.”

It was an appropriate combat situation. Royce would’ve been proud.

“Goat-man, we have enough weaponry out here to not only blast through that sheet of metal, but to turn you into tartare.”

“But you need me!” Satin protested, and the man on the other side clucked.

“No, broken bird. We only need one part of you. And I’m fairly sure we can fish it out of your corpse.”

What the fuck was that man talking about? I’d seen all of her the prior night.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a Barrett M82 being cocked, the bolt slamming home a fifty-caliber round, and realized the men on the other side of the metal countertop were completely ready to not only take me out, but Satin as well, and everyone that might be behind us for the next fifteen hundred yards. It was massive overkill, but it proved they meant business.

“I’ll surrender, if you promise not to hurt her.”

“Ace!” Satin hissed. “No!”

“Ahhh,” the man on the other side of the steel said knowingly. “A man of wisdom.”

“They won’t keep their word! They’ll kill you, and me!”

I couldn’t explain to her that I didn’t have a chance against a Barrett—but if I saw where the fuck it was, we might be able to successfully get around it.

“Say it,” I shouted, waiting for Salvio to respond.

“Very well. I promise we won’t hurt your bird, if you come out. Hands up. Just like in the movies, eh?”

“If you do hurt her,” I said, slowly lowering the metal countertop. “I’ll chase you into hell.”

The man with the Barrett was standing front and center. I’d made the right call. We hadn’t had a chance.

“Such bravado!” Salvio said, with a short clap, before gesturing one of his henchmen up, to whisk my impromptu shield away. I lifted my lips and gnashed my teeth at him, sending him scurrying even faster. “Hands out—now,” Salvio commanded, and another one of his men ran up, carrying two sets of thick metal cuffs. One set for my wrists—and another for my feet.

I kept my body in front of Satin’s, ignoring the way she was pummeling my broad back with her small fists, until both sets of cuffs were on me.

“See?” Salvio announced. “There we go. All will be well in the world now, shortly.”

He walked forward, and I bristled—I could still headbutt him into the ground.

“And as for you, broken bird,” he said, setting out his hand toward her. “You already know what I want.”

She frowned, sorrowfully, lifting her hands up to take her blindfold off. Her eyelids had a rows of long lashes that gently curled, and everything looked like I’d assumed it would—until she opened them up.

Inside each of her eye-sockets was a gleaming metal orb.

She ground her teeth together, but then leaned forward, taking both of them out to hand over.

“There,” she spat. “Are you happy?”

Salvio pocketed her secrets. “Never,” he said, then whirled his hand above him like a helicopter controller on an aircraft carrier. “Tie her up.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I’d never felt so much like a zoo animal before until that moment, being prodded down a dark hallway by men with rifles. It was all I could do not to play the role and roar at them, needing to take some control back, because all else, I had to fucking save Satin.

Even if I didn’t really know who the fuck she was.

“Lock them inside,” Salvio said, and rifle barrels and butts pushed me into a small pitch-black storage closet like a beast—my only consolation was that Satin was beside me.

“Anything you want to tell me?” I murmured, once the door had been slammed shut and locked on the other side.

“Why? Anything you want to know?” she asked, sarcastically, and then I heard her sigh. “They’re specialized implants. I really can’t see, not like you can, but they transmit positions and temperatures into my head—it’s a lot like sonar, but also with heatmaps. They also act as bone conduction speakers, so I can listen to my phone, where no one else can hear.” She left my side and started walking around. “We need to leave this place.”

“Agreed.”

“No, Ace—really,” she said with special emphasis. “Because I use only one of them for vision. The other one’s a bomb, cued to go off once it reads lower than my body temperature. Once Salvio takes them out of his pockets for long…”

I was left reeling anew, flooded with respect for the clearly mad woman I…wanted.

For my mate.

“Understood,” I said. I wrestled with my cuffs, and tried to move the chain on the ones between my hooves to someplace that I could stomp it.

“Shit,” she cursed, coming back to me after having made a circuit of the room. “There’s nothing in here that I can use to pick your locks.”

“What, you don’t keep a special bobby-pin in your hair?”

“Ha, ha,” she said, without any humor. “No, I don’t.”

Then I had a flash of insight. “Uh…I’ve got something you might be able to use.”

“On you? Somewhere?” she asked, and started patting around the outside of my kilt.

“Yeah. So to speak. Lift it up.”

“Ace,” she said, her voice full of disappointment. “You have got to be kidding.”

“I’m not. And please be certain that I’ve never said these words, in this order, in my entire life: grab my dick, unclip it from my leg, and pull the piercing out, for me.”

I could almost feel her body tensing, but then slowly she did as she was told, lifting my leather kilt up before fumbling underneath. The men outside had tied both her hands in front of her at least, which made things a little easier for her—but for me, things were a strange combination of horny and mortifying.

Her hands found my base, wrapped around it, and then sunk down, down, down, as my dick strained up to meet her.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

“I wasn’t joking last night.”

“And…this?” she asked, finding the tip of me, where my jewelry was clipped. One of her hands held me, while the other followed the chain to my thigh.

“If I don’t do that, it gets in the way.”

“Aren’t you worried about catching it on something?”

“If something’s that close to my dick without me knowing it, I have bigger problems,” I said. Her hands were quiet as she took the moment in. “You, uh, might want to hurry.”

“I’m a bit scared to unleash it,” she confessed.

“Don’t be. It would never hurt you.”

I didn’t know if it was my statement, or the sound of men shouting outside, followed by several large bangs, that rushed her to action, but her she started working on opening up the ring on my PA. Luckily, as a sculptor, she had strong fingers, and I heard it’s trapped ball fall on the floor, and quickly roll off.

“Good,” I said. “Now just unthread it, and give it to me.”

She held my dick still with one hand—while it practically rose to attack her—and did as she was told, putting the piece of steel inside my hands.

I used my satyr’s strength to straighten it, hopefully enough to where it could substitute for a lockpick. “Will this work?” I asked, offering it back out to her.

Her hands fumbled over mine in the dark before finding it. “Only one way to know,” she said, taking it from me, before searching my cuffs for their keyhole.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She had my cuffs off in under a minute, and the ones on my ankles a minute after that.

“How did you learn all this stuff?” I asked her, mystified.

“You free up a lot of time when you can’t watch TV,” she said, tossing the piercing aside.

I snorted. “Leave the rest of this up to me.”

I first went over and tried the door handle like a normal person might, but when that didn’t work, I backed up away from it to the opposing wall, and then ran myself at it, full force, with my shoulder.

It splintered like it was balsa wood—and then I bowed to Satin. “My lady,” I said, gesturing toward the door—but she didn’t move.

Because she couldn’t see or sense me.

But I loved her nonetheless.

I peeked out into the service hallway, where it appeared that chaos reigned—and I scented smoke and gunpowder right away.

“Can I carry you?” I remembered to ask, at the same time as I strode for her.

“Please,” she said, putting out both her hands.

I swept her into my arms and ducked outside, using my memory of the blueprints she’d shown me to try to navigate a way out via the service corridors. There was someone howling in pain up ahead—and I passed a body with their arm blown off.

“Put your shirt over your nose,” I told her. What the fuck had happened here?

She strained up in my arms, without doing as she was told, listening and sniffing the air. “Salvio’s an idiot.”

I didn’t disagree. “What’d he do?”

“He took my eyes into his base here. Wherever it was that he was storing all that artillery,” she said, as we heard another massive bang, followed by screams. “My eye’s bomb probably set off his grenades, and then those fires probably started other problems—”

“Shit. Well. Fifty-caliber ammo will do that.”

Satin sank back in my arms, tense and angry, as I jogged along. “He underestimated me,” she complained.

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Maybe,” she muttered, curling in toward my chest at last.

I exited the hallway behind another bar in the casino, right as a subsequent explosion rattled the pendulous chandeliers hanging from above.

Normal casino guests were in full screaming flight, while Satin tapped a code into her cuff.

“My driver’s coming—let’s get lost in the rush.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I started galloping toward the exits, taking bounding leaps from one leg to the next, dodging other escaping patrons, and doing my best not to jostle the most important cargo I’d ever carried.

The doors spiraled open ahead of us, and we ran outside, as her driver pulled up. I practically threw her in the car, then slid in after her. “Get us to the jet,” I ordered him—then watched him completely ignore me in the rearview mirror.

“Please take us to the jet now,” Satin repeated—and her, he listened to.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I guided Satin up the stairs to the waiting plane as quickly as I could—I wouldn’t feel safe with her until we were in the sky.

She spoke with the captains again quickly, then walked calmly halfway down the plane, opening a berth, to pull out a metal case that was locked to her fingerprint—and inside it was another set of eyes.

“I don’t want you to see,” she said, turning away from me to put them in.

But when she turned back around, they were there, inside her eyesockets, all silver and gleaming.

“Well?” she asked archly.

I spread my open hands in front of me. “What? Nothing’s changed.”

The plane taxied down the runway, and lurched into the air, and both of us managed the transition—her still in her spike heels, and me with my horns managing not to scuff the ceiling.

“Hmm,” she said. “I…suppose you are into body modifications.”

And my dick, which had managed to take everything post-kidnapping so far seriously, couldn’t stay quiet when it was referenced.

“Fuck,” I muttered, pressing down on my kilt like an alternate universe version of Marilyn Monroe over that air grate. “I can’t really hide him anymore.”

Satin softly snorted. “You weren’t doing a good job of hiding him before.”

If she really did have heat-vision, without her phone—“Wait—you knew I was into you! All this time!”

