FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

(Author's Note: A quick thanks to Sabi Kitsune for their comment and suggestion on the previous part, which inspired an encounter that occurs later on in this chapter.)

"Huwizzit?" The muzzy, half-asleep tone in May's voice was evident as she answered the phone.

"Did I wake you?" Gianna asked, still lying in bed herself, the handset pressed against her ear as she tried to focus on the call instead of the subtle sensations of heat slowly but surely asserting themselves between her legs.

"Nah, I was just hanging out under the covers, trying to convince myself it was a good idea to coax myself out of bed..."

"Rough night?"

"Just worked late and didn't sleep very much, is all. Still... this is Gianna, isn't it? I'm glad you decided to call. To be honest, crazy as it sounds, you're the first woman I've really clicked with in a while, and you didn't give me your number, so I was kinda hoping for a call these past couple of days. Er, not that I'm obsessing or doing any kind of stalker-ish thing with it, really! Just... been a little lonely lately, between anyone steady and all, so it's good to hear your voice again."

"Um, okay... Look, can we just talk about something in particular? I'm trying to sort something out, and somehow I think you might be the best person to help me."

"Sure! Lay it on me."

"And just to check... you'll still help me with it even if it's, ah, sexual in nature?"

"Sexual? Heh, if it's sexual, that's only gonna make me want to help you more, right? Kinda busy today, honestly, but if you're looking for some more help of the hands-on variety... hmm, have something around dinnertime too, but I am definitely free for whatever you're looking for later this evening..."

"I'll, ah, think about it, okay? I'm just trying to figure out how you can be, well, gay and still deal with certain things. I mean... I hope this doesn't sound rude, but you're fully gay, right? One hundred percent attracted to women?"

May laughed a little at that. "Of course! We call it being a lesbian, usually, but yeah, that's absolutely what I am, at least as much as any canine female can be."

"Huh? That's kind of an... odd qualifier, isn't it? I mean, if you like women, you like women, right?"

"True, but there is that little side effect of being a canine woman, you know? The heart and the mind know what they want, but every so often for a few days, the body wants what it wants, what it needs I guess, and so you've got to accommodate it a little."

"By which you mean heat, of course- wait, did you just imply that as a lesbian, you just give it up and sleep with guys when you're in heat?"

"Heh... well, technically, maybe, but it's more complex than that. Even if you don't like it, even if it goes against your attractions, sometimes you just can't fight biology. Okay, you can if you really want to, but it's a pretty high cost. There are some kinda activist-types I know, where it's at the core of their beliefs that being with men, at all, is somehow treason, so they did a procedure to take out certain things and prevent their heat entirely. Thing is, though, you do that and it kills all your hormones dead. Forget about enjoying sex or ever having an orgasm again, not to mention all the side effects and health problems. So yeah, maybe if your ideals are that strong, but to me, what's the point if you can't have fun with the people you're attracted to? And if I have to deal with guys some of the time, well, I guess I just accept that."

"But... if you're attracted to women, how can you stand it?"

"How do I stand it? Hmm... for starters, you just keep it simple, and make sure everyone's on the same page - that it's just about taking care of biological needs, and that's it, no connection beyond that. The easiest way to do that, if you're connected in our community, is to find a gay canine guy and take care of some mutual needs. Whether they really think about it or not, guys have some biological urges that don't quite go away on their own, and even if they're with a partner who's skilled and flexible enough to be capable of actually take a knot, a guy simply can't put the kind of particular pressure on it that a spade can. Straight guys never think about it, at least the ones capable of getting with women, but if they go too long without the specific kind of release that provides, certain uncomfortable stresses build up in them too. So, there's just a tacit arrangement: when there's a need, we get together, take care of things, and it doesn't mean anything more than that. We both know who we're attracted to, the kinds of people we love, and once it's done we go back to them. Simple as that. The activist types, sure, they think it's treason or something, but trying to ignore the fact that your body has needs just isn't going to work. And it's not like it's a big deal or anything, a couple of days every few months, you take care of it, and it's done. Not like your partner's gonna complain, either, because she's gonna do the same thing when it's her turn. If you're in a relationship, sometimes you just do a foursome with a gay couple - take care of business, and then have the actual fun with your partner afterwards."

Gianna sighed. "All right, I get it. Damn... I was kinda hoping that you'd have some awesome lesbian way of dealing with heat that didn't have to involve guys."

"That'd be nice, sure, if there actually was one. As long as you get a guy that's on the same page, though, it's not too bad. I mean, it's just a few days a year, right?"

"For you, maybe..."

"Oh, c'mon, it can't be that bad... So what are you on? Every couple of months?"

"Two to three days a week. Every week."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Oh... Ohhh. Okay, I think I'm beginning to understand. Wow... I'd heard that there were some women who rapid-cycled like that, but I can't say I've met one before you. Heh... no wonder you've got problems with guys! Especially if it's girls you actually want to be with... yeah, that's a mindfuck one hundred percent. Shit... wish I had better advice for you, but that's the way I've always dealt with it. Man, that's gotta kind of suck, though, having to choose between what you love and what you need, or not getting anything at all. Although, I thought you sort of implied that you were bi..."

"I dunno... I really don't know anymore. This fuckin' heat... I mean, I know what it is, but sometimes it's just so... intense, surreal, it's hard to tell where it ends and I begin. And that's the part that's driving me absolutely crazy. I want to be in control, and I hate when it takes that control away from me."

"Hmm... well, like I said, there is that one option, but you gotta ask yourself, are you willing to give up on ever having a climax again?"

"...No." Which, Gianna knew, had to be the correct answer. After all, as weird and vulnerable as it felt, the enjoyment from the female climax was one of the only good things that seemed to come with her form. Even if heat somehow could be taken away, the curse wouldn't be, which would mean she'd still get fucked, still probably get raped, and when it happened it would just suck even more. Plus, with what the boneheap could do, even if she did something medically it would probably just reach inside her and undo it, given how much it seemed to enjoy watching her in that condition. As much as she hated it, the only real way to take care of it, all of it, was to win that challenge, which meant that she had to manage what her new form entailed up until that point, heat included.

"Well, like I said, if you can't control heat, maybe you just have to control the situation. It's true that as much as I want to help, I can't do a whole lot to help your heat, unless we both take a couple of days off work and decide to be really, really patient. Women just have the wrong equipment to deal with it, and in heat muzzles and tongues and hands just can't properly reach the right things to make a difference. If you use a decently sophisticated strap-on, you can mimic some of it, but it doesn't have the same kind of lasting effect - you'd have to have a partner who was willing to use it on you near-constantly for the whole entire day to actually keep you relieved. And as much as I like women - heck, I even tried it a couple of times with women I was really into - even I don't have the kind of stamina required for that.

"As unpleasant as you might find it, guys really are the key. However, if you manage it right, you can keep the contact under control. Heh... actually, the key to it kinda is stamina, at least on the guy's part. A lot of women really don't consider it, but from my experience at least, it's the repetition that's key. You do it once, wait a while, and do it again, each time is... linear, I guess, you get the same amount of relief from each one. Back to back, though, and the effects are more like they're exponential, compounding on each other in terms of the relief you get afterward. Just the one gets me maybe an hour at most, but four or five one after the other and I can get through a whole work day. One session in the morning, one in the evening, maybe that's three hours out of your day at most, and the rest of the time you're still... well, horny, I can't deny that, but not desperate or out of control. Can't promise that'll work for you, but it might be worth a try if you haven't before. Although... you're still having problems with the main guy you've been with for that, right?"

Gianna groaned. "Really don't want to talk about that." Aside from the last part, though, she had to admit that May was probably right - despite its awfulness, the repeated knottings she'd received had forced the heat way back down inside her, and while it hadn't prevented the disgusting arousal when she'd been confronted by those two fuckfaces afterwards, it had mostly left her alone for the rest of the night, mercifully including her dreams. In fact, it was only when she'd woken up that morning that she'd felt tendrils of it slowly seeping back into place, and even then more gradually than they had before.

That being said, though, there was absolutely no chance she was going to try for another session like that before work, or hopefully ever again. Knowing the boneheap, though, complete avoidance seemed unlikely. In fact, going by what the demon had said, it was probably inevitable, and in a way May seemed to be backing it up - even a devoted lesbian had no choice but to end up stretched repeatedly around a guy's knot, to the defiance of her own sexuality, to satisfy that intrinsic need that couldn't be reliably taken care of any other way. That even a woman who wanted nothing to do with men in that way was still regularly held in thrall by them, to the point where she simply had to accept it as a matter of course, seemed to unequivocally indicate a trend of female subjugation by their own bodies - a troubling fact that only seemed to reinforce the demon's ideology.

"Um... do you mind if I ask you another question instead? Even if it's kind of a stupid one?"

"Sure, but... you're gonna have to deal with your guy stuff eventually. You're in heat right now, aren't you?"

"Huh? How'd you know that?"

"Well, given how often it happens, there's a good chance of being right anyway, but... there's a subtly different sound to your voice than when we first met, the kind of difference that you get when you're in heat, even if you can't always hear it yourself..."

"Yeah, you're right, I am, and I guess that's why I want to ask the question. Do you think that... do you think women really evolved to have no say about getting fucked by men? That throughout history women's bodies were really designed so that they had no choice but to give in and be dominated?"

There was another pause, this one a little longer, and for a moment Gianna worried that she might have impulsively stepped over a line. When May continued, though, she actually sounded a little bemused.

"That's an... interesting way of looking at things. Let me guess... you heard that from a guy, right? Probably while he was inside you?"

"Um, yeah..." Probably a guy, at least. "How did you-"

"Because I heard something similar, once, back before I was a hundred percent sure where my affections actually lay. Some guys really want to be dominant, but because of political correctness or whatever they're too afraid to admit that those feelings are actually coming from inside themselves, because they want to be that way. So they look at whatever they can, culture, history, biology, to prove that it's not just them, but the way nature wanted them to be, or some other cop-out like that."

"So... you're saying it's not true."

"Well... hard to know. Like anything else, a lot of it's a matter of perspective. Although, come to think of it... what would you say about taking me up on a dinner invitation tonight?"

"Um..."

"Don't worry, not a date! Totally informal. I mean, basically grabbing a sandwich at the local college and then going to hear a little talk. One of my former college professors is doing a presentation on some recent findings from an anthropological expedition to a series of ancient tribal sites in Africa. I'll get in touch and see if the three of us can grab a coffee or something afterwards, and maybe he can give you some actual perspective on it. He's a professor of evolutionary anthropology, after all, so he knows a ton about how all that kind of stuff came about. What do you say?"

"I... guess that could work. Although, afterwards... well, that and I still don't know how I'm gonna deal with my heat today. Me showing up like that with your male professor is probably not the kind of education that'd be helpful."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out. I was gonna give him a call anyway, as he's been out of the country for a while and I've been meaning to catch up with him for ages. Just remember, though, that heat is about your own sexuality, ultimately, about the experience of being a woman, far more than about whatever guy it is who happens to be helping you with it. Okay?"

"Okay..."

They talked for a couple more minutes about some trivial details surrounding the evening, and then it was time for both of them to reluctantly hang up and get ready for their respective work.

While the call hadn't been helpful in every respect, especially when it came to alternatives for dealing with heat apart from getting fucked all over again, in a weird sort of way it had actually felt good to talk about things with someone. Gianna half-wondered if that wasn't just some additional way her mind was messing with her, or some part of her now-female form that was actually making her want to be into all of that talking stuff, but at least the conversation hadn't been entirely without its uses. Even if May might not be able to deal with her heat entirely, she had at least indicated the ability to maybe provide some temporary relief for an evening here and there - and, for that matter, indicated that the demon's perspective might well not be set in stone.

Of course, the thing had said that it might be lying, and if there was a better way to think about it, Gianna was all ears. That being said, there was still enough of Giancarlo in her that May's comment about cowardly guys trying to use some universal fact to avoid responsibility for their own feelings stung at least a little. Well, maybe not so much - Giancarlo hadn't exactly been shy about hiding his feelings on that particular matter or preventing them from translating directly into actions. Giancarlo wouldn't have ever actually confessed to being a rapist, as he was smart enough to be mindful of the legal consequences, but he had never felt ashamed of it. T

he thing was, though... was the reason he hadn't felt ashamed the belief that it was just how women worked? No, not really... the trick he'd used with the pheromones and the hormone injections meant that he'd known the manipulation was on him. He'd certainly wanted to make women think like that, though, as it made them even easier prey - which, of course, was probably the same reason that the boneheap, demon, or both wanted to use it on her. Gianna, though, was all too familiar with how such manipulation worked, which meant that - hopefully - she wouldn't be quite as susceptible to it.

It didn't change the simple facts of her biology, though. And the most pertinent fact was that even the session the night before had only provided temporary relief - she wasn't even out the door yet, not even properly dressed and already things were flooding back, in one particular way quite literally.

Grumbling, she went over to the dresser - where, oddly enough, someone had attached a scrap of paper to one of the drawers. Which was especially odd, of course, given the lengths she'd gone to to lock everything down last night. When the paper came off easily into her hand, though, apparently having been attached not with adhesive but by some unseen force, she began to understand. Sure enough, when she flipped it over, there was nothing but a series of dark, arcane, chaotic-looking scrawls - which, after a few moments, somehow resolved into something readable in front of her eyes.

"noticed lack of clean clothes. some additional provided. those damaged replaced, improved. not new rule. just being helpful."

Yeah. Helpful. Gianna was quite sure that help was the last thing the boneheap had actually intended. Probably just another excuse to play some other stupid game with the clothes she was being forced to wear.

Unsurprisingly, the underwear sets she'd shredded before were back - in fact, there were now three sets of each, all neatly folded next to each other. Some of the other ones that she'd lost or messed up were ostensibly replaced, although whatever had replaced them seemed indistinguishable from what had been there before. There was a new stack of heat-specific panties off to one side, seemingly of the same type as before, although every single one of them now seemed to have the same color scheme: black overall, except for the area of fabric that went along the crotch, which seemed to be a slightly odd shade of crimson.

Gianna picked one of them up, looking at it dubiously. The crotch panel was certainly... vivid, but when she glanced more closely at it, she noticed that the fabric wasn't just a flat color. Instead, there was some subtle shading that went along with it, and while it was indistinct enough to be somewhat hard to make out, it looked almost like a trio of nearly oval blobs, with a slightly darker shading in the area they were all gathered around...

Gianna ground her teeth when she realized what the effect was supposed to be. The shading of it, when worn, would surely match up with the pads of her spade, exaggerating its relief when the fabric stretched across it. And once she figured that out, it was a quick leap to figuring out why the coloration had stuck out - it was, in fact, almost the exact same crimson color of her heat-swollen spade. The effect, then, was surely to make it look like, even though she was actually wearing underwear, that if her panties were at all exposed it would look like she was flashing her spade, an obvious sign of heated promiscuity that would certainly ensure even more abrupt male attention.

Grr... stupid boneheap! Of course, to an extent, her own actions had been just as stupid - she'd been planning to go out and buy some at least slightly more acceptable clothes, but had gotten caught up in everything else and hadn't actually done it, so all she had on hand was whatever the boneheap had provided her with. And given that any of her other underwear would end up soaked through in minutes, it seemed that they were her only options.

Of course, when she got to the closet, all the longer skirts had been used up, and the replacements were shorter still - the shortest one would probably cover things up as long as she stood up straight, but the moment she sat the wrong way, or bent over virtually at all, her panties would be on even more dangerous display than they had been before. In fact, as she thought of them, she realized that she'd actually seen something like them before - or, rather, Giancarlo had. He'd been trolling in a club one night, in a more consensual mood, when some horny bitch, a border collie she thought, had seemed to pointedly flash her spade at him. He'd followed her into an alcove, and when she'd paused facing one of the walls, it had only taken him a moment to get his pants pulled down at her skirt hiked up. He'd actually humped on her a few times before he'd realized there was still a layer of fabric in the way. She'd been in heat, though, and even those quick, non-penetrating thrusts had left her all but melted against him. He'd tugged the crotch of them aside and managed to fuck her into a trembling, knotted puddle inside of a couple of minutes, barely grabbing onto her muzzle in time to quiet her most intense moans. Of course, due to her heat and his impulsiveness they'd gone a little too far, and the next few minutes dodging and hiding from passersby while still tied together had been an adventure, to say the least.

So, even if they weren't the boneheap's invention, their purpose was obvious enough: they were the kind of thing you wore to a club, were technically coverage enough that you didn't get into actual trouble with indecent exposure, but were provocative enough, coupled with the pheromone dispersal, to ensure that whatever interesting guys nearby were giving you attention as soon as possible.

Or, put another way, the worst possible thing you could wear to work.

The only thing she could think of was to cover them up - there were plenty of leggings and pantyhose stacked up in her closet, and at least some of them were formal-looking enough that she could wear them into work. Given her state, though, she'd have to change panties even more frequently to keep them from getting conspicuously soaked as well, and it would be annoying, she was sure, having to pull them off every time she had to change.

It was either that, though, or have a truly embarrassing, and quite possibly publicly fucked, workday. Grudgingly, she found a pair and pulled them on before sliding into her stupidly small skirt, hating how comfortable the additional stretchy layer felt against her as soon as it was snugged into place. It was an improvement, at least, although the formal sort seemed considerably more sheer, and the crotch of them still conformed tightly around her spade - its outline would still surely be visible, if not an immediately vivid invitation, if she wasn't careful. Well, she spent most of her workday standing anyway, so as long as she didn't bend over unnecessarily, it should be acceptable enough. Plus, it was the last day before the weekend, which meant that the shop at least closed a couple hours earlier, so slightly less time to get through. It would still be agonizing enough, though, and she still didn't know if Hugh was in a stable enough state to give her any sort of real relief before the workday began.

As it turned out, her assumption was correct - when she got to work a bit early, as she had planned, the kiosk where he and Amanda normally worked was still locked up tight, including the partition that shuttered the main counter, which almost no one ever bothered to close. Hugh was in there, of course - she could heat his startled exclamation when she banged on the door, but didn't make any move to open it.

"I know you're in there, Hugh..."

