Chapter 6: The Day Before the Moon
The silence after Poppy’s question hung between them, heavy as the humid air before a lightning strike. Viv’s gaze didn’t waver. “What time does the moon rise?”
Poppy’s expression tightened, a flicker of agony crossing her features before being schooled into something blank. “9:47 PM,” she said, her voice flat. “It’ll be fully clear of the horizon by ten.”
Viv simply nodded, as if Poppy had given her the weather forecast. She finished her water, the pills a dull ache in her throat. The practicalities settled in her mind, a list forming. “You have food? Real food, for before?”
Poppy blinked, thrown. “What?”
“You said the need devours everything. You need fuel. I’m assuming ordering pizza is off the table.” Viv slid off the stool, her body protesting with a symphony of sweet aches. She moved to Poppy’s refrigerator, a monstrous industrial thing, and pulled it open. Inside was sparse: condiments, a block of cheese, a carton of eggs, and a haunch of red meat wrapped in butcher paper. “Right,” Viv said. “Okay.”
“What are you doing?” Poppy asked, standing stiffly in the middle of the kitchen.
“Making you eggs. And cooking that.” Viv pointed at the meat. “You’ll eat it. Then you’ll rest.”
Poppy let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Rest? You really don’t get it. There is no rest. It’s a fucking tide, Viv. It’s rising in me right now.” As if to prove her point, she shifted her weight and a low, pained groan escaped her. Her hand went to her lower abdomen, pressing hard.
Viv saw it then—the tension coiling her body, the slight tremor in her stacked hands. The thick, dark hair she’d noticed earlier seemed more pronounced, trailing down her happy trail to the waistband of her sweats, which were tented obscenely. The preview was over. The main event was warming up.
“Then you’ll eat on your feet,” Viv said, her tone leaving no room for argument. She found a cast iron skillet, her movements efficient. “And you’ll tell me what to expect. Not the poetic ‘beast’ stuff. The logistics. Do I need to tie you down? Is there a room you use? What happens if you get out?”
Poppy watched her, a complex storm of emotions in her gold-flecked eyes—annoyance, disbelief, a stark, vulnerable need. “The spare room. It’s… reinforced. Steel doorframe. Heavy lock on the outside. There’s a mattress on the floor. Nothing else.” She swallowed. “I’ve never… had someone on the other side of that door who wasn’t paid to check the locks and leave.”
Viv cracked eggs into a bowl, the sound sharp in the quiet. “Okay. And if you get out?”
“I won’t.” Poppy’s voice was gravel. “The door holds. The window is bricked over. It’s a concrete box.”
“But if you do.”
Poppy looked away, out the grimy window. “Then you run. You don’t stop. You don’t look back. It’s not me anymore. It’s hunger. And heat. It will take what it needs, and it won’t care if it breaks you.”
Viv didn’t respond. She whisked the eggs, the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the fork against the glass bowl a mundane counterpoint to the apocalyptic warning. She cooked in silence, plating six scrambled eggs and searing the steak rare, the scent of searing meat and salt filling the space. She pushed the plate across the island.
Poppy stared at it, then at Viv. Slowly, she picked up a fork. She ate like a soldier fueling for battle—methodical, fast, without pleasure. Viv watched the powerful muscles of her jaw work, the column of her throat as she swallowed. She was magnificent, even like this, fraying at the edges.
As Poppy ate, the changes accelerated. Viv could see them happening in real time. The tremor in Poppy’s hands worsened. A fine sheen of sweat glossed her olive skin. Her breathing deepened, each inhale a conscious effort. And her scent… it changed. The human smell of sweat and soap was being overtaken by something denser, earthier—wet soil, crushed pine needles, sharp copper.
“It’s like a fever,” Poppy muttered, shoving the last bite of steak into her mouth. “A fever that builds in your bones. Your thoughts… they get slippery. Hard to hold onto.”
Viv cleaned the skillet, her back to Poppy. “What’s the last thing you usually remember? As yourself.”
There was a long pause. “The click of the lock,” Poppy said softly. “From the outside.”
Viv put the skillet away, dried her hands. When she turned, Poppy was right there, having moved with predatory silence. She loomed, her heat palpable. Her eyes were molten, the gold swallowing the brown. Up close, Viv could see the individual hairs on her arms standing up, thickening. The bulge in her sweats was undeniable, a heavy, pendulous weight.
“The need is back,” Poppy rasped. “It’s not just in my cock. It’s in my teeth. In my hands. It’s an itch under my skin I can’t scratch.” She brought a hand up, cupped Viv’s jaw. Her fingertips were calloused, hot. “You should go. Now. While I can still watch you walk away and not chase you.”
Viv leaned into the touch. “I’m not walking away.”
A sound ripped from Poppy’s throat, half-growl, half-sob. She seized Viv’s shoulders, spinning her and pinning her against the cool steel of the refrigerator. The impact knocked the air from Viv’s lungs. Poppy’s body pressed into her, a line of tense, trembling muscle. Viv could feel the hard, thick length of her, even through both layers of fabric, pulsing against her belly.
“Fuck,” Poppy hissed, grinding against her. “I need… I need friction. I need pressure. I need you.”
