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StarCrossed

By Green

Gulping down the last sip of his coffee, Chase Varma set his mug aside and took a deep breath, preparing himself for an unenviable task. The tall, lanky Abyssinian stood up from where he'd been sitting at the little bar in their kitchen and strode with purpose down the hallway. Chase walked past the first door, his own bedroom, and then a second door that had a small sign hanging on it that read 'DarkStar Abyss Games' with a cool, non-copyright-infringing spaceship logo. He often smirked as he laid eyes on it, but given that he was already low-level embarrassed, Chase wasn't feeling the joy right now. He proceeded to the end of the hall and with a resigned sigh, rapped his knuckles against the last door.

There was the expected pause, and then the door swung open, to reveal a slightly younger Abyssinian cat, about a head shorter than Chase. She smiled warmly up at him, not a hint of stress anywhere in her expression. It made Chase feel a little guilty, to be frank.

"Hey," she greeted him, simply, "'Sup?" Chase swallowed.

"We gotta talk, Riya," he said, trying not to sound like the bearer of bad news. She nodded, stepping back and opening the door all the way. Stepping into his younger sister's room, immediately struck by the strong scent of perfume, as he was every time he came in here, the troubled male went and sat down on the bed as Riya returned to her desk chair, turning to face him. Her tablet was out, she'd been in full art mode. It looked like she'd been working on a minor NPC who only appeared once, and thus only needed one image drawn of him.

"What's up?" Riya said, reaching up to brush her bangs out of her eyes. Her black hair hung to her shoulders, and it looked quite silky and shiny today, but fancy shampoos were not what Chase had come to talk about.

Gazing down at his feet, Chase swallowed another sigh and steeled himself as he looked up.

"Okay, we really need to address the elephant in the room," he said, hating the frown that appeared on Riya's gentle features. "We've been pretending it never happened, and dancing around talking about it, but if we don't face this soon... Well, Michael is going to be pissed at us." It was the slender female's turn to sigh, crossing her arms over her chest and nodding sullenly.

"Yes, I suppose you're right," she said, "We've got an obligation to those nice people... thanks to you." She was smirking as she said it, so Chase just blushed, instead of getting defensive. Mostly.

"It was a joke!" he said weakly, "I never thought they'd actually do it!" He resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands, pointedly reminding himself that Riya looked sympathetic.

"I mean, it's half a million dollars we're talking about, how was I supposed to know our audience was just that horny?" There came a high-pitched, musical giggling, and Chase couldn't help but smirk even as he lowered his ears in feigned irritation at his sister's amusement.

"Well I'm glad you're looking forward to finally drawing lewd art," he teased, silently claiming victory as she blushed.

Riya averted her gaze, composing herself.

"Well, you're going to have to write about our characters fucking, and you didn't seem thrilled about that," she reminded him, pointedly. Reaching up, Chase began massaging the bridge of his nose.

"We might not have known that space hookups were what the audience wanted, but they sure started pouring money in when we revealed that stretch goal," he muttered Riya smiled again, raising one finger to correct him.

"Hey, these are 'romance route capstones', not 'space hookups'," she insisted, "It just so happens that they're going to be a lot sexier than we originally thought..." Chase shook his head as he thought back to that fateful livestream.

"I've never seen Michael's mood do a 180 faster than when those donations started coming in..." he mused. Riya snickered.

"I'm kind of surprised he didn't fire you anyway," she added, "Making the joke is one thing, but you really should have run it past the team before you, you know, actually put it on the stretch goals list." The tall, wiry male reached up and scratched at an itch on the side of his muzzle as he sighed again.

"Well, speaking of the rest of the team," he said, "if we don't want to let them down, we gotta... we gotta talk about actually working on this, and soon, or we might miss the deadline."

The younger feline pouted, lowering her ears unhappily.

"Ohhh, God, do we really have to? Can't we just give that part of the money back?" she asked, wringing her tail in her hands, "You're my brother, do we really have to plan out sex scenes together? That was never in the plan!" As the writer and the lead 2D artist for DarkStar Abyss Games, and indeed, on their first project, StarCrossed, Chase and Riya would indeed need to collaborate in order to revamp the 'romance route capstones' now that they wouldn't fade to black so soon. Chase wasn't thrilled about it himself, feeling hideously embarrassed about the very idea of discussing lovemaking with his little sister, but seeing how uncomfortable she was, he felt the urge to comfort her. Leaning forward, he put his hand on her upper arm and smiled supportively when she met his gaze.

"Hey, this isn't 'planning sex scenes with your brother', this is 'fleshing out a side of Jeice Rifter for the first time'," he teased, feeling relieved when Riya smiled slightly through the blush.

"C'mon, we can do this," he assured her, giving her slender arm a soft squeeze, "we're both grown adults, right? If we could handle plotting out the depressing Game Over scenes where Jeice dies and his hopes and dreams come to nothing, we can sure as hell handle seeing him physically expressing his feelings for his girlfriend!" Her ears slowly rising, Riya reached up and booped her brother on the nose.

"Or his boyfriend," she added, proud of the fact that their game offered same-sex romance options.

Chase, who was himself fairly confident in his heterosexuality, swallowed and nodded.

"Right, yeah, exactly," he said, trying to shrug the moment off. Truth be told, Chase had put more than a little of himself into their game's feline protagonist. He'd been doing it, in fact, ever since he and Riya had developed the characters together in their teens. So, the idea of Jeice Rifter professing his love for other men had always been a slightly surreal experience for Chase, not that he would ever admit any of that to Riya or the others they'd joined forces with to make their vision a reality. He put the problem of depicting Jeice as a tail-raiser out of his mind for the moment, only too happy to leave it for Future Chase to solve (that dumb sucker). His sister chewed that one over for a moment as he stood up from the bed and went to lean against the desk right next to her, her chair rotating to follow him.

"Maybe you're right," Riya finally said, "I mean, we're both professionals, and it's not like we imagined Jeice had, y'know, taken a vow of chastity or something..."

"Speak for yourself, I never saw him going past hand-holding," Chase lied shamelessly, "Jeice Rifter? Oh yeah, old-fashioned gentleman. Never kisses and tells, either." Riya laughed at the blatant falsehoods about their central character, who was a bit of a scoundrel at heart, but that heart was in the right place. As she laughed, Riya lifted one hand and laid it down atop Chase's, giving it a friendly squeeze. The elder feline smiled distantly. Riya had always been prone to making contact between them during good moments, something about sharing in the moment, Chase thought. He'd certainly never minded, and was secretly kind of flattered that she never seemed to do that for their other siblings. The two of them had always been closer anyway, so he'd never really thought about it too hard.

"Okay, right, so I guess we should get started," he said, reluctantly, "C'mon, let's give this a shot..." He pushed off from the desk and offered a hand to help the other Abyssinian up. Riya collected her tablet and followed him out to the room between their bedrooms. Despite the lofty name on the door, this was not the true home of DarkStar Abyss, it was just a small home office that the Varmas used for most of their StarCrossed-related work, barring the occasional minor thing like Riya drawing merchant NPCs or Chase grammar-checking the scripts. This room was also a tidy, professional background to put behind themselves when they were doing facecam meetings with the rest of the team; Chase and Riya might have come up with the story and the characters themselves, but they'd needed to gather a group of like-minded individuals with more technical skills the two cats lacked, and almost as much passion to see the game brought to life. This was, however, their first collective project, so the company didn't have an actual, physical office just yet, and everyone was working from home.

Chase had moved his laptop in here in advance, and Riya had put a desktop in here to work from, so it didn't take them long to get settled in.

"Alright, maybe we should start with the ones that'll be really popular..." Chase mused, "What do you think would be more fun, starting with the childhood friend or the crew's mercenary?"

"Emily or Freyr?" Riya said, "Hmmm, let's start with Emily, she's really sweet and warm, so it'll probably be nice and straightforward, make it easier on us." She looked up from her tablet and regarded her brother with that 'professionally intense' expression he admired

"All these scenes start right after you pass the point of no return, right?" she asked.

"The night before the raid on the Tetsunac flagship, exactly," he replied, nodding. Frowning thoughtfully, Chase began to rub his chin, thinking about the King Charles spaniel their protagonist had grown up with.

"Okay, right... Emily is all warm and gentle and compassionate, so we should probably play it, y'know, all intimate and tender, she'd definitely call it 'making love' instead of 'fucking'. So I figure Jeice is in his quarters all broody and stuff, maybe looking at something from his family like his Dad's pendant, and he gets called to the holodeck on the comms by Emily, who wants to show him something."

Chase's companion was pouting, however.

"It's not called the holodeck in our universe, it's called the rec room." Riya said, pointedly, "I can't believe I have to remind you of that, you wrote it! C'mon, say it with me, it's not called the holodeck because..."

"Because we're not Star Trek," Chase finished, "I know, I know, I can't help it if Trek makes for perfect genre shorthand! But fine, Emily calls Jeice down to the rec room, and she wants to show him, uh..." He hesitated for a moment, his train of thought stalling, but Riya interjected a suggestion.

"How about a holographic recreation of the village they lived in as a child before the pirate raid?"

"Oh, shit, that's really good!" the surprised male exclaimed, "Ties into their shared backstory, helps Jeice square with his tragic past, even gives them privacy in an outdoor location!" Riya chuckled.

"Well, I wasn't thinking they'd just do it on the ground," she tittered, "maybe go into somebody's childhood house or something..."

"Okay, that's fair," her brother admitted, "So Jeice gets there, the doors whoosh open, and we just do a reaction shot before we cut to the village background..."

* * *

And so, brother and sister got to work plotting out the scene. In their original plan for the game, whoever the player was romancing just stopped by Jeice's quarters on the night before the climactic attack, and the player didn't get to see much more than a kiss and a PG-13 shirtless embrace before the camera tastefully faded to black and cut back in to the after-talk. Now, they needed to make them a bit more impressive than just doing The Deed in Jeice's quarters, and this holographic program for Emily seemed like a good start. Things ground almost to a halt when they actually reached the lewd part - Chase thought Riya would never stop blushing after he described Jeice kissing Emily on the throat while slipping a hand under her shirt to touch her breasts, but in fairness, he'd had to swallow a whimper of embarrassment when he heard Riya say the word 'nipple' for the first time in his life.

Things got so self-conscious that Chase almost called it off a half-dozen times, but they powered on and described Jeice and Emily passionately making love in a downy bed under a skylight showing the twin moons of their homeworld. Together they talked about their collective understanding of the characters, having crafted them together over the past decade, to determine how they might best be represented in a lewd scenario, with Chase setting a scene as he envisioned it, while Riya did her best to craft a hasty sketch of that scene before penciling in some rough ideas of where the characters might enact their intimacy. Positioning and angling was crucial for Riya, as she was the one who was going to be drawing the stills. The team had decided to use a slideshow of still images for scripted sequences less plot-critical than the expensive core cutscenes, and this fit the bill. By the time they'd finished plotting that first sex scene, the Varma siblings were feeling a little more comfortable, and a lot more enthusiastic. Well, Chase's enthusiasm took a hit when Riya had them move on to Freyr Duskfang.

Realizing that he had just become Future Chase, the embarrassed male silently cursed Past Chase (that smug bastard) and put more effort into appearing nonchalant. The truth was, with as much of himself as Chase had put into their protagonist, it was very difficult not to imagine the scene playing out with himself in the role of Jeice Rifter. When they'd been working on the Emily scene, he'd found it exciting, a perversely erotic thrill running through him as he worked with his own sister to design and plot out a sex scene that he was fantasizing about starring in. But now that he had to work through the process with his bisexual protagonist in the arms of another male, Chase mostly just felt embarrassed and put off by the mental images of himself in the swarthy mercenary's embrace.

He didn't dare bring this up to his sister, afraid Riya would make fun of him for indulging in a self-insert character, so when this new mental roadblock started making trouble, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

'Okay, I can do this. I know I can do this,' he thought to himself, 'I'm not going to magically become gay or anything from this, even if it is super embarrassing. Just gotta suck it up, can't let Riya know or she'll tease me forever...' He imagined his sister following him around their apartment, delightedly reading gay fanfics to him, more encouraged by every cringe. But he supposed that would require there to be gay fanfics, which would require the game to have fans, which really required the game to be both released and, optimally, good.

It was still difficult at first, but Chase reminded himself that the motivations in a love scene were more or less the same no matter the orientation at play.

'Jeice Rifter is the kind of man who knows what he wants,' he thought, 'and right now, in this route, what Jeice wants is in Freyr's pants.' Smirking, the Abyssinian found that very helpful, both for the block and for the insecurity. Things picked up from there, though they did briefly get derailed by a discussion on whether Jeice was a top or a bottom, a distinction Chase had assumed he'd never need to make. But soon they had a scene to be proud of where their hero got to explore the fierce hired gun's closely guarded tender, caring side.

Eventually, Chase and Riya found a comfortable pattern, where each variation on the love scene started off with the target of the player's affection inviting Jeice down to the rec room in order to share a personal program with the scruffy former smuggler, and let Jeice in past their emotional armour (and sometimes literal armour too). Maybe having everyone call Jeice to the rec room was a bit simplistic, but ideally it wouldn't spoil the immersion, since any given player would only see one of the scenes in each playthrough. When they scripted scenes with women, Chase felt that sexy little thrill again, which only grew stronger whenever Riya suggested a detail, unknowingly shaping the fantasies in her brother's mind. And with newfound confidence, Chase was able to get through the gay scenes with minimal trouble, and a whole lot of blushing. He found that he actually enjoyed scripting the scene with Tronalk, an optional party member, a massively muscular lizard man whose brutal, uncivilized lifestyle was interrupted by Tetsunac operations on his undeveloped homeworld. Somehow, throwing the fearless warrior into a sci-fi setting had been one of the most entertaining parts of the story for Chase. Soon enough, they'd whittled their little list down to just a couple of items.

* * *

Riya frowned, tilting her head to one side as she pondered the pose before her, where Melikki, a skeptical but enthusiastic scientist, was stood up, breasts pressed against the wall in front of her, and Jeice spooned up behind her.

"Hmmm... If they're up against the wall, I'm not sure how we show off that they came..." she muttered. Chewing on his lip for a moment, Chase perked up with an idea.

"You could be blatant about it, just pull the camera in nice and tight underneath them," he suggested, "Why not just give everybody a front row seat, let them see the come leaking out of her pussy?" Her whiskers twitching thoughtfully, Riya distantly shook her head.

"No, I don't think that's quite it..." she murmured, "Drawing all of this but at a different angle is going to be a lot of work just to get penetration in the frame, plus it might be more lewd than I'm willing to go." As she tapped her stylus against her lips, her eyes slightly widened and she smirked.

"So... maybe I could do another angle, but it's right behind their ankles, on the floor, and we see the come dripping down from above, landing between her feet?" she said, putting the last pieces together as she thought it through out loud. Chase chuckled, thinking that sounded pretty lewd on its own, but smart enough not to say that.

"Oh, yeah, that works!" he eagerly agreed.

"Yeah, we can make it all indirect and sensual," Riya said enthusiastically, "I really like that, very sexy." The elder cat suddenly felt an involuntary shudder at the thought of Riya revealing something she found arousing. Before he could dwell on this, his sister looked down at their notes.

"So that just leaves, uh... Nova," she observed, tapping one perfectly-manicured claw against the name 'Nova Sallix'.

Chase swallowed, an unexpected thrill running down his spine all the way to the end of his tail. He was actually surprised to realize how much he'd been anticipating this one.

"Heh, saved the best for last," he said, "Cool, we got this." He was still a bit distracted by the - what even was that feeling, foreboding? - so that last part had mainly been intended to psyche himself up. That distraction, however, also meant that he didn't notice the way that Riya's tail froze in place for a moment before it began moving again, in a slightly less naturally relaxed way. Not to mention the way that her ears lifted up in distinct curiosity, locked directly on Chase, and listened nowhere else.

"The best, eh?" Riya said casually, with a grin that belied the twitching of her whiskers. She didn't even look up as she said it, just kept working on her tablet, saving that last set of lewd sketches (and then making enough backup copies that it suggested she'd been burned in the past).

"You are talking about the defector, right?" Riya continued, playfully, "The Tetsunac assassin who tried to slit Jeice's throat the first time they met? And she's a better fit for him than the girl he grew up with?" Chase chuckled self-consciously. Somehow, even after all the shocking sex talk, it was still embarrassing for Chase to talk to his sister about a fictional crush.

"That's former Tetsunac assassin!" he corrected, exaggeratedly defensively, "Jeice wouldn't let her chill on his ship if she was still working for the bad guys!" Leaning back and looking heavenward with an intentionally unconvincing confused expression, Riya tapped her stylus against her chin.

"Hmmm, it's been a while, Chase," she said, "didn't you say the only reason Nova didn't go back to Tetsuna was that high command considered her contaminated?" Chase made the face he always made when she had a good point that he couldn't counter, and she giggled in victory, looking more relaxed than she had a second ago for some reason.

"Yeah, yeah, well... everybody's got their preferences, don't they?" he finally said, "I'm just saying, if we ever do a sequel, I know which plot choices I consider canon, eh?"

This time, Chase did notice when Riya stiffened again, seeming even more tense than the first time. Her ears had already lowered nervously towards the back of her head.

"So what makes Nova canon?" she asked, softly. Her eyes were pointed at her tablet, but Chase didn't think she was actually seeing it. The taller feline felt strangely like there was a spotlight pointed at him to highlight his every movement and word, so intense was Riya's indirect focus on her brother. It was this, as much as her nervousness, that had Chase suddenly feeling a bit anxious himself.

"W-well, I don't know, maybe it's because she's been around the longest," he suggested, resisting the urge to rub the back of his neck self-consciously, "Jeice and Nova are the only characters who've been in every single version of the story. She might have always been meant to start off as a bad guy before joining him, but Nova's been there at Jeice's side, right from the beginning, before they even had names!"

He'd chosen that moment to look down at his feet, so he missed the slight wince that very briefly flickered across Riya's face as she dropped the pretense and looked at him.

"Aside from the whole 'kills people' part, she's actually kinda my type," he admitted, "I mean, yeah, she presents a very off-putting aura, but once you get under her shell and show her that you're in her corner, she'll take on an army for you!" He smiled self-consciously and added "Plus, I like a woman who can put me in my place." Riya now seemed kinda freaked out, her tail had poofed out and her whiskers were twitching non-stop. Before Chase could express his concern, Riya looked down at the tablet in her hand and widened her eyes.

"Oh no!" she said, "Gaaaah, connection error!"

Frowning just a little too much, she grabbed at the USB cable plugged into the bottom edge of the tablet and wiggled it back and forth."It must be that beta update, I'll have to, y'know, roll it back to the stable one, we'll have to finish this tomorrow." Chase lowered his ears, feeling disappointed and like it was somehow his fault.

"But there's just the one path left," he said, "We were gonna knock it all out in one go, remember?" Eyes darting between her laptop and her tablet, and studiously avoiding her brother's gaze, Riya shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Chase, it's the tech," she said, "We'll have to put this down for the night."

Swallowing, Chase nodded, already running his previous words through his mind, wondering just what in the hell he'd said to make Riya so uncomfortable!

"A-alright, sure," he said, in a more subdued tone, keeping the disappointment out of his voice only with effort, "Technology is fickle, I get it..."

As silence fell between the siblings, the awkwardness in the room began to increase at an exponential rate. This continued getting more and more uncomfortable until Riya looked up from her tablet and blurted out, seemingly for no other reason than to break the silence, "Hey, you want to give Michael a call?"

'No,' Chase immediately thought, sullenly. That isn't what he said, though.

"Well, he has been bugging us for an update on the sex scenes..." he muttered, "Alright, we might as well."

They had a large screen on the wall between their work areas, behind a table. Both Chase and Riya took a seat at this table as Chase plugged his laptop into a cable that had been taped to the top surface to keep it from fleeing into the tangle beneath. As Riya turned on the TV with a remote control that had been left next to the cable, the screen lit up and revealed Chase's desktop - which at the moment was using some of Riya's own concept art as a background. Strangely enough, it was Nova entwined with Jeice in a very 'femme fatale' pose, both of them pointing energy weapons at each other yet both seeming way into it.

"...You should probably ignore that," Chase said, as Riya blushed. Moving right past the faux pas, Chase ran the studio's teleconference program of choice and reached out to Michael Abbott, the studio manager and, on paper, Chase and Riya's boss, though really it was more like they were the ones who had hired him. After they'd realized that writing and art would only take their concept so far, and they'd need a team to help them make their game a reality, the Varmas had then quickly worked out that they didn't want to be the bosses of this little endeavour. Effectively managing people and pushing them to get good results was not something either Abyssinian particularly excelled at. On the other hand, their good friend Michael had always been good at getting groups of people to focus on Getting Things Done, even if it was a task as comparatively simple as 'finding out when the movie's playing, buying tickets, and getting everyone there on time'.

Michael had been uncertain at first, as he'd had a solid job at the time, and would have to leave it to manage the team and StarCrossed's development. But as they reached out and found more people with the skills they needed to turn the concept into a reality, Michael was convinced to go out on a limb with his friends. So far, things hadn't exactly worked swimmingly, there had been unforeseen problems, glitches, and issues all over the place, but Michael had done an admirable job of keeping the team focused and dealing with each crisis as it came up. The Great Dane was evidently better at compartmentalizing than Chase, who privately felt certain he'd have been overwhelmed with stress by the sheer number of different things that needed attention at any given time. Not that the stress wasn't showing...

Michael accepted the call and appeared in a personal study that Chase and Riya had been assured was carefully curated as a background for calls to make their friend look 'at least 58% more professional'. The dog hit them with a tired grin.

"It's the Varmas!" he said, after both sides confirmed they could hear each other, "Glad to hear from you guys, I was beginning to feel like a broken record with those emails..." The smile faltered a little, and some of that stress Chase had been thinking about shone through.

"...Please tell me you guys have some good news about the ero-scenes," Michael continued, just a hint of pleading in his tone, "Look, I know it's weird, you guys being siblings and all, and I can reach out for some outside help if it's just too awkward to work, but if you've got an update to the contrary, I'd be happy to hear it!"

Riya reached over to her laptop and started fiddling with it as she responded.

"Well, good news, then, because we're almost done," she said, "We've finished plotting all but one of the scenes. I'm sending you my rough sketches now, but Chase wanted to clean up his notes some more, as usual." She smirked at her brother as he frowned self-consciously.

"So I've got standards," Chase said, more defensively than he'd have liked, "Sue me..."

Michael had let out a heavy sigh of relief as soon as Riya uttered the words 'almost done'.

"Oh thank God..." he muttered, "We've been having framerate issues with the CGI cutscenes, so I'm so glad to hear that things are going smoothly for the traditional cutscenes. Not to mention that I wasn't loving the idea of what hiring a new writer or artist was gonna do to the budget, so this is extra good news!" The dog reached up and ran his hand back through his hair, seeming about 15% more relaxed. Chase couldn't tell, but he was pretty confident his friend's tail was wagging.

"By the way, I've been going over the finished scripts, and you did a kickass job, Chase," Michael added, "I love that scene where they find out why Jeice's last name is his job." He took on a steely-eyed look and put on an exaggeratedly gravelly voice. "'When you're a rifter, you live one job at a time.' Great stuff! I feel like that one's going in the release trailer..." As their friend chuckled to himself, Riya turned directly towards her brother and leaned away from the microphone.

"See? I told you that was a cool line," she whispered with a playful smirk that almost made her eyes sparkle, as she poked Chase in the side for emphasis, "and you thought it was cringe..."

Faced with that smile, Chase couldn't help but chuckle back, even as he still had his internal misgivings about the edgy line. Somehow, she'd been able to do that ever since they were kids, Riya was an expert at making her brother grin, even when he was sulking. Sighing exaggeratedly, Chase crossed his arms and adopted a put-upon expression.

"I guess I'll wait for the legion of fans to say it instead," he countered, though it was a cheap point and they both knew it: in the age of the Internet, there was always someone complaining angrily about any given aspect of a videogame, even if it was something everyone else loved. Frankly, letting the audience nitpick his scripts was Chase's least favourite part of the idea of actually releasing StarCrossed as a real, honest-to-God videogame. Having clearly heard them, Michael cleared his throat.

"Actually, I just heard from Crystal, the community manager?" the dog said, idly scratching behind one floppy ear, "We did some hype polls and we're looking really good to pretty much everyone, uh, except those guys that started calling the game 'WokeCrossed' after we revealed Jeice was bi and you could romance dudes. I don't know what their problem is, I think the M/M stories in this game are beautiful, personally..." Michael sighed and began scratching that ear with a bit more gusto, which shook his sleeve enough to slide down his arm, revealing a hint of a rainbow-coloured bracelet around his wrist. Chase thought to himself that it was an excellent example of environmental storytelling, before reminding himself that this was really happening even though it was on a screen, and he really needed to get out more...

"Oh, it's not just homophobes," Chase added, "I saw one of them complaining about 'forced diversity' since the cast is mostly morphics and aliens."

Riya made a face as if she'd bitten into something sour.

"Forced diversity?" she repeated, "Do they know we're Indian?" Both Varmas looked back to the screen as Michael snorted in amusement. He held up a hand appeasingly.

"Sorry, sorry, just reminds me of the thing with your names..." He snickered again. "God, that still kills me... what was your dad's reasoning again?" Riya just pouted and crossed her arms, which did not surprise Chase, who picked up the slack.

"Well, Mom and Dad had just moved here when they had me, so Dad wanted to give me the most, uh, 'local' name he could to, y'know, embrace his new country," the elder cat explained, "So I end up as Chase, like I'm a rich preppy or something." He gestured with a thumb towards his sister.

"But a couple years go by, they have another kid, and they're feeling homesick, so this time Mom convinces Dad to go more traditional, to embrace his own roots this time around, so -"

"So you get a nice boring name like you're the comic relief in an 80s movie or something, and I get drunk guys telling me my name is pretty and 'exotic'," Riya muttered, "Doesn't seem fair..."

Laughing softly, Chase acted to put a smile back on Riya's face, leaning over, mussing up her hair, and planting a kiss on the crown of her head.

"At least your pretty name matches your pretty eyes, no?" the elder cat chuckled, unbothered by the kind of shameless compliment the two of them had been tossing back and forth as long as they could remember. Riya did indeed smile, but this time, she blushed, too. Before Chase could spend any time contemplating this oddity, Michael drew his attention back to the screen.

"Yeah, can't tell you how pleased I am to hear you've made so much progress," he was saying, looking down at the papers in front of him instead of at the Varmas, "Oh, by the way, for the sake of the records, which character is left over?"

"Nova Sallix, the Tetsunac assassin who joined Jeice's crew," Chase replied, throwing him a line of context because Michael had been keeping a lot of plates spinning lately. Michael had opened Riya's email on his phone and glanced through the rough images as he nodded.

"Right, right, that makes sense," he said, casually, "Those two would be more awkward than the others because those characters are based on the two of you, gotcha."

Michael had said the words so matter-of-factly, so calmly, like it was no big deal at all, but it sent Chase's mind reeling, and both Varmas' tails poofed up as they gasped, in unison, "What?!"

Startled, the dog nearly dropped his phone, looking up at the screen in alarm.

"Wh-what are you talking about, based on us?!" Riya said, her entire face now a deep, rich crimson as she did some next-level blushing.

"Oh! Uh, s-sorry, I didn't know that wasn't intended," Michael said, seeming legitimately thrown off. Realizing he was blushing extremely hard himself, Chase reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck.

"I - I mean, I'll admit I can see some of myself in Jeice," the embarrassed male conceded, ignoring Michael's muttered 'Phrasing', "but Nova kills people, man! How is she anything like Riya?" He reached over and put his arm around his sister's shoulders protectively. She was so very tense, and when he made contact with her, she whimpered quietly, the poor girl seemed absolutely mortified. Considering they still needed to depict these characters having sex, and she was the one who would draw their dalliance, Chase didn't blame her.

Michael, who still looked more shocked than anything else, shrugged apologetically.

"Okay, so Riya doesn't kill people, and she wasn't raised to be a murderer, but - but you've gotta know about the personality, right? I mean, you wrote it, Chase!"

"Dude!" Chase said, in a tone that made it clear his true message was 'what the fuck?'.

"She's a take-charge woman!" Michael blurted out, as Riya finally buried her face in her hands, her ears so flat against her head that Chase wondered if she was trying to muffle the sound of their friend's baseless accusations. The dog continued: "She knows what she wants and goes after it, a-and when she has a goal, a mission, that really matters to her, God help the poor bastard who gets in her way!"

Chase blinked. That... actually was a pretty good summary of his sister's personality, even if her 'missions' were things like obtaining obscure teddy bears for her collection or putting together a professional presentation for the pitch meetings with publishers.

"Nova isn't afraid to stand up to anyone," Michael added, "even when she's in a corner, like when she was in Jeice's brig with a hole in her arm. She even talks now and then about visualizing a scene!" Chase swallowed. He felt... funny. It was like there was an itch he needed to scratch inside his mind...

"Uh, okay, Riya talks about visualizing scenes all the time," he said, "but Nova doesn't draw pictures, she shoots and stabs people!" Riya lifted her head, still looking miserable.

