I: Of Skin and Scale

“When you dreams are shattered and lay on the ground with no semblance of their former self, you can do two things and two things only: leave them be, forget them and focus on something else that is still whole, or you can pick up the pieces and turn those shards into a brand new dream that may become what your former idea was meant to be all along.” Someone, somewhere, probably after one too many drinks.

When Cory turned nineteen, on that very same day when he was about to blow the candles to his birthday cake, surrounded by family and friends, his father, who had gone to the toilet after taking his phone with him, returned, his face grim and looking angry and disappointed. Everyone invited was worried and questions piled up on the man until he spilled the beans and the truth came out in an avalanche of bad emotions: his mother was dead, not because of some idiot that ran her over, not while she was taking a nap, but because the woman he had personally hired to take care of her had slipped her too many sleeping pills and then proceeded to steal her jewels and her antiques, forgetting that she had to change the tank of oxygen the old woman needed to live. When her ECG flattened, an automatic response was sent to the hospital, something Cory’s father had spent some extra money on to be sure she’d be safe, but it didn’t take in consideration that someone would drug her heavily and forget to stay there and assist her in her own house while he left for the one and only hour he had available to say ‘happy birthday’ to his son. The ambulance arrived but it was too little and too late: she was already gone by the time the paramedics had taken out the defibrillator. As everyone rushed out of the house, the candles of Cory’s cake still dribbled wax over the cream on top and eventually died as well.

The woman was caught easily, found in a pawn shop trying to sell dozens of precious items the Salgar family had collected over two hundred years since they had moved to the country, rings, necklaces, pocket watches and other miscellaneous items. The owner of the shop knew no one would be in a hurry to sell so many items and take the lowest price possible unless they were stolen and burning hot. The caretaker got arrested, charged with murder and theft and sent to jail for the next twenty years, but it didn’t help make amends for the loss of a woman that was still healthy for someone over ninety years old and that could live for another ten years if she didn’t get sick. Byron, Cory’s father, along with Mary and Jane, the twins born after him, quickly found that even after the huge scandal that made the news and sent their family in turmoil, things weren’t going to be so simple as the will of their mother was released. It was uglier than when they confronted the caretaker when she was about to board the bus to jail because the will was a mess, the inheritance that should have been equally shared was not so in the least and most grandchildren were left out entirely. Byron got the largest share to ‘make up for the costs he had suffered to keep her alive for the last two decades’ while her daughters received barely half of what he had since they ‘forgot to even send a postcard on Christmas and visit for her last twelve birthday parties’. When the lawyer read that the remaining share of what the old woman had was to be divided only among Byron’s side of the family as he took them to say hello whenever he could, and the others were left out for their lack of care, fights erupted.

“It’s unfair that he gets that much! What about us? We loved the old hag just as much as he did!”

That was the most common sentence thrown around for the next year in the house and in the courtroom alike, cousins and uncles bickering with Byron, his wife and with Cory, making up claims of things they had never done in order to fatten their share, memories of things one other than their side remembered surfaced very conveniently whenever there was the need.

Eventually the man went mad and started screaming and berating at everyone around him, burning lifelong bridges and ties with his own flesh and blood because of their greed and in the heated environment full of hate and distrust, Cory quietly halved what little he had gotten from his grandmother, keeping her watch and a few photos along with enough money to pack and leave without having to ask his parents for anything and told the lawyer to sell the rest to his aunties who had called him the day before to tell him to convince his father to loosen the purse and give them the two hundred thousand dollars they were owed. His phone rang and rang for an entire week after he left home and headed south, near the border with the next country, five hundred miles away from his hometown and on the eighth day, he tossed it into an open sewer grate and went on with his life. He did leave a letter, a paper letter, to his parents, telling them he couldn’t take it anymore and that the money his relatives all lusted for with no regards for the late woman’s wishes was making his life a burden to him and to them on a daily basis. Cory hoped they would understand, one day, maybe. He arrived in a big town that he didn’t know and settled for a few months before moving on to another town, barely tapping into the great funds he had in his bank account that was opened for him when he was two years old and that now had a lot and after he sold the rest, he had even more than what his grandmother had prepared. Cory refused to use it unless it was needed, what little he earned was what he used for housing, food and the clothes on his back as he moved from town to town, year after year. He felt like an asshole, like the worst son in the world, and he was indeed a bad son in that regard, abandoning his family, no, his parents, just like that. But he had his reasons and his reasons were that he’d be stopped by his father and his mother if he had waited or made his intentions known to them before trying to leave. In that environment he was feeling sick, the air was stuffy and even though he was an adult, whenever a fight broke out he wanted to go hide in a corner and cry till he didn’t have any tears left. Every time he saw his father scream at his own sisters because they wanted money, every time some relative barged into their house begging for a few thousand dollars to buy a car or a house, he felt as if his family was already gone. That was why he gave his aunts what he gave them: to shut them up and give his father some rest. He hoped it had worked somehow and to make up for his mistakes, he sent postcards whenever he could and called home a few times, always hanging up whenever he was asked where he was or when he planned to go back. Eventually they stopped asking that but his heart ached. Going back now would only hurt him more and so he kept going forward, the decision had long since been made.

Then, in the middle of a hot summer day, the world was met with the greatest of innovations since the arrival of the internet and before that since the invention of electricity as a well-known corporation launched what became known as The Gene-y therapy: developed as a response for cancer and genetic illnesses two years earlier and already an incredible invention in medicine that still made waves to that day, it had been repurposed for a more commercial intent. Since it was based on patented and secure processes, the revolutionary gene-splicing therapy was instantly the next best thing. With five to six treatments one could easily become whatever one wanted, as long as it was limited to cosmetic and low-level functionality upgrades to one’s body. The WHO had already issued an order to the company and the laws on human experimentation enforced it, limiting what one could do to those two things unless under special conditions that merged with the original intent of the therapy. The rich immediately rushed to give themselves all manner of insane looks, ranging from new gen plastic surgery that made them look like teens again with no repercussions to perfect skin to exotic features. Few went so far as to change their entire appearance, becoming something else even if only as deep as their skin could go, most chickened out when confronted with the serious ramifications of what such an action would bring and settled for natural abs and no more love handles, if they could afford it that is. Nevertheless, the global scene began discussing about whether these enhancements could be allowed in sports or be considered as the most extremes of steroids, since there was technically no law that stopped someone from getting an incredible physique with money and then proceed to win the Olympics. Some said that it was essentially pay to win in real life, even more than it already was.

Cory stared at his bank account right in the middle of the storm that the Gene-y therapy had kicked up and then looked at the prices for a full body enhancement: he had enough for it and even if he splurged, thanks to his own investments and the insane amount of savings he had dumped into the account, basically everything he didn’t spend for basic necessities, he’d have enough to be safe for years to come. And yet he didn’t do anything with those thousands and thousands of dollars for several more months until one of his relatives knocked on his door and asked for money for some legal issue. He closed the door in their face without saying anything at all and locked it behind himself a moment later. Confused because he didn’t know how they had found him, angry because they hadn’t talked to him in years and the first thing they did was to beg for his share of money for no reason other than ‘family’ even after he had given his aunts every material asset, which they had quickly splurged or sold themselves, he clicked on the browser page that he had left open for so long and put in a request for a personal interview with a doctor of the group and asked for a consultation about that full-body enhancement.

“Are you sure you want to do a full body augmentation sir? It’s quite the uncommon procedure and most people prefer just something cosmetic and surface level, but you’re asking our company to essentially rewire most of your appearance and some of your bodily functions.” The doctor sitting opposite him, the one that had examined Cory from head to toe several times to make sure he was even eligible for a basic skin grafting process, shook his head after looking at the list of requests that his soon-to-be client had made. “Sir, I won’t lie to you, even though I should be doing my best to make you spend as much as I can, the basic procedure was considered something rather extreme just half a year ago, the total patients that have requested something like this in the entire country is less than two hundred at the moment…” The man paused and sighed heavily before taking a deep breath. “Look, I have studied psychology before getting into medicine and I know that no one does something like this without having some psychological reason behind it, so I would not recommend you do it.” Another pause, another sigh. “But if you sign this paper right here, you’ll start the process regardless of what I think.” The doctor pushed a single piece of paper towards Cory along with a pen and a whole lot of doubts. He had come there with the single goal of getting this thing done, the doctor had shaken his resolve a little: less than two hundred people like him among dozens of millions, which means he’d be a sort of freak until someone else came along and made him less of a madman who gave up his humanity. He thought hard for five minutes and then signed the papers under the concerned gaze of the doctor. “I just hope you made the right choice.” Cory looked at the 3D figure moving lazily on the screen of the computer and smiled wryly and then began imagining his future self.

