Chapter 5: The Transformation's Price
The silence after was different. Not peaceful, but expectant, like the held breath before a storm’s final surge. Sweat cooled on Viv’s skin.Poppy’s hand, still possessively curved around Viv’s hip, twitched.
The buzzing was back.
Viv felt it first through the floorboards, a faint tremor, or perhaps it was just Poppy’s thigh trembling beneath her. Then she heard it—a low, sub-vocal hum emanating from Poppy’s chest, a sound felt more than heard.
“It’s starting again,” Poppy murmured, her voice stripped raw. She didn’t sound resigned anymore.She sounded hungry.
Viv untangled her legs and shifted, her own body sore and magnificently used. She sat back on her heels, looking at Poppy in the jagged light.The sculptor’s gaze was locked on her, the gold in her eyes brighter, hotter. The changes were more pronounced now. A darker trail of hair led from her navel to the base of her cock, which lay half-hard against her thigh, thicker than Viv remembered from just an hour before. The vein along its side pulsed with a slow, insistent rhythm.
“Tell me about the knot,” Viv said, her own voice hoarse.Poppy’s lips curled, not quite a smile. “Why? Turning academic on me now, archivist?”
“No.” Viv reached out, her fingers hovering just above the heated skin of Poppy’s inner thigh. “I’m turning practical.I want to know what I’m asking for.”
A sharp intake of breath. Poppy’s cock gave a distinct, jerking swell. “Practical,” she repeated, the word a growl.“It swells.At the base.During… during the peak.It locks.It’s biology.Primal.It’s for breeding. For making sure the seed takes.” Her amber eyes flicked up, meeting Viv’s.“It’ll hurt. A stretch like nothing else. It’ll hold you there, stuck on me, until I’m done. Until every fucking drop is inside you.”
Viv’s cunt clenched, empty and suddenly aching.A slick pulse of warmth betrayed her.Poppy’s nostrils flared.
“You like that idea,” Poppy stated, wonder mixing with the hunger in her tone.
“I’m curious,” Viv breathed, her fingers finally making contact, tracing the powerful line of Poppy’s quadricep.“Curiosity,” Poppy snarled, surging forward. She grabbed Viv, flipping her onto her hands and knees with effortless, terrifying strength. Viv’s breath rushed out in a gasp.The cool, dusty floorboards were rough against her palms. Behind her, Poppy knelt, her body a wall of radiating heat. One large hand smoothed over Viv’s spine, a touch that was almost tender before it fisted in her hair, pulling her head back just enough to arch her spine.
“You want knowledge?” Poppy’s breath was hot against Viv’s ear.“I’ll give you a preview.”
There was no finesse. Spit-slicked fingers probed Viv’s entrance, pushed past her swollen folds, and plunged inside. Viv cried out, her body instinctively pushing back. Poppy worked her with a rough, urgent rhythm, her fingers curling, scraping that brilliant, sensitive spot deep within.
“You’re so fucking wet,” Poppy groaned.“Wet for the beast.For the knot. You’re insane.”
Viv could only moan, her world narrowing to the thrusting fingers, the grip in her hair, the promise of what was to come.Her climax coiled, low and electric. “Poppy, please—”
The fingers withdrew.Viv whimpered at the loss. Then she felt the blunt, solid pressure of Poppy’s cock, nudging against her.It was bigger.Significantly bigger. The broad head pressed, insistently, against her resisting entrance.
“Breathe out,” Poppy commanded, her voice guttural.Viv exhaled, and Poppy drove forward.
The stretch was breathtaking, a bright, burning fullness that stole the air from Viv’s lungs. It was more than before—deeper, wider, an invasion that her body fought for a second before surrendering, yielding with a gush of slick arousal. Poppy sank to the hilt, a deep, broken sound tearing from her throat.“God, Viv… fuck…” Her hips began to move.
It was a different kind of fucking.Not just frantic, but deliberate. Deep, pounding thrusts that hammered into Viv’s core, each one jolting her forward on the floor. Poppy’s hands gripped her hips hard enough to leave marks, guiding the brutal pace. The sound was obscene—wet, meaty slaps, their mingled sweat and her slickness coating them both.Viv’s mind fragmented. There was no thought, only sensation: the devastating fullness, the scrape of the floor against her knees, the sheer dominance of the woman taking her.Pleasure, sharp and undeniable, built with each punishing stroke. She was babbling, half-formed words, curses, pleas.
