doesn’t cuddle, though.

What if a cat destroyed your home, but it was already a total wreck?

Could you then be upset, especially if your dumb ass was the one who used him to field test the latest version of Baby Boom? No, everything that had happened, even the fleeting fear that she’d broken a hip and truly shown her age, was on her.

Sure, Linda Pelletier had a system for finding things in the midst of the chaos, and that had been upended. Just like several chairs, desks, the couch… which now bore the unmistakable deep scratch marks of her own fingernails. In addition to, if one looked closer, teeth marks. She could tell, because she wound up on the couch’s mortal remains, with a man she’d met days ago sprawled out atop her.

Pinned by his weight but no longer the active, brutal strength that had left marks across her ghostly-pale skin, she managed to grab her notepad, and jotted down a note that the subject… Sasha, rather, was still hard.

Buried inside of her all this time, still hard, still throbbing, even as he was sound asleep. In this state, he seemed nearly harmless, even profoundly cute, which Linda also got down for observation. He talked in his sleep too, something about ‘the Major’ and probably other manifold traumas the poor boy had gone through.

Linda had seen his type, a lifetime ago.

The midday sun was mercifully high in the sky, so while it was entirely too bright and her eyes burned, they weren’t being directly incinerated. Motes of dust and clouds of sketchier origin hung in the air, illuminated through the windows.

Her head was pounding worse than what she’d gotten the past, uh, thirty-six hours. The only reason she didn’t mind more is she was sore all over, just as predicted. Forget the bruises and bite marks where blood had long since clotted up, and all the natural healing processes were going without her input. She was also going through symptoms of overexertion and dehydration, and possibly, if she was lucky, another, more beautiful medical condition.

The pregnancy tests were in the study, though. However long her arms were, she would need to get this dead weight off her before she could actually leave the living room. Linda tried to kiss Sasha like a princess from the old tales, to awaken her sleeping knight.

Nope, her kiss just carried the stench of cancer, not really any magical powers.

That reminds me, I’m gonna have to cut back on the cigs now. Shit.

As she stopped being a part of the room or world or whatever and returned to her individual perspective of consciousness, one of the other brilliant realizations she had was that she needed the bathroom, bad. She was simultaneously in need of fluids, messy with the dried remains of Sasha’s fluids, and full of her own that needed to fucking let out.

He was really cute, though, snuggled up to her chest, arms around her. Warm, too. A living blanket. Even the metal arm and leg weren’t bad, he’d been careful with them for at least the post-breeding cuddle-

Brrring, briiing!

Why the fuck had she allowed them to install a telephone?

Brrring, briiing!

Come now, Linda. Somebody could be dying, and you’d miss the chance to observe it.

That was it.

She was going to give Sasha more time to rest, considering he’d done such good work for her today, and yesterday, but this was too much. She was in range of a half-full water bottle, which was plenty, when poured on the subject, to result in in one sputtering, naked cat rolling off the couch.

Instead of depositing himself flat aback and waking up bewildered, though, he rolled with impact, and wound up back on his feet, just like all the old legends said of veteran nekomata warriors. Eyes darting, taking in the surroundings, stance wide… which, given his nudity, just presented the only ‘weapon’ he had available in front of Linda’s admiring gaze.

“Morning, tiger.”

Brrring, briiing!

“Er, afternoon.”

Brrring, briiing!

Realizing he wasn’t still back on the Coast of Bones or wherever, Sasha let out a deep breath, and most of him relaxed. He glanced downwards, realized his indecency, and moreover how much of an erection he was still sporting, and Linda was graced with the sight of a grown man blushing. He also bore a strange expression, foreign to his complexion, that Linda could only describe as a big smile.

“That was incredible, but please warn me next time.”

Good stuff, but she had to crawl over to the phone at the edge of the living room, and pulled it off its hook after many rings. The fact that the caller persisted indicated… yep.

“Yep. Yeah, it’s me. Yeah, I’m not in yet. Yeah, I’ll be there, uh. Half an hour. Tell him to hold on until then. Yeah…? Well, tell him to quit picking at it. I’ll be… I’ll be right there.”

She slammed the rotary phone back down onto its corded base with as much emphatic **** as she could muster; very little. She felt like she’d been run over by a truck more than any desire to drive one into town, and rush to her clinic.

It was business hours, though. Linda had to make a note and schedule her wild **** orgies for the weekend or something.

“Duty calls?” Sasha asked, searching the wasteland of documents and debris for scraps of intact clothing.

“Yeah, in more ways than one. Grab your shit, I’m headed into town, and I can give you a lift.”

After she hit the bathroom, with a small testing kit in tow.

By far, one of the best qualities of Sasha Sokolov was his lack of useless small-talk, which he displayed admirably on the drive through country roads back into the heart of downtown Lilisburgh. Though naturally, he was rather curious about whether the procedure had, uh, been a success.

“Too soon to tell, but I’ll keep you updated.”

Let’s keep it to ourselves for now, I like being mysterious.

Plus, it’ll be great incentive for him to come over again when I refine the next version.