He remained silent for a minute before finally responding. "I... I can't."

"You can't what? Surely you're not thinking about going back on our deal. You know the consequences of that."

"Y-yeah, I know, I know, but-"

"And no whining, remember?"

"I-I'm not whining! B-but you know, I washed my pants, I washed everything off, there's no evidence-"

"Right. No evidence aside from multiple pairs of panties with your stuff all over them. But... you're right. All that proves is that we had sex, nothing more. There's also a chance that one of the mechanics saw us leave and can corroborate that we were in the room together, but again, that doesn't prove anything more. The fact of the matter, though, is that proof of what actually happened is irrelevant. All that matters is what I say."

"B-bullshit!"

"Oh, really? I think not - and you're the only one to blame for that. Because you see, thanks to all your posturing, I don't actually have to prove anything. I don't even have to couch it as fact - a nice, unsubstantiated rumor to the right people, and all of a sudden everyone's whispering about you. They don't know for sure what happened, but they don't have to know you're a fraud for sure. Enough of them probably already suspect it, anyway, and just that little bit of doubt puts you on the spot, puts it on you to prove your manliness before everyone labels you otherwise. Puts it on you to show some actual conquest. And that's the thing: we both know you can't do it. Hell, you're all but admitting it to me right now - even if you somehow managed to snare a woman who was willing, you'll be just as terrified with her. And when you fail, and her story sounds just like mine... yeah, at that point, your reputation as a little bitch will be all but cemented. Thanks to your own arrogance and stupidity, your masculinity is just a house of cards, words with no deeds to back them up, and the slightest breeze sends the whole thing tumbling down. So you see, I don't actually have to prove anything. All I have to do is just open my mouth, truth or otherwise, and you can kiss any hope of being 'one of the guys' goodbye."

"Oh, shit..." came the muted response from behind the door. Sure, maybe Gianna's gambit was largely a bluff, but put against Hugh's already shaky psyche, it seemed like it would be as effective as any piece of actual blackmail. Plus, it was probably true enough - a revelation from her would humiliate him, although she doubted that anyone actually took him seriously as a man's man in a world that wasn't colored by Hugh's own deluded ego.

"I... I get what you can do to me, a-and I know what that means, but... the other stuff, okay, I'll do it for you, no question. You want me to get stuff, do stuff for you, sure, no problem. But the... the sex stuff, I just, I... you're right, you know? About all of it. I haven't even been able to get it up since, then, okay? Not even to masturbate, not even for anything. Every time I try all I can think about is what happened, and I feel so, so... I just can't. I can't do any more of that. What happened was really, really bad."

Hugh, apparently, still wanted to feel sorry for himself, but Gianna wasn't having any of that. In fact, she'd have preferred to savor that moment a bit more directly - Hugh's expression of complete, abject terror over what she'd done to him made her feel more like Giancarlo than she had in a long, long while. Unfortunately, to do so would have been out of character, and certainly wouldn't have helped her play. No, it was time to do something more typical, especially as it was all but guaranteed to shake Hugh's self-concept even more.

"You really think the one fucking thing I did compares to the constant harassment you've dished out since you started working here? And I probably don't even know the half of it, since I don't have to suffer in the same room with you all day. You ever wonder why Amanda doesn't take off right after work, always has a little something else to work on? Why she always leaves after you do? It's probably because she doesn't want to chance walking to her car while you're still around. All your talk, all your groping, she probably thinks that one day you're gonna just jump her right there in the parking lot."

"B-but, I would never-"

"Yeah. We both know that, but she doesn't, and the way you treat her, are you really surprised that she feels that way?" Of course, Gianna didn't actually know any of that, but Amanda did have a habit of staying late to tidy up the kiosk, so it seemed believable enough.

For a moment, though, Gianna flashed on the boneheap's rule about sexual lies, but the ones that had resulted had all been lies about her own sexual situation, not someone else's. And besides, she was a whole lot more likely to end up raping Hugh again than the other way around. "So no, I don't feel sorry for you. And I also know that once you get out here and get a good whiff of me, you're gonna be hard whether you like it or not, so stop playing at being fucked up and let's get this started. Not like we have all day, here."

"You're still not getting it! With you, with her, with anyone... I, I can't handle this happening again, I just can't! I don't want my whole life screwed up, I don't the guys to think I'm a j-joke, but I can't do this either. You're right. It's all just a front. I don't know jack shit about women. I wanted to be popular, I wanted to be one of the guys, and I thought I'd look like a man if I was that way with women, right here where they couldn't ignore me, where everyone would have to acknowledge me... B-but that wasn't enough! You look like a cute little corgi, no matter how tough you actually are, and you have to work twice as hard to get the guys to take you seriously. You have to overcompensate! I-it wasn't anything personal, and it wasn't anything like, like-"

"Like raping someone?"

There was a pause, and what actually sounded like half-muted sobbing. "Look, I just can't, okay? I can't do it again. Even if you fucking burn me, I can't..."

So, pretty much exactly as she'd figured - Hugh was still too much of a mess to provide her with what she needed - especially not in the amount that May had suggested. In fact, judging from the sound of it, in that particular respect she might actually have made him useless - although, if she had to admit it to herself, he'd probably have been useless to her even if he could get it up. It was hard to see him as anything but pathetic now, the kind of man Giancarlo would have scoffed at for his weakness, his inability to take what he wanted. Admittedly, it took being Gianna to see even the tangential benefits in a guy like that - a morose, defeated Hugh probably meant his groping days were over. Even in heat, though, that part of Giancarlo's history made it feel almost contemptible to even think about being with Hugh again - and the fact that he hadn't even been able to properly finish the first time mean that eliminating him as a sexual partner really wasn't much of a loss at all. She'd have to sort something else out to deal with her heat, to be sure, but that didn't mean she wouldn't find a way to get at least some use out of the one guy she had over a barrel.

"Yeah, I get it. Fail me on this important thing, though, and you had better make it up with everything else. I say jump, you don't ask how high, you jump as high as you possibly can and pray that it's enough to satisfy me."

"Sure, anything... anything but, you know, that..."

Gianna walked away, leaving Hugh in his temporary hideout. Hard to tell, at least at that point, but hopefully she was playing him correctly enough to ultimately, sex aside, get what she wanted out of him.

It was new territory, to be sure - Giancarlo had never been in a situation where he'd actually tried to keep someone he'd raped under his control. Never longer than an evening, and never the same person twice. That was what had allowed his ruse with the pheromones to work, and what had kept him safe. That had been a different time, though, a time when relationships hadn't really mattered because his physical force and intimidation had been enough to carry him through.

Gianna didn't have those things any more, though, which meant that if she wanted to control someone, she'd have to use a different sort of manipulation. So far, that manipulation had been effective enough, but with Hugh, she wasn't so sure. Then again, out of the whole lot, Hugh was the only one who had actually been victimized - with everyone else, she'd been the one who'd been taken advantage of, at least initially...

As she walked back to her desk, though, she thought back to Giancarlo's rules, and began to wonder... was it even possible to act like him again in her current form? Was it possible to just... reach out and take what she wanted? Obviously, she couldn't just go out and grab people - unless she could magically suss out the rare guys out there who could be made instantaneously submissive, she wasn't exactly going to end up dominating them, however aggressive she was. In fact, coming onto a guy directly, without knowing his reaction, might just fire up the guy's own latent aggression. If that happened, well, it would put her right back in the subordinate position, the exact opposite of what she wanted. Along with the curse, it would be far too easy for those plans to be stymied, to be forced back into that role, and then it would happen all over again - being under a guy, having her insides dominated by him, being forced to react, forced to feel things, forced to cum, forced to feel herself flooded and used for some guy's satisfaction. It was a disappointing and perhaps inevitable outcome, and one that she wasn't exactly anticipating.

At the same time, though, she couldn't help but flash back on what May had said earlier. For her, at least during heat, she'd been able to somehow separate it - make it just about the sex, just about doing things with her body to satisfy her heat, with no greater meaning than that. If Gianna could figure out some way to just uncouple that biological need from everything else, from the submission and the squickiness and all the other penetrative feminine bullshit that went along with it, maybe it could actually be manageable.

After all, it wasn't about avoidance any more, wasn't about some prideful denial of her vulnerabilities or complete control over them. She'd already been subjected to the most feminine humiliation possible, already had that vulnerability between her legs penetrated over and over. Not just penetrated, in fact, but stretched to its fullest extent, had a knot jammed fully inside it, and then humped into complete and utter submission. No, she was more than well enough aware of the depressing nature of that vulnerability, but at the same time, she'd suffered that worst and made it through, certainly not unscathed, but still defiant. Heck, from that perspective, it was less about what happened than the inner strength of who it happened to - Hugh, after all, had been subjected to far less and was an absolute wreck as a result, while she'd just been through the ringer and was still standing.

Actually, that was kind of the weird thing about it - for someone who actually had been raped, brutally and repeatedly, she sure didn't feel like it. Yeah, her wrists still ached a little from all the times demon-Jonah had pinned them, and bits of her here and there twinged a little from the positions he'd forced her into, but she wasn't a total physical wreck, and she could walk a straight line just fine. In fact, she realized, contrary to all reason, that it was actually the stuff between her legs that seemed the least affected by what had happened. True, that was probably at least somewhat due to her heat - as uncomfortable as it was to have everything swelled in preparation, it had also been far more capable of stretching in the way that it needed, and there was no question at all about whether there had been adequate lubrication. She really hadn't expected to feel better than she had before, though. As it was, while the heat was creeping back, it still seemed to be doing so at a slower rate than it had before, and the symptoms that were recurring hadn't yet ascended beyond simple readiness to the achy, itching desperation. As much as she hated to admit it, May was right again - despite how humiliating it had been to her mind, her body had actually been sated by it. That alone was enough to conjure up renewed feelings of disgust and consternation, even anger about the conscious control that had been wrested from her, but it was hard to argue the physical logic of it.

Still, though, maybe it really was just a matter of perspective - what had happened, physically, was an indisputable fact, but that fact could lead to any number of conclusions depending on how she decided, ultimately, to interpret it. The boneheap seemed to have made especially sure, through its machinations, that it wanted Gianna to perceive her experience in a particular way: through the lens of a submissive woman, someone who had things done to her, and could only react as they happened. Admittedly, the physical nature of the act, and of the female parts in particular, made it quite easy for the physical narrative to follow, especially with the demon's intentional reinforcement.

But again, it didn't exactly have to be that way - the time with Hugh, for instance, had been much different. And maybe that was the thing right there - maybe the dominance didn't really flow from who was or wasn't penetrated - or, rather, that penetration didn't have to be the dominant act, or being penetrated the submissive one. There was no question that she'd been the one doing things to Hugh, forcing him to be the one reacting to her intentional actions, and in that case maybe the roles were reversed - instead of things entering, forcing, penetrating, it was more that she had captured his cock with her spade, surrounded it, smothered it with her own feminine parts until it had had no choice but to surrender its seed to her, not in dominant triumph but in helpless capitulation.

Maybe, from that perspective, she could still be a predator - a long shot, maybe, and one that most guys might not go along with, but maybe, just maybe, she could still find the right guy to make that role reversal possible. She knew there were clubs for that sort of thing, after all - Giancarlo had traveled in enough kinky circles to know at least something about them. They'd never intrigued him, of course, considering that submitting to a woman had been anathema to him. Plus, they'd seemed rather odd - lots of leather outfits, whips and chains and weird roleplay, but next to nothing in the way of direct, actual sex. Plus, jumping on someone who was already tied up certainly wouldn't provide the same sense of conquest that Gianna was still somehow seeking. However, such places might not be bad for finding guys with a submissive propensity, who could then be approached in some other setting, and perhaps utilized. Another long shot, to be sure, but it would at least be better than just waiting around each time she went into heat, struggling until some stupid feminine instincts took over and got her dominated all over again.

However, such plans were for the longer term, and certainly wouldn't do much against her current heat, still something she could control easily enough at the moment, but there was certainly no guarantee it would stay that way. She still had to get through the day, and she knew from previous experience that it would be easier said than done, especially with no easy targets to provide her with any satiation.

Jonah, of course, didn't seem eager to show up on time, and so the service center opened without him, Gianna doing her best not to focus on the male customers too closely, and in between dealing with them wondering just where the hell he was. The demon had certainly pushed him to the limit - she couldn't recall as Giancarlo going that many times back to back with any frequency, so he might still be sacked out and trying to recover, or maybe sitting around with an ice pack on his junk. Still, it was a little unsettling not to see him in, especially after how they'd left things, and she seriously began to think about giving him a call between customers just to make sure he hadn't done something completely insane. Even if he had gotten over it, though, he wasn't going to be in any shape to help her manage her current, heated state.

Problem was, though, beyond him and Hugh she really didn't know much about her current coworkers, as Giancarlo had had little interest in dealing with them - which meant, of course, that approaching them could backfire in any number of ways. The only guys she really knew, the mechanics, she knew more than well enough that they were the last guys she'd want to approach - or, for that matter, even risk bending over to pick something up within their visual range. Which left... what, then?

If it wasn't for heat, she wouldn't even be having that dangerous line of reasoning - but it was there, and she had to deal with it, before it took the decision out of her hands and led her to take an even more insane risk. There were customers, of course, but they and were even more likely to get her in trouble - being with one before had probably been ill-advised, and she wasn't quite as sex-crazed to be willing to make a similar, dangerous attempt just yet. Maybe a guy from the office complex across the way, corner someone on their lunch break - but that would still be a complete stranger, no good way of judging their personality beyond a snap assumption, and even more dangerous on unfamiliar turf. Too many secluded areas and other unknowns - screw that one up, and she could end up in a situation far worse than dealing with an angry or aggressive customer. Really, there weren't any good options apart from just fighting through it and hope that she could get through the shorter day before things came to a head. So she pushed forward, trying to focus on her work and shove her feelings down within her as much as she could, but every time a male customer's face flashed in front of her eyes, it took another renewed, concerted effort to bring things back under control, and each time it happened it was just a little bit harder. Damn... whatever had happened between them, there was no question that she wouldn't have minded making use of Jonah right about then.

As time went on, though, it became more than apparent that Jonah wasn't just late, but absent entirely; and, strangely enough, didn't seem to have even called in and told anyone that he wasn't going to make it. More worryingly, his phone was going straight to voicemail. Gianna wasn't sure what to make of it, and after the mindfuck Jonah himself had gone through after last night, it wasn't hard to assume the worst. In fact, when the two police officers had shown up a little before noon and headed straight for her, the first thing she assumed was that they were there to tell her that Jonah had attempted suicide, especially as unlike Hugh, Jonah was the kind of guy who might actually have enough determination to pull it off. Given the potential seriousness of the situation, she became actively furious at herself, and her heat, for leading her to focus far more on the pair's tight uniform pants than on the reason they were there.

"Is this about Jonah?" she asked as the officers came to a halt just in front of her station.

"I take it you're Gianna, then?" the black-furred one said, fit and wiry with the look of Doberman heritage. "Yeah, we need to talk to you about Jonah."

"Is he dead?"

The other officer, a bit lankier with with more of an Australian Shepherd look, seemed a little surprised by her reaction. "Are you kidding? He's sitting in one of our interrogation rooms, won't look up from whatever he's staring at on the surface of the table, and keeps going on and on about how he's a horrible, vile rapist who has to be locked up for what he's done to you."

"What, seriously? For the love of... dammit, I told him not to do anything stupid!"

The first cop looked back at her, head slightly cocked, with a skeptical look on his face. "I take it you're not interested in pressing charges?"

Of all the stupid, idiot things Jonah could have done, of course he'd pull a stunt like this. His loyalty, or pride, or honor, or whatever other ephemeral part of his ego hadn't been able to deal with the disjunct of who he was and what his body had been forced to do, so of course he did the "honorable" thing and turned himself in. Why couldn't he have just fucking listened to her and kept his head down? This, of course, was the last thing she fucking needed, especially in earshot of her co-workers, who were beginning to look over at her curiously.

"Grr... I can't talk about it here. Somehow, I doubt he's gonna mind if we borrow his office." She led them over to it, shutting the door and closing the blinds, ending up sitting in his swivel chair with her legs demurely and pointedly crossed, knowing exactly what it would look like if she didn't. The cops took a seat on the couch that sat perpendicular to the desk, keeping the ramrod-straight posture that all of them seemed to come with. Having a word like ramrod circulating through her mind, though, was not exactly helpful, especially as her heated thoughts reminded her that the two cops would probably be quite energetic in the sack, and with everything closed up, no one would have to know what happened between them. Other parts, of course, were already eagerly anticipating that course of action, making especially sure such a thing would go smoothly, and she desperately hoped that her recent change of panties would hold out through the conversation. Already, it wasn't looking like it would be much fun - despite how she'd actually been raped, the story she'd have to tell the cops would need to be about absolving Jonah from what he didn't commit, and in so doing placing the blame on her own depressing vulnerability.

"So... he didn't rape you, right?" The first cop said, looking like he was trying to be sympathetic, but the way his nose was sniffing, and the way his eyes seemed to wander before snapping back up to her face as he tried to shake something off, clearly showed that other things were on his mind.

"I'm guessing you already know that. It's not exactly a secret that I'm in heat, and the way both your pants are starting to tent, I know you're more than aware of it." The two cops didn't exactly look embarrassed, they were professional enough for that, but a moment later, both of their hats were firmly situated in their laps to conceal any further observation.

"Yes, we're both... keenly aware of that fact, which is a pertinent one that he probably should have mentioned..."

"Yeah, well... long story short, I went too long without any, um, action, and so when I showed up at his place, I guess we were both just too pent up. I got wild, he got wild too, we just kinda gave into it, and it ended up being a lot more intense than usual. He got on top of me, and maybe he was under the impression that he didn't let me up, but at that point he was... giving me what I needed. Afterwards, though, he started freaking out and going on about how he'd raped me or something. I told him to chill out, that our animal sides just came out for a couple of hours, that I was fine and that he hadn't raped me. I went home because I was tired of hearing him go on about how guilty he felt for nothing, and I thought it had sunk in and that he'd just drop it, but apparently not. He did exactly what I wanted in terms of taking care of my heat, I feel fine, and he didn't rape me. I'm sorry you had to waste your time listening to him wallow in his postmodern male guilt or whatever, but there's nothing to it, simple as that. I'd appreciate it, though, if you could just give him a warning or psych consult, something like that, rather than charge him for filing a false report. Sadly, he probably believes it's actually true right now."

