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Repaid in Silver

It was love at first sight. You were a work of art, as if an ancient marble statue had stepped down from the pedestal and was cast again in chrome. Your metallic edges were harsh and unforgiving, but in motion the straight lines seemed to bend. The way you moved, it was like mercury glittering in the sunlight. You were a masterpiece, and in the moments when you fell upon the scraggers you captivated my heart.

At first, I thought it was simply my mechanic's eye that drew me to you, like an avid puzzler to an unsolved puzzle box. Your design was obviously superior. Unique. Your body armor rippled and melded over what I could only assume was your biological musculature so seamlessly that it seemed like the rigid metal was twisting and bending as you moved. But as I watched, perhaps what surprised me most was a rare glimpse of your lingering humanity, that small spark that makes us noble, makes us great.

Perhaps some context would bring clarity.

It was my fault; I was stupid, oblivious, and foolish. I had been out past curfew, and rather than face the peacekeepers and their hounds, I figured I could cut through Old Bells. I knew it was a tough neighborhood. There was a reason the peacekeepers didn't go there, but I figured I'd be okay. I'm a tough little dog, and I thought I had nothing the scraggers wanted. More the fool, I.

They were human--or at least mostly so--but they were gangly and loose, and moved like puppets with half their strings missing. When the first one stepped out of an alley in front of me, I almost laughed at him. It's a good thing I didn't, really: I don't believe that would have ended well for me. A scragger was going to give me trouble? Little old me, with hardly a chit to his name? But when the second scragger stepped out behind me and I heard a third let out a cough on a low rooftop near me, it suddenly struck me that trouble was a commodity I didn't need money to buy.

Your rescue was quick. They didn't get the chance to even ask for my chits, nor give any ultimatums. If I had blinked, I would have missed half of it. The first scragger didn't even see you before he toppled where he stood, and the second only had long enough to twitch before half of his cranium disappeared in a cloud of organic matter. I heard you fire two more shots, and I can only assume you'd seen more of them than I had, still in hiding. Behind me, the last remaining scragger let out a gasp and a curse as you dropped to the pavement.You were designed to be intimidating. The will to fight drained from the last remaining scragger as he beheld you. Of course, I saw what he saw; you were a nightmare crawled from the proto-human subconsciousness. An apex predator--A wolf-wrought from metal and given human stature.. Every part of your canid face was articulated, so animated and lifelike, that only the mirror gleam reminded me that it wasn't fur.

I knew why the scragger cowered, and I tasted his fear, but he could never see what I saw. I saw beauty, and passion, and soul beneath that lupine mask.

You could have taken out the scragger without ever even revealing yourself. He knew it. I knew it. Instead, you descended to the road in front of me like a guardian angel. "Fat Tony is now Dead Tony." Your hand shot out and the last scragger flinched. Instead of a gun, though, you held a rose. It was a chrome rose, formed of thin, twisted sheet metal that seemed to glow in the unsteady light of the street lamps. It was for Tony, who was now laying in a puddle of his own blood, missing most of his head. You threw it onto the recently deceased. "Any of you who are still here this time tomorrow will join him."

Then you leaped to the rooftop in one bound and were gone.

The scragger looked at me. Even though he stood there, as capable and dangerous as before, I knew I was safe. He'd seen the same holo-vids and news feeds as I had--everyone had. 'Argent the vigilante'. Silent and deadly, too canny to be caught by peacekeepers, too dangerous for the big corporations to hunt down. Everyone heard the stories, but what those stories never told was what lay inside that silvered carapace. You'd shown mercy, that noble trait that's so often overlooked and so easily abandoned even by the wholly human. That a chrome hound like you had chosen to retain it, when so much of your humanity must have been carved away under the surgeon's knife, was... It was...

It was irresistible is what it was. I needed to know, needed to see just what you were, what had been so human, but was so obviously less human and more machine. I'd already been stupid once that day, so what was one more mistake, really?

So I climbed to the roof. It wasn't hard; like you I'm not so human myself. The difference is that I'm who I am more by mistake than by design. My mother, she'd been fully human, but my father had been a dog--and I don't mean in the derogatory sense. There's a few like him--like me--running around these days. People who flipped a few key genomes and are something a bit more than 'pure human'. Or less, if you asked the peacekeepers, but I don't. They're more the 'shoot-on-sight' kind of assholes, especially if they found me outside the appropriate place for a gene-freak like me. More or less, I'd inherited a body that made my presence less than welcome in the controlled sectors.