"No, Chase, he means when she's planning missions," she sighed, "When she's going over blueprints and saying things like, uh, like 'Okay, there will be three guards, one at the front entrance, and two at the side entrances, so we need to strike at exactly 0930 when they change shifts and there's no one watching this alley...'"

"Fuck. That's right..." Chase said, frowning. "Okay, those are... uh...uncomfortable coincidences, now that you mention it, but that hardly means these characters were based on us!"

"But what about the shoulder thing?" Michael protested, "I thought it was a direct homage!" Suddenly, Riya tensed up even more, letting out a high-pitched meep.

"What shoulder thing?" the extremely confused Chase asked.

"The fur on Nova's right shoulder has a black splotch on it with a light highlight in the middle," Michael explained, "Just like Riya!"

Swallowing again, Chase turned to regard his sister, his eyes automatically dropping to her shoulder even though he knew her sleeves were in the way. He felt even weirder, almost lightheaded. Although both Varmas presented as Abyssinians, their grandfather had been a Bengal cat, and Riya's right shoulder had a single, distinctive Bengal spot on it to mark her heritage. Chase, meanwhile, had some darker patches on his face in the shape of the distinctive 'lightning bolts' that were common to Bengals, but they were close enough to the orange-brown of the rest of his pelt that some people didn't even notice, or thought they were shadows, or something.

"I... guess I never noticed..." he muttered. Rather than thinking about the quirks of their gene pool, Chase was thinking about the thought that was suddenly screaming in the back of his mind, as it was impossible to ignore: Chase was safe and comfortable in the knowledge that he'd written Nova's characterization, so he knew for a fact that he hadn't intentionally made her personality like his sister's. But while they had a number of artists, Riya had been in charge of character design, and that meant that if Nova did actually have the marking, Riya had put it there... which suggested she'd put her own distinctive birthmark on Nova on purpose. Gah, why couldn't he remember?

"Wait, her right arm is the robot one," the confused tomcat belatedly remembered. Riya continued silently staring at her shoes, impossible to read. 'Helpfully', Michael filled in.

"Yeah, but there's a gap in the metal on the back of her shoulder, you can see her fur and part of the scar, remember?" Chase frowned. He did remember now, they'd done quite a dramatic scene where Jeice sees her from behind in a sleeveless shirt for the first time and realized how painful the scars around her cyberware looked. But Chase hadn't been focusing on her fur as much as her angsty backstory...

Chase swallowed a whimper of anxiety that had crept up on him, wondering to himself exactly when this afternoon had started going so wildly off the rails. Things had escalated so gradually, he hadn't really thought about it until Michael started suggesting that Chase's secret favourite pairing was actually himself romancing his little sister, but in space. God, if only there could be a power outage, he wanted out of this conversation right now...

"I'm feeling another 'tech issue' coming on..." Riya muttered to herself, so quietly Chase wasn't sure whether even he was meant to hear that. Either way, he gave his sibling the old side-eyes. He had about seven distinct questions for Riya based on the last three minutes that he flatly refused to even consider asking while they were still on the line with Michael, but which still ate at him. He supposed that little thought of hers just made it eight.

Michael clearly saw the embarrassment he'd wrought in the Varmas, and just as clearly regretted it.

"Uh, look, I'm sorry if this was a touchy subject," he said, "I'm, uh, probably out to lunch anyway..." Riya squinted and frowned.

"What was that?" she asked, her hands blindly moving across the laptop with the kind of confidence only hundreds of hours with a piece of equipment can give you, "You turned into a robot there..."

"Oh, uh, is it better now?" Michael asked, still coming through loud and clear.

"Michael? Michael? Can you hear me?" Riya asked, "The picture stopped coming thro-" She instantly fell silent as she pressed an unseen command and suddenly Michael froze up on the screen, his call briefly fading into grey as a loading wheel appeared over their friend's concerned face. It didn't last long before the call dropped entirely, and the entire window darkened as the words 'Cannot Make Connection to Network' appeared. Riya leaned back with a relieved sigh as Chase fished his cell out of his pocket. Sure enough, it had dropped their wi-fi and switched to the data plan.

"Did you just kill the router without looking?" he asked, dubiously. As she pulled the cable from the laptop and their conference screen went dark, Riya smirked and shrugged.

"Would you rather I have said we were going through a tunnel?" she quipped, a moment before catching herself and looking up with a guilty expression on her face. She met Chase's eyes, and he wondered where to even start.

"Riya..." he said, sounding and feeling unsure he even knew her anymore. But before he could find the next words, fear washed over the skinny female's face. She quickly tapped a button on the laptop, then stood up from her seat.

"Oh! It's later than I thought!" she exclaimed disingenuously, "I - I had a thing, wanted to go over s-stuff with someone in a different timezone, gotta go before they go to bed!" As she scrambled to grab her tablet, phone, and computer, Chase lowered his ears in disappointment.

"Riya, wait, talk to me!" he said, holding out his hands imploringly. But she just avoided his gaze and left, her footsteps audibly hurrying the short distance to her bedroom.

Leaning forward, Chase put his elbows on the desk and rested his face in his hands, letting his snout poke through.

"Uugggh... Well. That could have gone better," he said, unnecessarily. Had that really just happened? It was strange enough when he was plotting out sex scenes and talking about dicks and pussies and orgasms and such with his own sister, but now, his favourite pairing seemed creepy and uncomfortable with these revelations. Had they really both based the characters on themselves? It sounded so, so ludicrous, but he'd never seen Riya so uncomfortable as when this had come up. Then again, that might just be because she was super embarrassed by Michael's weird assumptions, not because they were true...

"Stupid Michael, ruining everything, doesn't he know that ignorance is bliss?" he muttered, sighing heavily through his nostrils. He was still stuck on one point in particular.

"She couldn't have put her own spot on Nova by accident..." he whispered, "If she knew she based Nova on herself, why the fuck did she let me make her a romanceable love interest? How could she be okay with all those random, anonymous players getting their dirty hands all over my little sister?!"

The troubled male blinked, running that last sentence through his head again and becoming rather embarrassed to realize his own phrasing and emphasis.

"God, what is with me today?!" Chase growled to himself, finally sitting up. Rather than get introspective and contemplate that question, the writer stood up and returned to his laptop, going deep into the files and finding a bunch of character studies, pictures of the characters in odd positions in various states of dress, to give a reference for their fur patterns and the way each person's pelt moves with their body or gets pressed by their clothes, and so on. After sorting through the directory for a bit, Chase pulled up a picture he'd been trying to remember more clearly this entire time, an image of Nova from behind, sitting naked on the edge of a hot spring. He'd spent the development cycle thinking of her as 'a Tetsunac' but couldn't deny that she looked a lot like an Abyssinian, even in a black and white image.

"Motherfucker..." Chase breathed. Sure enough, just beside the scars radiating out from her right shoulder, hinting at her past trauma, and just above the tech that she'd used to bury that trauma, was a dark spot.

Looking at it, Chase realized that he had seen it before, he'd just never really registered it as important, he figured it was some kind of burn or skin deformity from the explosion, maybe a side effect of the prosthetic implantation surgery. But looking at it now, knowing what to look for, there was no denying it; that was fur, not skin, and it looked a hell of a lot like Riya Varma's Bengal spot.

"No, no, no..." Chase whispered to himself, lowering his ears in frustration. Confirmation wasn't what he had been hoping for. Breathing a little faster than before, his tail flicking about irritably, Chase acted on a hunch, going back into the concept art and bringing up a bust shot of Jeice mugging for the camera. For just a moment, the nervous writer was relieved, thinking he'd been wrong, but then he took a closer look at the lines on his protagonist's face.

"...No way, that's gotta be just darker for perspective or something!" he insisted to himself, and he brought up a more recent image, after they'd ditched those goggles Jeice always wore on his forehead in the early art.

"Oh, fuck!" Chase groaned, swallowing a whimper. It was even clearer here; it was extremely stylized, to the point where Chase had never actively noticed, but Jeice did indeed have very Bengal-like lines on his face, in the exact same pattern as Chase!

"She couldn't have based them on us and then let them be lovers," the nervous male groaned, "She just couldn't have... could she?"

Chase kept wondering what in the world had possessed his sister to do these things. He had no new insights, mind you, he just kept focusing on that because he was terrified if he didn't concentrate on something else, his mind would wander to all the things he'd thought and said about how sexy Nova Sallix was over the years. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder instead what it meant that he'd always been so attracted to this character over the others.

'Hey, on second thought, can we think about all the embarrassing things I've said after all? Even that sounds better than this...' He picked up his laptop, his ears and tail still drooping. Chase had always felt so close to Riya, their bond had always felt like one of his strengths, so not being able to understand her behaviour, especially when it lead to such... uncomfortable... insinuations (there was a word that suggested the connections it was making were unintentional) was deeply discouraging.

His thoughts in turmoil with questions, Chase returned to his bedroom, where he lay his laptop down on the desk, reflexively plugged it into the wall charger without being aware he was doing it, and went to lie down on his bed, hands folded behind his head. The troubled Abyssinian had been there for less than a minute, though, before he sighed and stood up again. He'd been trying to resist the instinct to confront Riya about this. After that conversation, surely the last person she wanted to see was, well, anyone who'd been a part of it. Riya had been rather intensely embarrassed by Michael's little headcanon there, of course, but it had been more than that, something had really felt off about the way she'd practically shut down and stared at her feet while Chase succeeded only in getting himself more confused. But he just couldn't shake the idea that the two of them were stronger together, that he should speak with Riya, surely she could make this make sense!

He hemmed and hawwed over the decision for a bit, but in the end, he just needed to do something about this, sitting still and trying not to think about it was going to drive him crazy. Leaving the room, he crossed back in front of the DarkStar Abyss Games office and went to Riya's room. She'd decorated the door with a hanging decoration with her name on it, something she'd had since she was nine, when their mother had it custom-made since 'Riya' wasn't a name that showed up on a lot of merch. A cartoon sun sat in the corner, and Chase briefly reflected on the thought that its cheery, if faded smile was quite at odds to what was going on in the apartment around it. After taking a deep breath and letting it out, the lanky male knocked on the door.

Riya answered more or less immediately, but did so without opening the door, which was very unusual behaviour for her, especially after she and Chase had rented this place together and it was just the two of them.

"I'm alright, Chase," she called through the door, blatantly predicting his concern, "I just... it was a bit much, okay?" He was glad to hear that, of course, but determining Riya's alrightness was not the entire reason Chase had come.

"Riya, we need to talk," he said, "Michael was way off-base, but some of the things he said..." There was a pause, and Chase was about to speak up again, but the door unlocked and then opened. Riya didn't look like she'd been crying or anything, but she looked very tense.

"Look, I know things got weird," she said, "But c'mon, can't it wait until tomorrow?" Chase crossed his arms subconsciously but suppressed the urge to frown.

"I'm starting to think it's waited too long already..." he said, "Riya, I went back and looked at your Nova concept art, and she does have your mark." Closing her eyes, looking even more tense than before, Riya leaned against the doorframe and rubbed her forehead.

"She's a badass action lady and I feel like I could stand to be more confident like she is," she said, immediately, "So I threw my mark on her to make her more like me. Where's the controversy?"

"Well, what about..." Chase started, intending to bring up Jeice and the lightning marks on his face. But he sensed his sister was being evasive, which was also unusual behaviour for her, and this gave him pause. He tried to push down his frustration, telling himself not to treat this as an argument to be won, but reaching out to Riya so they could move past this together. Whether he'd be able to listen to the logic, on the other hand...

"There's no controversy," he said instead, raising his hands appeasingly, " I'm just wondering why you're acting like it's this big secret that's been uncovered." For just a heartbeat, Chase could swear something flickered across Riya's face, just a hint of oh fuck in her eyes before she recovered. He didn't think she'd thought of that.

"Those concept drawings were from when we officially started development, three years ago," he continued, "But something tells me it doesn't matter how far back I go, does it? The mark will be there." He gave her a pointed look.

"Finding this out ten years ago would have been just a fun detail," he said, flatly, "Finding this out today feels like you're keeping something from me."

"You never asked!" Riya protested. "I didn't think it was important, and you never said anything! I never asked you what - what Nova's arm is made of, that doesn't mean that's a secret!"

Chase swallowed, trying to gather his thoughts. He'd been flying by the seat of his pants so far, but he was kind of struggling. The truth was, there were so many different thoughts yelling for his attention all at once, that it all just formed an unhelpful white noise, like his head was full of static, preventing him from thinking straight.

"It's not about the spot, Riya," he sighed, resisting the urge to rub the top of his muzzle, "You pitched putting ballet in her backstory, from before she was taken by the state, and - and you did ballet for a few years as a kid... But she's not just you, she's still this deadly cyber-assassin from another planet, so - so I don't even see what you're doing!" He didn't need to see his sister's tail whipping back and forth rapidly to know that she was agitated, upset.

"Wh-what exactly are you asking?" Riya asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion, her arms hugging herself tight.

"I don't know what I'm asking!" Chase blurted in desperation, "I'm just trying to understand!"

"Well, maybe you don't need to understand!" Riya instantly snapped back, shocking Chase out of his frustration, "Maybe you're better off just forgetting about it so we can go back to normal!"

The confused male could have sworn he saw something in Riya's eyes, just for a second, but then he got distracted by the tear he spotted when he looked again. Whatever she wasn't telling him, it was clearly eating her up inside. Chase took a heartbeat to compose himself before trying again.

"...I'm sorry for getting frustrated," he said, "I just... I just wanna help. I don't know what all this is about, but I know we can figure it out, together! Please? We're a team, remember? Partners." He was raising his arms pleadingly as he spoke, as if inviting her in for a hug. But Chase's confusion only deepened when his words seemed to make Riya more agitated, not less.

"That's the problem! That's what I'm afraid of!" she cried, reaching up and grabbing at her head, "Do you even know what you're asking, how much trouble the truth could cause? What I would do to you just by saying it? What you'd think of me? After all you've done for me, I - I couldn't do that to you!" Beyond stunned, Chase struggled for the words to say anything at all.

"R-Riya, I..." he stammered, quietly, but she was already shaking her head and stepping back.

"God, why does it matter that Jeice and Nova are based on you and me?" the tormented female muttered, slipping back into her room and slowly closing the door behind herself.

As the latch clicked into place, Chase was still standing there, reeling to the point where he felt like he should be wobbling back and forth in a daze. He felt like a royal ass for failing so hard to help Riya, sure, but he was focused on the last thing she'd said, which told him more than he thought she'd intended.

'Who said anything about Jeice?' he couldn't help but ask himself, over and over and over. He hadn't gotten around to the lightning marks, but she'd mentioned Jeice with Nova all the same. But even with that rich vein of thinking to be mined, he couldn't help but remember the look that had flickered so briefly across Riya's face that he still wasn't sure he'd seen it: Fear. Now he couldn't shake the feeling that whatever his sister was hiding, she was terrified of the idea of him finding out.

Still struggling to wrap his head around whatever had just happened, Chase sighed quietly, walking back to his room with his tail dragging along the floor behind him, his feet on autopilot as he promptly began overthinking, running through every piece of that conversation with a fine-tooth comb. She'd been so upset, like every word he'd said was making it worse for her, and yet he didn't even feel closer to understanding what was going on! She'd basically confirmed that Jeice and Nova were meant to be the two of them, but... but even in the earliest, vaguest concepts they'd had, Nova had never been related to Jeice, she'd always been at least an 'enemy with chemistry', as Riya referred to the idea. So why would she...? The struggling Abyssinian felt like he had all the pieces to a puzzle, but he lacked a picture of what the puzzle was actually supposed to look like, so he didn't have the slightest idea how the pieces were supposed to go together.

He was also distracted from this line of thought by how badly he wanted to go apologize to Riya, but right now, Chase felt safe in assuming that anything he said to her would just exacerbate the problem, even if he couldn't quite put his finger on why. He tried to distract himself for the rest of the evening with inboxes and YouTube, but that troubling conversation was never far from his mind. He didn't see Riya again in person that night. One of them staying in their room was hardly unusual, but somehow he still felt like she was avoiding him this time. Finally, night fell, and after the usual rigmarole to get ready, Chase slipped into bed, concern for his sister still on his mind as he fell gratefully asleep.

* * *

He had just stood up from re-tying his boot when someone grabbed his shoulder from behind and shoved him forward, slamming him into the bulkhead, yet somehow turning him around to face the other way in the same motion. Before he could recover, she was right up in his face, reaching up to poke him in the neck with an extended finger. He was aware that this particular finger, on her cybernetic hand, contained a miniature retractable blade, so he assumed she meant business.

"Jeice Rifter!" she said, indignantly, "You have been getting too familiar for my liking! The things you've said to me... the things you have done..." Nova trailed off for a moment, a look of confusion washing across her face, before she rather uncharacteristically blushed just a little and buried that look underneath some more righteous indignation.

"You are attracted to me, aren't you?" she said, in an accusatory tone, her eyes narrowing, "You've been very distracting on missions with your, your 'flirting!'" Even now, he couldn't help but smile.

"Very, huh?" he asked, "Seems like I'm doing something right, then."

She blinked in surprise, and he winked at her. Frowning, she let him go and stepped back, turning her back on him - something that in and of itself indicated her trust in him.

"I - I don't understand!" she protested, rubbing at her synthetic forearm with her real hand, "Why would you focus your lo- your attention on me? I - I tried to kill you! Your own commanding officers don't trust me!" She gasped out loud as he stepped up behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

"It's because you're a remarkable woman, Nova Sallix," he replied, teasing her by mimicking her habit of using his full name every time, "You've been through more Hell than any one person should have to bear, but you came through with your head held high." She had instantly tensed up, her hands shaking. She whimpered piteously in confusion as he began to rub one of her upper arms.

"Let me guess, I'm the first person you ever met who wasn't either your commanding officer, or scared shitless of you?" he guessed, quietly. She tensed up... and then relaxed slightly.

"...Someone holding the leash," she whispered, "Or at the other end of a scope. Or a knife..."

Jeice nodded.

"And the Black Academy doesn't exactly prioritize the social graces... So you have absolutely no idea how to deal with these feelings, do you?" She pulled away as one of his hands sought out one of hers.

"N-no!" she blurted out, stepping away from him, "Damn you, Jeice Rifter, everything made sense before I met you! I was focused! Efficient! Fearless! Now... Now, I am none of those things, because you do not have the sense to see me as a weapon, and not a woman!" Her ears were drooping, some of the earrings clinking together.

"I sh-should not be feeling this way at all..." she muttered.

"Nova, please..." he said, softly, "Let's... let's stop dancing around it. We're both adults, we can admit that we -"

She whirled on him, tears in her eyes, soaking into her cheek fur and making the small metal plate on her right cheek glisten.

"No! How can you say these things?!" she replied, the turmoil obvious in her eyes. There was... something strangely familiar about this, but Jeice was focusing on the woman in his quarters at the moment. She walked up and poked him in the chest with her real hand.

"You s-say these wonderful, horrible things as if you truly believe that your High Command isn't going to just throw me in a hole and forget about me as soon as the conflict is over!" Nova insisted, "Don't you know what I am? What I've done?" she asked, shame and disgust in her voice, before gesturing to the room around them, "What I could do to you just by being here? If your leaders find out that you... believe you have feelings for me, then you might get thrown in a hole yourself! After all you've done for me, I - I couldn't do this to you..." Feeling moved by this unusually candid moment, and by the strength of his feelings for this woman, Jeice met her tormented gaze.

"Nova, I know you're afraid, but if you've ever trusted me, then believe this: I..."

But Jeice trailed off as his thoughts suddenly aligned and the handsome male realized what was so familiar about this situation and what had been itching at him this whole time: Chase remembered that this was a dream, what had happened the previous day, and more than that, he realized the obvious truth, that this woman in front of him may have been Nova Sallix... but she was also Riya Varma! That was 100% Riya's face and voice, even if she was talking about Nova's backstory and character arc.

...Which meant it was his little sister close to breaking down crying from stress over being in love with him... and who he desperately longed to gather into his arms and -

'Wait! No, this - this isn't right, why am I still feeling Jeice's feelings for Nova?!' he thought, his mind struggling to sort out which feelings were real and which were part of the dream. He blinked, forced back down to the moment, when Riya - Nova snapped her fingers in front of his face, the metal digits on her right hand making a much sharper sound than usual.

"You_what?" she demanded, albeit in a softer tone of voice than he'd heard her use with anyone else - than _Jeice had heard her use! "You can't set me up like that and then not deliver. Tell me what you had been going to say... P-please."

As if her usage of the magic word really had been magical, Chase felt himself compelled to meet her gaze and answer with the words Jeice Rifter had been about to utter before things got weird, as if he were only playing out his role in the scene. Taking a deep breath, his thoughts wildly panicking, Chase looked Riya in the eye and said the words.

"...I know I'm in love with you. I love you more than I've ever loved another person, and I can't imagine my life without you in it." Overwhelmed with unfamiliar feelings, the slender female stepped forward and threw her arms around him.

"I... I love you too!" she admitted, "I've known since the second time you saved my life!" But while this was all very lovely and warm, and normally Chase would be delighted to get a front-row seat to two of his characters confessing their feelings for each other, he was too busy being stunned to really process what was going on. He couldn't move past a specific thought. Namely, that while those words had been meant from Jeice to Nova, it had been Chase speaking them to Riya, to his own sister... and he had meant them.

He'd poured out his heart in a romantic confession to Riya, and somehow, it had been true. Every word. Every emotion.

'No... I don't understand... how the fuck could I - could we - with Riya_, really?!'_ Meanwhile, the woman in his arms was whispering to him.

"I never dreamed you could ever feel this way," the warm, slender female murmured, "When I realized, truly realized how I felt, I... I never dared hope that you even could love me back, with who we are to each other." Unsure whether he was moving of his own volition or not, Chase raised his hand to her cheek and tilted her face up towards his.

"It was right in front of me for longer than I'd care to admit," he whispered back, a touch embarrassed, "But I couldn't ignore it forever..." His thoughts were racing, running back over his relationship with Riya, and his heart began following suit as he remembered the two of them growing closer over the years, striking out into the world together and getting a place in the city for just the two of them, chasing a shared dream of bringing the story they'd created together to life.

Chase had always been more confident with Riya on his side, always sought her advice first when he was troubled... and oh God, he'd always been envious of her boyfriends, hadn't he? How had he not noticed that part? The more he thought about it, in fact, the more deep-seated he realized these feelings were... and the less inclined he felt to fight them. He felt her slip her hands under his shirt, and groaned, following suit, pulling her against him, pressing his nose where her neck met her shoulder and breathing deeply of her scent.

"Oh, Riya..." he sighed - or had he said Nova? - "I... I want you so badly..."

"Yes... yes!" she gasped, as his hands began to scruff through her fur. It was slightly coarser than the pelts of most of the women he'd known, but he supposed that was to be expected for someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes assassination.

"Hnngh, kiss me, Jeice, kiss me..." she moaned... or was that 'Chase'? There was the briefest moment of hesitation, but the fears in his mind were barely even audible at all right now, and only the warmth and the love mattered to the tall male, who pulled his cyborg partner in close and passionately kissed his little sister.

God in Heaven, her lips were so soft... That had to be from Riya, not from Nova... Their tongues met and entwined around each other, and Riya sighed contentedly through her nostrils, the warm breath tickling Chase's whiskers. He could feel her purring through her skin, and broke off the kiss with a smile, knowing he was purring back.

"You feel that?" he whispered, "I know you worry about having too much tech, but that feels plenty real to me." She reached up and cupped her real left hand to his cheek.

"It feels almost cruel to learn this the day before we make our final stand..." she whispered, "If we are to die tomorrow, then I must have you tonight!" Chase felt a shiver run down his spine, and raised a single finger.

"...Okay, maybe try to look at it more positively than that," he suggested, "But otherwise that's a fantastic idea!"

Smiling, she kissed him on the nose and walked towards his bed as he headed towards a shelving unit next to his quarters' window, which at the moment was pointed out into a random section of deep space, where there wasn't much to be seen aside from stars and one admittedly neat nebula. As he opened the top drawer and retrieved a condom, a thought occurred to Chase.

"Hey..." he said, "Wouldn't you rather, like, take this to the rec room and run some personally meaningful program?" He was joking about the pattern that had been established in the other love scenes, but she answered with a 'Naaaah...' more or less immediately. He understood why when he turned around to face his bed, and found the slender female kneeling atop it, somehow already as naked as the day she'd been born. In fact, after spending a moment just leering at her soft, perky breasts and her generous hips, with a tantalizing glimpse of pubic fur, Chase realized that all the cybernetic implants were gone, there was no trace of Nova Sallix left, and he was just looking at Riya Varma in the nude. She smiled at him and winked invitingly, raising her arms to cup the back of her head with both hands, proudly showing herself off to him.

"The rec room is nice, but I think I'd prefer something more... real."

It was at this moment that Chase woke up.

* * *

He started awake, blinking in confusion and groaning out loud when the sight that greeted his eyes was not his little sister, naked and beckoning him closer.

"Whuh-buh?" Chase mumbled, eloquently, as he blindly groped for, and then switched on his bedside lamp, followed by "God, fuuuuuuck, why did it have to be right then?" It took a full four seconds for the tired feline to realize that he'd had a dream that had stopped just shy of him fucking a sibling, and his first response was to be dismayed that they hadn't actually crossed the line. His dick was also extremely hard, that was not making it easier to think clearly.

"Fuck, I'm so fucked up..." he whispered, realization dawning, "I... I still want it... I still want her!" Unable to stop imagining his sister's slender body, particularly her provocative smile, Chase reached down and groped himself through the pyjama pants he was sleeping in. His stiff cock throbbed against his hand, and he moaned softly, squirming from the strength of his arousal. How had he gotten this worked up from a dream?

"Goddamn, I need to come..." he whispered, still holding himself, "Hnnngh, fuck..." His dick pulsed in his pants again, and looking down at himself, he saw a dark spot forming where pre-come was soaking into the fabric at his tip. But he knew with heart-sinking certainty that he wouldn't be able to think of anyone except the vision of beauty who had just kicked him out of his own dream. He hesitated, struggling with himself for a long moment, but his mind was hardly operating at full strength, and in the end his defences crumbled with the strength of his need.

"...Oh, Riya, forgive me..." he finally whispered, "M-maybe it won't be so bad if I focus on Nova instead of... well." Taking a deep breath, Chase shoved his pants down to his knees and grabbed a bottle of lotion from beside his bed, sighing contentedly as he began to smear the cream on his aching erection.

Giving himself a squeeze, trying very hard not to think too deeply into this, Chase began to stroke his hand back and forth along his rigid shaft, clenching his teeth to keep from moaning loudly as he shuddered with need. He remembered the dream, remembered confessing his love for Nova, holding her close and kissing her, remembered her beautiful (cyborg!) body, and the things he'd wanted to do to her. In his mind's eye, things went further: Jeice Rifter crossed his quarters and joined the assassin on the bed, suddenly just as naked as she was. The condom he'd retrieved at the end of the dream seemed to be mysteriously absent in these fantasies, for some strange reason.

"Hfff... hff... oh fuck, N-Nova..." he panted, imagining himself pushing into his lover for the first time, the gasp that she let out as he slid home, "God, you're s-so tight..."

Truth be told, this wasn't the first time he'd rubbed one out to the Tetsunac warrior; Chase had fantasized about Jeice and Nova's story getting hot and heavy on a number of occasions, but this was different. Before, it had been distant, detached, like he was an invisible pervert watching Jeice Rifter and Nova Sallix doing The Deed, but now? Now, it was very much a first-person experience. He imagined himself on his back with the cyborg straddling his hips, or standing up, pinning her against a wall while she wrapped her legs around his waist. He could almost feel her warmth, her presence against him, almost smell her pheromones in the air as he panted. Chase writhed and squirmed on the bed, his tail rigid between his legs, almost as if in homage to the hard prick he was squeezing and stroking with desperate enthusiasm, the lotion making it glisten handsomely in the dim light. After using his free hand to muffle a groan of pleasure, he brought it down to take hold of his balls, rolling his soft orbs in his hand and giving them a gentle squeeze through the thin, wrinkled skin of his sac. His cock had long since started dripping pre-come onto his belly, and he was trying not to fight the pleasure, to rub one out real quick and go back to sleep, hopefully to something less... controversial.

Chase shuddered hard and resisted the urge to yowl with pleasure, distantly afraid of waking Riya, of his sister catching him masturbating. At the moment, he was enjoying a doggy-style fantasy, but he found himself switching back to the one where he was standing up and she was clinging to him. There was just something about being face to face like that, seeing the little emotions playing out in her expression, practically feeling her rapid, shallow breaths on his whiskers as he imagined himself sliding balls-deep into her welcoming snatch, again and again and again... When they kissed in the fantasy, Chase subconsciously pursed his lips for real, he was really getting into it. He could almost feel her wet, silky warmth around his prick, her body moving against his...

"Ohh... oh God, N-Nova, I'm getting s-so close..." the trembling Abyssinian panted, "I'm g-gonna fuckin' come..."

