"Mei-Ling..."

  The name left him like a sigh. Bo Ji pulled her back in, and he kissed like a man drowning.

  But the hunger behind them was enormous. His hands found her waist with a jolt, fingers pressing into the groove above her hips as if terrified she might pull away. A whimper crawled up from his chest, muffled against her mouth, the sound of a man tasting contact after weeks of nothing.

  Fuuka let him hold on. She deepened the kiss slowly, tilting his jaw with her thumbs, guiding the angle. She breathed him in, let her body settle its full weight against his p, and felt his manhood hardening beneath the thin cotton of his boxer shorts almost immediately.

  The pheromonic conditioning runs deep. His body remembers how to perform even when his mind has forgotten how to want.

  She broke the kiss. He chased it, leaning forward, and she pressed a finger to his lips.

  "Slowly, Bo Ji-san. We have time."

  "Yes, I know, but—I don't—" He swallowed. His erection strained against her through the fabric, thick and insistent. "I haven't touched anyone since Mei-Ling left. Since before. Not since the Warren."

  "I know." She pressed Hotaru's braided handle. The Spirit Lantern lifted from the mattress with a soft hum, rising to hover at shoulder height, its hexagonal frame beginning to glow toxic violet. The light painted them both in shades of purple and shadow. "Hotaru will collect what we create. You'll feel a pull when you cum."

  "Oh…okay?"

  "Don't fight it. Let it go."

  "What if it's not enough?"

  Fuuka traced a line down his chest with her fingernail, over the stained undershirt, finding the hem and tugging upward. "It will be enough. Trust your body. It remembers."

  She pulled the shirt over his head. He was thinner than he'd been in the Warren. Ribs visible, muscle wasted from weeks of protein paste and despair. But the Imperial bone structure was still there, the framework of a man who'd once been handsome, and between his legs, the penis stood at full attention, tenting eagerly and honestly.

  Fuuka pulled his shorts down. His cock sprang free, flushed dark and already leaking at the tip, a bead of clear fluid catching Hotaru's violet light. She wrapped her fingers around the shaft. Bo Ji hissed through his teeth, hips bucking involuntarily.

  "Nngh—"

  "Shh." She stroked him once, base to tip, feeling the heat, the urgent throb of blood beneath the skin. Her Worm Witch senses mapped his biology: testosterone flooding his system, seminal vesicles already swelling with production, prostate engorged. However long his days in the Warren were, Ysolde had turned this man into a living factory, and the machinery still worked. "Lie back. Let me take care of you."

  He fell back against the mattress. His chest heaved. Tears were still wet on his cheeks, mingling with sweat that had begun to bead along his temples. Fuuka straddled him properly now, positioning herself above his hips, and reached between her own legs to guide him.

  She sank down onto him in one smooth motion, her womanhood clenching his erected length.

  "Aaahh—!" Bo Ji's cry bounced off the apartment's thin walls. His back arched, hands cwing at the sheets, every tendon in his neck standing taut. The sound was guttural, animal, ripped from somewhere deep and honest. Inside her, he throbbed and pulsed so hard she could almost count his heartbeat.

  Fuuka held still, letting him adjust. The sensation was adequate, his girth filling her at a comfortable angle, and she ground her hips in a slow circle that made him gasp again. Her Creepers stirred inside her womb, the symbiotic worms sensing the influx of male Aether through her vaginal walls, but she kept them calm.

  Rest and keep down, my little cuties. Not now. This wasn't about feeding. This was about extraction.

  She began to move.

  Long, rolling undutions. Up until only his penis's tip remained in her, then down, taking him to the root. Each descent pulled another broken pleased sound from Bo Ji's throat. His hands found her hips, gripping hard enough to bruise if she'd been fully human, and she let him hold on. Let him dig his fingers into her ass.

  "Mei-Ling—" He said the name like a prayer. Eyes shut, lips parted, seeing someone else behind his eyelids. Fuuka let him.

