My cheeks grew hot as I parted my lips to speak again. I felt a little awkward, a little embarrassed, but I pushed through it. It was just a new muscle I had to strengthen and grow. Hopefully it would come easier with time. “You were such a good boy for me, Greid.”

His reaction was instantaneous, his breath hitching again, his yellow eyes softening and turning pleading. Heavy. His cock—his ridiculously long cock—bucked against my stomach, still half hard from when we’d been talking downstairs. I couldn’t feel the barbs through the layers of our clothes, so I pressed closer, a grin tilting my lips when a tiny croak escaped him.

“Do you want your reward now, Greid?” I purred, the words coming easier in the face of how they affected him. The urge to give him whatever he wanted burned in my belly.

This sweet, kind demiurgus who’d given me so much—who’d given me freedom. But that wasn’t the reason why I wanted this with him. It wasn’t a trade. I just wanted him.

He swallowed thickly, still clutching my hand, his palm clammy. “Y-yes,” he whispered. “Please.”

That ‘please’ was so sweet, so genuine, that it made me fist the back of his sweater as I tamped down my desire. I’d heard pleas from partners before—when they’d been begging me to let them come after teasing them for a long time. When they’d whined for a blowjob because I’d told them they couldn’t fuck me. That one guy who’d begged to ‘just put the tip in’ because surely it wouldn’t hurt me. I still wasn’t sure if he’d known how much of a self-burn that had been.

But this ‘please’ felt different. It felt honest and guileless, and it was Greid.

I stepped back, raising our linked hands to kiss his knuckles before releasing him. “Get on the bed for me, Greid.”

He scrambled to obey, clambering gracelessly across the bed to kneel in the centre before gazing at me in silence as his hands flexed at his sides.

I smiled, walking around the bed to stand beside the big trunk pushed up against the footboard. I could already tell which side Greid slept on. The nightstand was a big clue, obviously, but there was also a long, Greid-shaped dent in all the blankets and pillows. Fondness tightened my chest, made my eyes soften as I stared at him.

We’d already kissed and orgasmed together, but this—being in his room—felt so much more intimate. This was the part of his house he’d been able to keep for himself after allowing me free rein in the rest of it. He may not have thought it was a big deal—in that sense, at least—to invite me in here, but it was affecting me. More than he had been already.

“Lean back against the headboard,” I rasped, my voice husky with emotion. Not just lust, but something deeper. When he immediately obeyed, I knelt on the end of the bed and gently palmed his calves. “Good boy. You’re such a good boy for me, Greid.”

The words were coming much easier now, because I meant them. I was desperate to make him feel good—to show him how wonderful he was, how he deserved the pleasure he craved just as much as anyone else.

But I wasn’t just here to shower him with praise. He wanted me to take the lead. Tell him what to do. Boss him around.

I’d eagerly read up even more on D/s dynamics when I went to bed last night. I knew a part of it was pushing a sub’s limits in the ways they’d consented to. We were just starting out, so I wasn’t going to go in guns blazing. I knew Greid’s hard limits, and I wasn’t going to even touch on anything we hadn’t discussed. I’d start small and feel my way.

“Take off your clothes for me, Greid.” I grinned at him, sliding my palms up and down his calves. “Time to show me that big cock of yours.”

“F-fuck,” he breathed, chest already rising fast. He reached for the hem of his sweater, throat bobbing with a swallow as he began to pull it up.

The moment his stomach was exposed, I couldn’t help it—I leaned down and pressed a kiss just below his navel before nuzzling the thin green line that descended into his pants. Greid made a strangled sound, muffled by the sweater around his head, his stomach muscles twitching under my lips.

I sat up as he finally got the sweater off and dropped it on the bed. He licked his lips as he reached for his fly with trembling hands. His cock was already a long, hard column stretching down the right leg of his jeans, and my hand itched to rub it through the denim, to map out its length.

I resisted, waiting not-so-patiently as he fumbled with his fly and lifted his hips to tug his jeans and underwear down over his ass. My gaze grew heavy as it fixed on the hairless root of his cock, that green line fading to his usual skin colour just above the base. The bottom of the shaft was smooth—free of barbs, but deliciously veiny. Then I saw just a hint of those barbs appear, barely visible, before Greid lifted his knees to shove his pants all the way off in a rush.

I actually gasped when his cock swung free, arcing through the air to smack against his torso. I almost winced—Christ, it was heavy enough to have almost winded him from the impact.

Holy fuck. It was… obscenely big. I’d thought I would be prepared for it after watching all that demiurgus porn. But it was one thing seeing a miniature version of a gigantic porn-star dick on my phone screen. It was another entirely seeing it right in front of me, in the flesh, right there. Available for me to touch.

“God, it’s so big,” I rasped. Greid had been walking around with a third leg in his pants this entire time.

Greid had been sitting beside me every night, eating and watching TV and getting high, with this beast just in his pants, just casually resting there.

The barbs spiralled around his length, growing in size until they were about a quarter inch long under the sleek, tapered head. They were alien to me, but strangely elegant. His cock was black like the rest of his skin, but the barbs had the same dark green sheen as his claws. They flexed as his cock twitched, stretching well past his navel. Almost to his freaking ribcage.

“W-well, I mean, it… gets bigger when it’s hard,” he said, hands clenched on the sheets either side of him.

His words broke me out of my daze, and I snorted as I looked up at him with a grin. He was chewing on his lower lip, ears fluttering non-stop as his legs shifted on either side of me. I was seated between his calves, and when I palmed his shins, his thigh muscles jumped at the contact.

He looked nervous. Vulnerable. A spike of anxiety tightened my gut as I worried that I wasn’t doing enough to put him at ease. He had to be feeling overly exposed—he was naked in front of me for the first time, and I was fully dressed, sitting between his legs with a front-row view.

“You’re gorgeous,” I said quietly, knee-walking closer as I slid my hands up and down his legs in what I hoped was a soothing touch. “Tell me how you’re feeling, Greid.”

His cock looked painfully hard, and the pre-cum beading on the tip was clear with a smoky tint. I already knew—from the porn, of course—that demiurgus cum was a dark grey, almost black, with an oil-slick sheen when the light hit it.

That had been almost more shocking than the spiky cocks. Yet another thing I was glad I knew in advance.

“I’m okay,” he said hoarsely. “Just… a little nervous. What, um, what about you? Are you going to…”

I paused as I figured out what he meant. When his yellow eyes darted down to my shirt, I realised and gave him another smile. “This is about you, not me. It’s your reward for doing so well for me.”

His breath shuddered out of him. “B-But I—I want to see you too. I want to touch you so bad, Beryl.”

A tiny part of me wanted to gently reprimand him for pushing back, for trying to control the situation, but he was learning—we both were. We were both figuring this out.

“I’m on my period,” I reminded him.