“I hope so too.”

The payment made his wallet hurt quite a lot but it wasn’t something out of his reach, given that the operation came at a discount because he’d do most of the things at the same time rather than adding bits and pieces to form his idea body over a longer period and thus saving himself some of the hassle. Still, it wasn’t easy and it definitely wasn’t painless: the treatment essentially aimed at splicing his entire genome to fit his desires while keeping his basic biology intact and adding on to that, awakening dead genes and creating new ones as well. Had he gone with something less invasive, some injections in the interested areas and a light dietary change would have been enough but he went for the full mile and then decided to go for the marathon next: over the course of a month, he’d have to be injected with the serums over twenty times and every time he’d have to increase his caloric intake to make up for the energy he was spending to build new muscle mass and replace the old cells of his body. One by one his most basic components were changed and turned into something else of his own design and after almost two weeks of nothingness, he saw the first signs that the treatment was working as flakes of skin fell in clumps during a shower in the clinic’s bathrooms. Underneath he saw something bright red that wasn’t mere flesh and definitely not blood, something hard and cool at the touch and in that moment he felt as if he was at last getting to the last stretches of his treatment. He was wrong as it had just barely started. Replacing the skin with scales was but the first step of many, followed by a much needed increase in muscle mass after the first one that made his skinny arms look bigger and fuller, the scales spreading neatly all over his body. When he started to grow up and around and when his tail poked from his tailbone, things got hard and remained hard for several more weeks, his hunger ever present and insistent to the point he had to carry a bag of high-nutrient paste on him constantly when he walked around the clinic and made use of its facilities to work out and build more muscles.

After more than a month spent cooped up in the clinic, subjected to all sorts of itchiness and nights wasted staring at the ceiling, waiting for the pain seething under his growing scales to settle and stop making him choke on bad tv series to drown out the feelings, he was handed a small certificate that said that he was free to go and that the treatment was at long last complete. Despite him being able to get out of the building as soon as he received it, Cory still sat on the edge of his bed for a few hours, unsure of what to do, making plans now that the constant worry that something might go wrong with the whole change and leave him crippled or worse, none of it had happened and he was as healthy as he could be with something extra stitched on top for good measure. The new Cory stood in front of the mirror in his room, a mirror he had kept hidden under a large towel for most of the time as he grew out of his skin and clothes, in a quite literal fashion and stared at what he had become. At the interview he had made a rough model of his future appearance but after more sessions and a meeting with a designer and an expert herpetologist, he had ironed out most of the finer details: from the lowly five feet eight he had before he stood at six five now, his lent clothes sticking to his scales like a second layer, showing the taut and lean muscles he had worked out at the gym a hundred feet away from his room, his red scales perfectly smooth and glossy, his talons as black as his nails though unable to retract into his digits. Had he been human and lacking the bright red colouration, or the thick swaying tail attached to the bottom of his spine, he would have been a model for human perfection, like most of those that go through the full body augmentation. His muzzle and his head had been the hardest part to design, but in the end he had gone for a mix of lizard and snake which the doctors had managed to replicate to near flawlessness. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, the smell of his body, the dust and dozens of assistants assaulted his brain as the finer senses of a reptile helped him work out the scents around him, his biforked tongue slipping out of his mouth constantly, nestled in a small sea of tiny white teeth that betrayed a changed diet and a danger less visible than the finger thick talons on his digitigrade talons. He had also fangs like a snake that he had requested but they didn’t have any venom of course, else they’d be seen as a weapon and he’d be taken to jail along with the entirety of the staff that had put them on him. He just wanted to look threatening and dangerous, not that his claws weren’t sharp or deadly in their own right. Curiously, the birthmark on his neck wasn’t gone, still there and now even more visible as the milky white scales contrasted the red ones forming the patter that his mother always said reminded her of a cloud on a stormy day. It was the only thing that reminded him of his human body and he liked it, it made for an unexpected present fate had left him. Outside the sun warmed his scales so pleasantly he stood still at the front entrance of the clinic for a good ten minutes, soaking in with his eyes closed, catching the attention of hundreds of people walking by on the street. Many had some minor changes, whether it was vibrant hair, eye colours or a permanent perfect tan, some had some bizarre hairstyles, a few looked too buff and too tall to be normal, but none looked like an entirely different species like Cory did and so, for the whole distance between the clinic and his apartment, he was the centre of the attention. His new life had already started.

The week after he moved out of his place once again and headed further south where the sun shone harder and the climate was warmer, even though he didn’t exactly need it, being hot-blooded like before, but the feeling of the hot hair and the heat around him was far too pleasant not to be considered. Plus south the food was better and he could save on heating in the winter and AC in the summer, a win/win/win situation. The new Cory settled in a medium sized town where he heard jobs weren’t scarce and immediately went hunting for some position and, just as immediately, found that few were interested in hiring him due to his appearance and for a while he almost regretted having gone too far, almost was the key word in this situation of course. By a gigantic and near impossible stroke of luck that made him question whether some god above had moved him and the doctors of the clinic, a company that specialized in sales searching for a new salesman and their mascot was a red humanoid lizard that looked eerily like him. Needless to be said, as soon as Cory walked into their main office and presented his frankly decent resume, he was hired. Sure, it was just because of how he looked but the sales he brought home two weeks after he was hired were equally impressive and the reason he kept his job and got a raise.

After almost five years on the day he left home, at twenty four years of age, Cory felt as if he had truly began to live his own life. He started going to the gym often and thanks to his new body and the genes conveniently spliced into his DNA he found it easy to build up more muscle mass than when back when he was just human, any extra fat he gained was stored in his tail like lizards, making it fatter and thicker, a hefty weight attached to his backside that was almost pleasant for him and a very convenient makeshift seat when one wasn’t available. He stopped buying most of his old shampoos and body products and aimed at only new products released by the company that owned the clinics, specialty items for scales that were slowly getting spread into normal supermarkets and malls here and there. After thaat he bought some heavy duty grinders for his nails since anything less strong than that would barely help in keeping them sharp and neat, plus he got used to buying toothbrushes in bulk after he learned that they got damaged easily by the fangs inside his mouth. As for clothing, he received a ‘uniform’ that resembled what the mascot of his company had, meaning a flimsy pair of shorts that barely reached halfway to his knees and a tight t-shirt with the logo printed on it, the former black and the latter a pearly white that made a perfect contrast with his red scales. Accidentally, those ‘one size too small’ pants would have been enough to make his crotch stand out and make him more of a stripper with a job in sales more than anything else, had he still possessed a human crotch instead of the hidden and private slit between his legs, so all one could see was a small dent. Like all reptiles, he was introduced to the wonders of no chafing, sweaty balls or anything of the sort, his worry about kicks to that sensitive region thrown out of the window entirely as his most important asset was safely tucked in. Regarding the rest of his wardrobe, it was mostly made up of more t-shirts, more short pants, jeans and little else, since when he wasn’t at work he was at home in the nude and spending the rest of his days soaking in the sunlight that entered from the windows inside his apartment. Saving money on clothing and underwear was pretty neat and Cory quickly took a liking to spend his private time naked, slowly falling in love with the feeling of his scales sliding against the soft fabric of his couch or bed, the heat of his home keeping the temperature nice and hot.

