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Here's part two of the Serpentine Bodyguard, with quite a bit more length and a rollercoaster of emotions in the second half. Unfortunately, there isn't a part 3 scheduled, but I'm ready and able to do it if someone wants to pick up the commission. Credit for the thumbnail goes to Twokinds on DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/twokinds/art/Xcom-Snek-838157829

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When a viper had suddenly arrived at the California Computational Agency's back-end division as a bodyguard to its manager, it sent out ripples that reverberated through the whole agency. Who was this Clark Hopper, people asked, and why does he get an alien bodyguard? Was the viper there to keep tabs on them? Was ADVENT choking up on their leash? Was Clark some kind of alien sleeper agent? Was he the first of many to get replaced by an alien impostor?

Of course, as a whole three weeks went by without anything else happening, those ripples gradually died down, and the back-end division grew used to having Hssara as just another co-worker. The only person who still harbored conspiracy theories about her was Jeff, but that put her on par with six or seven other people in the office. Despite her monstrous appearance, she was kind and unobtrusive… except when it came to her human ward.

Over the past few days, ripples and rumors of a different sort had begun to spread through the office, passed over private texts and water-cooler conversations. It was hard not to notice the moony looks Clark and Hssara gave each other on a regular basis, or how the viper sometimes coiled around him when they thought no one was looking; Liam even claimed he'd heard a combination of ravenous sucking and stifled moaning as he was walking by Clark's office door, but no one had the gumption to interrupt whatever it was he was doing with his bodyguard. Everyone had their own theories, and for the most part, they were utterly correct: Clark and Hssara were thoroughly in love.

On one particular Friday afternoon, Clark was busy proofing the latest rollout of the gene clinic patient database, scrolling through code and annotations to ensure everything was spick and span. They'd managed to finish it a full four days ahead of schedule due to some inspired work from the team, and the program had practically put itself together once they made the pieces. All Clark had to do was sign off on it, but he felt obligated to at least give it a once-over before passing it up the chain.

However, obligation wasn't doing much to motivate him, and Hssara could tell his attention was beginning to wane. She slowly slithered up behind his swivel chair to get a second set of eyes on the code, set her scaly yet manicured hands on his shoulders, and began gently kneading Clark's tense shoulders. "How goes the coding?" she asked, knowing her lover was already thinking forward to what they had planned for later that night.

Clark couldn't help but relax under Hssara's skilled massage, and he leaned forward slightly to let her get at his shoulder blades better. "Oh, it's looking great," he sighed, "Kelly and Jay worked some real miracles with recursion, Paul managed to cut down the executable size by a few gigabytes, Rick only stole half his code from Github, and they all managed to work write-only memory into the mix." By the end, sarcasm was dripping off his voice, and Hssara couldn't help but see his devious smile reflected in his monitors.

"Is that just a bunch of techno-babble to make you seem busy?" she snarked.

"Pretty much. The only errors I've found are some nitpicky formatting stuff that ADVENT doesn't give a damn about, but just in case someone screwed something up…"

"Sounds like you could use a break," Hssara purred, "Wouldn't want anything slipping by you, would we?" Her thumbs began firmly working on her human's shoulders, subtly incentivizing him to lean over.

"Yeah… I could use a break." After pushing his keyboard and mouse forward, Clark leaned further over the desk, giving his lover full access to his back. She didn't hesitate to begin really working out his knots, and since she'd ground her claws down quite a bit, Clark didn't have to worry about tearing his shirt again. He let out a long, contented groan, but his mind couldn't help but return to the romantic evening ahead in the middle of his semi-painful pleasure. "Is ADVENT still letting us use the 'company card' for all this?"

"Mmhmm… I mean, all they have to do is cancel a prime-time ad or two." As Clark had found out when he and Hssara went to buy groceries, the viper had a sleek black debit card that tapped directly into a pool of ADVENT petty cash. The initial idea was for her to cover her own living expenses, but over the past month, they'd been testing how far they could push it.

Eventually, Hssara decided to directly contact her superiors, and after a swift conversation in the alien's language, she realized that the pool was effectively a near-bottomless coffer. Hssara still checked in to clear any purchases, but from what her superiors had told her yesterday, expenses between her and her human lover would get swept under the ubiquitous umbrella of propaganda. When you're a global, near-omnipotent government organization with fingers in almost every technological corporation, you can splurge a couple hundred dollars here and there.