“Of course I did,” she said, crossing her arms. “It’s why I picked you at the MSA. Who better to protect me?”

“I don’t know,” I groaned and looked down. “Santa?”

“He wasn’t available, apparently,” she said sharply—and then snickered.

I dared to glance up, and found her smiling, seemingly against her will and better judgement. “Can I actually suture you? This time? I don’t want you ruining another one of my blouses.”

The pilot announced that we’d reached cruising altitude, so it was safe to use a needle—and we probably had a few good safe hours.

“Sure. Yeah.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For this attempt, I sprawled on top her bed, one arm up, so she could ‘see’ where she was aiming.

It didn’t help that she was incredibly close to me though—leaning forward, and repetitively moving her head, maybe to refocus her version of computer-based vision, I wasn’t sure—all I knew was that every time she twitched her hair brushed my extraordinarily erect penis.

It wasn’t even worth trying to hide it.

She moved, my dick bounced against her ear, and I bit back a moan. “Just ignore him,” I told her.

She looked up at me. “It’s kind of hard.”

“That’s what she said,” I muttered.

She groaned. “I’m holding a needle,” she complained, making another stitch. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“Fine, fine.”

“It’s bad enough I feel like I’m about to be attacked by an alligator,” she said, waving her free hand toward it.

“How do you think that I feel?” I told her, and she snorted at that. Then she brought her fingers together to tie off the sutures—and bowed down to snip the thread with her teeth.

It was so unexpectedly animalistic—and her mouth so close to my skin—that my dick, already achingly taut, somehow found more blood from somewhere else to furiously pump in.

“Finished,” she said, sitting up on her heels, and leaning over to put the needle safely on her nightstand.

I couldn’t imagine leaving her side. Not after seeing her in danger earlier today—or watching—and feeling!—the way she’d just carefully taken care of me.

“Do we have to be?” I asked her, my voice low and quiet. She licked her lips, and then made a thoughtful sound.

“How exactly do you see this thing working?” she asked.

I managed not to say everything that flew into my mind. I mean, preferably, we date for awhile, have fun, then get married, I knock you up, and we spend the rest of our lives chasing little Picassos.

“You’re at least twice as big as the biggest person I’d ever had in me.”

“Ohhhhhh,” I said, rocking back, realizing that instead of thinking about our future together, the woman I loved had been doing dick-math.

I could still work with that, however.

“I know I’m big—in all dimensions. But, that doesn’t mean I’m clumsy—”

“I didn’t mean that at all—”

“Let me go on. You’re not the first girl I’ve had this conversation with, you know?”

“But the first human?” she checked again, like it mattered to her.

“Yeah. For sure.” I pushed myself up on both my elbows. “Although I’m afraid the easiest way to do this thing, while we’re still figuring it out, isn’t terribly exciting.”

Satin tittered, and covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m about to get fucked by someone with a dick almost as long as my arm, Ace. If that doesn’t qualify, I don’t know what would.”

I snorted. “Yeah, yeah, okay,” I said, pushing myself all the way up. “First, let’s get you out of this thing,” I said, putting my hands on the tie of her shirt. It still had my bloodstain on it—but she could wear my DNA any time. I undid it, and then carefully tugged it off of her.

“These next,” I said, reaching for her pants. Her hands met mine and helped me, but I wouldn’t let her push mine back—now that I had permission, I wanted to feel her skin.

She rose up on her knees, sliding down her pants, while my mouth reached for her breast, and my hands groped her ass.

She purred a little, rocking into me. “That’s nice,” she said.

“Getting rid of this,” I stated, pulling her thong away from her skin, and tearing it in half.

“What? Ace!” she protested. “That’s Agent Provocateur!”

“I’ll buy you more,” I promised, and she laughed.

“You don’t even know how much they cost! And—” she said, pausing, her eyelids blinking down over her dully gleaming orbs. “You never asked me how much I would be paying you.”

It was my turn to kneel beside her on her bed now. I pushed her back, then reached for her pants, tugging them off the rest of the way, before I returned to hover my lips above her hips, pushing her thighs wide for me.

“Because I never cared,” I said simply, before I lay between her legs and feasted.

Her hands knew the drill—they went for my horns at once. I was transported by her claiming me, and I couldn’t have told you precisely what I did next under torture—if I sucked on her clit till she screamed, or let her ride on my muzzle, filling my nose with her scent, while my tongue writhed inside her, as she pushed my horns away, or brought them nearer, making me fuck her with my face—all I knew was that she was now my everything.

“Oh God—oh God—oh God—” she panted, her toes digging into the shaggier fur on my back, her knees squeezing my ears. “Ace—Ace—Accccceeeeeee!” she howled, her hips throbbing against me for what felt like minutes, before finally relaxing.

“Oh my God,” she said again, as I finally rose up.

“Is that so?” I teased her, reaching down to rub her clit with a lazy thumb.

“Yeah,” she breathed, looking up.

She was sweaty now, her hair was disheveled, and she smelled like me. I loved that her breasts had enough weight to them to make her nipples point a little diagonally, and while I was contemplating their perfection, I watched her slowly blush.

“It’s time, isn’t it,” she asked.

“Now or never,” I said, finally unlatching the buckle of my kilt. I tossed the leather skirt aside, and instantly my dick was slung between us.

She reached tentative fingers toward it, and I shivered when she touched me. I’d been hard the whole time I’d been eating her out—it was a miracle I had any blood pressure at all.

“It’s so big, Ace,” she whispered quietly—not a compliment, but a comment on logistics.

“I know. But if it doesn’t fit at all, we’ll do something else. I promise.”

I knew, on a bone deep level, emotionally, spiritually, metaphysically, that she and I were meant to be together.

And if that meant getting my jizz inside her with a turkey baster, well fuck, I still would.

“Put me where you want me, Satin,” I said, bringing my body over hers. My head was above her breasts, like my dick needed to have a running head start.

She tossed her legs around my chest again. “Okay,” she said, then pushed the head of my cock down, where it could rub against her entrance, piercing free.

I’d never felt anything so right before, in my entire life. She was soft, she was warm, and I knew she was meant for me.

She stroked me back and forth, rubbing herself up and down, before she notched me.

“Go slow?” she asked.

“Of course,” I swore, gently pressing.

If I hadn’t spent almost an hour getting her used to me, I might’ve not had such good luck, but as it was, her pussy stretched for me, like a welcoming flower.

“Fucccccckkk,” she moaned, as my head made it in.

“Yeah,” I agreed, taking minute thrusts, not trying to gain ground, just relishing the long-awaited friction. I felt the thick, blunt head of my cock rubbing against her walls, and I couldn’t wait to make her come again—to feel her squeeze me this time, and not my tongue. “Deeper?” I asked her.

She nodded quickly. “But—carefully.”

“Of course,” I said again. I pressed in a little further—and then a little further past that, till she squeaked and winced. “Uh—uh—uh—uh—uh—uh,” I said, pulling quickly back.

“I think that’s all I can take, Ace,” she said looking sad.

“Never apologize. Never apologize for anything again.” I reached down between us to cuff my own dick with a hand, so I would know not to go any further. I’d get a piercing there later to mark it, if I had to. “Was it good before that?”

She gave a short laugh. “Do you have to ask?”

“No. But—I like reassurance, too.”

“Yeah?” she said, reaching down to loop one of my horns. “You want to hear how bad I need to bang you?”

I lifted my lips at her in a tease. “Not if you’re going to call it that.”

She laughed for real right after. “Fuck you, Ace—and? Fuck me.”

“Roger that,” I said, pushing my dick back inside her up to where her limit was.

I gave her a couple strokes, then I twisted my hand so that every time I thrust, I rubbed her clit with my thumb. “Mmmmmmm,” she purred, bringing her free hand up to play with a breast.

I sent my long tongue up to lick at her other one, tasting the sweat that’d accumulated beneath it so far.

“That’s unfair,” she complained, without malice, before kicking off of my back, to arch her hips up.

“Yeah?” I asked her. “No, Satin—what’s unfair is how I sneakily made you come five different times, just so you’d be ready to take my cock.”

She pretended to pout down at me. “Did it work?” she asked, with feigned breathless innocence.

“You tell me,” I asked her, grunting, as I slid the length of me I was allowed inside her in again. There was a heated moment between us, while our bodies connected, over and over, me taking my fill of what I could get of her, and her with her metal-eyes half-lidded.

“I wanna come inside you, Satin. Are you on protection?”

That roused her from her pre-orgasm stupor. “Uh—no—I haven’t needed any in years.”

Fuck me, I thought, and groaned.

“But—” she began, before I could stop her.

“Nah,” I said, brushing her off. “You don’t understand how satyr cum works.”

“Well—I want to!” she protested—like someone used to getting her own way.

“I want that too—but let’s get you off again, first—”

“Ace,” she complained, with a real pout this time, but I shoved myself inside of her to interrupt her, and stayed there, keeping her maximally stretched, rubbing my thumb against her clit and working her wet folds with the fingers on my hand.

“What was that?” I teased her for her sudden silence. “Is it hard to talk, when you’re full of me?”

And then I bent my head down, moving my thumb, so I could lick her clit with my long tongue, and she screamed.

“Oh my God—how the—” she started, but fell quickly into moans.

Her hands found my horns again quickly—and that was the only thing I needed. My hips started fluttering forward, giving her the six fat inches she could take over and over, while her pussy’s juices drenched me like a fountain.

