Just. Like. That.

  Her face hit the blanket, her whole body clenched around me, and a spray of wetness hit the grass beneath us, leaking out from my nearly perfect seal inside her. Her tail went rigid, quivering, and the sound she made was somewhere between a howl and a sob.

  “THANK YOU, MASTER!”

  Okay then.

  She recovered in about ten seconds as I pumped away. She pushed herself back up on her hands, panting, ears flat, and her tail resumed its manic pace. “A-Another. Please. I clearly haven’t learned my lesson.”

  I spanked her again on the left side. Same result. She detonated like a firework, face back in the blanket, cunt walls clamping down on me, another generous contribution to the local water table leaking into the ground. She was apparently very, very hydrated. Her legs were shaking through it all but she stayed in position through what I had to assume was sheer stubbornness and core strength.

  “NNNNGH! Yes! More! I’m so—I’m still so bad, Master, I—”

  At this point I was genuinely curious. Was there a limit? Was there a point of diminishing returns where the spank-to-orgasm pipeline would experience some kind of bottleneck? In the interest of science, I went wild. Buck wild. Absolute chicky-buck-wild on that juicy ass. Thrust, spank, thrust, spank. Alternating cheeks in the name of equity.

  There was no bottleneck. Every single one hit the button. Portia came on the third spank, the fourth, the fifth, orgasms megastacking, and by the sixth she’d stopped forming words entirely and was just producing sounds as her pussy leaked like a fountain while I fucked it relentlessly. Her face was permanently planted in the blanket. Her ass was bright pink and still rising to meet every impact. The puddle beneath us was becoming a genuine logistical concern.

  “Bwuhhh,” she contributed. “Googija—fffffuuu-nug.”

  Well said, Portia. I picked up the pace. Not because it was necessary but because something had broken in my own brain and I wanted to see the other side of the mountain. I was playing god.

  Thrust. Spank. Thrust. Spank. Spank-spank-spank. Spickity-Spank Spank Sparoo.

  Each one connected flush and each one produced another full-body convulsion and another wet splash and another sound from Portia that had progressively less in common with speech.

  “Gyahhh—hnnng—Mast—buhh—”

  By the time I felt my own climax building, Portia’s arms had given up entirely and she was just face-down, ass-up, taking it like a champ as her body shook in continuous waves that had stopped being individual orgasms and merged into one long rolling seizure of bliss. Her tail had gone completely limp for the first time in recorded history. I think it was unconscious before the rest of her.

  I came inside her with one final thrust and her tattoo blazed gold. The ritual magic surged through us and Portia made a sound like a squeaky toy being stepped on by an elephant, clenched around me one last time, and then went completely boneless.

  Her tail gave one weak, involuntary twitch as she fell onto her side. Then nothing.

  I pulled out carefully and she didn’t move. I poked her shoulder. Nothing. I leaned down and listened. She was breathing, but her eyes were closed and she had this expression of absolute, transcendent peace.

  “Portia?”

  “Mmmmrrf,” she said into the blanket.

  “You okay?”

  “Arf.” One ear twitched. Her tail managed half a wag before giving up again.

  I heard hooves going across the field and looked up to see Clementine approaching from the porch, arms crossed, and Elysia having removed herself from her blanket cocoon and trailing behind. They both stopped at the edge of the circle and stared down at Portia’s motionless form, then slowly looked up at me.

  Elysia’s expression was caught between impressed and horrified. Clementine’s was pure judgment.

  “Dude,” Clementine said.

  “She asked for it. Literally.”

  “That is one sick dog.” Clementine looked at the puddle situation, Portia, and my hand, which was still pink from impact. “You broke her.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Mmmmrf,” Portia confirmed.

  The two of them each grabbed an arm and dragged Portia out of the circle, her limp body trailing through the grass like a ragdoll. Her tail bumped along behind her, too spent to wag. They deposited her on a dry patch of blanket, and Elysia began wrapping her in her own cocoon while Clementine stood over the scene shaking her head.