"Perfect… bureaucracy at its finest."

"Did you double check the reservations?"

"Yep, did it this-" Clark let out a sudden gasp as Hssara hit a particularly troublesome knot, but as she worked out the tension, the gasp turned into a quiet moan. "Just did it this morning." Candlelit table for two at Il Macellaio Migliore at 6 pm, rated the state's third-best Italian restaurant. It had great food, good ambiance, and, most importantly, staff who were willing to accommodate an alien with a little government incentive. At first, Hssara had been a tad hesitant to go out on such a public excursion, but if anyone started complaining, ADVENT could just start chucking hush-money like they always did.

"Kolhossa…" A month ago, Hssara's only experience with candlelit dinners was a scene from a movie shown during "cultural assimilation night" back in Nevada… she never would've guessed she'd actually be going out with the guy of her dreams.

The viper continued her tender kneading for a few minutes until Clark had practically melted onto his desk, after which the human sat up and spun around to face her. "You want me to do you?" he asked, intending to give her sensitive hood plenty of attention.

"Actually, I think you're still a bit tense… just stay right there." Her voice dripped with eager playfulness, and her grin was devilishly wide, so Clark knew exactly what she wanted before she began slithering around his chair. After making a few rounds, she slunk her torso under the desk and pulled the chair forward, making it look like her human was hard at work to anyone coming in from the door.

Clark knew from experience just what she was about to do, but even though his dick was already hardening, decency compelled him to say something. "Don't you want to lock the door?" he asked, already knowing the answer before he finished asking.

"Eh, they don't seem to have much to bug you about," the viper replied, hands already reaching for Clark's zipper. "And even if someone barges in here pointing fingers… they can sue me, as you humans say." With that, she deftly unbuckled his belt, popped his waist button, unzipped his fly, and began inching his slacks down his legs. Once she'd gotten them a little way down, she followed up with his boxers and slid both garments down to his ankles.

Meanwhile, Clark pulled his keyboard and mouse back toward him, mainly so that there was the slightest chance he could be mistaken as working. His eyes began tracing over the code once again, but before he could get two lines in, he felt the intoxicating touch of Hssara's tongue wrapping around his bare dick. She had him trained to where the slightest squeeze from her prehensile licker got him as hard as a rock, and once blood finished pumping it up to full size, the viper didn't hesitate to pull her talented mouth down on top of it. In an instant, Clark's manhood was enveloped in cozy, wet, pulsating goodness, and he couldn't help but let out a groan as his tip slid down her throat. "Ooooh, fuck," he sighed, his left hand reaching down to tenderly stroke her hood.

Hssara's only reply was to start bobbing up and down, doing double duty with her suckling lips and constricting tongue. She could almost smell her human lover's arousal, especially when she took him to the hilt, and even though he bit his lip to stifle his moans, she could still hear the pleasure reverberating through his voice. Thanks to her convenient lack of crotch armor, Hssara reached down and began fingering herself to her bobbing rhythm, getting her already-aroused slit soaked with feminine fluids.

Any chance Clark had of appearing nonchalant vanished as he leaned back in his chair, fully succumbing to the viper's suckling pleasure. On top of her tongue still holding his shaft inside his mouth, he could feel her throat swallowing and convulsing just the way he liked, and her soft, scaly lips stayed sealed around his cock. Her free hand began fondling his balls as well, almost begging him to finish in her mouth, and Clark could tell his body was moments away from obliging. The human tried to think up something witty to say, something to encourage his lover or make her blush, but all his pleasure-addled brain could muster was a primordial moan. "Mrrrrraaaaaagh…"

Clark had absolutely no intention of resisting, and he was perfectly fine with Hssara sucking out his load under his desk, but all that changed when he heard footsteps just outside the door. As the knob began to turn, he frantically sat up and put his hands on his keyboard, and as the visitor stepped through, Clark tried to ignore the fact that Hssara still had his manhood halfway down her gullet. "Huh-hi there, can I help you?"

Right as the words left his mouth, Clark realized how unnatural they sounded, especially since he said them before he even saw who it was. The visitor turned out to be Liam, the same guy who'd been making assumptions earlier, but he didn't seem to notice anything was wrong until he was already through the door. "Hey, Clark, I was wondering if you knew where we kept the documentation for the client class."