Which, of course, was in fact technically true - his body had indeed raped her while his mind had at least partially been along for the ride. Given who she had been, Gianna wasn't the sort who'd dwell on feeling morally bad for raping someone, and all she felt about what she'd done to Hugh was disgust at how pathetic he was, rather than anything in particular about herself. Jonah, though... she was beginning to realize that, as much as they'd been friends, their relationship hadn't really gone deep enough, as was often the case between guys, to know what kind of person he actually was underneath. Jonah had been something of a cad with club girls, to be sure, and had certainly been willing to take advantage of tipsiness or confusion or crumbling hesitation, he'd never been anything close to Giancarlo, and his morals had been weighty enough that rape, actual rape of someone he cared about, had apparently been beyond what he'd been willing to bear inside, even at her request. So, she'd have to somehow be even more clear about what she expected from him, and come up with some way for him to reconcile his behavior on top of it. First, though, she had to extricate him from the situation he'd put them both into, and hopefully her explanation, as mostly truthful as it was, would keep his rash actions from causing too many problematic repercussions.

The Doberman cop, apparently the senior one, still looked a little serious but nodded before he spoke, which was probably a good sign. "I'll be honest with you - this isn't the first time I've seen something like this happen. True, it's usually in someone younger, some kid just out of high school that gets his first action with a girl in heat and doesn't know how to make heads or tails of what all happened once the heat really got set in his nostrils. Some guys, the only way they get it is to have it spelled out in front of them with words containing no more than one syllable. I'm just glad it's guilt, really, rather than what it might have been, so I'm gonna go ahead and chalk it up as a win. The way he's acting, though, you know I can't just kick him loose in case that makes him do something even more rash. He's gonna get that psych consult whether he likes it or not, and once it's done, I assume the hospital can call and have you come and collect him?"

"Yes... of course." It had worked, at least - Jonah wouldn't have to pay all that much for his stupid reaction, at least assuming he didn't say something provocative enough to the psychologist that they decided he needed a three-day hold.

The first cop made like he was getting ready to get up, but a moment later he settled back down, looking inquisitively at his partner - who, Gianna belatedly realized, had been staring keenly at her the entire time - and, in fact, at a part other than her face.

"Alan... you do realize this is our cue to leave, right?"

"But... I mean, like she said, she is in heat, and taking us in here and shutting the blinds... that's kind of an invitation, isn't it?"

Gianna felt a flush of... something from his comments, hopefully anxiety and not something else, as perverse as that was. The first cop, though, just sighed and gave his partner a glare.

"You do realize that's the reason you got assigned a new PTO midway through, right? Because taking advantage of women in heat while on duty, even if they specifically ask you to and your old PTO is insane enough to go ahead with it in front of you, is a violation of our code of conduct and just inviting a suit for harassment or abuse of power?"

"But what about last night, at that bar-"

"Yeah, at a bar, in our civilian clothing, not wearing guns or anything else that could obviously coerce someone. When you're on the job, you're held to a higher standard, not just to be an honest man, but to not be an embarrassment to the uniform. Which, right now, you are." For a moment, he turned back to Gianna. "I apologize for his conduct, ma'am. He'll eventually learn better - I intend to make absolutely sure of that." His last sentence had sufficient bite to make the rookie's ears instantly slant back in fear.

"Yes, I, um, I do apologize, miss- er, ma'am. I was out of line, and I'll strive to do better in the future."

"And if I actually was interested?" Gianna clamped her jaw shut not quite in time to stop the words from coming out, and was furious that she hadn't been able to prevent them in the first place, but enough of the cops' musk had wafted over that it had suddenly become harder to properly control her thoughts. Fucking heat!

The younger cop's muzzle actually dropped open for a moment in surprise, but before he could say anything, the other cop planted a hand firmly on his shoulder as he got up. "Which, as I mentioned, doesn't actually matter because he is in fact a professional who isn't going to let anything interfere with his work. Right?" Alan nodded sheepishly, and the other one sighed again, relenting a little. "However... it is entirely professional to leave one's card with someone you've contacted, in case they want to follow up with you. The particular type of follow-up you seem to have in mind, of course, is to happen only on your own time, and in a way that is not related in any way to your job as a sworn officer of the law."

"Yes... um, my card!" Alan fumbled through his pockets for a moment, before coming up with a partially creased white rectangle, jotting something down on the opposite side before handing it over. "And my personal cell's on there too, just in case, you know-"

"And thank you, of course, for your time," the other cop said, opening the door and quickly shepherding his charge through it. "Remember, the hospital will call you when he's ready to pick up. You ask me, though, letting him stew in the waiting room for a while might help him think some things through. And next time, if he wants spill his guilt all over someone, you might want to consider discussing it just a little more thoroughly with him before he does..."

As soon as they were gone, predictably, several coworkers, including Amanda, were poking their head into the office and inquiring about what was going on with their boss - quite curious, she was sure, as to what her part in all of it was. Luckily, none of them seemed to have clearly heard anything the cops had said when they first arrived, so at least she didn't have to suffer the embarrassment of having everyone at work know what had happened to her. At the moment, though, she wasn't exactly keen on cooking up more lies that the boneheap might decide to make true just for fun, so she settled instead for evasion, making up some line about protecting his privacy during a trying time for him and how he would have to be the one to explain however much of it he wanted. Her coworkers didn't look exactly satisfied, but they knew and respected Jonah enough to accept Gianna's statements and get off her back about it. Which meant that for the moment, at least, there was one less disaster for Gianna to deal with.

Her heat, however, would not be dissuaded nearly as easily. At the same time, though, its progression was a little different than the day before - the symptoms, instead of just increasing exponentially in aggravation and desperation, seemed content to plateau at a certain level and hold there more or less steadily. Maybe it was because the hormones were on the downswing of the cycle or something, but instead of feeling pushed beyond her limits and absolutely out of control, things now seemed to stay just barely under the threshold of what she could handle, even if it meant doing so with crossed legs and through gritted teeth. Certain other aspects were slightly more muted too - the stuff flowing down between her legs stayed at a steady trickle instead of a soaking torrent, and while the formal tights did indeed make it more of a pain to change things out in the bathroom stall, ending up a little ripped as a result of her frequent struggles with them, at least she'd had to fight them slightly less often than she'd planned.

Even if the physical aspects of it seemed to have plateaued under normal circumstances, though, the mental component still seemed to be revving as strongly as ever. Any halfway-attractive guy that approached her station caused everything to spike back up in intensity, and doubly so if she happened to catch a whiff of the guy's scent. Never mind that she'd just been through an entire night of grief at the hands of demons and men - while by all rights she should have been thoroughly sick of any sexual notions, her mind readily conjured up fantasies about the men that crossed her path, flooding unbidden into her thoughts despite her best efforts to suppress them. At least they weren't all submissive feminine nonsense - while there were a few of those, especially with particular fit and muscly guys, there were enough that were more akin to jumping a guy and taking what she wanted.

And really, if they had all been like that, perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad. In fact, during a couple of them, she realized it was something she'd actually been missing. While she hadn't really sensed it right off the bat, when she had first become a woman, that thing she'd taken for granted as a guy had gone missing: that constant, eager consideration of sex, something that had factored into nearly ever hour of every day. In a way, that had made sense, since as a woman sex was something she'd wanted no part of, but now she realized that those were the kind of thoughts she longed for. While he'd certainly only acted on a small portion of them, Giancarlo had always been ready to imagine what could be - any woman who walked into view, wearing anything at all revealing, would be rapidly evaluated in his mind, then undressed and given to his imagination to see what it could do with her. By the time a woman had walked by, he had already anticipated how she would feel against him, under him, as he stripped her, or if he just pulled things aside and pinned her against a wall. Even without acting, those fantasies had helped fuel his sense of confidence, of superiority - perhaps it wouldn't be so easy to find an equivalent state of mind now, but Giancarlo... there had been something so powerful about knowing that any female that crossed his path would be made to submit in one way or another, in his fantasies, and probably just as easily in reality whenever he desired.

Unfortunately, such a thing couldn't be said about Gianna's confidence in her new form, her domination of Hugh excepted. Carrying over her plan from yesterday hadn't worked too well, as her assumption had been true - there had been no candidates that she could immediately see would be eager to submit to her in the way that she wanted. The heat, she knew, had something to do with it - like it or not, once canine men caught a woman's heated scent, something primal was kicked into gear within them, and even milquetoast sorts of guys tended to adopt a sort of directed, focused confidence. A few customers, in fact, were confident and brazen enough to get handsy with her again, and even with things slightly calmer, the high sensitivity and built-in drive of heat meant that it took all of her willpower to pull away rather than lean into their touch. Thankfully, though, the half-day meant that there was only an hour or so of "peak" time before she could leave her post, and not have to risk a whole additional afternoon full of customers. The last thing she wanted at that point was to get so desperate she actually succumbed to someone's advances, and found herself forced back into a submissive reminder of the night before.

The very moment it was time to clock out, she hurriedly shut down her station and got the heck out of there - it might have been good strategy to track down Hugh and twist the knife a little more, just to assure her grip on him, but at the moment it didn't seem worth the risk. Certain parts of her were starting to feel itchy and needy in a very particular way, and while it still wasn't quite bad enough to keep her from toughing through it, she wasn't eager to keep herself around possible temptation.

Besides, there were certain things she absolutely needed to do, and first among them was a trip to the mall. She was quite done with letting the boneheap decide her entire wardrobe, especially given the way it put her at risk, and while the stupid curse might prevent her from getting anything too conservative, she had to be able to find better stuff than what was on hand. Although at the moment, the most immediately required thing to track down, as far as risk-mitigation went, was some underwear properly designed for heat - the kind that suppressed the distinctive scent rather than amplified it. As an added bonus, most men tended to avoid the womens' section of department stores like the plague, which meant that the trip would probably be safer than doing much anything else.

Giancarlo, though, hadn't exactly been big on shopping. Uniforms for mechanics were bought in bulk, and everything else, including the dress shirts and slacks that made up what he'd considered formal, had been picked up in similar quantities, mostly from big-box stores. It was his physique, and manipulation, that had usually gotten the job done, so fashion had only been the most peripheral of concerns.

As far as women's clothing went, about all he knew about it was the kind of stuff he liked to see a woman wearing, and how to get it off of her as quickly as possible, whether or not she was actively trying to keep it on. Her trip, then, would hardly be a fashion odyssey, but at least she knew basically where to shop, and even now, style wasn't exactly her first concern. Heck, if it had been possible, she would have bought the loosest, most shapeless stuff she could find to hide behind, but thanks to the curse, she knew the options of what it would let her buy were far more limited. Still, she planned to test its limits as much as she could, and come up with some clothes that didn't feel like they had "rape me" stenciled across the rear. At least the boneheap hadn't stooped to anything quite that blatant yet. Well, unless she considered the "optional" underwear set that it had provided, but the chance of her actually wearing that seemed just about nil.

As the local mall didn't exactly feature much in the way of auto-parts or hardware stores, and therefore hadn't had much to tempt Giancarlo inside, he'd never become all that familiar with it. At the moment, though, it seemed like a necessity, especially as the frumpy womenswear the big-box places featured would have little that the curse would allow.

The mall was... about standard, Gianna figured, giant hallways of shops anchored by three of the big-name department stores with a food court in the center and a square sea of parking surrounding it. The food court, though, was Gianna's first stop, and a little bit unexpectedly - the hunger pangs that had been absent the day before had returned, at least a little, and that had to be a further signal that the heat was beginning to tail off.

Gianna walked along, eating absentmindedly she glanced through the various shop windows. There were several that catered to women, but they all looked too... fashionable somehow, the kind of places they wouldn't have been able to drag Giancarlo into, the kind with tops displayed in the window that Gianna couldn't at a glance figure out how they were supposed to be worn. In any case, wild fashions like that both attracted attention, and if the mannequin was any indication, seemed focused on showcasing a woman's bust, both things Gianna was more intent on avoiding. The lingerie store display managed to do little more than elicit a grimace; while it catered to multiple species, right there, front and center, were panties displaying the same spade-enhancing design and color pattern that the boneheap had managed to inflict on her. Forget that! At least the department stores focused somewhat on practicality.

Midway to the nearest one, though, she noticed a group of teenage boys snickering and leering over at her. At first, she thought it was more nonsense due to the heat, but a few moments later she realized what they were really on about - while Giancarlo might have casually purchased a corn dog and munched on it without drawing any notice, from an immature male perspective at least, a woman doing so could also conjure up a markedly different connotation. As she made the realization, and felt her cheeks burn with yet another dose of feminine embarrassment, she nevertheless had the composure to at least partly turn the tables. She glanced over pointedly at the boys, brought the thing to her mouth, and slammed her jaws down around it emphatically. It was enough to send a quick shock through them, as their minds inevitably figured out just what that had been meant to signify, and while a couple of them gulped and flattened their ears, one of them actually reached down and instinctively crossed his hands over his crotch. His friends, though, were quick to notice, and were soon too busy laughing at him to pay much attention as Gianna walked on, shaking her head. Was there anything this stupid form couldn't somehow turn sexual?

At least she'd been right about something. Except for a small handful of women, one pushing around a stroller, the women's section of the nearest department store was largely deserted. Of course, now that she was there, she didn't exactly really know what to look for - or, for that matter, how any of the sizes were supposed to work. All the clothes the boneheap had provided had just fit right off the bat, and shopping for guy stuff was beyond simple, since you just matched the waist and length dimensions on pants and grabbed whichever T-shirts and underwear had a big L on the front of the package. The stuff here, though, had all sorts of screwy numbers and letters that didn't seem to signify anything. What dimensions was something like 23CL even supposed to be measuring?

Well, so much for that plan. Gianna glanced at a couple of things in vague frustration, and was just about ready to pull out her phone and see if she could find any "women's clothing sizes to something that actually makes sense" converters online, when she realized even that wouldn't help much. The sizes she knew and had memorized for Giancarlo wouldn't do her any real good - she was much shorter now, maybe even petite, slimmer and smaller in every dimension, and with hips, waist and chest in completely different proportions. She wouldn't get anywhere without help - which, from the sound of the woman clearing her throat behind her, was apparently close enough at hand.

Gianna turned around and gave the woman a quick once-over. Her mottled grey-brown fur probably indicated that her ancestry was mixed, although there was definitely enough of an Akita shape to her face to be noticeable. In other respects, though, the genes had combined more favorably, creating a face with gentle lines and wide eyes, cute, perky ears, and a slim, lithe form that nevertheless managed to have just enough curviness in the proper places.

Typically enough for her position, her clothes were more fashionable than formal, including a top where the normal fabric had seemingly been brushed and embellished to make it look like some sort of faux-sweater knit. It only came down to just above her waist, though, and below that she wore what Gianna guessed were supposed to be a suitably fashionable pair of dark leggings. To say that the things were fur-tight, though, was an understatement - while the fabric was at least opaque, it left little about her form to the imagination. It was tight enough, in fact, that the outer contours of her spade were beyond clearly visible, proudly protruding from between her legs.

Gianna looked her up and down for a moment, her eyes lingering uneasily on the spade, before she realized what was nagging at her about the woman's form. She was, in seemingly every respect, Giancarlo's perfect victim: attractive, small enough to be easily overpowered, seemingly oblivious in her display of sexuality. Looking at her, right there, was where it would have begun, taking note before fading into the background, watching her work, watching her travel home, learning her route and her routine, picking out the best spots where she could be pulled aside and out of view. Or better yet, whether she liked to visit bars or clubs, or how she liked to party - while there wasn't the same thrill of risk or force, it was a lot easier to simply get them drunk, bump and grind until their sense of caution dissipated, and be one and done and gone before they sobered up.

Under normal circumstances, it was the kind of delicious beginning that could have led to any number of things, all sort of possible and wonderful conquests, and that absolute, thrilling sense of certainty - knowing her face and registered her scent, fantasizing about soon being inside her, feeling her insides squeeze and struggle in vain against the climax being forced out of her. To have her become Giancarlo's, completely dominated in every way - and the fact that at that point she didn't know what was in store, that she didn't have a clue that soon her body would be doing nothing but reacting to his presence inside her, had been one of the most powerful thrills imaginable.

That feeling of acquiring prey, of hunting, stalking, taking... for a moment, it was so close, so agonizingly, tantalizingly close, but then her current reality shattered it. For at the time when Giancarlo would be getting subtly hard, internally licking his chops as he surveyed his certain victim, the only thing she could feel was a subtle stirring inside her... followed, of course, by another gush of wet warmth that spread out across her spade and soaked into her panties. There wasn't any clearer reminder of just how much she was in the same boat as the other woman, how much more she resembled Giancarlo's prey than any sort of predator close to his caliber, and suddenly the woman was less intriguing prey so much as a cruel taunt, so perfect and yet so frustratingly out of reach after what the boneheap had done.

She tried to shake it all off, to look instead at the woman's nametag - Bernice - and ask her how to sort out the pressing clothing situation, but her eyes couldn't help but gravitate back to the woman's spade. It was just so... out there, so obvious, like it was yelling out her sexuality to every guy around. As frustrating as it was not to be able to appreciate it from Giancarlo's rightfully male perspective, from her new perspective it was puzzling in equal measure. Why was it that some women were so eager to put that vulnerable part of them so front and center, especially knowing the sorts of fantasies it stoked in most men? Giancarlo had of course appreciated it, and hadn't thought much more about it other than that it signified they were stupid sluts too clueless to know that their bodies were practically begging to be raped, but Gianna knew it couldn't be as simple as that. Other women, after all, weren't compelled into such displays by some supernatural bullshit, and most of them certainly weren't stupid or naive. And yet, the trend persisted, in canine women especially. It couldn't just be down to what was in fashion, could it? Something so potentially embarrassing couldn't have possibly caught on if women weren't somehow, deep down, actually in favor of it... right?