“Is this what you wanted?” Poppy gasped, her rhythm faltering, growing ragged.“A preview?”
“Yes! Fuck, yes!” Viv screamed.Poppy’s thrusts became shorter, harder, pistoning into her with a focused intensity. Viv felt the base of Poppy’s cock begin to swell. It wasn’t the full knot, not yet, but a pronounced thickening, a ridge that stretched her just a fraction more with each inward plunge.The sensation was overwhelming, a relentless pressure on nerves already screaming with pleasure.
It tipped her over.
Her orgasm exploded, a convulsive, white-hot seizure that clamped her inner walls down viselike around the invading length.She shook, sobbed, her vision spotting.
The feeling of her violent clenching was the final trigger for Poppy. With a roar that shook the sculptures on the walls, Poppy slammed home one last time, burying herself as deep as possible. Viv felt the hot, pulsing jet of her release, flooding her insides. The ridge at the base swelled, not to the point of locking, but enough to hold her securely, stretching her exquisitely as Poppy pumped her full.
They collapsed together onto the floor, a heap of shuddering limbs. Poppy’s weight was crushing, her body still jerking with the aftershocks of her climax.Viv, pinned beneath her, felt spent, ravaged, utterly claimed.
Minutes bled by, marked only by their slowing breaths.Eventually, Poppy softened enough to slip out. A rush of warmth followed—their mixed fluids leaking onto Viv’s thigh. The smell of sex and salt and wild musk was overpowering.
Poppy rolled onto her back beside her, staring at the shadowed ceiling.“Two days,” she said, her voice hollow.“It gets worse.Longer. Stronger.The need… it devours everything else. I won’t be me.”
Viv turned her head.She saw the profile of a goddess, etched in sweat and shame. She saw the tremble in the powerful hand resting on a stomach now streaked with evidence of their joining.
“You warned me,” Viv said quietly.“Margot warned me.The books hinted at it. I’m choosing to see it anyway.”
Poppy turned her head. The gold was subdued, a banked fire.The human pain was forefront.“Why? What could you possibly want from this? From me?”
Viv thought of the quiet of her old life, the ordered rows of books, the dust motes in silent libraries.It felt like a faded photograph. This, the aching heat between her legs, the salt on her lips, the terrifying wildness in the woman beside her—this was in color.“I don’t know yet,” Viv answered honestly. “But I’m not leaving.”
A long silence stretched.Then Poppy sat up, moving with a weary grace. She stood, a tower of scarred muscle and potent womanhood, and offered a hand down to Viv.“Come on,” she said, the command softened by exhaustion.“Shower. You reek of me.”
Viv took her hand.The calluses were rough, the grip firm. As Poppy pulled her up, Viv stumbled against her. Poppy caught her, held her for a moment, their naked bodies pressing together in something that wasn’t lust, but a stark, simple need for contact.
In the steaming spray of the shower, Poppy washed her with a surprising gentleness.She soaped the aches from Viv’s muscles, rinsed the sweat and come from her skin. Viv returned the favor, her hands sliding over the landscape of Poppy’s back, feeling the subtle ridge of her spine, the powerful slabs of her shoulders.They didn’t speak. The water beat down, a cocoon of noise and heat. Clean, dried, and wearing a pair of Poppy’s soft sweats and an old t-shirt that drowned her, Viv sat at the messy kitchen island. Poppy wordlessly placed a glass of water and two ibuprofen in front of her.“You’ll need these,” she said, taking some herself.
They drank in silence.The apartment seemed to listen with them.The frantic energy had bled away, for now. It was the eye of the hurricane.
“Tomorrow,” Poppy finally said, staring into her glass, “I won’t be able to work.I won’t be able to think. The beast… it crowds out everything.The only relief is what we just did.Over and over. It’s relentless.” She looked up, her gaze clear and terrifyingly sober. “This is your last real chance to walk away, Viv. Once the moon is tomorrow night… there’s no going back from what happens.”
Viv traced the grain of the wood counter. She thought of the preview, the ridge, the flood of heat inside her. She thought of the roar, half-human, half-beast. She thought of the profound loneliness in Poppy’s eyes when she was most herself.She lifted her gaze and held Poppy’s. “What time does the moon rise?”