Limitless Evolution As a Snake

I don’t say anything for a second, just staring. That’s not the clumsy, broken-horned girl who tripped over my tail in an alley. This is something else. Something I made. And holy shit, it’s working.

I should probably tell her how fucking hot that was.

I drift over, tail smoke curling low across the floor. It’s still weird, this body. I went from solid noodle to sentient vape cloud with ghost hands. At least this version has them. I tap her shoulder with a wisp of smoke, and she turns, still smiling, glowing from the casual way she handled the attacks.

"Hey," I say. "C’mere a sec, wanna talk to you outside."

She doesn’t even ask why. Just grins wide, horn stumps twitching, and skips after me, fingers lacing through the smoke where my hand should be, like she’s done it a hundred times.

We slip out through the side doors onto the balcony, the party noise fading behind us into a dull hum. Cool air, Twawi city lights smeared out past the carpark, nobody watching.

I coil the rest of my smoke around her, slow, wrapping her up until she’s pressed right against what passes for my chest these days, and just breathe her in.

Vanilla and something sweeter underneath, that smell she gets when she’s happy. "There’s nothing you can’t do," I murmur, low, right against the top of her head. "You handled all that back there without breaking a sweat, seriously. That was insane."

Her horn stumps twitch hard, and she makes this small sound, half laugh, half something else, burying her face into the smoke like she’s trying to disappear into me.

"I just," she starts, voice already gone soft and stammery, "I just didn’t want anything to happen to you, that’s all, it wasn’t... I mean, I didn’t even think about it, I just moved-"

"Yeah, well." I tighten the coil a little. It takes nothing. A barely-there thought. A few months ago I was getting my scales cracked by a sewer gator. Now I can hold this little war machine still with a puff of smoke. Evolution is one hell of a drug. "Still insane, and apparently you can shoot my teeth out of your mouth now too, so that’s a whole new level of insane, we’ll get to that in a sec."

"Wait, what?"

"Later," I whisper, and dip my head lower, forked tongue flicking out to taste the air right at her collarbone, warmth and nerves and want all rolled up together, and she shivers so hard the whole coil around her trembles with it.

Her hands find the smoke like she’s trying to grab hold of something solid, fingers curling into wisps that shouldn’t hold shape but do anyway because I want them to right now.

"Matt," she breathes, and her voice has already dropped half an octave, gone thick and slow in a way I recognise. Horn stumps stop twitching, steady now and focused; her eyes start swirling different colours.

Well, there she is.

One of the smoke tendrils along my side peels off, thin and curling, and I guide it down slow, tracing the shape of her hip before I let it slip between her legs and press right up against her.

She makes this sound, this sharp little ahh that cracks halfway through into a gasp, and her whole body jolts against the coil.

"Haah, Matt, not here," she whispers, frantic, hands scrambling at the smoke as she can somehow stop me with fingers that just pass right through. "Your family is right there, they’re literally on the other side of that door!"

"Mmhm." I don’t stop. Her knees buckle, and the coil takes her full weight without even trying. This smoke form is nuts. I just think it, and it happens. And family? Please. They can wait. Or watch. I don’t really give a shit either way anymore. "You don’t want to be naughty out here?"

I dip my head down next to her ear, voice gone low and lazy like I’ve got all night, because honestly I kind of do.

"Funny," I murmur, "because you’re already soaked. Like, embarrassingly soaked, I can feel it right through the smoke, Cherry."

She makes a noise that’s somewhere between a whine and a laugh, face going red all the way up to her horn stumps, and she buries it against my chest again like that’s going to hide anything from a guy who can literally taste the air around her.

"Shut up," she breathes, no heat in it at all, hips already tilting forward into the pressure like her body’s got a mind of its own and it already made a decision without asking her first.

"Make me," I tease, and give the coil one more slow squeeze.

And that’s all it takes.

Her scent hits me full force, and my whole thermal vision just goes pink, every heat signature in the world blotted out by her, like someone dumped a bucket of paint over my brain and called it a day. I don’t even decide to move; I just do, smoke coils dragging her down onto the ledge of the balcony wall while my head dips low, and I start tasting her, actually tasting her, tongue flicking out slow along the inside of her thigh.

She yelps, hands flying to her mouth too late.

"Shh," I whisper, not even bothering to sound like I mean it. I want her loud, my snake brain hisses, but I can’t have loud right now. That contradiction coils up inside me, a feedback loop of predator instinct and basic self-preservation that I don’t have time to unpack.

I work my way down slow, tongue tracing behind her knee, and she full-on giggles, this snorting, embarrassed little laugh like I found a ticklish spot she forgot she had, and then two seconds later I find a different spot and the giggle breaks apart into a moan so sharp she has to slap both hands over her own mouth to keep it in.

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