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At first, he’d been hesitant to return.
You should be making an effort to meet someone.His neighbor, Lurielle’s, words had rattled in his brain for a full week.
His former partner in avowed singledom, the elf next door had been a fast friend from the moment she’d moved in more than a year ago. He and Veleena were only separated at that point, only just beginning the legal process of dissolving their marriage and splitting their assets when Lurielle had moved to Cambric Creek on the heels of a bitter breakup.
His house was built from one of two housing tracts designed for larger species. His front door was wider, the pitch between his counter and his cupboards deeper to account for his horns, all of his shelves a bit higher, with springy flooring that absorbed the pressure of his hooves. The house next door was identical to his own, but that hadn’t stopped the petite, sapphire-eyed elf from moving in.
It was a perfect backdrop for their friendship — neither had the desire to be coupled, and they had attended community carnivals and picnics and block parties together, thumbing their nose at love and having a grand old time. That was until she’d brought home a giant orc with a southern drawl who’d simply never left.
“You want me to fix you up with someone from work?” she’d asked that night the previous week, topping off his wine glass as they sat around her undersized patio table while Khash manned the grill. Rourke had made the mistake of lamenting his dating app woes, instantly regretting it.
The big orc was acting as if the salmon he was turning had come from a beast he’d wrestled from the water with his bare hands with the way he was fussing over them, increasing the heat until flames flared from the grated cooktop. It took everything in Rourke’s power to keep from pointing out that the innocent salmon steaks hadn’t done anything to him and didn’t deserve such treatment.
“What happens when I break their heart? Or do they decide I’m an asshole and that you have a terrible judgment? You don’t want to risk your professional relationships that way.”
“Now that’s the truth, Bluebell. You don’t wanna go buryin’ other folk’s bones in your garden when you still have pruning to do.”
Rourke pressed his lips together in a hard line to keep his internal monologue from bursting forth without his approval. Khash was a syrupy southern charmer, full of folksy idioms and metaphors that were nonsensical most of the time. He was a stockbroker in Bridgeton and lived in one of the highrises on the waterfront, although he seemed to spend more time in his girlfriend’s suburban home than in his own. A sardonic smile tugged at his lips, and Rourke had raised his eyes to Lurielle — sarcastic, smartass Lurielle — but her head was tipped back, her eyes shining in adoration as her boyfriend slid the plumpest of the blackened salmon steaks onto her plate.
“Oh, you’ve got that right. I don’t need anyone else’s bones in my garden.”
Rourke had looked away when the big orc bent in half to press his lips to her mouth, wishing he’d kept the kitchen light off when he’d arrived home that night instead of alerting them to his presence.
“But still. If you want me to set you up with one of my friends, I will. I worry about you, you know. You work too hard; it’s not sustainable. You should make an effort to meet someone. Or at least try a new hobby, do yoga, something other than work.”
Hehadbeen making an effort to meet someone, he’d wanted to argue, but he held his tongue, knowing it was futile, and simply tried to get through the completely exhausting dinner. Besides, he still didn’t know what he wanted.
Rourke had stayed away from the milking farm for several days after that night. He’d spent the rest of that week attempting to imagine himself with any one of the more successful dates he’d had in the past year — bickering the way his petite elf neighbor bickered with the big orc, finishing each other’s sentences, sidetracking every story with a shared remembrance that was only significant to them, inside jokes triggered by random, innocuous words, just getting through dinner and drinks seeming to take at least nine hours — and couldn’t. More significantly, he didn’t want to. The mere thought left him cold.
An app designed for hook-ups replaced the deleted dating version, a bit more in tune with his uncharacteristic indecisiveness. He wasn’t looking for love, he was pretty sure, but hewashorny. Soon, dinner dates that ended in sex replaced the ones that had usually ended with a hug in the parking lot, but they were sporadic at best, and the sex wasn’t always satisfying, which was always a possibility when dating outside one’s own species.
The issue of what the milking facility was doing with the blood they’d collected, in addition to the non-stop supply of semen, was a question that had arisen over the table the last time the Minoan Society had gathered for dinner — a quarterly occurrence that he didn’t always make time for, but he had gone that month.
“They might be doing genetic testing to isolate the genes for muscle mass and strength,” one bull suggested. Rourke thought that seemed a tad optimistic and was just a way to insinuate minotaurs were superior when measured up to, say, orcs.Well, definitely superior to orcs like Khash.
“Could be that they’re running our genetic makeup looking for anomalies so they can develop new drugs. They’ll be ahead of the curve, and we’d be dependent on them,” suggested another, earning the muttered agreement of the rest of the table.Considering it’s a pharmaceutical company, that’s probably exactly what they’re doing.
“They’re probably using our sperm for insemination clinics,” one of his more dour cohorts had grumbled, earning the groans of everyone around him.
The main use of their semen was no secret — human men couldn’t get it up the same way, didn’t have their stamina, couldn’t get as hard or stay hard for as long as any one of the bullmen at the table, and the drug companies had figured out how to synthesize the proteins in minotaurean semen. Little blue pills helped to flag human erections and gain a teensy bit of bullish steel, a billion-dollar industry built off their backs. It was the same protein that gummed up their plumbing, a pain in the ass all around, and a product had been developed forthatas well.An entire economy built around our jizz. Best to give the farm a break for a while.
Then he’d matched with the kitsune on the app. Bright-eyed and quite literally bushy-tailed ? five of them, to be exact — and a filthy mouth. She’d told him exactly what she wanted to do to his cock, the way she wanted to be eaten out, how she wanted him to fuck her in a public place, one of his long-held fantasies . . . but after several weeks, texts were all in which they’d engaged. She was a doctor at a hospital in Bridgeton, just as busy as he was, and for two weeks straight, they tried and failed to make their schedules match, their x-rated conversations remaining only that.
After the fourth time plans were canceled, Rourke was finished. The hook-up app went the way of the dating app, and instead of downloading anything further, he toggled over to the milking farm’s booking portal. He was cranky, he was horny, and he was too fucking impatient for any of this.
That was the point that he shifted his appointments at the farm, blocking out forty-five minutes twice a week. Two appointments a week that were for him and no one else, relaxing and pleasurable. Visiting the farm to ejaculate with the aid of hands that were not his own had come to resemble a twice-weekly indulgence rather than a perfunctory chore, tithing back to the community, giving his sex drive the workout it had been craving. He saw no reason to get back on the dating carousel.
His cock swung like a limp fire hose as it was released from the nozzle, the tech wiping him clean before turning away, his cue to vacate the bench and redress as quickly as possible.
“Full to the top,” the milking assistant announced as he hobbled to the chair where his pants rested, quickly redressing with his back to the room. “That’ll be a handsome payout. Have a good rest of your day!”
He grunted in response, already pulling open the door. He tipped well and never took up too much of their time, never made a mess of the collection floor, and always gave them a warning when his cock was ready to blow if they didn’t already have the nozzle ready. Conversation was not a part of the agreement.
It was easy, he had discovered over the last month, to push away the concern of being lonely when he was stretched out on the milking bench. He had perfected the routine at that point — he made sure to slip into the room a few minutes before his appointment time, undressing and waiting at the back of the bench before the techs even made it into the room, ensuring they couldn’t even see him. He would get into position as they hooked up the tank, close his eyes, and let his fantasies take over.
He would envision the succession of women he’d been out with, the college girlfriend he hadn’t seen in more than a decade, his ex-wife when she’d still been completely in love with him. It was easier than dating; without question, he couldn’t find any compelling reason to stop.
“Just signing out.”