She was still thinking about it when the woman asked if she could help her, apparently for the second time, looking somewhat concerned when Gianna just stared back at her.

"Um... is something wrong?"

"Huh? No, nothing like that, just... I'm sorry, but can I ask you an impolite question about fashion?"

"Er, I guess? If it's something about fashion, well, that's what I'm here to help with..."

Gianna glanced briefly downward, letting the woman follow her gaze. "I guess it's just... don't you get all sorts of grief from men, wearing something like that? I, um, dress sort of fashionably I guess, and I get enough flack from guys wearing what I do - it's not exactly conservative, as you can probably tell. I'm aware it's kinda the fashion now, but if I just left my spade, you know... out there like that... I don't understand what it does for you, you know?"

Luckily the woman didn't seem perturbed by her question. "Oh, that? Yeah, you're not the first gal to question that style, although I have to say, the ones that ask usually tend to be older - of a more traditional generation, you know? If you ask me, though, I don't think there's anything controversial about it. It's like any other fashion choice - some like it, some don't, some it works for, some it doesn't. For example, you've gotta have a good thigh gap to make it work - too thick or at the wrong angle, and it's just an indistinct mess."

She looked over Gianna's form, apparently with a critical eye, focusing mainly on the hips. "If I had to guess by your angles, you could probably pull it off no problem, if you wanted to - but the skirt's a good look on you too. If you're concerned about guys, though... well, if it's canine guys you're talking about, you could probably wear a niqab and they'd be the same way, right? Guys are gonna stare, it's just the way they are, and it always seemed to me we shouldn't have to hide parts of ourselves just because they do. We're not puritans anymore, so why be ashamed of our bodies? If it's fine for guys to wear jeans that are snug in the crotch to advertise what they've got down there, don't see why it should be any different for us girls - after all, unlike felines and the rest of them, we've actually got something real to show off! Heck, sometimes I think guys almost expect it nowadays, and actually get more disappointed and aggressive when they can't just look - from my experience at least, I get more jerks trying to get away with pawing my ass when I'm wearing a skirt than with something like this. Then again, the way some guys are, thinking that they're actually an alpha wolf and that they can just grab you however they want - well, that's what the back of your hand is for, right?"

She paused for a moment, looking a little embarrassed and shaking her head slightly. "Er... I mean that in the most professional, polite way, of course! I know I'm not supposed to get all... political, I guess, when talking with customers, but you did ask, right? Anyway... from a fashion standpoint, it's true that it is one of the more popular styles right now, but honestly, the main reason it is in style isn't because it's flashy, but because it manages to do something a lot of other fashions can't: it's sexy, flattering, shows off a flair for a fit and desirable lifestyle, and most of all, it's actually really, really comfortable!" She ran a hand down the outside of one leg, apparently trying to show off the fabric. "Not that what you're wearing's bad or anything, and maybe your office requires something like that, but it's probably not exactly built for comfort. Something like this, though, it really is the best thing you can wear, especially for a canine such as yourself. Pulls on right the first time, keeps your fur in place so you don't have loose fabric rubbing at it, and it moves with you without bunching or binding, no matter how active you are. Plus, when you're dealing with a spade instead of some barely-there thing like felines have, you can't just wear any random leggings and be comfortable. And let's face it, with something like that, it's just not gonna feel right unless what you're wearing is snug and supportive. And that's what our line of specialty canine leggings do the best, with a custom design tailored to and designed to flatter your every contour! True, it does display every one of those contours as a result - but as your own ensemble so skillfully illustrates, they pair well with a skirt, too. So, what do you say? Would you like to see about trying some on?"

Gianna shook her head, surprised that the woman hadn't seemed to have caught on to her condition. Then again, though, men were far more keen on noticing that particular scent - most women didn't really have a particular need to know who around them was in heat - well, except maybe to fob particularly aggressive guys off on them.

"I don't think I'm going to be actually trying anything on - not below the waist, at least. It's... that time of the year for me, you know?" Well, more like that time of the week...

Bernice seemed to sniff at the air, apparently finally picking up on it. "Ah, I see! Not a problem, though - our store has an excellent return policy, and the fit of our clothes is generally spot-on. So, if you know all your sizes, I can get you headed in the right direction..."

Gianna was about to state that no, she had no idea what her sizes were, and hope that it didn't seem too unusual for a woman to be completely clueless in that regard, but as the first syllables were about to pass through her muzzle, she felt a sudden chill, first against the fur on the back of her neck, and then darting shiveringly down her spine and up into her head, pulsing coldly for a moment between her eyes. Just as suddenly, it was gone, and the room returned to normal, but in its place, inexplicably at the forefront of her memory, were a set of numbers and their attendant tags: hips, waist, bust, and several other things, including sizing for particular types of garments. Well, that, and an inexplicable desire to go track down the leggings that Bernice had suggested, purchase several pairs, and anticipate how good it was going to feel to wear them. So, not inexplicable at all - just another of the boneheap's machinations. Apparently, it had caught on to what she was doing, and was now getting a kick from watching her have to shop for feminine clothes, and to continue its enjoyment the thing was more than happy to facilitate her actually doing so. Whatever its wishes, though, she was still going to get whatever the curse would allow her, even if more fur-tight leggings had to be part of the bargain.

"Sure... actually, I have several things I'm looking for, especially... do you have the kind of underwear for when you're in heat, the kind that absorbs the scent instead of spreading it around?"

"Of course! Follow me, and I'll make sure we get you set up with everything you need..."

Bernice led her around, babbling more about fashion than Gianna had ever desired to know. That being said, the woman was actually pretty good at her job, helping Gianna efficiently track down everything she was looking for - or, at least, what the curse allowed her to buy. It wasn't exactly subtle about its intentions, and the desire to buy any particular garment seemed directly proportional to how tight or skimpy it was. Gianna did notice a pattern, though, one that she could actually exploit: once she gave in and selected some ridiculously skimpy or feminine thing, the desire was satisfied and let up for a minute or two, during which she could more rationally select things that were closer to what she actually wanted. The curse was still enough to keep her away from proper pants or anything too dramatically conservative, but at least she was able to get some halfway-decent things along with the others, like skirts that actually came down to mid-thigh, and didn't risk flashing her panties every time she bent over, and tops that didn't have giant openings for showing off cleavage. Or course, the curse made sure she had to get the other stuff as well, including several pairs of the spade-hugging leggings, but at least it was a partial victory, especially as it included several packs of heat-style panties that were actually designed to absorb the scent to the maximum extent possible.

Which, she thought, was something she really could have used at that point. Her heat was still stabilized just below the level of what she could stand, a fact that was helped along by being in a part of the store where men generally feared to tread, and by having something else, even something as asinine as shopping, to focus on. It was still there, though, hovering in the corners of her mind, and spiking up whenever a halfway-attractive canine guy came at all into view. After she'd finished up her purchases and brought them back out to the car, she'd made the mistake of deciding to walk back to the mall proper and check out the electronics store as a partial antidote to clothes shopping - and making the further mistake of stepping briefly into an alcove to make a quick and hopefully discreet adjustment to the pantyhose/leggings/whatever it was that she had on. Some random canine jerk had noticed, though, probably zeroing in on her more by scent than by sight, and as distracted as she was, she barely noticed him come up behind her - and really only noticed properly when he just up and stuck a hand down the front of her skirt.

She started at it, but all of a sudden there were fingers probing against the outline of her spade, and even through the fabric the touch was enough to slam her stupid heat back into high gear. For a few horrible moments it caused her to just freeze, her hips squirming in response, and for a moment all she could think about was how good it would feel for him to just grab her and bend her over, so much so that she could feel her body starting to move in anticipation of it, like it was inevitable. Strangely, though, it was something that Bernice had said that finally cut through it - that the only thing jerks like that deserved, and expected, was the back of someone's hand. The spike of anger and humiliation had been enough to get her to pull away sharply, whirl around, and come face to face with her assailant: some pathetic chump in a dress shirt and pants sporting a too-obvious erection, his face flushing with guilt when he saw the anger on her face.

"Um, uh, I was just trying to... help?" was his idiot excuse, which Gianna met with the promised slap, sharp enough that it snapped his face to the side, a tiny droplet of blood flicking away from where one of her blunt claws had nevertheless caught hard enough. Really, she'd have liked to punch him, but she'd seen it play out often enough to know that usually slapped guys cringed away, while punched ones fought back. True enough, he shrank back, the look of guilt compounding. "B-but, you're in heat, right?"

"Yeah. And a total stranger. In the middle of a public mall. Are you fucking braindead or something? Do you just like getting the crap kicked out of you by security or random women's boyfriends? Seriously, if you want to do something like that and have any chance at all at getting away with it, you've gotta majorly up your game. Find someone in a place when they're actually secluded. And for fuck's sake, hold on and don't let them turn around until you get what you want."

"Huh?" The man looked at her with confusion, although Gianna quickly realized what had happened - somehow in her anger, she'd let a part of Giancarlo slip through, specifically the part that felt disdain when other men's incompetent attempts with women got their guard up and made his subsequent attempts harder. Not the kind of thing one would expect coming from a woman's mouth, though, although there wasn't exactly a great way to walk it back. Better to just ignore it and get away, then.

"Just... whatever." She raised her hand again. "You want another, or you want to get the fuck away from me?"

"S-sorry," the guy stammered, and stumbled back a few steps before virtually running away, leaving Gianna feeling actually halfway victorious - even if the sense was drowned out by the heat that was now suddenly pulsing in full force back into her abdomen, with all of its itchy awfulness. She fought it back down as best she could, thankful that it was ramping down enough that fighting it actually did something, even if that something wasn't really quite enough.

As she made her way back to the car, hating that she could now feel her spade clearly as it strained against her sodden panties as she walked, it squirmed even more uncomfortable as she jumped, startled, from her cellphone ringing within her purse. Surprise, surprise: it was some staffer at the regional hospital, letting her know that Jonah had finished his evaluation and was ready to be picked up. Great; she'd just finished dealing with one idiot, and now it was time to deal with another, one that couldn't be so easily dismissed.

She tried to think about what to say to Jonah on the drive over, but most of the attempts quickly resolved into angry grumbling. The fact that she had to deal with that kind of bullshit right now, that she'd had to all but debase herself to those cops and now have him in her car while she was still in heat... the entire thing was pissing her off, especially since none of it would have happened if Jonah had just been enough of a guy to keep his trap shut. Well, there was nothing to do but deal with it now, but she sure wasn't gonna allow it to happen a second time.

When she showed up at the hospital, at least, she didn't have to wait around for him - Jonah was pacing back and forth just to the side of the main entrance, looking more angry than anything else. When she pulled up beside him, though, and he saw her face through the window, his expression became considerably meeker, and his shoulders slumped as he reached for the car door.

"I'm not crazy, you know," was the first thing he said as he settled into the passenger seat.

"No... you are crazy."

"What? Are you-"

"You're absolutely crazy. And do you know how I know that? Because when I tell a sane person to sit tight and not do anything stupid, they DON'T DO ANYTHING STUPID! How the fuck did you think going to the fucking police was a good idea? To fucking confess to rape? What made you think that was anything I would have wanted?"

"I... I don't know, all right? I just... I couldn't sleep. I mean, I did sleep. But every time I did, that's all I could see, me on top of you, me raping you. Only... it wasn't you. It was some... I dunno, some weird, strange demon thing, and it just lay there, and grinned back up at me, and kept saying over and over how much I enjoyed it, that this is who I really was, that everything else was a lie and that it was showing me what was really there, deep down inside. And... and that it wasn't the end. That I was going to do it again. To others, and especially to you. That every time you went into heat it was going to happen all over again, whether you wanted it, whether I wanted it. I know, I know it's just a dream, but... what if it's right? What if I really am fucked up somehow? Jeez, I know I'm not the nicest guy ever, and yeah, when some chick is on the edge of wanting it I might just do something to push her over, but I've never forced myself on someone who was actually pushing me back or rejecting me. I'm not a fucking rapist, I can't be, but... I remember everything. Every detail. And no matter how much you try to spin it, I remember being out of control. I remember you fighting back, remember you struggling to get out from under me, and most of all, I remember holding you down and fucking you anyway. I raped you, over and over, and it was.... that I'm capable of such a thing, that I literally don't have enough control over my body to stop myself from doing that, and the idea that I might hurt you again because of it... I didn't go to the cops because I felt guilty, or at least not just because of that. I went to the cops because I'm afraid, afraid of how I could become someone capable of doing that, afraid of what I might do next, and all I could think of was that I had to be locked away so that I couldn't hurt anyone. So that dream couldn't come true. And you know... maybe that does mean I'm crazy. But crazy or not, I don't know what to do. I don't even know who I am anymore, and that's scaring the shit out of me. I don't want to be this way, but I don't know how to stop it, because I don't even understand how I got to this point in the first place..."

Somehow, Gianna wasn't entirely surprised by the tale - the demon might have been tired enough to leave for a while, but it had obviously found enough energy to insinuate itself back into Jonah's dreams. Still, whatever he'd seen, it wasn't like she could just tell him what actually happened - especially after the dream, he'd just think she was mocking him, or he might actually start to think the demon was somehow part of him, which would only make him more desperate. Gianna, though, wasn't exactly adept at psychoanalyzing people - maybe which women might be vulnerable to a certain type of charm, but not how to talk a distraught friend down off of a ledge. The blunt approach, though, hadn't stuck, so she'd have to figure out a slightly more convincing way to deflect Jonah's dangerous train of thought, at least well enough that she'd feel safe leaving him alone again. She absolutely wasn't planning on babysitting him for the night, especially given the fact that her heat still wasn't wholly under control and her presence might actually make the situation worse. Not to mention she still had a date of some sort with May coming up, with potentially the answers she might need to fight her own special brand of demon-torture that was still lurking unpleasantly in her mind. Jonah, though, was in much more urgent need of fixing, and while she didn't have any magic bullet for his uncomfortable situation, she had to at least try something.

"Right. You don't think you're projecting just a bit much, here? You had one fucked-up night, one fucked-up dream. Yeah, maybe it came at a... delicate time between us, but come on! You've known me for ages, and we've had sex what, dozens, probably hundreds of times. In all that time, there's never been another night where anything happened like this. Just once. Who knows? Maybe it was the wrong sort of full moon, maybe the stars and planets were in some screwed-up alignment, but there was a single, one-off bout of craziness. Why should one anomaly define everything you do from that point on?"

"I... I guess..." Jonah didn't exactly sound convinced, but at least the agitation in his voice was a bit less.

"Yeah, it shouldn't. And remember, that's just with me. You've been with any number of women, any number of times, and nothing like that has happened at all. Heck, you said it to me last night, right? Maybe every once in a while you pawed past an uncertain no until it turned into yes, and while I'm not gonna condemn or defend that, nothing else you've done has even come close. But if you keep that thought in your head, that you're a rapist or whatever, it's just gonna make you miserable. So maybe you just have to push past it. Prove that it's not the truth about you."

"Prove it? How?"

"Well, we're not exclusive, right? I'm not gonna ask you to try anything with me, not so soon after what happened, not when we're both so screwed up about it. But maybe what you have to do is put yourself in a situation where the stakes are as low as possible, and show yourself who you still are. Go to some random bar, pick up some slut you're never going to care about in a million years, take her back to your place, and go at it while staying consciously aware and in control of your desires. And guess what? I'd wager you're not gonna rape her, that it's gonna be the same mutual stuff that it usually is with you. Heck, if you really want to prove it, find a woman in heat and do the same. If you really do go berserk and rape them, then you prove you have a problem, and you get to be arrested and locked away the way you wanted. And if that doesn't happen, which, let's face it, it won't, you can prove to yourself that you made one mistake on one crazy, fucked-up night, and now that you know what happened you'll always keep things under control to make sure it never happens again."

"I don't know... I don't know if I want to find out anything more about who I really am right now..."

"Well, you're gonna have to prove it eventually, but for right now, the most important thing is to keep your emotions, whatever you're fearing right now, in check. So just... I don't know, chill out, meditate, close your eyes and listen to the radio and just fucking relax. It's over, and now you have to pick up the pieces, and the first part of doing that is to get your head on straight and stop acting like a fucking idiot. Got it?"

"Got it..." Jonah replied, trailing off, and when Gianna chanced a glance over at him, his head was slumped down towards his chest, his eyes closed. She still didn't exactly know how calm he was, or what was actually running through his mind, but at least the remainder of the trip back to his house completed in silence, without any further arguments or prevarications.

Once they got there, though, letting him out of the car was another story - even though her conscious mind knew the situation, having him, and his familiar masculine scent, there for the entire drive had made it nearly impossible to keep her heat below the threshold, not to mention trying to focus on the road as her mind kept drifting back to amorous thoughts that could only be partially offset by the horror of the night before. The end result was that by the time she pulled up against the curb, she was just about ready to beg the guy who she had suffered under to climb into the back seat and pounce on top of her.

Somehow, she managed to keep it together and chivvy him off back home, even if it did leave her frustrated enough that she was seriously contemplating pulling her stupid leggings down and humping the shift knob for some sort of relief. She managed to hold on just enough to get back to her apartment, at which point she all but ripped off the rest of her clothes, climbed into the shower, and spent the next half hour washing her stupid heated scent off; or, more accurately, turning the showerhead to its massage mode and holding the spray against her spade, in the hope that in the ebbing phase of heat it would do something useful.

It didn't really ease her frustration, and did nothing at all to actually get her off - initially, it actually seemed to cause thing to ramp up. After a while, though, the massage at least led to things down there feeling a little more numb, instead of filled with itchy, frustrated desire, and since it got things at least back to the point where she could endure them, she considered it a win. That being said, though, it was still questionable whether or not determination alone would get her through the rest of the evening.

At least she'd be seeing May in not too long, and maybe she'd have some ideas that were slightly more concrete than what she'd mentioned earlier over the phone. In fact, looking over at the clock as she toweled her fur dry, she realized that she was due to meet her sooner than she'd thought. Apparently, whatever the overall effect, it had caused her to zone out in the shower for longer than she'd realized.