'Yes!' cried his imaginary lover, 'Don't pull out! I want it inside me!' Naturally, none of Chase's ex-girlfriends had ever let him bareback them, at least not without pulling out, so it tended to recur among his fantasies.

"Hnnngh, fuck yes," he groaned at her enthusiasm, "G-gonna give you every d-drop, all f-for you..." He started stroking his cock even faster, now fondling and squeezing his balls much more energetically as he approached the point of no return. The fantasy female clung to him tenaciously, rolling her hips against his thrusts, whispering filth in his ear and encouraging him to come as hard as he could to show her how much he cared.

It was only after he'd started stroking his dick that Chase had realized just how badly he needed this; he had been focused on the project lately, and he'd been trying so hard not to think about the lewd scenes he and - someone he wasn't currently thinking about - had needed to make that he had been kind of avoiding sexy behaviour the last few days. Now, pleasuring himself as feverishly as if he were trying to make up for those days, Chase was teetering on the edge, wholely lost in the fantasy, as if the room around him was the dream, and not the other way around.

"Oh fuck, oh God, I'm - I'm coming!" he gasped, burying himself to the hilt in his imaginary lover, "Oh Christ, Riyaaaaaa!" This last word stretched off into a potent but muffled moan of pleasure; Chase hadn't even had one second to think about his slip-up before his mind was overwhelmed with white-hot ecstasy. His rigid prick throbbed and flexed in his hand again and again, spurting pleasing arcs of hot, creamy feline jism all over his stomach and chest, painting his fur with an impressive amount of come. Of course, he barely felt his seed landing in his pelt, since in his mind, Chase was holding his little sister Riya close, kissing her frantically and shuddering hard as he emptied his balls into her tight, wet, unprotected pussy.

Chase's sleek body was tense from head to toe as he ejaculated all over himself, but when at last he had burned through his pleasures, he slumped back down to the bed with a groan of sincerest relief. His head spun from the strength of that release, so he just lay there limply for a while, one hand still loosely curled around his slowly softening penis.

"...Holy fuck, that was a good one," he panted, "but why'd it have to get weird?" Reluctantly aware that he couldn't just go back to sleep covered in semen and lotion, Chase propped himself up on his elbow to survey the damage.

"I tried so hard not to let it get weird..." he muttered, and then shivered as he finally let go of his cock. Lifting that hand, still wet with come and moisturizer, Chase regarded it for a moment as physical evidence of these strange, unfamiliar thoughts that had suddenly sprung up.

"I won't tell anyone if you don't..." he murmured to his hand, which remained as silent as ever in agreement.

Reaching down to the floor and stretching out his other arm to its limit, he retrieved the shirt he'd been wearing that day.

"Good thing I was lazy tonight, huh?" the sleepy male said to no one, as he used the shirt to wipe the hot come off of his hand, and out of his fur, "Hmph, that's better..." He'd expected that he would have to get up and make a big production out of cleaning the jism out of his pelt, so he was quietly thankful that he hadn't put his shirt in the laundry basket in the corner. He was still very heated and sweaty, though, so he just kicked his pyjamas off his ankles and pulled the sheets over his naked, slightly sticky body as he reached out to turn off the light. He told himself that weirdness aside, he was probably fine, but his thought processes sure did take odd paths when he was this tired. Talking to himself was a new one, though...

* * *

Mercifully, the rest of Chase's dreams that night did not make him question anything about himself or his relationships. He was a bit put off by the one where wearing suits to office jobs had been phased out in favour of everyone dressing like random Power Rangers, but that had more to do with the dream eventually degrading into an infinite cubicle maze. That aside, it was a pretty restful sleep, and he did admittedly feel better the next morning. While he was showering (and trying not to think of it as 'washing away the evidence'), Chase tried to convince himself that he hadn't been in his right mind the previous night, but his mind wouldn't leave it alone. He found that his thoughts kept wandering back to all those things he didn't understand. The troubled male just couldn't stop thinking of that moment when he'd turned around and it had been Riya, not Nova, nude on the bed... and how excited he'd been to see his own sister that way. One of the parts he kept picking at was that in the dream, his intense attraction towards Riya was a surprise, but... one that felt somehow familiar? He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment as he poked disinterestedly at some eggs he'd apparently prepared for himself while he was lost in thought, hands on auto-pilot. His whiskers twitched in agitation as his questions stubbornly refused to answer themselves. This was all complicated enough without the parts that contradicted themselves...

Chase kept telling himself that he'd only dreamed of Nova with Riya's face because he'd found out about the spot on her back, that it was just his surface-level thoughts, but he didn't believe that for a second. He just knew it was deeper than that, more important than that, he just couldn't bring himself to consider some of the possibilities... As he was spacing out, staring laser-intently at the absolutely nothing right in front of his face, Chase was caught off-guard when Riya suddenly appeared in the kitchen, coming around the corner without a sound.

"Oh!" she gasped, surprised, which snapped Chase back to the present, startled. Riya didn't seem to notice, as she had glanced over at the counter as he'd reacted. He counted that as a small blessing.

"Good morning," she said, more quietly, once she'd composed herself.

"Morning," the elder feline replied. Chase found himself blushing as he tried desperately not to think about the dreams he'd had the previous night, as if she might notice. Already the tension in the air was as thick as soft serve ice cream, yet nowhere near as fun. Riya began filling the kettle with water from the sink. She tensed up, a moment of distinct hesitation, and then looked over her shoulder at him.

"Hey, uh, I wanted to talk about... what happened last night," she said. Chase swallowed a fearful yelp, his heart suddenly racing as his mind jumped straight to the conclusion that Riya had overheard his pleasures last night and knew that he'd climaxed while imagining himself hilted in her.

Riya reached up and brushed some hair out of her eyes, and it distantly occurred to Chase that she looked embarrassed, not outrageously offended. He had just enough time to realize he was being irrational before she confirmed it for him.

"I'm... sorry I got so upset last night," the slender female said, as she set the kettle to boil and - with nothing else to occupy her attention for the moment - she turned around to face him and leaned back against the counter, her ears lowered contritely. "I... I know you were just trying to help, I was just... scared."

"Scared?" Chase repeated. He'd thought he'd caught a glimpse of fear, but why? An intrusive thought told him she was afraid of him because he'd been perving on her, but he silently told that thought where it could shove its suggestion, because of course that hadn't even happened until after the argument. Riya sighed quietly before meeting his gaze.

"We've been working on this game for so long," she began, gesturing in the direction of their office, "and so much of it has changed or, or expanded as we've gone further along. It's... it's all become so much bigger than when it was just a few sketches in my notebook. It's gotten me stressed and I keep thinking that, uh, that the closer we get to the end of this, the more likely the whole house of cards my life is built around will start crumbling."

Dismayed, Chase felt the immediate urge to get up and go comfort his sister, give her a hug, but he hesitated because of the strange thoughts he'd been dealing with. But he couldn't just sit here, could he?

"Oh, Riya," he said, "I'm sorry to hear that, I didn't realize..." She held up a hand, silencing his internal conflict.

"It's okay..." she said, before visibly reconsidering that reflexive response, "Well, it's not okay, I got super upset and yelled at you when you were trying to help, but I'm alright, I'm dealing with it." She looked down, her midnight-black hair swinging in to hide the sides of her face.

"I was dealing with it, managing to get by, but then you said that you considered Jeiva to be canon -"

"Jeiva?" Chase interrupted, drawing a blank.

"Jeice/Nova, duh," she replied with a small smile, "Get with the lingo, Chase."

"Oh, right."

"Anyway, you said that you considered Nova the canon love interest, and then we immediately have Michael making suggestions that make that super weird, and you just wouldn't drop the thing about the spot on her shoulder... I admit it, I was getting all defensive."

With all these worries and irrational thoughts popping up, Chase was growing more and more tense. When Riya glanced at the kettle, which was starting to bubble, going by the little plastic window in the side, the nervous male looked down at his eggs and focused his attention on them. They weren't the warmest, but it gave him something to do, at least.

"It's all forgiven," he said, "We've... we've all been under a lot of stress, I think I understand."

"...Good," Riya said, after a moment, "I hated leaving things like that between us. You were right, we're better as a team." She pushed off the counter and moved to the cabinets; Chase realized he was aware of the sway of his sister's hips for the first time in his life, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it. The slender female retrieved a mug from one cabinet, and a teabag from another, setting the one inside the other just as the kettle released its switch with a loud, attention-grabbing pop. Her timing had always been good. The water was still bubbling as she filled her mug and set the tea to steeping.

Riya had a small smile of satisfaction on her face as she turned around to wait for the tea, but Chase was suddenly struck with the thought that there was something wrong with that smile. It didn't quite reach her eyes, like she was carefully putting on a cheery outward expression to hide... what? Sadness? Anxiety? He was normally pretty good at getting a read on Riya, but today he was second-guessing every thought that entered his head, undercutting himself. The distracted Abyssinian was still pondering this when he realized she'd asked him a question and he hadn't been listening.

Blushing, realizing he'd been gazing doe-eyed at his own sister while wide awake, Chase cleared his throat and looked down at his plate.

"Sorry, could you repeat that?" he asked, self-consciously. One of Riya's ears flicked to the side before she replied, and it took him a moment to realize, but now she was avoiding eye contact too.

"I said, would you like to finish off plotting the last scene?" The elder feline willed his ears to remain upright, as there was almost nothing else in the entire world that Chase wanted to do less right now than plot out a scene of Jeice Rifter and Nova Sallix confessing romantic feelings for each other and having sex. How the hell could he_possibly_ do this without thinking of them as him and Riya the whole time?!

"Uhhh, I don't know, sis, you seemed pretty upset yesterday," he replied, resisting the urge to scratch at the back of his neck, "Are you sure you don't want to, like, take a couple days?"

But she shook her head, standing up a little straighter like she was steeling herself for something.

"No, we should get this d-done," she said, cringing slightly at the stutter. She sighed, taking a moment to pull the teabag out of her drink and toss it in the trash. Then, after a moment, she spoke up again. The entire time she talked, she fiddled with the end of her tail and studied the mug of tea in her hands as if it was whispering secrets to her.

"I'll admit, I was trying to avoid dealing with this... particular part of the plan," she murmured, evenly, "I thought I'd be able to just, you know, push through and forget... until you told me it was your favourite route of the game and I just... didn't know how to handle that. But I don't want everything we've worked so hard for to get held up by my... feelings... on what those characters mean to m-... us."

Chase swallowed, genuinely surprised by her words... and feeling more than a little like a heel for wanting to bail on the idea - just for now, he insisted - for pretty much the same reasons she'd rejected. Scraping his fork along the plate for a couple seconds before he realized he'd eaten all the eggs, Chase put the utensil down and resisted the urge to whimper nervously.

"W-well, okay, as long as you're okay with it," he said, struggling desperately to keep his disappointment out of his voice. Then, the conflicted male found himself standing up, giving his plate a quick rinse at the sink, and following Riya out of the room towards their office. As he walked behind her, Chase caught his gaze sinking to linger on Riya's butt, which looked fantastic in that striped skirt... which just underlined his fears.

'Oh God,' he thought, 'How am I gonna get through this?'

Soon enough they were set up in the office. As Riya's tablet booted up perfectly, Chase couldn't help but think about her accidental admission that she'd faked the tech issue. Maybe this really was bothering her as much as him, though after those dreams, he kinda doubted it.

"Okay, set up," Riya confirmed, "Uh, here goes..." But despite finally sitting down to Do The Thing, they had trouble even getting started. Oh, sure, they were able to get an (extremely generic) baseline where Nova walked into Jeice's quarters and invited him to the Rec Room (even if Chase was only able to get there by imagining someone else in place of Nova). But the moment they crossed that threshold, things fell apart. Chase was normally the one driving the plot, and he was already struggling to even _think_about the scene, because every single time he did, he would think of the dream - that damnable dream! - and suddenly the roles of Jeice Rifter and Nova Sallix would be reprised by Chase and Riya Varma once again. Any attempt to ponder anything in serious depth just lead to Chase getting scared off by the mental image of himself tenderly embracing his little sister Riya, of caressing her soft pelt and eagerly, desperately peeling her clothes away to reveal - goddammit, there it went again!

So far, he couldn't even figure out a proper setting for the love scene, much less contemplate the positioning - not that he figured the positioning would be any easier once he got there, with the way he kept imagining that it was him and Riya in whatever pose he was imagining, that it was himself aligning his rigid prick up with his own sister's wet, needy - hnnngh, stop that!

"I don't suppose there could be a system failure and they could just do it on the floor of the Rec Room?" he muttered to himself, frustrated, "I bet that room's easy as fuck to draw..."

"What?" Riya called, one eyebrow raised curiously. "Did you say something?"

"Never mind," he sighed, "Nothing useful, anyway." Turning to look at her, Chase tried his best to engage.

"Well, what if... we had Nova set the Rec Room to the planet where she first met Jeice?" he asked, "I mean, okay, she tried to kill him and it was a fight that ended in a draw, but..." He'd been intending to trail off anyway, but Chase frowned as he saw Riya already shaking her head.

"Nova always finds you on the second planet you visit after the tutorial on Buronis," she reminded him, and Chase interrupted her with a groan of understanding as he recalled that exactly which planet came second was the player's choice.

"And Boro Prime, Thyyris, and Dorp have completely different environments," he finished. Normally, the fact that they'd named one of their planets 'Dorp' cheered him up a little, but this time, he didn't even smirk.

As Chase was staring at his shoes, marvelling at the thought that after all these years and all this effort, this was going to be what scuttled StarCrossed. Riya was clearly determined not to give up.

"I think that's the problem to focus on, where to put Nova," she said, slowly, thinking things through, "Pretty much everyone else has their, uh, 'ero-scene' set in a recreation of somewhere that's super-relevant to their backstory, but Nova has the grimdark origin, and I'm having a hard time trying to come up with sexy iterations of, like, assassin training facilities and cyber-enhancement surgery rooms." This was an excellent point, Chase realized, silently annoyed that he hadn't seen it sooner himself. And happily, no sooner had he considered the idea before a possible solution suggested itself to him. Un_happily, that solution came from the dream he'd been struggling with this entire time. At the very end of the dream, when it became clear that things were getting hot and heavy, even if she _did look like his sister, he'd brought up the Rec Room as a joke, and she'd said, oh what was it...

'The rec room is nice, but I think I'd prefer something more... real.'

Even as he shivered again at the mental image of his sister, naked, arms raised and hands on the back of her head as she boldly smiled at him, Chase found his mind taking the line and running with it, coming up with a way they really could make this love scene just as uniquely suited to Nova as the rest of them had been to their respective characters. But... it was from the dream where his blood had boiled with the shameful desire to mate with his own sister, how could he possibly contaminate everything they'd created with something so crass? How could he even look Riya in the face after suggesting it?

"Uh, okay," he said, struggling to bury that thought, "what if we set the Rec Room to the command deck of her old ship, but without the crew? Maybe she'd want to, uh, stick it to Tetsunac high command by having sex on top of the tactical map table."

Chase's ear flicked as Riya made an irritated noise.

"Are you kidding, Chase?" she asked incredulously, whiskers dancing in annoyance, "The holo-table thing on the enemy flagship? That's the centrepiece to the culmination of this romantic subplot? Come on, big brother!" Chase had lowered his ears, chastised and embarrassed, which might have been what made Riya stop for a moment and visibly centre herself before she spoke again, more softly this time. "Alright, look, you've been totally out of it this whole time, and we both know it. And even when you're not spacing out, your heart hasn't been in it, so you give me out-of-character weirdness like this. I..." Riya averted her gaze, reaching up to brush at her hair where it dangled past the base of her ear.

"I thought that I just wanted to move past all that stuff from yesterday," she said, "Get it done and over with like the others, just... rip off the band-aid." This last she spoke a little uncertainly, as it was a far less common expression among fur-covered morphics than humans.

"I guess I didn't think about how you felt about all that," Riya admitted quietly, fondling her tablet anxiously, "The scene is important to both of us, after all, these characters go back a long way... And not to put too fine a point on it, but that's on top of the fact that they both have our faces." Chase blushed, but found himself unable to say anything before she continued.

"If this is too soon for you to work on this, or if that's not gonna be possible, I will _totally_understand..."

The troubled male sighed, shaking his head. He was at wit's end with the strange, new, yet oddly familiar thoughts that had been plaguing him since he woke up, and now Riya had noticed. How could he tell her what's going on without mentioning... that part?

"I - I don't know, that's the honest answer," he confessed, "After how things ended last night, I was really confused, and I think it led to me having some weird dreams? Ones that made me realize some things... Or maybe I just now realized I realized them?" He closed his eyes and swallowed, still seeing that playful smile... "Knowing that Nova is meant to look like you, and that Jeice and I might share some of the same head space, I was left to wonder why I always looked to them over the years as 'the' couple, and thought they fit so well together. Did I just... not put those pieces together, and just thought... I don't know, that familiarity meant compatibility?" he pondered, "Was there something deeper in there I wasn't confronting? Or did I find something in there I didn't realize?"

He opened his eyes as he said this last, and found Riya... sitting oddly stiffly, actually, and looking at him in a deep surprise. One of her ears began to twitch as she leaned back in her chair, expression utterly blank. When she finally spoke up, the skinny female's voice was just above a whisper.

"You seem pretty calm," she said, flatly, "I... suppose you've been thinking about it for a while n-now..." Chase managed a small smile he didn't really feel, and shrugged his shoulders, which he only now realized felt very tense.

"I sort of... haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I woke up," he admitted, doing an admirable job of hiding his nerves.

"And you're not... freaking out or spiralling or anything?" she asked, standing up and slowly, hesitantly, crossing the small office and approaching him, toying nervously with the tablet she still carried in her hands. Chase reminded himself that they were still talking about the truth behind Jeice and Nova's designs, and not that sex dream that had made him feel like a shameful pervert.

"Nope, cool, calm, and collected," Chase said with more confidence than he truly felt, "Just kind of... embarrassed it took me so long to realize."

Riya made... actually, Chase had no idea what the hell that noise was, almost like she'd barely avoided busting out into nervous laughter by shoving it back down her throat. He looked over at her, and she was covering the lower half of her face with her tablet. He raised his eyebrows to ask the obvious question, and she cleared her throat and lowered her tablet, going as far as to set it down on the middle desk where they sat together for videoconferences. After taking a second to gather herself, Riya too looked cool, calm, and collected... at least on the surface. Her whiskers were still dancing curiously...

"Sorry, it's just a little... wow," Riya said, which was a problem only in that Chase had absolutely no idea what that meant.

She reached up and brushed her hair out of her eyes, smiling at her brother in an oddly bashful way.

"Well... as long as you're thinking about it..." Riya said, softly, as she stepped even closer. "What do you wanna do about... all this?" She gestured vaguely, the sweep of her arms encompassing the entire office around them. Swallowing nervously (though if he were truthful, Chase wasn't actually sure why he was nervous), the lithe male looked back down to his laptop screen, full of the vague and so far unhelpful notes he'd taken about the scene. He found himself agreeing with Riya's sentiment from earlier, he desperately wanted to get this scene done and over with so he never had to think about it again.

"I wanna keep moving forward," he confirmed, even as he wondered to himself how he was going to solve this problem without resorting to the idea he'd gathered from the dream. He didn't stay on this topic long, though, because Riya mewled happily, lowering her ears in respect and with heavy emotion as she positively beamed at him.

"Oh, God, Chase, that's exactly what I hoped you would say!" she said excitedly, and before Chase could ask what that meant, his sister suddenly stepped forward again, smoothly moving into his personal space and sitting down in his lap in a single continuous movement that ended with her cupping the shocked male's face with both hands, leaning in, and kissing him!

Chase tensed up, his eyes bulging out cartoonishly as Riya, as his own little sister, held him close and slipped her soft, nimble tongue into his mouth, sighing through her nose in what felt like relief as she did so. God, she was so warm, and she smelled so nice... With his conscious mind blue-screening, overloaded with panicked questions (which mostly boiled down to 'what the fuck?!' when it came down to it), Chase reacted instinctively, and right now, his instincts were telling him to... kiss his sister back?! By the time he realized he'd slipped his tongue into Riya's mouth, the younger Abyssinian had already entwined her own tongue around it and whimpered with desire. There was a hunger, a desperation, to every move Riya made, and a stunned Chase realized it could only mean one thing: she'd been holding back from doing this for a while now. He also realized that he'd loosely returned her embrace, his hands resting on her shoulders but making no effort to intervene in this moment of forbidden passion. Why did it feel so fucking good? Why was he still doing it? And how in the actual fuck had this been her idea?!

Eventually, Chase was able to gather up the focus and the willpower to do something about this, and he tightened his grip on Riya's shoulders just a little, pushing her back from him with a reluctance that surprised even him. Especially him...

"R-Riya!" he said, already stammering in his confusion, "You... you..." Riya herself looked mightily confused for a moment, but as she searched his expression, the younger feline saw something she clearly didn't like, and a deep and penetrating Fear appeared in her eyes.

"Wait, wh-what's wrong, Chase?" she asked, "I thought... No, you said..." That fear blossomed into panic as Riya clearly realized that there had been a serious miscommunication somewhere along the way.

"Oh my God," she whispered, barely audibly, before raising her voice and repeating herself, "Oh my God!" Riya leaped off of Chase's lap like it had suddenly grown white-hot, a look of absolute horror on her face.

"I - I - I'm sorry!" she stammered, "You - we - I thought - oh, God!" Raising her hands to her face in shame, Riya turned away and moved to flee from the room, only to stop with a piercing yowl after a few steps when Chase hurled himself out of his chair and caught hold of the end of her tail, stopping her dead in her tracks. He didn't let go until he stepped forward and put one hand on one of Riya's shoulders. This time, not getting an explanation was not an option.

The moment Chase released his grip on her tail, Riya whipped it out of his hand and curled it around her side to take hold of it herself. She kept her face turned away from him, but huffed indignantly.

"Nobody's grabbed my tail like that since elementary school," she muttered. In fairness, it was rude to grab someone's tail without permission, but this couldn't wait.

"Riya, you can't just run away!" he said, "Not after k- after that. We need to talk about this!" She turned towards him at last, and the taller feline was taken aback to see that Riya's cheeks glistened with tears, though she hadn't uttered a sound.

"Please, Chase, can we not?" she asked, not in the manner of a rude dismissal but rather, in a desperate, pleading tone. "Can't we just... p-pretend I never did that? Move forward and f-forget about it?" Evidently, the look Chase gave her in response did a good job in conveying 'Are you fucking kidding me?', because Riya groaned piteously and turned away again.

"Riya. You kissed me." Chase was holding back his frustration admirably. "Do you see how this is a bit difficult for me to just shrug off?" She whimpered wordlessly, cringing away from him. Taking a deep breath, struggling to centre himself, Chase kept pressing. Rather than roughly holding her in place, he trailed his hand down his sister's slender arm and gently took her hand in his.

"Please..." he said, more softly, more supportively, "Just... just talk to me. I'm not mad, I just... I just need to know." She swallowed audibly, then looked uncertainly at him. He squeezed her hand, and she closed her glistening eyes and winced.

"...Okay," Riya breathed, "It's... I guess it goes back all the way to the beginning."

"The beginning?" he repeated, leaving the 'of what' part implied.

"Of StarCrossed," she explained, "The very beginning... Do you remember that time when we were teenagers, when you found my sketchbook and saw all these characters? You told me it was so cool and asked if I had a story for them... I said I didn't really have much of anything other than it being some far-off future space story, but I wasn't good at finer details. And then you asked if I would be alright with you telling me a story starring the people in my drawings..."

A distant, nostalgic look came over her face, but she didn't quite smile.

"I do remember," Chase said, softly, feeling the warmth of fond memories himself.

"Well... after all these years, I need to tell you... that wasn't quite true," Riya admitted, toying with the end of her tail nervously.

"Wh-which part?" the anxious male asked, his own tail flicking back and forth behind him with nervous energy.

"I did have a story for those characters," Riya said, "It just... wasn't finished right then, and I didn't want you to see it before it was done. But then, you started telling me this story, and you were so, so immediately enthusiastic about it, and it was so very, very charming..." That was not a word Chase had expected to hear anywhere in that speech, but he didn't comment on it.

"Are... you saying that this whole time we've been working on StarCrossed, there was this other story underneath?" Chase asked, increasingly dismayed the more he thought about it, "And you've, what, had to watch as it goes further and further away from your original vision?"

"Until yesterday..." Riya muttered under her breath.

"What?"

"Never mind... the point is that I had been planning this other story, but I was never as good at that part as you, so I had these moments I was drawing crystal-clear in mind, but no idea how to get there..."

The troubled male frowned slightly, impatiently wondering where this was going. He managed to restrain himself enough not to say anything, though. On the other hand, Riya clearly noticed his frustration, as she sighed and lowered her ears again.

"Look, Chase... do I have to spell it out?" Riya said, "Even Michael noticed the signs..."

"Wait, what?" he asked, blinking. He'd been trying so hard not to think about that meeting that at first he did not make the connection. She sighed, closed her eyes, visibly steeled herself, and spoke the words.

"The characters I'd been drawing back then, the characters who became Jeice and Nova, they were meant to be you and me," she said, "The story was meant to be my way of... of confessing that I had a crush on you."

Chase rocked back on his heels like he'd been slapped across the face. It had suddenly come back to his memory that one of those first drawings he'd found had been 'Jeice' and 'Nova' in a passionate embrace, kissing deeply.

"You... you what?" he managed to gasp out. Riya was covering her face.

"I thought you were cute!" she gasped, "And you were way more mature than the other guys our age. I don't know, I was in a rebellious phase, and I kind of... liked the idea of rejecting taboos, or whatever." She turned away from him but made no effort to leave.

"I thought it was true love, of course, that's why I was being so extra and trying to confess my feelings through an illustrated story..." Riya admitted, "I'd probably been watching too much anime. But that day you found it, I hadn't touched it in a while because I'd kinda been hating on my work at the time." The blushing female slowly lowered her hands and looked at him shyly, indirectly.

"Everything I drew for like three weeks felt terrible, the perspective would be off, or the feet would be tiny, or the faces would just be ugly... And then you came along, picked up that notebook, and start raving about how amazing it is..."

When she fully turned towards Chase again (still blushing fiercely), Riya was actually smiling again.

"You started spitballing ideas right on the spot, and when you asked if you could actually make up a proper story, you looked so excited, so enthusiastic about my work," the slender Abyssianian murmured, "how could I say no?" There was something about the warmth in her eyes that Chase found unusually captivating; he was so embarrassed and confused about this, but he couldn't look away from her, felt his anxiety easing away as she continued to talk.

"You... kept coming back," Riya continued, "I thought that might be the end of it, but you really were excited about the idea... It was while we were first working on the story together that I realized what I'd had before was a crush..." She flinched, looking away for a moment, then noticeably forced herself to meet his gaze again.

"...Because it was while we were working on the story together that I realized I was falling in love with you for real."

Feeling like the world had fallen away below him, Chase blinked, reeling from those words, and suddenly became aware that he was sitting down again. He couldn't remember when he had done that, which really didn't help the storm of confusion that was raging in his mind about seven times worse than it ever had before.

"A-are you listening to yourself?" he asked, concerned, "Riya, you're my -"

"Your sister, I know, I know!" she interrupted, "I've told myself ten thousand times, but I can't just flip a switch and turn it off!" Lowering her ears and half-sitting-half-leaning on the very edge of Chase's desk, Riya sighed.

"I should know, I've tried." She closed her eyes, hunching down and hugging herself tight.

"It's not my fault you're the kindest, most empathetic man I've ever known," she muttered, "Or that you believe in my art so much that you make me believe in me, too." She opened her eyes and gave him an oddly grumpy look.

"You know, back when you found that notebook, I had a real hard time accepting a compliment, I always worried they might be leading me on... but when it was from you, somehow I just knew that you meant it, that you felt it with your whole heart." Riya's expression was softening considerably as she spoke. "If it wasn't for you, I probably would have put my art away and focused on my career, been a really boring person... How could I not fall in love with you after that?"

She kept her gaze on his, even and calm, and Chase felt very... well, whatever the fuck was going on, he sure felt it very strongly. He wanted to comfort her, to hold her close and tell her it would be okay. Or, wait, did he want to hold her close so he could kiss her and whisper romantic things in her ears to make her blush? Or maybe he wanted to hold her close so he could strip their clothes off and have his wicked way with her? Did he want to be her brother? Or did he want to be her boyfriend? Did he have to choose? And why wasn't he even anxious that he was thinking this way? Instead of addressing any of that, the conflicted male stayed on topic.

"But if you started... feeling this way... ten years ago, and you've, um, b-been feeling it this entire time," he managed, "Why didn't you say something? And how the hell have I never noticed?" Riya smiled sadly.

"Because I've been doing a good job hiding it, duh," she replied, faux-sarcastically, before she sighed and the smile disappeared again. "When it was just a silly little teenage crush, when it was just about you being cute and rejecting societal norms, all I wanted to do was get my hands on you, but when I actually started to feel it, when I actually started to love you... I realized that I could never tell you."

"Wh..." Chase started, but Riya was already talking again.