Welcome or not, though, it came in handy when I needed to get around. The roofing slats were bent where you'd landed. There were scratches in the nearby warehouse wall, ones I could immediately identify--cybernetic climbing claws. Well, two could play that game. The concrete was pitted and scarred by years of disuse, so the hooks I'd built into my gloves could grip easily. I climbed up, following your trail where it flipped onto the next roof. I was so engaged in following the trail that I didn't notice you were watching me until you spoke.

"It's not safe to follow me." All I could see of you were those piercing red eyes shining out from the shadows. I was terrified, to be honest. I'd never really considered what I'd do if I caught up to you. It must have showed on my face, because the glare seemed to dim.

"I had to see. You're Argent, aren't you?" I'd heard of you, about what you did. I respected what you were, but I never thought you'd be so...so...

"Yes, but you shouldn't be up here." Your eyes bored through me, measuring me. It felt like you could see all the way to my soul You seemed to pause for a moment, as if you were considering. You were probably accessing your databases, looking me up. "Dean. Mechanic on the lower fifth sector. Is that you?". "Yes. Yes! How did you know?" I was stunned that you knew me, but the shock was only momentary. Of course you didn't know me personally. You probably had an uplink--data on demand from wherever you were, whenever you needed it.

"You're a corgi?" Your eyes seemed to laugh from the shadows. "You're registered as a wolf, but you're the stubbiest wolf I've ever seen."

"I... Wait a second, wolf? Really?" Something in your tone liberated my tongue. "That must be the central registry you're looking at. Sorry, they didn't have an option for 'half-pint canine.'"

The eyes blinked, then I saw the shadows shift. "You should go home. The scraggers won't bother you again tonight."

Your form seemed to unfold, preparing to leave. I could follow you again, but I had the feeling that would have ended badly for me. "Wait, Argent, I can help you. I'm a mechanic, and a good one. I even get in some gear they don't have in first sector."

You glanced back at me, and that same incisive glare tunneled into my brain. It must have found me wanting. "I already have a fixer. Live safely, Dean the corgi." Then you left.

To say that you made an impression would be an understatement, but what could I do but continue on? You'd made it clear you didn't want to be followed, and I? Well, I'm just a mechanic. I left Old Bells with every intention of living the rest of my life, trying to convince myself that you'd never dropped into it. I succeeded, mostly. I had a steady stream of clients with torn filters on their skimmers and burnt-out emitters on their grav bikes. My hands might have been white each morning, but by the time I hung up my torque wrench each evening, they were black with grease.

That was life in the lower sectors. It wasn't pretty or glamorous, but I'd like to think that I'd done rather well for myself. Even as a half-pint gene-freak, I had some respect, and I had my little luxuries. I may not be rich, mind you, but I enjoy the little pleasures I can eke out of a rather menial existence living among the cast-offs of upper-crust society. I enjoy my job, and can you blame me for thinking of myself less as a mechanic and more as an artist of steel and pistons? There's a beauty in the rumble of engines and the hum of capacitors. It had always been enough for me, and would be still--right? But now, there was a certain chrome wolf that stalked my dreams; that left me lonely and wanting in the mornings. It had all been enough for me beforehand, but now I felt a certain pang of emptiness, like there was something I'd seen and something I'd felt that was calling out to me. I'm not brave and I'm not brash, but I felt the urge to chase those dreams, grasp that moment with both hands. It was an urge I needed to stifle to stay sane, and for months, I managed to do just that.

Then one day you fell back into my life.

I'd heard gunshots, but that wasn't out of the ordinary. It could have been scraggers, or the pretty boys from up above. Hell, the peacekeepers might be making a raid. I'd learned long agoto keep down in my sector. Stick your head out and you might lose it. So when I heard gunshots, I turned up the radio to make it clear that I hadn't heard anything.

