Author of SF and Fantasy erotica

Welcome to Layman-upon-Waters. Elliot is the city’s new overseer for the Office of Municipal Integration, and his days are spent encouraging the region’s secretly inhuman denizens out of hiding and into cooperative citizenship.

Each chapter is a stand-alone event with only a subtle through-line, so there should be no issue with reading them out of order.

Chapter 3 – The Lamia

“He’s opening his eyes,” came a familiar, soothing voice. The voice that would ask him how his day had gone. The voice that accompanied the rich scent of tea and the crackling of a fireplace. “Elliot, lad? Can you hear me? Can you stand?”

The dark behind his eyelids gave way as Elliot urged himself back to wakefulness. When he pushed down with his hands in a bid to sit up, it was difficult. He stuck to the floor, and his head was spinning.

“Slowly,” came another voice, equally soothing. Deep and feminine, it was the voice that had accompanied softness under Elliot’s palms and heat across his erection. His stomach flipped as the blood in his veins was diverted in a plethora of incorrect directions. Hands caught his shoulders before he could tumble again, and a chorus of gasps met his ears.

Finally, Elliot succeeded in sight. His bleary vision picked out two figures, one on either side of him. One was standing tall with white in his hair and beard, a fine evening coat on his shoulders. The other was knelt in the mud with him, and her eyes held a glow that defied the darkening evening. Beyond, a small crowd of Low Town onlookers. Some had wide, anxious eyes, but many were laughing.

Elliot looked down and realised that one of his boots was unlaced. That seemed important.

“Here,” said Madam Lantern, offering him a clay mug. “Drink some water. No need to do anything else just yet.”

“The rest of you, off!” called Castellan Thaddeus to the crowd. “Entertainment’s inside, not here in the street!”

Elliot looked up the wooden wall of the building beside which he’d fallen, and he picked out the red-ink sign swinging over the door. Dancing by Lantern. He’d come for a drink at the end of another long shift in the office. He’d seen that his boot was untied, so he’d bent forward…

Lantern’s hand was scalding on his forehead, but he didn’t struggle. Her rosy cheeks framed a thin-lipped grimace, running parallel to the low line of her brow.

“No temperature, so I doubt you’re ill,” she said. “I haven’t heard you coughing, and your appetite seems well. Nothing to suggest you’ve fallen suddenly sick. Which means…”

She and Thaddeus shared a look, and Elliot didn’t care for the shape of it. It made him feel small.

“Elliot, lad,” said Thaddeus. “When exactly were you planning on filling those other desks in the office with some helpful hands?”

Elliot scowled around another greedy sip of water. “When I got around to it,” he croaked. “It’s fine. I can manage for now.”

“You obviously cannot!” harumphed Thaddeus, a chorus with Lantern’s disapproving sigh.

“That’s brave, foolish talk,” she said. “You can’t do all that work alone, Elliot. You need to hire some support.”

“Is this a wage issue?” asked Thaddeus, hands firm on his hips. “Are people being cheeky? Or has nobody come forward? I will tell the scrivener’s office to send-…”

“I’m fine!” Elliot tried to stand, but vertigo tipped him to one side in his rising and forced him to accept Lantern’s strong grip on his arm. “I’m fine. I can do this. I don’t need the help.”

Lantern pushed him against the wall of the tavern. She didn’t need much strength. Elliot held tight to his stubborn indignation to prevent getting too aroused by her aggression.

“I think we’re going to have to insist,” she said with a scowl.

“Yes, I’m afraid I shall have to pull rank on you, my lad,” said Thaddeus. “Tomorrow, the Office of Municipal Integration will be taking a rest day. And the day after, you will conduct interviews to fill at least one position in your cohort. I will get the word out, so you needn’t fear a lack of interest.”

“Hear, hear,” said Lantern with a nod. Her knot of blonde hair bounced playfully. “I’ll do the same. I know for a fact that some of my staff are looking for a change of pace. You’ll have your help, Elliot, you can rest assured of that.”

Elliot rubbed his eyes. His back was caked in mud from the Low Town road, and his skull was ringing like a gong. And his pride… His pride ached.

“Fine,” he said. Then he downed his drink, wishing it was something stronger.