Clark's eyes flicked down just long enough to confirm that Hssara was still stuck to his gonads, and as he tried to focus on Liam, she began slowly sucking once again. "I, ah… aren't they in the drive?" he replied, inadvertently making things worse by battening down his expression.

"Well, yeah, but they aren't in the folder with the rest of the client data…" It was hard to tell with worry and embarrassment racing through his mind, but Clark thought he could see suspicion building in his subordinate.

"I think… I think Kelly moved it to the, uh… other folder," the manager sighed, "The, um… one with the class code…"

"Right…" Shit, he suspected something, and Clark's paling expression wasn't helping matters. "Are.. are you okay?" Liam asked with a furrowed brow, seeming to quickly scan the room for clues. "Where's Hssara?"

"She's, ah…" Sucking me off under the desk? Gradually inching me toward a climax with slow, deliberate mouthwork? Probably enjoying my discomfort and the fact that neither of us could stop her? "She's… getting coffee."

Judging by the way Liam had entered, he'd come around the side near the break room, but before he could bring anything up, the programmer's eyes suddenly fixated on something on the floor right beside Clark's desk. His boss swiftly followed his gaze, and Clark realized that the very tip of Hssara's tail was sticking out from under the desk, slowly wiggling back and forth as she kept swallowing her lover's meat. When Clark met Liam's gaze, he realized in an instant his subordinate knew what was going on, but instead of offering a flimsy explanation, he simply raised one finger to his lips in the universal "say nothing" gesture. In the moment of silence that followed, they could both hear the shlick shlick shlick of Hssara hastily getting herself off, but Liam had enough sense to excuse himself. "Right, I'll check there and ask Kelly," he said, "Thanks…"

With that, he swiftly left the office and closed the door behind him, leaving Clark to slouch over the desk as Hssara's previous pace resumed. All thoughts of scolding her were driven out by the blissful pleasure of her throat and lips, eventually causing him to double over further as he blew his load. The viper easily swallowed spurt after spurt of the white sticky stuff, but halfway through, Clark could feel her begin to shiver from her own small orgasm. "Mmmmph," she mumbled, still sucking down the last dregs of cum while her snatch pulsed and squeezed around her fingers. Both she and her lover relaxed backward as pulsing pleasure faded into post-coital contentment, but it didn't take long for Clark to work up the nerve to speak.

"Hssara, that was…" It was both terrifying and exhilarating to have his subordinate watching, and the viper knew just what buttons to press to get him cumming like a fire hose. "…it was reckless, doing that out in the open."

As Hssara slid up to look him in the eye, pushing his chair back as she emerged from between his legs, she couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. "Reckless? That implies something could've gone wrong."

Clark couldn't help but let a bit of indignant annoyance slip into his voice. "Liam walked in on us, how is that not something going wrong?"

"What's he going to do now that he knows about us? Is he gonna get jealous? Tell the whole office? Maybe write up a lawsuit? Last time I checked, two consenting adults don't constitute a sexual harassment lawsuit, and even if we did-"

ADVENT would just sweep it under the rug, cover it up, or do something else to keep its VIPs out of harm's way. "Alright, so he won't do anything against us, but that's still unprofessional."

Hssara raised herself up a bit further, putting her hands on her hips while her lips curled into a pouty frown. "Unprofessional? You're the one who put the 'Out of Service' sign on the bathroom two weeks ago so we could screw there, and the whole coffee cup fiasco was your idea too."

Clark raised one finger to make a counterpoint, then realized she was pretty much right. "Touché. But still, I think we could do more to keep it in our pants on the job… if we keep rutting like animals, god knows what the team will start doing to each other."

The viper's lips relaxed into a smile, and she lowered herself down to give Clark a kiss on the lips. "Alright, boss, if you think that's best… do you still want me to clean you up?"

"Sure," her human lover sighed, leaning further back to expose his thinly glazed tip. It took all of ten seconds for Hssara to squeeze out the last leaky drops of cum, and after wiping his manhood clean with one hand, she let him pull his pants and underwear back on. Meanwhile, she used the same hand to wipe away her own excess fluids, then dried it on a particular spot of carpet; the synthetic fibers were already stiff, and as she pulled her fingers back, she could smell the aged aroma of their past lovemaking sessions. Clark got back to work reviewing his team's code while Hssara pretended to take a nap with her hands tastefully covering her still-engorged groin, both of them pondering both each other and the events to come.