Getting ready, of course, meant another trip back to her accursed wardrobe, and for a moment, as she grimaced in anticipation of its contents, she seriously contemplated just going to meet her stark naked in protest of the boneheap's humiliatingly feminine clothing machinations. Of course, she wasn't crazy enough to actually go through with that reckless notion - a woman wandering around naked in heat was bound to get into trouble just as soon as a canine guy came anywhere within range, and with the stupid curse such a decision would surely result in being gang-raped for hours or some other awful consequence.

At the very least, though, thanks to her shopping trip, she would be able to wear some things she'd selected herself - well, albeit with Bernice's enthusiastic assistance. Some things that, for the most part, weren't designed either to humiliate her or make her an enticing target for male lust. Like, for example, the actually proper sort of heat-related panties.

She'd dumped the bags of clothing on her bed, and now she shook them out onto its surface, tearing open one of the packets of heat-absorbing panties and looking them over. Out of their package, they looked, while still obviously female, at least reassuringly more like regular underwear than the provocative lingerie that had been foisted on her before. Just white, stretchy cotton, what seemed like a normal cut, and the slightly pronounced cushioning built into the crotch panel. Good enough, then, and when she put them on they pulled comfortably into place, her slightly less swollen spade settling in comfortably - the exterior of it feeling passably dry for the first time since her heat had started as whatever was within the fabric wicked away the lingering bits of moisture that had emerged since she'd dried off. So, one improvement at least, although it paled in comparison with not having to deal with any of that nonsense in the first place.

Bernice, who had actually known how to think about dealing with feminine things like heat, had also managed to pair them with some heat-adapted brassieres, something Gianna hadn't even realized existed. They were plain enough, which suited her perfectly, and with only the bare minimum of cleavage to satisfy the curse. Plus, they were somehow contoured in a way that kept them from smashing in constantly against swollen, heated nipples, and while that meant they poked out a bit more in front, it also meant that there was one less thing to annoyingly stimulate her.

The problem was, though, that however the stupid curse worked, or whatever it had done to mess up her mind, the conscious choice of her uninteresting and heat-concealing undergarments meant that as soon as she pulled them on and started considering what else to wear, it was as though a switch had been flipped, and her calculated, reasoned approach went out the window in favor of whatever happened to catch her, or more accurately the curse's, eye. Cute, tight, sexy... bam! The next few minutes went by in a daze, pulling things on and off, spinning around in front of a mirror, and the next thing she knew she was already on her way, sitting there at a stoplight on the way to dinner and an evening with May.

She shook her head, glancing down to see what she'd ultimately put on while under the curse's spell. To her disgust, but not particular surprise, the same stupid leggings that Bernice had been touting earlier were now snugged around her thighs, and while the underwear at least did a little to disguise the shape, the outer edges of her spade were still visible pushing out against the tight fabric that her curse-addled mind hadn't seen fit to obscure beneath a skirt. It was accompanied by a matching black top, which somehow managed to make up for its relative lack of cleavage by what it revealed with its tightness and midriff exposure.

Great - exactly the sort of thing she hadn't wanted to wear, especially for a night out on the town with a bunch of guys staring at her - whatever Bernice had thought about the empowerment signified by that fashion choice, the only thing Gianna could see it empowering were various aggravating types of male advances. It was too late to turn back and still meet May on time, though, so annoying and potentially risky though it was, she'd have to deal with it. After all, it was probably still better than what a lot of the coeds down there would likely be wearing, and it's not like the curse would be any different if she were wearing something more conservative. Still, it meant that she'd have to be even more on her guard for aggressive men than usual.

The local college in town was primarily a commuter campus - not the type nestled away in the woods somewhere, but the kind built into the middle of the city, several square blocks laid out on top of the existing street grid. Not exactly a picturesque location to put on the front of the brochures, but it was nice enough, with classical architecture and a park-like common area in the center. It was a little ways off from the city center, though, surrounded by the sort of businesses that catered to college students, which meant plenty of fast and inexpensive food joints, artsy bars of the type that catered to overeducated hipsters, cramped blocks of studio apartments next to disorganized bookstores and all-night laundromats. All in all, a reasonably clean and safe section of town, with the possible exception being the row of fraternity buildings off to the side - the school had gone through a scandal some months ago regarding some of the brothers being rather unclear regarding details of consent, and while Giancarlo had scoffed when he'd read about it then, it was something that nonetheless stuck in the back of Gianna's mind now.

That wasn't really the reason that Gianna felt a certain sense of unease building up as she pulled into a parking space in front of the sandwich shop on the edge of the campus proper. No, that part of it was mostly down to the clothes she was wearing, and she quickly realized why - while they might be technically more covering than a stupid miniskirt, with the risk of flashing panties at any given moment, they were uncomfortably close to the ensemble that the boneheap had forced her to wear during that first terrifying night of trying to navigate the city, alone and targeted as prey by any canine with a cock and a working nose. And there she was, again, getting out of the car onto a city street as night began to fall, that sense of vulnerability creeping back in. Of course, she was more aware of herself now, in a safer part of town, so the outcome ought to be different - but at the same time, it didn't do much to temper her sudden sense of awareness and hypervigilance, scoping out every guy in visual range to determine whether they posed a threat. The only saving grace was that she wasn't alone - there were plenty of people milling about, including plenty of college women in similar or even more revealing clothes, giving the men around ample opportunity to ogle someone other than her. She still wasn't invisible, and there were certainly a few guys who glanced her way, but for the moment those glances didn't seem to linger or lead to anything more menacing.

There wasn't too much time to agonize over it, though, because May was quickly visible, waving in her direction and beckoning her forward, her other arm already tucked around something that looked like a picnic basket.

"Hey, Gianna!" May said as she approached. "Right on time, too. I hate to say it, but you're one of the few women I know besides me who's actually punctual."

She gestured at the basket in her arm. "Of course, I ended up getting off work early, so I called in an order ahead of time - no sense waiting in line if you don't have to, right? I hope you don't think that's presumptuous of me, but I think I only know your home phone and it just rang and rang when I called. Anyway, I got a bunch of stuff, so I'm sure there's something you'll like. So... if you're okay with that, I though we'd head over to the commons and eat before going to the talk. Sound good?"

Gianna nodded. May had probably called during her... adventure in the shower, and in any case she'd never been particularly discriminating about what she ate, as long as it was technically food. Or, at least Giancarlo had, and her new form's stomach hadn't exactly proven to be any more delicate than his.

The commons was only a couple of blocks away, and it seemed like May did in fact have a picnic in mind, complete with a floral-patterned tablecloth that she set down along a patch of grass in the corner of the commons. They were hardly the only group eating there - clusters of students were dotted around the rest of the lawn, although none of them seemed quite as formal about it, plopped down on the grass directly and ringed by textbooks and fast-food wrappers.

The sandwiches, at least, seemed a step up from that, and Gianna just about inhaled half of a pastrami on rye before slowing down. At least her appetite seemed to be normalizing as the heat plateaued, although the unsettling itch considerably lower down in her belly reminded her that it was still far from over - as did the fact that her eyes darted over to look intently at a few particularly interesting college boys as they walked past.

Gianna's company, of course, was attractive in her own right, although not in an instinctual way so much as one that appealed to the parts of her mind that made up whatever remained of Giancarlo. Taking advantage of the decent weather, she'd decided to dress down appropriately, wearing shorts that were small and snug but not scandalously so, and a top similar to Gianna's, albeit with the logo of an alt-rock band emblazoned across the chest. Both only seemed to highlight the lustrous, golden fur on her thighs and belly, kept pristine in that mysterious way that women, at least women who weren't Gianna, always seemed to manage. She was hot, to be sure, with a rack that wasn't huge but perfectly proportioned to her frame, and while the curves of her fit form were subtle, they were present in all the right places. In fact, despite being several years older, she fit right in with all the pretty young coeds wandering past - a fact that probably applied to Gianna too, she realized, but that was one thing she wasn't currently eager to think about.

Still, it was somehow a little surreal, just... sitting there with May, eating and talking about things of little consequence, just like two normal friends. In another form, May would have been just another girl for Giancarlo to figure out how to get drunk and push up against a wall - actually, given her orientation, probably more of a target for a back-alley rape, as Giancarlo wouldn't have been caught dead walking into a gay bar of any sort. Whether rape or drunken one-night stand, though, there would never have been any connection at all - no phone calls, no messages, no relationship. Giancarlo hadn't been stupid - he got what he wanted, and he knew that any attachment beyond that would only serve to be trouble. To Giancarlo, May would have been little more than a body to be lusted after, used, and subsequently discarded.

And yet... there she was, sitting with her, talking with her, and while she could claim to be there for some other reason - to find answers, maybe to get further into her head to make future manipulation easier - she knew that wasn't the only reason. Whether or not she'd intended to, she'd leaned on May to deal with things. May had encouraged her to talk and talk, she had, and just like that, some sort of a connection had begun to form. It might not be as entrenched as the one that had apparently been formed with Amanda by the boneheap's machinations, but in terms of emotional depth it was probably already more complex than the relationship Giancarlo had had with Jonah. And because of that, well... Gianna really didn't know exactly what to think about it. She knew it made sense to keep focusing on the advantages she could gain, on the loyalty she could command, but sitting there, just kind of hanging out with May, she couldn't deny the fact that it was just... nice.

At least the conversation kept her from focusing too much on trying to sort it out - female emotions were hardly Gianna's forte, however much her new body wanted to inflict them on her. Not that the conversation itself was horribly informative, beyond learning that May was some sort of freelance designer by day, mostly working out of a local consulting firm, along with something more enigmatic on the side that she'd mentioned in passing, but she'd shrugged it off and quickly changed the subject when Gianna had pressed her for more details. Not that it really mattered what she did, at least not beyond what the resources of her job might be able to provide, but it was something. In fact, May had been far better at getting Gianna to open up about stuff and carry a lot of the conversation, rather than revealing much about herself. Gianna halfway wondered if that was just a female thing, trying to steer a conversation that way, or something more directed, but by the time she considered it May was already packing things up and getting ready to head over for the lecture.

The talk was apparently taking place in one of the smaller student auditoriums, banks of fixed seats with folding bases arrayed out in concentric semicircles, in front of a slightly raised dais flanked by the digital-era take on traditional whiteboards. On a series of easels nearby were several photo sets, ostensibly featuring the findings and artifacts of whatever ancient tribe was supposed to be the focus of the event. Whatever it was, Gianna didn't have high hopes for the lecture - if high academia had been his thing, Giancarlo would probably have been a professor, taking advantage of his underperforming female students, than a mechanic.

If she wanted the answers that May had promised, though, it was something she'd simply have to suffer through. At least, by the same token, the annoying and aggressive frat boys had also stayed far away, and the audience that trickled in seemed to be made up more of fellow professors and older community members interested in the subject at hand, with only a handful of people Gianna's age or younger.

The professor giving the talk, though, was more youthful than Gianna had anticipated, maybe a little older than her but still a ways from directly approaching middle age. He was also canine, with the look of a setter, and wearing the slacks, dress shirt and unassuming plaid vest that were almost stereotypical of his occupation - all the way down to the silver wire-rim spectacles perched atop his muzzle. Still, beneath it all he had a kind face, and while his figure didn't exactly impress, it clearly spoke of more time spent out in the field than poring over tomes behind a desk. His speaking voice certainly fitted someone familiar with those sorts of talks, a smooth, soothing baritone without much in the way of modulation.

In fact, he sounded like a lot of the teachers Giancarlo had had, and who he'd had trouble keeping his eyes open while listening to. Gianna soon realized that he was having the same effect on her, and it was only to keep from offending May, and to keep the promise of the later talk on the table, that she struggled to keep her eyes open. If the talk was any indication, though, she wasn't entirely sure just how helpful the guy was going to be in sorting out the demon-planted notions about her current form that were still lurking disturbingly in her thoughts.

Ultimately, though, she ended up having no trouble staying awake through the lecture - albeit for a different, though sadly expected, reason. While Gianna's heat had seemed to be frozen, even fading, it wasn't gone entirely. Whether it was due to the concentration of male scent from the crowd within the closed auditorium, or simply some unfortunate spike in the cycle before it finished receding to normal, midway through the talk the aggravatingly familiar feelings suddenly surged back to full force deep in her belly. Thankfully, her new underwear managed to contain and conceal the unbidden lubrication that inevitably followed, but it did nothing at all to calm the other symptoms that were once again flowing through her. All she could do was clench her jaws and try to ignore it, but by the time the lecture ended even her panties weren't enough to conceal her condition from anyone around her who was paying attention.

Well, at least most people - May didn't seem to be picking up in it much at all, not saying anything until she noticed the way Gianna was unconsciously gritting her teeth.

"Aw, c'mon, the lecture wasn't that bad, was it? Maybe not the most thrilling stuff ever, but I found it really interesting..."

"Not the lecture."

"Oh? Something else wrong, then?"

"You're really gonna tell me you can't tell what's wrong just by breathing in?"

May sniffed at the air for a moment before the obvious finally hit her. "Ohhh. Right. Heh, guess I kinda blanked on that for a moment. Though, to be fair, you wouldn't know it just from looking at you, which takes some pretty impressive determination and control. Although the way your heat cycles like that, it makes sense you'd find ways to tamp it down as much as you could..."

"Yeah, well, it's not nearly as effective as it seems from the outside. And as much as I can control some of it, certain parts are horribly unavoidable. I don't know why women can't seem to smell it that much, maybe because they have to tune it out whenever they're in heat so it doesn't drive them crazy, but this place is full of guys who are gonna have no problem picking up on it. Urgh... and probably the same with your professor. Maybe this meeting is a bad idea after all..."

"Ah, don't worry about it! Jeremy's a stand-up guy, not the type who'd try anything or take advantage, and he's happily married to boot. Heck, he's one of the only male professors who didn't propose doing a little something on the side to bump my grades up a notch or two. And if it helps to know that there could be some relief at hand in the future... what I said earlier's still correct in that I can't really resolve your heat, but if you want, I can make it feel a whole lot better for a while..." She winked knowingly, and while Gianna's grimace stayed the same, inside she was seriously considering that option. Whatever it meant, it was sure to be better than being all but raped, or actually raped, by some random guy - which was an option that the boneheap was sure to have left on the table.

"All right, I'll... keep it together for now. Let's just... choose a place for that coffee that's not around here, all right? There are enough guys giving me that look as it is right now..."

True enough, there were more than a few male heads swiveling in her direction, sniffing the air and grinning approvingly. She tried not to show them anything in return, but unsurprisingly her body was more than aware of the attention and reacting accordingly, her heat stoking further in her belly. At least the disturbing thoughts that went along with it hadn't resurfaced for the moment, but it seemed imperative to get away from that agglomeration of male scents before things started to get dicey.

She decided to go outside and get some air while May sorted things out with her professor, making sure to lean carefully against the building outside. At least with a wall behind her, no one would be able to walk up unnoticed and offer up a grope that would make things worse, and with her heat spun up she wasn't sure she trusted her own body to respond the way it should. She'd made it out back in the shopping mall, it was true, but it had been far too close for comfort.

It was only a couple of minutes, though, before May returned, and in the interim no one bothered her, allowing her to just lean back, take in the crisp night air, and try to relax as much as her heated state would let her. While it wasn't much, it was at least something, and while that internal itch and wet, squishy spade between her legs were aggravating, she was fairly certain she could handle sitting in a cafe with only a single, unaggressive guy in close range.

May, apparently more exercise-obsessed than Gianna was, had biked to the lecture using one of those sporty ones that could be folded and disassembled, enough that it could be tucked easily into the trunk of Gianna's car before they drove off. The place that May had picked out for coffee wasn't one Gianna was too familiar with, and while it wasn't particularly far away, it was at least in a fairly decent part of town, mostly devoid of randy college kids and the sorts of men who lurked and stalked around some of the dicier neighborhoods.

The shop, uninterestingly titled Randall's, had a typical, almost corporate sort of look, clean and modern and vaguely upscale without managing to project much of a unique personality at all. It was nice and bright, though, and the leather-upholstered booths around what appeared to be actual solid-wood tables lent it an atmosphere that was comfortable enough. It was maybe half-full when they arrived, and the hostess led them to a nice booth in the corner, mercifully away from the other patrons who dotted the establishment.

The professor arrived a moment later, striding quickly towards them after May waved him over. He sat down across from them, politely proffering his hand to Gianna.

"While I know May, and while she did mention your name, I'm afraid we haven't properly met before. As I'm sure you know, my name is Jeremy, and I'm a professor of occasionally boring things that I do my best to make less so. I suppose it's premature to say so, but given that you are with someone who's such an excellent judge of character, I can only assume that you're quite a nice person if may has judged you a worthy partner."

It took everything she had not to crack up laughing at the irony of that remark. In fact, the notion of it was so hilarious that she almost didn't pick up on the last part, not until after she'd shaken his hand, and nearly too late for a proper response.

"Um, we're not in a-" She paused, looking over as she felt May's hand rest gently atop her own.

"It's... early days, you know?" May replied, and Jeremy seemed to understand.

"Ah. My mistake. Nevertheless, it's good to see you with someone again, regardless of how close you might be. The last time I saw you, I really did wonder if I'd have the chance to see you smile again. You look... so much better now, and I can't tell you how relieved I am to see that."

May pulled her hand back, almost looking a bit embarrassed. "Let's, ah, just let the past be the past, okay? I'm sure you've got much more interesting things to talk about..."

"Ah, well... not as much as you'd think, really. The government was actually stable when I visited this time, and the NGOs I worked with were fully and professionally staffed, so there weren't nearly as many escapades as I had to recall the last time we met. I already went over what we actually discovered, and I doubt you'd be interested in delving further into the minutiae - even as a student, I recall you always being more of a big-picture kind of person. True, there were a few adventures with the team, but... I mean no offense, Gianna, but such things would be expected to be kept in confidence unless talking privately to those who know them. Besides, I'm actually more interested in hearing about the questions that May mentioned you had for me. Maybe it's wrong for me to be flattered, but it's not every day that I find people outside of my relatively obscure field who are eager to talk about it."