* * *

Elliot thumbed the stack of papers on the desk beside him, feeling the tickle of parchment against his skin. A goodly number of willing administrators, truth be told, though it irked to admit it. Elliot had spent much of the past two months letting himself believe nobody was interested. That way, he wouldn’t have to share his precious responsibility with anyone.

Instead, his day following a shift of nothing but sleep and easily digested meals had been filled with conversations with potential new hires. Around a quarter of these had come from Layman itself, from the residents around the Castle if not the actual scrivener’s hall. Elliot recognised a handful from his apprentice days, all bright-eyed and full of the vim of ambition, though they naturally didn’t recognise him. He’d never stood out in his time there.

Madam Lantern’s locals had been more of a mixed bag than the practiced professionals of the Castle. Some, the earnest ones, had come to Elliot with a long story of odd jobs they had taken on throughout their varied lives, from baking to lumberjacking to fishing, with no evidence to suggest they could actually read and write. Mercenaries and lamplighters and dancers and horse wranglers. One handsome fellow very carefully did  not claim to be the highwayman who had been terrorising the local countryside, while simultaneously making it clear he appreciated the comparison.

Then there were the mummers, the liars if Elliot was feeling less generous. Those who claimed to be famous poets, songwriters and novelists, though they couldn’t produce a name for any work they had created. Those who claimed Elliot’s humble government role with its unimposing salary was beneath them, but they would demean themselves out of service to the people. Elliot felt no guilt sliding his notes on these candidates to the bottom of the pile.

And then there was Asura.

The young woman giggled at Elliot’s renewed attention, leaning on one hand and painting an invisible sigil on the wooden desktop with one finger. She was slim and graceful, and Elliot had not needed her confirmation to know she was one of Madam Lantern’s dancers. Asura’s ivory skin tone and slanted eyes suggested at a homeland further south than Layman-upon-Waters, a lineage she had taken pains to highlight with a masterful stroke of the lady’s brush. Glittery, emerald eyeshadow and luscious, puce lips, dark blush on her cheeks and a remarkable, metallic finish in her chestnut hair, making it shimmer in the afternoon sunlight. She wore a slim coat of forest green that stretched past her thighs, and the bronze, silk shift beneath was attached not over the shoulders but with a band around the neck, showing off the contours of her collarbone. She had soft sandals on her feet, which seemed unwise given the prevailing mud of the Low Town, but the green sparkles were clean as if freshly donned. Green paint on her toenails and fingernails both, and silverwork rings on her hands, wrists, feet and ankles all.

Asura flashed him a smile. She was gorgeous, and she clearly knew it. She could count the seconds of hesitation that Elliot was forced through each time he acknowledged her beauty and forgot what he was supposed to be thinking. Distracting, domineering and arresting, she would have had Elliot in the palm of her hand.

Unfortunately for her, Elliot was well used to strong-willed women after two months in the Low Town. And the hunch – no, the certainty that she was not human but merely pretending, did not overawe him as it had done on meeting Lantern and then Penelope. He didn’t know what manner of creature Asura was beneath her glamour, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t the right woman for the job.

“Tell me a little more about your position at the Dancing by Lantern,” he said with a stern scowl. “You’re a dancer, you say? What makes you think such a role would transform neatly into a government administrative role?”

“Oh, dancing is just what I do in the evenings,” said Asura, winking one dark eye at him. “Madam Lantern keeps all us girls busy during the day with cleaning, cooking, even a little paperwork. I myself balance the books from time to time.”

She adjusted her seat, languishing from one hip to the other. Elliot felt a brush of her toe against his knee, and he pulled his legs back and out of the way. Another fiendish giggle from Asura pursued him.

“You’re practiced with parchment and quill, then?” said Elliot. “There’s a lot of writing involved with this work. My own wrists are sore by the end of the day.”

“Mmm, I bet they are.”

“I just need to know that you are confident with your writing,” he persisted.

“Oh, I can write.”

“Neatly and consistently?”

“Here, why don’t I show you?”

Rising with a roll of her supple spine, Asura leaned across the table. Elliot stiffened at their sudden proximity, and he was paralysed by the woman’s shimmering, midnight pool eyes. When Asura slid his notes out from under his fingers, he didn’t resist. And again, when she plucked the quill from his fingers, he did not fight.