I pulled up, while keeping my head bowed, seeing the space where we met, where I was sinking into her, pulling all the way out before plunging back in as far as I was allowed

“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful,” I said, burying my tongue against her again. She was getting closer, I could smell it. “You taste so good,” I said, coming up, licking her juices off the fur of my chin. Inside, her pussy was swollen now, her walls thick from all the friction I’d given them, holding me hard—and she’d started whining, like she needed something that she couldn’t quite say. “And someday, Satin,” I growled at her, “I’m gonna cum in you, and make you hold it in.”

That was all it took—she shrieked and started trembling all over, bucking forward wildly, her hips working against mine, and fuuuuuuuuckkkk—I stayed in her for as long as I dared, because everything that was in me wanted to feel it—before I ripped myself out of her, straddling her quickly, my hooves digging into her bed as I stroked myself hard.

Then my orgasm took me, and I was shooting out, spurting myself over her, all the cum I’d been storing up to give her my mate from me jetting out of me onto her milky white skin.

I’d never come so hard in my life—and I hadn’t even been inside her.

God help me when I was.

I bent over her when I was finished, panting. “Do you need a life preserver?” I asked. She was some mixture of content, but also astonished—then she ran a finger over her chest to put it in her mouth and lick the cum off of it like icing—and I felt all the blood in my body, sinking once again.

“No,” she said, before giggling. “But next time I might take a tarp,” she said, and it was my turn to laugh.

“We’re heading to the shower,” I said, scooping her up inside my arms to take her there. “And tell me where you keep clean sheets.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

There wasn’t room for both of us in the shower, really, so I cleaned her off quickly, set her free, then gave myself a fast rinse, before coming back out.

I didn’t know what we were now, but I knew what I wanted, so it was worth asking.

“Can I sleep in here? With you?”

She’d put a set of her black silk pajamas back on, and retied her blindfold’s bow—I hadn’t asked her to, but maybe it made her feel more comfortable.

“That depends,” she began, sounding prim. “Do you snore?”

“No,” I said.

“Would you lie about snoring, to get to sleep beside me?”

“One hundred percent, absolutely, duh.”

That made her snicker. “Okay, fine. But if you keep me up, I reserve the right to kick you out again.”

I would hold my breath to stay in her room, if I had to. “Fair.”

“Next question then,” she said, seemingly looking around her room. “Do you have a nighttime kilt?”

“Uh…no.”

“What do you sleep in, then?”

“At home? Nothing. Usually.”

“Except for that,” she said, waving her hand at my legs, where my cuff was.

“Yeah, except for that. Otherwise my dick rolls me over in my sleep when I get a hard on.”

She gawked again—and then laughed.

“What? You—you think I’m joking?” I said, sounding offended—which only made her laugh more.

“It’s a little BDSM’y, isn’t it?” she asked, her nose wrinkling, before crawling into the bed I’d made.

She got under the sheets—whereas I lay on top of them, as chaste as I could be while also being naked and unchained, beside her. “I dunno. For me, it’s just a fact of life,” I said, as she turned toward me, tucking her arm beneath her pillow. I listened to her breathing, knowing she was still awake.

“You know,” she said eventually, “people fetishize me too. Just in different ways. They think I’m helpless, that I can’t fend for myself—and as satisfying as it is to prove them wrong, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to.”

“Well, those people are stupid. You’re amazing.”

For someone who read books in his spare time, I had probably picked the world’s least inspired adjective.

But if I told her how I really felt, and what I wanted from her—from us—she would have had every right to shove me out the door without a parachute.

And…I was hard.

Again.

Goddammit.

I put my hands behind my head, hopefully cushioning some of her pillows from the worst of my horns, and sighed. “If you feel him in the night, ignore him. He’s just curious.”

Satin gave me a sleepy smile, and rested her free hand on the center of my chest. “Goodnight, Ace.”

“G’night, Satin.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

I woke to the sound of Satin shrieking from the room in the plane where the fridge was. I leapt out of her bed, likely shredding her sheets, barreling in, ready to grab her and protect her with my body if we were going down.

But the plane still seemed like it was flying—and she was curled up into one of the chairs, looking at the phone in her hand, before throwing it away.

“What happened?” I asked, running to her side.

She didn’t answer me, she just pointed in the direction her phone had flown. I picked it up, and saw the screen—it was a story about how a bank manager in Moscow had unexpectedly died.

“This is bad, isn’t it,” I asked her.

“Yes,” she answered, before using her fingers to press her lower lip in to chew. She didn’t have any make-up on now, but she was still beautiful—and I knew I had to fix things for her. “That’s two drops compromised, Ace. That means there’s only the third, and who knows if the United States will even report it? It could get swept off the news by some silly holiday shopping news!”

I spied the time and date on the corner of her phone. After all of our jet-setting, we only had a day left.

“Does your information have to compete with the holidays?” I wanted to go on and say I’d rather take her to the moon than let her place herself in danger again, then thought better of it.

This was her mission, after all.

She frowned and bowed her head before quietly saying, “The timing is meaningful to me.”

If it meant something to her, it meant something to me, too.

“Okay then—how can I help?” I asked, kneeling down in the aisle, and placing a hand atop her armrest.

I watched her swallow and felt her thinking. “It’s clear my team’s been compromised. My enemies might’ve gotten lucky in Morocco, what with the paparazzi taking photos, but not in Russia, not without an inside man. So I can’t go to DC anymore—it’d be a death sentence for anyone I met.”

“What’d you need to do there?”

“Hand off a chip for its data to be announced on Ambitron’s channels.”

I recognized the name, they were a well known news corporation.

“I take it we can’t just drop you off at their front door?”

“Not unless I want to get their building bombed.”

I rocked my head back, slightly. “Hmm.”

She waited, one eyebrow cocked above her blindfold. “Hmm?” she asked.

“What if I knew a bombproof building with a direct line to every satellite over North America? Would you even need a news connection, if you could just get your information out, all over the internet?”

She pensively bit her lips. “People would be more likely to discount it as a prank, without the weight of an official news organization behind it.”

“I understand.” She wasn’t wrong—and there wasn’t much I could do about that part. “But would it lend some gravity to the situation if every MSA branch in the world shared your list at the same time?”

Satin quietly gasped and put her hand on top of mine. “You…you could do that?”

“I think so,” I said. I was pretty sure Royce hadn’t fired me, and I had a fantastic in with my branch of the MSA’s IT department. “Although you would definitely have to pay me.”

She rose up in her seat. “In what?” she asked, in an aggressive purr.

It was like her voice was lightning and my dick a lightning rod—but I didn’t want anything about our relationship to actually be transactional. That wasn’t me.

“It’s the kind of thing I would do for any client, Satin,” I quickly clarified. “I was just teasing.”

But the corners of her lips still curved up. “I wasn’t,” she said, and lifted the armrest between us.

I was frozen, as she leaned toward me, over the aisle. “Lay down, Ace,” she commanded—and I did so at once.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

My body took up most of the space between the opposing rows, but Satin didn’t seem to mind as she crawled out on top of me. My dick had already lifted up my kilt, which meant that when Satin rested her hands on my chest and straddled my midsection, the soft skin of its underbelly rubbed against the silk of her pajamas, right beneath her crotch.

“Oh, fuck,” I rumbled. It was clear she meant business—and whatever she wanted to do with me, I was going to let her. But—last night hadn’t been that long ago—she had to be sore. “You sure you’re down for round two?” I asked her, with the last bit of common sense I possessed.

Her hands curled into the shaggier V of fur atop my chest. “Yeah,” she said, grinding down, biting her lips, giving a sigh. “I—I like you.”

It wasn’t love, and she said it like the words cost her, but my heart still thrilled to hear it.

“Yeah? I like you too,” I confessed.

“Not just your dick?” she teased. “But—the rest of you?”

“Yeah, Satin,” I said, grabbing her hips. This way I could drag the silk between her legs up and down all of me. She leaned forward and let me, and I knew I was hitting her clit. She quickly pulled off her top and flung it away. “Now these,” I commanded, meaning her pants.

“You do it.”

I ripped them in two at once.

She wasn’t wearing underwear beneath them, and I felt the soft, hot skin of her pussy rubbing on my shaft immediately.

“Put those on my tab,” I told her, while she started to arch her hips and moan.

I wanted all of her wet, and all over me. I could feel her heat building, so fast, like she was a match and I was a strike-pad—and for the first time I had hope it wasn’t just me in this.

Plenty of other MSA guys had found human women to be with—of course we’d talked about our situations some.

And in the end, not a single one of them had fallen alone.

If my body called to hers—maybe hers wanted to call back.

“Ace,” she whispered, fighting my hands to stay still, before she rocked back and reached down, spreading her pussy wide between her fingers where I could see. I was hit by a wave of her scent, at the same time as I saw all of her folds were glistening, a flushing a dark pink from the friction. I made to grab for her—but then she suddenly leaned forward, planting hands on both my shoulders, picking her hips up.

“Line it up,” she demanded.

I was going to ask if she was sure—then I decided to take her at her motherfucking word. I reached down, lassoed the top half of my cock with a palm, and brought myself up in between her legs at once.

She settled back and gave a small grunt when she made contact, but didn’t press further—she just moved her hips up and down, drenching my slit far better than I could ever manage with my tongue.

I groaned, and ran my other hand into her hair, pulling her face into my chest, so I could watch her heart-shaped ass bob above me.

“Like what you see?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, in a hushed tone. “Always.”

She lifted her head and her lips curved into a soft smile. “Well—since I can’t truly see you—tell me how it feels.”

I groaned, half-a-second away from telling her that her pussy was also ‘amazing.’

“I’m not really a man of words.”

“Try. Please.”