When you fell through the front door to my garage, I froze up. It was a shock--I thought you'd forgotten me. It'd been six months since you saved me, six months since you'd been haunting my every waking moment. I'd convinced myself the most I'd ever see of you again was the fuzzy security feeds they showed on the news. Now, the red laser glare of your artificial eyes stared right through me. Then you fell forward and passed out.

It didn't take much expertise to see the damage they'd done to you. There were bullet and flak scars in your metal hide, so deep that I could see the smashed servos and burnt wires beneath. One of your arms was bent wrong--its elbow-joint actuators were wheezing in futile panic. When I rolled you over, I realized the damage wasn't only 'skin' deep. There were gouges in the overlapping plates of your muzzle where I could see the wiring exposed, and the delicate lenses over your optics were shattered. My opinion as a mechanic was that you were a wreck. I couldn't tell if there were more injuries below the surface without hooking you up to diagnostics, but I wasn't hopeful. If you'd walked into anyone else's shop, they'd have disassembled you and sold the scrap.

Good thing you came to my shop, then.

What else was I to do? Of course I sheltered you. One glance through the open garage door confirmed my worst fears: there were peacekeepers all over my street. With my pulse beating double-time, I struggled with your limp form. By the time their scanner drones reached my garage, you were safely hidden in my secret stash beneath six inches of scan-resistant lead and a fake floor panel. The peacekeepers were on edge, so I "accidentally" let them find a low-grade restricted transformer. They confiscated it, took my fee, and left. I closed and locked the door behind them.

I returned to my work bench, but my mind wasn't on it. I stood with a screwdriver in hand and the engine I'd been working on untouched in front of me. At any moment, I expected the peacekeepers to realize their mistake. I counted my heartbeats. One-one-thousand, the whirr of their drones receded until it disappeared beneath the sound of my own pulse. Two-one-thousand, silence reigned. Three-one-thousand, . Four, then five. I heard them talking to my neighbor--an old merc with a smoker's voice. He hadn't seen or heard anything. One minute, then two. By the time I'd counted out fifteen minutes, they were gone. No sound of a cutting laser burning its way through my door, no chatter from the peacekeeper's comms, no stutter of gunfire out in the street. I really was clear.When the sun crept below the city skyline I finally felt it was safe enough to open the secret compartment. Within moments I had you up onto the table, the rest of my jobs pushed aside and forgotten.

Up until then, I had wondered sometimes just how much of 'you' remained under that chrome carapace that so resembled a wolf. Now that you were in front of me, I was almost afraid to find out, but after six months of you stalking my dreams, I couldn't keep my hands off. You were even more gorgeous than you were in the alley. Your body armor was so smooth and articulated that it was a second skin. Even your face, which could have just been a rigid armored mask to instil fear in your enemies, was instead fully articulated. It was effort that someone had taken to make you more of a person than an automaton. Through the damage I could see the beautifully delicate electronics, flush against (and even integrated into) the flesh beneath. It was all wetware, not just robotics. There was something beneath all of that cyberware that was more than just a machine. Slowly, reverently, I removed the plating that hid your delicate inner workings and skin. It came away from you in patches where damage had shattered it. Your chest was pockmarked with flak, and it looked like someone had fired a laser pistol point-blank into your stomach. The armor all came away, even down your legs and over your crotch. I needed to look.I was your mechanic--your ersatz doctor-so I couldn't let my eyes linger there..

But my admiration had to be put aside, along with the rest of the failings of my flesh and bone body. I wasn't stupid enough to think I knew how all of your systems fit together, so sticking an inhibitor into your data socket seemed like the best idea. It would keep you immobile while I worked, so if I hit a nerve wrong or tweaked the wrong contact, you wouldn't decimate my shop and, incidentally, me. It was the safe thing to do. I'd cause less damage to you if you didn't wince every time I welded something shut, and you'd cause less damage to me if I made a mistake. Every mechanic knows to cut the power before they work on a circuit, to kill the engine before they stick their fingers in the gears. It was the smart thing to do. So why do I feel so stupid for having done it?