Her hands shoved at Viv’s leggings, yanking them and her underwear down to her thighs in one rough move. The air was cool on Viv’s exposed skin. Poppy didn’t even bother undressing herself; she just pushed her own sweats down over her hips, freeing her cock.
It was different. Thicker at the base, the skin darker, an angry red. The head was swollen, gleaming with slick arousal that wasn’t quite come. It twitched, a live thing, against Viv’s stomach.
“Here?” Viv gasped, her own arousal a swift, wet answer between her legs.
“Here. Now. Everywhere.” Poppy’s voice was breaking apart. She hooked one of Viv’s legs over her hip, opening her. The broad, slick head of her cock notched against Viv’s entrance, but she didn’t push in. Instead, she rutted against her, the hard length sliding through Viv’s wet folds, rubbing against her clit with each frantic thrust.
“Oh god,” Viv moaned, her head thudding back against the fridge. The sensation was brutally direct, obscenely good. Poppy’s cock was hot and solid, a relentless piston gliding in her own slickness, battering her sensitive nub. The metal of the refrigerator door rattled with their rhythm.
Poppy’s face was buried in Viv’s neck, her breath scorching, her teeth scraping the skin. “Yes… just like that… fuck, you’re so wet for it, for me…”
Viv’s hands scrambled for purchase, gripping Poppy’s sweat-damp shirt, then sinking into the wild tangle of her hair. She was losing herself, her world reduced to the slam of Poppy’s hips, the wet, slapping sounds of their bodies meeting, the coiling, desperate tightness in her core. Poppy was right—it was a fever, and she was catching it.
“Harder,” Viv pleaded, her own voice foreign to her. “Poppy, please…”
Poppy obeyed, her movements becoming more animal, less controlled. She slammed against Viv, the base of her cock—that thickening ridge—hammering against Viv’s clit with bruising force. Viv saw stars, her vision whiting out at the edges. Her climax crashed into her without warning, a raw, screaming thing that clenched her entire body. Her cunt spasmed, drenching Poppy’s thrusting length.
The feel of Viv convulsing around her, the gush of hot fluid, was the final thread snapping for Poppy.
With a guttural roar that vibrated through Viv’s bones, Poppy drove forward, not with the slick slide along her folds, but into her.
The invasion was shocking, breathtaking. Viv was still clenched tight from her orgasm, and Poppy was bigger, so much bigger than before. The stretch was an exquisite, burning fullness that tore a broken cry from Viv’s throat. Poppy didn’t stop. She buried herself to the hilt in one devastating thrust, her hips flush against Viv’s ass.
“Mine,” Poppy snarled into her skin, the word distorted. “You’re mine.”
Then she fucked her. It was not lovemaking, not even the rough, passionate sex of the night before. This was a claiming. Poppy pulled almost all the way out, then slammed back in, setting a punishing, relentless pace. The refrigerator door shuddered and banged. Viv was pinned, utterly filled, each deep stroke hitting a place inside her that made her see flashes of light. Her own sensitivity was overwritten by a newer, deeper, more urgent need.
Poppy’s hands gripped her ass, fingers digging in, holding her open, adjusting the angle for deeper access. The sounds were filthy—the wet squelch of penetration, the slap of skin, their ragged, mingled grunts and moans.
“Gonna come,” Poppy chanted, her rhythm faltering, growing erratic, harder. “Gonna fill you up… gonna knot you…”
The ridge at the base of her cock swelled perceptibly, a pronounced bulge that stretched Viv’s entrance wider on every inward plunge. The promise of it, the threat, sent another vicious bolt of pleasure through Viv. She was coming again, her internal muscles fluttering wildly around the invading thickness, her body trying to milk it, pull it deeper.
Poppy felt it. Her roar was inhuman. She shoved in one final, brutal time, hilting herself as deep as she could go, and Viv felt the base of her cock bloom. It wasn’t the full lock, but a significant, sudden expansion that stretched Viv to a breathtaking, impossible limit, sealing Poppy inside her.
The hot, frantic pulse of Poppy’s release followed immediately, jet after jet flooding Viv’s depths, so much it felt like it would spill over. Poppy shuddered violently, her entire body seizing, her forehead pressed hard against the fridge above Viv’s head. She held there, locked by the partial swell, panting like a wounded animal.
Slowly, the intense throbbing subsided. The swollen ridge softened, just enough for Poppy to slip out with a wet, obscene sound. Viv’s legs buckled. Poppy caught her, her own movements clumsy, and they slid together down the front of the refrigerator to land in a heap on the cold kitchen floor.
Fluid, warm and sticky, leaked from Viv, soaking into her tangled leggings. The smell of sex and salt and wildness was overwhelming. Poppy’s arms were around her, but they were shaking. Her breath was hot and ragged against Viv’s temple.
“See?” Poppy whispered, the word frayed and full of despair. “It’s not… it’s not going to stop. It’s just going to get worse. The knot… next time it won’t let go. And I… I won’t know you.”
Viv, her body humming with spent sensation, turned her head. She looked at Poppy’s face, saw the terror swimming in the gold. She reached up, her fingers tracing the sharp line of a cheekbone. “You know me now,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “And I’m not locking you in a box alone.”
Poppy just closed her eyes, a single track of moisture cutting through the sweat on her cheek. Outside, the afternoon sun began its slow descent. The moon was waiting.