"Like you said, you're my brother, which means that even if you were super into it, even if you immediately, like, leaped into my arms, there'd still be four million reasons it was a bad idea," the troubled female sighed, "Our family would be scandalized, our friends might abandon us, it would even fuck with our careers! But I had no way of knowing how you'd react... so for me, the worst case scenario was that I'd lose you." As she fell silent, Riya's hands fidgeted in her lap and she looked nervously at her brother, who was trying to find the right words to address this.

"But something changed." There wasn't the slightest hint of a question in Chase's tone. She'd kissed him earlier, of course something had changed. "You kept this on the down-low for ten whole years, and something changed today."

Riya frowned slightly and looked away, her tail flicking about with annoyance for a moment.

"You make it sound like it was easy," she said, instead of addressing his point, "like it wasn't a struggle for me to watch you dating other women, to try to find what I already had with you with other men, and to resist the urge to confess to you every time we were together!" She let out a huff as Chase blinked, chastised, but before he could find the words for an apology, Riya composed herself and got on with it.

"But yes, something changed... yesterday," she said, her whiskers twitching nervously.

"When Michael let the cat out of the bag about Jeice and Nova?" Chase guessed, to take his mind off the thought of how Riya must have felt whenever he obliviously brought a girlfriend around. The younger Abyssinian shook her head, her long, straight black hair shimmering in the light.

"No, actually... it was when you said that Jeice/Nova was the canon couple to you, that those two ending up together is the way the story is supposed to go," she corrected, gently. Chase instinctively nodded before he finished thinking that sentence through, and so he suddenly frowned.

"Wait, what?" he asked, "Seriously? We have the same OTP, that's what makes you throw caution to the wind and try to french me?"

"It is when those characters were meant to be us, when they're still heavily inspired by us, and when you blatantly based all their banter off of us," Riya replied, cheerily, "Basically, if you were putting the character based on you with the character based on me, it meant that even if you didn't realize it, you were saying there was a chance for the real us!"

She looked down at her feet and sighed.

"I'd gotten so used to pushing those feelings down, to burying them deep inside me. I'd been doing it for so long that it didn't hurt as much as it used to," Riya murmured, "Just... a comfortably familiar weight, mixed in with all the other stuff I'd gotten used to living with. You carry something like that long enough, you almost forget it's there." Still reeling from the implications of this conversation, Chase felt the anxious thrill of having absolutely no idea how all this would change the rest of his life, the rest of his career with DarkStar Abyss Games, the rest of his relationship with his sister, or even the next five minutes. So he really sympathized as she spoke of struggling with her own heavy issues.

"Riya, I had no idea..." he said softly. He had looked off to the side, his mind starting to wander into self-analyzing how he felt about her after all this, so Chase was entirely caught by surprise when Riya's hand closed around his on top of the desk. She was looking straight into his eyes, a plaintive expression on her face.

"Then I heard you say you ship Jeice with Nova, and it was like someone put a spotlight on my feelings..." she said, "The thing about those weights is that... that you only almost forget they're there... and even if you stop noticing the weight you're carrying after a while, that all changes when someone points it out, and you realize how tired your arm is." She gave his hand a squeeze, and for exactly one thrilling second, Chase thought she was going to lean in to kiss him again. He only realized afterwards how into that thought he'd been.

"Okay, it scared the crap out of me and the first thing I did was fake a tablet problem and run away, not proud of that..." Riya said, "But when I had some time to think about it, I realized that I... I needed to put that weight down. I needed to take the outside chance, no matter how crazy it was... to tell you that I love you."

A curious change came over Riya's face as she finished, as if finally getting the words out had given her the clarity to see the big picture again.

"...Except then I just kissed you without permission, a-and you're still my brother, and now I've probably ruined everything, haven't I?" she muttered, standing up straight again, her hand slipping off of Chase's.

"Oh God..." she breathed, taking a hesitant step towards the door, then another, "I'm s-sorry..." Finding himself on his feet before he entirely knew what he was doing, Chase quickly crossed the distance between them and, after resisting the urge to just grab her in his arms to stop her, stepped around in front of her instead. He hunched down slightly so their eyes were level as he reached up to touch her cheek, and Riya's eyes widened in surprise and her cheeks darkened slightly at the contact.

"Hey, hey! It's okay, Riya, you don't need to keep running off like this!" he said.

"But I..." she started, fully ready to justify her fear, but for once it was Chase who cut Riya off.

"It's okay," he repeated, pointedly, "it's me, Riya, we're partners, remember?" She swallowed. She didn't smile, but she looked a little less afraid.

"...Better together, I remember." Slowly tensing up, she started to lean away from him, her ears flattening against her skull.

"But... how can you be okay, knowing how I feel?" she asked, "How I've felt for years now? Why aren't you upset at me?"

Chase closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head slightly.

"Okay, real talk? I'm still processing how I feel," he admitted, "When I get there, I'll work on why." When he opened his eyes, he was surprised to see the faintest smile on Riya's lips, which in turn reminded him of how unexpectedly nice it had been to kiss her. There had been none of the instinctive revulsion or horror he would have expected from open-mouth kissing his own sister, just... the feeling of a warm, soft woman in his arms, and the passion she wanted to show him. This time, when he realized he was thinking lewd thoughts about Riya, he just felt kind of amused and embarrassed about it.

"Chase... I'm sorry..." Riya whispered, starting to turn away from him. He responded instinctively, using the hand he'd been supportively cupping her face with to softly caress her cheek. She inhaled sharply and turned back to him, surprise evident in her eyes. He needed to say something, he needed to be kind and supportive, but he needed to let her down gently, so the poor girl could have some closure after all these years.

"I... Look, Riya, I do love you, I just..."

For a moment, something practically sparkled in Riya's eyes at those words. Then, her face tightening up, the shorter feline suddenly stepped backwards, pulling away from her brother's hand.

"No!" she cried out, "Don't say that! Why would you say that?!" Before Chase could answer, Riya shook her head violently, her hair dancing wildly, and groaned with frustration.

"God, I - I've wanted to hear those words for so long..." she whimpered, "But - but you only found out I'm into you today, there's no way you love me back already! You're... Oh God, you're just saying that because you know I want to hear it!"

"Riya..." He raised his arms plaintively as he said her name, as if beckoning her for a hug. But she turned her back on him.

"No, don't, Chase... don't indulge me, please," she said, pain in her voice, "Even if you did love me back... You've got so many great things to do, your writing is the heart of DarkStar Abyss, and the studio we built could really go places with you... b-but loving me back would risk losing everything."

There were tears in her eyes, but she was maintaining composure, giving off a tense, strong front. But as much as it hurt to see her pain, Chase was distracted by something so very deceptively simple that at first he didn't even realize what had his brain positively buzzing.

"I... I don't have an end to that sentence," he breathed, as all those disparate pieces and questions that had been tormenting his brain suddenly seemed to start aligning themselves with each other, interlocking and forming together, as if the puzzle was solving itself now that Chase was viewing all the pieces from exactly the right angle. Suddenly, he could see their facets lighting up, highlighting unexpected things, like... The way his heart would soar when he cheered up Riya on her sad days. The level of effort he'd put into the story over the years in order to impress Riya. How defensive he'd gotten when Michael had suggested that Nova's cyborg look, with a full robot arm and one glowing metal eye, was 'a little too 80s'... because the design was Riya's.

"Oh my God..." he whispered, but the sad female was frowning in confusion.

"What? What sentence?" she asked, noticeably irked that he seemed to be ignoring her heartfelt moment of falling on her sword to Do the Right Thing.

Looking over at her in bewilderment, his thoughts still coming together, Chase swallowed.

"I was trying to let you down gently, s-so I said 'I do love you, I just', but... but I don't have a second half to that sentence!"

"Chase, I'm trying to express important emotions here!" Riya protested, her feelings evidently hurt. But her brother was already waving his hands dismissively.

"No, no, you don't understand!" the older Abyssinian insisted, "I was gonna put a, uh - shit, what is it called - a qualifier at the end of that, like 'I love you, but not in that way', or 'I love you, but as your big brother', except... they don't feel right. Nothing feels right! I - I can't say it because..." He inhaled deeply, his eyes widening as the last few pieces fell into place.

"Oh God... Riya, the story... I remember now, I started making it up because you were so sad, so frustrated with your own work, and I wanted you to see it... the same way I saw it. I wanted to make you happy. And ever since then, ever since we've been working together, I've never stopped feeling that way. If I'm the heart of the studio, it's because I was inspired by you. I work my hardest because you do the same with your art, I draw my best ideas from conversations with you! Riya... you're my muse!" Riya's eyes also widened at his words, and the willowy female raised one hand to cover her mouth in surprise.

"So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't have a second half to that sentence because I don't just love you as your big brother..." he admitted, "Riya... I am in love with you! I think I've been in love with you all along!"

Riya seemed a bit overwhelmed, her eyes as big as dinner plates, her tail holding absolutely still, like it was frozen.

"Oh... oh, Chase, I... I n-never actually considered what I'd do if y-you... if you..." She stammered, looking a little light-headed. Chase, his heart pounding in his ears, felt the need to act, recognizing that Riya was afraid this was too good to be true. Acting on his instincts, as surprising as they'd been recently, Chase closed the distance between himself and his little sister, who looked extremely nervous. Taking hold of one of her hands (and feeling her immediately grip his hand back), Chase smiled at her and began to churr, calming her down a little as he leaned in closer. He'd expected to have to reassure her, but Chase was immediately sensing that the last thing the two of them wanted right this second was more talk. Bending in and taking his chance, Chase kissed Riya the way she'd kissed him earlier. As expected, she tensed up all over and let out a muffled sound of alarm, but after hesitating for a small eternity (from Chase's perspective), Riya started to relax and kissed him back. The taller Abyssinian shuddered as their tongues met once again.

'Holy shit, I'm kissing my little sister. Uh, again,' he thought, 'Oh, man, and this time it was my idea!' He couldn't believe how exciting it was! As their lips and tongues danced together, Riya was only relaxing slowly, like she was letting the pressure out bit by bit. For his part, Chase raised his arms and slowly wrapped them around her, pulling the trembling femme against him in a warm embrace. Riya audibly whimpered with happiness, finally relaxing the rest of the way, and he felt her shaking hands rise up to hug him back.

Chase's mind was going a hundred miles an hour, overwhelmed with all these new feelings, still unpacking exactly what they meant to him. One thing was already obvious: holding Riya in his hands, kissing her the way he'd thought no brother should want to kiss his sister, wanting to be close to her... it all felt right. There wasn't the slightest bit of hesitation anymore from the fact that she was kin, in this moment he felt like Riya was the woman he was meant to hold in his arms, like this was exactly what he was supposed to be doing in this moment. All he wanted in the world was to show the true depth of his appreciation to the woman who had so inspired him. He felt like she was getting the message when one of her hands slipped up to the back of his head, to scratch the bases of his ears. Sighing happily, he began properly purring. It was like he could no longer hear all the worrisome reasons this was a bad idea over how loud his desire for Riya was. God, how had he not realized every time he laid eyes on her?

Eventually, Riya leaned back a little, and so Chase reluctantly let her break off the kiss, standing up straight again. Distantly, he wondered if her lipstick smeared, and resisted the urge to touch his lips. The Varma siblings smiled shyly at each other.

"That was nice," Chase whispered, "Really nice." Riya giggled excitedly, raising one hand to her mouth demurely.

"Y-yeah," she agreed, self-consciously but enthusiastically, "It's like a wonderful dream, I never thought I'd get to kiss you like that... Er, not including that surprise kiss earlier, I mean..." She blinked, and her smile faded, immediately making Chase feel determined to bring it back.

"I... I've just had a terrible thought," she admitted, as her ears lowered, "What if I am just dreaming?"

Chase grinned at that, but Riya continued to look anxious, like she really was afraid this was just her subconscious teasing her with what she couldn't have, and at any moment she'd wake up alone in bed.

"Let me reassure you you're awake, then..." he whispered to her, and leaned in to capture her lips again. Once more, Riya eagerly went along with it, moaning softly into the kiss as one of Chase's hands slipped down to her soft, pert ass, boldly giving her a squeeze through her skirt. The other hand moved up to cradle the back of Riya's head, under her hair, as the siblings expressed the feelings that had been boiling under the surface for a long, long time. Chase was delighted to learn that his sister's fur was just as soft as it looked...

With Riya's attention drawn to the kiss (which was understandable, since Chase was really putting his all into it), the hand resting on Riya's rump slowly, languidly reached down to hook the tips of his middle and ring fingers under the hem of her skirt. Lifting it up slightly, he reached down, holding the fabric in place with his hand as his thumb and forefinger approached the soft, flawless buttock peeking out from her bumblebee-yellow panties. Even as he kissed Riya, the corners of Chase's mouth curled up, while the claws on his thumb and finger silently extended, allowing him to reach down and give his sister's butt one hell of a pinch.

Leaping back from Chase, her tail poofing up amusingly, Riya let out an unholy yowl, grabbing at her butt. Then, blushing, she hissed at her brother.

"What the hell was that for?!" she demanded, all ten of her own claws popping up to say hello in the most threatening way possible.

"So you can be sure you're not dreaming, of course!" Chase said, cheerily. Reluctantly retracting her claws, Riya gave the taller feline a smack on the arm.

"Don't do me any more favours..." she muttered, before giving him a Look. "I thought you didn't want to be my brother anymore, I thought you wanted..." She trailed off, averting her eyes, as if she didn't want to utter the words aloud. Churring, Chase took hold of her hands.

"I will always want to be your big brother," he assured her, "I just... want to be something more on top of that." Rubbing her butt, Riya growled quietly.

"Lucky me..." she muttered. Bending down so their eyes were level with each other, Chase caught her gaze and then smiled at her.

"Will it help if I kiss it better?" he asked, as earnestly as you like. Despite herself, Riya giggled at that.

"How many times did I tell you to kiss my ass when we were in high school, and now you're volunteering..." the skinny femme mused.

"Of course," Chase agreed eagerly, "I'd like to kiss you all over, little sister..."

While she was giggling at that again, Chase winked at her, and then a thoughtful look came over his face.

"Actually, maybe we should talk about that," he murmured, "This is all really new to me... So, uh, what do we want to do with this?" He pointed back and forth between them as he said the word 'this', making his vague statement marginally clearer.

"You mean, um, the sex part," Riya said, blushing just enough to be more fetching.

"The relationship part," Chase corrected, putting a nicer spin on it, "...But yes. If you wanna take it slow, stick to kissing and maybe cuddles? I would be totally okay with that," he said, meaning it, "And If you want to take it further, if you wanna have sex... to be honest, I would totally be on board for that, too." He grinned sheepishly at this last admission. It would feel strange enough admitting that he wanted to have sex with his sister even if his sister wasn't the person he was talking to!

Rubbing her chin for a moment and staring blindly off into the middle distance, Riya mulled over the moment for a bit.

"I... I find this kinda hard to say..." she admitted. Chase gave her hands a squeeze and smiled reassuringly.

"No judgement here," he assured her, "I won't be offended if you need more time to think things through now that it's actually happening. Maybe we could go on a few dates first, ease into it..." She nodded slowly and took a deep breath.

"Then... oh God, I can't deny it any longer, I - I want you, Chase!" Riya blurted out, desperation in her voice, "Even if you are my brother, I've wanted to fuck you for years, and I - I'm dying to get my hands on you!" The embarrassed female covered her face in her hands and groaned as Chase grinned from ear to ear (a human idiom, of course, as a cat's ears are directly on top of his head, which would be a rather unsettling smile).

"Jesus, s-saying it out loud makes me feel like such a whore..." Riya mewled ashamedly. Stepping forward, Chase gave her a hug.

"Don't talk about my little sister like that," he scolded, gently, adding after a moment's thought "Or my girlfriend, either." That got Riya to peek out between her fingers.

"Girlfriend?" she quietly repeated.

"If you want," Chase replied, calmly.

"I do!" she blurted out, just a little too quickly. Chase chuckled, and though she shrugged sheepishly, Riya was still smiling.

After biting her lip for a moment, Riya met Chase's eyes again.

"So, uh... what's the next step?" she asked, before narrowing her eyes, widening her smile, and rewording that. "...I mean, what do you wanna do next, big brother?" Chase felt a shudder run down his spine and up his tail, and took a moment to think, to seriously consider: Do I really want to have sex with my own sister? Am I really okay with that? Thinking about everything he'd been through with Riya, everything they'd done together... only made him more certain. Stepping forward, he reached up and gently caressed the side of her muzzle.

"Well, now that you're a little more relaxed, how about we start with..." He trailed off, but he did so as he leaned forward, angling for her lips. Both siblings were purring steadily by now, and the sound only intensified as Riya eagerly stepped up close, cuddling up against her big brother as they kissed once more. Chase marvelled at the softness of her lips, having previously assumed it must be an illusion of makeup that made them look that way. Once again, he followed his instincts and raised his arms to hold her, and this time she shivered eagerly in his arms, slipping her hands around his back to return his embrace. Her tongue was so warm, so nimble, moving about with the kind of excitement that can only come from being allowed to have something you've wanted for years.

Chase had found himself lost in a woman's arms before, but this felt... different. Before, it had just been a sex thing, purely a matter of raw attraction, but that wasn't what this was. And that's not to say he wasn't outrageously attracted to Riya, of course. Oh sure, he wanted to fuck her, but it was so much more than that! Riya was intoxicating, every part of him longed for every part of her, as if his very soul ached for his sister, and it was really making him realize that his words had been absolutely true: he'd been in love with her for years and somehow not seen it. The feeling was... beautiful. So rather than worry about it, he just embraced the feeling as enthusiastically as he was embracing the woman in his arms.

"Oh, Riya..." he breathed, when they reluctantly broke off the kiss to breathe, "My heart sings for you...." She made a very high-pitched noise that he interpreted as delight, and then kissed him back. The slender female was running her fingers through her brother's hair, which ran shaggy down the back of his head and neck - he'd been going for a kind of mane look - and pausing occasionally to scratch him behind or between the ears. Chase playfully caught her tongue between his lips and held it there for a moment, before releasing it and grinning at her.

"You've been waiting for this a long, long time," he whispered to her, "So let me take care of you..."

He leaned in as if he were going to kiss her, and Riya pursed her lips and angled her muzzle to help him, but Chase dodged to the side at the last moment and planted a chaste, sibling-appropriate kiss on her cheek with a mwah. He leaned back exactly long enough to catch her gaze and wink playfully at her, and then leaned back in without a word and planted another smooch just below where the first one had gone. This time, he kept on kissing, slowly moving further south, down onto her sensitive neck, making Riya giggle.

"Chase, what are you...?" she asked, but he just booped her on the nose.

"Shhhh..." he whispered back, "You're gonna love this, trust your big brother..." She giggled more excitedly when he used the term, and he made note of that. This time, when he moved in, instead of kissing her, he gave her throat a playful lick, marvelling at the sense of intimacy. The throat isn't terribly erogenous, but it is terribly vulnerable to injury, so pretty much every predatory species made it a Thing when you allowed someone to touch you there. As he continued to edge downwards, Chase casually reached up and unfastened the two top buttons on Riya's shirt. This time, he leaned back further, to gauge her reactions. She seemed surprised for a moment, reaching up to touch the button... and then she flushed a little darker and nodded eagerly.

Moving back in, whiskers twitching with excitement, an emboldened Chase continued his trail of kisses and the occasional lick down his sister's neck and onto her sensitive shoulder, peeling away the top flap of her shirt nonchalantly to expose his chosen path. As he teased her with his lips, Chase was blindly unbuttoning Riya's shirt, slowly but confidently; he had unironically practiced the skill on a stolen mannequin in college, when he was putting way too much pressure on himself in the bedroom department - but that was a whole other can of worms, and absolutely nowhere near Chase's mind as he calmly and smoothly continued to explore his little sister's body with his lips.

Biting her lip, Riya murbled quietly as Chase's meandering, serpentine path lead him down towards her cleavage, and her surrendering buttons allowed Chase to reveal her plain grey bra. He continued to worship her body, but reached out with one of his hands, which she took, and he immediately gave her fingers a tender squeeze that seemed to calm the increased nerves that came with being more and more exposed. Chase could read his sister like a book, and he was very much enjoying observing her reactions. When he kissed the soft, downy fur just above her breast, she gasped with excitement, and then opened her mouth as if to speak, only to fall silent instead, literally biting her lip after a moment. It seemed less likely to be about the metaphor, though, as it was about the shiver that spread across her body as her new lover continued to trail kisses down onto her soft boob.

When he finally reached the bra itself, Chase cheated down just a little so his lips would be planted squarely, amusingly (and endearingly, he hoped) on the fabric, staying there and putting on a befuddled expression as if he didn't know exactly what he'd encountered. Riya began to giggle, raising one hand to her mouth as she observed her brother's antics. When Chase finally leaned away, leaving a slightly darker spot on her bra, he was smiling. He'd figured Riya would be nervous and embarrassed about this step, so he'd done something unexpectedly goofy to raise her spirits and hopefully make her more comfortable. He met her eyes, asking the question non-verbally by stroking the bra with the back of one finger. Blushing fetchingly, Riya put on a self-conscious smile and nodded.

Chase reached in and returned his hands to the task of unbuttoning her shirt. Unlike before, when he'd gone s-l-o-w-l-y in order to tease her, this time the eager male realized he needed Riya's shirt to be properly open so he could reach the latch on the back of her bra, so Chase just opened the buttons as quickly and efficiently as he could. He felt Riya shiver as he casually parted the halves of her blouse, exposing the rest of her slender abdomen. The elder Abyssinian took a moment to just admire the golden-brown of his sister's belly fur, much the same as anywhere else on her body, but without the darker brown markings (and in Riya's case, the single black and white spot on the back of her shoulder). Leaning in closer, Chase's instinct was to kiss her on the lips again, only to remember his little journey south, so he smirked and just nuzzled against her cheek instead.

"Y-you want me to get it?" Riya whispered, gesturing over her shoulder and down, but he was already reaching behind her.

"Nah, I got this," he replied, confidently, and he felt her shiver again, more clearly this time. Despite her stillness, she was just a bundle of excited nerves and energy, he could feel it. He let his fingers trail along her pelt as they approached the latch, and he churred to her.

"God, your fur is so soft," he whispered, "You soak in conditioner for a whole day, or what?"

"It's a g-gift," she replied, grinning softly. "I guess it... o-oh man, Chase, y-your hands are so warm..." She was purring so hard that hints of it were coming through in her voice.

Chase's seeking fingers finally found the connecting latch on the back of Riya's bra. Time to put his money where his mouth was... Thankfully, this wasn't a terribly complex design, and it was a matter of only a few seconds before it popped open.

"Yahtzee..." the delighted male whispered as he caught the two back straps in each hand and gently eased them forward, peeling the garment away from his sister's body and exposing her round, pert breasts. Standing up straight, Chase recklessly tossed the bra over his shoulder without looking, though he would later enjoy noticing that it had perfectly draped itself over Riya's laptop.

"Man, you are way out of my league, Riya," he murmured, pretending not to notice her newfound bashfulness, "Just gorgeous. Now... where was I?"

Moving back in, Chase planted another kiss on Riya's left teat, his path leading closer to her hardening nipple... and then veering playfully away.

"Tease!" Riya muttered, "And don't think I don't see what you're doing with the, the shameless flattery." Pausing between kisses, Chase looked up at Riya with a smile.

"Does that mean it didn't work?" he asked, innocently. Riya's flush deepened somehow.

"I didn't say that..." the younger feline mumbled, more quietly. Grinning triumphantly, Chase returned to his worship.

Feeling even more playful, he began to chart a circular, winding path around his sister's breast, carefully avoiding the sensitive nipple.

"Chaaaaase..." Riya whined impatiently, bapping him in the side of the leg with her tail. He tried not to smile too hard, and said nothing, but he'd gotten the message, so he had a little mercy on Riya, moving back up to her summit and then planting a kiss directly on her nipple, which he then took into his mouth, licking and sucking on the crinkled flesh. Riya gasped with pleasure, arching her back and pushing her bust against his face.

"Oh! Oh, f-fuck yes..." Riya hissed out, shuddering hard as her brother's tongue teased and licked. If he'd been born a dog, Chase's tail would be wagging.

Obviously, the Varmas hadn't planned to take things to this level right here, right now, on the spot, and so this was happening where Riya had happened to be standing when Chase had prevented her from leaving, in the middle-ish area of the office, between their desks. That thought lead to another, more alarming one, so Chase took a moment to confirm that all the lights were off on their video conference camera, and then returned his attention to suckling on Riya's soft titty, satisfied they weren't broadcasting this to the rest of the company.

"Yes, yes..." Riya whimpered, squirming on the spot, clinging to her brother as he licked and teased. Chase's mouth was too busy to speak, of course, but he did make a noise to make it clear he was enjoying this too.

"Mmmmm..." he sighed, his tail floating back and forth behind him contentedly. He kept glancing up at Riya's face, scarcely able to believe whose breast he was nursing on.

"God, Chase, I love this," Riya whispered, "d-don't stop..." Chase silently made a note in his mind that went 'enjoys nipple play' and filed that under 'useful information'. As he worked the stiff flesh between his lips, hisf left hand sought out his sister's other teat, not wanting it to feel neglected. Taking a firm hold of it, he gave it a gentle squeeze, and Riya moaned softly, raising one hand to cup the back of his, as if she wanted to ensure he couldn't let go. He gave that teat a firm squeeze while spiralling his tongue around its twin, and Riya shuddered and let out a long, quiet sigh of contentedness, thoroughly distracted from Chase's other hand, which moved in towards the thin belt she was wearing on her skirt. Unable to resist, he brushed his hand between Riya's legs, through the skirt, on its way up to grab hold of the belt buckle. Naturally, Riya tensed up and gasped.

"Ah!" she cried, "Ch-Chase!"

But he was relentless in teasing her breasts, and as he kept pleasuring her sensitive nipples, Riya's knees wobbled just a little bit. Letting go with his mouth, he glanced up at her.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," she responded, a little too quickly, "I j-just wasn't expecting how good it would feel when we've b-barely gotten into the, uh, the foreplay..." Chase positively beamed up at her, ears standing up straight.

"I'll take that as a compliment!" he replied, cheerily, before adding, more quietly, "You taste good, by the way, makes me want to take my time..." Riya shivered in his arms again, whimpering softly and smiling as she blushed. He'd thought she might, if she liked having her nipples played with. Chase imagined her pussy clenching in on itself at his words, and churred to her approvingly. The plan had been to continue southwards towards a taste he was even more excited about sampling, but there was no harm in lingering a while if Riya was really into this... Thusly decided, he gave the nipple he'd been worshipping a playful lick before returning to suckling, and Riya moaned with pleasure and shuddered hard, assuring her lover that he'd made the right choice.

The slender female's breathing became just a little deeper, just a little harder, as her brother continued to lick and suckle at her sensitive nipples.

"Oh... oh God, yes..." she murmured, leaving it unclear whether she was aware she'd done it or not. Riya was squirming and shifting on the spot, fingers opening and closing like she wasn't sure what to do with her hands. Then, she gasped, her legs shaking, as Chase poked her nipples with the tip of a claw and the point of a tooth at the same time.

"Owww!" she cried, "Chaaaase, don't! I - I'm not horny enough for that yet!" It was Chase's turn to shudder again simply from hearing his little sister say those words. Still, he obligingly backed off... for now. Riya was, of course, referring to a very peculiar quirk that morphic felines had inherited from their feral cousins; when a cat gets horny enough, mild pain is instead interpreted by the brain as pleasure. This had given cats a fairly well-earned reputation for liking sex a little harder than most, with claws raking down backs and teeth biting into shoulders being common features of feline sex. It also explained how they hadn't gone extinct despite many of the males, unlike Chase, having sharp, pointy barbs on their dicks...

"Let me kiss it better, then," Chase teased, and he broke his path by planting a single smooch directly against both of her nipples, mwah mwah. That seemed to appease the younger feline, and Chase returned to his nursing.

Chase was loving becoming familiar with his little sister's breasts, and Riya clearly appreciated the attention to her girls, petting and stroking her hands through his hair, but it wasn't long after that that he began to feel impatient, feel the call for more. This might have had something to do with the fact that Chase's penis was at last starting to stir in his pants, and as his twitching shaft slowly grew longer and stiffer, his ability to be patient was slowly eroding. He glanced up at Riya's face, and immediately concluded that she would be perfectly content to let him suckle all day if he wanted to, and made a mental note to consider actually trying that at some point... preferably not standing up. But for now, with one last fond lick of her nipple, the wiry male pulled back and slid back down, planting a kiss directly beneath it. As he continued southward, Riya groaned with disappointment - but only for a moment, as it was clear to both of them where this was going. Chase's lips descended Riya's breast one more time, and his hand released her other mound as he moved onto the gentle plain of her lower abdomen. Her fur smelled just as good here as everywhere else on her body, Chase was pleased to note, and she began to squirm on the spot and giggle adorably when he planted kisses onto her stomach.

"Ticklish tummy, eh?" he asked, this time letting her know he was making a note of something with a playful, brotherly smile. She blushed harder and laughed softly to herself.

