Chapter 8
Morgan
I don't know what I'm doing.
The day I left Crusher, I was so stunned and heartbroken and mortified I took the bus out to Drift's Lake to spend the afternoon with Sienna. She’s the reason we don’t believe in hiking anymore, but she was also the first to get pregnant, by Drift, the lake siren.
It's been over a year since then, and she's still pregnant, will be for at least another year. Enormous, too. Apparently, that's how mama sirens keep their babies safe in cool, oftentimes dangerous water.
Sienna doesn't seem to mind it. Her siren dotes on her like crazy. Plus, his voice is magical, actually for real magic, so I think she's just a little high all the time. She was a good distraction from my thoughts.
That night, I returned to the human dorms and had a fitful night of sleep, my thoughts heavy with Crusher.
The next day, the shit hit the proverbial fan.
Frank dropped the first set of videos on HornPub, and they immediately went viral.
We're pretty well protected, the location of the dorm kept quiet, so nothing too crazy happened, but all the girls heard about it, figured out quickly it was me.
They've all been cool, but I was still pretty embarrassed.
The next day, I made a HornPub account, subscribed to a lower tier. Just to see.
Just to watch us together.
Just to watch Crusher on his own in front of a live audience.
Just to see the way the light has dimmed in his eyes.
It's hard, but I keep watching.
It took six days — yesterday — for me to upgrade to a higher tier so I can see more of his catalog. It's terrible, I know this, but I needed to see if I changed him.
He changed me.
I've spent today working on a reading primer that's recently been developed for us. When I explained what had happened to a social worker who was concerned I might have been tricked into making that sex tape, she thought I'd be a good test subject for the workbook.
It focuses heavily on sex terms. It's been an ongoing issue.
It's mid-afternoon by the time I close the book and check my messages, figuring if nothing else, I might be able to test the characters I just learned.
My heart leaps in my chest when I see one from Frank.
It's a video. I recognize immediately that it's in Crusher's room, early morning, He's curled up, asleep, a blanket pulled up to his neck.
Just a great big handsome bull head on a pillow.
There's a voice-over, Frank saying, "I figured a video would get less lost in translation than any words I write. "
Yeah, okay.
The moment the voiceover starts, Crusher wakes with a giant yawn and a stretch of equal scale. Then he tucks his hand back under the blanket and rubs something gently. For a moment, I'm thinking he's jerking off, which I've seen enough of this week already, but then he pushes the blanket away.
It's me. He was curled so neatly around me I was all but hidden.
He's careful as he peels himself away without waking me up. I make a sound, reach for him, and he pets and soothes me until I go back to sleep.
It's another ten minutes of him going between the restroom and the bedroom, bringing in a bucket of water and washcloths, cleaning not just between my legs but my entire body. I start to wake many times, and he settles me every time.
He manages to replace the sheets once more.
He gives me a pillow to cuddle.
He tucks me in again.
And then he just stands there, staring at me for a few minutes.
It's not creepy. It's sweet. I've had literal nightmares of him inviting other humans, my friends, to do a night on cam with him, but he wouldn't have done this if he hadn't caught feelings. Frank wouldn't have sent me this if I were misreading the way Crusher was different on camera this week.
He should be in the middle of a stream right now. I figure he won't mind if I make some waves announcing myself there, and I'm pretty sure I can get the bare minimum across with emojis. But when I navigate to his channel, there's a message apologizing that today's stream has been cancelled.
Oh, no.
I'm not going to try to communicate via Frank's message, that's just inviting disaster. But it's early enough I can get a bus out to their place and be on their doorstep by nightfall.
I stuff an overnight bag and rush out, spinning back to grab my bike from the rack.
Nearly crash into the wall when I realize Crusher is twenty feet away, pacing on the sidewalk.
He's not dressed in the muscle shirt and the loose woven pants that I met him in or the soft gray sweatpants I left him in.
He's in dark burgundy breeches tailored to fit snugly to minotaur thighs and a matching jacket just slightly too small, like he got the outfit when he was a little younger and didn't realize he'd bulked up so much.
Even without a shirt underneath, the single fastened button is struggling.
His straw-colored hair is styled, a gel teasing volume, waves, and shape into it, lifting it out of his eyes but allowing it to move naturally. He was looking tired, more disheveled than usual during yesterday's stream. He worked to make himself look nice for me.
My eyes burn as tears threaten, and my heart swells.
I don't have to wave to him. I don't have to say anything. I don't have to move. The moment I see him, his attention snaps to me.
His jaw drops. His face lights up. He takes a giant breath as though he's forgotten to breathe. Then he's jogging to me.
I tell myself to accept the obvious as fact, but now that he's here, I remember how he responded when I told him I was pregnant.
Not just shock or horror but betrayal, too.