I clenched my jaw and then nodded my head. “Sorry—I’m nodding, I’m down—and I think you can already tell where I want to be.”

She giggled at that, still rubbing her pussy on my cock’s fat head. “Yeah, he’s pretty noticeable. I’m surprised you didn’t fall off the bed last night.”

“Me too,” I said, laughing back. “Can I go inside you?”

“Yeah,” she said, arching slowly back. “But—talk to me,” she urged, as she began to press.

“You’re hot—everywhere, I mean, you’re gorgeous, but, especially right there, and my dick feels like some sort of heat-seeking missile.”

“Yeah?” she teased.

“Uh huh. And the second I scented you—I knew I had to try to—” My words failed me again. “Get inside you?” I guessed, preferring to sound crude over desperate. At the same time, I clenched my ass to rise my hips up and get my dick closer to her and she allowed it, the edges of her pussy finally deigning to take me in, stretching to accommodate my girth. Both of us made deeply satisfied noises, and she started teasing me again, having taken, very literally, just the tip.

“Hmmm,” she purred, just riding there. “You wind up inside a lot of girls, Ace?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t want to lie. I wasn’t as famous as Satin, but thanks to my ex, there were pictures out there of me, too. “But—”

Oh fuck it. It was impossible to lie to her while she was on me, and seeing as she still needed the MSA’s building, while my confession might put an end to this, it wouldn’t send her screaming.

“I think I’m meant for you,” I blurted out, and she stilled her hips immediately, staring down. “Not like in a gee-this-would-be-nice-to-fuck way right here. But something more. Real. Long-term.” Maybe even forever.

Her elegant eyebrows arched over her blindfold. “No wonder you’re shitty at poker,” she said. “You suck at hiding your hand.”

“I don’t want to hide from the person I want to be with. Not now—not ever.”

She was silent above me—still on me!—for another too-long beat. “Then I guess your dick isn’t the only thing big about you.”

I looked up at her, utterly mystified. All of me was big, my hands, my shoulders, my horns. “Which other part?” I asked, slightly terrified of her answer.

She broke into a grin and laughed. “Your heart, you idiot!” she said, and then rocked back to take in more of me.

It wasn’t the answer I longed for—I wanted to hear that felt like I did, and that somehow together we would make things work. But instead of wondering what she was thinking, I decided to listen to her body, which was now eagerly taking me, sliding back and forth, fucking herself with my cock. She leaned over so that my angle into her was perfect, and her breasts brushed my fur.

I wanted to come at once—and had a vision of myself accidentally shooting her across the rest of the jet—so I reached out to either side to grasp hold of the metal legs of the seats where they were bolted into the floor, trying to contain myself.

She noticed the movement from me. “Are you good?”

“Yeah. Just trying to exercise some self-control,” I groaned.

“Why?”

There wasn’t any point in holding back. “Because you make me irrepressibly horny. Because ever since I met you all I’ve only thought about two things: how best to make you happy, and how to give you all my loads. And because if I don’t distract myself somehow, I’m going to tell you more things you might not want to hear.”

She’d started fucking herself in time to my phrases. “There’s all your words,” she said, with a grunt, as she rammed me home in her cunt. She balanced on my chest with one hand, then reached for her clit with the other, fluttering just an inch of me in and out of her, holding me deep inside. “But—who told you—” she said, lightly panting, as she wound herself tighter above me—“that I don’t want to hear them?” she asked, looking down, her hair falling forward to stroke my cheek like a caress.

If that meant…that this was real…I released the chairs beside me slowly, and wrapped my hands around her waist. My fingers met on either side. I didn’t guide her, I just got to feel her there, using all of her small human muscles, taking me.

“Isn’t dating your bodyguard a cliché?” I asked, hardly daring to hope.

She giggled again and licked her lips. “If it’s good enough for the Princess of Rhöndal, it’s good enough for me.”

“Yeah…but I don’t want to fuck her,” I teased, and that made her laugh.

“Stop it Ace, I’m trying to concentrate!” she said, and I could see her free hand practically vibrating between her legs.

For me. Like the rest of her. That wanted to date. Me.

Relief and joy swept through my body like a raging river—and then I knew I needed to get on task.

“Get it, Satin,” I purred. “Use me. Ride me. Rub yourself.”

She bit her lips and then nodded, giving a small whine.

“You’re so fuckin’ close I can feel it,” I said, because I could—her knees were shifting beside me, like a cat waiting to pounce.

“I’m trying,” she whispered—and I knew sometimes, some girls had a hard time coming—hell, sometimes I did, too—so I let go of her waist and grabbed my dick again. It was rock hard, but because it was so long it did have a little give, which meant I could lift it up and down, making it angle differently inside her, like I was stirring her with it.

She squeaked at that, then went completely still, keeping her hips splayed wide.

“Gonna fuckin’ take all of you,” I muttered.

Her rubbing hand dropped and wound into the fur of my chest—marking me with her scent—as she panted. “Ace,” she hissed, tensing, her brow furrowing above her blindfold’s black line as her jaw fell open. “Ace—Ace—Ace!” she called out with a shout, bowing her head down, and then bucking it back, coming on me at last. She swam forward and back, ramming my cock into her, making me hit the back of her over and over again, deeper than I’d been last night, I was certain, and I—I just relished the show. I closed my eyes, feeling her squeeze me, knowing that there really would come a time when I would get to fill her with my spunk, listening to her cries and the soft wet sounds where we met. She shuddered, and gave a final moan, and I knew I was up to bat.

I pulled her off of me, even though she complained, but I kept her on top my chest, as I stroked myself good and hard beside her.

“Someday—soon,” I grunted. “This is gonna be in you—when I unload.”

She nodded frantically, like it was her dearest wish, and suddenly she was right—my heart was as big as my dick—no—bigger—swelling in every dimension.

“Satin,” I warned her, and then let go with a bellow, waves of milky white satisfaction pouring out of me, like my balls were fucking Niagara, covering my chest, but also her shoulder, spattering the side of the nearest chair, and probably spotting the floor.

All because of her.

My mate.

I gave a final groan once I was finished, and another few pulls to clean me out, then just lay there, breathing hard, as she lay atop my heaving chest.

I pushed some of her hair back away from her, trying to save it from getting drenched. “You should get away from that stuff,” I warned her.

She gave me a lazy smile. “You act like it’s poisonous.”

“Because if baby-making were an alcohol, it would be one hundred proof.” I usually wore strong-enough-for-satyrs condoms, but not every satyr did. We had reputations for a reason. Other satyrs though—not me. And looking down at her I was so glad I hadn’t fucked off or fucked around too much before I found her.

“I need to tell you something, Ace,” she said, finally picking herself up.

Part of me panicked, but it was nothing compared to the much larger part of me that now trusted her. “Yeah?” I asked, beginning to draw a lock of hair behind her ear. It’d gotten some cum on the end though—so I tossed its tip into my mouth to clean it.

“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “My real name is Sarah.”

I beamed up at her—the same way she was beaming down. “Sarah,” I said, trying it out for the first time. “Nice to meet you. Let’s go home.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was all showers and business after that. The plane changed course, Sarah figured out where we could safely refuel, and then we were heading to the airport that we’d first left from, back near my branch of the MSA, and I was considering the best way to approach things.

I had all of my friend’s numbers in my phone, of course, and many of my coworkers after that—but there was one I had, because she’d done my onboarding orientation, but that I’d never used before.

I decided to try it, instead of her dad.

“Serena?” I asked, the second she picked up, walking to the back of the plane.

“Who the—” she started off, like it was early in the morning—which it might very well be, in her timezone. “Ace?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you in trouble? Scratch that—should you be?”

“Uh—about that,” I began. “I need your help. Well—MSA’s help. And not just our branch—I’ve got some data we need to release from every branch, simultaneously.”

There was quite a long pause on the other side. “Why?”

Because I’m in love, and insane. “It’s important.”

“Oh? Too bad you didn’t sign any contracts before you stormed off.”

“I wasn’t storming. I was dramatically following the woman I love.” I might as well set the stakes for her.

The pause following that statement was even longer. “Uh huh,” she said, without going on further. Then she heaved a sigh. “We didn’t change the locks, and you know Nex will help you. Just don’t tell my Dad I knew anything.”

“Yeah, I already figured that,” I said, pacing as best I could. “The thing is that I don’t just need hardware access—I need back-up.”

“Aceon,” she hissed, much like my grandmother used to, when I spent too much time bouncing on and off the barn roof as a kid.

“I’m coming in a little hot.”

“Like Serrano pepper? Or Carolina Reaper?”

I wrinkled my nose. I couldn’t actually taste hot things, and usually I ate whatever was in front of me. “Which one’s worse?”

I thought she was disappointed in me, until she chuckled. “Okay—I’m texting you Sylas’s number. But if his wife says he can’t go out, Ace, you need to respect that—they just had a baby.”

“He’s married?” My words tumbled out in my astonishment.

If a Nightmare could manage to find love and companionship, I sure as shit had better be able to.

“Yes. I was a bridesmaid.” Her voice was briefly distant, since she’d taken her phone away from her ear. “It was all very lovely. But—it’s their baby’s first Christmas, so don’t you dare fuck this up for them.”

My phone beeped as her text landed. “I won’t, I promise, thanks.”

“Merry Christmas, Ace,” she said kindly, then added. “And good luck.”

“Thanks,” I said, then hung up to dial the number she’d sent me.

“Hello?” A familiar gruff voice said when it picked up.

“Hey, Sylas—it’s Aceon. From work.”

