Epilogue: Nesting

The wind atop of the Daily Planet building whipped Lois Lane's baggy dress. If she faced the wind, it would blow tight against her swelling stomach, making clear what she had been trying to hide. Instead, she turned her back to the wind, chewing on a dog biscuit, feeling the choker around her neck...at least, she called it a choker. She wasn't even sure why she had bought it, except that it felt right.

The door to the elevator opened. Clark Kent stopped to step through the door, then straightened up to his full height. Out here in the wind, with his shoulders thrown back, Lois could finally see how tall and well-built he really was.

"Smallville," she said when he was close enough to hear her over the wind. "I asked to speak to Superman..."

"Yes, you did," he gave a sad smile...and took off his glasses. She blinked as the last piece slid into place. Lois smacked her forehead. "What do you want, Lois? You said something about a favor?"

"I..." her breath caught in her throat. She was going to have to tell him everything. Gave a long sigh. "I want to borrow Krypto for a couple of weeks."

The story came out...and old journalistic instincts made her lay it out like a Pulitzer-winning article. The night out at the club. The positive pregnancy test. The hellhound that dogged her steps, quite literally. How Krypto had defended her...and then the last few weeks, as she had begun preparing for the birth. Laying in supplies. Following nesting instincts as she prepared a quiet corner of her apartment with blankets and towels. Reading up on books about human and canine pregnancies.

Clark's mouth was a firm line as he absorbed all of it. When she had finished, he had only one question.

"What about the chastity device?"

Lois shuddered and grabbed her arms as if chilled, despite the heat of the sunlight on her back. He stepped forward instinctively, grabbing her arms and turning her around so that the wind fell on his back. Sheltering her.

"I don't know," she said. "I can't...I've tried bolt cutters, and I wanted to try an angle grinder, but it's...I don't want to hurt the puppies."

Her voice cracked. It was the first time she had said that out loud.

"Stay," he said when they got back to Lois Lane's apartment.

Krypto, now without his trademark cape, obediently sat. The dog sniffed and was obviously eager to explore what was to be his home for the next two weeks. He looked like a white labrador retriever, a little on the small side, but wiry, with big intelligent eyes. Yet he obeyed his master.

As Clark set down two fifty-pound bags of dog food, Lois welcomed in his friends...who shucked their mortal disguises, revealing Zatanna and Dr. Fate.

"So...I suppose I...need to show you," Lois said.

Zatanna, in her top hat and tails and long fishnet-clad legs, nodded. "Why don't you change in the bathroom. We can do this wherever you feel comfortable."

Dr. Fate, in the golden mask and golden cape, had assumed a female aspect for this "consultation," which helped. Clark Kent reached down and scratched behind Krypto's ears, whispering "good dog."

"I'll stay in the kitchen and keep Krypto company," he said. Lois laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Clark...you don't have to. It's okay." She cracked a smile and nodded at the dry dog food. "You've already bought me dinner."

That occasioned a smile...and unexpectedly, she felt him press his lips against the fingers of her hand. Heart fluttering, she went to the bathroom to change..and emerged minutes later in a black silk bathrobe embroidered with dragons. Cinched tight about her swollen midsection, there was no way to hide her pregnancy.

Not that there would be much to hide from any of these people much longer.

Lights on. Curtains drawn. Lois took a deep breath.

You can do this, Lane, she told herself. Everyone was born naked. Women take their clothes off all the time.

She undid the robe.

The dome of her stomach was taut, well-defined, and relatively small...maybe as far along as a woman five months along, Lois judged. Doctor Midnite had told her she would probably get bigger over the next couple of weeks, until the birth-pangs cam. Her breasts were still about the same size, bare palmfuls with high-pointing nipples and just a hint of sag, but the pink nipples were now puffy and a deeper red in color...and then there was her pussy.

The reporter had taken the opportunity to shave. The brand that Circe had burned into her was clearly visible, as were the rings through her vulva, locked together to prevent access to her vagina...but the vulva itself was swollen, the lips protruding, rings half-buried in pink flesh, and Lois swallowed her embarrassment as she felt the clear fluid leak from her engorged slit.

"Sorry," she said reflexively. "The doctor said that discharge is...normal."