The air in the office at the second floor of the company was hot, very hot, the ac was working badly because of a bird that had gotten stuck inside it the other day and the repairman had done a horrible job at fixing it, meaning the entire floor had smelled of bird crap for an entire morning after they had fired the machine back up and that the next few days were spent trying to fix what the actual fixer should have done in the first place. A second call to their office had been made to request a better person but so far no help was able to be seen. The only employee in the entire building that was working almost at a normal capacity was the only one that didn’t look human: Cory found that working in a moderately hot environment helped him be more relaxed while he typed away and slaved for this corporate overlords, his scales soaking in the warmth and keeping him nice and cosy for the most part. Only when the heat reached a level in which everyone else was sweating bullets and drenching chairs and desks did he feel sleepy and his productivity plummeted as the reptile inside him begged for a week-long nap. Most of the time he gave in as everyone else wasn’t working either, curling up on himself for a nice break in a crispy one hundred degree office.

“Cory, are you free?” The snakemorph in question raised his head high above the desk he had been assigned, a special desk that had to be retrofitted to allow the eccentric human to work comfortable and not have to tuck his tail in between his legs or worry about his height and one where no cables were loose and at risk of being cut when he stretched his legs.

“Yes, what is it Donald? Do you need me to help the delivery guys again?” Last week there was a massive chaos as the company expanded and started to colonise the floor above them thanks to the massive increase in sales that Cory himself was partially responsible for and he had to help the workers move in massive amounts of boxes left out in the open to avoid the incoming rain to make an even bigger mess. “Please tell me it’s not helping the delivery guys again…” Donald, a recent hire though a few weeks more senior than himself, shook his head and made him sight with relief. “Good , because that time I got hit by rain and had to walk around the city with the clothes sticking to my scales like some kind of stripper that had participated to a wet shirt contest.” He shivered at the memory despite the incredible heat around him.

“Oh, come on Cory, it’s not like you’ve got to worry about showing much down there.” Donald fixed the curly red hair that fell on his face and grinned, making Cory sigh: the joke of him being a girl had been thrown around too many times to count even though everyone knew he was very much a he and more muscular than ninety percent of the employees in the entire company. He had also given up on trying to stop the comments from being said at this point.

“Yes, but I still got pulled over by cops and got a warning for public nudity.” Had he still possessed his old bushy eyebrows, the snakemorph would have furrowed them, instead all that his friend could see was a small crease on top of his forehead and little more. After the operations one of the many things he had to work hard to learn was how to move muscles on a face that had become a blunt muzzle, practicing at home in front of a mirror to remember how to smile properly and how to frown without looking weird, well, more weird than a snake trying to smile anyways. “So, what do I have to do this time?”

“We’ve got a client, came in person, who wants to buy the new pillow-couch cover set that we received the other day and I was wondering if you could do that one for me.” Donal smiled and chuckled as Cory looked around and saw that nearly half of the office was idle and on lunch break while the other half was at home and waited out the renovations and upgrades to be done. There were plenty other people to ask for help.

“Ask Mina or Coral.” His tail whipped up in the air and pointed at two people currently sitting in their chairs and sticking so close to the one fan they had between them to catch some cold air. Donald scratched his head and then shook it with an apologetic-yet-evil expression on his face.

“I think you should do this one.” Cory huffed, or rather, hissed, in displeasure, which resulted in a drawn out long raspy sound that startled the person sitting on the chair two seats over. “I’m sure you’ll love it.” Cory hissed again ant rolled his slitted eyes, putting force into his tail to propel himself on his feet and hunched over to avoid hitting the ceiling that frankly was a tad too low for his tastes. Donal patted his scaly back and put on his business smile. “Thanks man, you owe me one.” Cory was about to reply with a confused expression when the man rushed out of the door and slammed it behind him too fast for him to do anything else other than stare and be confused.

“What was that about?” Owe him one? He was the one asking him to do his work, why would he owe something to do more stuff? Cory hissed a third time and took a handful of nuggets, stuffing them down his throat with the ease of a real snake and headed downstairs as he wore his fancy mascot t-shirt. There was a woman with a long brown ponytail sitting at the desk that Donald was supposed to be in, so he beelined for her, avoiding the many boxes of still unopened stuff around the office and sat down in front of her. “We apologize for the mess, miss, were currently renovating and weren’t expecting a cust… omer…” Cory started to put on his business smile and began the tirade of apologies and offers already lined up in his head like any other time he was asked to take over for a colleague or finish something himself, but words failed him as soon as he looked at the face of the woman: a pretty, tanned face, chocolate brown adorned by dozens of small purple scales that glittered in the light of the office and the rays coming from the windows now that the sun was high in the air. Long and dark eyelashes, a hint of mascara on the corner of her eyes to crown her shocked expression, mahogany locks dropping from her ears where they had been tucked away but a few moments before. He could see his reflection in her eyes so wide open they were, hers still human whereas his own were slitted and alien, their surprise at seeing someone with scales equal and different at the same time. Cory swallowed what little was in his dry mouth and attempted to make up for the awkward silence that was setting on the two of them before things got too far and would cause more problems than needed. “Uh… ehm… nice… nice scales.” The regret for his weird and inappropriate comment was near instant and made him wish he could burrow into the ground and hide.

“Oh, ehm, thanks, just got them done last week.” She blushed and the rush of red on her cheek made the deep purple look almost black in comparison as she clutched her purse and bared the long trail of scales that started from her hands all the way up to her elbow, a sort of glove that covered her palms and fingers completely. Cory gulped again and felt his tongue threaten to slip out to taste the air. That little bit of unconscious behaviour took a while for his co-workers to get used to and something he forced himself to contain when talking to customers. “You, you too.” Faced with someone similar to them, neither was quite sure of what to do and it took Cory ten minutes of weird and awkward chatting about the most disparate of ice-breaking topics to remember he was supposed to sell her stuff. Half an hour later she was out and expecting a delivery of a brand new set of covers with a little bit of discount that Cory threw in for no real reason other than a ‘promotion for buying the set together’ and let her go.

“So?” Donald appeared out of nowhere just as the woman walked out of the store and headed south, Cory staring at the small chubby tail that was sticking out of her pants from a small and badly cut hole in the probably expensive denim. She was really fresh out of the clinic as she said, since that stubble was but ten inches long and looked quite cute, like a turtle’s tail or a turtle’s head, the scales on that growing fifth limb looked even fresher and softer than the ones on her face or hands and made Cory want to touch them to feel what they were like. Yet he just stared at her as she left.

“So what?”

“Did you ask her number?” Cory looked at Donald with the most confused expression someone with no skin and barely a human face can make, forcing an exasperated sigh from his co-worker that only made him more confused. “Dude! She’s got scales like you! She’s a beautiful girl and she probably likes you already! How can you not ask her phone number? And before you say ‘no, she is not interested in me’, I will tell you right in your face that we all saw your expressions while you talked and there is now way you two aren’t made for each other.” Donald left him alone on his own chair and walked away without saying anything other than that.

It took Cory a good five more minutes to figure out he missed on a huge opportunity and then proceeded to slam his head on the desk so hard it started to dent, making him silently thank his scales for both the protection and hiding the massive blush he surely had under them. The encounter had been so fast and so pregnant with weird comments and long moments of silence that he had completely blacked out for most of it and relied on his experience to drag himself through the ordeal and had completely forgotten about that part. He told himself asking a customer out like that was creepy and wrong to justify his clearly monumental fuckup but no matter how many times he told himself that she wasn’t interested in a freak like him, her glossy yes and that single moment when her soft hands met his rough and pebbly palms to grab the pen he was handing her, how that moment felt like an eternity, he just couldn’t shake the regret and for days after the event he groaned and wallowed in self-hatred. Time was a powerful ally, however, and within… two weeks of loathing nearly every decision he made since he had learned to walk, he had mostly forgotten about that blunder and went on with his life, unless Donald brought it up at work when he was with his guard down. Those were the moments in which he wished he could use his tail to plug that annoying mouth of his or maybe act like a proper snake and eat him whole, he only worried about the bad shit that man ate that would give him a run for his money. Still, he wished he had a second chance to make up for it.