“How many Aceons do you think I know?” he asked, and then his voice sank deeper, becoming something dangerous. “And how did you get this number?”

“Serena.” I felt all right throwing her under the bus for that. “I wouldn’t call if it weren’t important, but it is.”

The Nightmare made a thoughtful sound. “I’m listening.”

I summed up as much of Sarah’s story as I could, quickly, and I didn’t leave anything out—I couldn’t take the Nightmare on a mission with me in good conscience if I didn’t tell him that our enemies were numerous, well-equipped, and bloodthirsty.

“Ahhhhh,” he said, when I finished getting him caught up. “Well then.”

I didn’t know if that was good or bad—but Sarah was looking back at me in hope—and I knew that even if Sylas left me high-and-dry, I’d figure out something, for her sake.

I had to.

“And just what time are you landing?”

That, I knew—Sarah’d given me the information after she’d finished changing our coordinates.

“Don’t leave your plane. I’ll meet you on board.”

I remembered Serena’s admonition at the last moment. “Wait—don’t you need to ask your wife?”

“Don’t worry, she’ll be out at a holiday gathering with friends,” he said, and hung up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

That left Sarah and I with eight hours to spare. But instead of fucking madly, we just sat by one another and talked. She was in jeans and a fitted T-shirt, and she couldn’t get enough of petting my fur—and I wanted to learn all about her, now that I had clearly made the cut.

The time passed like a quiet current between us, gentle and unhurried. Sarah rested her hand on my arm, her fingers stroking my fur absently, and for once, I didn’t feel like I had to be larger than life. She asked me questions about my childhood, about the first time I realized I was different, and instead of brushing them off, I found myself answering honestly. In return, she told me about the tiny rebellions of her youth—things like sneaking out of her family’s estate and then making the bodyguard who picked her up tell her how he caught her, so she could do a better job of it the next time. It was the most human I’d ever seen her, stripped of all the layers she wore to protect herself from the world, and I realized anew how much I wanted to be the one she didn’t have to hide from.

“Then I got these eyes when I was ten—and I had to re-learn everything,” she said, pointing to her blindfold. “I was upset at first, because I was a kid, you know, and I really wanted them to shoot lasers—then my mom said, “what would you even do with that if they could?” I couldn’t very well tell her ‘go and shoot all of my enemies’, so I said, “I don’t know. Carve statues?” and the very next day she hired a famous sculptor to tutor me. The rest is history.”

“I like a monofocused woman,” I teased, letting my voice carry the warmth of how much I enjoyed simply being with her. She flushed and shook her head, retreating, so I caught her wrists and pulled her back. “Don’t hide. I want to know everything.”

“Well that’s good, because I’ve never told anyone else this much.”

I brought her hands up to my lips and kissed them. “That’s because we’re meant to be, Sarah. I promise.”

Then she bowed her head further. “Ace—I’ve had all sorts of other men make me promises before.”

I wasn’t worried, I just kept smiling at her. “There’s your problem then,” I told her. “None of them were satyrs.”

Her head stayed bowed a moment longer, then she laughed.

Somehow I got her to sleep on my shoulder for a few hours, before the plane landed and we taxied out to the hangar where it lived in between missions.

“Tell your men to keep the door closed, okay?” I told her, pulling out my phone to send Sylas a text.

He appeared in the jet right after it was sent, in a cloud of smoke and malice.

“You rang?” he intoned, forming into something more solid quickly, although there was still a piece of smoke on his chest that I couldn’t quite make out.

Sarah jumped at the sound of his voice—and I realized he didn’t register on any of her equipment.

“Sarah, this is Sylas—he was with us at the MSA before we left.”

“I remember his voice—but how did he get on board?” she asked me, panicking.

“I can portal. But civilians aren’t supposed to know I can do that, so don’t spread it around.”

And just then…a baby cried, from the vicinity of Sylas’s ribcage.

It was my turn to panic. “What the fuck was that?”

“I told you—Mina’s went to Ellum’s Christmas party, and I stayed at home to watch Lucian,” Sylas said, settling a proprietary hand on what I was now realizing was a smoke-hidden baby-sling. “Don’t worry,” he said, this time to his child. “I’ll feed you soon,” he went on, before looking at me. “Right?”

“Uh…yeah—right—let’s get back to headquarters?”

“I’ll take you there immediately,” Sylas said, opening up some sort of hole through which the lobby of MSA headquarters could be seen.

I put Sarah’s hand on my arm. “Trust me?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she said with a nod.

“Then let’s go.”

Half-a-second later we were stepping onto the Monster Security Agency lobby’s tile.

“You couldn’t deposit us up in the server room?” I complained.

“No—because then people wouldn’t see you, and where would the fun be in that?” Sylas said.

“See us?” Sarah asked.

“I did some of my own recon after Ace called. Your shadowy group seems to have been keeping tabs on us since you two left, possibly waiting for news, or Ace’s return.”

Which meant that they knew I had, seeing as the lobby windows in front of us were open to the outside world.

“And this was your helpful plan?” I confronted him.

“I have a baby to feed,” Sylas stated. And the infant that was obscured by his baby-sling started crying.

The Nightmare had gone and put my mate in danger—and for what? “Sylas!” I growled.

“Shhh—you’re upsetting him,” he said, bobbing his child up and down—as Sarah’s hand squeezed my arm. I shook my head and wrapped an arm around her instead, propelling us both toward the elevator.

We were quiet on the eleven floor ride up to the server room. “This is going to work,” I promised her. “I swear it.”

“I know,” she said, giving me a deep nod.

“Okay,” I said, as the doors opened. “Twenty steps down the hall, then there’s a door to the right,” I told her, before letting her go to run ahead and get it open. “Nex!” I shouted once I had, turning on the lights and banging a fist on a metal wall.

“Hello Aceon,” said a clinical sounding disembodied voice from somewhere above me.

“Hey, Nex—I need your help.” Nex was the AI that coordinated our branch of the MSA’s affairs. He was wildly overpowered and annoyingly good at Call of Duty.

“It will be my joy to serve you.”

“Cut that shit out,” I told him, rolling my eyes.

“Sup, dawg, time to get fragged?” Nex tried next, in his prim and proper voice.

“We really need to work on your personality.”

“That would require working around more normal people.”

I started setting a workstation up for Sarah. “Over here!” I shouted, when she came in the room. “Four steps forward, ten to the left!”

I’d managed it by the time she got there, so she had a chair in front of a monitor, and one of the plates we put potentially dangerous gear and magical objects onto, until we could safely disarm them.

“Just tell Nex what you want, and he’ll do it, or tell you how. Nex—without her tech, Sarah’s blind, and you’d better treat her right, or I will never let you win at CoD again.”

“Wait—you’re leaving?” Sarah said, just as an alarm started going off from somewhere in the building below.

“Yeah.” Bombs and babies didn’t mix. “I can’t let that idiot fight without me.”

“Ace—” she called out, before I could leave. “Be careful?”

“Of course,” I swore, before running off.

How could I not be?

I had important things to live for.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I opted to bound down the stairs rather than take the elevator, seeing as I was fairly sure I was heading into a combat situation. The rising scent of gunpowder, and smoke not attached to Sylas shortly confirmed it.

I paused behind the final door to listen, before bursting into the lobby, in time to see Sylas wrapping the tree with what looked like intestines—they were—and then I stood there for a whole ten silent seconds just wishing I hadn’t seen it, before I noticed twenty corpses on the ground.

“Ace!” Sylas shouted, sounding much more friendly, scooping the guts out of another downed man. He flung these towards the lobby’s door, where they skidded wetly on the tile. “How many of them am I allowed to kill?”

“Uh—” I stuttered. “As many as it takes for my girlfriend to do her thing—but what the fuck, man? That’s disgusting!”

Sylas dusted his hands free of blood before putting them to his baby sling and soothing his child. “That’s the point. There’s nothing more demoralizing than slipping in the blood of your downed fellow fighter.”

I guessed I couldn’t disagree.

“We’re almost full, aren’t we?” Sylas cooed to the tiny burden he held.

I looked from him, to the outside of the building again, where no one else seemed interested in running up, for highly understandable reasons. “Uh…so…you’ve got things handled?”

Sylas gave an affronted snort. “It isn’t really even challenging.”

“Okay, well, call me if that changes,” I said, jumping in the elevator to ride back up.

I raced back to the server room once the door opened, and found Nex and Sarah working with one of her eyes on the plate, with her giving him instructions.

“I’m back,” I announced, so she’d know.

“How are things?” she asked, looking over.

“Turns out he has shit fairly under control.”

“I think we’re ready,” Nex said. “I cannot guarantee you will be able to use this orb again when I am through with it—and you might want to look away. I wouldn’t want to damage any of the circuits in your remaining eye.”

“Understood,” Sarah said, pushing her chair back, and standing up.

Two of Nex’s armatures dropped down from the ceiling, and started doing things to the eyeball she’d left behind, creating bright lights behind her back. One of her mechanical eyes was still in place, while the other socket was empty.

“I don’t like people seeing me like this,” she said, reaching back quickly for her blindfold.

“Okay,” I said, because it was up to her. “Just as long as we both agree, I’m not people.”

Half of her lips twisted up into a smile.

“Aceon,” Nex said from overhead. “I’ve detected an external threat to the building.”

“Sylas is fine, I promise,” I said.

“Not from the lobby—from outside. There are several hundred drones armed with explosives approaching the building.”

“Why?” I asked.

Sarah gasped. “Because while your building is bombproof—I’m betting your transmission antenna is not,” she said.

“Quite right,” Nex agreed.