So, it was time to open that particular can of worms, apparently. Then again, it wasn't exactly like she had anything to lose but her dignity, and that had already been mostly crushed by the boneheap, and then obliterated during the hours the demon had spent defiling her with Jonah's body. She just shrugged, then, and launched into it, laying out the demon's whole diatribe while managing to keep from intimating where that opinion had come from.

At least, judging from his expression, the tale didn't seem to surprise Jeremy much.

"Well, that's... certainly one interpretation of how things evolved. Admittedly, anthropology isn't often a science defined by precise results, and while large bodies of evidence are open to interpretation, my own analyses of early cultures and the historical record don't seem to bear most of those conclusions out. Especially one assertion that you mentioned, that women had decided to run away en masse from mating obligations with alpha males, strikes me as being completely specious based on the evidence. Keep in mind that heat as you know it is actually a modern, significantly diluted form - the original mechanisms of estrus, during that time, were dramatically more severe and biologically compelling, with scientific findings of residual hormone levels present in early skeletons indicating that some women, isolated in caves by natural disasters during their heats, actually succumbed to the overproduction of hormones when they reached a toxic saturation in the body. So as far as early mating is concerned, there was no general trend of women running away, or a knot being needed to hold them in place. Mating was a biological need that their bodies required them to submit to out of necessity - it was in essence as involuntary as breathing, something that could be briefly delayed but ultimately compelled. The greater agility and speed of males, rather, is generally considered an adaptation in response to over-predation of slower prey species and the need to capture swifter ones, and the need to compete with each other for access to mates - the idea was that the obstacle to mating was other males, and that once their claims had been forced aside, the mating itself was effectively automatic. However, as the structure and composition of societies changed, that simple flow of competition and breeding couldn't be maintained - a roving band could chase other males into the woods for a while before recovering them, but when people began to live together in cities and towns, the dynamics became more muddled - and it was from that confusion and chaos that much of the other adaptations, including the knot, were eventually developed.

"You see, the knot, actually, has very little to do with enforcing anything on females directly, so much as it had to do, originally, with denial of disruptive access by other males. As societies were evolving beyond the doctrines of the pack mentality, breeding methods were slower to adapt. Rather than the system of violent fighting with only the victors allowed access to females, those same men had to live together constantly, and to keep their villages together, fighting became counterproductive. Because that structural pillar broke down, though, it meant that women in heat suddenly became accessible to every man in the village once their status became known, resulting in the situation of men crowding around and jostling for purchase, and access, during the act of mating itself.

"While less violent and less prone to disputes, and for that matter slightly more egalitarian, it also led to cases of men being routinely pulled away from partners mid-coitus and replaced by someone else, making it harder to ensure that their own sperm was... in the mix, so to say. There are stories recounted in early historical documents, in fact, of situations where a single woman was penetrated by a dozen scuffling suitors, only for their jostling to become so severe that none of them ended up actually ejaculating within her. Some men, however, with a variation at the base of their penis, were able to stay more firmly attached to the female during mating, or had stronger, stabler builds that were were more difficult to jostle or dislodge - thereby ensuring that when they came, it was within the most advantageous spot in the female anatomy for fertilization, rather than further out where it could be displaced by the motion of another man, or out of contention entirely.

"In certain ways, this actually gave women more of a choice in suitors - when they knew their heat would be coming on, they could set up a secluded rendezvous with their chosen partner, and by the time other males located her by scent they would already be tied together, discouraging the others for at least a while. In fact, it was those rendezvous that resulted in stories that would eventually become the basis of the common tropes of today's canine romance novels.

"On the other hand, the adaptation also put a greater burden on women. Back then, knots could stay in place for up to two hours, which was not the most comfortable proposition, and meant that mating was much more of an imposition. In the prehistoric era, the one saving grace of that involuntary mating was that, because the competition took place entirely before it, the mating itself was a short process because there was no need for it to be longer. At this time of competition, though, heat and mating had become a much greater imposition of time, especially in an era where women began to have more responsibilities, and where, in cities and in the ready presence of others, the most powerful functions of heat were needed less and had already begun to fade slightly with subsequent generations.

"It was at this point, and moving forward, when the more specific female changes, especially the formation of tissues designed to be sensitive to repeated stimulation from a knot, a trend that generally continues into the modern era. As heat had evolved to become less compelling, and when notions of sex and sexual politics began to be in in flux, some women began to protest the onerous nature of mating - especially the knot and its potential to create discomfort with its extended presence, one that was already dropping but still longer than it is today. It was also the first real era where the body had begun to be studied and the idea of medical and chemical treatments were first put forth. Several proponents of that early, and risky, medicine were more than willing to cater to that complaint, peddling concoctions that they claimed could eliminate heat, remedies that of course came with myriad side effects. Whether or not women risked taking them depended a lot on their earliest sexual experiences, and how they responded to taking the knot. For the women whose bodies had an interior structure that the knot could stimulate as it stayed inside them, the experience was at least reasonably pleasurable, and so they saw no need to risk such a thing; for others, the feel of it was incredibly uncomfortable, and so they chose to take the medicines instead.

"Unfortunately, as with most early patent medicines, both the efficacy and side effects were highly variable. Some were actively toxic, and killed those who took them outright, while others were simply damaging, causing infertility and other ailments. By and large, most women who took the medicines never had children beyond their first heats, while other women were considerably more fertile and produced the majority of offspring. The end result was that subsequent generations more heavily favored that particular placement, and from then on most women have had that adaptation - especially as the most prolific breeders were generally the ones who derived the most enjoyment from sex. It's unclear if it was possible during earlier times, as the records conflict, but it was towards the middle of this era that the phenomenon of a female climax akin to the male counterpart was first reported.

"As these trends continued over the intervening centuries up to the present day, the experience of sex, especially for women, has changed substantially. As sex shifted from the public to the private sphere and there was less immediate competition, women began to prefer, and actually seek out, men with smaller knots and shorter tie times. After the advent of ovulation blockers, those changes and the acknowledgement of female pleasure and sexual agency led to a considerable sexual revolution, with offspring primarily resulting from partners who could reasonably please women rather than simply find ways to fend off other men. Eventually, societal notions changed at least somewhat overall, from the idea that that sex was not something that a woman resigned herself to for the pleasure of a man, but a mutually pleasurable expression of love, or at the very least lust, for both. And as pleasure became a core part of sex, partners were chosen on their ability to mutually provide it, only reinforcing those trends and biological pathways. While aspects of those original biological drives are obviously still present, from an evolutionary standpoint they are no longer the primary drivers of procreation. There are some, in fact, that theorize even heat itself could eventually fade into a more on-demand sort of desire - the variations in heats between women seems to point towards that eventuality, as does the fact that most modern canine women can now both prepare for and engage in pleasurable sexual activity both in and outside of estrus."

"Ultimately, what that all means in a modern context... well, that's more a matter of psychology or sociology, things I'm less of an expert in. And as I'm not a woman, I really can't say with certainty whether all those evolutionary theories match up to the experience of things such as heat, although from an absolute perspective the hormonal levels, and the comparable responses, are empirically much less than they were historically. When you look at how things progressed through history, saying that women evolved into submission simply doesn't match up with what is generally known about canine history - in fact, everything seems to suggest the opposite, including, and especially, the evolution of heat. At the dawn of our species, estrus and being mated didn't involve any choice on the part of either sex, both acting solely on chemical instinct. In those times, there were no sensitive internal structures in females, nor was there the capability to climax, because there was no need - women were simply bred, so there was no point in convincing them to be interested in it. The fact that women do derive pleasure from it, even more so than men, speaks to the magnitude of choice available compared to earlier stages in evolution. Does heat still compel some sexual contact that otherwise wouldn't occur? I'm sure that's a fact, probably even one that could be empirically proven with enough determination and analysis. But at the same time, there has literally been no point in our species' history where a woman has had more control over her sexual destiny."

"Anyway, um... I hope that answers some of your questions? Unfortunately, anthropology and sociology aren't exact sciences, with conclusions that are often open to interpretation. That's how I interpret it, though, and I think what evidence there is is far more convincingly explained by my theories than by those of the gentleman in question."

Gianna nodded. It wasn't exactly perfect, or entirely convincing, but at least it demonstrated that the demon's viewpoint wasn't anywhere near absolute, and maybe even mistaken. Even so, though, there were certain things that still seemed far more depressingly explained by the demon's point of view.

"I think... it answered a lot of it, at least. But... heat still exists, and the way I've felt it at least, sometimes it's a choice, sometimes you can resist it, but if you go long enough, it's so strong that it's all you can feel, all you can think about, and you just have to satisfy it. And if having sex is supposed to be a choice during heat, how come being knotted, and having a guy come inside, is the only thing that provides any lasting relief? If that's not being forced to submit to a guy's desires, I don't know what is..."

"Ah, yes. That's actually an interesting question, and it manages to touch on another aspect of sexual evolution on the female side that most people don't really consider. As I mentioned before, in the earliest days of canine evolution, all the sexual competition took place among males before mating, so there was no competition in the mating itself - whoever won the battles fathered the next generation. Once that system changed with the advent of civilization, things shifted over to a different type of competition that involved mating itself, and even with the knot, over a period of heat women usually no longer received semen from a single alpha, but from a variety of different men.

"Ultimately, this meant that reproductive competition came down to the sperm itself, creating certain other adaptations. For the males, it involved the extension of the flared ridge around the head of the penis, designed to scrape previous ejaculate from the vaginal canal, and it is this attempt to clear out the seed of other suitors which may be the origin of the vigorous thrusting that occurs before knotting during traditional coitus. For the females, though, evolution involved adapting to this new trend of potentially suboptimal suitors, resulting in significant branching and convolution of the fallopian tubes to create blind alleys and other obstacles for sperm to traverse. As fertilization in canines almost always takes place within them, and the fertilized egg generally emerges into the uterus immune from additional sperm activity, the female body adapted to ensure that only the fittest sperm was capable of locating an egg in the first place.

"However, this system worked best when there was plenty of sperm to sort through, and that consideration had an effect on the evolution of heat, driving women to seek out sex until there was enough different suitor sperm to compete, and making the presence of that sperm a factor in releasing the hormones that reduce the drive for additional mating. With the way things, especially ovulation control, work in the modern era, that particular adaptation is probably more of an evolutionary remnant rather than one that serves any compelling purpose, but it remains nonetheless. Unfortunately, as the relieving hormones are actually triggered by sperm activating certain receptors in the vaginal and cervical walls, I can't say I know of any scientific advances that have been able to deal with it any better than they've been able to deal with heat itself - artificially injecting sperm does technically work, but isn't compellingly better than actual sex, and probably has to be combined with some sort of knot anyway for a complete sense of relief. Still, I imagine that over the long run, both of those aspects will continue to evolve towards a different form as those traits are no longer specifically selected for in future offspring."

He glanced for a moment between the two of them. "Yeah, I know... sometimes I just can't seem to give an answer without jumping into a dissertation on the matter. The long and short of it is, though, most of the weird stuff about heat and canine sex are actually remnants of our even weirder sexual history - and while they are things we still have to deal with for now, men and women both, eventually further evolution or more dramatic technological progression will eventually move us forward, likely to a point where our current sexual behaviors and compulsions will seem positively alien to generations looking back a couple of centuries hence."

"Which... doesn't do much for us right now, though," Gianna said with a sigh. "Although... really, thanks for answering my questions. It's definitely helpful to hear a... better perspective, I guess. I didn't mean for them to dominate the discussion, though..."

"Don't worry about it. I know that sometimes my speaking style doesn't completely convey my enthusiasm, but trust me when I say that this is the kind of thing I love - using my knowledge to educate someone in a topic of mutual interest, especially when they've been the victim of what I can only see as intentionally distorted misinformation. And don't worry about inspiring me to ramble, either. Believe me when I say I could go on about the minutiae of this topic, among others, for hours and hours - why, just the particular sexual mores and adaptations of the Tangoaku people, indigenous to a tiny island in the South Pacific, could easily take up an entire evening. However, I'll try to restrain myself from going on too much longer. I appreciate your thanks, for course, but simply having an interested audience is reward enough.

He paused for a moment, seeming to consider something. "Although, I think I can understand why you were so determined to ask about this - and I suppose I can also see why the history and biology of it would trouble you so. Considering your sexual orientation, heat must seem like a particularly cruel compulsion, as it creates an overriding state that runs counter to the attractions that you would otherwise feel. Especially as I've come to belatedly realize that you seem to be dealing with said condition at the moment, which...likely makes my presence more awkward than it would otherwise be. I can assure you that I do not seek to cause you any further distress, though being both canine and male are both factors that I cannot readily change. Although... if you don't mind me saying so, your even temperament despite that fact has been rather remarkable. I assume you're into... biofeedback, mind over matter, that sort of thing?"

"Stubborn determination more than anything else, probably. There's no way that I'm gonna let it control me. At the edges of it, when it's ramping up and ramping down, it's still hard, still crazy, but I can just about keep it under wraps. In the middle, though..."

"Ah. Well, like I said, I'm much more of a historian - when it comes to dealing with things in the here and now, I'm probably the furthest thing from an expert. I had wanted to catch up a bit more with May, and perchance learn a bit more about you. However, if my presence is bothering you, we can certainly postpone that further conversation for another time. While I of course would never do anything to cause distress to someone May cares about, and while I also excel at controlling my own impulses, it is impossible to deny that your condition is causing me to experience certain unavoidable, biological reactions, and after a time I'm afraid they could come to affect my behavior. In any case, as far as direct help with your condition goes... I can only assume that May can speak to more relevant experiences and mitigation techniques."

Gianna glanced over for a moment as May nodded, seeming to sniff at the air for a moment. "Yeah... a conversation Gianna and I have already had, actually. And... I am sorry for not taking better notice of your discomfort. I have to admit, though, you're pretty impressive in how controlled you're managing to keep it. Most women in heat, you know it - not just from the scent, but from the way they look, how they act, how they speak, in all those things you can tell just how much they're barely on the edge of being in control. Whatever you're doing, it works..."

Or, at least, it had worked well enough while Gianna had been distracted by Jeremy's rambling answers and not thinking about it constantly. Now that the conversation was back onto it, though, it was harder to ignore. The itch was still there, more than enough to make her breathing more rapid and set her teeth on edge, and as for things lower down... well, it was enough to say that she was ready, very ready, so much so that even the more robust underwear was feeling thoroughly saturated. She hoped, at least, that the saturation hadn't gone all the way through - thanks to the curse, the only thing beyond that were the fur-tight leggings stretched in snugly around her spade, and while the dark fabric probably wouldn't show that humiliating result, one errant male hand in that spot would provide all the justification the average guy would need to take the next step, whatever her wishes.

Her mind, in one singular saving grace, was at least so far refraining from spilling over into lurid fantasies about the man sitting across from her, but with her arousal seeping back into her conscious thoughts, she knew it would only be a matter of time until they appeared. So, he was probably right - the faster they wrapped things up, the better, before those behaviors and actions typical of women in heat decided to spring up again of their own accord.

"Um, well... I try my best, but... yeah, if we're going to order anything else, we should probably get it to go..."

"Fair enough," Jeremy said, looking over at May. "I'll be in town for a couple more days, though - perhaps we can talk a bit more then, one on one? In any case, I'll let the two of you take off. Somehow I have the feeling that you both have a long night ahead of you..."

After saying their goodbyes and settling the tab, it was only a minute more before Gianna was back behind the wheel of her car, with May in the passenger seat. Gianna knew she ought to strike up a conversation, keep things rolling, but at the moment she wasn't able to think up a useful topic of conversation - it was taking enough concentration just to drive properly and keep lurid, very unwanted thoughts involving Jeremy from flooding through her mind. Goddamn heat! As far as she knew, it was supposed to be over in a few hours, but it didn't seem willing to let her go without another resurgent drive into some guy's arms.

It was May, then, who spoke up first. "Gianna?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm... sorry if anything I said back there was misinterpreted. I wasn't trying to imply that we were an... an item, something like that..."

"It's fine. Besides, sounded to me more like he implied it, not you. And your answer was right, anyway - it's way too soon to tell where any of this is going anyway."

"Yeah... I'm probably worrying too much about it." May paused for a moment. "Er, and about that other assumption at the end..."

Gianna laughed a little at that. "That... was just a little incongruous, wasn't it? Especially after going on about why being with a guy was the only real way to relieve heat, and then assuming we were going to, well... yeah. Although, what you said earlier, about my heat... I know you said something about trying to help, but I know from when we talked earlier that it's not something you're really interested in, so if you want I can just drop you off and figure out... some way to deal with it..."

"Well, actually, what I said earlier... I don't think it came across quite right. The way I'm feeling right now... trust me when I say I'm more than happy to help you."

"Huh? But you said-"

"I said I didn't have the patience or stamina to be with someone through their entire heat, which is true. If it's just to ride out the rest of it for an evening, though, that's a whole other story. Plus, it would let me play with a toy I haven't had a chance to have fun with in ages..."

"Really? Wow, and I thought I was forward..." Then again, though, there was one aspect of it that certainly appealed. It went without saying that spending the night by herself, at that level of heat, was probably a horrible idea, and with both Jonah and Hugh messed up and thoroughly unavailable, her options at that point really were down to an encounter with some random guy, with all the risks and dangers that entailed, or whatever May had to offer. Put that way, the choice was even more obvious than it had been before, although even for May the proposition did seem just a little abrupt.

"Heh, that was kinda blunt... Didn't mean to offend, though, and it's not like I'm trying to pressure you or anything! I guess it's more about... there aren't a whole lot of women out there you can be direct with, you know? So when I find someone like you who is, I sorta go into overdrive. Well, that, and I don't know how else to say it - there really is just something about you that gets me going like nothing else, from the moment we met. I'm really not like this most of the time, and usually I take a while to warm up before I even feel interested in that way, but with you... what can I say? I guess you're just that hot - to me, at least..."