The rest of the day went by relatively uneventfully, with Hssara keeping Clark company while the human continued checking code. By the time people began filing out of the office, he'd made it halfway through the full load, and Clark would've stayed later if not for two reasons: he and Hssara had somewhere to be by six, and he knew from experience the viper could get quite frisky when no one else was around. Clark left his office, said his goodbyes to those still lingering about their desks, then headed down to the parking lot with his bodyguard in tow, already pondering what the restaurant would be like.

The two of them quickly got into Hssara's black van, the only vehicle really capable of carrying both a human and a viper. Hssara got in the spacious back while Clark sat up in the driver's seat, and the van's no-divider design let them chat without issue. Even though there was a steering wheel, the vehicle was fully autonomous, and all Clark had to do was speak the destination he wanted: "Autopilot, take us home."

"Destination confirmed," came the robotic reply, "ETA: 28 minutes."

With that, the van clicked itself into reverse, gracefully pulled out of its parking spot, then began the trip back to their apartment. Once they were on their way, Clark swiveled his seat around to face his serpentine companion. "So," he asked, "Are you nervous at all?"

"Nervous?" Hssara couldn't help but smirk as she thought up a rebuttal, something along the lines of "how could a giant snake monster be nervous of a candlelit dinner," but she ultimately decided it would be better to speak from her heart. "Yeah, a little," she replied, "I mean, I know the staff seemed pretty tolerant, but that doesn't mean the other diners won't freak out."

Clark let out a small chuckle. "Trust me, the last thing these people will do is freak out. It's all about ambience and atmosphere, and as long as the staff act cool, they won't do so much as raise their voices."

"I take it you've been on a bunch of fancy dates like this?" Hssara replied with one eyebrow raised.

"Just one, but the atmosphere isn't something you forget. It can be cozy and quiet, like no one else is in the restaurant with you, but… sometimes it feels like you're under duress to stay quiet."

"Under duress?" Hssara couldn't help but imagine a candlelit room ringed by well-dressed and heavily armed guards, all of whom were instructed to take out any disruptions with silenced rifles. She knew it wasn't remotely true, but the absurd thought was still fairly amusing.

"Actually, I take that back; the only thing forcing you is the sheer atmosphere of the place. It's like… remember that one experiment we saw on the science channel a few days ago, the one about center of mass?"

"The one where they balanced a ball and two shovels on two wine glasses?"

"Yeah, that one. It's like some sort of equilibrium… no one ever does something odd because of the expectations of everyone else." Clark thought he could see a bit of confusion on Hssara's brow, and he quickly realized he was beginning to nerd out. "I suppose it's more of a human thing…"

His lover, however, was far less dissuaded by his philosophical tangents. "Actually, I know what you mean, and the Elders actually have a term for it: Futyf Vurumso, if I remember correctly. I think the literal translation would be 'high balance,' but I'm guessing humans call it something else."

"I think it's called the social contract," Clark replied.

"Hmm." The two of them sat in silence for a moment before Hssara thought up something witty to say, which she telegraphed with a scaly grin. "So I was breaking the social contract when I sucked you off in front of Liam?"

"Exactly."

"And you were breaking the social contract when you jizzed in my coffee, right?"

At the mention of the coffee cup fiasco, Clark both gritted his teeth and stifled a laugh. In the eight days since its inception, it had gone from lewdly funny to slightly embarrassing to ridiculously hilarious. "Yes… that was a breach in the contract, and a rather hairbrained move, I'll admit."

Hssara couldn't help but break into a malevolent smirk. "Oh, you're still mad that I got you to drink your own cum?"

Clark couldn't help but think back to when it had actually happened, to the absurd dilemma Hssara had forced upon him. After the first cup spiked with his seed, Hssara had made sure to always get an identical cup to his, and when he tried it again, she revealed her trap with an evil grin. At first, Clark thought she'd switched the cups, but something about her fiendish expression made him doubt it. "You switched the mugs when I wasn't looking," he accused, "Didn't you?"

"Maaaybe." The viper's smirk was as inscrutable as a sphinx, further throwing Clark's judgment off balance. She definitely could've swapped them, he'd been pretty focused on the code… but she could've just as easily left them right where they were so that when he swapped them back, he wound up with the cup laced with man-milk.