“Nex, how long will it take for you to upload my data?” Sarah asked.

“If you want every MSA branch in the world to release it simultaneously, it will take 12 minutes and 34 seconds to propagate across my network with the required redundancy,” Nex told her.

“Is this where the action is?” Sylas asked, coming into the room.

“Not anymore,” I told him, before looking to Sarah. “Stay here. This place should be safe.” But what Sylas and I were going off to do likely was not. “Also? I love you,” I said, before running into the hall and closing the door behind me.

“So it’s like that, is it?” Sylas teased, surging along side me, before disappearing completely.

“You’d better be going up!” I hollered, hoping he would hear, before I hit the elevator doors.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I stepped out at the MSA building’s top-most floor and then took the short metal stairs up onto the roof. The door was locked, but by then I’d built up enough of a head of steam that I burst through it, sending it flying.

I’d never had a reason to be on the MSA roof before, so I’d never seen the antenna tower up close. It loomed above me, a lattice of steel beams and cables narrowing as it climbed toward the sky. Dishes and receivers bristled near the top like the quills of some futuristic porcupine, and a ladder bolted to one side promised a precarious climb.

The whole structure hummed with energy, vibrating faintly as it fed signals in and out—a heartbeat of technology connecting the building to the world—and keeping it intact was the only gift I could give my mate for Christmas.

And Nex had been right. Past the antenna, there was a swarm of incoming drones, easily visible against the more brightly lit buildings behind them.

“Thoughts?” Sylas asked.

“Oh, now you care?” I asked him.

“I’m more of a wetwork kind of guy,” he explained, like I hadn’t noticed.

Were the drones operated by programming, or by humans? Either way—“They can’t aim for what they can’t see,” I said. “Keep me clear though?”

“Understood,” Sylas said, going diffuse in an instant, only to crowd the entire roof with smoky gray, as I ran for the antenna structure in the middle of the smoke and started carefully climbing. I tried each piece for stability before I trusted it, and made sure not to touch any cables—I had no doubt my sharp hooves could easily clip one by accident.

Sylas’s shadows were thick all around me, stretching up into tendrils that lashed toward the drones, slapping them out of the air. Some bobbed and recuperated, others plummeted to the distant ground, but oddly none of them were going off, yet—I imagined their operators didn’t want us knowing they were armed with explosives until they were sure they would work, to keep the element of surprise.

“Ace?” came a voice from inside my ear. Sarah. “I told Nex he could hack into this, so I could speak to you. There’s still nine minutes to go. I hope you’re okay.”

So far, so good, I wished I could tell her, but the connection was only for receiving.

“They’re sending more drones, Ace. A whole other wave of them. Whatever you’re doing now is working—but I wanted to warn you.”

“More incoming!” I shouted out to Sylas, so he’d know.

“Understood!” he shouted back.

“Also?” she said, sounding hesitant. “I know it sounds crazy. But I think I love you, too. So come back to me, all right?”

I was so stunned in that moment I almost fell off the antenna.

But then right after that, I became so light I could fly.

“They’re dropping payloads!” Sylas shouted—which gave me just enough warning to brace.

These drones didn’t bother trying to gain access to the antenna—they just began dropping their bombs. I could see explosions bursting through Sylas’s smoke, as he created a dome over the antenna, deflecting most of their energy outwards, but at a cost.

“This…is actually somewhat painful,” he said, sounding surprised. “Hold Lucian,” he demanded, and a baby sling materialized around my chest, strapped over one shoulder, and around my hips.

“You didn’t leave him in the server room?”

“A son’s place is at his father’s side!” Sylas said, sounding irritable. “How much longer?”

“Seven minutes.”

Sylas didn’t respond to that—and I had a feeling that was a bad thing.

“Okay, so,” Sarah said, returning in my ear. “Nex says they’re being directed by one larger drone that’s being operated remotely. He’s trying to get into their system now, but he says in the meantime, if you take that one out, it should take out the rest of them.”

“Which one of them’s biggest?” I shouted out to Sylas, making an educated guess.

“There’s one…that’s just…orbiting…to the west,” he said, with grunts. “I can’t reach it while I’m maintaining the antenna’s integrity though.”

I grit my teeth—I couldn’t safely run down to get the door I’d burst off of its hinges to hurl, not while I was carrying Sylas’s baby. So I reached out to the nearest dish and tapped, thud-thud-thud, tap-tap-tap, thud-thud-thud, hoping that Nex and Sarah would hear.

“Ace?” Sarah’s voice burst into my ear a second later. “Are you okay?” she asked, likely because she couldn’t help herself, then no doubt thinking hard. “You’re up there—Sylas is helping—but you need—a—a ranged weapon!” The line between us went dead for a moment, before she picked up again. “Nex says don’t touch that dish you just hit again—but that there should be another one, ten feet higher up, and six feet to your left. It’s redundant!”

I nodded, even though no one could see me but Lucian, and began very carefully climbing.

“Four minutes,” Nex informed me, as I became level with the dish and started scooting out. At this height the antenna’s structure had begun swaying, and I didn’t know if that was because of my weight, or the continual pounding Sylas’s smoke-shield was taking outside. I crept sideways, and Sylas noticed my change in direction at once.

“What’re you doing?” he demanded.

“Getting a weapon!” I shouted back. The dish loomed in front of me—a huge, concave circle of steel and bolts. It was heavy, yes, but I’d carried worse—and I was lucky, the dish and the drone that counted were on the same side. I got one arm around its edge, bracing my shoulder against it as I worked my cloven hooves under the support brackets like a pry bar, wedging them off, one by one, while trying to keep my center of gravity low, and Lucian carefully balanced against me.

The dish came off into my free arm with a groan of steel, and I grunted, bracing it against my body. It was about three feet wide, and heavy, maybe fifty pounds.

“You’re gonna need to take Lucian back, Sylas,” I called out. “And I’m gonna need a clearing.”

“Timeframe?” he shot back.

I heaved the dish up higher with one arm. “Now!”

Lucian’s slight weight disappeared as did Sylas’s smoke, and my sightline toward a larger drone, bristling with antenna of its own, was clear. I leaned out as far from the antenna as I dared, feeling like King Kong, and then I hurtled the dish overhead, like I was throwing an axe, with so much force that I had to let go of the antenna to finish the movement, plummeting thirty feet straight down.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The impact of my hooves hitting the roof’s concrete jarred through my body and my teeth slammed shut so hard that one of my molars chipped, but I ignored that, spitting it out and looking up to where I could see the stars—because all of Sylas’s smoke and the plastic scent of exploded C4 was clearing.

Was the Nightmare okay? And his baby?

And what had happened with Nex and Sarah?

“Sylas?” I shouted, immediately concerned.

He coagulated in front of me, baby-sling and all. “After you made your move, they departed.”

And the antenna was still in one piece, so—“Ace!” Sarah shrieked, coming through the open roof door. “Are you all right? We lost contact with you—”

I was already running for her, crunching through drone rubble and scanning the ground for unexploded ordinance.

“Back inside!” I demanded, picking her up like she weighed nothing. “Sorry—it’s just not safe—”

“You’re alive!” she squeaked as I squeezed all the air out of her. “What happened?”

“He hurled a dish like a discus, taking the largest drone out of the sky,” Sylas intoned from beside me.

“And without it around, I managed to override their security systems, and send the rest of them home and armed,” Nex said, from…I didn’t know where.

“You’re not supposed to be free range, Nex.”

“Hmm,” he said, mimicking thought quite effectively. “I suspect a lot of things have happened tonight that we shouldn’t tell our superiors.”

“You’re not wrong there,” I muttered. “But—as for now.”

“We’re safe,” Sylas said, putting a gentle hand against the sling he carried, making Lucian coo.

“You all know what that means then, right?” I asked everyone surrounding. “It’s time to get our stories straight.”

Sylas swore up and down he’d have the lobby cleaned before the actual cleaning people came and had a heart attack—and he had a confession for me before he left to manage it, pulling me aside as Sarah and Nex discussed the best ways to decontaminate the roof. “There is a slight chance that I, as the humans say, ‘owe you one’.”

“Nonsense. I only did what any other MSA agent would do up there,” I said, assuming he meant my moment of heroism on the antenna, when I was left exposed.

“Hmm? No, not that—I mean, of course you would’ve,” he said. “But no, I mean more in relation to you never telling my wife that Lucian and I were here.”

It was hard not to burst out laughing. “Serena told me to tell you to ask her for permission! And I did!”

Sylas made a disgruntled sound. “Well, we were hungry, and this time of year is strange, isn’t it? All good feelings and cheer? I find myself disliking it.”

I reached out and clapped his shadowy shoulder, careful not to fall through him. “Me too, man,” I said, before catching sight of Sarah. “I mean, up until about four and a half days ago. But don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Good,” the Nightmare said. Then he opened up a portal to another place and disappeared, as Sarah returned to my side, beaming.

“Well?” I asked her.

“It worked—or rather, it’s working—multiple news outlets are reporting on the list now!”

“Worldwide,” Nex added.

“And here I thought you all were discussing plastique removal,” I teased. “But really, Sarah—that’s amazing!” I said, feeling stupid, until she threw herself into my arms and agreed.

“It is! It really is!” she said, as I lifted her up and spun her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“And you’re sure this is a good idea?” I asked Nex, as Sarah and I walked through the lobby, relieved to discover that Sylas had taken down all the intestines, true to his word. “I mean, won’t you get into trouble?” I asked him. “He won’t turn you off, will he? I can’t be losing my CoD buddy.”