  Meanwhile Juniper was already on her way to me.

  “I am going to drink so much water after this,” I said, waving at her as she approached.

  She slithered into the circle slowly, twenty-plus feet of copper-and-black tail trailing through the grass. Her crimson hair was loose around her shoulders and her horns shone under the moon. The pearlescent glow highlighted her curves in a whole new way. She’d removed her robe and I tried not to stare and completely failed because I’m a guy and there are limits.

  But she was scared. I could see it in her hands, which kept finding things to do. She adjusted her hair, touched her horn caps, crossed and uncrossed her arms over her chest.

  “Hey,” I said, closing the distance between us slowly and giving her time.

  She tried to smile. It came out crooked. “Hello, Champion.”

  “You know you’re beautiful, right?”

  Her arms tightened across her chest and her gaze dropped. “Thank you, but you don’t have to say that.”

  “I know I don’t. I’m saying it because it’s true. And I know you know it is, but I need you to understand that I’m all in here.” I stopped about a foot away from her.

  Her composure cracked. “I’m all in as well,” she said. “For what it’s worth, this should be easy once we get started because I find you very... beautiful as well.”

  “Then let’s kick things off. It’ll be easier once we start.” I reached out and gently uncrossed her arms. She resisted for a second, then let me. “Of course if you have doubts...”

  “I don’t,” she said, shaking her head and her curly red hair. “Even if I did, it’s too late for that. You’re my Champion, and I know that I am falling for you. I’m ready.”

  I wasn’t prepared for the full experience up close. Her breasts alone were a religious experience. They were tipped with those puffy nipples that stiffened the moment my thumbs grazed them. Each one overfilled my hands, and I had big boy hands. When I cupped them and lifted gently, the weight was the single most erotic sensation of my life up to that point, and I’d recently been smothered nearly to death by a horse-girl’s thighs.

  “Josh,” she said as her voice dropped a little. Her forked tongue flickered against her lower lip. “Take me.”

  I took one nipple into my mouth and she made a shameless moan. Her forked tongue found my ear, both tips tracing independent paths along the shell, and her coils shifted around us and tightened against the ground.

  “I want to show you something,” she whispered, and then her coils moved.

  Twenty-plus feet of serpentine body rearranged around me, and suddenly I was wrapped in Juniper from every direction. Not squeezing, just holding. Her coils supported my weight and my back and cradled me in a way that shouldn’t have been as comfortable as it was. I’ve never been a small guy, but wrapped up in Juniper I felt held in a way I hadn’t since I was a kid. I’m going to leave it at that because anything more would sound weird.

  She kissed me then, and that forked tongue did things inside my mouth that redefined what I thought kissing could be. The twin tips traced my tongue in different directions, curled around it from both sides, and found sensitive spots I didn’t know I had. The kiss was thorough and almost scientific, like she was mapping every square centimeter for future reference.

  Her coils shifted again and I felt her adjust to give me access to where her humanoid body met the serpentine half. Her tattoo pulsed right at that junction. She guided my hand there and I felt the warmth, the slickness, and the slight tremor that ran through her entire body when I touched her.

  “I was worried about this part,” she admitted, barely above a whisper. Her accent thickened when she was vulnerable, and right now it was the thickest I’d ever heard it. “The anatomy is not standard.”

  “Nothing in my life is.”

  I took my time learning her. Juniper’s body wasn’t built the way a human woman’s was, but the fundamentals were there, just configured differently and nestled where scales gave way to soft heat. She was so sensitive that her whole body reacted to every touch, her coils rippling gently whenever I found a good spot. Her breathing went ragged and her forked tongue kept flickering against my neck, my jaw, my ear, both tips working independently and driving me absolutely insane.

  When I finally pressed into her, her coils tightened around me. The sensation of being inside Juniper while simultaneously being wrapped in her from every direction was overwhelming. Every thrust was countered by subtle movements from her lower body, her coils adjusting to match my rhythm and adding pressure and friction I couldn’t have gotten from any other position with any other woman on any planet. She pulled me deeper with her body, literally, and the squeeze that resulted was enough to make my vision blur.