And I know he hasn't been right since that day, I know he's literally right here in my front yard, but I know nothing about him or his family; minotaurs, really.
Maybe he's not here for me but for the baby.
"How are you here?" I ask when he hesitates just inches from me.
"Frank said he was sending you something today. Something that would bring you home."
"Home?" I grin, feeling settled with that one word in a way I never could have imagined.
"Yeah, home. But then I got to thinking, you said you weren't from Wellensbee, and you were on that bike, which means you'd be on a bus too, and I started to worry that what if something happened, wouldn't it be better if I came and got you, and look at my sweet bike."
He gestures to the street, where there's a yellow motorcycle with a sidecar, both so large the entire contraption is bigger than half the cars on the road.
"That's really sweet," I say, talking more about him coming out here than the bike, which I'm a little worried I'll fall out of. "But how did you know where I live? It's kind of a secret."
"Oh. Ahh." He scratches his belly, nearly splitting that poor jacket.
"When you gave us the payment info, you gave us the wrong number.
That was your vault number. You're supposed to give your share number out, not your vault number.
Anyone who has your vault number has access to, well, everything. Everything."
"Oh. I probably should have known that already."
"Yeah."
A second or two of silence, but then we're reaching out to each other. He pulls me in, and I sink into him. Again, I think home.
"I'm sorry," Crusher says softly, rubbing my back. "I didn't . . . how I reacted that morning . . ."
"You were stunned. You don't need to apologize. You thought you were just making a movie, not making a baby. That's a lot."
"It's not."
I pull away enough to look up at him, but he has a giant chin under that giant head, so it's impossible to keep holding him without his cooperation.
He leans back, tilts to the side enough I can see one eye. It's enough to see he's not joking or blustering. He meant that.
"It's a calf. I've always wanted calves."
"You're a porn star."
"You think porn stars don't have calves? Morgan, when you add a partner to your videos, you're literally showing the world how you make calves."
I snort and push away a little more. "You thought I was on a contraception spell!"
"I have so much HornPub to show you. Half the network is breeding and pregnancy — and milking, of course." His gaze dips down to my cleavage. I don't even mind. I remember how obsessed he was with my boobs. I liked it. "So we got the advantage there."
"But I'm not your mate," I point out.
That silences him.
For about three seconds.
And then he busts out laughing so hard he buckles over, accepting it as the chance to drop to his knees to bring himself to my eye level.
"Heifer, you pushed me into a breeding rut with that dirty mouth of yours.
You didn't think that night was just normal, did you?
My balls would have been coughing dust by the end if that had been a normal night.
I still don't know how I didn't die of dehydration, but that's the breeding rut.
And that only happens with your mate. Mate. "
"So why did you freak out that morning?"
Crusher puts his hand on the side of my face, stroking my cheek with his hooved finger.
"Morgan. My sweet mate. My beautiful little dairy cow with the bestest udders ever in all the worlds.
I was recovering from a breeding rut. I was barely hanging on.
You told me I'd calved you, and I'm pretty sure every drop of blood left in my body ran a race to my cock, and there was nothing left to run my brain. "
I sniffle.
With joy.
Dammit.
"Oh, here." He reaches back to pull something out of his pocket and hold it out to me: a bouquet of flowers.
Kind of.
Like, there's a ribbon around the stems, and there looks to be a lot of stems, at least a dozen, but maybe a lot more.
But there are only seven actual flowers.
And they're beautiful, reminding me of the dense, meticulous structure of a smooth-petalled camellia, but the petals have an iridescence to them that I've never seen before.
It's just weird that there are only seven.
"I got nervous and ate some of them."
I laugh so hard I spit on the poor flowers, but Crusher doesn't even seem to notice.
"You're going to come home with me, right? And you're going to sleep in my bed and love me and have my calves and let me take care of you, right?"
Another sniffle.
A tear.
"Yeah."
"And you're going to do some shows with me, right? I need a job to support you and all our calves, and that's my job. And Frank's job, too. And it could be your job, right?"
I give him a long, serious look. I can't be a porn star. That's crazy. Look at me.
But Crusher is looking at me. And he thinks I can. And I know he's getting a ton of new subscribers right now because of me.
But I can't be a porn star.
Can I?
"We'll figure it out," I promise.
"Okay, good." His eyes and his hands both lower to my belly. He rubs his thumb across my pelvis, flabby from the last pregnancy but relatively flat, nothing but me beneath it. "Do you know for definite if you're calved?"
"Oh, they don't even give us pregnancy tests unless something is going wrong, but it's a for-sure thing."
Crusher's hands go around me, but I don't miss the fact that they go right to my ass. I catch the glaze in his eyes as he leans in, bringing his mouth to my ear. "Okay, well, maybe we should try again, just to make sure."