“Royce will be here in approximately fifteen minutes, and, while I am not human, I suspect it will be easier for me to explain my illicit use of MSA resources if you are not.”

I let go a held breath. “All right then. And if he works himself up, remind him my holiday technically has three days left, and I’m within my contractual rights to go offline.”

“Bye, Nex—it was lovely to meet you,” Sarah said, with a wave, as we exited the lobby, and then to me she said, “I hope you don’t mind I summoned us a ride,” as an Escalade pulled up.

“Can’t lie, I’m a little bummed, I wanted you to have to snuggle near me to keep warm while we waited.”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “We can still snuggle in the back seat.”

We drove back to her jet by mutual decision—I had a toothbrush there, she didn’t have one at my place, and her sheets were nicer. Plus it would be easier to hole up and hide out there, if we needed to get away—there would likely be repercussions, good and bad, for the information she’d unleashed. Reporters wanting stories, criminal prosecutors starting cases—and while Sarah wanted to help with all that, and definitely would—this time right now over the holidays, while people processed her information and decided what to do with it, seemed like the only lull we’d have for quite some time.

We ordered pizza to the plane from the concourse—not a thing I knew you could do, prior—and then we watched the news roll in on TV.

“This is going to be insane for awhile,” she said, working on her second slice.

“But—in a good way, right?” I asked, checking in. Because if she needed me to redo this whole past week over again to help her, I would.

Especially the sex parts.

“Yeah,” she said, clicking the television off. “Seems like everyone’s starved for news, and there’s only so much entertainment you can milk out of NORAD’s Santa Cam.”

“So, why’d we need get all this done by Christmas Eve, anyhow?” I asked, after finishing my own piece, and sending my tongue out to lick any remnants of grease or sauce off of my fur.

She turned and gave me a bittersweet smile. “It was my father’s favorite holiday. He decorated the embassy up for it every year. When I was a kid, our Christmas tree seemed like a mile high—and while my mom kept up the work later—I knew it hurt her. So I just wanted to make a big change, and have new and better memories for the day, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said, swallowing, before standing to offer her my hand. “I’ve got my hand out now, Sarah. Would you…like to come make some memories with me?”

Her head tilted up, showing me her beaming smile, as she put her hand up so I could take it. “Yeah, Ace—let’s.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I was glad she was walking behind me, so she wouldn’t feel my dick rising up to grope her. I could hardly blame it though—its instincts were good, and it’d finally led me to the right girl.

Once we were inside her bedroom, I turned to pick her up and toss her gently on the bed. She squealed and then laughed, kicking off her shoes as she bounced, reaching her arms out for me.

“Yeah?” I teased, unlatching my kilt, thrilled to see her so eager. “You’re not scared of this big, horny monster who wants to eat you?”

She laughed and shook her head. “Not as long as he wants to eat the right parts,” she said, reaching down to unzip her jeans.

I helped her pull them off quickly, then lay down, trusting her to manage her own shirt and bra. Instead, I nuzzled the space between her thighs, running my nose up and down the shiny silk that protected her pussy from me, inundating myself with her scent, before letting my lips reach forward to pull her underwear off of her, so that I could take a careful bite.

It took two bites though for her to realize precisely what it was that I was doing.

“Ace! You aren’t!” she gasped, as I chewed the fabric lucky enough to be drenched by her juices and swallowed it.

“I am.”

“Oh my God!” she shouted, and then rocked back, laughing, her head in her hands, as I started licking her newly revealed pussy. She switched gears quickly though. “That’s so good,” she said, with a moan, reaching down to run her fingers through the patch of shaggier fur I had between my horns on my head.

I tilted my head side to side, hoping she’d get the hint, and she did, grabbing hold of my horns.

“You like that?” she wondered.

I nodded into her cunt, started pushing my tongue in, and her walls came for me at once, already excited, primed by the fact I’d given her pleasure every other single time.

Her body knew what she needed—and so did I.

“Oh yeah, Ace,” she breathed, beginning to arch her hips up. I caught them with my hands to support her, and she tossed her feet over my shoulders, letting her knees fall wide, leaving her totally exposed. She held onto my horns with one hand and used the other to pull at her nipples and for some reason that gesture in particular left me panting—so I rose up from between her legs to tell her so.

“Keep doing that,” I said, then added, “please.”

“Hmm?” she asked, looking down the plane between her breasts at me and giving me a conquering smile. “This?” she asked, pulling her nipples up, then dropping her full breasts, making them bounce and jiggle.

The sight of it made stupid primal shit rise up inside me—thoughts I didn’t want about how those breasts were not only mine but that someday I would share them with a baby.

I was mammalian, after all.

Then she licked her fingers, before pulling her nipples into tiny peaks in front of me, and I just about died.

“Come help me, Ace,” she said, with a helplessness that I knew was all for show. “My period’s coming, they feel all full and achy.”

I rose over her the same as I might have were she playing a flute and charming a snake, moving to take one nipple in between my strong lips and pull and suck at it, and then the other, all the while she held her breasts up for me, making gratifying noises, my dick hovering between us like a flesh-colored surfboard.

“That’s so good too,” she whined, as I licked a broad stripe between them, over her, not wanting to break contact with her skin. Then she reached one arm underneath, to hold both of them up, while reaching down to play with her clit again, jostling my dick with her arm—and I moved it away from her, bringing lower body up, so that I could slap her pussy with my balls.

“You need me there?” I murmured, in between deep, rolling sucks.

She didn’t answer, she just nodded.

“How badly?” I asked, watching her body flush. I could feel the wet folds of her pussy briefly stick against me with each tap, like they were trying to catch me and pull me in.

“So badly,” she swore.

I could’ve pretended I was taking pity on her, but the truth was I was taking pity on myself—I kissed between her breasts, and down her stomach, until my hands were supporting me over her hips, and my dick was aligned.

“Gonna go in now,” I warned her, leaning down to kiss the point of her hip, as I began to do so. “I’ll be slow.”

“You don’t need to be,” she protested—and she was right—she was wetter than the ocean.

“Maybe I’m being slow for me,” I teased. “’Cause I wanna make this last, eh? And feel you while I can?”

She inhaled, and held her breath for long enough that I stopped moving entirely. “Or…what if you just hurry up and come inside me?” she suggested instead—and when I was finished being stunned, I pulled myself right the hell back out.

“Sarah—you don’t know what you’re asking.”

She pushed herself up on her elbows. “Who says I don’t?”

That…was a very good question.

“I think you might not understand,” I said, awkwardly kneeling back and checking my phrasing. “Like, satyr sperm will knock up anyone within three weeks on either side of an egg release.” I’d gotten told so in a special monster sex ed class at school, along with all the other monsters, and it’d killed whatever ‘game’ fourteen year old Ace’d possessed, seeing as most girls that age knew they didn’t want babies. “It’s relentlessly potent.”

But Sarah wasn’t in high school—and she wasn’t running away.

And she was also probably the smartest person I knew, barring Nex, who wasn’t really alive, and/or begging to be boned by me.

“Just because I’m me doesn’t mean I never wanted a normal life,” she said, lightly frowning.

And then I realized she’d entirely misread my hesitance. “Oh shit—no—it’s not that—at all—at-all-at-all,” I backpedaled, leaning forward and catching one of her hands, so I could place it on my chest, hoping she could feel my heart. “It’s just that this is maybe the first time I’ve gotten everything I’ve always wanted. I just want to be sure that you want it, too.”

She tilted her head to the side, so her hair could stream out against her sheets. “Ace,” she began, but I interrupted.

“I do love you, Sarah. I really do. I didn’t tell you that just because I thought I might die and I wanted you to hear it. I meant it then, and I mean it now, and I want to keep loving you for as long as you’ll let me, which is hopefully a very long time. I’m a hundred percent positive that you’re my mate, and—even if you don’t feel the same way—I know that I can show you. If you’ll let me.”

The words came out in a rush, I couldn’t stop them, and the relief I felt after saying them was the same as I got sometimes after really good release.

Maybe, if I got to tell Sarah I loved her every night, I wouldn’t have to jack off to go to sleep.

Or maybe, I could tell her that and fuck her, every night for forever, and live in the best of both worlds.

She reached up to take my face between her hands. “Did you get a concussion when you landed on the ground?” she asked, and I shook my head rather than answer her. “Did you forget I told you I loved you back?”

I shook my head again. “I think…I just needed to hear it.”

She smiled at me. “I love you, Aceon. Which you’ll just have to trust is wildly out of character for me. But that’s how I know this is right—because I feel it too.” She let go of my face and patted the bed. “C’mere,” she said, and did I was told, laying down beside her, spearing one of her pillows with a horn.

She turned to face me, and leaned in to give my nose a kiss.

“Careful. You don’t know where that’s been,” I warned her, and she laughed, giving my chest a playful shove.

“Don’t be a jerk, Ace,” she teased, then kissed a line from my nose up to my cheek, pressing her lips against my fur.

And for the first time in my life I felt loved, and appreciated, just for who I was—even moreso as she wriggled up to nibble on my ear.

“Oh God,” I whispered, and she laughed quietly.

“What you thought I didn’t notice?” she asked, pulling it’s lightly furred felt between her lips, while rubbing at the base of my ear on the other side.

“No—I just didn’t think you could get anymore perfect,” I said, wrapping my hands around her ribcage, lifting a breast up for me to lick.

“That’s cheating,” she complained.

“What else was I supposed to do? It was right there!” I said with a laugh.

Then she brought her face down, running her temple against mine, then she nuzzled into my neck, before resting her head on my arm, holding onto the fur of my chest with one hand, while the other reached down—not between her legs, but between mine.