  “Oh,” she breathed. And then, much less composedly: “Ahh! Oh, that’s... Josh...”

  “I know.”

  “You can’t possibly know. You’re not the one being...” She lost the sentence to a sharp gasp when I hit a particularly good angle. Her coils clenched and I felt the pressure from my ankles to my shoulders. Her hands gripped my back and her nails, which were longer and sharper than a human woman’s, raked lines that could benefit from Portia’s healing magic later.

  We found a pace that worked. There was nothing frantic about it because Juniper didn’t do frantic. She did thorough. Every movement was felt and responded to, which was very on brand for the party’s resident scholar. When I cupped one of her breasts and thumbed the nipple while I was inside her, her whole body constricted around me and she made a noise like all the air had been forced out of her lungs at once.

  “I’m going to...” she started, and didn’t finish because she was already doing it. Her coils locked around me and her back arched, pressing those magnificent tits against my chest while her inner walls squeezed me in rhythmic contractions that made holding on for even a few more seconds genuinely heroic. Her forked tongue lashed against my neck with both tips curling, and the sound she made was quiet and almost surprised, like she hadn’t actually expected it to feel that good.

  I finished inside her about ten seconds later. There was no version of reality where a man survives that kind of full-body serpentine squeeze without completely losing it. Her tattoo blazed, possibly the brightest of all three, and the release pulsed through both of us. I felt the magic of the ritual channel through the act, through us, the same way it had with Elysia and Portia but stronger now because this was the final seal.

  She didn’t let go for a long time after. Her tail stayed wound around my legs and her head rested on my chest. I could feel her heartbeat through the coils as it slowed from racing to resting.

  “Thank you,” she said into my collarbone. “For not making it all about the logistics.”

  I laughed. “There were some logistics.”

  Her forked tongue flicked against my neck, which shut me up immediately. “Hush, my Champion. My… love.”

  The final bond locked in and the whole circle blazed with light. All three connections flared at once, and the full weight of the completed ritual hit me.

  Josh 2: Revenge of the Sith, fell at last like a soldier who’d given his last breath to the call of duty as energy rolled through me. Warmth poured through every muscle and every bone. My vision sharpened and my hearing expanded. I could taste the night air on my tongue, electric and clean, and my whole body felt like it had been plugged into a wall socket in a good way.

  The blue window appeared:

  RITUAL COMPLETE: Champion’s Resolve acquired. Passive ability: Resistance to magical effects. Enhanced regeneration under moonlight. Permanent. All base stats +1. STR: 20. DEX: 17. CON: 16. INT: 11. WIS: 11. CHA: 11. Emotional Bond Link established: Party members can now sense each other’s general emotional states.

  STR 20. I stared at that number. I’d have to test the limits later.

  Juniper read the notification over my shoulder through the bond. “It worked,” she murmured. “We did it.”

  “I got a stat boost from sex and you’re running the math.”

  The corner of her mouth twitched. “Someone has to.”

  Then a second notification appeared that I hadn’t expected:

  SYSTEM NOTICE: Champion stat increase detected. Cavalier Bond propagation in effect. CLEMENTINE KIM—GREATER STEED: Bond Scaling recalculated. All physical stats adjusted upward. STR: 16 (+2). DEX: 16 (+2). CON: 16 (+2).

  New passive unlocked: Steed’s Resilience.

  Effect: Enhanced durability and partial magic resistance while bonded. Bond Status: AMICABLE.

  I read it twice. The ritual hadn’t touched Clementine directly. She’d been fifty yards away eating popcorn the whole time, but my stat increase had cascaded through the Cavalier bond and dragged her numbers up with it. The System didn’t care that she wasn’t part of the ceremony. She was bonded to me, and when I got stronger, so did she.

  She was going to pretend not to care about any of this, and she was going to be secretly thrilled, because who wouldn’t want to get more powerful out of nowhere?

