Litue 3 (Patreon)

Not sure if you guys are enjoying this story, but I wrote some more anyhow!

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The day grew late, and I watched as the sky turned golden. The sight was truly breathtaking, and I got so distracted that I didn’t even hear someone approach my door until the bolt clanged.

I spun in a panic and rushed to conceal the paperclip that I’d stolen from Governor E’e, but Voo’leath only laughed. “You don’t need to hide it from me,” he said. “I won’t tell.”

I sighed in relief and gave the little metal clip in my ear a tug. “Thanks, Voo. You’re a sweetheart.”

“Just don’t let the governor see you wearing jewelry,” he added as he rolled his cleaning cart into my room. “Your sentence said you’re not allowed any, and he’d be liable to tear the thing out. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”

I nodded and took a seat on the bed. “I didn’t think I’d miss it,” I confided. “But I guess I must have. I snagged it the first chance I got. I don’t even have a mirror. Perhaps I’m a klepto?”

“I wouldn’t overthink it, hon. You’re just not accustomed to having people tell you that you can’t,” said the muscular geroo. He grabbed a white folded sheet from his cart. “Now, are your sheets soiled?”

I shook my head. “Nah, his mess is under the table.”

Voo’leath peeked around one of the chairs and nodded before putting the sheet back in his cart. “Good. Mopping is easier than changing sheets.” He spritzed the tabletop with cleanser and wiped it down before turning the chairs over one-by-one and setting them on top of it.

When the janitor dunked his mop in the wash bucket, I stood up on my bed and motioned timidly toward his cart. “Hey, Voo… Um… You mind?”

The grey geroo shook his head and I leapt from my perch, landing head-first in his trash barrel. Within moments, I was digging through it, tossing papers and snack wrappers over the side with wild abandon.

“Litue! Stop that! You’re making a mess!” Voo’leath shouted as he reached in after me. He grabbed me under the arms and pulled me out, setting me on the floor beside his cart. “I didn’t even throw it in there since I knew you wanted it.”

He pulled the rolled-up newspaper from where he’d stashed it, beneath a stack of cleaning rags. I snatched it from his paws and hugged it to my chest. “You’re my hero, Voo!” I exclaimed as I started paging through it. Although it was cheaper to distribute news in electronic form, digital devices were still in short supply on New Gerootec. Most of their manufacturing had focused on crucial goods so far, and consumer products were lagging behind. But they had plenty of wood for paper… “You have no idea how boring it is to sit here without any shows to watch, any books to read, or any friends to fuck.”

The geroo rolled his eyes, and I set the paper aside. “Hey Voo, lemme show you how much I appreciate you, okay? You’ve got a fresh sheet. Let’s see how filthy we can get this one!” I grabbed him by the wrist and tugged him toward the bed.

“No, Litue! Geez,” he groaned, pushing my paw away. “Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

“No, of course not!” I said.

“Well, that’s exactly what you’d be doing. I’d lose my job, probably go to jail—”

“E’e doesn’t lose his job,” I said with a pout. “And he fucks me all the time.”

“Yeah, well, he’s the governor, and I’m… not.” He wrung out his mop and began washing away the splatters beneath the table. “Besides, even if my boss never found out, Deti would smell you on my fur. I don’t want to lose my mate!”

I groaned. “She’s cleaning the east wing today, right? Go get her! My bed is huge. I bet all three of us can fit. At worst, we’ll just take turns!”

He shook his head. “Deti would never agree to something like that. I’ve never done it. No way I can see her doing a threesome.”

“Oh, I can,” I said with a grin. Both of the janitors had resisted my offers so far, clinging to their weird conservative geroo customs, but it was easy to tell I’d been making more progress with Voo’leath’s mate than I had with him. She opened up to me far more than he did, held eye contact with me longer. I could smell her interest. If she weren’t so worried about “cheating” on her mate, we’d be screwing every night. Oh, these poor backward people…

“Wait. What?” he gasped in surprise.