  "Yes. I'm here." She pnted her palms on his chest, feeling his heart hammer against her fingers, and increased her pace. The wet sounds of their coupling filled the small room, rhythmic and obscene, punctuated by Bo Ji's stuttering groans and the creak of the cheap mattress springs.

  Hotaru drifted closer, violet light intensifying. The Spirit Lantern's collection protocol was active, tuned to the specific frequencies of male ejacute. When Bo Ji released, Hotaru would capture the psionic signature encoded in his semen before the fluid even cooled.

  But first, she needed volume.

  She clenched her internal muscles, squeezing him in counterpoint to her thrusts. Bo Ji's vocabury colpsed to vowels. "Ah— aah— fff—"

  "Don't hold back," she whispered, leaning down to press her lips against his ear. Her breasts brushed his chest, nipples dragging across his skin, and she felt the shudder that ran through him like a current. "Give me everything, Bo Ji. Everything you've been holding inside."

  "I'm going to—I'm going—"

  "Then go."

  He cummed with a scream that he tried to muffle against her shoulder, biting down on skin that refused to bruise. His hips bucked upward, driving deep, and Fuuka felt the first hot surge inside her as his cock pulsed once, twice, three times, four. Months of abstinence combined with Ysolde's conditioning turned the orgasm into a flood, his body emptying itself with the abandon of a broken dam.

  Hotaru fred. The ntern's violet light spiked to blinding for half a second, then settled into a deep, satisfied throb as it began pulling the Aether-rich essence from their joined bodies. Bo Ji whimpered beneath her, still twitching, spilling, his cock jerking inside her with aftershocks that seemed to go on and on.

  Fuuka didn't stop moving.

  "Again," she said.

  "I can't—but that was so good—"

  "Your body can," She rolled her hips, grinding down, and felt his softening cock twitch back to attention. The conditioning. She pressed her thumb against the base of his shaft, finding the pressure point that would accelerate recovery. A trick from her home pnet Devithar, where sex was currency and stamina meant bargaining power. Bo Ji groaned, his penis hardening inside her again, eyes opening.

  "Thousand Gods— Mei— Mei-Ling—"

  "Mmm." Fuuka sat upright, arching her back, letting him see her body above him in the violet light. Swaying breasts, small shoulders, sleek bob fluttering, utterly in control. She circled her hips, found the angle that made his toes curl against the sheets, and rode him with a focus that left no room for his self-loathing. The sensation and the slick, relentless friction of her body wringing him dry.

  The second orgasm came faster.

  "Haaahh—!" Bo Ji grabbed her thighs and thrust upward with a strangled and she felt another warm torrent, thicker this time. Hotaru pulsed again, reservoir filling.

  He was crying from release and bliss. Tears streamed down his temples, and his chest heaved with sobs tangled with gasps of pleasure.

  She gave him thirty seconds. The room quieted except for his breathing and the low hum of Hotaru overhead.

  "That was so good, Mei-Ling," he muttered, eyes still closed.

  Fuuka lifted herself off him. Bo Ji made a small, bereft sound at the loss of contact, but she pressed a hand against his chest.

  "Turn over," she said. "On top of me."

  His eyes opened. Wet, red, confused. "What?"

  "You've been lying there letting me take." She settled onto her back against the sheets, hair fanning across the pillow, and opened her arms. "Now you come to me. The way you used to come to her."

  Bo Ji stared down at her. Something crumbled behind his expression, a wall he'd built between what this was and what he was pretending it was. Fuuka watched it fall. He climbed over her slowly, arms trembling as they braced on either side of her head. His weight settled against her, chest to chest, and she felt his cock press against her inner thigh, still slick from the st two rounds, hardening again.

  She reached between them and guided his shaft into her hole. Slower this time. He sank into her with a long, shuddering exhale against her neck, and his forehead dropped to the pillow beside her ear.

  "Move when you're ready," she whispered.