I did the best I could with your unfamiliar anatomy. I may not have known what each system did as a whole, but I know when a servo's missing, or where a wire's stripped, or where the wetware needs a new connector. I know that I left you at least as functional as you'd been before you'd been damaged, but would it be a lie to say that I left you even more? Everything I could reach I cleaned and shined and disinfected, and where the original simply wasn't salvageable, I replaced it. I left your delicate machinery spotless. And then, when the time came to seal the wounds back up, I must boast that I'm a master with a laser welder and a cutting torch. Master? No, I'm an artist. You were beautiful, and if I had anything to say (or do) about it, you would be again. I smoothed your chromed steel finish back into its delicate waves, mimicking fur over your torso. You had little clefts and ridges, where a natural pelt would clump and curl. Whoever had originally sculpted you had understood canine anatomy. I followed the original patterns, and where they'd been scraped or blown away, I improvised. Your head, your chest and stomach, where bullets and shrapnel and beams had scarred your armor, I left you smooth and spotless.

Can you blame me, though, for letting my eyes linger as I worked the shrapnel scars from your thighs? How could I ignore you when you sat just inches from where my head needed to be? You were shaped like a canine, with a sheath that seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be real fur. Your body armor would cover that when it was all reassembled, but who would take the time to model such realistic anatomy if it wasn't meant to be used--wasn't meant to be functional? It enraptured me, ensorcelled me, and my mind wasn't on the welding anymore.I tried to stay professional, but...but there weren't any other dogs like me, not down here in lower fifth sector. And I wasn't going to go chasing the strays out in the street, the feral creatures with no mind and no will and... No, that wasn't me. But a dog has needs, doesn't he? And when such a gorgeous piece of art was staring me right in the face, I...

I was weak. I shouldn't have, but my hands strayed. It was only after I felt fur between my fingers that I realized I'd let the torch and cutter dangle from their tubes. I know, it was most improper of me. Callous and wrong of me, even, but I couldn't help myself. I put my hand over your sheath. Really, I just meant to feel it-to see what it was made from, but when I felt the warmth and vivid life beneath it, all thoughts of professionalism simply fled. The reason it looked almost like real furwas that it was real. It was skin and flesh and pelt, and I could feel your heartbeat through the thin fuzz. The inhibitor would kill any non-essential machine functions, but this wasn't a machine. This was you, unmodified and unenhanced. When I had been replacing and repairing your armor, I had only assumed your wolf-like features were part of the grafting process--to make you fit the armor. This, though, there was no reason for this to have been modified unless... Was this really what you'd been before all that metal had been grafted to your skin? Had you been a dog, like me?

As I stood holding your sheath, shocked by what it implied, you responded to my fingers. There wasn't any machinery involved there, just pinkish skin, glimmering with liquid, that peeked from the tip of your sheath. My hand tingled like I'd touched a live wire.

Beneath my fingers, I felt you throb, and my eyes immediately shot up to your face. I was afraid that you'd be looking down at me, that somehow the inhibitor had failed--but no. Your red-lasereyes (with optics so recently replaced by yours truly) faced upwards, glazed and inert. Only your subconscious, your proto-brain, was awake now, and at least it approved of what I was doing.

My hands rubbed, and my fingers pulled. I had to see all of you, unsheathed and natural, beneath your combat armor exoskeleton. As your cock slid from your sheath, I was hit by a waft of scent, the tang of dominant wolf. It was heady, and I closed my eyes to absorb it. It spoke to me on an instinctual level, filling my nose with the presence of "male." Underneath, though, I could smell the rest of you, the fine machine oil, the metal polish, the slight acrid touch of burnt plastic from your ruptured electronics.

When I opened my eyes again, all of you was on display--every tantalizing inch of you. The red length that had sprouted from your sheath left dull smears on the armored carapace over your stomach. You were gorgeous, every bit the wolf I hoped you'd be when I first realized that your canine physique was more than symbolic. The length twitched between my fingers when I slid my hand up to feel you, and dribbles of liquid dripped over my knuckles when I curled them around your knot. Overcome with curiosity, I gave my fingers a lick. It was slippery and slightly bitter, definitely not one of those gene-engineered cocktails that the "enhanced" cybers down here in fifth sector had. They could be sweet, or creamy, or any number of unnatural flavors or textures to fit personal taste, but someone with a nose as keen as mine could always smell the unnatural chemicals in them. For all that you were enhanced and augmented and modified to make you strong and fast and nigh-impervious, this was natural. This was all you.