I just nodded.

“Litue…”

“Just give me an hour—” I started to say, but he cut me off.

“An hour?” he shouted. “I don’t have an hour! Deti and I have to clean all of City Hall.”

“Of course, you have an hour!” I explained. “Look, you guys usually clean here until it’s late, and then you go home to fuck—”

Voo’leath growled. “We go home to have dinner.”

“Yeah, okay,” I conceded. “You go home, have dinner, and then fuck—”

He shrugged. “Well, occasionally, I suppose—”

“All I’m asking you to do is to move the time you were going to spend fucking up a bit,” I said, trying to hide my exasperation. “Instead of work, dinner, and then an hour of fucking before bed, you do your fucking now, then clean, then have dinner and go to bed. It all works out the same! You don’t always have to fuck before bedtime!”

He just stared at me like I was crazy. I really didn’t understand why he was being so inflexible.

“Litue, I like you,” he sighed, “but honestly? You can be a little trampy.”

I had no idea what that word meant, but I was certain it was some sort of insult.

He reached back into his cart and grabbed an item wrapped in wax paper. “Brought you a sandwich for dinner, okay?”

“Thanks,” I said glumly, taking the food.

He went back to mopping.

“Could you at least ask her?” I pleaded after swallowing down a bite.

He shook his head. “How could I possibly do that without ruining what I’ve got?”

“You just ask her!”

“Hey, Deti, you wanna have a three-way with Litue?”

I groaned and buried my face in my paws. “Not like that! You gotta… sell it a bit. Tell her how drop-dead amazing it would be! How life-changingly stupendous! I would do it, but you know I’m not allowed to leave this room. Unless you wanna bring her back here so I can ask—”

“No!” he shouted, then frowned for a time while he busied himself with mopping. “I could never explain that. But like maybe… Y’know how that loudmouth Litue is always bragging about how amazing she is in bed? You think any of that is true?”

I glared at him in silence for a long while. “Really? That’s your idea of ‘selling it’?”

“Look, I know Deti better than you! We’ve been mated for years,” he growled. “If I even hint that I’m interested in this and you’re wrong, then I’m sunk! I’ll have admitted that I want someone else. She’ll leave me!”

“That’s ridiculous,” I grunted. “It’s perfectly natural to be attracted to others.”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, “but there’s a limit! You can be attracted, but you can’t even consider sleeping with someone else.”

I threw up my paws. This was hopeless.

“What about…” he asked. “Has Litue been pressing you to have a three-way with us? Because she brought it up while I was cleaning her room and wouldn’t shut up about it.”

I stared at him, resting one cheek against my fist. “Y’know, I’ve never said this before, but the harder you try to have sex with me, the less I think I really want it.”

Now, it was his turn to moan. He threw down his mop. “I have no idea if all ringel are like…”—he gestured wildly at me with all ten of his fingers—“but geroo are not! We have to work within what is acceptable in our society if we don’t want to lose what’s important to us.”

“Okay, okay,” I sighed. “I get it. You’re just making me feel like I’m the burden you guys have to put up with. I’m trying to make you guys happy, y’know? I’m trying to thank you for all you’ve done for me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” Voo’leath put away his mop and started pushing his cart out of the room.

“So, you’re gonna go ask her?”

He frowned. “Not now, but maybe when we’re done working. I’ll ask her … what I said.” He drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “If she’s all, ‘Yeah, it’s annoying. I wish she’d stop doing that,’ then well, I guess that’s that. But if you’re right and she does show an interest, then I’ll bring her back by here before leaving. The three of us can talk.”

More talk. Great. How did I get taken captive by such a prudish race? I wondered. But aloud, I said, “Yeah, okay. I hope she does want to come back by so the three of us can talk.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11yAKG7U6qIYx308li6Xpfsr-ZHH22nGOx1n7jV-4H88/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?