Not that there was anything normal about this.

The magicians studied the chastity piercing like a safecracker surveys a bank vault.

"I believe," Dr. Fate said at last, her voice echoing hollowly within the metal helmet. "We will need Superman's assistance."

Clark stood at the doorway, carefully not looking at the naked reporter.

"The enchantment is powerful, and there are...protections against tampering. Zatanna and I can use our powers to temporarily weaken Circe's spells; Superman must break the rings while we hold the spells in abeyance."

Clark was as nervous as a thirteen-year-old boy helping to birth cattle for the first time...yet he stood in front of Lois, sleeves rolled up, pointedly not looking the reporter in the eye as she lay there with her legs spread on the bed. Zatanna and Dr. Fate raised their hands, each mumbling incantations under their breathe...and to Lois Lane's astonishment, the amulet that nestled between Dr. fate's breasts began to glow, shedding a pale, cold light out over the reporter.

Recognizing his cue, Clark reached forward. Big hands, hands that Lois had once imagined touching her in very different ways and circumstanced, seized on the bottommost ring. Lois sucked in her breath, aware that he was trying not to touch her, but the quarters were too close, and she couldn't help but feel the warm press of his fingertips on her sensitive lips.

CRACK.

The bursting of the first ring sounded like a gunshot. Krypto was on alert now, tail high, eyes darting. Clark kept on.

CRACK.

CRACK.

CRACK.

CRACK.

Each retort louder than the first, and Lois could see the sweat pour down from Zatanna's face, the dark shadows under Dr. Fate's armpits. The tension in the air was electric, and Lois had heard the smallest, almost imperceptible of grunts from Clark...and there was only one set of rings left now, the ones that ran through the top of her labia and intertwined with the ring set through her clitoral hood...and Krypto growled and barked at something in the shadows, and Lois could see the strain in Clark's face now as he slowly applied more and more of his superhuman strength to the task...

CRACK-A-DOOM!

Something broke in the world then, like a hurricane let loose within the reporter's apartment. The rings crumbled into sand, leaving Lois with a pussy full of gaping holes, and Clark's hands grabbed her knees to keep the reporter from being lifted up from the bed by the **** of whatever had been unleashed from that magical device.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the wind died down. The reporter's apartment was in disarray, but Krypto had ceased growling. He leaped onto the bed and licked at her face.

Zatanna shook her head as if to clear if. The light from Dr. Fate's amulet dimmed and finally halted.

"Her spell is broken. You are now free of her influence...though I fear she has detected our interference, and may take vengeance."

Lois scratched Krypto behind the ear. He looked very serious just then, still on high alert.

"It's okay," she said. "I feel safe."

Zatanna and Dr. Fate made their goodbyes. Lois had wrapped her pregnant belly back up in the robe. It felt so weird to be free, for the first time in so many weeks. The lack of the weight pulling on her down there, omnipresent, was so odd.

Clark was the last to get ready to go. He was still blushing like a schoolboy, but as he reached for his coat and hat, Lois stopped him.

"Smallville...you know, I haven't thanked you properly. For everything. And I'd like to."

He swallowed, big blue eyes wide, throat suddenly dry.

She let the robe fall open as she guided him back toward the bed. After all, it was nothing he hadn't seen before. No protests came to his lips as she kissed them, and then with mounting excitement she tore at his clothes, eager now to see him naked, to get at his prick....shaking with sudden need, not just for weeks without sex, but because she wanted to erase that sigil that Circe had marked her with, to prove how wrong the sorceress was when she declared the reporter's pussy for her own use.

It took a little while to find a comfortable position...and they settled with Lois on her side, one leg raised so he could slip his cock, just a little thicker and longer than what she was used to, into her from behind...and one of his great hands engulfed her breast and squeezed until the milk spurted, and the other rubbed protectively at her belly, and he didn't go too fast or too deep, his mouth kissing and tasting her neck, her shoulder, and when she turned her face her lips...

Krypto watched, with mute interest. Sniffed the air, and set himself on patrol of Lois Lane's apartment. nudged approvingly at the nest Lois had built. He knew, in that way that dogs knew, that the puppies would come soon.