I can't tell you how excited that realization made me. How could I make you see how much it meant to me? I'm a mechanic who spends most of his days buried arms-deep in intake manifolds and busted exhausts and heat sinks with a cutting torch in one hand and a soldering iron in the other. It was like marching through the industrial district in third sector and finding a forest, surrounded by the steel mills and the foundries and the silicone presses. I found it irresistible; found you irresistible.

Within moments, I had stuffed your tip into my muzzle. The scent overwhelmed me, and most of the next few minutes were a blur. Only two things stick out in my memory. First is your scent, that tantalizing mixture of natural canine blurred with the artificial rubber-and-plastic-and-carbon-steel of your cyberware. Second is the feel of your fur, just where it ended and your second skin of armor plating began. I remember it gliding against my finger pads as I tried my very best to swallow your shaft.I succeeded, too, right up until my lips could close around it just above the knot. Oh, you're a large wolf, and I'm a small dog; I had a sore throat for days afterwards. But I could no more stop myself than I could halt a runaway jet bike with my bare hands.

Now that I think of it, though, I remember one other thing. If I thought the scent was strong at first, it was nothing compared to the overwhelming of my senses as you came. Without any of the "tells" of a fully conscious person that'd alert me to an approaching eruption, I was caught unaware when the first jet of runny seed splashed against the back of my throat. I couldn't suppress a cough. I pulled my muzzle away and let your length flop back to the shiny plates of your armored skin. As I recovered my composure, I watched it throb, sending spurts of translucent liquid across the metal ridges and contours of your faux-fur. In a trance, I slid my finger pads around the puddles your peak had made on your belly.

But as I lazily stroked your receding erection, reality intruded. In this case, it was the electronic clock chime that broke my reverie, telling me it was time for my favorite weekly holo-vid. In that instant, the gravity of what I'd done struck me. You were immobile, incapable of any thought, perception, or reaction that wasn't purely autonomic. I hadn't just been unprofessional, I'd been- I don't know-amoral. No better than the scraggers you'd saved me from all those months ago.

Silently, burning with shame, I cleaned your armor and finished the repairs, ignoring the holo-vid that had slipped into record mode. I reattached the last bits of your armor, making doubly sure that no trace of the damage you'd sustained (or of my actions) remained. As a last step, I programmed the inhibitor for the standard four-hour sleep cycle, then removed it.

Then, unable to face you, I retired to my own bedroom and locked the door.

It would be the right thing to say that I was overcome with guilt, and that I didn't sleep. It would also, however, be incorrect. I had only been curious, and I only let your body do what it had been programmed to do by instincts millennia older than your logical electronic coding. I didn't wish to meet you eye-to-eye, so instead I slept until morning. By the time I emerged from my den in search of my first coffee of the day, the cyberware cradle where you'd lain was empty.

---

And this is where I believed I'd end my story, but you know very well that it doesn't end there. I could say how my eagerness had ruined any chance I'd had of some mythical happy ending, and how all I ever saw of you again was captured in grainy security camera footage on the nightly news. It would have made a poignant story about loving too hard, too eagerly. It would have made a good (if rather adult) modern fairy tale.

But you couldn't leave it there, could you? I was ready to accept my mistake, ready to come to terms with what I'd done, but you had to come and turn it all upside-down again. Two weeks after you left my too-tender care, you returned.

When I first glimpsed your red eyes from across my bedroom, I thought you were a nightmare, here to teach me my lesson. Then, when sensory input from my fingers and my ears and my nose informed me that you were too vivid and too real to be a dream, I realized that it might still be a nightmare. A waking one. You were here to put me right, to take your revenge on me for the liberties I took with you. I couldn't breathe. The panic and fear had pinned me firmly to the bed.

"Mechanic Dean, you should have been expecting me." Your voice had that same growl I'd heard when I first found you on the roof overlooking the alleys of Old Bells. I couldn't respond. My tongue had fled along with my wits.

"I'm here to thank you for your expert work."

Thank me? You break into my garage, my bedroom, in the middle of the night and wake me with those eyes--those terrible red laser eyes-to thank me? I gibbered something, but it must not have made sense. The light of your eyes blurred a little as you moved. You were coming closer.

"I--I..." I caught myself before I managed to complete that thought. Did you know? Could you remember what I'd done? "I didn't expect you to come back." At least that was the truth.