"Oh, man, it's so weird that it's you saying that..." she mused, "It's so awesome that it's you..." Churring to her, pleased that they were both on the same page, Chase continued.

Soon enough, he approached the hemline of Riya's skirt, where the belt still hung open. He considered being whimsical again, but figured they were past that now. He met her eyes, more so he could wink at her than looking for confirmation at this point, and unfastened the skirt, carefully unwrapping the garment and leaving his lover standing there in just her socks and panties. Averting her eyes, Riya whimpered, her ears lowering self-consciously, and from the way she briefly raised her hands before stiffening and putting them down against her sides, Chase suspected she was resisting the instinct to cover her breasts, which suggested she was anxious about how naked she was, and how naked he wasn't.

"You alright?" he asked, softly, as he set the skirt down on the floor.

"Y-yeah, of course," she said, too quickly, "I'm just... I haven't been n-naked in front of someone in a long time now, a-and it's you, so..." She was struggling for words, but he thought he got the gist of it. He took hold of one of her hands, brought it in and planted a kiss on the back like an old-timey gentleman.

"No pressure here, little sister," he whispered, "Every part of you is beautiful, you have nothing to be ashamed of."

The smile she gave him sent a warm shiver down his spine, but it was still a shy smile, so with a smirk, Chase leaned back to help her out a little psychologically.

"Getting all heated up, though, gimme a second..." Reaching down, he grabbed the hem of his shirt and peeled it up, over his head. When he pulled free of the garment, the bashfulness was gone from Riya's face, replaced instead by bald-faced attraction as she leered at his chest.

"Ahhhh, that's better," he said, tossing the shirt aside. Riya bit her lip, continuing to trace the older feline's muscles with her eyes.

"...When did you get toned?" she asked, quietly.

"During the pandemic," he replied, "Started doing sit-ups and stuff in my room as a prison joke, stuck with the habit."

"I like it..." she said, quietly, her eyes dropping back to his abs. He growled at her playfully, and she smiled even wider.

Settling down onto his knees, Chase resumed kissing the younger Abyssinian's stomach, moving down, down, carefully bypassing her navel because her shirt had looked new and he didn't want to risk kissing lint, all the way down to the hem of her bright yellow panties.

"I love these, by the way, they're adorable," he whispered to her, as he hooked his fingertips under the elastic waistband. She _meep_ed out her thanks. The kisses slipped further and further south, until finally, Chase began smoothly tugging his little sister's panties down, slowly uncovering the 'path' as he continued along it. Riya raised both hands to her mouth, her ears absolutely still, her brother holding 100% of her attention as his lips brushed against her neatly groomed pubic fur. She shifted from one foot to the other nervously as he closed in on his prey, until finally, he was close enough to pounce! Riya arched her back and gasped, her hips involuntarily bucking as Chase planted his kiss directly against her clitoris, swirling his tongue around the fleshy hood that hid the sensitive nub away.

"God, yes!" Riya moaned, before clapping both hands over her mouth. Chase almost laughed as he realized she hadn't been scandalized that she was letting her big brother go down on her, she'd been afraid of screaming with pleasure.

Having crossed a line, Chase leaned back and pulled Riya's panties down the rest of the way so he could get a good look at her. She lowered her ears and whimpered sheepishly, her tail slipping between her legs as Chase got a very good look at the way the material peeled away from her slit, which already glistened heavily with arousal. He churred again as he helped her step out of her underwear, one foot, then the other.

"You're so wet..." he whispered, unnecessarily, "I made my own sister wet... Why is that such a turn-on?" When Riya hid her face in her hands in order to giggle self-consciously, Chase felt the sudden, unexpected urge to run his tongue along the damp spot on Riya's panties, but resisted it in favour of a quick sniff that told him that Riya smelled very good indeed, this direct sample of her pheromone-laden private scent making him shudder, his cock throbbing in his pants. He ached for more, but handily, the source was right in front of his face...

Chase swallowed, his mouth feeling oddly dry as he took in the sight of his sister's pussy for the first time. Riya seemed to be one of those girls who kept things tucked away most of the time, though with her folds engorged with desire, her inner pink was peeking through. He took a moment to admire the way her labia glistened in the light, and then made her squirm by using his thumbs to spread her folds aside and take a peek at the velvety-soft walls within. Releasing her and letting her close back up, Chase took one last glance up at Riya's face. He had just been going to wink again, or say something flirty, but she beat him to the punch.

"...Please?" was all she said, quietly and self-consciously, but the quiet desperation in her plea, her need for him, was one of the sexiest things a woman had ever shown him. Chase grinned at her, saying nothing. There were other ways to answer her, of course, and Chase's method was to lean forward and give his sister's slit a long, slow lick, enjoying the sampling of her juices, as well as the incredible heat coming from within, and of course, the way that Riya reflexively bucked her pussy against his tongue with a wordless cry.

Chase smacked his chops a couple times thoughtfully and nodded.

"Mmmm, tasty..." he murmured, and glanced up to confirm that Riya was blushing. "My compliments to the chef!" He enjoyed that Riya was giggling as he leaned back in to pick up where he left off, licking playfully at her mound, bathing it with his tongue, until her entire vulva glistened with saliva instead of her own nectar. He kept on lapping at her entrance, and Riya reached down to place both hands on Chase's head, behind his ears.

"I - I thought most guys hated doing this..." Riya stammered, "Oh God..." The first thing Chase did was silently curse Riya's exes for leaving her with this impression, but he didn't dwell on that topic long as he started replying between licks.

"Who in the world -" Lick. "- told you that? I'd say most guys -" Lick. "- love to go down on girls -" Lick-lap. "- Or hey, maybe I'm just awesome that way." His next lick was particularly teasing, pressing juuuuust hard enough to part her labia, and he suspected Riya could feel him just brushing the more sensitive flesh within. She was certainly squirming enough...

"Up," she said, which kind of threw him off.

"Wha?" he replied, elegantly.

"L-look at us," she said, gesturing back and forth between them, "I'm standing up, you're kn-kneeling on the floor. My - my pussy is above your mouth, so you're g-going up on me."

Chase laughed softly at that, delighted both by the observation and from the intense shudder of anticipatory pleasure he'd felt when he'd heard his little sister say the words 'my pussy', which she'd seemed self-conscious about saying in front of him, even now. He glanced between Riya's embarrassed smile and her wet slit, wondering if that had turned her on as much as him...

"I... kneel corrected," he purred, as he leaned back in to continue. This time, he lingered only briefly, giving her mound a couple more curious licks before he burrowed the tip of his tongue between Riya's folds, slipping into the welcoming, gripping warmth of her pussy.

"Oh - oh fuck!" she cried, rolling her hips and grinding her pussy against Chase's mouth. For his part, Chase was still dealing with the overwhelming sensation of tasting so much of his sister's secret flavour at once, of the needy, possessive way her vagina clung to his probing tongue. Plus, with his nose this close to her snatch, and with Riya this turned on, every time Chase breathed in, he was taking in her arousal pheromones, which were slowly ratcheting up his desire for the slender female over time. So when she started humping against his mouth, the elder Abyssinian responded in a daze, reaching up behind her with both hands and grabbing hold of Riya's ass.

'Mine,' he thought, distantly, and it only felt natural, felt right. He squeezed a soft buttock in each hand, groping and squeezing to get familiar with Riya's cute rump as he curiously ran his tongue along her quivering inner walls, thirstily licking up her juices. He found a spot with a slightly different texture and pressed against it experimentally.

"Oh Chaaaaase," Riya moaned, her skinny legs visibly shuddering as her pussy clamped down on his tongue, "Mmmmph... D-do that again..."

Riya had closed her eyes now, no doubt focusing her attention entirely on the sensation of her big brother's tongue making itself at home in her wet, needy pussy. When he obliged her and repeated that last motion, Riya shuddered hard from head to toe, her inner walls clenching down on Chase's nimble tongue again.

"Hnnngh! ...Th-thank you..." She was purring louder than before, and her tail kept rubbing against his side, like she wanted as much contact with him as possible. Having found a spot that made her respond like that, and having her ask for more instead of protesting she was too sensitive... Chase considered this an absolute win, to quote the large green man from the meme.

"Goddamn, you taste so good..." he murmured, pulling away and unironically licking his lips. "We should have done this years ago..." Riya let out a muffled squeal into both her hands as Chase's tongue slipped back inside her.

"Mmm, agreed..." she breathed, when she'd halfway composed herself. Chase's feline eyes were drawn to movement as Riya reached up and began to grope and fondle her breasts, letting out a shuddery little huff as she began to squeeze and knead the soft flesh right in front of him, using the tips of her thumbs and forefingers to pinch and tease her hard, sensitive nipples. There was something Chase found impossibly erotic about watching his little sister playing with herself like that, knowing she was too turned on not to.

She stirred, groaning with need and rubbing herself against his mouth again.

"Ch-Chase, please, this is so g-good, but I need more," Riya panted, "P-please, I don't think I can c-come like this, I need..." She trailed off, hesitantly, and he pounced on the opportunity. He was pretty sure he knew exactly what she meant, but why let that keep him from making her blush?

"What do you need?" he whispered to her, "Be specific."

"Hnnngh... It f-feels so weird to talk to you like this," she admitted, "God, this is emb-barrassing..." He prodded at that spot inside her, and she gasped and tensed up, her legs squirming like she couldn't keep them still.

"You don't have to s-say it if you don't want," Chase replied, faux-innocently, "I'd be perfectly happy to edge you all weekend if you can't come like this." Letting go of her tits, Riya covered her face with both hands, leaving only the end of her muzzle peeking out. It frowned.

"B-bastard..." she groaned, frustrated, embarrassed, and aroused. She didn't resist long, though.

"Hnnngh, okay okay, it's my - my clit!" she panted, "I need you to play with my c-clit!" Chase grinned, feeling his dick throb in his pants, now almost fully hard, but tried to keep the joy out of his voice.

"Ohhhh, why didn't you say so?" he teased, and then, before she could respond, he leaned forward and began to lick and prod at Riya's clitoral hood with the tip of his tongue, making her twitch and squirm until the sensitive nub peeked out.

"Yes, yes, j-just like that," the slender female panted, "D-don't stop..." Her grip on her brother's head had tightened slightly, to Chase's amusement. Encouraged, he tried to work the tip of his tongue between Riya's clit and the hood that protected it, circling around the nub and giving her rather overwhelming sensations, if the shaking of her knees was anything to go on.

"Gyaaah!" Riya cried, shuddering from head to toe, reflexively grinding her slit against her lover's eager mouth, "Oh - oh f-fuck, oh Chase, I - I love you..." Feeling the need to reward her for that, Chase pulled his tongue back and took his sister's love button into his mouth, suckling on it the way he had with her nipple, enjoying the way she whimpered and moaned, shuddering against him as her sensitive nub pulsed against his lips. Then, after reluctantly letting go of her eminently gropable ass with one hand, he slipped two fingers into Riya's wet, clinging channel, starting to work them back and forth as he focused the bulk of his attention on her clitoris.

As Chase suckled directly on her clit, as he teased and rubbed along her inner walls, searching for sensitive spots, Riya twitched and spasmed, her legs beginning to shake and wobble ever so slightly as the pleasure increased. The way she looked around, she probably wished this rather spontaneous event had happened right next to a desk or table she could just sit down on, but they were just sort of in the middle of the room, and the only object within arm's reach was a bookshelf. The younger Abyssinian looked back and forth between the nearest desk and her brother's head, still diligently working between her thighs, evidently choosing between wanting to sit down, and not wanting Chase to stop eating her out. In the end... she reached behind her and grabbed hold of the bookshelf for support, her fingers slipping around the sides to grip it tightly, trying not to put her weight directly against the shelves. Right on cue, she shuddered, and one of her legs shook, but she stayed up.

"Ohhhhh, God, big brother, I've b-been so stressed lately," she murmured, "I... I n-needed this so badly..." In response, Chase squeezed her clit between his lips and pressed on a spot he was pretty sure had made her toes curl up earlier (it was a little unclear because she still had her socks on, but that was okay, they were cute). Riya's pussy spasmed again and clenched down hard on his fingers, her hips jumping against his face as she gasped with pleasure.

Pleased to be giving her exactly what she needed, Chase was nonetheless jonesing for his sister's juices, so he released her clit and swapped places with his fingers again, returning his tongue to his sister's vagina and moaning as the flavour of her arousal surrounded his tongue again.

"Y-you really do l-love the way I t-taste, huh?" Riya murmured, barely above a whisper, "Oh, f-f-fuck, like I needed m-more reasons to be - hngh! - attracted to you..." Chase mentally high-fived himself, and continued worshipping the slender female, bringing his fingers back in to resume teasing her clit, rubbing and stroking the little nub while Riya shuddered and trembled, whimpering and panting out her desire. She was so wet, he was pretty sure he could feel her juices soaking into his cheek fur, and she was so responsive, her love tunnel squeezing and clenching, reacting to every lick, every stroke. Chase's tail happily floated back and forth behind him, the eager male in his happy place as he licked his sister's pussy, running his tongue along her walls and greedily swallowing her nectar. By now, he was rock-hard, his cock straining against his pants most obviously (not that anyone could actually tell at the moment). Riya's fingers tightened on the bookshelf, leaning on it a little more heavily as she shuddered again and moaned shamelessly with pleasure.

Chase put all of his focus and effort into pleasuring his sister, practically dissociating as he lost himself in licking and stroking and teasing. At one point, Riya let go of the shelving unit behind her in order to fondle one of her breasts again, but only moments later, one of her wobbly legs nearly gave out, and her hand snapped back down to grab hold of the bookshelf.

"Ohh... oh Chase, I... I'm g-getting s-so close," Riya panted, "God, yes, I-I'm gonna f-fuckin' come..." Chase groaned into his lover's pussy, monumentally turned on to hear this. In that moment, Chase Varma wanted to make his sister climax more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, even seeing StarCrossed become a reality. He redoubled his efforts, mercilessly stroking Riya's clitoris and plunging his tongue in and out of her wet, needy snatch as she trembled and whimpered.

"Hnnngh... Th-that's so good..." the needy femme moaned, bucking her hips against Chase's lips, rubbing her pussy against his muzzle, "D-don't stop, eat me, big b-brother, eat me!" Being the good sibling he was, Chase was only too happy to comply.

It wasn't long after that that Riya began to tense up all over, her body stiffening and her legs beginning to wobble non-stop.

"Oh... oh God, yes, I'm... I'm... I'm coming!" she cried, arching her back and grabbing both her breasts. She then moaned Chase's name, stretching it out into a long cry of passion as a powerful orgasm exploded forth from within her. The slender feline shuddered hard from head to toe as her clit throbbed hard against her brother's stroking fingertips in perfect time with her pleasures. Riya's pussy clenched down on Chase's tongue again and again, holding it in place so tightly when she did that Chase's tongue kept getting stuck in place as he continued to lick and tease her inner walls. Oddly, it made him think of 'red light, green light' for some reason - but not for very long, as there was a climaxing girl to focus on. Riya screamed as a gush of her juices spurted forth, painting Chase's face with her pleasure and leaving him swimming in his little sister's pheromones, almost feeling dizzy as he kept working her needy treasures, dragging his lover's ecstasy out as long as he could.

Riya came and came, whimpering and moaning her bliss, fondling and groping her breasts as her vagina fluttered along her big brother's probing tongue, as he continued to play with her, licking her pussy and manipulating her love button. Unfortunately, in her desire to pinch and tug at her nipples to enhance her orgasm, Riya had neglected to consider the fact that she only possessed two hands, so holding onto her tits meant that she was not holding onto the bookshelf. Thus, her knees suddenly gave out, and the surprised Abyssinian pitched forward with a high-pitched yelp that interrupted a whimper of bliss - which meant that Chase was even more surprised when Riya suddenly shoved him backwards and pushed him to the floor with her still-convulsing pussy!

He'd been kneeling, so Chase found himself lying flat on his back with his knees in the air... and Riya sitting upright, directly on top of his face. He distantly knew that some guys were way into this, but it had never appealed to him... until he'd actually experienced Riya 'facesitting' him, her wet vulva pressed against his muzzle. He couldn't see much, but his mouth was still in the same relative position, so once he realized he was uninjured, he cheekily resumed eating Riya out. She gasped, a strong wave of pleasure washing over her, and continued to whimper and shudder as she rode out the last of her bliss atop her brother's head. At first, Chase was distracted by the feeling of something soft slapping at his thighs, but he quickly realized it was Riya's tail jerking back and forth like a furry snake having a bad dream because she was coming so hard.

Eventually, Riya could come no more, the bliss having burned its way through her. She relaxed atop Chase's head, starting to sigh with relief and the warm bliss of afterglow, only to yelp in surprise and begin giggling. When her body had sagged down, the pressure pushed the tip of Chase's muzzle into her pussy. This made breathing a problem, but when Chase gasped in surprise, the breath he pulled in even tasted like Riya, so he was whimpering with pleasure when his embarrassed sister pushed off of him and knelt next to him.

"Oh - oh God, I c-came so hard..." she murmured, rubbing her eyes, "I'm k-kinda dizzy..." Chase was pushing himself to a sitting position as she said this, amused to feel how wet his facial fur was, and it was a good thing he did, because Riya tried to stand up, lost her balance, and promptly flopped over in his direction again. Reacting quickly, the surprised male managed to catch her in his arms, holding her against his chest.

"Hey, easy, easy, just breathe," he whispered to her, "I've got you, Riya." She closed her eyes and whimpered quietly as he said that, nuzzling against his chest.

Chase began to rub her back, amazed how hard she was purring. She felt so limp in his arms, like that orgasm had taken a lot out of her. It made him feel oddly protective of her, and he brushed her bangs off of her face and kissed her on the forehead. He realized he didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for giving his own sister oral sex. He also realized he couldn't stop staring at her, so taken was he with her natural beauty, even in this sweaty, dishevelled state. It felt like... like he'd looked at her, but somehow, he'd never really seen her before. All these thoughts combined to sort of underline the fact that he really was in love with her.

"You're so beautiful..." he whispered, recognizing awe in his own voice, "I've been right beside you all these years, but I never saw it... How could I have been so blind?" She reached up and draped her arm around his neck.

"Shhhhh, this is a nice moment," she mumbled, sounding almost like she was falling asleep, "D-don't beat yourself up, big brother... you get me off like that a few more times and I'll forgive you." They both giggled at that.

Gathering Riya up in his arms, Chase shifted his weight to his legs and forced himself up to a kneeling position with a grunt. The shirtless Abyssinian stood up, now carrying his surprised lover in his arms. He knew that Riya's clothes were scattered all over the floor, having put most of them there himself, so since he couldn't see his feet right now, and he didn't want to slip while carrying Riya, Chase took a step to the side, which carried them both closer to the 'zoom table' where they did video-conferencing. Riya looked up at her brother and frowned.

"Hey! I don't know if it's your thing or not, but I don't wanna get fucked on an uncomfortable table!" she protested. Chase blinked, confused.

"...What?" he finally asked, unable to work out why in the world she thought he wanted that from a single step.

"The - the thing with Nova and Jeice!" Riya said, pouting, "You wanted them to fuck on the tactical map table for their big love scene!" Finding himself blushing, Chase shook his head.

"No, no," he said, "I - I only said that because my only good ideas came from the dream where we fucked! And then I couldn't stop thinking about it, and trying was only making it worse, so I could only come up with bullshit like fucking in the command centre."

He'd closed his eyes tightly as he said that, unable to rub the bridge of his muzzle with his hands full of his naked sister, but as he opened them again, he was mildly taken aback to see Riya sporting the biggest, most mischievous grin, her eyes practically sparkling.

"So that's what that 'weird dream' was about, eh?" she teased, reaching up and booping him on the nose. Chase blinked, realizing.

"...Oh fuck, I never actually said that, did I?" he whispered, and Riya giggled delightedly.

"No wonder you were so tense and uncomfortable, you couldn't stop undressing me with your mind, you shameless pervert," she teased, "So, what are you waiting for? Dish!"

"It's not like that!" Chase laughed, "Okay, it's kinda like that... but I was Jeice, and you were Nova, and I couldn't stop acting like Jeice, s-so..."

"Poor guy, can't stop working even in his sleep," Riya mused.

"God, I was so hot for you... but I thought it was just Jeice's feelings for Nova... except then, at the end, she took her clothes off, and suddenly all the metal was just gone, and it was you... and I still wanted you so fucking bad..." He swallowed and averted his gaze, studying the familiar books on the bookshelf.

"...In fact, I woke up in the middle of the night after that, and I had to, uh, to jack off before I could go back to sleep." Somehow, even with everything they'd said, even after performing some of the best cunnilingus of his life on her, Chase was still embarrassed talking to his sister about masturbating.

Riya, who had still been steadily purring away this entire time, parted her lips and allowed the sound into her voice, giving her a husky, sensual tone that sent a shiver down Chase's spine and made him extremely, uncomfortably aware that he was still clothed from the waist down.

"I love that I have that effect on you, big brother..." she murmured; the way she said 'big brother' made his dick throb hard in his pants, aching for stimulation.

"So, um... you said you had good ideas from the dream?" she asked, not quite managing to make it sound casual. Chase grinned self-consciously.

"Well, like you said, Nova's backstory is too grim to draw from for a love scene, and in the dream, she even started off furious at me - I mean at Jeice, for making her feel that way despite all the self-loathing. So I was thinking that since her whole life, she was raised on Tetsunac propaganda and lies, and Jeice and his crew were the ones who showed her the truth, she wouldn't want to create a fancy illusion to be with Jeice." He paused for a moment to remember her wording.

"'The Rec Room is nice, but I'd prefer something more... real,'" he recited, "I figure for her love scene, she'd just want to do it in Jeice's quarters, make it about them in the moment instead of about her own past."

When he dared to look back down, Riya was smiling again, though more thrilled than playful.

"Chase!" she said, excitedly, "That's perfect! That fits Nova to a T!" He smiled back at her, delighted she was pleased.

"You know," he added, pondering the day so far, "If she goes into his quarters mad at him for having feelings for her, she might try to talk him out of it at first." The slender female's ears lowered slightly.

"Oh?" she asked, cautiously, clearly sensing he was trying to hide his own playfulness.

"Funny thing, there's this line that wasn't in the dream that just sort of suggested itself to me today..."

"Chase..." Riya murmured warningly.

"Just picture it, he tries to touch her shoulder, and she turns her back on him, and says..." He paused to turn his face to the side and put on a tense expression, but his voice was deadly earnest.

"Don't indulge me, please. You've got so many great things to do, sending this ship all over the stars, exploring space, saving lives... and loving me back is only going to risk losing everything."

Riya was still fairly flushed from sexual exertion, but from the way her ears slowly lowered, Chase was pretty sure she was invisibly blushing as well.

"Were you really thinking about dialogue for the game while you were... down there?" she asked, studying the orange-brown fur over her brother's sternum. Lifting her up in his arms and craning his neck down, Chase planted a kiss on top of her head.

"That's my secret, little sister," he whispered, "I'm always thinking about dialogue." Whether or not she got the reference to The Avengers was unclear, but Riya giggled all the same.

"I told you you were my muse," he added, winking at her. After a moment, he faltered.

"Ah, as long as you're okay with it, that is..." he belatedly added.

"Of course I'm okay with it," Riya replied quickly, "I just... didn't know you filed things away like that. It's actually really flattering..." Churring tenderly to the naked woman in his arms, Chase turned towards the door and carried her towards it.

"Then in that case, the only decision left to be made..." he said, pausing so Riya could reach over and helpfully open the door, "Is which bedroom I should carry you to?"

Chase had been hoping to lay her down in his own bed and make love to her, holding her against him in the same bed where he'd dreamed about her, and he'd been expecting some playful banter on the subject, but after only a few seconds, Riya grinned at him and said "My room, please." Tilting one of his ears to the side curiously, Chase blinked.

"That was... faster than I was expecting," he admitted, "Any particular reason?" Getting that secretly-blushing look again, Riya shrugged as they stepped out into the hallway.

"Well... because your room smells like a guy," she said, sheepishly. That one didn't feel great, truth be told, but Chase tried to roll with the punch.

"Well, yeah, if it smelled like a woman, you'd slap me," he deadpanned, and Riya let out that adorable little giggle again. Thusly encouraged, Chase obediently carried Riya to her bedroom, and she shuddered in his arms as she opened the door to let him into her sanctuary.

The air in Riya's room smelled strongly and pleasingly of her favourite perfume, which made sense given that this was where she applied it, but Chase, still soothing his wounded pride, refused to comment on it. He carried an eager Riya over to her bed and laid her down, and then joined her himself, stepping on with his knees as Riya scrambled up to the same position, so she could reach over and kiss him before he'd even settled down comfortably. Chase shuddered as their lips met, as their arms encircled each other. He'd always liked kissing girls with their tops off, and Riya was no exception. The sensation of his little sister's soft breasts pressing against his chest made Chase purr a little harder. They broke it off quickly enough, and Chase flashed a grin at Riya.

"Well, I'm feeling entirely too restrained right now," he sighed, "so let me just -" But as he reached for his belt, Riya suddenly gasped "No!"

Blinking in surprise, Chase looked up at her, the obvious question on his face. Now, Riya really was blushing.

"I mean, let me do it for you," she said, quickly. As she reached in and began to unfasten his belt, Chase smirked down at her.

"You've got a real particular idea in your head about how this goes, don't you?" he asked, and she lowered her ears and shrugged self-consciously.

"I... may have thought about it a few times in the last ten years..." she admitted.

"Only a few?" he replied, cheekily, "I should have shown you my workout a long time ago." Riya snickered at that, and she probably would have made a clever retort had that not been the moment when the belt came open, and she quickly focused on unfastening Chase's pants, unzipping his fly to reveal the obscene tent in his boxers. Riya blinked, staring at the barely-obscured rod in exactly the same covetous way that Indiana Jones stared at the golden idol from the boulder scene.

"Oh, wow..." she whispered, then blushed even harder and covered her mouth.

"I - I said that out loud, didn't I?" she asked, and Chase gestured dismissively.

"No, no, by all means, continue sending my ego to the heavens," he teased, as he rolled back into a sitting position so she could pull his pants free and toss them aside.

Riya moved back in, her face only inches away from Chase's tent. She reached out and touched it, just pressed the flat of her hand against the underside of his shaft, and he inhaled sharply, his hard cock pulsing against her palm. Chase swallowed, watching a tiny dark spot appear in the fabric just over his urethra, pre-come beginning to leak at her merest touch.

"God, Chase, I - I can already smell your pheromones," she whispered.

"Of course," he murmured back, "I've never wanted to make a female mine more than I do right now..." She shivered visibly at his blatant words, and turned her attention back to the treasure she'd been denying herself. Hooking her thumbs under his waistband, Riya hesitated, looking up at her brother for support. For once, he completely suppressed the urge to make a joke, as he wanted her to touch him even more than she clearly wanted to touch him. So he just nodded to her, and she lifted the waistband away from his body, over the bulge, and tugged it down, whimpering out loud as she took in the view of her big brother's penis for the first time since they were young enough that their parents had bathed them together. Chase trembled, unable to look away from Riya's face as her eyes blatantly and shamelessly roamed up and down, drinking in every detail of his hard prick and heavy scrotum.

"Jesus Christ..." she whispered, tone close to awe, "I thought it had to be an optical illusion or something, but you r-really are that big..." Raising one hand over his head, Chase then raised the other one and gave himself a high five without uttering a single syllable. When Riya giggled and gave him a Look, he shrugged unapologetically. It wasn't every day he heard a girl talk about him that way...

"What? I didn't say anything..." he teased.

Shaking her head and sighing exaggeratedly, as if she weren't also still grinning, Riya returned her focus to Chase's penis. She leaned in closer, her nostrils flaring as if sampling her brother's musk, and she shuddered visibly with excitement. Glancing up to the elder Abyssinian's face, she indicated his tool.

"Can I...?" she asked, trailing off at the important part of the question because Chase was already nodding.

"Please." With his permission, Riya reached out and boldly took hold of the eager male's cock, slipping her slender fingers around his shaft and just holding him firmly in her hand for a moment; Chase felt himself throb in her grip, and swallowed a moan. He then gasped aloud as Riya gave him a strong squeeze.

"I saw that," she said, playfully, "That was a moan that you hid! If I couldn't hide my noises, you're definitely not allowed to!"

"Yes, ma'am," Chase replied, using sarcasm in an attempt to downplay how unexpectedly into that idea he was.

Returning both of their attention to Chase's cock (not that they'd ever drifted far), Riya began to touch and feel her brother's manhood all over with her fingertips and palm, exploring his textures, his contours, and seemingly seeking out all the spots that made him tense, shudder, or throb. Chase had never had a woman treat his prick with such reverence before, and it was an immense turn-on, as evidenced by the way his length flexed in her hand again, drooling pre-come onto her thumb. Chase expected her to find it gross, based on his exes, but she surprised him by glancing at it, then cooing directly at his dick.

"Aww, he needs my attention so badly..." she whispered playfully, "Don't worry, big guy, just leave it to your little sister..." With a glance upwards, seemingly to confirm that he was looking, Riya winked at Chase before continuing.