On a Friday afternoon, on one of the few days off he got as per his unusual contract, Cory’s phone rang as he was soaking in the setting sun in his balcony, sprawled on the small bench he had bought a while back. His scales would have felt extremely warm at the touch to anyone, if there had been anyone to touch them in the first place, and he was a bit dizzy after three hours laying down on his back. The loud ringing of his phone jerked him awake and almost made him fall on the floor, but his tail instinctively latched onto the handle of the door/window that gave on his living room and avoided the uncomfortable meeting between his face and the cold tiles of the floor. A few seconds of fumbling around with his hands as his eyes opened and his irises thinned to two minuscule slits, he took his phone, retracted his claws and tapped on the screen to accept the call. It was to be noted this was his third phone since the change, the previous two ruined by accidentally grabbing them too hard or forgetting that he had his claws unsheathed and thus cutting the fragile screen in little pieces. An expensive mistake indeed.

“Yes?”

“Cory? This is Violet.” He was completely awake and on his feet less than a second later as he remembered that the only Violet he knew of was his boss, the woman that had hired him in the first place to boot. He straightened his back, then a tie that wasn’t there and brushed his scales from a little sand that flew from the beaches down south in an old but hardwired reflex from when he still wore ties. “Are you free right now?”

“Yes, yes of course, it’s my day off after all.” And it was such a good day off too… “Is there something wrong?”

“Not really, it’s more of a personal favour.” He already dreaded what was going to come next: your boss asking you to do something personal for them was either a bad thing or a horrible one in his experience, rarely it breached into the realm of ‘not so bad’. “It seems someone has forgot to deliver a package and it was supposed to be due today, the customer wants to have it delivered asap or else they’ll ask for a refund. I’d ask the usual staff or go myself but I am caught up in something and most of the other guys are still out or heading to the warehouse to pick up their regular orders, plus you’re the only one close to the destination anyways.” Cory cringed inside and felt tempted to gouge his eyes out at the unreasonable request but held it in like a professional masochist. His plans for the rest of the evening were busy with him doing nothing and then absolutely nothing at all after the hectic week he had just gone through and the mere idea of being thrown somewhere in a rush wasn’t even on the list of things that he had considered possible for ruining his day. “I am really sorry and if you do manage to do this quickly, I’ll throw in a little bonus at the end of the month, ok?” All of a sudden it wasn’t such a bad idea to go and deliver this package…

“I’ll do it, no problem.” He’d have done it anyways because he’d be forced to, else he’d have refused on the spot as soon as he heard the last word of that accursed sentence in the first place.

“Good, then come by the office within the next fifteen minutes and try to deliver it within the hour. See you.” The phone call ended just as abruptly as it had started and left Cory stunned: getting to the office took at least fifteen minutes and he was still naked and the car was still in the garage.

Skittering on the recently cleaned floor, talons barely getting any traction on the tiles, he jumped on his couch where the only clean pair of clothes he had at the moment had been thrown the day before as he had returned home. He put on his most decent sweatpants that barely reached halfway down his knees and a tank top with some colourful letters on top that barely managed to form a coherent sentence, grabbed the car keys and his phone, jumped over the couch and rushed downstairs all before the first minute of his timer could tick. Slamming his talons on the gas pedal, Cory sped out of the garage and went on the road, checking the time every second or so to make sure he’d be on time and not a moment too late. He knew that he could take it easy, but at the same time, the sooner he was done with this, the better and the sooner he could get to his blissful void evening.

Driving a car in his condition was something of a small nightmare because the space was very little and his tail was forced to curl up to the side, far too big to slide under the seat, far too big to not make it hard to change gears while his legs were too long. All things considered, he needed a new car, customise it to fit his extremely peculiar needs that would increase the price by a good margin and also the reason why he was holding off the purchase, preferring to wait till he earned enough to buy it and only then paying for any upgrade. Racing against time to get to the office in time, he picked up the huge and bulgy package from the doorman at the office and jammed the thing inside his trunk to the best of his abilities while trying not to break anything that might have been inside. Checking the phone constantly to make sure he was still in time, he had to navigate in an area of the city that he was unfamiliar with, the gps not really helping him much to make his already painful job a tad more annoying and frustrating. Once he was at the destination, he was met with yet another obstacle, this time in the form of stairs and the apartment he needed to reach being at the fifth floor, no elevator of course, because why not. Panting and feeling all around like shit for having run ten flights of stairs with what felt like a hundred pounds worth of junk on his shoulders, Cory rang the doorbell and took a moment of rest. His back was sweaty, though far less than what a regular non-enhanced human would go be after what he went through, the scales on his body not only helping him live comfortably with the heat but also keeping most of the moisture in. Sometimes he wondered what kind of augs most of the others who went to the clinics chose or where would humanity end up in a few decades of artificial and selective enhancements and evolution. Already things looked like a small portion of the population had come from a different world or evolutionary timeline and sometimes news of people getting extreme mods made the papers or tv, with an incredibly vocal minority yelling about how wrong doing such a thing was only to then secretly head to give themselves a few touches here and there to look better. Musing on such deep questions, he barely heard the door open and fumbled to get the tag with the name of the person he was supposed to deliver the stuff to.

“Delivery for Miss Aisa?” He read the tag on the package still in his arms and then looked up, only to see a familiar face dotted with just as familiar purple scales. “Oh.”

“Oh.” Both spoke at the same time, both frozen in time once again, both staring into each other’s eyes. All of a sudden things clicked in place and Cory understood why his boss wanted him to personally deliver the goods, he only wished to know how they had figured out where she lived. “H-hi.” That concern was blown out of the window as soon as she spoke. In that moment he noticed that she was quite small, a whole foot smaller than him, making him look all the more imposing and huge compared to her lithe physique.

“Hi.” He didn’t know what to do at this point: he had asked for a chance for days and days after he realized his mistake, now he had that chance downright rubbed on his muzzle, it was there for him to catch and right his previous wrongs. And yet he didn’t know what to do next, all the scenarios he had played in his head were not suited for this particular occasion. “C-can I take it in-inssssside?” In his nervousness, he forced his s quite a lot and immediately cringed inside so hard his organs may have shut down on the spot but the woman in front of him barely reacted, her eyes and senses too busy staring at him and the less than proper clothes he wore: from the tank top, his broad muscles were shown, no nipples to speak of after the change but the mass was there nonetheless, his arms bulged out as he still held the heavy stuff in his hands and his thick tail swayed left and right, wagging like a dog’s now that his brain had lost control of it.

“Sure, sure… please…” She blushed and moved back inside, letting Cory step in albeit with some awkwardness since the package was bulky and he wasn’t at the best of his mental capacity just yet. Aisia watched from the sides as he put the stuff he carried down and sighed in relief, cracking his back once he was free of it at long last. The door closed behind them on its own, locking the two in the same room and as they stared at each other for a third time, each lost in the other’s glittering scales, Cory’s tongue slipped out and tasted the air, the scent of cinnamon and oranges flooding his senses with greater strength than what his nose could pick up. He saw her gasp as he did so, hoping that she’d not be too weirded out by how far his enhancements had gone. He felt stupid, very stupid. “Thanks… for the delivery I mean… didn’t expect they send… you.”

“Well, ehm, me neither.” He tried to put on a smile but his tense muscles only bared the full range of his pearly whites, far more than what a human should rightly have, all sharp and lined neatly into his huge mouth. She smiled awkwardly as well, unsure of what to do next. “Ha-have a good… have a good day then.” Cory turned around and put a hand on the handle of the door, only to freeze a moment later, every muscle in his body screaming at him, his heart punching his throat till it started to hurt and then some. Weirdly his brain was screaming even louder that if he missed this, he’d never forget it. He had to make a move before the chance slipped through his dumb scaly fingers. He craned his neck so that he could look at her from the corner of his eyes and sighed, gathering all the courage he had left after his dignity had been shattered and destroyed moments ago. “Would you like to go for a coffee?” The moment of truth.

“YES!” The shout came too fast and too loudly, making the silence that came after even more weird and difficult to deal with. “I mean… yes, that would be nice.” She smiled and his heart sank back into his chest, still throbbing hard and fast, still with that uncomfortable feeling in the back of his mind but forgotten in the momentary joy that he had finally caught that once-in-a-trillion chance. Now he just had to not fuck up the rest. Aisia lowered her head and looked at herself: she was wearing yoga pants along a thin t-shirt that was rather short, baring to him the skin on her stomach and lower belly as well as the patches of scales shining with the sweat of a hot day spent inside the house. “I hope you won’t mind I’m not dressed nice.” Cory didn’t say anything and pointed at his sweatpants and his top, making her blush. He was just as messy as her. “Oh, right.”