"I always repay my debts, Dean."

"You--ERK!" You put your hand on the foot board of my bed and I heard your fingers close--click-click-clicking of metal against wood. I jumped a bit and skittered backwards in the bed, pulling my knees to my chest. "You don't owe me anything. I--It's fine!"

"But I do, Dean."

"I--" It was useless. I couldn't lie, not to you. I'd been so enraptured, so enamored of who you were that even if I'd tried to lie, it would have come out wrong. "You shouldn't thank me. I--I did..."

You flowed up onto my bed like a cat, until your burning red eyes were just inches from mine. The mattress sunk low beneath you, and I heard the creaking of the support boards beneath. I stopped talking, and you said nothing more for a very long time. All I could hear was my heartbeat, and my breath, panicked and heavy in the suddenly all-too-warm bedroom. I heard nothing from you. Your air filters and heat sinks were all silenced. You were silent as a ghost.

Then you spoke again. "I know, Dean. All of my senses are programmed to stay active when the inhibitor chip's in. I know exactly what you did."

Cold fear spread in my belly. I was about to die. I knew you were there to exact vengeance, to "repay" that debt in full. My heart beat so hard that it made my fingers twitch in their death grip on my blanket. I could hear it in my ears like a rush. Oh, god, I felt like I was going to be sick, but I couldn't move, not with those eyes boring into my skull from just inches in front of my own muzzle.

And then you kissed me. Your metal lips were smooth and unyielding, but warm, as warm as flesh. The kiss pushed me back against the headboard, trapping my muzzle against yours. It was terrifying. I didn't know if this was just the prelude, if you were getting ready to... Well, you know what I thought you were about to do.

But I thought wrong, obviously, or I wouldn't able now to write you this message. Instead of ending me, you showed me what it was like to truly be alive, alive like none of the gene-freaks or cyber-dogs or the rest of them down at the clubs could show me. The kiss wasn't forceful, it wasn't aggressive, it wasn't a demand. It was exactly what you'd offered, a heartfelt repayment of your debts.

In that moment of clarity, the burden of shame and disappointment I'd felt since that day in my garage seemed to slough away. Why? Maybe it was alleviated by your forgiveness. Maybe it was the arousal of having the specter that had hunted through my sexual fantasies for months on all fours above me in my own bed. Perhaps it was even the chance, just the possibility, that you felt for me even a glimmer of what I felt for you. The fear melted, and in its place was only adoration and worship of you.

Your hand tugged gently at my legs as your lips pulled back. They had plastered themselves against my front in fear, and now that it had abated, I allowed myself to be uncurled. Your arm scooped me up as if I weighed no more than a feather, though to you that may in fact be the case. I felt myself pressed against your front, my fur flat against the textured surface of your armored skin. You hadn't worn your full battle-assembly; most of the extra armor that could be removed had been, and all I felt were the ridges of your styled faux fur. I could smell you again, rubber and metal and plastic and dominant and male and wolf.

When you sat me down against your thighs, I straddled my legs around your hips and locked my ankles above where your tail sprouted from your rump. You didn't need to push forward against me, because I was pushing myself down against you. I felt that gorgeous length throb beneath me, and then with a gasp and a grunt and a slight stab of pain, I felt it throb inside me. You were gazing at me as if you were worried for my well-being, holding me gingerly--like you might a delicate flowerYou needn't have worried. I'd had a lot of cyber-junkies beneath my tail, some even larger than you (though not naturally).

You got the idea quickly enough, though. When I pushed myself down, grinding myself against your knot, your concern evaporated. Your metal lips nipped at my ears, and I felt one of your hands close around the base of my tail. It was the right attention, pushing the right buttons and hitting all the right places. Your hips rolled forward, and suddenly I was sitting on top of one very enthusiastic wolf.

I held on as you humped, listening to my poor bed creak beneath you. My own shaft slickened your metal skin down and slid frictionlessly, getting a twinge every few moments as I felt it slide across one particularly nice ridge in your "fur." You slid deep and probed all of those secret little spots that made me writhe in your arms. I hope you weren't annoyed by my yaps when you tugged at my ear, I can't help it. Without a hand touching me, my excitement rose then peaked. You must have felt me shivering in your grasp as I spurted across your belly, because you stopped your thrusts long enough to let me enjoy my high.