"...She's gonna kiss it and make it feel allllll better," she whispered, and pressed her soft lips directly against the spot where his crown met his shaft. She let out a gentle mwah that was entirely drowned out by Chase's whimpery moan.

Riya seemed delighted with herself, churring out loud as she began kissing Chase's dick, planting her lips against random spots all over it, and teasing her big brother to the point of squirming and whimpering with need.

"You can't just use my own m-moves against me," Chase protested, with almost zero force behind it, "That's j-just underhanded..." He couldn't believe how much pre he was producing; normally he didn't notice much at all, and here he was, leaking like a fountain at his own sister's touch. He told himself it probably wasn't just because it was Riya. Probably.

As Riya showed mercy on the kissing front, Chase belatedly reached down and finished shoving his boxers down, sitting down on the bed and slipping his feet free so he could make himself more comfortable while Riya continued to play with him.

"I - I'm not normally this bold," Riya admitted, instead of acknowledging his point, "It being you is making this so much more exciting..." Well, that certainly didn't make it easier for Chase to continue insisting otherwise about the pre thing.

"I s-sort of figured," he replied, "If you were normally this bold, I'm betting this would have happened years ago!" Riya giggled at that, then shrugged sheepishly.

"Oh right, yeah," she acknowledged, amused, "It probably would have!" She punctuated her statement by skipping to the next step and taking the head of Chase's cock into her mouth.

"Oh - oh, fuuuuuuck!" the elder sibling cried out, arching his back in surprise as the soft warmth of an eager mouth enveloped his sensitive tool. Chase couldn't help but whimper again as Riya kept going, her full lips slowly sliding down his shaft until they were nestled against his pelvis, her chin fur tickling his scrotum.

Riya moaned around her mouthful of cock, and Chase panted and squirmed, feeling her nimble tongue running along the underside of his shaft. When Riya pulled back, she whimpered excitedly.

"Oh God, you taste as good as I'd hoped..." she murmured, shamelessly, "I used to dream about giving you head..." Chase shuddered from head to toe, and couldn't help groaning with pleasure.

"Hnnngh, I c-can't believe I'm hearing my little sister saying things like that..." He knew instantly: that was a mistake. Sure enough, Riya grinned up at him with a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

"Oh, like what?" she asked, faux-innocently, "Like, 'I'm going to suck your fat cock, big brother'?" This time, her tone was low and sensual, making him shudder even without her hand remaining on his dick. "Like, 'God, I can't wait to taste your hot come, nice and fresh from your balls'? Oooh, how about, 'I hope you don't have plans tonight, because neither of us is leaving until you give me the fucking I deserve!'"

"Oh my fucking God, Riya!" Chase protested, even as he laughed delightedly, "Yes, like that! I surrender! You win! But if I get any hornier, I'm gonna die!"

"Oh, we'll see about that..." the slender female promised, winking lasciviously at her lover before returning her attention to his dick.

Chase mewled with pleasure as Riya took his manhood back into her muzzle, and this time rather than just savouring the feeling of having her big brother's dick in her mouth, Riya began to slowly bob her head along his shaft, bringing one hand up to grope and fondle Chase's balls as she began to suckle him properly. The shuddering male found it hard to believe that he'd masturbated just the previous night, as he felt so needy that it was like he'd been denying himself for a week straight... Feeling Riya's soft lips rubbing along his straining cock, her whiskers teasing at his groin, and her long hair draping itself over his inner thighs, Chase couldn't help but let his head loll back and moan. He couldn't believe how good this felt... in fact, he was starting to worry about how good it felt. He'd made such a big production out of going down on Riya, of slowly building her up until her orgasm brought her crashing down (almost literally). But Riya had barely started, and all she'd really done was put his dick in her mouth, and yet he was already starting to feel the Point of No Return in the distance.

"Fuuuuuuck..." he sighed, trying and failing to think about sports. But Riya wasn't making it easy for him, as she rolled his testicles around atop her palm, giving the sensitive orbs the gentlest of squeezes and making her brother whimper with pleasure again.

Chase shuddered and trembled as Riya licked and teased and rubbed at his most sensitive parts, relentless as she sought out each and every spot that made the older feline moan. He felt himself throb against her lips, imagined his prick drooling pre-come onto her tongue, and felt even more turned-on.

"Ohhhhhh, God," Chase moaned, so embarrassed about his condition that for just a fraction of a fraction of a second, he seriously considered an intrusive thought suggesting that Riya had somehow drugged him via her feminine juices in order to get him worked up faster. On the plus side, that was such an obviously ridiculous thought that for a little bit, he was distracted from how quickly he was responding by being even more embarrassed that he'd given the 'poison pussy' idea even that much thought.

"Y-you're magic, you've g-got to be magic," he mumbled, "It's the only th-thing that explains it..." He sighed with relief when Riya let his cock slip out of her mouth, but she quickly took hold of it and began rubbing her thumb up and down along his shaft, preventing him from cooling down and looking for all the world like she was trying to coax more pre out of her brother's dick.

"Whatcha mumbling about up there, Chase?" Riya asked, innocently. Chase's immediate instinct was to lie, to tell the girl he was sweet for that everything was fiiiiiine, that she didn't need to change things up at all... but even he didn't believe he'd be able to hold on without coming for much longer. The shame was intense, but despite his best efforts to listen to that doomed impulse, he found that he just had to come clean, he couldn't bring himself to openly lie to Riya.

"I... I'm getting turned on way f-faster than I expected, I got so hot eating you out," he admitted, hiding his blushing face in his hands, "You need to s-slow down or something or I - or I'm gonna come!"

To Chase's surprise, he felt Riya begin to stroke his prick with her entire hand, making him throb again.

"You're saying that like making you come would be a bad thing," the younger Abyssinian teased.

"C'mon, R-Riya, I was hoping this w-would be, uh, you know... more of a warm-up..." he replied, still hiding his face.

"A warm-up for what, big brother?" Riya pressed, dropping the dirty talk routine and leaning into the 'innocent little sister' voice to make him shudder with taboo desire - and that was before she planted another kiss on his crown.

"God, of course she makes me say it," he muttered to himself through gritted teeth, before surrendering and blurting out "Okay, f-fine, I - I want to fuck you, Riya! I want to fuck you so bad, it's making me crazy!" He let out a second, less sexy groan as Riya giggled delightedly at his confession. It may have been obvious, but actually saying the words seemed to be very different from just leaving it as an implication.

Chase whimpered from both self-consciousness and desire, and it took him several seconds to realize Riya wasn't speaking. The moment he looked out from behind his hands and glanced down at her, Riya met his eyes, smiled a sparkling smile, and leaned down to give his cock one long, slow lick from base to tip. Tensing up, Chase moaned the word fuck, stretched out to about eleven seconds long. He almost finished right there, but he fought tenaciously and managed to hang on.

"It makes me very happy to hear that," Riya finally replied, her tone light and cheery, "Thank you very much for saying so!" Then, lifting his sac with one hand, she planted a kiss on one testicle, then the other.

"Christ, that's s-so hot, and I fucking love it, but p-please, sis, I'm so fucking close, and I - I don't want to come too soon! I don't want to let you down when you've w-wanted me for so long!" Riya blinked in surprise, sisterly playfulness taking a backseat in her eyes in favour of the look she got when she unexpectedly saw something cute like a feral puppy or kitten.

"Awww, sweetie! Let me put your mind at ease then..." She licked his cock and made him whimper. "First, you aren't letting me down, I'm having a great time." Another lick, which made his toes twitch and clench. "And second, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but... I've waited years for this, big brother, it could never be too soon."

Flushed with arousal, Chase lowered his ears and tried to stammer out a response, but found only embarrassed gibberish. Riya chuckled good-naturedly and gave his erection another kiss.

"Now it's your turn, Chase, you gotta relax," she teased, lightly, "C'mon, do you really think if you come in my mouth now, that I won't let you fuck me later?" Chase's eyes widened, as he'd been so focused on not climaxing that the idea of future trysts genuinely hadn't occurred to him. Shrugging, he grinned sheepishly.

"Well, when you put it like that..." he finally said, more quietly. Riya churred happily to him to show her approval. And with that, without waiting for further discussion, the slender female took Chase's dick back into her mouth and let out a long mmmmm to show her contentment. Riya began to rub her tongue all over her big brother's straining cock, teasing the tiny hole at his tip as if she were lapping up his pre-come. Helplessly shuddering, Chase just moaned.

Riya redoubled her efforts, clearly eager to get her brother off, and Chase could only squirm atop the bed, bunching up the sheets as his hands clenched and unclenched.

"Hnnnngh, you're s-so fucking g-good at this..." he panted, before the tip of Riya's tongue teased a particularly sensitive spot, and he descended into aroused babbling, "Oh fuck - wait go back, go b-YES right there right there, ohhhhhh..." Riya churred around his prick as she continued to tease and lick at it, looking more relaxed and content than she had since they'd started working on all these sex scenes. Distantly, Chase almost found it a little difficult to reconcile the Riya he knew with this woman, who was way more enthusiastic about giving him oral than he had ever expected. But the sparkle in her eyes, and the grins she gave him when she took him out of her mouth, they made it impossible for Chase to deny that this sexy and exciting girl was his sweet Riya. Chase struggled desperately against the pleasure for a few minutes, unable to fight the instinct to drag it out, but it felt like that was only encouraging Riya to try even harder to make him pop.

"Oh God..." he panted, feeling himself teetering on the edge, feeling every muscle in his body slowly tensing, "Oh f-fuck, oh Riya, I..." The slender female's eyes snapped open and she made a strangely irritated sound around his penis. Somehow, Chase instantly knew what she meant.

"Oh, little sister," he corrected, "I'm so close, I'm g-gonna... I'm fucking coming!"

In his mind, he'd expected Riya to pull back, to keep licking his cock as he came, ejaculating all over her beautiful features and allowing Chase to check off 'give a girl a facial' from his secret Sexy Bucket List. But instead, Riya just moaned around his cock and sank down, taking almost his entire length into her muzzle; Chase would realize in the shower the next day that Riya hadn't gone down the entire way because then he would be shooting straight down her throat and she wouldn't get to taste it. That shower would be notably long as Chase was overcome with the desire to rub one out from that realization, but once again, that was for Future Chase to discover. Present Chase was in no state to analyze Riya's actions to that depth, he was only aware that her tongue was soft and hot and wet and it felt beautiful as it rubbed and licked at the sensitive underside of his dick, where his urethra was bulging beneath the skin. At the exact moment he finally came, as pleasure exploded within him and spread throughout his body, Riya gave Chase's balls a gentle squeeze, somehow amplifying the moment and causing Chase to throw back his head and yowl with ecstasy. His dick began to flex and spasm, and Riya whimpered with what sounded like a heady mixture of glee and relief, as if she was the one checking something off her Sexy Bucket List, purring hard as her big brother's throbbing prick began spurting hot, creamy feline jism onto her tongue, painting her mouth with his potent seed. Rigidly tense from head to toe, Chase grunted and whimpered and moaned as he came and came, yet somehow he still heard Riya audibly swallowing again and again, greedily drinking down his fresh, gooey come and looking very much like she was in her Happy Place.

All the stress, all the worry Chase had been experiencing that day seemed to be a million miles away as he finally sagged down to the bed with a groan.

"Ohhhhhh... Goddamn..." he whispered, between panting breaths. He shivered as Riya slowly, carefully ran her tongue along his oversensitive cock in a corkscrew path that covered every inch of him, as if cleaning off the semen. Then, swallowing one last time, radiating the satisfaction of a job well done, Riya sat up straight, letting Chase's softening cock slip out of her mouth with a slurp. After the shudders died down, Chase panted hard, breathing deep of the lightly-perfumed air and staring up at his sister's ceiling. Once again, there was none of the guilt and regret that a part of him had been certain would follow his orgasm. Somehow, Riya making him come felt like the most natural thing in the world, like it was simply the obvious evolution of their close relationship. While he was thinking this (and idly wondering how she kept her ceiling so clean and cobweb-free), Riya shifted on the bed, and he felt her crawling over to him on all fours. He smiled tiredly as she leaned over, her face directly above his, her long hair hanging down like a privacy curtain to hide their taboo behaviour from the world.

"Hey, babe," Chase said, quietly, earning a rather adorable eep from the slender female, "That was amazing." Riya said nothing, just smiled back and bent down to kiss him. Chase eagerly turned towards her, already anticipating her touch, as each time they kissed, it seemed to feel even better than the previous time.

"Thank you..." he added, just before their lips met, before their tongues slipped out to meet each other... before Chase realized that Riya's mouth tasted strongly of semen, and that she must not have swallowed the very last of it. He made a noise of surprise, tensing up briefly beneath her, but then relaxed, shuddering pleasantly as he kissed his sister and tasted his own seed on her tongue. She had seemed so confident, he wondered how she'd known he would be into it... since that was certainly a surprise to him... but he was more focused on the physical experience of the moment itself. He reached up and started running his fingers through Riya's pelt on her back, enjoying the texture of her fur even as he enjoyed the sensation of their slightly slimy tongues coiling and embracing with each other.

When they broke it off, Riya moved away so that Chase could sit up, scootching himself over so he was at least lying aligned with the bed, his head up with the pillows. The playful femme followed him closely, and flopped down on her side right beside him, resting her head more against Chase's shoulder than the pillows, and raising her top arm and leg and draping them over Chase's body in a deliciously possessive posture. Riya immediately began toying one finger through the fur on her brother's chest, and Chase smiled softly, closing his eyes and spending a minute or two just... enjoying the warmth and the feeling of her closeness. Of all the morphic species, cats most appreciate the benefits of a good cuddle. Their discordant, though quite loud purring showed that the Varmas were no exception. After a bit, Chase opened his eyes and looked over at Riya.

"It's... been a while since I've been with anyone," he admitted, quietly, "I've been putting the game first for... feels like forever now."

"Mmmm, I know the feeling..." Riya murmured sympathetically, "No judgement here, you've seen how vibrant my social life is... I'm just glad that left us here together."

Chase smiled at that, raising his arm and curling it around Riya's narrow shoulders.

"Look how happy you are," he whispered, giving her a light squeeze. Riya churred and nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder... which meant her scent glands were leaving her pheromones on him, marking him as part of her territory.

"Of course I'm happy..." she murmured back, "You're finally mine." She squeezed him with the arm and leg laid over him, which made him feel extremely wanted and desired. They briefly kissed, a slower, less frantic experience than the kisses they'd shared before. This was more about confirming their feelings for each other than it was about loudly declaring them to the heavens. When they broke it off, they continued lying there, lightly embracing each other, their tails lazily flicking this way and that.

"Riya..." Chase said after a bit, "I'm... sorry. That I never noticed how you felt for me..." But she was already waving him off.

"No, don't be like that, it's okay," she said, even as the words sounded slightly hard for her to say, "I'm your sister, I... I understand how you would look at me and not see a potential girlfriend." Chase could appreciate the difficulties of being reasonable in the face of strong emotions, but he also shuddered pleasantly when she said the word 'girlfriend', when she suggested there was a future in this, and Riya giggled, clearly having noticed.

Leaning over to her, Chase planted a kiss in the centre of his sister's forehead.

"Well, I definitely see it now..." he assured her, "and I'm not going anywhere." She churred in response, hugging him a little tighter.

"I... never let myself imagine what would happen if I actually got you," Riya admitted after a moment, "It's a little overwhelming..." They kissed, just a quick peck on the lips.

"I can't say I ever planned out what it would be like to, uh, secretly date a sibling myself," Chase deadpanned, "Yeah, this... this is complicated." Riya giggled quietly, shaking her head.

"Tell me something I don't know," she sighed, sympathetically. After a long pause, Chase lifted his head and looked at her again.

"Freyr's real last name is Lewis, not Duskfang," he said, obligingly, "and he's never told anyone." There was another pause, in which Riya just stared silently off into the ether, a surprised expression on her face. Even her tail ceased moving.

"...Seriously?" she eventually asked, already giggling, "Freyr Lewis?" Chase nodded sagely.

"Oh yes," he said, earnestly, "You can see how it wouldn't exactly... strike fear into the heart of bounties." Riya giggled louder and poked him lightly in the sternum with the hand that had been idly toying with his chest fur.

"No! I mean, is that, like, secret lore or something, or are you just playing with me?"

"Yes."

"Wh- Awww, c'mon, Chase, don't I get, like, immunity from teasing now that we're t-together?" Chase finally let out the laugh he'd been hiding.

"Normally, yeah, totally," he lied, "But sadly, you're also still my little sister, which makes teasing you priority one."

Riya pushed herself up on one elbow and looked down at him, giving him a Look, her ears lowering in mild irritation.

"You know, I just now sucked your dick," she reminded him, giving his chest another poke.

"Hmm... Good point," he conceded, treading more carefully, "Okay, uh, yeah, Freyr's last name was one of the first things I thought of when I was brainstorming him from your sketches, but then his storyline in the game wasn't about his family, and, uh... it just never came up." He knew he sounded sheepish, as Freyr had been one of the first characters he'd pondered after Jeice and Nova, and he'd gone a bit overboard in the level of detail he came up with, which also included the (often rude) meaning of each of his tattoos and a vague idea of the origin of each of his scars, neither of which was terribly important in the actual story of the game. Riya just nodded, though, and lay back down against him with a small, satisfied smile on her lips.

"That's more like it," she muttered, returning to idly toying with her brother's fur. "Though... now that you bring up the game... I feel like it will be easier to talk about, you know, positions from now on."

Chase's hand stopped stroking through her hair as he smiled silently and waited a moment for effect before he lifted his head and gazed down at Riya, finding her resting her cheek against his shoulder with her eyes closed, a beatific smile on her face, the very picture of innocence. He was pretty sure she was fucking with him.

"So when you say positions, do you mean in the game... or on this bed?" he asked, gently. From the very core of his soul, Chase was absolutely convinced Riya was about to parrot his 'yes' joke back to him, and he was going to deserve it, but she just continued on as if he hadn't spoken.

"You know," she said, casually, "now that we've addressed the sexual tension between us, and we're not blushing just from being in each other's presence... and we know what each other taste like when they come..." She added this last part in a lower, tease-ier voice. Grinning, Chase refused to give her the satisfaction of asking for clarity again, and just moved on, trying to sound casual himself as he focused on the less lewd option to tease her.

"Well... you remember how Nova wanted to stay in Chase's quarters because it was something real?" he asked, nonchalantly, as if they weren't both naked and still sweaty from sexual exertion with a sibling.

"Of course," Riya purred, as she adjusted her positioning so that her naked slit was now directly pressed against Chase's hip, giving him one hell of a distraction.

"...Well," Chase continued after a moment, not acknowledging his sister's labia, "I was thinking that she'd want the sex to be something real too."

"Got it," Riya replied, absolutely earnestly, "only real sex, none of this imaginary sex that is so popular lately." The relaxed male laughed and gave her butt a playful swat that made her yelp cutely.

"Smart-ass," he said, but if he meant it as a bad thing, his tone did a terrible job of expressing that. "Look, I mean... I mean she'd want to know it wasn't just sex, that it was an important, emotional experience. I was thinking that they would do it nice and simple, missionary-style, so that they could do it face-to-face, share in the moment together." He felt her cheek fur rubbing and meshing against his shoulder fur.

"Mmm-hmm, yup, that's pretty good," Riya acknowledged, smiling slightly. She adjusted her position slightly, and he swallowed, pretending his entire being wasn't focused on her pussy as it rubbed against his hip. He wondered if she was wet, if his little sister's juices were soaking into his fur... Riya lifted her head from his shoulder to look him in the eyes.

"But you know, there is another position I can think of that puts you face-to-face," she said, playfully, "Even if she's never tried it before, maybe that one's more, you know, up Nova's alley..." The curious male played it cool, but could not suppress the twitching of his whiskers. Was Riya suggesting this was a sex position she'd longed to try? Or was she just setting him up to think that in order to tease him? He decided the first option was more fun and gave Riya 100% of his attention.

"Do tell..." he replied, encouragingly.

The hand on Chase's chest began to trail back and forth, dragging one finger behind it, as Riya laid out the scene.

"Okay, imagine you're Jeice and I'm Nova," she replied, straight-faced, but letting some of her purr into her voice, "So we're together, we're holding each other, we're naked, we're kissing..." Letting his hand slip down to briefly rest on one of her soft buttocks, Chase smiled at her.

"So far it's so vivid in my mind, it's like I'm really there," he quipped. She giggled and licked his nose.

"But we can't stand waiting any longer," Riya continued, her finger circling one of her brother's nipples teasingly. Chase was distantly surprised how sensitive the long-ignored nub was, but tried to hide it because he was interested in what she was saying.

"We want to make it really memorable, so, we get out of bed, and I go lean back against a wall," Riya continued. Chase was quietly confused, she'd bucked his expectations by exiting the bed, but he trusted her to be going somewhere with this. He was going to correct her terminology, though, because he was still a writer.

"Bulkhead," he whispered.

"I go lean against a bulkhead," she replied, smoothly, "You walk up and - and you put it in me, and then you gather my legs up in your arms and support my weight as y-you fuck me against the wall..."

Chase swallowed, seeing it all in his mind's eye, right down to Riya's legs slowly closing around his waist. For her part, Riya was now quite red, though she was still smiling excitedly.

"We'd still be face-to-face, so we get that emotional connection you wanted, and you carrying me would show I trust you to support me when I need you..." she giggled, and finally averted her eyes as she whispered the rest. "...And I hear that doing it vertically like that lets you get really deep!"

"Oh my God, Riya, that is so hot..." Chase breathed, impressed, "And it reflects all that character growth we were talking about!" He laughed. "Okay, yeah, you've convinced me, standing up against the wall it is, wow..." Riya leaned up and licked his cheek playfully.

"Mmmm, I'm glad to hear it," she murmured, churring to her lover and moving to kiss him. Chase eagerly met his sister's lips, the picture she'd just painted with her words just as vivid in his mind as the ones she made with her tablet. Naturally, he didn't notice when Riya moved, as the hand that wasn't resting on Chase's chest slipped down to take hold of her brother's penis again.

It twitched against her fingers, but then lay still, as Chase was still quite sated for the moment. Chase expected her to start stroking him, to try and arouse him again, and he broke off the kiss with an anxious grunt.

"Ngh... W-wait, Riya, I - I love your idea, and I want to t-try it," he said, stammering from the feeling of her hand touching his oversensitive cock, "B-but I just came, it's t-too soon!" But Riya didn't start stroking, she didn't squeeze him, she just held his flaccid penis lightly in her hand.

"Shhhh, it's okay," she whispered to him, "Let's just cuddle..." She leaned in to kiss him again, and despite his confusion, Chase kissed her back. That soft hand continued to do absolutely nothing other than hold on, and Chase silently wondered if she was just touching his dick to remind herself that she could, that she'd figuratively and literally gotten her hands on what was apparently the guy of her dreams (Chase still found it difficult to imagine sweet Riya having lewd dreams about him...). Suddenly, something clicked into place in his mind, and he realized what it reminded him of: the way Riya had had a habit of just holding onto his tail when they were children, apparently enjoying simply being in contact with Chase. He used to humour her and let her hold on while he watched TV or played videogames or other things that left him sitting in one place for a while. Their parents had found it absolutely adorable, but for some reason Chase didn't much want to think about their parents right now, so he focused on the part where Riya seemed to be treasuring this new, sensual connection between them.

While he was being honest with himself, Chase had always felt closer to Riya than anyone else he knew, and now, holding her, kissing her, that closeness, that connection felt stronger than ever. Breaking it off, he leaned in, pressing his muzzle against her throat. First he kissed her on a vulnerable spot, making the other feline squirm and churr. Then he inhaled deeply of the natural scent of Riya's skin and fur, breathing her in and losing himself in the moment with her.

"Riya..." he whispered, "I love you." She whimpered quietly, shuddering with emotion.

"I love you too," she whispered back. Their embrace tightened as they resumed their kissing, and Riya was lying more on top of Chase than the mattress, but her light frame was nothing he couldn't handle comfortably. At the other end of the bed, their tails were rubbing and sliding together, as if they were trying to wrap around each other, but couldn't quite manage it.

One might expect, given this circumstance, that Chase and Riya would continue touching and kissing each other until Chase's refractory period ended, until they began getting aroused again, and they would roll straight into making love. However, Riya's bed was extremely soft and comfortable, and they'd raised the temperature of the room with their antics already, so the two Abyssinians found themselves starting to drift off to sleep instead. Where most people would probably shake it off and keep going, felines are not most people, and napping was a highly regarded and deeply enshrined part of their culture. Thus, Chase allowed himself to nod off, Riya still gently holding his penis as she drifted off herself. In the middle of the day like this, the sleep wasn't deep, so they didn't quite get down to experiencing dreams. It was more like they were dozing, their conscious minds quieted for the moment, aware only of the sensation of their bodies touching, of the bed beneath them, and a warm, delighted contentment that came from being in physical contact with one's mate. It was new to Chase, but on the instinctual level that he was aware of it right now, it was quite welcome.

He just floated like that for a while between consciousness and dreaming, his only thoughts of Riya, and it was nice. Eventually, after what could have been fifteen minutes or four days, Chase was distantly aware of the younger feline moving off of him, and chose to remain in this impossibly comfortable moment. When he did ultimately return to the land of the living, it was because of an inconsistent brushing sensation he kept feeling. The lanky male's eyes fluttered open to find... Riya, kneeling on the bed and bent forward almost prone so she could rub her face against the right side of his pelvis, just smearing her cheek against his fur. As he watched, she lifted her head and repeated the gesture on the left side of his pelvis, rubbing her face enthusiastically against his pelt. This time, she leaned back when she was finished, not nearly upright, but lifted enough to glance at Chase's face. She smiled when she saw him awake.

"Oh good," she said, softly, "You're just in time." Before Chase could ask any of the obvious questions vying for position in his mind, Riya bent down once again, only this time, she began rubbing her soft, fuzzy cheek against her brother's ballsack. Chase gasped, taken aback by the strange, unfamiliar, yet strangely enjoyable sensation of his sister's fur brushing against his scrotum.

"R-Riya, what are y-you..." the squirming male attempted, only to trail off as he shuddered in pleasure and confusion, "Oh, oh God... Wh-why does that feel s-s-so good?" He bit his tongue then, refusing to moan for her from... whatever she was doing. Was she trying to turn him on? Was this her fetish? It was stimulating a lot of spots at once, but Chase wasn't sure he could ever come from just this... or was Riya just being his sister and messing with him for fun?

Instead of answering, Riya just moved slightly further up, so that her nuzzling included Chase's penis directly, instead of just jostling it around. After swallowing another moan, Chase gathered his willpower to focus through the bizarre sensation.

"What are you d-doing, Riya?!" he gasped, his whiskers twitching at random. They'd been napping a little while, Chase had recovered from earlier, but his dick was still only about a quarter hard from... this, so when Riya finally stopped, without lifting her head from her sibling's crotch, Chase's manhood flopped forward on top of her muzzle and just rested there. Riya was grinning from ear to ear, and made no effort to remove the penis from her face, but Chase could see her nostrils flaring rapidly, like she was breathing deep of his musky private scent, eagerly sampling it. Chase liked that they had that in common. Seeing her unable to get enough of his scent, obviously starting to get turned on, only served to excite her lover right back, reminding him of how energized he'd felt when breathing her scent directly from her wet slit.

Riya lifted one hand from the bed and poked herself in the cheek, then returned her arm to the mattress without addressing the cock she was wearing.

"Scent glands," she said, cheekily, which mightily confused Chase until he realized he'd been so focused on their sexy, pheromone-laden private scents, that he'd forgotten about their public and less fun personal scents; a cat's scent glands are on the sides of their faces so when they rub their cheeks on something...

"You were scent-marking me!" he realized in surprise, his eyes widening.

"Yuuuup!" she cheerily confirmed, "Getting you in my bed after all these years of wishing, I'd be crazy not to mark you, so that everyone will know for sure that you're mine." Chase shivered and blushed hard, suddenly extremely on board with the idea of being hers... and of making her his.

In truth, they shared quarters and had been known to cuddle on occasion even before they kissed, so Chase and Riya already smelled strongly of each other... but going through the motions anyway, making it 'official' even if their secret wouldn't be threatened, was extremely exciting to the Varma siblings. In fact, Chase watched his penis throb, flexing against Riya's muzzle and flopping back down. For the first time, Riya looked directly at her brother's penis where it rested against her face.

"I especially wanted to mark you as mine here, even if it will probably make my face smell like cock all day..." she said, a hint of reluctance to her tone before she blinked and giggled, adding "Hey, that'll just make it clear that I'm yours, too!" The giggling increased in volume as she finally leaned away, letting Chase's mostly-flaccid dick slide off her muzzle and flop back down to rest against his balls.

Chase found that he rather enjoyed this side of his sister, one she'd never shown him before. The possessive way she talked about the scent-marking was a real turn-on... because he could see the way just talking about it was slowly getting Riya worked up.

