Morning After Regret
Rusty
Sixteen months ago
The only thing worsethan an unholy hangover was waking in a foreign bed in a room never before seen, trapped in six vise-like arms. Rusty’s entire body felt like it was dying. Actually, he kinda wished he was already dead, because the nauseating agony pulsing through him was possibly the worst thing he’d ever experienced. Which, for him, was saying a lot.
His head throbbed like someone was taking a mallet to the inside of his skull. An angry sea sloshed in his stomach, and he tasted bile on the back of his tongue. He hated throwing up, but the warning lights were already flashing, and he didn’t think he could stop it.
Nope, he was definitely about to puke, which was highly inconvenient given that he was completely incapacitated by six dark gray limbs locked around him.
Someone was breathing heavily behind him, each exhale ruffling the fur between his ears. As he squinted down at the familiar striped fur coatingevery arm holding him captive from wrist to elbow, a different kind of nausea bubbled to life.
“Oh my gods,” Rusty said, though it sounded less like actual words and more like a garbled whine.
His next inhale hitched, turning into a desperate gasp. It brought with it the damning scents of cinnamon and coffee beans and the sharp tang of stale alcohol.
“Oh my gods,” he said again, and the exclamation of horror was much more recognizable this time. If the current situation wasn’t so dire, he would have been proud of himself for forming real words. But there was no room left inside him to feel anything but the hangover and the sickening realization that he was lying naked in an unfamiliar bed with none other than Gemae Akyllo snoring behind him.
Fighting the urge to scream, he took inventory of himself. Okay, yes, he was most definitely naked, but that didn’tmeananything. He didn’t feel recently fucked, but that was barely a comfort given that Gem was a very loud and proud power-bottom. So he wouldn’t even know if they’d… if they had actually… Oh deities, he couldn’t even finish the thought.
With a gag, Rusty struggled in earnest to escape the many limbs keeping him confined to the bed—a bed that wasn’t his. A bed that wasn’t even Gem’s. Actually, where were they?
Not that their location mattered right now. All that mattered was getting as far away from Gem as he could, finding his clothes, and escaping before the Araknis woke up.
Unfortunately, the comatose Gem had no intention of letting Rusty go quietly. The moment he tried to wriggle out of his confinement, Gem tightened the coil of his arms, dragging Rusty back until they were pressed disconcertingly close.
Rusty could feel the soft lines of Gem’s chest and stomach against his back, and he swallowed down a yelp when one of Gem’s ridiculously long legs slipped between his. His tail was stuck between them, but when he tried to free it, Gem shifted just enough that something stiff and phallic brushed against Rusty’s ass, right under the base of his tail.
Gem’s dick. Gem’s dick was touching his ass!
“Oh fuck that!” Rusty cried as he started to flail wildly.
Normally, he was much cooler under pressure, but Gem’scockwas right there, Rusty was hungover as balls, and his brain wasn’t braining. His body didn’t even feel like it was bodying. He was nothing but mortified survival instinct as he shoved at Gem’s arms, chittering madly as the Araknis recoiled from him with a shocked and confused wail.
“What in the holy hooved goddess?” Gem shrieked in Arakni as he bolted upright, the movement of his colossal ass causing the mattress to bounce the still-flailing Rusty right out of the bed.
With an embarrassing yelp, he tumbled to the floor, landing hard on his shoulder. He rolled with the momentum, hissing angrily as yet another form of pain shot through him.
“Your dick,” Rusty whimpered as he attempted to crawl away, but since the room was spinning, he gave up quickly, instead focusing on his shallow breathing as another flood of bile coated his tongue. “Oh my gods, your dick touched me.”
“What’s happening?” Eight eyes blinked discordantly down at him as Gem pressed his upper hands to his head. “What the—Rusty?”
They stared at each other in stunned silence before several of Gem’s smaller eyes lowered to take in Rusty’s unclothed body. A choked noise sounded in Gem’s throat, his thin brows rising impossibly high, and Rustysquealed, trying to cover himself with the sheet hanging over the side of the bed.
“Don’t look! I’m naked,” he snarled, and they both winced at his volume.
“Shh, stop yelling. And don’t take this the wrong way, but does it matter that you’re naked? You’re covered in fur; it’s not like I can see… anything,” Gem said—in Hellia, this time—gesturing vaguely at Rusty’s fur-covered groin.
Baring his canines, Rusty bunched the sheet around his hips. “I don’t care if you can—don’t look at me!”
Gem slapped a hand over his many eyes and whimpered. “Oh em geez, I wasn’t even looking. But seriously, you need to stop yelling. I am so fucking hungover. Or maybe I’m still a little drunk. I honestly can’t tell.”
Rusty pressed his forehead to the floor and groaned again. “What happened last night?”
“Um, I think it’s safe to say we drank a lot,” Gem said, and Rusty swallowed convulsively as his swirling stomach gave a dangerous heave. “We were playing Hellahoola, and… Unholy shit, I think we trafficked Tad!”
A vague memory surfaced, and Rusty winced. “Pretty sure she was into it, though.”