You were considerate, more considerate than I think I could have been in your place. With a single arm you lifted me back off of your shaft, letting it sit twitching against my tail as you let me recover. I convinced myself I could hear your heartbeat through the layers of metal and ceramic and silicone over your chest, but it was probably my own that I was listening to, thundering in my ears.

Then, when I showed signs of recovery, you started to move again. You flipped me onto all fours, and just as I was gathering my limbs beneath me, I felt you beneath my tail. You were careful and considerate again, but I wasn't in the mood for careful. I pushed back, loving the feel of you sliding deep, until I felt your knot throbbing against my tail base. Getting the idea, you grabbed my tail and tugged.

If only I could bottle the feeling I felt as you bent over me, hand on my tail and jaws closed around my ruff. When your hips rocked, it was so silky-smooth that I could barely tell if you were pushing in or tugging out. Then a hand closed around my shaft, still tender after my orgasm. It was metal, but not completely smooth. I could feel textures and ridges as my cock slid through your fingers. Your grip slickened by my own juices, you soon had me yapping again. Sorry.

At the end of each of your humps, I felt the thick bulbs of your knot tap against my tail end. It gave me a little thrill, because as the taps became bumps, and the the bumps became a grind, I knew what you wanted--but were too careful to just take. I may be small, but by no means am I as fragile as you were treating me. I met your bumping and grinding, and when I felt you begin to pull back, afraid of what you might do to me, I pushed with my arms and legs to make sure you didn't get away.

I won't say it didn't hurt. It did. But there was pleasure, too. Pleasure that made me wriggle back against your chest and whine. Pleasure that made me twitch and spurt onto your metal fingers. Pleasure that made me squeeze and clench around the knot that had just slid into my rump. You had enough of your instincts left to hold me tight and growl in my ear as I felt you pulse inside me. I'd be sore, no doubt about that, but it was worth every bit of it as I felt you twitch your peak into me.

We stayed like that for minutes that seemed to roll into hours, clasped together in our feral embrace. Eventually, you let us collapse onto our sides, still holding me close to your stomach, still tied tight to my rump. By the time I felt the warm rush and smooth friction as you slid from me, I was only half-conscious. When I woke in the morning you were gone.

Now this is where I should say that I thought it might have been just a dream, but I won't lie. I could still smell you in the morning, and the bed sheets were stained with the product of our activities. Perhaps you think you've come and repaid your debt, but instead you've only left me longing, remembering that night.

I know the night is dangerous for you, and doubly so for those you love. It's no surprise that you don't want some little dog hanging around. I'd be a liability, I know. You were right, all those nights ago, when you told me that it wasn't safe to follow you. If only I'd known why.

That's what logic tells me, and I'd be a bad mechanic if I didn't let my logical side have its say. But I'm also a dog; I'm also a stupid, emotional, irrational person, and that side of me tells me to run off into the night, to leap from every rooftop until I find those telltale marks again--the claw marks on the walls, the heavy dents in the roofing, the shorted EM locks where you'd taken the quick way through. I'd search the shadows, and maybe then I'd find you. That's what my primal, instinctual side tells me, that side you awoke when you woke me so suddenly that night.

But I won't. I'm a logical dog, and I won't go looking for trouble, especially where I'm not wanted. Maybe you were just coming to repay your debts. If so, consider them repaid in full, along with tip.

Just maybe, though, there was something more than that, and that's why I'm writing this message today. I'll send it out, post it publicly onto the net, for every scragger and freak and juicer and splicer to read and laugh at the pitiful dog-boys getting it on. I wish there were another way, but I don't have a way to contact you directly. This is my only hope. This is both my plea and my invitation. Anyone else reading this, I'm not as stupid as you think. My name's not actually Dean, and I don't live on 5th sector. Don't bother looking for me--this message isn't for you. Argent, I know you remember me. You know who I am and where I live. If you have another night not so busy with your business that you can find you way down to my little garage... I won't leave the door unlocked, but it wouldn't stop you anyway. I'll be waiting tonight, and every night until I see your shadow in my bedroom door again.

And maybe next time if you leave a trail for me, I'll follow.