Gianna, of course, knew exactly why May felt the way she did towards her. It was a little surprising that the curse worked on women too, especially cute, not-at-all-butch ones, but there was no question that it was causing just about everyone she met, everyone interested in women at least, to take an overtly sexual interest in her. At least with women, the attraction was mutual in both mind and body. Although in this case, the roles were still regrettably reversed, albeit out of necessity given her heat. It was still a little depressing, though, to know that even with another woman, she was going to be on the receiving end of something close enough to a dick being jammed into her.

True, there was still time for her to bail if she wanted, but she was already pulling up in front of May's place, which meant that the decision would need to come quickly enough. The fact was, though, that there really was no other good option, and as it stood, Gianna wasn't entirely sure she could actually make it through the drive back to her own place without pulling over midway through and jamming a hand down the front of her leggings in desperate frustration. The flare-up in arousal and the ebbing heat were still in conflict, and as a result the itch within her was technically stabilizing, but at a level a good ways beyond what she could consciously control for any reasonable length of time. So when she pulled up to the curb, she turned off the car and locked it up, and a minute later she was sitting on the couch at May's place, squirming slightly, as May darted into the bedroom to "get ready."

Sitting there, feeling the heat tensing every part of her and leaving her aching for release, for the first time she felt grudgingly thankful for the curse, albeit only within the incredibly narrow context of May. Rape, of course, was simple, and properly lubricated sex was straightforward enough, but when it came to enticing a woman towards sex in a regular context, it was usually a whole lot more complex than just asking for it. As far as Giancarlo had known, for lesbians it was even more so, as there would be two women who'd have to talk and stroke and cajole each other into sex rather than just one. That being said, Giancarlo had also thought that lesbians were simply women who just hadn't been dicked the right way yet, or maybe dicked enough, so it wasn't like Gianna had a whole lot of insight to draw on. Somehow, fully inebriated, that had been enough the first time, and thanks to some unholy combination of the curse and Gianna's heat, this time was shaping up to be mercifully simple as well. If only the roles had been reversed, in fact, it might have had the potential to be the best sex she'd had since being inflicted with her cursed form. At the moment, though, she'd more than happily settle for simple relief, at the hands of someone who wasn't an aggressive man, someone who might actually stop after the first time if she asked.

Well, if May was getting ready, Gianna figured she might as well do the same - at least that way she'd have a chance to go back home wearing a pair of leggings with a mostly dry crotch, one that didn't scream heat to anyone around. She still wasn't really used to wearing them, though, and they seemed to behave even more problematically than the sheerer thing she'd worn earlier in the day - after kicking off her shoes, she quickly discovered that the fur-tight things didn't exactly just pull down like pants did, or tear under pressure like the stupid tights, instead snagging and bunching around her thighs as she yanked frustratedly at them. Eventually she ended up all but rolling them down off of her, pulling the thick, wound coil of them off of her ankles and stacking it on top of her shoes as neatly as she could, shrugging her tight black top off as well and throwing it on the pile. That left her in her heat-adapted underwear - not exactly the sexiest ever, the plain white fabric in stark contrast to her dark fur, but somehow she doubted May would mind. After all, Gianna was fairly sure the whole sexy lingerie thing was mainly something women did with men in mind, and whatever it was that lesbians found interesting about other women, she was fairly sure it didn't have a whole lot to do with how frilly and sheer their undergarments were.

She heard the door swing open, and looked up to see May step confidently into view. Suddenly, it took everything Gianna had to stifle the laugh that was building up in her chest.

It didn't, though, have anything to do with how May looked. If she had seemed attractive in her earlier ensemble, May was even more so as she stood topless before her. The lines of her body were perfect, sleek and svelte but with the clearly feminine curves that would have set Giancarlo off in an instant. Her breasts were unmistakably natural, although given their size that would have been the logical conclusion - they were probably B-sized, C at best, the kind that when cupped would fill Gianna's hands just about right, although they would have surely disappointed Giancarlo a little. Aside from that, though, in a previous life her form, like Bernice's, would have been perfect: slim enough that Giancarlo could have easily overpowered her, but athletic and energetic enough to put up just enough of a delicious, squirming struggle before succumbing to the inevitability of Giancarlo's presence within her.

It was strange, though, trying to reconcile that recollection with her current condition: feeling that momentary snippet of memory, that instinctual feel of the hunt - only for it to dissipate into a maelstrom of feminine, heated emotions, the strongest of which still yearned for a male presence, the physical and emotional vulnerability of heat that Giancarlo himself had so often made use of. At the very least, though, the absurdity of the thing May was wearing was able to cut through most of that, for the moment.

There was hardly a question that the thing swinging, awkward and pendulous between May's legs, could answer that yearning - but at the same time, the notion of thinking of it in any way resembling a real cock was borderline ludicrous. It seemed to be coated in some kind of silicone, and rather than a masculine, meaty red, the outside was swirled in shades of pale lavender in what Gianna guess was supposed to be some sort of reassuringly innocuous pattern. Instead of the traditional, angularly flared tip, though, this one had a smooth hemisphere on the end, with a little nub pointing out of the top of it. The hemisphere blended directly into the rest of the cylinder, a shaft perhaps the length of the one Giancarlo had or maybe even a little shorter, smooth with the exception of a maybe inch-long clear part in the middle that seemed filled with an abstract clump of mysterious nodules. The knot, if you could call it that, was shaped more like a tapered bulb than anything else, smoothly extending from the cylinder before retreating in the same manner towards its base, even at its maximum protrusion never seeming to extend to the diameter a proper knot would have had.

The whole apparatus was somehow attached to what looked like the skeleton of a pair of panties, seams outlined in robust leather straps snugged around May's hips. The rigging kept the whole thing basically in place, but hardly still - instead of a cock standing resolutely erect out in front, the thing seemed to wobble around on its base, swinging back and forth pendulously in front of her like some bizarre solitaire version of a dick-waving contest. All together, especially between the legs of an otherwise attractive woman, the image was nearly enough to make Gianna crack up laughing, but she managed to contain herself to what she hoped was a barely-noticeable smirk.

Well, maybe a little more noticeable, as May seemed to instantly pick up on it - though, thankfully, she grinned as well. "Yeah, it's a sight, isn't it? I picked it up back in the day, back when I was still trying to figure out what I really wanted to be sexually. True, I wasn't ever exactly... butch, but I wanted to try a dominant role for a while - hard to do that, though, when whoever you're trying to be with cracks up when you whip something like this out! The third women I naively tried it with, though, was kind enough to point out that the thing was actually for women in heat, for which the function was far more important than the form. It was something I probably should have caught onto, considering that for a woman that isn't in heat there's not much point for a toy to even have a knot, but long story short, it didn't see much use after that - tried it appropriately with a couple of other women, but it's really not enough for anything more than quick relief. Although, as far as that's concerned, it's about as effective as something like it can be." She reached down and tweaked the end of it, causing it to bounce around even more vigorously. "Even so, there's no way it looks normal, and it just feels so... weird, having it swinging around down there. Still don't know how guys can stand having stuff bouncing around between their legs all the time like that..."

She glanced back up at Gianna, and whatever Gianna's expression was, it clearly wasn't hiding the creeping desperation of heat.

"I'm guessing you don't want to hear me go on about this thing, right? Weird-looking or not, I'm pretty sure it works - or so I've heard and seen firsthand, at least with a couple of people. Never quite had the courage to have someone try it out on me, and probably not the patience, either - it does take a while longer to reach its maximum effect, at least compared to the... natural kind. But if you're ready to try it out... well, let's just say I'm very eager to see just how you'll react to it..."

Gianna nodded, before even really thinking about the consequences of her response - she was to the point of needing relief badly enough that the form it came in didn't matter as much as the fact of it being at hand. When May had taken her hand and led her to the bedroom, she'd quickly acquiesced to following her, and it was only when she was flat on her back amongst the sheets, the vision of May and the ludicrous cock-replacement looming over her, that the submissive position caused her some misgivings. May, though, still looked completely nonthreatening to Gianna, so the misgivings didn't really find a voice - at least not enough of one to react much at all when May tucked her fingers through the waistband of her panties, and Gianna offered no resistance as May slid the saturated fabric away down her legs and off from around her ankles in a smooth, practiced motion. She didn't even protest when May coaxed her thighs apart, although to Gianna's slight surprise, the first thing that darted down there wasn't the ludicrous dildo, but May's eager, curious face.

"Wow - you weren't kidding about heat taking you by storm! I thought mine swelled up crazily when it hit, but... not like yours, that's for sure. Not that I'm criticizing or anything, honest! I thought yours was beautiful when I first saw it, and now that it's so dominant, front and center and all flushed like that, wet and shiny and ready..."

It certainly wasn't the only part of Gianna that was blushing - and slightly annoyed. "Um, really? You're trying to compliment me on how that... thing between my legs looks?"

May's head popped up from between her thighs, just enough to show Gianna her eyes looking back with a certain sense of consternation. "I... wouldn't have thought you were one of those women who still feel ashamed by their intimate parts..."

"It's not that, it's... complicated. Maybe it looks beautiful or whatever when it happens, I don't know, but for me this particular thing gets to 'happen' every few days, and then it's just... big and annoying and aggravating, too wet and too sensitive and too obtrusive between my legs." Well, admittedly not quite as front and center as proper male equipment, but said male equipment also served as a reminder of something far better than constant readiness to be fucked. "I don't really look at it, and I don't really care how it looks, and if you think it looks hot, that's... great, I guess. But beautiful or not, it's still sitting there, aggravating me like crazy, and sending compliments its way isn't going to relieve that."

"Heh... not a romantic bone in your body, is there?" May sighed for a moment before pulling herself back upright, the knotted dildo bobbing gently back and forth in front of her. "And yet, despite all that... I swear, it's the strangest feeling, really not one that's ever overtaken me before. But being here with you, wearing this thing, I just... I can't explain it, but I've got the strangest urge to just get on top and, and... knot you with this thing. How weird is that, huh? I've never wanted to be a guy, never really preferred being dominant like that, but here, with you..." She shook her head. "Sorry, sorry! Didn't mean to get all crazy on you, there. Something about you, though, just conjures up these thoughts, these feelings, I never thought I'd have..."

As slightly unsettling as it was to see May like that, if the curse was going to give Gianna something better than some awful guy jamming a very real knot and shooting very real, very humiliating cum inside her, she might as well count it as a win. "You know what? If you want to feel like that, for right now at least... feel however you want to feel, but right now, I'd be overjoyed to feel some relief..."

Apparently, the curse had a strong enough hold of May that Gianna's words were more than enough to compel things into motion. May seemed for a moment to surge forward towards her, all at once, and by the time Gianna could fully register the impact of the motion, her insides were stretching easily around the smooth, silky-feeling shaft, the artificial knot already nudging and slightly spreading the squishy, swollen pads of her spade. Weirdly enough, when she saw May braced carefully over her, her partner seemed almost more aroused by the initial contact than Gianna was.

Gianna, of course, had no complaints about the view. Weird as it still felt to be penetrated, and as uncomfortable as it still felt to be on the bottom, it was a darn sight better for those feelings to be accompanied by the sight of a beautiful woman, her face filled with clear arousal, her breasts swinging pendulously in the center of Gianna's vision with perky, erect nipples swinging close enough to lick with a tilt of her head. It was far better than it had been even with Jonah, before the demon had possessed him at least - and that had been a guy she'd actually sort of liked. No, while the cock itself might have been an imperfect substitute, if she had to succumb to this sort of treatment, she certainly preferred for it to be with someone Gianna could truly and unconflictingly find attractive.

Whatever her display, though, May's rhythm couldn't be seen quite as enthusiastically. As soon as she started moving, it was clear that she had no real idea of how a man actually went through the motions - at least not from the perspective of providing them. Instead of really, properly thrusting, she sort of rolled her hips around in a reciprocating motion, one that the pseudocock only managed to transmit haltingly and somewhat discordantly within her. The motion probably wasn't helped much by the thing's nature - while a real cock, for all its intrusiveness, had a certain warmth and a ridge that engaged with the surrounding flesh to amplify the sensation of each stroke, the smooth surface didn't really catch at all, didn't really do much of anything to make her react in response beyond the stretching feeling when it had first entered. Its presence, maybe, provided a little bit of relief, but beyond that, Gianna hated to admit that it really wasn't doing much for her. For the moment, the view more than made up for it, but it wouldn't be enough if the frustration within her continued to build.

Even the knot was a pale imitation of the real thing. It didn't have the same spreading sensation against her spade, and was narrow enough that it actually started popping in and out of her at random after a couple of May's halting thrusts. The only reason the thing finally caught inside her was that her spade, apparently as frustrated with the knot's deficiencies as the rest of her, suddenly clenched down hard around the base of it and trapped it inside. Unlike a real one, though, it only sort of gently nudged up against her heat-swollen insides. And while the other part of the engagement technically happened, the nubby thing on the tip brushing up against the deep, sensitive part of her, the sensation of its touch quickly faded.

Gianna felt the knot tug gently against her spade as May tried a couple more hesitant thrusts. "Okay, I think it's all set, now. Feeling any better?"

She looked a little disappointed when Gianna shook her head, although a moment later, her face flashed with recognition. "Oh, wait a minute... I totally forgot to turn it on! Er, actually, I think you're supposed to get the knot in before you do, so maybe we're still all good..." She trailed off, mumbling to herself as she hunched over, her hands fiddled with something clipped to the leather straps near her waist. It was an absurd combination of awkward fumbling and compellingly swaying breasts, one that might have sent Gianna into a fit of actual laughter in other circumstances, but as soon the audible click of May activating the thing sounded, those feelings were abruptly the furthest thing on her mind.

Immediately after the click, there was a sudden, intense thrum between her legs, and the device began to feel rapidly more interesting. The nubby thing started alternately tapping and rubbing in a tight circle against her, while the strange nodules in the center seemed to poke out from the shaft, kneading against her flesh in the most intriguing way. The thrumming, though, seemed to come from the knot itself, growing in intensity as it send deep, massaging vibrations through her entire core.

It all happened at once, leaving her momentarily speechless as her body worked to catch up to the combined sensations. Put together, though, they settled into a rhythm that, despite the lack of thrusting, quickly seemed immensely more satisfying. Enough so, in fact, that she was suddenly more than content with her position, lying there with a lazy, aroused smile on her face, watching May occasionally tremble above her as the echoes of the vibration sparked her own arousal.

Almost before she knew it, the device drove Gianna to her first climax, although the nature of it was remarkably different. It wasn't at all like the ones she'd had forced through her before - no shuddering shock, no uncontrolled spasm or weird, aroused weakness that left her feeling stunned and horribly vulnerable. Instead, the sensation almost snuck up on her - the motions inside her had gradually felt stronger and stronger, better and better, and just like that, her insides were throbbing and clenching against the shaft in the familiar feminine rhythm of climax, the sensation eliciting not a strange, forced moan, but rather a blissful, satisfied sigh. And rather than leaving her feeling weak, overwhelmed and trembling, the throbbing simply subsided into a comfortable stillness as the thing worked inside her before the arousal and pleasant feelings crept back in again.

Unlike an actual guy, though, the thing within her had no desire to stop, or to subside or recede within her, happily doing its job for as long as its power held out no matter the number of times it drove her into that easy climax, milder perhaps than with a guy, but still more than pleasant. In between them, it was true that the frustration of heat still crept in a bit along with her arousal, but as soon as she was brought back to that gentle peak, for the duration of it she was more than satisfied.

Not to mention that in between, the show above her was more than enough to recovered any ebbing arousal with a vengeance. While it didn't seem to happen with nearly the same regularity, the vibration of the device was affecting May in just the right way, powerfully enough that when Gianna looked down she could see the vibrations shivering through the fur along the inside of May's thighs. Every so often, Gianna felt the device shake rapidly within her, and looked eagerly up to watch as May's feminine rhythm joined her own, her body bucking and arching through her own climax, nipples and muzzle blushing vibrantly pink as her face took on the beautiful yet strangely pained expression that only overtook females in the throes of orgasm.

Gianna's own face, surely, was expressing something similar, but she was satisfied enough not to care about whatever slight embarrassment such a thing might have caused her to feel. She was finally satisfied, not with a rapey guy but with a beautiful woman writhing and cumming above her, and nothing was going to ruin a moment like that. Certainly not one that seemed to go on and on, the lights of the room fuzzing comfortably at the edges as she settled into the cycle of climaxes that the device managed to coax out of her.

Sadly, though, the moment of bliss once again managed to be rudely interrupted. For a moment, she thought that it was just a follow-on effect from her latest climax, something that made the room look even softer and brighter. When she looked closer, though, she realized that it was somehow more focused. The light was coming from May, a corona circling her face, her fur practically glowing. It wasn't like the red-eyed malevolence that had encompassed Jonah, though, but something much different, something that she could actually, directly feel was somehow far less threatening. That being said, though, she didn't react with elation, or even surprise, when May's mouth opened but the voice of someone else came out: subtle, calm, glinting brightly with a hint of melody.

"So... it has happened. To be honest, it was a gamble. I did not know if you would ever become connected enough with May to enter a state where we would be able to speak. All I could do was send her in the right direction, and hope."

"You're not a demon." It was more a statement than a question, tinged with the annoyance of coming face to face with yet another stupid thing possessing someone she knew in the most awkward possible situation. "So, what, then? Are you supposed to be a fucking angel or something?"

"Or something, yes. Angels and demons are just abstract concepts. But there are... other things that exist. Things which are in conflict. Things willing to manifest in your world and corrupt it with their manipulations, and things that wish to lift the world up and wash the corruption out from underneath. Only a powerful, dangerous few, like your... acquaintance... can manifest themselves directly. Most require vessels to serve as conduits between your world and one of ours, and even then it takes a great effort to do so. I'm sorry if it is unsettling, talking through your lover like this, but as you are already under the influence of another I cannot converse with your mind directly."

"Well, at least you apologized, and you're not actively raping me, so I suppose it's slightly better than last time - although it's still pretty damn creepy that all you supernatural bastards seem most eager to talk to me when I'm knotted..."