Asura’s body was a languid arch from her raised rear up to her shoulders. A shining lock of hair dropped free of the bun on the top of her head and brushed past her ear, and she used a green fingernail to tuck it back into order. And with her other hand, propped by her elbow, she was writing on his parchment. Elliot stared at the lovely dancer’s lips, her tongue emerging from within as she concentrated. He breathed in the spicy scent of her soap and makeup. Then, with a rosy smile, Asura handed him back his quill and took her seat.

“There,” she said. “Can you read what it says?”

Elliot swallowed. Asura had written ‘Fuck me’ in gorgeous cursive along the top of his page. She giggled as she watched his eyes dance along the flow of her script, and she proudly drank in the blush that threatened his cheeks.

And Elliot let his temper build. Asura was charming, seductive and pleasing to the eye. She could write, and she would likely maintain a good rapport with the locals. But…

“This really isn’t the right work for you.”

Asura sat up straight, a wide-eyed look of shock on her narrow face. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t have any ambitions for this kind of role,” Elliot said. He counted off on his fingers. “You don’t have a background in legislation or law. You don’t have experience with the certificate of aegis process yourself, or anything like it. You struggled to maintain focus through your own interview, so I can’t imagine you’d handle a certificate application with suitable aplomb. Frankly, Miss Asura, I believe this work would bore you.”

Slowly, the dancer deflated. Elliot’s heart throbbed with sympathy, but he shoved it back into order. And well he did, as in the next moment, Asura was smiling again.

“You are quite right,” she said. “This work would bore me.”

“Then why did you apply?”

She shrugged her slender shoulders with a pretty purse of her lips. “I thought I had better widen my horizons. And this place is close to the Dancing by Lantern so I wouldn’t need to commute far from my rooms there. I like to meet people, so that would make the days a little more interesting. And the money is a step up from my usual tips.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling a wide, shameless smile. “That’s it.”

“Then you can’t have thought I would hire you,” said Elliot. “You can’t have thought I would consider you the best candidate for the job. Not with your lack of experience.”

“Now, hold on.” Asura planted her hand on the desktop, fingers splayed. “I may not be a fancy scrivener, Mister Elliot, but I’m no fool. I know my own worth, and I believe you will acknowledge that worth.”

“Can you elaborate?” asked Elliot.

Asura grinned. She placed her hand on the paper in front of him and then pushed it forward. ‘Fuck me.’

“You can’t be serious,” Elliot sighed.

“Oh, I’m very serious. I like to have fun, Mister Elliot. And I think the two of us could have an awful lot of fun here in this little office, night after night. I could do a spot of work here, some writing there. Nothing to sing about, admittedly, but enough to show the castellan that I’m not worth sending away. And then, when we’re alone, I’ll make you come.”

Her teeth flashed in the sunlight streaming through the warped glass of the window. Her hair shimmered with a sheen of emerald. “I’ll make you come as often as you like. On my chest or in my mouth or up my pussy, it doesn’t matter to me. Keep paying me, and I’ll make sure you never regret inviting me into your life. On my word. Now…”

Asura sat back in her chair, folding her slender arms at her chest, and cast him a proud smirk. “Tell me you’ve received a better offer than that today.”

Elliot throbbed. His weary mind begged him to give up and let her in. So beautiful, and she’d make him feel better. She’d ease his strain, and she would do so with expert proficiency if her body was any judge. Asura’s toe brushed against his knees again under the table. She pushed her touch along his trousers and eased his legs apart.

“I think we’re done here.”

Asura’s brow twitched. “Are you sure about that?”

“Quite sure. This isn’t a game, Miss Asura.” Elliot rose from his chair to keep her away. A flash of emerald scale as she retreated under the table, suggesting she hadn’t been using her foot after all. He pushed his curiosity down and said, “This is no game. It’s work.”

“I disagree.” Asura was scowling up at him. “Life is a game, Elliot, and ‘work’ is where the game shows its true colours. It’s all about meeting demand and reaping the rewards. Money, renown and fun. You could offer me all of those, and I could reciprocate. We’d both be winners.”

He folded his arms. “But you’d do the job poorly. Our clients would lose.”

Asura rolled her eyes. She leant forward on one elbow, her tongue moving along her teeth behind her lips. Elliot continued to glower.