She took hold of me and it felt—I don’t know—right? Amazing? Words couldn’t express how I felt anymore, and it wouldn’t have mattered if my favorite book was the dictionary.

Especially as she put one knee over me, and started pulling me into place.

“Yeah?” she whispered.

“Very yeah,” I agreed, thrusting up gently, once I was notched.

It was tight for half-a-second, and then her pussy remembered who it belonged to and opened up, letting me slide myself right in. I arched forward until I bottomed out and she let loose a long moan. “Just like that, Ace. Please.”

What else could I do? I mean—of-fucking-course. I put one hand on her hip to steady her, and started up a rhythm, in-in-in, out-out-out, in-in-in—

“Ace?” Sarah asked, her voice briefly going high. “Are you…fucking me in morse code right now?”

“Oh shit.” I had been.

“Do you need rescuing from my vagina?” she asked with a cackle. “I mean, there’s easier ways to tell me you want a safeword.”

“No,” I groaned. “It was just on my mind from earlier, I think.”

Luckily loving me required a good sense of humor. She couldn’t stop laughing, and I didn’t mind, because each time she did she gave me a squeeze.

“Oh my God,” she giggled, with a final titter, biting her lips as she looked up at me. “I do fucking love you. I must, because really.”

“That’s good,” I said, grinning back at her, striking up a much more serious rhythm. “Because I hear laughing increases your chance of getting pregnant by like…three thousand percent.”

She chuckled darkly, rolling back, while pushing down her hips. “Yeah?” she asked, grabbing hold of one of my horns to make me bow my head. I took the hint, and eagerly sucked her breast. “How about I be in charge of doing all the math in the family,” she said, moving her hand so that she could keep a thumb wrapped around my horn’s base, but also rub my ear with the rest of her fingers, and I was ecstatic. “And you be in charge of opening jars and all the fucking?”

I groaned into her, pulling my head back far enough to say, “Sounds good to me,” and then her knee squeezed my hip and everything changed.

“Right there,” she whined, riding her hips against me.

“Mmmm,” I purred, feeling her squirm on my cock like bait for a fish.

“You’re so deep,” she said, like it was a complaint, but I knew it wasn’t when she threw her hand over head, to brace off of her headboard and take me deeper.

“Only because you’re so open for me,” I whispered. She’d never be able to take all of me, our bodies couldn’t combat straight science, but as long as she loved me, however much of me she wanted, it would always be enough.

“Ace,” she hissed, and I nodded.

“Don’t brace, okay? Let go,” I said, bringing her wrist down, so I could push her up, her silk sheets sliding against her skin. I pulled almost the entire way out, and then did it again. “You feel so fuckin’ good, Sarah.”

She nodded, like she agreed, and then her hands found my fur and clenched. “Oh—right there—at the back—that spot—right there—” she pleaded, and I groaned, the friction between us was maddening.

“I’ve got you,” I promised, bowing my head, blowing hot breaths on her chest. “Whatever you need. As long as it takes.”

She could only answer me with a whine. “Ace—Ace—oh my God—don’t pull out—fuck me through—”

I could only grunt an answer and then she was coming, violently, speared on me, riding her hips back and forth like I was a horse, crying out and shouting my name like she belonged to me—because she did.

Of course I wanted to fuckin’ fill her up.

I started to thrust against her with intent, making her whole body bob, her pussy clamped around me like it wanted what I had to give.

“Yeah,” she gasped, when she could speak again, throwing her head back, her fingers curled tightly into the fur atop my chest. “Please, Ace—please—”

That was all it took. Even if we hadn’t done anything else before, I think the sound of my mate asking for my cum would’ve caused my balls to spontaneously answer. I grunted and groaned, feeling them slide against my inner thigh as they lifted, squeezing to give her her first mated load. I shuddered with pleasure as it shot out—and then realized what I’d been missing all along, trapped in all those condoms—the magic of how wonderfully lubricating satyr spunk could be.

My balls pulsed, another wave rolled through me, and I would’ve sworn it was enough to push her up the bed—but whatever ground I lost, I easily regained, shoving back into her with a rude squelch.

I didn’t care though—not when it was because of me—not when I could feel her pussy quivering still, like it couldn’t believe it’s goddammed luck that my dick was ramming home and coming deep inside her.

Sarah cried out as I jetted in her again—I couldn’t help myself—and then I realized everything that was happening to me wasn’t just a dream, or something boy satyrs whispered about to other boys after their sex ed class.

Sarah was my mate.

Of course she’d put me into my first rut.

“Oh God, Ace,” she whispered, as cum started pouring out from where we met, dripping down her thighs. “It’s hot,” she said, and I had a moment of shame that almost threw me out of things before she continued. “It feels good.”

“Good,” I grunted, trying not to grit my teeth as my balls pulled up again. It was like the entire lower half of my body was now acting on instinct, and I was just the puppet attached to the strings. “Oh God—Sarah—I’ve gotta—” I groaned, losing myself inside of her again.

“I can’t believe how much you love me,” she said, clinging onto my fur for dear life.

If love were measured in semen volume, then yes—so very fucking much.

Then she hissed, and gasped, and I worried I’d done something wrong, trying to maintain some control of—I didn’t the fuck know at this point, as my lust rose like a thermometer on a summer day—maybe the top quarter of my brain?—before she let go of me with a hand and put it back between her legs to touch herself.

I gasped and came again.

“Yeah—uh-huh—” she said. “Just—just like that—”

For the next few hours, orgasms were like one of those pendulum toys on fancy office desks, swinging back and forth between us. I would slow down, and then she would start up, or vice versa, and back again—I knew her mattress was destroyed, but why not ruin it for all it’s worth?—and she went hoarse from screaming.

And then the tide of lust—or cum—receded. Some semblance of sanity was restored, and I was stroking just to stroke, because I didn’t want to leave her.

“Oh Ace,” she said, collapsing even further against me, and I slowed to a stop and gently stroked her back. For the first time in my entire fucking adult life, my balls actually felt drained. My dick relaxed at long last, she shifted, and it slid out, closely followed by a warm gush of the last cum I’d shot in her pussy.

She made a satisfied hum. “If that doesn’t get me pregnant, I don’t know what the fuck will,” she said, and I could feel her smiling against my chest.

I didn’t either…but I still wanted to be sure.

“Uh, so, can we do one more thing? It’s a long-term fantasy of mine.”

She drowsily pushed back. “What?”

“It’s easier to show you. Just say yes.”

The smile she gave me then was blinding. “Yes.”

“Okay,” I announced, slowly getting up—my cum drenched fur was stuck to me, and I was sure I looked at least partially like a wet cat, so I was kinda glad she couldn’t see. Then I grabbed her by her ankles…and began carefully lifting her up in front of me.

“Ace!” she shouted.

“I’ll be careful!” I promised, and the plane was on the ground. She squealed as I lifted her high and started running my tongue between her legs.

I already knew what I tasted like, from my own shenanigans—but tasting myself and her? Knowing that my sperm was already settling itself inside her, stalking her next egg like a caveman stalked a bear?

The thought was so good, I could barely stand thinking it—especially because I knew I wasn’t dreaming it alone.

“You’re so silly!” she laughed, and then purred my name as I sucked on her clit. “How long has this been a fantasy?”

I smiled right against her pussy, where I knew that she could feel it. “For the better part of five days.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I made her come two more times, then gingerly set her down. As far as I was concerned, she was pregnant with my baby now, and any confirmation that might come after was merely a formality. I took her to the shower, washed her clean, and then we sprayed half the bathroom as she tried to clean me, mostly because we didn’t both fit in the shower, and neither one of us was willing to admit it.

“This is a point in my apartment bathroom’s favor—the shower’s huge, even if nothing else is,” I told her, when we were drying off.

“I’ll remodel,” she said flippantly, giving me a smile, before sobering. “Though I’m not looking forward to sleeping on a waterbed.”

“That’s a charitable definition of it,” I laughed, before stalking into the other room to fix things.

She heard the bedsprings squeaking. “Ace? What did you do?”

“Flipped over the mattress. Let’s just give up on those sheets though.”

“That was my last clean set,” she said with a wince. “But—I know—just don’t give me shit, okay? I go to a lot of fancy things,” she said, heading into her on-board closet, and coming back with a small fortune in furs to pile onto the bed for us, like we were cavemen indeed.

“Was your mother a fur-trapper?” I felt compelled to ask.

“Shush,” she said, putting a silencing finger out—and I found it with my nose, which made her giggle.

We both made things work, with her mostly curled up on top of me, but not long after she closed her eyes she murmured, “From here on out Ace—your fur is the only fur I need.”

“That’s right,” I promised, feeling her drift to off sleep.

As for me…I didn’t quite want to pass out yet.

Somewhere, not that very far away, there was a raging Monster Security Agency Christmas party happening at Ellum’s—and next year, for the first time, I would be there too. And I’d lean into the whole Krampus thing, because why not? I’d shine my hooves and paint my horns red, wrap myself in rattling chains, and bring a three-month-old baby I “stole” in a basket, along with my loving wife.

I couldn’t wait.

If you loved this book, check out every other dang Monster Security Agency book there is out there! They’re all this good! And if you love me in particular, sign up for my newsletter for more news and monster art! <3

Xoxo!

Cassie

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I need to get this posted up ASAP y’all and Jackie usually does this part — but you know my name! Cassie Alexander! Look me up — I have TONS of FANTASTIC HOT BOOKS anywhere books are sold!

Xoxo!

Cassie