“It’s nothing… I was sunbathing when my boss called and shouted at me to come here…” He heard her giggle at that, knowing well what he meant and then, the next thing he knew, or rather, realized, he was sitting on a padded chair in a bar, a coffee cup that was far too small for his large hands resting on the table in front, Aisia drinking from hers in silence on the other side of the table. He wracked his brain trying to figure out what had happened: he invited her to… go out, yes, then he walked with her down the stairs and then… they went to a bar and ordered? Where was his brain for the past ten minutes? Where had it gone?

“So, why reptile? Why not… mammals or birds? Most people prefer them.” He was shaken out of his trance as soon as she asked him that question, Cory diving down to take a sip of a rapidly cooling coffee to mask the fact that he had no clue what that question was about. A flash in his mind and neurons fried themselves trying to remember: she had asked why he had chosen a reptile template for his augs.

“Oh, well… it’s a hard thing to explain but, if I had to make it short… I just liked them more than any other option, I guess.” She looked at him with a confused expression. “I used to have a pet snake when I was young, loved the scaly noodle a lot, more than the dogs and cats my friends had in their houses, I envied the little fucker too, living a life under a cosy warm light, eating every now and then…” He sighed. “Also if I went with dog or cat for myself, the spending for shampoo and haircuts would have been insane. Would hairdressers even do full-body service for me? Would I have to go to a dog groomer or something?” Her laughter exploded in his ears like thunder, sweet and mellow and impossibly loud at the same time.

“Oh, yes… imagine a human sitting on a bench while a professional groomer cuts their hair in those weird styles leaving behind only a tuft of fur on their arms or something…” She chuckled between words, making Cory imagine a human-sized poodle with no fur, looking grumpy, and then he started chuckling as well, though his laughter was far deeper and raspier, mixed with hisses that made heads turn and wonder what was happening. They kept on laughing for a good while until their sides hurt and the chuckles turned into breathless wheezes. “Thanks, I needed that.”

“Same…” he wiped a tear from his face and leaned back, his coffee cold and forgotten by that point, watching her catch her breath. “What about you?”

“Me? Well… I… I don’t know to be honest. I just like snakes, not as much as you of course. I settled with some scales and a tail one day when I felt like spicing things up a notch.” She sighed and took a sip of her cold coffee. “Have you always worked for that company as a mascot?”

“No, I actually moved here only three months ago, after the change.” She raised an eyebrow.

“You’re telling me that you didn’t get your look because you wanted to work there or something? It wasn’t some crazy publicity stunt?” He shook his head.

“Just a big coincidence.” He smiled and she flashed him a wider smile back.

“I don’t believe in coincidences at all.” Aisia put her coffee down. “I didn’t just get in that office that day just because I felt that the offer was interesting, but because I felt the mascot was very, very, very cute.” Cory almost chocked on his coffee. “So colour me impressed when a walking and breathing version of that cute logo walks in on me and tries to sell me stuff. I would have understood if they had went for a regular suit, I would have understood but seeing you like that was a blow to my heart…” Cory chuckled.

“Sorry to have startled you.” He stirred what was left of his drink with a straw and fell silent for a few seconds until his brain processed her words and connected the screaming dots right in his face and he froze. “So… you think I’m cute?” His words almost got tangled up in his throat again. Was that a joke or was she being serious? Or maybe did he just mishear what she said entirely?

“Extremely so.” She said nothing else and stared at him, her brown eyes locked onto his own and refusing to budge. “Why else would I have agreed to get a coffee with a stranger that I have seen twice in my life?” She cocked an eyebrow and smiled yet again.

“Touché.” He tried masking the clump of nervousness settling on his chest but he was making a rather awful job at it since his tail was doing most of the talking for him. “You’re very cute as well.”

“Thanks.” Aisia flashed him another smile and he felt as if he could die then and there and he’d be happy to have seen such a mesmerising sight at least once in his life. “So, your place?”

Less than two minutes later, Cory was ten dollars poorer and in his car there was another person, his brain still trying desperately to process what exactly was going on to the point he barely heard what Aisa was saying. He was concentrated on the road, or at least appeared to do so, a clever act he put on to mask how much in distress he felt. One could hear the gears in his head churn and grind against each other as he put in miles behind her apartment and slowly but surely headed for his own home, each yard under the tires felt as if it was both too long and too short to him. Before he knew it, Cory had opened the door to his flat and Aisa was already inside, sitting comfortably on the couch in his living room and looking at him with a gaze that told too many things all at once. He gulped and froze yet again.

“What’s the matter big guy? Cat’s got your tongue?” She grinned and leaned on the armrest.

“It’s just… I don’t really know what to do right now.” He hoped his scales would hide the blush.

“What? Are you a virgin?”

“No, not that kind of… alright, it’s been a few months since I had any action and what little I had was… well… before…” She made a little ‘O’ with her mouth and looked quite embarrassed herself now that he had come clean with his private life. “I’m no virgin but I don’t quite have grasped what I can do now that I am like this.” Aisa chuckled and made him blush even more.

“What did you do on your first time?”

“A whole lot of mistakes as I went with the flow?” Cory scratched his scaly scalp and smiled wryly at his own words.

“Then let’s do just that, ok? One step at a time and we’ll see where we go from there.” She smiled and he sighed heavily as he closed in to her and kneeled in front of her.

He wasn’t that tall, merely enough to be at eye level with her on the low couch while she was still sitting down and, following what his body was screaming for him to do, he kissed her, his hands holding her shoulders and petite body steady, leaning in more and more, pushing her down against the back of the couch until his whole being was smothering her, his red scales everything she could see. The closer he was to her, the more he felt her hands roam on his chest, on his scales, the soft scales sliding without any effort on his stronger, rougher ones. He heard her groan weakly once his long thin tongue slid from his stiff lips into her mouth, coiling once and then twice on her own, fighting for the little space there was in between her mouth and his bigger muzzle. Strings of saliva fell in glistening bridges onto her perky breasts, soaking into her clothes. Cory grunted, grabbing onto her and lifting her up with ease, slamming her onto the couch, settling into a position where he could even more easily overpower the small woman. Her hands reached for his back and met behind him, pulling herself even closer, chest to chest, skin to scales as they kissed and as she let herself be at the mercy of a predator of a man, his scent and his body all she could feel for hundreds of miles around her. The sheer warmth of his scales seeped into her and made her sweat, fat beads of moisture leaving trails on her neck which he licked clean, replacing her fluids with his saliva until her entire neck was a slick mess of his own making.

“You’re so warm…” She never stopped rubbing her hands on his scales and feeling his body heat, almost like a rock let soak the sun for days and then put on her chest, almost impossibly warm.

“I was sunbathing for most of the day after all…” He smiled and kissed her again. “Do you want to keep going?”

“It’s not about me, dear, it’s about you… do you think you can keep going? Your little friend sure looks and feels like he can.” She flashed him a coy grin as her feet touched his groin, his hiss echoing in the living room immediately after he felt her soles touch something very hard and very wet inside his pants. “Did you get your dick remodelled as well?” Cory gulped and tried to hold his hips still as she kept touching and prodding his growing member and his swollen slit between his legs, the bulging shape inside his pants making a lewd and prominent tent that had a wet spot right at the top.

“O-of course…” He hissed and gasped, frozen as his muscles fought to keep control of his most basic of instincts. He had consulted with a specialist from a marital aid website that was famous for making rather… animalistic products well before the possibility of growing ones on humans was even a thing, a consultation that had been just as, if not even more, in depth as his future scale colour or the shape of his face, full of decision and rather embarrassing, especially when the man he was giving details to started asking which size he wanted to grow to and what shape he’d like to have. “Might as well go the full mile, right?” She barely acknowledged his words as her feet worked around the edge of his pants and started tugging them down, lower and lower until they caught up with the pesky member she was so desperately trying to see, barely able to have a peek at the base and the swollen slit it had been housed in less than a minute before. “H-h-hold on a second, let me do it.” Cory took a deep breath, fighting against her for the honour of letting his aching cock slip free of his pants, curling his tail beneath his legs to tug at the edge of his pants much like she was doing, with the only difference he knew how to work around his own body quite well. “Just a second.”