Yes, Asura would have eaten him alive two months ago. Thank goodness for Madam Lantern’s unorthodox tutelage for immunising him from the attention of a beautiful woman.

Somewhat. Immunising him somewhat.

Asura, seeing she was losing, huffed. “Alright, fine. Sit down.”

Elliot remained standing.

“You’ve made your point!” Asura snapped, meeting his eyes. “Sit down.”

Letting out a sigh of his own, Elliot adjusted his coat and took his seat. She was right, he’d made his point. But it was a surprise when Asura rose instead. She took a moment to stretch out her spine, wincing with pleasure, then slinked around the desk. Elliot was forced to stare up at her as she sat herself on the tabletop beside him.

“I saw you fall outside the Dancing by Lantern,” said Asura. Her voice was the soft, comforting whisper of fresh bedsheets. The dancer wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were kind. Shimmering. “Lantern was beside herself. She doesn’t like to see you hurt, Elliot. None of us do, not when you do such good work for us, like you said. And I knew I could help you.”

Those shimmering eyes held him fast. Elliot didn’t protest when Asura placed one slippered foot on his chair beside his thigh, then leaned towards him. She touched his hair with her slender fingers. She stroked him, and it was luxuriant.

“You work so hard,” she whispered. “You deserve to rest. I’m not smart enough to ease your burdens like a good little worker, but I can help you rest. I can take the stress away. Imagine it, Elliot. The work is done, your body is weary, and you slink upstairs to bed. To me.”

Tangling her fingers in his hair, Asura leaned in. Her eyes were all he could see. They dragged him in, drowned him under her dark waters. Dark, warm waters…

“Imagine my body curled around yours in our shared bed,” Asura sighed. “Imagine my voice reminding you of your worth. I could heal you, strengthen you, and then send you out to do more of your good, good work. Doesn’t that sound heavenly? Doesn’t that sound like exactly what you need?”

She wasn’t wrong. Asura’s comfort sounded like heaven. After the long days, the thankless clients, the callouses on his fingertips, it was-…

“It’s what you deserve!” said Asura, breathing into his lips. “You deserve to rest! So rest, Elliot. Rest with me.”

His head was lolling, but Asura’s hand in his hair kept him upright. His vision blurred, but her eyes were sharp as crystal. Still, he did see a smile creep up the edges of her lips out of the corner of his vision.

“Rest, Elliot, and let me take care of everything.”

* * *

It was late, and Elliot was cold. A wind blew against him, and he was buffeted as though he weighed nothing at all. He staggered, and his thigh bounced against the chalky stone of the outdoor well. The hard surface was a shock, but doubly so the sloshing water spilling over the edge of the bucket in his hands. Elliot hissed as chill liquid soaked his trousers and filled his shoes. He slammed the bucket down on the side of the well, then took a step back and assessed his situation.

He was standing in the triangular courtyard outside his kitchen window. The two buildings making up the longer edges were dark, but the moon was high and bathed the stonework in silver light. Elliot had been out here for water enough times to navigate it in pitch dark.

But why was he here now? Hadn’t he been working just a moment ago? It had been the early afternoon, and the pile of applications for a spot on his support staff had been tall. He’d been speaking to…

Elliot’s heart thudded in his chest. He stepped up to the bucket and peered down at his own reflection in the water. His thick, brown hair was tousled as if from rough sleep, and his turquoise eyes were ringed with red. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, and his green coat of office hung from one shoulder. Then he looked closer, and he raised a hand to his cheek. His fingertips came away with a trace of oil, fragrant and puce. The shape of a woman’s lips. And in his trousers, the stubborn weight of an erection. It ached, so it must have been waiting there some considerable time.

Leaving his water behind, Elliot stormed back into the Office of Municipal Integration. The kitchen door clattered as he ran to his work desk. He pressed his hands to the papers scattered across the table, and he read the page resting on top of the chaos.

Interview notes from his discussion with Asura, and he could tell it was the same piece of parchment from the lascivious graffito on the top edge. But everything else about it was unfamiliar. His handwriting, but the text described a woman quite unlike the dancer Elliot had met that afternoon.

Good organisation skills. Polite and efficient manner. Aspirational love for her city and nation. If the words were to be believed, Asura was far and away the best candidate for a position in Elliot’s team.