"We should... maybe discuss later what happens if somebody knows for sure I'm yours, and you're mine, but for now..." He sat up and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, leaning in to kiss her, taking the initiative. "...I believe we have unfinished business, little sister." She shuddered noticeably and let out an excited little trill as he used the title, and they were both smiling as their lips met. Chase sighed through his nostrils with contentment the moment he felt Riya's tongue against his, as if he'd only just that second realized how much drabber life was when he wasn't kissing his sister. Just before Chase closed his eyes, Riya whimpered quietly and lowered her ears submissively, something that lit an ember in her lover's heart.

They'd been kissing for only a few seconds, their tongues twisting and wrestling together, before Chase began longing to touch the slender female, so he blindly moved forward on the bed without breaking off the kiss, reached around her with both hands, and pulled Riya into his arms. She clearly approved of this plan, churring quietly as he rubbed his arms up and down along her back. There was something about the gentle curves of Riya's back that Chase found endlessly appealing to run his hands over. He could feel her start purring as her hands reached up and began rubbing his chest, dragging through through his fur and tracing his muscles. Once again, the idea of who he was smooching and hugging was an immense turn-on for Chase, the taboo nature of their love adding a little spice on top of the already awesome experience of making out with a naked woman who is crazy about you.

"Mmmmm..." he sighed, as his hands dipped down to shamelessly grope both sides of Riya's ass, giving her cheeks a gentle squeeze. It was Riya's turn to sigh through her nostrils as she pushed her butt back against his hands. Thusly encouraged, Chase pulled her closer, pressing her soft breasts against his chest again. Her hands continued to eagerly explore his body while his worked on squeezing and kneading her butt.

The contented male started getting playful pretty much immediately, lightly spreading Riya's cheeks as if showing off the goods to an imaginary audience behind her. Her tail whipped left and right, agitated by excitement, but not unpleasantly so. Unable to resist, Chase moved one hand further to the middle, reaching down and lightly brushing just the pads of his first two fingertips along Riya's slit to see how turned on she was, finishing by brushing over her clitoris. In response, the younger Abyssinian moaned into her lover's mouth and began kissing even more energetically. Returning his fingertips to his sister's pussy, Chase confirmed his findings. Her vulva was very warm, to be sure, but not as warm as when his tongue had been buried in it. Besides, her outer lips were only a little moist, so he clearly needed to take some more time turning up the heat. After a moment's thought, he moved to assuage his worries and check that he was on the right track/tease his sister some more. Chase touched the tip of just one finger to Riya's pussy again, and this time he gently pushed forward, sliding into her all the way to the knuckle. Tensing up, Riya broke off the kiss to gasp, and as her lover opened his eyes, he felt her inner walls clenching down hard on his probing digit. Chase smiled, having discovered that on the inside, she was plenty wet for her big brother.

Riya moaned eagerly as Chase shifted his hand about and wiggled his finger inside her, making her vagina clench and spasm.

"Oh - ohhh, Chase..." she panted, tilting her hips to offer him better access. But Chase just slipped his finger free and left her pussy alone for the moment. Riya squirmed and whimpered with disappointment as he pulled out, pushing herself in the direction his hand had gone as if trying to catch it.

"N-nooo..." she protested, pouting and blushing at the same time.

"Don't want to rush a love scene, sweetie," he teased, "I just need to warm things up a little more, first." Still pouting, Riya muttered something under her breath about writers, but Chase didn't quite catch it over his chuckling.

Leaning back, relaxing the tightness of their embrace a bit, Chase's attention was immediately drawn to the way this freed up Riya's boobs. Chase did love the feeling of a girl's tits pressed against him as they kissed, but focusing his attention on them was even more rewarding. Riya sighed quietly, seeming to forgive him rather quickly as he bent down and closed his lips over one of her nipples, which tasted just as good as the last time he'd suckled on it.

"Mmmmm..." he sighed, watching her ears twitch and her cheeks darken. He knew for sure he was still on her good side when he felt Riya's hand come to rest on the back of his head, toying her fingers through his hair and stroking behind his ears.

"Nnnff... You're l-lucky I love the way you do this..." she muttered, self-consciously. Chase felt tempted to let go of her breast to make a playful comment, but forgot what he'd planned to say as he felt Riya take hold of his penis once again. Somehow, he'd only reached half-mast from kissing and fondling Riya so far, clearly he wasn't trying hard enough. He swallowed a moan and looked up at his sister's beatific smile. Riya winked at him.

"What's good for the goose..." she teased, giving his cock a squeeze. Unable to argue that point (certainly not with a titty in his mouth), Chase shrugged and kept licking the sensitive nub.

Releasing Riya's nipple just long enough for him to capture the other one, Chase immediately resumed suckling as he massaged the soft flesh of her teat with one hand. For her part, Riya was squeezing and rubbing along the length of his dick, and the appreciative organ was responding by growing and stiffening in her grip.

"That's it, baby, get nice and hard for your little sister..." Riya cooed, stroking one finger along his underside, "Mmmm, and don't s-stop licking..." Chase answered by releasing her nipple just long enough to moan appreciatively. When he returned, he immediately began to suckle, and Riya whimpered with pleasure - and, oddly, a dash of embarrassment. Maybe she was self-conscious about how sensitive her breasts were? Chase felt that wasn't quite it, but for the moment he was just content to enjoy how cute it made Riya look, averting her gaze almost demurely and blushing noticeably beneath her sandy fur. It was a curious contrast to the gentle, confident way she was fondling his hardening prick, doing an admirable job of remembering where his sensitive spots were and rubbing teasingly at them. She occasionally switched to gently kneading the shaft to keep him from getting too hot, which felt suspiciously like revenge to the Abyssinian on the receiving end of it.

Soon, there were no words, only purring, interspersed with the occasional whimper or moan, as the Varma siblings lost themselves in each other, in rubbing and touching and kissing and licking. As his cock throbbed in Riya's soft, talented hand, pre-come starting to drool from his tip, Chase growled with need, finding himself aching to kiss his sister again. Releasing her left nipple and giving it a farewell smooch, Chase straightened up (his back thanking him) and leaned in to capture Riya's lips. She seemed disappointed he'd left her tits alone, but gladly moved to kiss him, clearly aching just as much for him. Chase only waited about two seconds before he made her tense up and yelp by reaching up with both hands and closing them over Riya's breasts. She turned her face to the side to let out a shuddery moan, and Chase didn't give her any time to adjust before he started squeezing and kneading her perky mounds, and lightly pinching her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

"Oh! Oh - ohhhhhhh..." she moaned, the sound thrilling in Chase's ears. As he continued to toy with her sensitive nubs, Chase was planting kisses along the side of her neck. Riya was apparently so lost in the sensations that the hand on her brother's cock had stilled, just lightly holding him again instead of stroking or teasing, though her warm, soft hand made sure he stayed nice and hot for her. Of course, the way she arched her back and shamelessly pressed her breasts against his hands to encourage him was doing a very nice job of that all by itself.

Riya felt very warm against him, and her breathing was faster than usual, so even without dipping a finger in her treasures, Chase was pretty confident she was getting very horny. With that in mind, he extended the claws on his forefingers and lightly rested them against her nipples.

"Ahn!" Riya gasped, tensing up. Winking at her, her brother began to lightly pinch at her sensitive flesh, which made her... shudder and purr even harder. "Hnnngh - oh Chaaaaase, that's so good... Ahh!" This last was because Chase had given them a light tug, which pretty much confirmed that Riya's pleasure-for-pain sense had kicked in this time. Sadly, it didn't make felines immune to discomfort when they were randy, actually injuring themselves would still be unpleasant, but shallow, sharp pains like one might get from the light use of claws or teeth would be deliciously arousing.

"Purr for me, little sister," Chase whispered to her, "I love how sensitive your boobs are..." Riya moaned wordlessly in response, lowering her ears submissively and finally letting go of Chase's cock so she could reach up and grab hold of both of his arms, seemingly just to give herself something to do with her hands while Chase played with her. She whimpered and mewled, finally leaning back in to kiss him again, more hungrily than before.

Chase was really enjoying himself, and Riya clearly appreciated his efforts, but as much as he could have happily kept playing with her soft tits for the rest of the day, he found himself interrupted when Riya broke off the kiss with a needy whine, and she let go of one of his forearms to reach up, take hold of Chase's hand, and very insistently tug it off of her breast and downward, clearly making a beeline between her legs. When his hand reached her pelvis, Riya self-consciously met his eyes, her ears flat against her head.

"P-please?" she whispered, cheeks burning with both embarrassment and the flush of arousal. Chase very briefly considered making her beg, but she was so attractive like this, all worked up and sweaty and looking at him pleadingly, that he couldn't hold back. It helped that he ached to touch her already. So, smiling at her, Chase slid his hand down the last little way and cupped it possessively over his sister's vulva. He immediately gave a little squeeze, and Riya inhaled sharply.

"Yes yes yes yes yessssss..." she whispered to herself, shuddering from head to toe. Even her pussy gave a twitch against his hand, and his fingers were already getting wet. Not wasting any time, he began rubbing his fingertips up and down her slit, enjoying the way that the slender Abyssinian whimpered and rolled her hips as he teased her labia and clit.

"I kn-know for a fact that you're n-not seeing girls left and r-right..." Riya panted, "How are you s-so good at this?"

Chase laughed, really enjoying how honest that perplexed tone had sounded.

"I found these really nice online tutorials for pleasing your sister in bed," he lied, casually, "Very informative, goes through everything step-by-step..." Giggling, she lightly swatted his arm with her free hand... which then returned to Chase's cock, taking a firm hold and beginning to stroke again.

"No, really," Chase laughed, "I think the channel name was, uh, SisterFister69_420..."

"I've s-seen your writing," Riya replied, "How are you not better at making this up?" As he pulsed in her grip, Chase winked at her and grinned rakishly.

"I don't usually have a b-beautiful girl giving me a handy when I'm writing," he pointed out, as his fingers finally pushed between Riya's labia and slipped into her warm depths. The eager female moaned approvingly, shuddering as she clenched down on her brother's wiggling fingers, which pushed in to the knuckles and made themselves at home.

"Hnnngh..." Riya groaned, shuddering a second time as Chase languidly raised his thumb and used it to stroke his sister's love button just once. Whimpering with pleasure and joy, Riya pulled him in close as if to kiss him again, but moved her other hand from his arm to his back, and suddenly dragged her claws down one of his shoulder blades, making Chase arch his back and cry out, his own feline traits making stars of pleasure dance in front of his eyes. His prick throbbed hard and drooled a sizable dollop of pre onto Riya's hand.

"Oooh, you l-liked that, didn't you, big brother...?" the playful femme teased.

"God, yes..." Chase panted, too worked up to feign innocence out of embarrassment. He began to move his fingers, working them in and out of Riya's slick vagina and giving her a proper fingering, but it failed to remove the smile from her face. Still, his earnest response earned him another delighted giggle as Riya kissed him on the cheek and spread her legs a little more, to make it easier for his digits to work their magic on her sensitive channel.

Once again, the siblings lost themselves in their need for each other, feverishly working each other's most sensitive flesh, seeking out spots that made each other gasp and moan. Chase was purring up a storm, his eyes half-closed and unfocused as he concentrated entirely on the sensations they were bringing each other, lightly humping into his sister's soft hand as it ran up and down his rigid, drooling prick. As Riya's pussy clenched down on Chase's fingers yet again, the slender female moaned with need.

"Oh - oh God, Chase..." she panted, "I - I need you s-so bad, please, let's... let's take things f-further." Chase was pretty comfortable right where he was, and he could probably be quite satisfied diddling Riya all evening, but it would be a lie to suggest that his trembling sister's desperate plea wasn't music to Chase's ears. Leaning back, he grinned at her, trying to play it casual despite the way his whiskers were dancing with excitement.

"Absolutely," he replied, slipping his fingers out of her and licking them clean. He liked the way Riya bit her lip as she watched him do it.

Kissing her on the cheek, Chase slipped off the side of the bed.

"Okay, so for some reason, I've been thinking we could... do it up against that wall there," he said, gesturing to a blank stretch of Riya's room. The slender female's eyes lit up as Chase suggested 'her' position. Visibly eager, Riya stood up, but pointed the other way.

"We share that wall with the neighbours," she pointed out, "Better try that side."

"Good idea," Chase agreed cheerily, as Riya scampered across the room, positioning herself in front of a wall shared with their office. She reached up, stretching for a moment before turning around and raising her arms, placing the backs of both hands against the wall in front of her. Then she lifted one foot from the floor and placed it on the wall, so her knee stuck out coquettishly. Then, after what Chase interpreted as a pause to take a deep breath, Riya gave him a look full of bedroom eyes and grinned mischievously.

"What are you waiting for, big brother?" she asked, running one hand down the front of her body, "You want me, I'm yours." As she spoke these last words, Riya playfully leaned off the wall, turning around and wiggling her rump teasingly. Once she'd confirmed that Chase was unable to take his eyes off her butt, the younger Abyssinian dramatically raised her tail until it was flagged nice and high, completely revealing her glistening treasures.

"Is that how Nova would entice Jeice over?" Chase teased back, taking his sweet time to amble over as he slowly stroked his penis with just his fingertips, to keep himself hard but not push himself any further. Slightly put off, Riya blinked, her tail dipping lower as her confidence faltered.

"What? Oh, right..." she said, needing a moment in her aroused state to remember what her lover was talking about.

Riya, who quickly bounced back, stood up a little straighter, a haughty tone coming over her words, if not her eager, playful smile.

"So, Jeice Rifter, come on and take me... if you think you're capable of it!" she teased, giggling when Chase responded by thrusting an excited fist skyward.

"Yesss! That's great!" he laughed, before exaggeratedly clearing his throat and trying again.

"I mean... Ohhh, I think that fight showed that I can handle you just fine, Nova," he said, turning up the cockiness in his voice, "though I'm really going to enjoy proving it!" Stepping up behind her, he took a moment to admire the view, running his eyes up and down his sister's unclothed form, shamelessly leering at her pert, round tush. Then, acting entirely in character for both Chase and Jeice, he raised one hand and gave Riya's soft ass a playful spank. The needy female yelped as her butt was swatted, but she quickly recovered, and despite her blush, sent a steely Look over her shoulder and jabbed one finger towards his face warningly. In fairness, that hand would contain a number of concealed assassination tools on her counterpart, so that would be a very intimidating gesture indeed.

"Watch yourself, male!" she practically spat, "I should kill you where you stand for that..."

"Easy, now..." Chase said, raising both hands and pretending to be nervous, "It's just a thing non-assassin people do, it's a... not-entirely-respectful way to show my appreciation for your fine, cybernetically-enhanced backside."

Raising his hand, Chase pointed down and moved his finger in a circle, indicating for Riya to turn around. With one last wiggle of her rump, she eagerly obeyed - perhaps not what Nova would do, but the poor girl was practically dripping down her legs, so Chase let it slide.

"Now, just back up against the w-bulkhead over here..." he murmured to her, stepping in close, pretending he didn't notice his erection brushing against her lower belly. Purring already, Riya leaned back against the wall and shivered when she made contact.

"...And I get close and we do what comes naturally," he added, planting a quick kiss on her cheek as he reached down and took hold of his dick. Stepping even closer, Chase squatted slightly, as he was taller than Riya, and leaned in; the younger Abyssinian whimpered with anticipation and nervousness as the crown of Chase's hard prick bumped against her slit, and began running back and forth along her folds, gathering her juices and getting slicked up.

"You ready?" he whispered, out of character. Swallowing, Riya nodded almost frantically. With that, Chase took a deep breath to steady himself, and then, after meeting her eyes directly, he began pushing forward, shivering as he felt Riya's folds parting before his tip. Both siblings moaned with desire as Chase's cock slowly began to slide into his little sister's wet pussy, one inch at a time.

"Oh - oh, fuck, Chase..." Riya whimpered, her hands tightening on his shoulders as he reached the halfway point.

"Not yet," he quipped, "let me savour the feeling of you first..." As if she hadn't noticed his answer, she mewled with arousal, her inner walls rippling around him.

"God, you h-have no idea how long I've wanted this... How long I've wanted you..." She whispered, sounding close to getting emotional about it. Leaning in, Chase churred to her, letting his lips brush her forehead.

"This is how you'd p-picture it, isn't it?" Chase whispered, stuttering when Riya's pussy reflexively clenched down on him, "When you'd fantasize about us?" Riya moaned, long and shameless. Of course, that part might just have been Chase continuing to push into her.

"Yesssss..." Riya sighed, "I - I've always wished you would t-take me like this... It just makes me so hot... that's why I suggested it for J-Jeice and Nova... Aaangh!" She cried out and tensed up as Chase shoved himself in the last little way, hilting himself in his sister's welcoming body. She was so velvety-soft inside, so warm and slick, and the way her channel clung to his prick, it felt like they'd been made for each other. Both felines whimpered with pleasure as they took a moment to just get used to these feelings.

"I love the way you f-fill me up..." Riya whispered, her cheeks burning as she met her brother's eyes.

"Well, I love the way you feel around me, so I guess we're even..." Chase replied, sliding his hand down her side and pausing on her thigh, "Get ready, little sister, because I'm gonna make your dreams come true." He smiled, but Riya made a face like... like she felt about five things at once, and wasn't sure which one to choose.

"Oh my God, that's so cringe," she whispered, "...Why does it turn me on so much?" Booping her on the nose, Chase winked at her, raising the volume of his voice again.

"Because you have excellent taste in men, Nova," he teased, "Now then..."

Sliding his hand around to the back of her thigh, Chase gently lifted Riya's leg away from the floor. She shifted her weight to the other foot and allowed him to lift her leg so that her upper thigh was parallel to the floor, about even with their hips. He repeated the gesture on the other side, and Riya meekly allowed him to take her full weight on his arms. The slender female whimpered nervously and pressed both hands against the wall behind her to help support her weight as Chase adjusted his arms so that he was carrying her comfortably. Her legs were partially resting atop his arms, and his hands were cupping her supple buttocks.

"You alright?" he checked, and she nodded.

"Y-yeah, I've just never actually let a guy carry me d-during sex before..." Riya admitted, "Somehow in the dreams, I never worried about you dropping me..." Immediately feeling the instinctive need to reassure her, Chase nuzzled against her cheek and hit her with his best ruggedly handsome Jeice Rifter smile.

"Mmmm... if you think I'm gonna let go of this ass, you're crazy," he said, giving both cheeks a squeeze and making her giggle excitedly. His tone became a bit more earnest, a bit quieter, and he said, "Really, babe, don't worry. I got you." Riya smiled shyly at that, despite their entwined pose.

"...Thank you," she whispered, acknowledging her anxiety. Chase winked back at her, and with that, began to pull back. He almost, but not quite, pulled out, leaving just his crown teasing inside her, and Riya moaned. Chase allowed himself the rather flattering thought that she was moaning about how empty she felt inside without him, and smiled. After this brief pause, the wiry male slid back in, hilting himself in a single thrust, Chase groaned with pleasure at the feeling of Riya's pussy spreading open, making room for him.

"Mmm... Okay, big brother..." Riya murmured, "It's your turn to see how long you can stand while someone brings you to the edge." Churring to her, Chase grinned, peeling back his lips just a smidge to show off his teeth.

"Challenge accepted."

With a grunt, Chase pulled back and started thrusting in earnest, burying his prick in his sister's welcoming vagina again and again. Leaned back against the wall, Riya was a little passive, but the submissive way she lowered her ears - not to mention the noises she was making - showed that Chase had her full attention. She was bouncing slightly, rocking upwards every time Chase thrust into her, even though he wasn't exactly going particularly hard (yet). This made things feel especially responsive to Chase, who let his gaze explore the younger feline's body. He shivered with need as he took in sights such as Riya's tits, which were jiggling pleasantly in time with the siblings rocking against each other. The site of their joining also excited him on a deep, primal level, a part of himself that could happily watch his cock disappearing into a healthy female all day long. But in the end, the writer's attention was drawn back up to his lover's face. Riya's hair was a bit mussed up, and she was flushed and sweaty from their exertions, but she still looked radiantly beautiful to him, and the depth of the affection he saw in her eyes took his breath away.

Riya clearly felt similarly about what she saw in her brother's eyes, as she whimpered with joy, shuddered hard, and clenched down on his dick hard enough to hold him in place and cease his thrusting for a moment. Tensing up, she turned her face to the side and closed her eyes. Chase stepped minutely closer to the wall, changing the angle at which Riya was leaning against it, and bringing their faces closer together.

"No, I want to see you," he said, softly, "I want to see the look in your eyes as you let yourself surrender, let yourself feel safe in my arms. This is your truth... show me." He punctuated the statement by kissing her on the cheek. When she turned to look shyly back at him, Riya hesitated, studying his clavicle instead of meeting his gaze.

"...Was that meant for Riya? Or for Nova?" she finally asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes," replied Chase, immediately.

Despite herself, Riya laughed at this, shaking her head.

"Oh my God..." she breathed, and then spoke up, saying "I didn't think you'd say it, I can't believe you still made that joke e-even while you're inside me..." She yelped as Chase gave the next thrust a little more oomph than the ones before, driving home with a wet slap and feeling his heavy balls swing forward to brush against her butt.

"Sorry, babe, still your big brother," he teased, and then chuckled as he felt Riya's inner walls clench down on him from the reminder.

"Mmmm... you love that, don't you?" he whispered to her, "You're getting off so hard on this being incest, aren't you?" Her needy pussy shuddered and clenched again as he breathed the word 'incest' to her, which answered the question well enough on its own. But the younger feline was in the mood to answer.

"Yessssss..." Riya moaned shamelessly, "My - my big brother's dick is inside me, that's so wrong, so p-perverse, you aren't even wearing a c-condom..." There was something about that statement that snagged in Chase's mind, but instead of devoting any amount of his attention to it, he opted to focus instead on the eager female bouncing on his prick.

"...But even thinking about it m-makes me so wet... so hot..." Riya continued, whimpering with pleasure, "It's making this s-so much better..." She clenched down again, and this time, Chase felt his cock throb against her velvety channel, imagined himself drooling pre. After a moment, he came clean.

"I, uh, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a m-major turn-on that this tight, wet pussy I'm fucking is my little sister's," he admitted, thrusting extra-hard to punctuate the words 'tight' and 'wet', and feeling it squeeze down again when he finished the sentence.

Riya moaned eagerly in response

"God, yes, give it to me, big brother..." she whimpered, and Chase briefly glanced down when he felt Riya's legs, which had been dangling by his sides this entire time, lifting up and curling around his back. The younger feline's shapely legs held him snugly, as if she were trying to make sure he couldn't pull out all the way. This last thought inflamed Chase's desire, told him she was loving it just as much as he was. He couldn't help but groan, half-drunk on pleasure.

"Fuuuuck, you're so tight..." Chase panted, "this is amazing..." Riya let out a shuddery whimper, rolling her hips in time with her brother's thrusting, pushing her pussy towards him to ensure he buried his prick as deep inside her as he could on each and every thrust.

"Nnnffffff, d-don't stop, Chase, fuck me! Fuck your little sister!" Riya cried out. Chase growled with need; he'd never had such an eager lover before, and to hear such bold, crass things coming out of his shy, unassuming sibling's mouth... it was only natural that he started going a little faster, a little harder, than he had been before.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Riya gasped, shuddering hard, "Th-this is so much better than my dreams..."

Chase was purring almost as hard as Riya as the two Abyssinians rutted against each other, panting and whimpering in their forbidden passion. Bracing herself, Riya lifted one hand from the wall and reached forward to clasp onto Chase's shoulder, then lifted the other one in kind. She was still leaned back against and supported by the wall, but now she was holding onto her brother with her entire being, or at least that's how it felt to Chase, who loved every part of the sensation. What he loved less was the increasingly distracting feeling of his knees aching down below. Sex wasn't usually a workout like this, and his legs did not appreciate it. Distantly, Chase's mind reminded him of Riya falling while coming, and wondered whether weak knees ran in the family, but Chase understandably filed that thought under Don't Care for the moment to focus on bouncing his delighted sister up and down on his cock instead.

He captured her lips again, kissing her roughly, the panting breath from his nostrils tickling her whiskers, and both siblings moaned softly as their tongues entwined again. Each time Chase drove home, it made a wetly muffled slap, and even the sound was a turn-on with this woman. Even further below that, their dangling tails bent forwards and contacted each other, beginning to rub together as their owners frantically, ecstatically made love against the wall. Chase let go of one of Riya's buttocks just long enough to drop his hand a little, and then bring it back up with a playful smack to her rump. Riya arched her back and broke off the kiss to let out a gasp that was also a cry of pleasure.

Riya had dared to slip a hand off of Chase's shoulder so she could reach down and begin rubbing and massaging her clitoris, which Chase silently appreciated, both because he liked watching his sister masturbate, and because he'd felt bad about not being able to do that himself while he was holding her up. He was focusing on Riya and the lewd show she was putting on when he lifted one foot to adjust his stance and allow him to thrust a little harder. But when he put that foot back down, it was on a sock or a pair of panties or something, a bit of fabric that slipped out to the side, leaving Chase with a lopsided stance, and before he could re-balance Riya's weight, much less before he could brace himself to move his foot back, one of Chase's protesting knees suddenly gave out.

"Whu_oh shit!" Chase cried, as he and Riya suddenly pitched off to the left. Riya, for her part, let out a shriek, her tail poofing up as she suddenly dropped, Chase still inside her. Cats, as a general rule, have extremely good reflexes, even when they're not Inherited, so when they rolled as they fell so that Riya was beneath Chase, he was able to move his arms such that his weight fell upon his forearms, rather than the slender female beneath him. Ached like hell afterwards, though, even with carpet that thick. With a mutual _ooof, the Varma siblings flopped unceremoniously to the floor, with Riya lying flat on her back, her legs slipping down from Chase's waist as she groaned, briefly dazed.

"Owww... my buuuuutt..." Riya groaned, rubbing her rump, where she'd first impacted the floor. It should serve as evidence that Chase was similarly dazed that he did not immediately volunteer to rub it for her. No, sadly, at that precise moment, Chase was too busy kicking himself for dropping his lover their first time together, and struggling desperately not to whimper from how his arms stung, not to mention the painful twist his knee had received.

"Fuuuuuck..." he finally sighed, his ears flat against his skull in embarrassment, "Shit, I'm sorry, Riya, are you okay?" He couldn't see much more than what was between his arms, which was to say that it was just Riya's head and shoulders, with her raven-black hair spread out behind her head on the floor like a halo. She squirmed a bit, maybe searching for bruising, and then met his gaze.

"Yeah, I'm alright... what about you, though? You're the one who screamed and fell over!"

Feeling even more self-conscious when Riya was concerned instead of angry at him, Chase shrugged and blushed a little harder.

"Yeah, I slipped on something," he admitted, "Maybe doing it standing up and carrying you was a bad idea... or maybe I just shouldn't have skipped leg day." Riya smiled at that, so at least he had that going for him.

"I'm mostly just disappointed because the sex was really good," Riya giggled, "Mmmm, we'd really found a nice rhythm..." As she squirmed beneath him, Riya gasped, caught by surprise when she moved upwards slightly and felt Chase's still-hard prick brush against her pelvis, the hot, flat surface of the underside of his shaft pressed against her lower belly.

"I see I'm not the only one..." Riya added with a smirk, "How can you still be stiff, though?" Chase shifted his weight to his right arm so he could lift his left hand from the floor and move it down Riya's body. She gasped as he abruptly pushed one finger between her labia.

"How can you still be wet?" he countered.

"Th-that doesn't count," the younger Abyssinian protested, "it's not like I dry up the second I stop being horny!"

"Oh," Chase replied, calmly, "then I guess it's because you smell so damned good..."

As he returned his arm to the floor (after licking that finger clean while meeting Riya's gaze, of course), Chase began to roll his hips, just a little, gently grinding his penis against his sister's body to make it impossible for her to ignore. The texture of her fur was nice against his cock's sensitive skin, which still glistened with Riya's feminine juices, but it was a far cry from the hot, tight, silken grip of her vagina wrapped snugly around it.

"Knee's still sore," Chase observed, testingly flexing his leg a little, "I don't think we should try to pick up where we left off, but otherwise..." He waggled his eyebrows at her, but despite the warm smile she gave him, Riya didn't bite.

"Otherwise?" she prodded, clearly intent on hearing the words. Chase grinned ferally, only too happy to oblige.

"Well, if I'm okay, and you're okay, and we both agree getting interrupted sucked," he murmured, as he continued to slowly grind against her, "why don't we just keep going right here?" Riya blinked, thinking for a moment, and then smiled.

"...You probably could have worded that more lewdly," she critiqued playfully, "but okay, missionary sounds great, big brother..." Riya had lifted her legs and spread them wider as she trailed off into giggling, which only intensified as Chase pushed up a bit and maneuvred himself back into position.

The discordant purring in the room grew noticeably louder as Chase took hold of his cock and pressed the head of it against Riya's slit, running it up and down, teasing her good and proper. Sure enough, she pretty much immediately started rolling her hips against it and whimpering. Chase took a moment to enjoy the way she writhed and squirmed beneath him, pushing her hips up towards him.