  He didn't move yet. He just breathed against her neck, his body shaking with something that had nothing to do with pleasure.

  "She used to make this soup," Bo Ji said. His voice was muffled, broken into pieces. "Winter melon and pork rib. Every Sunday. Even when we couldn't afford the pork, she'd find a way. She'd send Bao to the market with exact change and a list written in her handwriting, and the butcher always gave the boy extra because Mei-Ling's handwriting was so neat."

  Fuuka said nothing. She pced her hands on his back and held him.

  "I never told her it was the best thing I ever tasted." His hips shifted. A slow, instinctive push that seated him deeper. "I never told her a lot of things."

  "Tell me now," Fuuka said quietly.

  He began to move. Unhurried, graceless, the rhythm of a man who wasn't performing but remembering. Each thrust carried weight, and between them, words spilled out of him like they'd been dammed for years.

  "She snored. Tiny little snores, like a cat purring. I used to lie awake just to listen." A thrust. "She hated my cooking but ate it anyway and said it was good." Another. Deeper. "She cried when Bao spoke his first word, and I pretended I wasn't crying too."

  Fuuka's hands traced slow circles across his shoulder bdes. His skin was hot, feverish. She could feel his heartbeat through his ribs, hammering against her chest where their bodies pressed together.

  "She smelled like jasmine soap," Bo Ji whispered, and his rhythm faltered, hips stuttering. "Cheap stuff from the corner dispensary. Smelled like it cost a fortune on her."

  Something turned behind Fuuka's sternum. Small. Unwelcome. She cataloged it, filed it in the same pce she kept the memory of Devithar's st sunrise through the viewport, and let it pass.

  "She sounds wonderful," Fuuka said. And meant it.

  Bo Ji's pace quickened. His breathing turned ragged against her ear, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him closer, tilting her hips to match his angle. The shift drew a groan from deep in his chest. His hands found her hair, gripping gently, the way a man holds something he's afraid of breaking.

  "Mei-Ling— I'm sorry— I'm so sorry—"

  "Shh." Fuuka pressed her lips to his temple. His thrusts grew urgent, desperate, losing whatever rhythm he'd built. She held on, letting his weight pin her to the mattress, letting the cheap springs cry beneath them. "You're safe. You're enough. Let go, Bo Ji."

  When he cummed the final time, his voice cracked open like dry earth receiving rain. "Ahhhn— nnhh— thank... thank y—"

  He couldn't finish the sentence. His eyes rolled back, body going sck on top of her, every muscle surrendering at once. Consciousness left him mid-thrust, his cock still buried inside her, twitching out the st of what his body had to give.

  Fuuka held still beneath him. Let the final drops transfer through Hotaru's pull. The Spirit Lantern glowed steadily now, reservoir near-full, violet light warm and rich with accumuted Aether. More than she'd hoped.

  She eased him off her gently, rolling his weight onto the mattress. His softened cock slipped free with a wet sound. She cleaned herself with the edge of a sheet and dressed efficiently. Her Nucleus Watch went back on st, the csp clicking shut, dragons resuming their violet pulse against her wrist.

  Bo Ji slept. His breathing was so deep, Fuuka could tell it was the first real rest his body had allowed itself since leaving the Warren. The misery that had been in his face had smoothed, leaving behind something younger, softer. He almost looked like the man in the wedding photo she'd noticed on the wall.

  Almost.

  Fuuka knelt beside the mattress and pressed Hotaru's handle twice. The Spirit Lantern opened its lower chamber, releasing a viscous pool of mixed white essence into the ceramic bowl she'd taken from the kitchen alcove. Bo Ji's fresh semen, still warm, glowing faintly with raw Aether. And from Hotaru's deeper reservoir: Jabari's essence, weeks preserved, its Lunar-Mirage signature distinct from Bo Ji's unaspected output.