And Elliot’s blood boiled. Clutching the paper tight in one fist, he marched out the door and into the night.

Low Town was celebrant tonight, as it seemed to be on most nights. The people of Layman’s outer settlement took hold of any reason to let loose, and there were many places to go in the night that would support such celebration. Taverns and bars, little music halls and smoke emporiums. But Elliot had only one path to follow. He pushed against the door below the red-ink sign of the Dancing by Lantern, and he surged inside.

Music and chatter assailed him like a wave. Heady scents and thick, perfumed air. Business was alive in Madam Lantern’s sordid tavern, and the raunchy atmosphere settled on Elliot’s skin and tried to suffuse him. He didn’t let it. He shook off the fruity aroma of expensive spirits, the taste of sweat in the air, the rose-red lamplight that made the shadows long and lurid. He ignored the welcoming smiles of the men and women in Lantern’s employ, the beckoning hands and eye-catching attire. He put behind him the thumping music of the troubadours with their drums and pipes, and he stilled his feet before they could dance. He pushed through the jostling parishioners towards the bar and the beaming smile of the tavern’s owner.

Madam Lantern looked radiant tonight. Her shining, brown eyes resolutely dragged his attention away from the clinging bodice of her white shirt, all ruffles and open slits to show off the large woman’s figure, and her blonde hair was loose and lovely around her shoulders.

“Elliot!” she called over the din. “I thought we’d miss you tonight! You have to tell me about…”

Her smile faltered, then fell as she acknowledged Elliot’s expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Where is she?” He barely heard himself over the laughter and the music, but a few drinkers around the bar spun to face him. A black-haired girl next to Lantern who Elliot didn’t recognise jumped with fright at the sound of his voice.

Lantern was simmering. She chewed her lip, and Elliot fancied he saw some spots of her true, salmon-coloured skin filtering through her glamour as her focus wavered. The burning orange glow flickering at the edges of her brown eyes would have frightened Elliot if that heat had been for him. But it wasn’t. She nodded her head towards the far side of the hall.

“The door behind the musicians is the dressing room,” she said. “She’s in there.”

Elliot pushed his way through the crowds. A lot of them got out of the way well in advance, and the troubadours didn’t let up their lively performance as he slipped around them and through the door at their backs. He felt their curious eyes on his spine. Then the door slammed shut behind him.

Asura stood in front of a full-length mirror, but she’d spun to face Elliot on his entrance. The oil lantern on the ceiling illuminated a worn chaise longue in cream fabric, laden with pillows along one wall. The floorboards were coated with a rich, red rug, thick as moss and soft beneath Elliot’s shoes. It was a tight room, close and intimate, and Elliot was forced into Asura’s proximity by the warm confines.

She filled a lot more space than Elliot remembered. Asura wasn’t wearing her green coat from that afternoon; he thought he saw it crumpled on the floor by the long chair. The dancer was dressed in just the shimmering bronze of her halter shift, which left her shoulders and spine bare before looping loosely around her hips in a flowing, skirt-like wrap. And beneath that skirt, her legs were missing. Instead, Asura’s lower body was that of a long, emerald-scaled serpent with a cream-coloured underbelly. She was balanced on a fat coil of tail that took the weight of her torso, but the tail itself continued for another five or six feet in a long curl around the room.

Asura’s flesh was still a rich ivory, but now it was decorated with soft, green scales along her upper arms, her wrists and cheekbones. Her bun of hair was thick and shining with emerald gloss. And her eyes, those ethereal eyes that had taken him out of himself, were a brilliant yellow with slender, black irises. Her painted lips parted in a silent gasp.

“It’s you,” she said, looking him up and down. To assess his reaction to her transformation, or was she anxious for some other reason? She swallowed, then chanced a smile. “I wasn’t expecting you. Come to see me dance, love?”

Elliot proffered the mangled parchment from the interview. “You know damn well why I’m here!”

“Is there some sort of problem? You worked very hard on that.” Asura put a hand on her hip, her whole serpentine length tilting into a coquettish lean. “You were very complimentary. I was flattered.”

“You hypnotised me!” The ludicrous words sounded petulant, but Elliot was too incensed to care. “You made me write this drivel! None of it is true!”