"Chase..." she groaned, "are you trying to make me beg for it? Because I'll totally beg, just stop teasing me!" The taller Abyssinian chuckled, pulling back enough to break contact with her wet vulva, and winked at her, his whiskers dancing happily.

"Nah, just wanted to make sure you were still warmed up for me," he replied, "Now where were we...?" Riya whimpered with need as their treasures touched again, but this time it was only long enough for Chase to adjust his angle and begin pushing. The needy female's hands travelled up his arms and gripped his shoulders tight, and Riya moaned eagerly as Chase's hard dick slid back into her pussy in a single smooth thrust.

When the elder feline's balls were nestled against his sibling's butt, he let out a moan of his own, having been holding it back since he was halfway in. He couldn't take his eyes off of Riya's, at the merest glimpse of the emotions swirling within her as her brother hilted himself in her once again, as they continued their taboo tryst. There were no walls, no secrets between Chase and Riya, completely unable to hide their feelings fro, each other in this moment of pure intimacy. Chase had never seen Riya so vulnerable... and it just made him want to protect her, to hold her in his arms and keep her safe.

"God, Riya... I love you so much..." he whispered, leaning on his elbow so he could lift his hand and caress her face. Then he grinned and added "And not just because you feel so fucking good inside!" in order to make her giggle. She lightly bapped him on the arm but positively beamed up at him.

"I love you too, Chase," she replied, instantly, "and I - I love that you know that now!" Both Varmas sighed as Chase pulled back and began to thrust again.

"Oh! Ohhhhh..." Riya gasped, then moaned, briefly surprised to be getting fucked again, before she relaxed and lay back, spreading her legs a little wider so her brother's thrusts would reach deeper.

Chase dipped down and licked the side of Riya's muzzle playfully, barely affecting the rhythm he'd quickly fallen into. She churred up to him, the sound making some primal part of Chase's brain tingle with excitement, even as a more civilized part continued to voice its effortlessly ignored protests that Riya was a blood relative. He bent down again to press his nose against the side of her slender neck, breathing deep and filling his lungs with her. He marvelled at how a scent he was so familiar with could suddenly feel so very different, and leaned back to focus on his thrusting, on the feeling of his aching prick rubbing against his little sister's tight channel, again and again and again...

"Mmmm, yes..." Riya sighed, her hands beginning to explore Chase's upper back, her legs curling back up to wrap around his waist, much as she had in their more vertical lovemaking.

"I d-don't think you're g-gonna fall off if you let go," he teased, but she just tightened her embrace with all four limbs, hugging him tight against her.

"Are you joking with me? You're f-finally mine, I'm never gonna l-let go..." she panted. It went unnoticed in the heat of the moment, but their tails began to curl around one another, as if their entire bodies wanted to hold each other tight. At last, they were in the right position for their tails to coil together like the stripes on a barber pole.

They kept rocking against each other, moaning and yelping and gasping and whimpering names and praise to each other as Chase drove himself into Riya all the way to the hilt, over and over. Her legs tightened around his waist, that familiar snugness that made it hard to pull out. Chase couldn't tell, but the toes on the ends of those legs were curling up each time he bottomed out inside Riya; he was doing a good job. He did, however notice when the fingers on the ends of her arms suddenly dug their claws into his back, scratching him just below the shoulder blades, and he arched his back, groaned loudly, and shuddered as a wave of that peculiar pleasure-pain washed over him. In response, Chase growled with desire for this occasionally maddening woman and suddenly lunged in, sinking his teeth into her skinny shoulder.

"Ahh!" Riya cried, tensing up hard, before slowly relaxing as she whimpered "F-fuck, yesssss..." She shuddered in his arms and her pussy clenched down so hard that even as slick as her inner walls were, they held Chase's prick in place for a couple of seconds. When he leaned back, the faintest taste of copper on his lips, Riya had her ears flattened again. Seeing his little sister flushed with sexual arousal, her ears in a submissive posture, had been shocking, scandalous, the first time he'd seen it, even as it made his dick throb. But by now, he'd grown comfortable enough with the incestuous nature of this situation that it was just a turn-on.

"Th-that was a lot harder than mine..." she murmured, self-consciously, "What if it leaves a s-scar?" Chase hadn't planned a witty remark, he just followed his instincts.

"Then you'll be mine forever," he whispered, and she shuddered in his arms again.

Riya clearly liked the sound of that, moaning softly and hugging him tight again.

"Oh, Chase...." she sighed, and Chase briefly reflected on the life choices that had lead to hearing his little sister moan his name like that. "Nnnnfff, m-make me yours and yours alone..." Her half-lidded eyes snapped open as Chase followed her request by slowing down his thrusts.

"Say please," he murmured, before she could protest this cruel and unusual treatment.

"Please! Please make me yours, big brother!" Riya immediately and enthusiastically whimpered, unable to hide the desperation from her voice. She then relaxed noticeably as Chase resumed his former thrusting pace, and he chuckled softly... at least until the claws poking into his back convinced him to be more discreet.

After another time of panting and whimpering, as the Varmas focused on the sensations and the closeness between them, continually coming back to look into each other's eyes and share in the moment, Chase growled with need. Pleasure had been building inside him, and he was starting to struggle to hold it back. But he was hellbent on managing it long enough to inform his lover.

"R-Riya..." he whispered to her, "Oh - oh fuck, I'm getting c-close, I'm n-not gonna be able to hold back much longer..." She clearly heard him, but the wordless noise she made wasn't really much of a reply. Sexy, though.

"Do y-you want me to p-pull out before I c-come?" Chase persisted. The younger Abyssinian whined quietly, her legs tightening around her brother's waist.

"Nnnnooo, don't..." Riya panted, sounding close to the edge herself, "I - I've never d-done it without a c-condom before... I want to feel it!"

Chase had already started pondering where, on his sister's lovely body, would be the best place to mark her with his seed, so the response surprised him. Getting increasingly naked with Riya, sharing their bodies with each other, the progression had all felt so natural, so right. Despite how taboo it was, for the first time since he'd lost his virginity, Chase hadn't stopped to find a condom first. He'd just kept the moment going without interrupting the flow. But he hadn't expected Riya to actually ask for it inside her... Was his sister on the pill or something, or was she just... asking him to roll the dice with her? Sensing his hesitation as his thrusts slowed down just a little, Riya reached up to caress his face, pouting and giving him the devastating Sad Kitty Eyes. His ability to resist her in the name of prudence was already weakening, and she hadn't even said a word yet.

"P-please come inside me, b-big brother?" she begged, "I want it s-so bad..." Exactly as she'd intended, Chase's resistance crumbled instantly, and he shuddered against her, resigning himself to his fate.

"You win, you w-win," he groaned, to her obvious delight, "How could I s-say no to that?" Riya giggled victoriously and kissed him playfully on the nose.

"That's right, you c-can't, you good kitty," she cooed to him. Chase wasn't sure how he felt about the shudder that accompanied that phrase.

The time for doubt was behind him, so Chase redoubled his efforts again, fucking Riya fast and hard, and she gasped appreciatively, arching her back off the floor and pressing her soft tits against his chest again. It was this motion that drew Chase's attention to the fact that Riya had once again sought out her love button, and was rubbing and stroking it with a desperate enthusiasm.

"I'm... I'm so c-close... I'm gonna cooooooooome... " she moaned, "B-but I don't wanna come unt-til you do!" The eager male growled with the need for release even as his mate mewled with the desire for fulfillment. How wonderful that these were not mutually exclusive goals, then! Chase began tensing up from head to toe as he continued thrusting into Riya's hot, gripping pussy, feeling himself hurtling towards the point of no return at full speed. For her part, the younger feline's legs were slowly tightening around her brother's waist, and Chase did not think she was doing it on purpose. Their tangled tails held firmly to each other, clinging together just as passionately as the rest of the siblings' bodies.

The purring, sweaty Abyssinians continued frantically making love right there on the carpeted floor, Chase interrupting Riya's next moan by kissing her, delirious with ecstasy as his climax approached. Their tongues had only been dancing together for about four seconds, though, before Chase broke it off to moan himself.

"Oh - oh, fuck, Riya, I'm - I'm coming!" he cried, and he felt her reach up and grab at his head with the hand that she wasn't diddling herself with, turning him to look down at her.

"P-please, let me see, share with me!" she babbled, and Chase had just enough wherewithal to realize she was talking about sharing the moment with eye contact before he felt the dam burst. Shuddering and gasping, he gazed into Riya's beautiful eyes as pleasure exploded forth from within him, filling his entire body as he came. Chase buried himself all the way to the balls, one last time, as his prick began to throb and spasm, pumping warm, gooey come into his little sister's tight, wet pussy and painting the walls of her vagina with his seed. Riya had been stroking her free hand through Chase's hair and biting her lip, emotions dancing in her eyes as she watched her brother shudder through his pleasures. Finally, it was too much for her to bear, and Riya yowled with ecstasy as she followed her brother over the edge, trembling and shaking beneath him from the strength of her orgasm.

Riya cried out an almost piercing yes as she came, her vagina clenching down again and again, squeezing Chase's dick most pleasantly, but she forced herself to maintain eye contact with her sibling, who was moved by the experience of climaxing along with his mate. Talk about your vulnerability, it was like he could see all the way down into Riya's soul...

"God, yes," Riya repeated, "Oh f-fuck... G-give it to me, big brother, every d-drop, just flood me!" She was shuddering continuously through her pleasures, her free hand gripping Chase's shoulder almost as desperately as her legs were holding his waist, having tightened around him to the point where Chase couldn't pull out even an inch if he wanted to.

"Rrrrrr, yesssssss..." Chase managed, through clenched teeth. Her encouragement was making his orgasm even more intense, of course, but so was just looking at her and reminding himself exactly who he was ejaculating inside. He continued to obediently empty his balls into his sister's needy, squeezing pussy, as the two Abyssinians writhed and whimpered their way through their bliss, the purring filling the room around them.

When the long moment was finally over, and both Varmas flopped down limply, Chase let out a heavy sigh of relief, stars dancing and flickering before his eyes. When his vision faded, the first thing he laid his gaze upon was Riya, her own eyes closed as she lay back on the floor, panting silently. Although Chase had slumped down, bracing himself by his elbows on either side of his sister had helped him hold up his upper body and keep him from smushing her uncomfortably. Indeed, she seemed quite comfy where she was, laying on the floor of her room with her brother lightly laid over her like a hot, sweaty blanket. He found that he liked the contact too, made him feel protective. It also helped that he didn't want to move an inch right now, both because he felt exhausted after such energetic lovemaking, and because his still-hard penis remained snugly buried in Riya's pussy, and he wanted to savour the sensation of his sister around him.

Closing the distance between them, Chase planted a kiss on Riya's lips, just a quick mwah, and her eyes flickered open and she smiled at him like a fairy tale princess coming back to life. At least, that was how Chase perceived her in that moment. He had never seen such profound relief in her eyes before, though he supposed a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders; secret, forbidden attraction wasn't just her secret anymore. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, so many things he wanted to say... so he opted for none of them.

"Hey," he murmured.

"Hey," she whispered back.

"I've been thinking... about our game," he deadpanned. Picking up on his amusement, Riya put on a suspiciously straight face as well.

"Oh? What's up?" she asked.

"Well, I know we had different ideas for Jeice and Nova's positions, so what if we did both?" Unable to hide her smile, the younger Abyssinian maintained the earnest tone in her voice.

"Both, you say?" she asked the man who was currently buried in her, as if she had no other priorities, "Do go on..."

"I'm thinking they start by fucking against the bulkhead in a fit of passion, but halfway through they, uh, intentionally throw themselves down onto Jeice's bunk to finish up in the missionary position." He winked shamelessly at her, and added "I've had some amazing inspiration." Grinning from ear to ear, Riya managed to suppress her laughter.

"Oh, I think that's a great idea, big brother" she replied, emphasizing the word 'great' by clenching her pussy and making Chase shudder hard. Then, together, they both broke out into delighted, yet rather tired giggling.

When the laughter calmed down, the two felines, still purring, leaned in to nuzzle their noses together.

"I love you, Chase," Riya whispered.

"I love you too, little sister," Chase replied. They kissed rather briefly before one of Riya's ears cocked to the side.

"So... amazing, huh?" she asked, her tail twitching in its tight, coiled embrace with Chase's tail.

"Some of the best I've ever had, I mean it!" Chase said, emphatically, "It just felt... right! Like..." He struggled to put the emotion into words, his post-coital haze not helping.

"Like... we were meant to be together?" Riya suggested, her voice suddenly barely above a whisper. Swallowing, Chase just regarded her for a moment, taking in the sudden tension, the anticipation, the... hope.

"You know.... that's exactly what it feels like," he whispered to her, and couldn't help but smile as he watched that anxiety melt out of her eyes as she went right back to enjoying her afterglow. She smiled back and he churred to her, leaning to one side so he could lift an arm and caress her face.

"You're not crazy, Riya," he whispered to her, feeling that the words should be said out loud, "I feel it too." She giggled and churred back to him without a word, and he began to gently stroke the side of her muzzle with his fingertips.

"I... I had my uncertainties, I admit it," he said, "But after all this, I know it's not just sex..." Chase shivered. There had been another line from the dream that had resonated with him, but he didn't feel it was meant for the game. Now he knew exactly who needed to hear it.

"...I know I'm in love with you," he whispered, "I love you more than I've ever loved another person, and I can't imagine my life without you in it." Riya's ears dropped from the strength of her emotions, and she brought one hand to her mouth in shock.

"Oh, Chase..." she whimpered, barely audibly. She sounded like she was about to start crying from happiness, and so to keep her from feeling embarrassed in her afterglow, he kissed her again, running his hand through her long, silky hair.

When they broke off the kiss, they just held each other for a while, and it was warm and comfortable. Chase didn't stir until he heard a phone or wristwatch or something beep to mark the clock rolling over to the next hour, and then took stock of himself. He'd gotten a lot softer, so Chase somewhat reluctantly pulled back with a grunt, his penis effortlessly slipping out of Riya and glistening in the light, still at half-mast thanks to the warm embrace of his sister's vagina. Speaking of which, Chase felt a little anxiety of his own at the sight of the semen slowly, lazily oozing out of Riya's pussy.

"Hey... I know asking after is stupid, but, uh -"

"But am I on the pill?" Riya asked, calmly smiling at him. The elder feline nodded to her.

"Do you mean birth control pills?" she asked, a playful tone in her voice, "Or fertility pills?"

"Riya!" Chase protested, quietly hating whatever part of himself just shivered at the thought of Riya trying to have his kitten on purpose.

"Fine, fine, just having a little fun... Yes, I'm on birth control," Riya sighed, "Do you really think I would beg you to nut inside me if it wasn't safe? Me?" Chase reached up and sheepishly rubbed his forehead for a moment before leaning back down and resting both arms on the floor again.

"I guess you're right..." he murmured, "Sorry, all of this feels just a little crazy. Hard to tell where level ground is anymore."

"I can understand that," Riya replied, gently rubbing one of her brother's biceps, "I was in denial for so long! I told myself that it was just your body I was attracted to, not you, that the dreams were just because I couldn't stop thinking about it... Looks like it didn't work." Rolling to the side so he wasn't holding himself up over Riya, Chase laughed contentedly.

"I'll have to hear about those dreams some day," he said, "They might make for some great inspiration." The way his eyes were roaming his lover's naked body as he said the word 'inspiration' made his meaning crystal-clear.

Cuddling in closer to Riya, Chase loosely wrapped his arms around her, just holding himself against her and enjoying the closeness. He'd never wanted their frantic, forbidden lovemaking to end, but he supposed they had to get up off the floor eventually... Swallowing a sigh, the sated male regarded his sister.

"Riya..." he said, more quietly, less cheerily, "About what we're going to tell Mom and Dad..."

"No." She was succinct and to the point.

"...What do you mean, 'no'?" Chase asked, blinking in surprise.

"I mean, no, right now I don't want to think about the big secret we're going to have to keep, or lying to our friends and family, or anything like that!" Riya replied, more forcefully.

"I... I've been in love with you for years now, Chase, and this whole time, I've told myself it was a stupid thing to even consider, because of the secret, because of how hard it will be to keep it... and now, even though I've got you, I keep thinking about all those times I tried to convince myself it wasn't worth it..." She rolled onto her side and hugged her brother tight, nuzzling against his shoulder like she was afraid he'd disappear if she let go.

"So I'm just focusing on right now, on you and me," Riya continued, "I know it's important to talk about this stuff, need our relationship to be healthy and all... but can't we just ignore the world outside just a little big longer? Can't we just focus on this moment, right now, when we've admitted our feelings and consummated our love?" Hugging her back, Chase churred quietly and brushed some errant hair out of her eyes.

"Of course," he relented, "Anything you want, baby..." He paused to enjoy the way she shivered in his arms when he called her baby. "...But do you think we could at least get off the floor, and have this moment in your nice, soft bed?" Glancing down at the carpet as if she'd forgotten where she was, Riya smiled.

"You know, that does sound nicer... Okay, let's move."

* * *

"You ready?" asked Chase, as he held the door open for his sister. A few weeks had passed since the eventful day when the Varmas had given in to their desire for each other, and both of them seemed more relaxed, maybe even a little more confident than before.

"Oh yes," Riya replied, "certainly be nice to call Michael without any work hanging over our heads." He gave her a sideways glance.

"Nice to have all those, ah, 'connection errors' cleared up, too," he teased, stopping short of elbowing her in the side to make sure she got it. She just smirked and gave him a look in response. With the elephant in the room thoroughly addressed, it had been fairly easy for the two of them to finish their work on the sex scenes, even improving on a few of them in editing thanks to... recent inspiration. The siblings sat down in front of their camera set-up, and Riya reached forward and plugged in her laptop, revealing that her desktop background had been changed to a very recent drawing depicting Jeice and Nova in an even more passionate embrace than the one on Chase's desktop, with Jeice's shirt nowhere to be seen.

"Nice," Chase commented with a smirk, "Concept art for a sequel?" Riya's whiskers twitched as she made some adjustments to the cable and sat back down.

"That remains to be seen, I guess," she said, nodding towards the screen, which now displayed their dormant teleconference program.

With one last glance between them, Riya clicked on the appropriate button, there was some festive ringing from the program, and then they were connected once again to Michael Abbott. The moment he laid eyes on them, he lit up from ear to ear with an enormous grin. Chase, for one, immediately assumed the guy's tail was wagging.

"Hi, guys!" Michael immediately greeted them, "Chase, Riya, fantastic to see you!"

"You had sex last night, didn't you?" deadpanned Chase. The Great Dane's ears perked up a bit as he laughed.

"Oh, come on, Chase, getting the final draft of the script back from proofing just has me feeling so much better, that's all," Michael said, "But also yes." Riya burst out with a slightly undignified snort of surprised amusement, caught completely off-guard by that. Both males grinned at this, and Chase pretended his heart didn't give a flutter at the fetching way his sister blushed and lowered her ears, but neither of them said a word on the subject. Michael's expression suddenly become unconvincingly serious as he leaned in closer to the camera.

"Make anymore jokes like that, though, and I'll have to report you to HR," the man who was technically their boss said, "...Just as soon as we actually hire someone in HR." The three of them snickered like schoolchildren sharing a joke.

"More importantly," Michael added, brightly, "now I don't have to keep harassing any of my friends to finish their work all the time. God, I felt like such a jerk..." Riya waved her hand dismissively.

"Don't worry about it, we totally get it, even got it at the time," she said, "You did a great job of keeping everyone on-task and not letting anyone fall behind."

"Yeah," Chase agreed, "You're the MVP of the whole production, dude." He cheekily placed his hand on Riya's thigh, out of sight of the camera, below the desk. Without her facial expression changing one iota, Riya took a (very) firm hold of her brother's hand, removed it from her leg... and moved it to her other hand, closer to Chase, allowing their fingers to intertwine. Chase couldn't help but smile a little more, but in his celebratory mood, their canine friend didn't come close to noticing.

"Thanks, guys," he said, "Nice boost to the old ego there... Oh, forgot to say, we just need to finish incorporating the final script and art, and we'll be able to send the game off for final cert!" As if their friend's excitement was contagious, Chase felt a shiver of anticipation run down his spine. Final certification was a big deal for a game's development, after all!

"God, you hear that, Riya?" he said, concentrating very hard on not calling her 'babe' or even 'little sister' given the way it made her flush now. "All these years, and StarCrossed is finally gonna go gold!"

The slender female let out a trill of excitement, practically bouncing in her seat.

"I can't believe it's finally gonna happen!" she giggled in delight, "People are gonna play our game!" She gave Chase's hand a squeeze and he couldn't help but smile at her.

"Of course it's gonna happen!" Michael replied, "You guys really worked your tails off on this project!" He shuffled some papers off-screen.

"And this stuff is really good, by the way, all the writers have really outdone themselves."

"Aww, thanks," Chase said, sitting up a little straighter.

"I'm not just blowing smoke here," Michael insisted, "I was going over the last few love scenes and you guys outdid yourselves, particularly with the Nova scene." Both Abyssinians' ears perked up. Riya turned towards her brother and gave him a wry grin before she spoke up.

"Oh yeah? What about the Nova scene?" she asked, her tail swinging over to tease against her brother's. There was more shuffling of papers.

"Looks like you guys really saved the best for last," Michael observed, "There's some really great emotional weight in this one in particular. I mean, you can really feel Nova's confusion when she's trying to deal with her feelings. I love this line here..." He raised his forearm to his forehead and turned to the side, as if he were an overacting stage actor.

"'Don't indulge me, please. You've got so many great things to do, sending this ship all over the stars, exploring space, saving lives... and loving me back is only going to risk losing everything.'" the dog recited, before falling back into a comfortable grin. "It's fantastic! I wasn't sure how you were going to convincingly sell the idea of Jeice loving the assassin who came to kill him, but you sure proved my ass wrong!"

"You see, Chase? He loves it! I told you that was the best one!" Riya said, as if Chase had disagreed with that assessment. Michael laughed.

"I don't know about the best," he teased, "But for what it's worth, I'm as gay as the day is long, and the Nova path is still one of my favourites." Michael's ears perked up.

"That's not to forget you, Riya, the art on all the paths was great. I'm partial to the men, shocker, but I'm told the ladies are just as titillating." He quietly laughed to himself.

"And this isn't even the focal part, man, this game really is going to be sick..." He gazed wistfully off-screen for a moment, and then looked back down to his papers, his ears raising as he focused his concentration.

"Okay... so with all this, it should just be a matter of having the lines coded in, and then we wait for Riya's lineart to be inked and coloured," Michael said, nodding to himself, "Then it's just a final pass over everything and we should be done. Have a stiff drink and put this game behind us, start looking to the future."

The Varmas nodded back, hands and tails still touching.

"Right," they said, not quite in unison.

"Speaking of the future," their friend said with a smile, "I don't know if you're brainstorming the sequel yet, but have you given any thought to making Jeice/Freyr canon in the next one? I feel like it's gonna be a popular route..." He wasn't even trying to hide that he wasn't being serious, grinning delightedly. Riya and Chase exchanged a glance that probably said a lot more than Michael realized, and Chase smirked and let go of Riya's hand.

"You know, we'd been really focused on seeing this one hit the e-shelves, so we haven't really thought about the follow-up..." Chase said, faux-seriously, "But as perfect as Freyr and Jeice obviously are for each other, I feel like everyone will have their own preferences... Pretty sure I know which one is my favourite..." The elder Abyssinian's voice did not in any way betray the fact that he'd moved his hand to his sister's soft rump and started caressing it as he said that. Riya gave him a Look and managed not to blush.

Michael chuckled, but pretended to nod dejectedly.

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," the Great Dane sighed, "Well, maybe we can make it read the save so everyone's choice becomes canon."

"Oooh, I like that!" Riya said, her whiskers twitching excitedly.

"See? We're planning the future of this company already..." Michael joked, "Oh! But speaking of stiff drinks instead, I wanted to invite the staff out for drinks on the weekend, celebrate finishing all the content. The programmers and the music guy are already on board, but the voice actors are just a 'maybe', busy schedule and all that. You two in?" The two cats exchanged another look to silently communicate, which was easier since Chase had stopped teasing Riya's butt and gone back to holding her hand.

"Yeah, I think we can make that," Chase said, as Riya nodded happily. "When and where?"

"I was thinking we could meet on Saturday night at Sullivan's, across from the office block?" Michael suggested, adding "It's the place that had the nachos Chase really liked."

Chase had been having trouble placing the name until Michael had helpfully added that little detail. He suspected his friend had put it there for that very reason, knowing Chase almost as well as Riya did.

"Oh! Right, I remember, we got really hammered and got the whole bar singing 'Hey Jude', good times..." Chase murmured, grinning to himself.

"I'm not sure about the exact hour," Michael admitted, apologetically, "People shuffling things around and all."

"It's fine," Riya assured him, "We'll be there." The Great Dane smiled at that, and this time, Chase could actually see the tip of his friend's tail wagging back and forth at the bottom of the frame.

"Great!" Michael said, "Okay, I'm glad to touch bases with you guys, but we're not done-done yet, so I need to make a call to some guys about language localization, fun..."

"Best of luck," Riya said, lowering her ears sympathetically.

"I'd say this could have been an email," Chase joked, "but as a dog I'm sure you're just hard-coded to vocalize that I've been a good boy." Michael laughed at that, shaking his head.

"Nah, I just really wanted to share my appreciation face-to-face, uh, so to speak," he said, "But yeah, I'll let you guys go. Good talking to you!"

"You too, dude," Chase said, giving a little wave.

"Bye, Michael!" Riya added, waving along. It was quite a wholesome image, really.

Michael waved back and vanished from the screen with a bloop, and both Abyssinians instinctively relaxed, no longer dealing with either their boss or being sociable with their peers.

"I think that went pretty well," Riya said, as she stood and made to retrieve her laptop, "He didn't even turn into a robot or anyth- Chase?" She had turned to find her brother still sat in the same spot, staring off into the middle distance.

"Hmmm?" he asked, glancing at her with typical feline aloofness.

"The call ended like five seconds ago, and you're already lost in thought," Riya observed, sitting down on his lap and resting her arms on his shoulders in a loose hug.

"What's up, big brother?" she whispered to him.

"It's nothing, I'm fine," he assured her with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, "It's just... We've been working on StarCrossed for so long, thinking about it non-stop since we were just dumb teenagers with a cool idea... It's just so weird to suddenly realize... it's done. We're done. We're... just not gonna work on StarCrossed anymore, and that's a strange feeling after all these years."

Riya was already nodding sympathetically.

"I feel it too," she admitted, "Almost makes me want to do the final colour on my lineart myself so I can put the feeling off..." She leaned in a little closer and nuzzled against his cheek.

"It's probably natural to feel like this after completing a huge project, eh?" she said, "We'll get through it. I'm trying to look forward to people getting to play our game. Just think, soon we'll be able to gush over the positive reviews together!"

"Heh, yeah..." Chase agreed, grinning slightly, "And get our righteous indignation on about the negative reviews."

"Of course," Riya said, booping him on the nose before standing up. This time, Chase got up too, looking a bit happier than before. "And hey, on the weekend we get to hang out with everybody and celebrate this achievement!" She was walking towards the door when Chase's hand on her shoulder stopped her.

"Well, that's how the company is going to celebrate," he clarified, smirking at her, "But since we're the ones who have been here from the beginning... how do you wanna celebrate with just the two of us?"

Riya's smile grew wide and she giggled delightedly, pointedly setting aside her laptop before turning towards Chase - and leaping up into her brother's arms! Chase caught her, arms moving up under her butt, with an ease that suggested they'd been practicing since the first time he'd tried carrying her. He squeezed her rump, and she churred to him before they kissed passionately, her legs closing around his waist to hold her in place. As their tongues writhed and wiggled together, as their hands ran through each other's hair, brother and sister began to purr again, delighting in their love, even if they were keeping it a secret for now. Chase began to take slow, careful steps towards the door to the room, taking them somewhere more suitable for making sweet, sweet incestuous love. As she broke off the kiss, Riya licked her lover's cheek.

"So, my tomcat, are you ready to put this game behind you?" she asked. Letting go of one of her buttocks (because she was clinging to him with all four limbs), Chase reached up and brushed a lock of ebon hair out of her eyes.

"I think... I'm looking forward to getting started on the next one," he said, optimistically, and they kissed again as he stepped out of the office and towards a bedroom.

With the feelings that Riya had been denying and Chase had been oblivious to finally out in the open, the Varmas felt closer than ever, and not just physically; it was like they'd reached a whole new level of intimacy and openness than they'd realized was possible. With so much doubt and stress removed from their minds, they were even able to put more of themselves, and of their newfound love, into their creative efforts, reaching new heights of inspiration as they pondered what new twists and turns the story could take in StarCrossed II, and whether or not it needed a subtitle, as the marketing guys kept suggesting about the first one. This newly-blossoming love definitely had their juices flowing, creative and otherwise. The future was looking bright for the two Abyssinians, and they were eager to face it together, without the fear and loneliness that had kept them apart for so long. No matter how the game was received, whether or not the sequel ended up being made, these star-crossed lovers need never be without love again.