“No, hurry up, I want to see it!” Her eagerness was contagious and Cory moved his fifth limb faster to accommodate the growing hunger both of them were feeling bubble in their minds and in their bodies. With one last tug, Cory managed to get the stretchy pants out of the way, letting them fall just as a dense and long rope of precum flew from his tip all the way to her chest, an arching stream of liquid lust that made him hiss softly under his teeth. “Woah…” He wasn’t sure whether she was being genuine or just shocked at the shape, he had gone wild with it and didn’t hesitate to spend a couple grand more to have all of his secret wishes fulfilled to the very limit of his imagination. His cock looked utterly inhuman, it had a vaguely humanoid head reminiscent of a cut human, but that was where the resemblance ended, the rest was a thick, tapering length, full of ridges and with two small knots that she could feel throb, on each side, bumps littered nearly every last inch of free space, giving it an even thicker appearance as it throbbed and shivered with clear excitement. “It’s so…”

“Ugly?”

“Thick…” Aisa didn’t hesitate to place her sole on his cock and slide her flesh on his own, feeling the blistering heat of his cock herself, the beats of his heart, the firmness and wild angle of it and the complex texture. “You’re a naughty one, for having chosen such a… juicy cock.” She bit her lip and rubbed her feet up and down, prodding at the puffy slit that was stretched around the base. “Is it always this hard?”

“Ye-yes actually… I always feel it inside me… it’s a bit of a hair-trigger, always coming out when I see something hot or cute.” It was her turn to blush this time, though she didn’t stop her teasing with her lower half, letting her feet slicken with his slitfluids and his precum until they were a drenched and sticky mess that formed more bridged between her toes.

“I love it.” His heart jumped with joy, both because he hadn’t been branded as an even bigger freak and because he saw her slide her hands around her back and unfasten her bra. “Get my pants for me, will you?” He didn’t say anything and in the next few seconds, all one could hear was the sound of clothes shuffling around and then being tossed on the floor. The two stood naked, or rather, lay naked, one on top of the other, Cory looming over Aisa with all his bulk and mass over her, his cock still pushing out of his slit, reaching the last few inches of growth and then ultimately setting at a rather human ten inches with something to spare but immensely more thick and alien-looking.

“You think you can take it?” Now he worried about his size, after she had expressed she liked the shape. He was already too big for his own hands to reach around his knot when fully engorged, she was so small he feared she wouldn’t even get that far but he only heard her chuckle.

“I didn’t just get scales and a tail as enhancements dear, I also got some extra stretchiness to aid me in my job. I’m a professional ballet dancer.” Cory cocked his head sideways. “I was already elastic before the surgeries, but now… I am sure I can take all of you till the base.” He gulped. “So you’d better not hold out on me, hot stuff.”

“Wouldn’t even dare.”

“Good.” Aisa grabbed his head and lowered it till she was able to kiss him herself this time, moaning into his mouth as soon as she felt his body shift and his hips push forward against the ever soaked mound between her legs. Cory gasped in surprise once his sensitive flesh found more scales in that area, her sex hairless and crowned with a ring of smooth scales just like her arms and face. “I got some work done down there too…” His heart threatened to jump out of his chest the more he got to talk to her, the more he learned about her and her body, it was as if they were destined to meet from the very moment they decided to change their appearance to meet some wild dream and fetish they had. “So fuck me hard and get that cock to good use.” Cory hissed and pushed forward again, the very tip of his cock meeting her soiled muff and parting her around himself, slick flesh around slick flesh. “Oh, fuck…”

“It’s just the tip, relax… you’ve still got ten inches to go.” He had been with her for barely an hour and a half in total but he already knew she wasn’t a shy girl and her response told a lot: she moaned and writhed under him, pushing against his body and sliding herself lower on the slab of meat connecting the two of them. “Eager, are we?”

“Yes…” Aisa bit her lips and hugged him tightly, feeling his cock spread her open more than any toy she had, the live, throbbing, pulsating member with such a wild and alien texture made her very core shake. “Ke-keep going… I can take it all.” Cory grunted and retracted his claws to hold on to her hips for support, both pushing her and sliding himself forward, inch after cuntbreaking inch of cock shoved with relentlessness inside her. Her walls clamped as hard as they could around him, stretchy, fitting like a glove, barely able to stop him with every contraction of her muscles. “Oh shiiiit!” The knots in the middle of his impossibly thick member were the greatest hurdle, forcing her to relax her muscles to allow even a fraction of what felt like a fist shoved inside her with no regards for her wellbeing. Cory grunted and hissed, his claws unsheathing and poking her hips, his fangs coming out in a mad rush of pleasure and wild instincts, pushing as hard as he could against her resisting body until he heard a wet squelch and then felt the insane pressure around his midsection give way and let him slide deeper and deeper, slamming the full ten inches of his cock down to his slit.

“Ffffffuck.” He hissed and held her even tighter against him as he truly started to rut her, pumping his cock back and forth, slowly loosening her passage to welcome his member with greater and greater ease, something that should have been done before but that was forgotten in the heat of the moment. “You’re so tight.”

“N-no, you’re the one who’s too big!” Aisa moaned and grew ever closer to a monumental climax, already closer and faster than ever before in her life, every little bump of his cock stimulating her walls, the girth keeping her spread and sensitive even when he retreated and attempted to pull himself out, the very base rubbing on her clit and throbbing with his blood at the same time.

“Is that a complaint I hear?”

“Fuck no… harder! Please…” He obeyed and bent his back, his acquired stretchiness aiding him in bending far enough to lick her neck as he picked up the pace, quickly going from a slow and steady pace to a fast, powerful, body shaking series of hammering thrusts that made the couch shake and move under his force. “Yessssss.” Her legs straightened, coiling on his hips, her arms barely able to meet around his back, keeping herself close as he kept going faster and faster, the sound of their hips meeting created a wet and lewd cacophony in his living room. The smell of sex and sweat filled the rest of the air around them, dense, powerful, their moans and grunts overpowering both whenever Cory slammed his hips, slit against slit, flesh on scale, over and over and over again, a growing puddle staining the new couch with their lust. “Harder!” Her eyes widened and her mouth hung open as he felt his fangs tickle her neck, a raw, inhuman feeling, the sense of danger looming all around her as he reached the limit of his speed and his hips turned into a red blur. She came first, spasming all around him in an endless series of contractions, squeezing and shivering all around his still pumping cock until it was just too much to bear and he slammed himself home one last time.

“Oh shit… shitshitshitshit…”

Cory gasped for air, unloading the first insanely thick rope of seed inside her very womb, every load making her skin stretch and pool, her belly bloating after barely fifteen seconds of constant onslaught. No human could do this, not even the other modded humans she had met from the beginning of the worldwide rush to become better and bigger, no man had gone so far, most just going for length, some going for volume and thickness… he had gone for all of them at the same time and then more, becoming something different, raw, inhuman, the mere feeling of those knots, the bumps and the roughness of his flesh, every little detail came together to make her squirm like her very first time. He collapsed on top of her and then rested on his side, turning her around so that he could spoon her as he still unloaded pint after pint of seed in her, every throb, every push of his internal tested as song of bliss and another fraction of an inch to her belly until she looked as if she was pregnant and around her second trimester. She came again when he resumed his thrusts, weak, pitiful compared to the rut he had given her before, but he was still coming all the while, hosing her walls with thick spooge and making her even slicker until he was at last able to slip free of her grip, leaving behind a massive void and a flood of pearly white seed, the last few spurts flying for a good few feet in the air before crashing down on the carpet and staining that too. Cory hissed one last time and then felt his cock relax, oozing his essence rather than shooting it all over the place and slumped, tired and satisfied against his couch and her.

“That was fucking amazing.” She huffed and panted, feeling as if she had just run a marathon or practiced for hours her moves with the other girls at the studio, sore all over but happy, her hips and thighs bathed in a growing layer of lust.

“Glad you liked it.” He gave her a peck on her cheek. There was silence in the apartment for a long while before she mustered the courage to ask something that had been in her mind ever since she had seen him.