The ringing in Elliot’s ears was backdrop to the sudden silence outside his skull. He couldn’t hear the music from the main hall anymore, likely a trick of the tavern’s thick wood. Asura’s wordless expression danced back and forth, from frustrated derision to playful dismissal. And then, with a huff, she relented.

“Yes, fine. You’re right. I did do that.” The serpent clicked her teeth. “Honestly, I’m not sure how you broke out of that stupor so quickly. You should have been under for hours yet.”

“Why?”

The snake smirked. “Why, you ask? Isn’t that obvious? I want the job, Elliot. I want that lovely government salary.”

“You don’t deserve it!” he snapped. “What was your plan? Were you going to hypnotise me every day you came to work to keep me from asking questions?”

“I wouldn’t have to. I meant all of what I said. I would make myself useful.” She fingered the fold of her wrap with a sharp smile. “One night with me would prove my worth.”

“And during the day? When I’d need you to do the real work?”

“Oh, what work? Letting people into the city? Please. People who want to enter the city will find a way with or without our help. My employ is not going to jeopardise that. Your office is just another game the nobility plays, Elliot. It’s not important.”

“It’s very important!”

At some point, a moment lost in the white blur of his vision, Elliot had crossed the room. He was standing with his legs parted over the curl of Asura’s tail, and Asura herself was leaning back against the wall of the changing room. One hand was pressed against the wood, and her serpent eyes were wide with shock.

“It’s very important, Asura!” Elliot persisted. “You think it’s easy for someone like you to get into Layman because you’ve never tried it! You’ve found your place in the Low Town, but what about others who can’t make a home here? I have been inundated with requests for a chance in the city! I can’t count the number of people who want just a glimpse of what’s been denied them! And now I can give them more than that! I can give them a life among humans! A national stage on which to ply a trade! A house to raise a family! Don’t you dare tell me that’s not important!”

His vision warped as he staggered, consciousness trembling. This time it was Asura who held him upright with a tight hand on his upper arm. He righted himself closer to her, and despite the impressive length of her tail, he found himself looming over the snake against the wall. Her lips were parted, and the lamplight shone like green flame along her scales.

“Don’t you dare tell me it’s not important,” he hissed. “Don’t you call what I do a game for the nobility. It’s vital, and I have to get it right. I have to… to get it right.”

Elliot’s throat ached. He looked away from the topaz shine of the serpent’s wide eyes.

“I’m not hiring you, Asura. I’m hiring someone who cares. That’s final.”

His piece said, Elliot tried to step back and away from her. But the heel of his shoe bumped against the coil of her tail, which had snuck its way into a loop around his shoes on the rug. At the same time, Asura’s hold on his arm tightened, keeping him from getting away.

The snake laughed, but her eyes lacked her usual confidence. They were creased with what looked like anxiety, and Elliot’s heart throbbed with guilt for making her afraid of him. And yet, when she licked her lips and showed him the forked end of her red tongue, when a bead of sweat escaped the copper locks of her hair and ran a line down her temple, when her scaled cheeks began to shine with blush, she didn’t look so afraid.

“So what?” she whispered, her lips carefully caressing the shape of each syllable.

His temper flared. Elliot set his lips in a line and silently dared her to explain.

“Why come down here and spoil my night if that’s all you were going to say?” she asked. “You could have stayed at home and torn up that paper instead of barging into my dressing room. So, what do you want?”

Her full lips curled up into a manic smile. “An apology?”

She was still playing. She was still mocking him. Elliot snarled. “Yes.”

“You want me to say I’m sorry?”

“Yes, I do.” When Asura reached out her free hand for him, Elliot dropped the torn paper of her application and grabbed her wrist, eliciting a gasp from the snake. “I want you to apologise for wasting my time,” he growled.

He could feel Asura’s tail slithering around his calves, embracing him with her coils. His blood was thundering, and her smile… Her smile was… infuriating!

“Make me!” hissed the snake.

Elliot kissed her. He wasn’t entirely sure why. But Asura met him like for like, sharpness with sharp. Her forked tongue lashed in his throat and her long tail gripped his thighs in an otherworldly tangle. Her free hand slipped around his neck and held his face against hers, but Elliot, burning with rage, grabbed it and forced it into a mirroring pin with its pair against the wall. And Asura wailed into his lips.

“M-Mmm!”

