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My thighs clenched together.

I want that too, I replied, unable to stop myself from imagining it. Nuni’s big dick sliding inside me, stretching me. His muscular body hovering over me, face tight with pleasure. Getting to feel him come inside me, knowing we were connected so intimately.

I wanted it. So much. Not just because I liked getting fucked, but because he was… Because…

I’ll speak to Greid , Nuni sent back, and I could detect the ruthless determination behind the words.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Nuni

B y Friday morning, I’d texted Greid five more times during the week, and he still hadn’t gotten back to me.

I was starting to get pissed.

I’d already gone online and tried searching for human-demiurgus sex, but the only results were fanfic, smutty artwork, and a porn site that made videos of humans getting sucked off through a glory hole by a huge demiurgus dude. There was also a conspiracy blog about the weird cult that operated outside of the city—the one that publicly called itself a “commune dedicated to bettering interspecies relations”.

It was definitely a cult though. We’d all heard the rumours that the humans there were deepchasers—people obsessed with demiurgus. They called themselves The Order of the Greater Beings, for fuck’s sake. I mean, I liked to think I was a greater being, but not just because I was a demiurgus. I’d earned my greater being status, goddamnit.

I didn’t care enough about weird human cults to go down that rabbit hole though, so I gave up after trawling through a few pages of search results.

But there had to be a way, right? Demiurgus had been living on the surface with humans for hundreds of years. And both species were equally obsessed with sex. I refused to believe that there hadn’t been a single old-timey lech in history who’d dedicated his life’s work to figuring out how he could fuck the other intelligent species living alongside his own.

Maybe I could start a research company as an offshoot of Rorik + Stimis. I could just say that it was… researching human-demiurgus relations to figure out how to design buildings that catered to both species sharing a living space. That sounded believable.

It was actually a pretty good idea. I could ask Greid if there was anything he and Beryl had noticed after several months of living together.

Of course, that would require Greid to actually fucking get back to me. I’d initially texted him saying I wanted to ask him something, and when that hadn’t worked, I’d followed it up by saying I needed to speak to him, which still hadn’t worked.

It kind of made me feel like crap, honestly. I was his brother. What if there were something wrong or serious that I wanted to tell him? Did he not care?

Even though I knew it was pointless, I tried calling him as I sat at my desk during my lunch break on Friday afternoon. It just rang and rang before clicking over to voicemail, so I hung up as my jaw clenched. After a few seconds of irritated seething, I was shutting off my computer and grabbing my suit jacket.

“Lipa, I’m taking the afternoon off,” I told her as I stepped out of my office.

She looked up in surprise. “Oh. Okay, sir. You have a call with—”

“Reschedule all my calls this afternoon then head home,” I told her. “I have to go deal with a… family thing.”

She nodded quickly. “Of course. Thank you, sir. I hope everything’s okay.”

“Have a good weekend,” I said, already striding for the elevators.

If Greid was ignoring me, I’d just turn up at his house. He couldn’t ignore me then.

Greid lived on a quiet, leafy street in the Cimmerian District, where demiurgus-built townhouses crammed together with gleaming stained-glass windows and plant pots crowding the front stoops.

I got a little nervous as I pulled up behind my brother’s SUV parked outside his house. I always felt weird when I was talking to Greid, which tended to make me lapse into brotherly teasing because it was familiar. He was so closed off. It was like pulling teeth trying to get him to actually talk to me, even at family gatherings.

God, I hoped Beryl wasn’t in. I could really do without being called Pooni and watched suspiciously in case she had to jump in and defend her precious boyfriend. I’d barely said two words to her at Christmas before she started getting all snarky.

She was nothing like Anita. Anita was quiet and blunt, but she had a great, dry sense of humour. And nothing seemed to faze her. She’d be able to handle my family no problem, even Kiti and Aunt Indi, who was probably the most overbearing out of all of us. And I bet Mom would love her.

After smoothing down my tie and buttoning my suit jacket, I knocked on the front door before stuffing my hands into my pants pockets. I glanced around as I waited. There were two old dudes smoking cigars on a nearby stoop, openly watching me.

My lip curled as I turned back to face the door. This was why I preferred living in a busier area, deeper in the city. Your neighbours left you the fuck alone. Nobody cared about what anyone else was doing. Making eye contact in the street was a cardinal sin. I bet everyone here greeted each other cheerfully on the sidewalk every morning.

Greid probably didn’t, seeing as he rarely left his house. But I bet Beryl fucking loved it. Perky, friendly Beryl who’d successfully charmed the rest of my family into loving her despite the stupid Pooni nickname she’d given me.