“Why did you go for a full-body enhancement?” Cory was taken aback by the sudden and out of place question but since he had nothing else to do for the moment, he fell deep in thought for a moment or two.

“I wanted to start over my life.” He sighed. “For the second time.”

“Second time?”

“When I was nineteen, my grandmother was killed by her caretaker so that she could steal her jewels, we caught her but the shitstorm that came after caused even more problems than her very own death: the inheritance wasn’t split equally among my family because most of them didn’t care about her at all while my father and his side, me included, went to say hello almost every month, making sure she was ok.” Aisha didn’t even dare speak, feeling his heart beat madly against her back through his thick scales, his muscles tightening at the memory of what had happened. She could feel his rage on her skin. “They wanted more and more, my father refused and held his ground, but I couldn’t, I was a coward and sold some properties she had left me, got the cash from my aunts and left.” He sighed, regretting once again every decision he had made as they came crashing down on his conscience for the millionth time. “I left my home, my parents and my leech relatives with a lot of money, moved from city to city, working small jobs, I refused to even touch what she left me, until one of my cousins came to me, begging me for cash right after the Gene-y was released to the world.” She scooted closer to him, rubbing her hand on his arm, feeling the taut muscles squirm under his scales. “I don’t know how they found me but I was so angry, so mad that after four years of no contact, the first thing they did was ask for more stuff, no hello, no anything.” There was a pause. “So I decided to change everything in my life again, this time for real and so much no one would ever recognise me: I went to a clinic, asked for an appointment and started to work out on my appearance and ended up like this. After that I moved to this town, got the job at the office where you met me and the rest is boring stuff.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok, I got over that shit a while ago.” Lies, even she knew that as soon as he said it: the wound was still fresh in his memory, maybe because every time he looked at himself in a mirror he’d think of why he was like this now, a constant reminder that would never go away. “I just wanted to start over and what better way to start from scratch with a new face, a new body, in a new town where no one knows you?” There were hundreds of other way for sure, but in the heat of the moment, so many months ago, he couldn’t come up with any way other than a completely blank slate. “A dumb reason, I know.”

“Not that dumb, but rash definitely describes it better.” Aisa regretted making such a bold comment on someone else’s life after they had come out with the very reason they had abandoned everyone in their past just to start again. “Very daring though.” She hurried to patch up her mistake. “And I can’t say I don’t like the end result.” She heard him hiss happily once she said that. “Can I stay the night? It’s getting late and I don’t feel like taking a cab or ask you to take me back…”

“Alright. How about I throw in some food as well?” The loud sound of a gurgling stomach reverberated throughout the entire living room as both of their stomachs awoke at the same time.

“I’ll take that offer, after a long shower.” Aisa held up a hand that was caked with cooling spooge and the remains of her own lust.

“Good idea.”

Less than five minutes later, after throwing their clothes in a hamper with all the soiled cushions of the couch, the two were in the shower, hot, almost boiling water, running over their bodies as they kept close to each other, letting the stream clean most of the filth and sweat from their session. Aisa moaned and drew a sharp breath as she worked Cory’s cock with her hands, failing to even meet around the middle at its thickest point, rubbing her soap-slickened hands over his chest from time to time only to get back to stroke his member. It was an entirely different matter than when he was inside her: now she could watch it twitch and shoot rope after rope of pre, feel the bumps slide on her palms and her own soft scales, see how he reacted when she did something right, squeezing all over the girth of his cock. Cory let her do it, enamoured on the feeling of someone else’s hands on his flesh, letting her experiment as much as she wanted on him, giving her a clumsy but eager handjob while he teased her muff with his tail, pumping her full with the first few inches, keeping her stretched even after she thought she was done taking huge things inside her. They kissed under the hot water, each trying to pleasure the other and making them come first, one with her hands, one with his tail and his tongue on her neck. Cory lost the second match, tired and flushed after the first, her assault on his cock making him flinch and lose control over his tail, eventually spilling a still inhuman load on the walls of the shower minutes before she got her share of pleasure from this second and unexpected session.

While she was drying her hair, he was already done thanks to a distinct lack of those things in his life, standing as naked as always in the kitchen and cooking their meal. He heard a whistle come from behind him that threatened to make him spill a whole jar of salt on their pasta instead of just two pinches. She chuckled.

“So you like to cook in the nude?”

“I do everything nude when I’m in here.” He sneaked a peek at her, ‘dressed’ with only the towels he had in his bathroom. “I have come to prefer being free like this, scales are more resilient and clean faster if I get dirty.” Almost as if the universe was listening, the sauce bubbled and a few bits of tomato exploded and landed on his chest. He huffed and reached for a rag, soaked it in water, then wiped the offended area and stood with his arms open, clean as a whistle. “See?”

“Oh, I see everything.” Her eyes darted lower and lower until they met with his slit, licking her lips at the sight of that hidden gash that hid a very fun and big toy. One wouldn’t tell he was so big from the outside at all. Cory blushed a little but she couldn’t see that. “I think I’ll join you.” Moments later the sound of towels hitting the floor boomed into his ears: now Aisa sat naked on the chair he usually used to eat on the counter of his kitchen, only one last towel draped around her hair to dry them remained. “It is indeed better.”

“Steer clear of the sauce, I doubt it feels nice on normal skin.” She nodded, keeping an eye on the bubbling pot and another on the bubbly butt swaying in front of her, hidden by his tail. “I like how you only had your augs be partial, any reason for that?”

“Not enough money.” She shrugged. “And the studio I work for, which is also where I train at, has recently made an announcement they don’t accept fully enhanced people or some stuff like that. I am still tolerated because with these beauties on me, I can play some fun roles without resorting to make-up. Pretty neat stuff if you ask me, but damn did it cost a lot.” Cory nodded, he knew just how much only skin grafting costed, not to mention what he had to fork out.

“Here, dinner’s ready.” He whipped out two dishes and loaded them with sauce and pasta, enough for two people each and plopped them on the table.

“Big eater?” He nodded. “Me too, dancing is one hell of a calorie burner.”

“I thought you guys were always on a diet.” Aisa rolled her eyes as she dug into the plate and shoved a huge forkful of noodles in her mouth, mumbling something with it full.

“Yeah, kinda, but I have always been able to eat and not get fat. One thing that I didn’t have to get enhanced at all.” She flashed him a wide grin and dove for a second round. “I got the chance to enjoy some of the greasier side of life unlike most girls.” Aisa seemed pretty proud of herself for that achievement. “This is fucking great by the way, how did you get so good?”

“Well, I have been living alone since I was nineteen and have had to learn fast else I’d waste too much money on junk food and when I was little, dad used to teach me how to cook properly to impress girls.” He chuckled, playing with his fork for a while before getting another forkful of noodles.

“Then he was fucking right… were you not cute as you are or even as hung as you are, I’d have agreed to come if I knew how awesome you could cook.”

“I thought men were the ones that were supposed to be conquered through food.”

“We live in weird times in which six feet tall lizardmen walk with impunity on the streets.”

“Actually, I’m six feet five and I almost got arrested by the police once, when I got my shirt and pants wet after a rainy day and old people and mothers cover their children’s eyes when I pass by.” He said it with a carefree tone but she could hear the tinge of pain in his voice. “I got used to that as well.”

“Well, they don’t know what they are missing.” Aisa jumped on her chair and leaned on the table, kissing his snout and immediately getting back on her seat, leaving behind a saucy impression of her lips on his own. “And next time you go out, I’ll be there to make you feel better?”

“You will?”

“What? You think I’m going to leave and forget about you? Hell no, I’m here to stay. You, you sexy piece of hunk, you’re mine now, got it?” Cory nodded, more out of reflex than anything else, his stomach full of butterflies all of a sudden. His meal got cold as he watched her eat and then steal his share before scarfing that down too.

