Chapter 92 Five.

Chapter 92: 92 Five.

The portal that night spat out something kind of like a centipede the size of a school bus, except each leg ended in a blade and the whole thing screamed at a frequency that made me aware of my prostate.

We killed it in about five minutes, which was becoming routine enough that I almost missed the part where Ayra got flung into the fence and left a Ayra-shaped dent in the privacy boards.

She healed herself before I could even ask if she was okay, popped back up with her tail wagging, and asked if she’d earned a spanking for letting her guard down.

Elsa said the scream had ruined her hair. Juniper was already examining the portal scar for energy fluctuations. Just another Tuesday night at the Coleman farm.

I was cleaning monster gunk off my sword on the back porch when Clementine sat down beside me.

She’d transformed back from horse form about ten minutes ago and was still breathing a little hard. Her pearlescent skin was flushed from the run.

She had a beer in each hand and held one out to me without looking over.

"Thanks," I said.

"Don’t mention it." She took a long pull from hers. "Literally. Don’t mention it."

We sat there for a while. The other girls had gone inside. I could hear Elsa complaining about shower priority through the kitchen window, Ayra’s voice offering to wash her hair for her, and Juniper telling both of them to keep it down. Normal household noise for me.

Clementine finished her beer and set the bottle down on the porch between her hooves, stared at it for a second, and then turned to me.

"I’m cashing in."

I blinked. "Cashing in what?"

"My weekly night. You said I could sleep alone with you once a week. That was the deal."

I remembered. She’d put it on the table during the house rules negotiation in front of everyone, and I’d punted it with a "we’ll talk about that later" because Elsa’s face had been doing something nuclear. Leave it to Clementine to keep a running tab.

"Technically I never promised that, but... I think it’s fair until you’re ready to join the mega bed arrangement. You want to do that tonight?" I asked.

"No, I want to do it next fiscal quarter." She rolled her eyes. "Yes, tonight, fuckface. My room. After you shower, because you stink like bug ass."

"And how do you know what bug ass smells like?" I asked, arching a teasing brow.

"You’re stomping all over my mood with your big dumb ’bought online’ combat boots, so go shower and come to my room and don’t make me ask twice."

I looked at her carefully. Her jaw was clenched, her arms were crossed, and her ears were pinned straight up, but her tail was doing a slow, uncertain flick behind her.

She wasn’t angry. She was scared, and being kind of a bitch about it was the only way she knew how to ask for what she wanted while keeping her guard up.

"Give me fifteen minutes," I said.

"Make it ten." She stood up and clacked her hooves back into the house without looking at me.

I showered in nine minutes because I had a bit of a competitive streak. I told the other girls I was turning in early, which earned me a suspicious squint from Elsa. Ayra offered an enthusiastic "Sleep well, Master! Arf!" Juniper suggested they all join me shortly—it was after midnight after all.

"No, that’s alright. Clementine’s cashing in on her night tonight, and I definitely owe her some attention."

I’ll spare you the tantrum a certain elven princess threw when she heard me say that.

Clementine’s room was also the bedroom that Juniper had used before her arrival. I’d set it up as a guest room back when the concept of having guests was purely theoretical, more like a "what if" scenario than an actual possibility.

Anyway, it had a full-size bed, a nightstand, a lamp, and exactly fuck-all else. She’d added a few touches since claiming it, of course.

There was a phone charger sprawled across the floor, a pile of my stolen clothes in the corner that she’d designated as her wardrobe, and a framed photo on the nightstand I hadn’t noticed before. The photo showed an older Korean woman with sharp eyes and a wide smile, standing in a kitchen. She was kind of hot, too.

Clementine was sitting cross-legged on the bed in one of my t-shirts and a pair of boxer shorts she’d cut a tail hole in. She hadn’t locked the door, but I took the initiative to do so upon stepping inside. She looked up when I came in and her eyes did a quick scan of me that she tried very hard to make look casual.

"You showered fast," she said.

"You told me ten minutes, after all," I reminded her.

"Didn’t think you’d actually listen." She scooted over and patted the mattress beside her. "Sit."

I sat obediently. The full-size bed felt like a shitty pool float after a couple weeks on the Russian mattress.

"So," I said, forcing an awkward smile.

"Yep. So." She picked at a thread on the comforter. She picked up her tail and curled it around her own waist, which I figured was a self-comfort thing, like hugging herself. I was getting pretty good at reading horse-girl body language, as it turned out. "I want to be clear about what this is and what it isn’t."

I nodded, actually grateful to have her set me straight. I was pretty open to whatever as long as she was happy, after all. "Okay."

She took a breath and chewed on her lower lip for a second. Whatever she was about to say, she’d been thinking about it for a while.

"This is you sleeping in my bed tonight. Sleeping. Not fucking. I know that’s probably confusing given..." She waved a hand vaguely at the air.

"The fact that we’ve already fucked before and I recently started sucking you off and especially sitting on your face pretty regularly—"

"Praise the Lord—"