Chapter 22
He’d sold that property when she’d stopped joining him there for the summer, during her college years. She’d been too busy, she’d told him, but the truth had been more complicated. He’d wanted to bring her—his new wife—to intrude on what had always been Cass’s special time with him.
There was no reason she should be there now. Staring around her in shock, she noted that the netted hammock still swung between the two pines that had shaded her when she was a child, rocking back and forth under the evening sky, using lazy kicks of her foot to set the hammock swinging as she daydreamed about having adventures in far-off lands, with her trusty canine companion at her side.
A short distance away, the Airstream trailer that had sat on that property for as long as she could remember gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the dense copse of pine trees.
“How is this possible?” she asked, looking down at herself and noting she still wore the hard-suit she’d taken from the shuttle.
As she stared at it, touching it to remind herself of the shuttle and of what should be real and what shouldn’t, the suit shifted beneath her fingers, changing to a white sundress with bright pink daisies all over it. She’d worn something similar on the last summer she’d visited the property with her father, before his marriage to her stepmother.
She gasped and jerked her hand away from the dress, gaping at the fabric as the loose skirt rippled in the breeze that escaped the pine needles.
“What the hell?” She looked back at the silver trailer, then spun around to find the house, just as she remembered it—an aging double-wide with a sagging porch along the entire front of it.
The only difference from her memories was that Nahash coiled on that porch, staring back at her.
She rushed towards him, noting how incongruous he looked in that place where he didn’t belong. The fact that he looked so wrong in an Earth setting disturbed something deep inside her that she didn’t want to acknowledge—something that caused panic to twist her insides.
“Nahash!”
She clattered up the steps in pink heels that had replaced her suit boots when she wasn’t looking. The unexpected shoe change caused her to stumble, but Nahash caught her in his arms and pulled her against his chest—a chest also free of armor—or any clothing to hide his scaled muscles from her view.
“What’s happening to us?” she asked, clinging to him, terrified he would disappear at any moment.
He shook his head, a deep frown creasing the space between his brows and carving grooves around his mouth. “I don’t know, Casss. I’ve never seen a place like this before, but it can’t be on the station.”
Though his words scared her, his embrace soothed her. Even the tail curling up her body to wrap around her waist felt good. As long as he didn’t disappear on her, everything would be okay. She could handle whatever came at her if Nahash kept holding her.
“Did we get abducted again? And returned to Earth? To my dad’s former property? That doesn’t make any sense!”
He stiffened against her. “You know this place?”
She nodded, then laid her head against the smooth scales that banded his chest. “This is a place on Earth that my dad used to own. I spent the best part of my childhood here, every summer.”
He looked around now as if suddenly more interested in the place, his body shifting beneath her cheek as he turned to regard the house behind them. “This place is important to you?”
She sighed, recalling the many wonderful summers she’d spent there, having her dad all to herself for two whole weeks at a time. They’d spent hours fishing in the nearby pond, just beyond the trees at the edge of the property, though nothing but tadpoles and guppies lived there. It hadn’t mattered.
“Yeah. I guess it was. I think about it a lot when I’m stressed out with work. It’s my happy place, I suppose.”
She’d wanted to buy it back once she’d graduated college, but the new owners had refused to sell.
“Then you come here often in your mind?” The way his voice sounded, she got the feeling it wasn’t an idle question.
She lifted her head and looked up at his face, noting that his frown lines had only grown deeper as he studied their surroundings. “I… I guess I do.”
He met her eyes, his hands leaving her back to cup her jaw as he stared at her intently. “Were you thinking of this place on the station?”
She’d been thinking of her fear, and of how alien the station seemed—how cold and sterile and dark. It was possible that some part of her mind had retreated to a happier memory—one filled with light and the innocence of childhood.
“I don’t know. Maybe subconsciously, I was thinking about this place.”
He lowered his hands to her shoulders, rubbing at the knotted muscles there as he once again looked around in consideration. “And now we’re here. In your memory.”
“How’s that possible?”