Elliot’s erection was a mad weight against her scaled hips. When he rubbed himself against her underbelly, he could feel where she was open for him beneath her skirt. His pressure against her pussy caused Asura to shiver from her wrists down to the end of her tail.

Asura writhed against him. He could feel her skirt tugging open where they rubbed together, could feel the heat of her against his trousers. Elliot peeled himself from her lips and kissed her neck instead, tonguing the sharp ridges of her little scales. He relinquished one hand and tackled the catch of his trousers with it, and Asura pawed at his shoulder as he worked.

“You gonna fuck me, human?” she moaned into his ear. “Y-You think that’ll-…?”

“Shut up.”

Asura’s keening voice cracked. “O-Okay…”

Elliot painted her underbelly with the slick head of his cock. He rubbed against her interlocking plates of firm skin with his tip, and he sought the wet depths of her. It wasn’t hard; she was ready and waiting for him. Elliot found a familiar and accommodating slit below her waist, and he fed himself into her. First with caution. Then, when Asura sang out a scream of pleasure, with a forceful thrust. He held her against the wall with the length of himself, pinning her with the penetration of his rod.

She felt spectacular. Asura was a throbbing vice around his cock. She squeezed him, just as her tail was squeezing his legs. She soaked him in fluid. The snake let Elliot pull back just enough that he could push another penetration into her, and he grunted into her neck as he began to rut.

Elliot wondered at his state of mind as he fucked Asura with resolute pounds of his hips. He’d certainly never gotten this fired up with a woman before, they hadn’t let him. He hadn’t even known this side of him existed. But the anxiety that he was being too rough was ground to dust in the rhythm of his thrusting. Asura’s scales resisted his blows. In fact, she seemed to be enjoying them.

“Y-Yes, yes!” she groaned into his ear. “D-Don’t…! Don’t…!”

Her voice broke around a lyrical string of sibilance Elliot’s mind couldn’t comprehend. Elliot felt the flick of her tongue against his ear as she hissed out moaning expletives of serpent vocabulary. When he bit down on the soft flesh of her neck, her diatribe cut off with a screech of desire.

Asura’s fat abdomen rolled against his thrusting and devoured him. She met his pounding with a wet squeeze of her body. Her hot breaths left condensation in the collar of his coat of office.

And Elliot was too tired to care. Too tired to care that the insipid woman might have just seduced him into obedience. Too tired to care whether this was still a product of her hypnosis. And far too tired to care that his finishing inside her might make her pregnant with some sort of half-human, half-snake baby. His skin was aflame, his blood was pounding. Elliot came.

He grunted like a beast as he once more skewered Asura against the wall with his cock. He squeezed the come out of himself and let it fill her alien anatomy. He could feel himself dripping around the plug of his rod. He imagined the slick semen making curved trails between her scales. Asura’s sighs were soft and hot against his ear.

When he pushed back from her, Elliot’s sweaty clothes peeled off her skin. Both of them were dripping wet. His muscles ached. But also… so peaceful. Such a relief to be shed of his burden.

“W-Wait…”

Holding her at arm’s length, Elliot glowered into Asura’s plaintive eyes. The snake squeezed him with her tail and panted from her lips, head lolling and arms limp by her sides.

“I’m so close!” she moaned. “S-So close! You have to-…”

“I’m finished, actually.”

Asura’s lips fell open. A sharp scowl etched her brow, and she breathed in to begin what promised to be a hot tirade.

But Elliot smirked. “Did you have something to say to me?”

She bit back her words with effort. Elliot enjoyed the snake’s petulant indecision. He kept her held away from him when she tried to rub her dripping pussy against his wet cock. Elliot ran a hand from her bare shoulder down the shimmering fabric coating her chest, and she stopped wriggling, her breathing sharp. Asura shivered as he placed his palm on the scales of her tail. Her slit lay an inch further below.

“Well?” asked Elliot.

Asura’s eyelids fluttered. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“What was that?”

“I’m sorry, Elliot! I’m sorry I wasted your time!” sang the serpent. “I’m sorry I hypnotised you, and I’m sorry I extort you into giving me a job I don’t deserve!”

Elliot ran a teasing finger around the outside of her slit. “You’ve been such a hassle.”

“I know, I’m sorry! Just… Fuck! Please! Forgive me!”