" To possess someone, especially someone peripheral to your intent... the direct connection makes it easier, even if it is only a prosthesis. It is a more direct act than I am accustomed to, but it seemed a necessary one to take considering recent developments. You have been through a lot in the past few days, and there are important decisions approaching that may affect fates other than your own. In such a time, it seemed crucial to let you know that you are not alone in the face of what you call demons. There are others who take your interests, and the interests of those around you, to heart. Others who can offer you another way through, and who can warn you of the inevitable that lies within traversing the boneheap's path."

"Wait... you're telling me there's another way to get back to being a guy? That I can tell the boneheap to go fuck itself and get back to normal?" For a moment, at least, Gianna was suddenly a lot more interested in the conversation.

"Not exactly. The boneheap has... concealed that form from our sight, for safekeeping. As such, it is the only one who can restore that form to you, and to have it restored the only recourse is to play its game. I am here to tell you, though, that to do so would be a mistake - it is not a form that you want to reassume. Doing so will only bring further depravity and ruin."

"So how, exactly, are you supposed to help me, then? I fucking hate being like this. Maybe not at this exact moment, but... you know what I mean. Obviously I want to go back to the way I was. And if the only way back is through doing what that awful thing wants, then why are you even here?"

"Because you need to understand the long game, not just your short-term predicament. The boneheap isn't truly interested in keeping you a woman indefinitely, and its challenge isn't simply meant to give you some sort of false hope. It wants you in your current form, wants you like this for a time, just long enough to get its false and poisonous message across: that the female form is contemptible and its surrender an inevitable fact of life. It wants you to believe this, because even as it disheartens you now, it internally reinforces a certain view of the world, one that you held dearly before and one that will only become reciprocally stronger if you are again transformed. Once that worldview is set enough, the boneheap will move up its challenge, and while it will seem insurmountable at first, it will be a challenge the boneheap knows you will win.

"When it returns your form to you, though, it will not leave. It will remain in the background, whispering, goading, reminding you of what women are and what they deserve from its perspective. It will drive you to be harsher, rougher, more depraved. You will rape again, becoming more violent and more bold, until one night, as you finish, you will wrap your hands around a woman's throat and squeeze until there is nothing left. Once that threshold is crossed, there will be no going back. Your corruption will be complete, and you will be in thrall to a pernicious, unstoppable evil. Even if the boneheap were somehow to be banished or neutralized, your male persona is likely beyond cure, and if such a form were restored, its old habits would return. As a man, you can only be a rapist. As ironic and cruel as it might at first seem, your current form is actually serendipitous, as it offers you a true second chance. Not at absolute purity, but at redemption."

Gianna looked up at not-May's face with incredulity. "Right. Because me being raped and vulnerable and miserable is such a better deal. Don't you get it? I fucking hate this, hate being like this! What's the point in being redeemed, or whatever, if it means I can never get back to the form that I want? And you're right - if I do change back, I'm probably going to rape people. All being powerless and vulnerable like this does is make me want to dominate others that much more. It's just in my nature. And it's not like you don't already know, but even like this I've raped one guy already, and all but raped another. It's not like I'm gonna magically change to fit what either you or that damn boneheap want just because you swapped out my sex. And if me raping people as a woman is somehow morally better than doing it as a man, I'm not the only one whose morality isn't normal. So again, I'm gonna ask... why are you even here?"

As soon as she finished her diatribe, though, she regretted making such a blanket admission - if May was at all present through what was happening to her, if she could hear what was being said... well, it didn't make sense to dwell on that. Besides, if she really was aware of the exchange, she'd surely be more confused than anything else. In any case, the thing possessing her didn't seem to react emotionally to the admissions either way, instead continuing in its soft, steady voice.

"To hope that you might listen to reason, if only for your own happiness. Already, things are different. You have... sinned, this is true. But already it is for different reasons, and as a matter of desire it is no longer necessary. In your old form, your patterns and habits would remain the same, but in this new one, you have already been with others, including now, for other than rapacious motivations. Even now, you are in a mutual embrace that your old form would never have made possible.

"Consider - In your old life, there was only one friend, with a relationship that was barely fur-deep, one where what you believed to be your true self remained hidden. Return to that path, and you will have your power for a while, but you will wield it alone. And alone you know it will end, locked in a cage away from the world, punished for your bad acts and denied the power over others that you desire. Keep this form, though, and the sins of your past self stay with one who no longer exists. Here, you have more friends than just one, and each friendship has already grown far deeper than it would have before. Your power may be limited in certain respects, but it is no longer tied to your happiness. Take this different path, and there can be many friends, and not just partners, but lovers in every sense of the word. It is a far brighter future than you would have had, and far brighter than some would say you deserve. I believe, though, that even you are awaiting the opportunity to see your true self, once it becomes fully disentangled from the corruption of your past. Take this path, and I will be there to lift that true self up into the light."

Gianna looked back up at May's possessor incredulously. "You do realize that, whatever your crazy promises, there's no way I'm going to accept this, right? We both know what staying in this form means for me. The curses, and all the other crap the boneheap has in store. Only it has what I want, and only it can make this stop. All this... glowing warm stuff is nice, I guess, but you're wasting May's breath."

"Then let me be clear. You have a choice, and I cannot make it for you. You can choose to play the boneheap's game through to completion, and tread the path that I believe it will lead you down. Or, you can choose the path that comes by going to the boneheap and formally resigning from its competition. It is true that if you do this, you will retain your female form, and you will never again be a man. Once you do, though, once you make that choice, the boneheap's hold over you will be broken, and the curses it has set into place will no longer be absolute, but vulnerable to manipulation. It will take a little time, but I believe that I possess the power to unravel them, thread by thread. True, there are some things that will not change. Your heat, unfortunately, is a natural part of that form, and I cannot mitigate every risk. However, you will no longer be in maximum peril with every encounter, and you will be able to make your own choices about how to live your life. You would have the opportunity to make a good life for yourself, one with far more possibility than you had before. You can be a mechanic again, be with men or women as you choose, and experience connections at a level that you would never otherwise have discovered."

May's possessed face above her seemed to soften slightly in its expression. "This isn't a choice you have to make now. You can continue moving forward however you wish. Even if you do not choose the path I recommend, as long as you retain this form, I will help to counteract the poisonous influence of the one who inflicted it when I can. Just keep in mind that when the boneheap offers its challenge, the decision will have to be made, as it will be the very last point at which you can choose to refuse its influence and take another path. Once the challenge is accepted, there will be no way to turn back. Ultimately, it is all up to you, but you know the boneheap does not care about satisfying your interests, only its own. While I know I can't prove right now that I'm not doing the same, I'm sure you can hear that my words ring true. There is only one path that offers you a real future. Please consider carefully which one you want to pursue."

The light around May quickly began to fade, but the voice still continued, even as it subtly faded. "May will not know of my presence, but if you have need of me again, I will sense it and bring you together again. Remember, though, that your plight is now known to me, and that I will fight for the right future. For the one that needs to be."

As soon as the voice finished, trailing off into silence, the light momentarily flashed brighter before fading out entirely. May's body relaxed, settling back down against her, and while her eyes didn't close, they looked forward in an unfocused daze for a moment before she blinked and seemed to return to awareness. As she did, though, the feelings of the device seemed to fade as its mechanisms ground to a halt - interestingly, the close proximity to the possession had apparently drained off what charge it had left.

"W-wow... I don't think I've ever felt a climax quite like that before. It was like I was just floating, weightless, in this warm, endless sea, completely satisfied and at peace. Usually, I can't come properly at all using this thing, but together with you like this, the way it all finally connected, it just... I know I keep saying it, and how crazy it sounds, but there really is something about you, and even if I couldn't actually put it into words, I'm so happy that we can be... well, like this."

She looked up at Gianna, her face suddenly seeming a little concerned. "Um... you are enjoying this, right? You seemed to be really into it, but I have to say, you look kind of troubled right now..."

Gianna struggled for a moment to reply - it wasn't as easy as all that to just switch gears back to the "real" May, especially while they were still so intimately connected.

"I... no, I am enjoying this, really. That you're here doing this for me, helping me to make at least this part of heat into something that's not horrible... I really appreciate it, you know? It's just... I can't even really explain it to you, but even now, all the craziness in my life lately keeps worming its way back into my skull. And I'm just-"

"-Not quite sure how you feel about being with a woman like this?"

"Um..." Not really, not exactly, but it seemed safer to go along with the assumption. "You could tell?"

May grinned. "Well, it's not like I'm exactly lacking experience in this, you know. I've been with enough... people who are virgins to this lifestyle, I guess you could call them, to know how they usually react. That the whole concept of it is something pretty new to you, and you're still trying to find your way through, still trying to get your mind to come to terms with what you're feeling. That sound about right?"

Oh, if only she knew... but still, if May was going to assign her that role, it seemed smart to pick up on it. If she showed a little vulnerability now, May might feel more comfortable letting her guard down around her, and in turn, the more power Gianna could eventually have over her when it became necessary to turn the tables and demonstrate who was really in charge. Still, though, May already had enough of a taste of her personality that she couldn't just play the wide-eyed ingenue.

"Guess it's like I said earlier, when we first met... right now, with me and guys... it's beyond complicated. I don't think I ever really considered how I felt about being with women - at least, not before I met you. And it's true that I've never had a relationship with a woman that's been anything like this." Which was true enough - it really was the first time Gianna, or Giancarlo, had been with a woman as anything akin to an equal. "I don't exactly know what that means, though. I mean, we haven't even known each other a week..."

"And yet, we've been together twice now. That's a pretty good sign, don't you think?"

'I... yeah. It's just... like I said, complicated. I mean, being like this... it satisfied me enough for the last bit of heat to resolve itself, I think. But in a few days it'll be back again, and while maybe we can do this to ride out the end of it again, for the rest of the time, that complicated stuff with guys will probably return. And with one particular guy, well, it's especially complicated, but... I'm not in an exclusive relationship right now. Haven't been for a while, really." Or, for that matter, ever. "But if you can deal with all that, deal with me... I really do like being with you. No lie, this really is the best sex I've had with anyone in ages." At least since becoming Gianna, for sure.

"Yeah, me too... and I'm not trying to pressure you into anything. What I'm trying to ask is... for starters, at least, do you want to make this a regular thing?"

"Hmm... you mean eating sandwiches on a random college lawn and listening to incomprehensible science lectures, or...?"

"I think you know what I mean..." May grinned, leaning down to paw at Gianna's breast through her bra. "Damn, how did I forget to get that off of you? Ah, well... can't complain, though. I suppose there's another thing that does need to be unhooked, though..."

By that point, Gianna's spade had decided to give up on its death grip, and the pseudocock, knot and all, slid out easily enough. May got up for a moment to unhook the rest of it from around her, and for a moment Gianna considered getting up, getting going now that she'd accomplished what she needed to. Before she could muster up enough determination to make the choice, though, May crawled back into bed, nudging Gianna over onto her side and spooning her naked body up against her. The feeling of a female form curling around her, soft and warm, was compelling enough, and when a hand slid down through the fur on Gianna's belly and curled fingers gently in to massage oh so perfectly against the pads of her spade, all she wanted to do was sigh happily, snuggle back against May's soft fur, and drift easily off to sleep.

It was the first time, in as long as she could remember, that Gianna had awoken in someone's arms. As Giancarlo, if anyone had still been around the next morning, it was only because he was still doing something to them that was far more intimate than cuddling. And yet, for just a moment before it started to feel somewhat alien to her experience, it actually felt... nice. Nice enough, in fact, that what the apparition had said the night before lingered in her mind. Was there really, truly, some other future in all this? At the same time, though, it didn't take long for the recollection of another possession to pop back into her mind, with the horrible feeling of powerlessness that had accompanied it - along with the previous rape in the storeroom, the humiliating groping from Hugh and random customers, the vulnerability of being on display, the ravages of heat, and the half-dozen other instances where she'd only just barely been quick or clever enough to avoid yet another merciless violation. May was a slight consolation prize against all that, to be sure, but not nearly enough to make up for it.

The rest of the morning went pleasantly enough, without any of the awkwardness of the previous time they'd been together, their conversation mainly limited to comfortable small talk. Which was good for Gianna, as her responses were only halfway present, the rest of her still preoccupied with the supernatural apparitions that had become disturbingly common since her transformation. She finished breakfast quickly, somehow managed to figure out how to unroll the leggings and pull them back on, and quickly said her goodbyes. Even though it was still a while before work, she knew she had to stop by her apartment first, and not just to get cleaned up - after what had transpired the night before, she felt the need to have a pointed conversation with one particularly vexing individual, one who was likely just as well aware of what had occurred.

Sure enough, when she walked into her apartment, the boneheap was just sitting there in the middle of the living room, not even bothering to disguise its presence. Gianna regarded it with her usual glare, but if it had, in fact, been caught out on its motives, nothing about its alien shape seemed to indicate that it cared.

"So... I suppose you've got something to say to me, hmm?"

"an apparition met. words exchanged. sounded kind, so probaBly believed them."

"And I suppose you're going to tell me that they're all lies, just another attempt by someone to manipulate me?"

"not all lies. mostly truth. not eNtire truth, however."

"Right, and I'm supposed to believe something like you is actually going to tell me the truth for once."

"perhaps. agreed to no hidden rules, after all. three outComes, as stated. pass challenge, fail, resign. however, incorrect assumption made regarding victory. male form restored, yes. voice whisPering in ear, no. game... annoyed ONE with greater power, so stakes higHer. initiated game anyway. ONE added own rule: any outcome causes temporary inability to continue play on this plane. If triumphant in contest, forcing contest failure or resignation, opportunity to rest bones in plane of choosing. if challenge passed, sent apart from this plane to one of ONE's choosing. surely unpleasant one. wish to triumph in contest, avoid ONE's outcome. rule imposed, however. chalLenge must provide chance at victory. not impossible. play game to point of challenge, guaranteed chance at restoring male form."

The inflection around the word "one" was distinctly odd, with a strange sort of reverberation. Was the boneheap somehow... actually trembling when it said the word? Whatever the boneheap was, the revelation seemed to indicate that however much power it had, it wasn't anywhere near the top of the heap - and given how miserable the boneheap could be, whatever "one" was, Gianna sincerely hoped she didn't have to meet it. Nevertheless, it was somehow appropriate to learn that the thing that had put her into this horrible life had, through its callous actions, gotten itself into its own particular predicament.

"So, she was lying about you being around to torment me, then? To whisper in my ear, to drive me to kill?"

"probably not lie. more likely unaware of additional condition of victory, assumed facts about situation based on prior experience. irrelevant, though. no motivation for killing in any case. no further suffering to extract from corpse. rape something living, and suffering persists. much preferred."

"And everything else?"

"correct in some aspects. fail or resign, stay woMan, power no longer exerted. however, power over game includes power over curse. win challenge, all asPects of form restored, curse explicitly negated. lose or resign, expLicit manipulation and rules of game no longer apply. curse persists, however, and once power relinquished, can no longer be modified or conTrolled. unraveled, perhaps, perhaps not. some aspects remain, nonetheless. some actual changes not easily edited away, without knowing specifics of transformation. clothing choice not acTual curse, but rooted in mind, in persona. remains even if actual curse taken apart. certain other aspects persist. plus, any outcome in female form maintains frequent heat. unaVoidable. only path to restoration of male form, male life, is through game. impossible to cancel game unilaterally now that ONE involved."

The boneheap shuffled about, using its bony arm to smooth its sacklike garment before gesturing pointedly at Gianna, although it didn't appear to actually be doing anything to her this time.

"only three outcomes. only one posSible choice to end game before challenge, advocated by apparition. however, make choice, and form remains, aspects remain. make choice, change irreversible. male form, male life, no longer exist. no recolLection of past life, no memories, no gian-carlo. only always female, always female persona, memories female from birth. happy life? maybe. sacrifice everything gian-carlo was, though. sacrifice core of self. embrace heat, vulnerability, peneTration. only way to keep true self is through game, thRough challenge. keep in mind before making irreversible choice."

So, in a way, while whatever it was that possessed May had been mistaken, in certain aspects it had been correct: if she resigned herself to her new form, she could in fact leave the sins of her old life as Giancarlo behind in a way that wouldn't "corrupt" her new life. Of course, it hadn't mentioned that that was because every bit of Giancarlo would go away along with it!

No, there was only one way back, and she wasn't going to give up on it, not as long as she had a chance to take charge of her life again, not as long as she could return to a form whose hormones didn't cause it to all but beg to be raped every few days. And whatever it might have said, about friends and lovers and opportunities, so far whatever tradeoffs there were didn't come even close to offsetting the misery her form had brought to her, and certainly would in the future. And as far as the boneheap was concerned, she was sure that it knew the same - it was impossible to tell from what passed for its face, but she could have sworn it was smirking somehow, still sure it had the upper hand, still sure that she would play its game and abide by its rules. Even if she didn't play, if she actually resigned, it seemed the thing would get some of what it wanted anyway.

No, for now at least she had to push ahead, no matter what else the boneheap might have in store for her, no matter what other nasty little tricks it had up its sleeve. She would rise to its challenge, somehow, and even if it took using and abusing literally everyone she knew, supernatural or otherwise, if that's what it took, she would do it. Which, she couldn't help but wonder, might be why the boneheap had picked her. Just to make its stupid game that much more interesting.

The boneheap, unsurprisingly, had one more dig at her as it once again faded away triumphantly, secure in the knowledge that she would keep playing its game, still subject to its indignities.

"no resignation. thought as much. game far from over. will be fun to see whether capable of measuring up to challenges ahead. one today, even. make sure to check calendar on phone. reaction to what is scheduled should be fascinating."

She swore she could hear echoes of its strange, bone-clattering laughter as it disappeared from view. As soon as it was gone, her hand was diving into her purse to pull out her phone. She had seen a block of time carved out for something on the calendar when she'd glanced at it before, probably assuming it was something boring like a staff meeting. When she looked closer, though, she noticed that it was set up in the color that was normally reserved for appointments outside of work for which she had scheduled time off, usually mandatory stuff, medical appointments and the like. This appointment, though, was with a doctor she'd never heard of, and when she opened up the full entry, the notes accompanying it revealed why.

The appointment, of course, was for a gynecology check-up.