She looked around too, trying to spot some clue to how they’d gotten there. Everything felt so real, from the slide of the dress fabric across her legs with each ruffle of the breeze to the firm massage of her shoulders beneath Nahash’s scaled hands. She could even smell the pine trees and Nahash’s more subtle scent.
He shook his head. “I wish I knew. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”
He closed his eyes, his hands falling away from her shoulders to rest at his sides as his tail slipped from her body to lie still upon the warped wood of the porch.
Frightened by his sudden stillness, she grabbed his broad shoulders and tried to shake him. Unable to budge him, she shouted his name.
After a moment, he shuddered, then opened his eyes to glare at her. “I can feel your shouts vibrating in my jaw, Casss.” He rubbed the offended body part. “I tried to detect an energy signature. Anything I could grab hold of and disrupt. There’s something there—some underlying energy—but it feels organic, and it’s too faint for me to grasp. I don’t know how to get out of this place.”
His last words were said with such self-disgusted frustration that Cass hastened to reassure him. “Stop blaming yourself for this! You aren’t a god, Nahash. You can’t know everything.”
He turned towards the house, his back muscles bulging with his tension. “The only advantage to this new form was that it was strong enough to protect you, and yet even with these ‘gifts’, I failed at that. Ever since I slithered out of my cocoon after second meta, I was told that I would be unstoppable. I was told I was the hope for my entire empire—that I would be the one to save our civilization. The only one I care about saving is you, and I can’t even do that.”
“Good god! That’s a hell of a burden to put on one person, Nahash. No wonder you beat yourself up so much!”
His words gave her sudden clarity into the insecurity that must have been plaguing him the entire time. She hadn’t realized that he placed so much importance on being powerful enough to save an entire civilization. She was really starting to hate the Iriduans who’d given him such an impossible burden to carry alone. It was little wonder he’d run away from it all at the first excuse he’d found. Though she knew she meant more than just a convenient excuse to him.
When he didn’t respond to that, she wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing herself against his back. “Oh, honey, please don’t blame yourself for this. We’ll figure this out together and get out of here.”
He stiffened in her arms, the scales along his back rubbing against her cheek as his shoulders straightened. “Again, you call me this ‘honey’. Why?”
She was about to say something very stupid, admitting to a feeling she shouldn’t already have for him in such a short amount of time—a feeling that made her panicky—but instead she went with a more neutral response. “It’s a term of endearment for someone we care about.”
He turned, breaking her hold on him only to take her back into his embrace, lowering his face until they were eye level. “So, you care about me?”
She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, knowing what she was starting with that kiss as her heartbeat throbbed in the pulse at her throat.
Nahash responded with hunger that was almost terrifying. Almost. His arms tightened around her as his tail entwined in her legs, shackling her so she couldn’t change her mind and run away from him. His lips consumed hers as his busy hands stroked over her back, then fell to her hips.
When his tongue flicked out to stroke her lips, she opened them and let him penetrate her, sucking on his agile, forked tongue as he moaned, his kisses growing even harder and bruising while his tongue explored her mouth.
He tugged her skirt upwards, exposing her bare legs to the caress of the breezy air. Scales slid over her naked legs as his tail tightened around her.
She shivered at the feeling of that part of his body running along her sensitive skin, and this time she acknowledged that it didn’t disgust her. The sinuous strength of it excited her.
A warning bell sounded in the back of her mind, saying they really should figure out where they were and what was going on, but his hungry lips and tongue silenced any murmurs she might have made about breaking away from him to do that.
The more he kissed her—the more his hunger threatened to consume her—the hotter her arousal burned, until she was certain she’d need to sit on a block of ice if she didn’t find something to put out the fire between her legs. She wondered if this was how he felt when he was engorged—like there could only be one kind of relief.
As he rucked up her skirt to her waist with one hand, his other stroked over her panties—silken boy-short underwear that seamlessly clung to her athletic frame. They both moaned as his hand slid down the front of the skintight covering, over her mound towards the wet heat between her legs.