She stayed the night, in his bed, as the little spoon. Cory was honestly dumbfounded that he wasn’t dead or dreaming, confused, happy, a bit scared, very tired and still a bit hungry now that the butterflies had been digested. He could feel her body on his, her skin against his scales, her small toned back on his broad chest, so petite, so perfectly fitting in his embrace. Again he could only think how it all seemed as if this match was made in heaven, just too… right, to be real. His worries and the endless trains of thought brought him right in the middle of the night only to fall asleep two hours later than his usual. Waking up also proved to be a chore or a challenge, since he refused to wake her up in any sort of way, moving so slowly he barely moved at all and then had to rush once he closed the door, eat his breakfast in one gulp, get dressed, run downstairs and get in the car.

“So?” Donald was waiting for him at the entrance with a shit-eating grin the size of a cargo ship, Violet, his boss, was right next to him with an even bigger grin.

“So what?” He feigned ignorance and attempted to enter but the door closed in front of him, plus there were five other people staring at him from the other side of the glass. “What?”

“Soooo?” His grin grew even bigger. Cory sighed and cringed so hard his lungs sunk inwards and his tail curled on itself.

“She’s at my house, we went for a coffee and then I made her dinner.”

“And?”

“And what? Can I keep something private or do you want a certificate?” Their expression wasn’t one that even gave him the chance to shrink away from sharing. “Fine, I guess your attempt to hook me up with her was successful, I had a wonderful evening.” In that moment Cory wished he could unhinge his jaws down to the floor and eat their faces off those thick skulls or something. “Happy?” They nodded. “Why even bother? It’s not like I was in a hurry…”

“Yes, but you were lonely.”

“I was kinda happy to be…” Violet violently rolled her eyes at that. “What?”

“Cory, listen here for a moment: you’re a good young man, and one that has done something none of us has the balls to even think of doing.” She pointed at his whole body with a wave of her hand and let him work her words into his brain. “It’s been a rough few months for all of us, we’ve come to like you a lot and we thought you looked a little sad, so when Donald saw that woman, we thought you could enjoy having a talk with someone like you. Then you blew the whole thing off because you crushed so hard on her you forgot how to speak properly.” He blushed and sighed at the same time. “You looked so desperate the days after and we just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“I asked my niece to stalk her on her social account after I pulled the name from the order she placed and made sure she was a nice girl before asking you to deliver her package for us.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“That’s not the point Cory, shut up and listen: we think she is the right person for you and it seems we weren’t wrong in that assumption, now, were we?” They waited for him to nod. “So, be sure not to fuck this second chance up and do please relax a little, ok? You look a little tense.” His boss patted his back and then had the audience that smiled at him open the doors and finally allow the day to start. He wasn’t even sure what to think anymore: was he supposed to be thankful for their efforts or was he supposed to be angry because they nosed into his private life? “Oh, and get to work, I don’t pay you to laze around.”

Over the course of the day, Cory could do little but go back to the day before, thinking about all the things that had happened, all the things that could have happened and the things that still waited to happen to him but mostly, he thought of the woman that was currently in his apartment, either sleeping or lazing around. Once the clock reached the long-awaited five in the afternoon, Cory did what he had never done before and ran out of the office after closing his pc and grabbing what little he held near him, not bothering to ask if there was still something to do and no one stopped him either, some even wishing him good luck with his new girl. He ignored the wooing and focused on getting home as fast as lizardly possible. Unfortunately there was no one when he got there, no one but a note stuck to the fridge that read: had to go practice to the studio, left everything as I found it, coming back this evening. His heart jumped in his chest at the realization she was indeed coming back and that she hadn’t lied to him in any way, unless she had lied in the note which would be weird and unusual and… Cory slapped himself and hurried to undress, clean the apartment till it was spotless and then began cooking dinner.

“So… you’re telling me that your entire office conspired to have the two of us meet?” Cory sighed and nodded, playing with the food in his plate, moving bits of meat around and refusing to look at her in the eyes. He had made the rash decision to come clean and not let this become some secret that would eventually ruin something later on. Honesty in these situations was the best options to prevent conflict. Or so he hoped. “Well that’s some shady stuff.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Sorry for what exactly?” He looked up at long last and saw her smile with no signs of anger or being upset at him. “You are just as a victim as I am, why would you be sorry for someone else?” Cory blinked, confused. “I think they have indeed stepped over a few lines that shouldn’t be crossed, but it seems to be working out for now, right? Plus you looked so cute and embarrassed when you told me, I’d be heartless not to consider your apology genuine.” Aisa rubbed her hands on his own and squeezed. “I stand by what I said earlier: you’re mine.”

“Does that mean that you want us to be a thing?”

“Of course: you’re the most handsome man I have ever met in my life and you’re also the best cook, the sweetest and the most considerate of what I feel.” Cory gulped and rubbed her hand back.

“And you are the most stunning woman I ever laid my eyes on.” Aisa was the one to blush this time around, as his bigger hands held hers tightly.

“I just hope I won’t abuse your goodwill too much.”

“I’m sure you will not.” He stood up from his seat and craned his neck to reach her and steal a quick kiss from her still open mouth. She grabbed his head and held him in place as they kept going, breaths washing over each other, tongues coiling around the other’s until Cory sat back with a heavy thump. “Want to do it again?”

“Your bed, now.”

Dinner was forgotten as they rushed hand in hand towards Cory’s bedroom where they had slept together the day before, the door was not-so-gently slammed open and almost left a dent in the wall. Cory tossed her on the soft and huge mattress with ease, his muscles ballooning out for the briefest of moment as he lifted the lithe ballet dancer and let her fly for a couple of feet before throwing himself on the bed as well. Aisa landed on her back and then saw the world turn red, his chest once again eclipsing every inch of the space in front of her. Cory kissed her again, making full use of his bulk to pin her down and only allow her to let her hands roam on his chest and back, his tongue slipping out, tasting both his and her scent, the smell of arousal everyone oozed when in the mood. His slit started to drool, precum and slitfluids leaking from the swelling lips of his sex, pushed out by his growing cock. As he kissed her, he didn’t even need to remove her clothes since she had done that herself as soon as she had entered his door and he had closed it, going with the flow of life in his house. His hands found her thighs and rubbed her partially scaled skin, going higher and higher until he felt a just as wet slit and slid a finger inside. Aisa moaned and arched her back, feeling the thick digit slide and curl in her passage, his claws retracted, scraping at her sensitive spots, making her squirm more and more as he kissed her and hosed her legs in thick gouts of precum over and over. With a soft hiss and drawing a deep breath in, she came, holding on to his arms for support, her brain freezing for but a moment and then left to wonder just how did me manage to make her come so quickly and easily. The time to wonder was cut short as she felt something else poke at her sex, something that was far bigger and thicker than his finger.

“Oh… you still feel so big…” Cory grinned and thrust forward gently, easing himself inside her, parting her folds with each cuntbreaking inch of inhuman cock he had to give her. The rough and wild session from the day before had left her still sensitive and it felt as if he was even bigger and the bumps on his flesh were more numerous, stimulating every single nerve she had over and over while he picked up the pace. “Fuck me…”

“Is that a compliment or a request?” Cory chuckled and sped up yet again, his hips starting to turn into a red haze as his cock hammered her muff, pushing deeper and deeper still, letting her feel each time he attempted to push the swollen pseudo-knots in the middle of his length, the hard bumps she had forced herself to take on their first time. This time he made her feel them, how big they were, ramming himself only to push back when he was about to slip past her tightest point, going forward to stretch her again and again and again.

“Give me that fucking knot! Please!!” She cried and curled her legs behind his hips, pulling and tugging with him. He grunted as he obeyed her desperate pleas, fighting against her resisting muscles to push that bump over and deeper inside her. “Yessssss.” As soon as he was in, she came, waves of pleasure and the sheer satisfaction of being able to take on such a thick cock washing over her with the force of a meteor.

Cory hissed, unable to move so tight the grip around him was, overpowering her only when she started to come down from her orgasm and rekindling it immediately. The uneven and alien shape of his member kept that single climax go further than humanly possible, the throbbing and pulse of his flesh giving it something that no toy could reach and no human had given her in her entire life. She came over and over again, whenever he pulled back and then pushed forward, hammering his ten inch cock inside a passage that should have been too small to even fit him. He came soon as well, hosing her womb with his seed a second time, the impossibly tight seal keeping everything in and making her squirm as the pressure became almost too painful to bear.

“Again.”