He leant against her. Elliot’s fingers delved her pussy and were instantly sodden. “Fine. Just this once,” he whispered against her ear.

Asura groaned as he explored her. The snake’s pussy sucked his fingers with voracious hunger. They let him in deep. Was she deeper than a human girl, he wondered, thinking back to a certain red-headed apprentice and the dark of the Castle supply cupboard. He couldn’t recall.

“Mm-mm-mm!” moaned Asura, humping his fingers with her scaled hips. “Ah-ah! Ahh!”

One thing was certainly different, Elliot discovered as he thumbed the edge of Asura’s slit. The mound of the serpent’s clitoris was joined by a twin, a mirror image on the other side of the opening. A semi-clitoris, or something like that, though Elliot was no naturalist.

Whatever their names, Elliot was finding great success in sharing a rub of pressure between the two mounds. His lubricated thumb worked back and forth, denying one to indulge the other, and Asura’s grunting rose in pitch and pace. The point of her tail thrashed along his spine like a miniature whip.

“P-Please! Please!” she gasped. “Please! F-Finish! Finish me! Please!”

He kissed her cheek, caressing the scales of her neck with his free hand. “Asura…”

“Please! Elliot! E-E-E…!!”

Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. Elliot choked as Asura’s tail grabbed him around his stomach and squeezed hard. At the same time, her hands fell into his hair and tugged. Her shriek of climax echoed in his ear.

“Yessss!!”

Fighting the pain, Elliot held her at the peak of her orgasm. He pushed down on her twin clitorises. He pressed his lips against her neck.

And long moments later, she relented. Elliot staggered out of her coils with his cock flopping out the front of his trousers, and Asura slid slowly and gracefully to the ground. She lay on the rug with one arm over her eyes and caught her breath. Her chest rose and fell beneath her mangled shift. Her skirt was a dishevelled mess around her bare underbelly.

“Fuck…” she sighed. “I… Fuck…”

Elliot returned his cock to his trousers and straightened his jacket. The shame of letting himself get carried away warred with the pride at seeing a so thorough satisfied partner. He needed space to consider himself.

“I’d better go,” he managed.

“Wait.” Asura’s tail hooked loosely around his calf. “Wait, Elliot. I don’t think I’ve… quite made it up to you.”

He didn’t fight the smile very hard. “I’m a busy man, Asura.”

“Then come back again some time. Come back and see me dance.” She grinned at him from under her arm. “And then come backstage and do that thing with your thumb again.”

Elliot folded his arms. “Will you be good?”

“So good,” she chuckled. “I’ll be so, so good from now on. Promise.”

“Good night.” Stepping out of her tail, Elliot took his leave. He ran his hands once again over his clothing to ensure they were suitable, then stepped back through the door.

The roar of applause took him entirely by surprise. Elliot staggered, buffeted back by the sound, the eyes of the crowds. When he hesitantly made his way back towards the bar, Elliot received many a slap on the back, a hearty wink from one of Lantern’s girls.

“Sounds like you got some payback,” said Lantern herself when he reached her. She was grinning from ear to ear. “That was quite a song you shared for us!”

“I… I didn’t know the walls were so…” Elliot’s cheeks were aflame. He scratched bashfully at his hair. “Sorry.”

But Lantern shook her head. “No, thank you, Elliot. You saw how Asura is. Getting put in her place like that will make her so much more manageable, for a while at least.”

“I’m not hiring her,” he said.

“No, and I wouldn’t let her go. She’s much better off here than working with you, even if you did tame her tonight. But did you find some help from some more suitable folk, at least?”

“I don’t remember. I’d better go home and check.”

It’s very important! bellowed Elliot’s past self in his memory. Don’t you dare tell me that’s not important!

Now that he knew what was at stake, maybe he could find the right fit for the Office of Municipal Integration. Someone who would take the role seriously. Someone who dreamed of a cooperative tomorrow, just as he did.

“Could I get a drink first?” he asked Lantern. “Something stiff? I feel like I need it.”

Lantern bent to fetch a bottle of spirit, and Elliot was assailed by the praising hands of the crowd. “Gave Asura a stiff one, eh mate?” was said often.

Elliot didn’t make it home until morning, and that was fine. His work could wait, just this once.

laymenstory