  From the porch, maybe fifty yards away: “Are you weirdos done with your pagan orgy or whatever? I made popcorn, ya fuckin’ heathens.”

  All four of us turned our heads. Clementine stood in the porch light with a bowl of popcorn in one hand and the other hand on her hip.

  “Popcorn sounds good,” I said way too hoarsely to sound cool.

  Chapter 9

  “Sir Josh, the coffee apparatus has betrayed me again!”

  That was the first thing I heard the morning after the ritual. Elysia’s voice, shrill and outraged, drifting up from the kitchen through the floor. I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet and I already knew she was… embarrassed about it, which was new information I shouldn’t have had access to.

  I lay there for a second, trying to figure out how exactly I knew that. It wasn’t because she sounded embarrassed. She sounded annoyed. But underneath the sound, inside my chest, I could feel a hum of frustration laced with shame, and it was coming from her direction. Layered underneath that, I could feel Portia’s warm contentment thumping along like a happy heartbeat, and further down, Juniper’s quiet, meditative mood somewhere else.

  It was the emotional bond link. Champion’s Resolve came with a lot of perks, but this one was going to take some getting used to.

  I flexed my hands above the covers and felt the other difference. My fingers closed tighter and the tendons in my forearms stood out sharper. STR 20. I’d gone to sleep as an already super fit guy and woken up as something a bit closer to a comic book character. When I rolled my shoulders, everything moved smooth and easy, almost weightless.

  “JOSH! It is ON FIRE!”

  Right. That sounded like a situation. I got out of bed with a groan.

  By the time I made it downstairs, Portia had already put out the coffee filter with a damp towel and Elysia was standing three feet from the machine with her arms crossed, looking at it like it was too blame for whatever had just happened. Through the bond, I could feel her embarrassment spiking underneath the bluster, which was genuinely useful because her face was giving me nothing but indignation.

  “I was testing my magic in an attempt to speed up the device’s coffee-making process,” she informed me. “It betrayed my kindness.”

  “Actually, you set the filter on fire, Princess,” Portia said.

  Elysia nodded like Portia had only proved her point. “It was brazenly unreceptive to my methods.”

  I walked over and straightened Elysia’s tiara, which had gone crooked somewhere in the mini-crisis. The embarrassment spike smoothed out instantly through the bond.

  Okay. So that’s how this worked. I could feel what they were actually feeling underneath whatever they were performing, and if I responded to the real emotion instead of the surface one, things went smoother. When Portia bounded over and her excitement crested so high it felt like standing next to a subwoofer, I said “Good morning, sit, breakfast in a few,” and her emotions leveled off without the typical trademark four minutes of bouncing and barking.

  It was like having cheat codes for my own household. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet. Useful? Definitely. A little invasive? Also definitely. Whatever.

  STR 20, DEX 17, CON 16. I was built different now, and the morning routine was the first place it showed. I moved through breakfast prep more precisely than I ever had. When I cracked eggs into a bowl, each one split perfectly with zero shell fragments. My hands did exactly what my brain told them to, with zero lag and zero waste. I also made some coffee the right way.

  Breakfast for five. The number didn’t faze me anymore. I had the rotation down. Juniper had her meat-and-egg plate first because it took the longest. Then I mixed the pancake batter while the bacon sizzled, and I made a separate stack for Elysia because she didn’t like her pancakes mixing with those of less highborn members of the household. The coffee was also started again, without any potentially combustible attempts to speed up the process of turning ground up beans into magical wakeup juice this time.

  Juniper came down and joined us next. She slithered into the kitchen, settled at the table, and nodded at the plate I set in front of her before looking at me with crimson eyes that saw right through everything.

  “You’re processing the bond link well, I see,” she said.

  “It’s a bit… loud,” I admitted, leaning against the counter with my coffee.

  “It will quiet down. Your brain is adapting. Within a week, it’ll be background noise unless someone experiences a strong emotional spike.” She took a precise bite of scrambled egg. “Think of it as learning to filter a new sense. Like when you first got the party awareness and couldn’t stop feeling everyone’s location.”