  She mixed them with her fingers, whispering Devavā?ī to coax the signatures toward harmony. "Dve bīje spar?a-hīnau, ekā nadī bhavantu. Virahāt sa?gama?. Bhinna? vahatu ekam. [Two seeds that never touched, become one river. From separation, union. Let the divided flow as one.]"

  Jabari's warmth. Bo Ji's volume. Two men who'd never met, their semen mingling into something greater than either alone.

  The mixture began to glow. Purple at first, then deeper. The color of Proxima Centauri's sky at dusk. Fuuka directed Hotaru over the bowl, and the ntern's portal function engaged, casting a wide cone of violet light downward.

  The semen pool rippled. A vertical disc of light tore open above the bowl, widening. Through the tear, she could feel Venus. Hot, thick atmosphere, sulfuric haze, and beneath it: Jabari's signal, suppressed but clearer now. Close.

  She pulled more of the mixed essence from the bowl and shaped it. Gorgers first. The semen twisted in her hands, curdling into fibrous clumps that writhed and stretched, taking form. One. Three. Five. Eight, then twelve hound-like shapes, purple-fleshed and single-eyed, bones cracking into pce as they grew from seed to soldier in seconds. They shook themselves like wet dogs, violet fluid spraying, and turned their glowing eyes toward Fuuka in silent obedience.

  More material remained. Enough for something bigger.

  Fuuka pressed both palms into the remaining pool and spoke the next summoning words. "Uttishtha, ko?a kāmasya. Raksha āhvātrī? tava."

  The apartment floor cracked. From the ceramic bowl, a shape rose. Shell-backed, standing on powerful hind legs, broad jaws grinding as crystallized semen hardened into armor pting.

  A Semen Jinki. Twice her height, head nearly touching the ceiling. It smelled of sex and Proxima jungle and something like Fuuka's own private part.

  The Jinki looked down at her. Its eyes held the warm brown of Jabari's essence blended with the desperate vitality of Bo Ji's offering.

  Fuuka gathered Kage, sheathed the dagger in her obi, and turned back to Bo Ji one final time. From her kimono's inner pocket, she drew a slim card. Magnetic strip, holographic seal, stamped with the transit authority's emblem. A one-way shuttle ticket: 'Destination: Transfer Station Theta-9, then onward to Proxima Centauri.'

  She'd purchased it three days ago, before she'd even known she'd need Bo Ji specifically. Contingency pnning. Shazmeen had taught her well.

  She pced the ticket on the pillow beside his head. Beside it, she set a small folded note:

  To My Seed Provider,

  New life awaits. Proxima has work for those willing to start over. The shuttle leaves on the 29th. Use it or don't. But know that what you gave tonight saved lives.

  — F.N.

  She did not sign it with her Rakshasa title. Bo Ji didn't need more gods. He needed a door.

  Fuuka stood. The oxygen meter blinked yellow in the corner. Seven days until it ran out. Enough time.

  She turned to the portal, still humming in the center of the room, its purple-rimmed disc casting shifting light across the sleeping man and the bare walls and the wedding photo where a younger Bo Ji smiled beside a woman.

  "Thank you, Bo Ji," Fuuka murmured. Then, louder, to the Gorgers and the Jinki crowding the cramped space, issuing her command in Devavā?ī: "Samaya. Adhuna. [Through the portal. Now.]"

  The Gorgers went first, loping through the portal in a pack, vanishing into the light with wet snarls. The Semen Jinki lowered its massive head, folded its white bulk through the disc, shell scraping the portal's edge and sending sparks of violet energy scattering.

  Fuuka stepped through st.

  The light swallowed her. Heat and sulfur hit her senses shortly after, thick Venusian atmosphere pressing against her skin, the sound of distant combat reaching her ears before her vision cleared.

  Behind her, on Mars, the portal colpsed. The apartment went dark and quiet. Bo Ji slept on. The shuttle ticket y on his pillow, catching the st fading wisps of violet light before those too disappeared.