She clutched desperately at his thick biceps as he explored her over her panties, then lifted his hand to the waist of them and slowly peeled them downwards, exposing her sensitive flesh inch by inch to his questing fingers.
If she’d wanted to run, she’d lost her chance. She couldn’t even close her legs, as his tail had entwined between them, keeping her in place, but also keeping her legs spread far enough that his hand could slip through her wet folds and down to her soaking entrance.
His tongue continued to ravage her mouth as his lips played with hers while he slowly slipped a finger inside her, testing her readiness. His arms trembled beneath her fingers as if he fought against the desire to pin her to the porch floor and ram one or both of his engorged cocks into her heat.
Since he drew out his exploration, adding another finger to stretch her, she had the time for her own exploration. She lowered her hands from his biceps to his groin. When her fingers wrapped around his two cocks, he hissed against her mouth, his hips pushing his body closer to her as both shafts twitched in her grip.
She stroked each erection until the end of his tail writhed and the fingers he thrust inside her grew more frantic. Without warning, he withdrew from her long enough to tear her panties the rest of the way off her legs, then he grabbed her by her hips and lifted her off her feet.
His tail curled around her ankle, pulling it farther away from her other leg so she ended up straddling him when he clutched her body against his.
She felt so on fire from his touch that she didn’t think she’d need any lube to ease him inside her, which was a good thing, because the mace-like spiky head of one of his cocks prodded her soaking entrance, the protrusions tickling and teasing her sensitive opening as he demanded entrance.
She whispered his name against his lips when he withdrew his tongue from her mouth. He hissed her name in response, lowering his head to lick the column of her neck as she dropped her head back on her shoulders.
She didn’t have to beg him for what she wanted. As soon as the tip of his erection grew slippery from rubbing it against her wetness, he pushed it inside her—the large head stretching her in a delicious way that had her moaning at the pleasure of being filled by him. The spiky protrusions felt stimulating inside her as they passed over her g-spot, then sank deeper until they brushed against her womb.
If they’d had lube handy, she would have suggested where he could put his other cock. It was almost as if it knew where she wanted it, since it was pushed downwards by her thigh around his waist until the tip of it rubbed against her tight second hole, the spiky nubs teasing that puckered opening. She tightened around the cock inside her, slicking it with even more wetness as she thought about that second one filling her at the same time. As big as it was, they could still make it work, if only they had lube and went slowly.
For now, she reveled in the feel of him stretching her as he filled her. She’d never been with a man so well-endowed, and her inner muscles clenched and massaged his thick shaft, causing him to moan, then hiss inhumanly as he began to pump his groin, pushing in and out of her while his arms and tail kept her pressed tight against his body. His lips caressed her neck and collarbone as he pumped inside her.
Cass made her own mewling sounds of pleasure, biting her lip to hold the loudest of them in. She’d always been embarrassed by how vocal she could get during sex, and this was beyond any pleasure she’d ever experienced.
To avoid the urge to let her screams free, she turned her head to capture his lips when he lifted his head from licking her neck. He responded to her kiss with the desperation of someone grabbing onto a branch to avoid being swept away in the strong current of a river. His reaction reminded her that he’d been a virgin before her. All of this was new to him, which probably explained the quiver of muscle beneath his scales as he moved inside her.
She wanted to taste him the way his tongue dipped into her mouth to taste her, but she knew better than to make the attempt. His sharp teeth could tear her tongue to pieces, so she remained content to play with his lips and suck on his tongue when it delved into her mouth. She savored the taste of him, which was surprisingly fresh, crisp, and sweet. It made her think of an apple, which drew her back to the image of forbidden fruit. She wondered if Eve would have settled for the kind that came off the tree, if she could have tasted the devil’s kiss.
His second erection rubbing the sensitive ring of her other hole felt so enticing that she wondered where she could find lube—strongly doubting there’d be any in the house.
With that thought, she felt a sudden pressure against her palm where it lay against Nahash’s chest. With a gasp, she pulled away from him to stare at the impossible item in her hand.
It was a small bottle of sexual lubricant.