Of course, she could have assumed he'd figure that out, in which case she would have swapped them, or she could've thought another step ahead and not swapped them. Her amusement seemed to feed off his confliction, daring him to take a cup and drink it. He couldn't help but think back to the first movie they'd ever watched together, but in the heat of the moment, he failed to recall how the duel of wits had ended.

Instead, he decided to apply Occam's razor, reasoning that a simple switcheroo made the most sense. "Gimme that," he playfully growled, standing up and swiftly swapping cups with Hssara; she hardly resisted, but her fiendish smile widened a few degrees. Clark could feel a few doubts still bouncing around in his head, but the human paid them no mind as he raised the cup to his lips. At first, it seemed he'd guessed right, but as he drank deeper and deeper, he began to feel the consistency thicken, and a sour-salty note emerged amidst the cream and coffee.

As her lover's face twisted in a look somewhere between disgust, amusement, and humiliation, Hssara couldn't help but let out a mischievous giggle. "Like the new cream you put in?" she tittered, mockingly taking a sip from the mug he'd had on his desk.

Initially, Clark was about to ask how she knew he'd go for her cup, but then he remembered how Vizzini had met his demise via iocane powder. "You put it in both, didn't you?" he sighed, trying to hold back a chuckle of his own with mock irritation.

"Mmhmm." The viper took a long drink from her own mug, smacking her lips at the familiar taste of human jizz. She knew Clark held no hard feelings about it in the same way she didn't mind the extra "cream," but it was still fun to see the human's face twist with embarrassment and hilarity. "Hey, it's not my fault you fell victim to one of the classic blunders…"

Back in the present, Clark did his best to formulate a rebuttal. "I'm not mad," he said with a suppressed grin, "I'm just…"

"Embarrassed that you got outwitted that easily by a giant snake?"

"Well, it wasn't just any snake," he replied, reflexively countering Hssara's self-assessment even though he knew it was ironic. "She was a brilliant, smoking hot criminal mastermind, the kind of femme fatale that could fuck you into a coma or kill you with one hand."

The viper's expression gradually went from playful to predatory as she got up from her "seat," slowly slithering toward Clark as the van trundled along. "If I'm the femme fatale," she purred, "Then what does that make you? A stoic detective? A naive victim?"

"Oh, I'm just some schmuck who's in love," Clark sincerely replied, "But if you'd rather I be your prey…"

Hssara cut him off by surging through the last three feet between them, pulling her human into an intimate kiss. "Please, I'd never hurt you," she cooed, affectionately stroking his hair with one hand while gazing into his eyes. "You're way too much fun to keep around… and I doubt any other human could match me in bed."

The two of them just stared at each other for a moment, with Clark soaking up the intimate warmth of her slit-pupil gaze, but before they could do anything too forward, the van's autopilot spoke up in a computerized voice: "You have arrived at Bretton Arms Apartments."

"Well, here we are," Clark sighed, right before checking his phone. Thanks to whatever tech the ADVENT installed in their vehicles, he barely felt the van stop, and the ride through town had been as smooth as silk. "We've got a little over thirty minutes until the reservation… Autopilot, how long will it take to get to the italian place?"

The van's computerized voice spoke up again. "With current estimated traffic, it will take approximately 25 minutes to arrive at Il Macellaio Migliore. Traffic is projected to remain constant until 7 pm."

"Better hustle, then," Hssara said, right before popping open the back door and slithering out. Clark quickly followed behind her, paused briefly to lock up the van, then followed his serpentine lover all the way to the elevator, hurrying enough that they didn't notice another tenant's muted reaction. The ride up to their floor seemed surprisingly long now that they were on a time crunch, but once the doors opened, their apartment was mercifully close.

Clark and Hssara wasted no time getting to the bedroom, after which they swiftly began getting dressed for the evening. A few days prior, the two of them had taken their ADVENT company card for a little shopping spree, during which they'd decided they might as well get some nice clothes for their high-end dinner date.

For Clark, the new clothes took the form of a sleek two-button suit, cut from a light synthetic fabric that was breathable enough to withstand Californian heat. Instead of his usual button-up and tie, he wore a black turtleneck underneath, and he finished the look with a pair of shiny leather loafers. His viper companion said it made him look like some billionaire tech genius, but Clark just thought it looked kind of clever.

For Hssara, they took the form of a simple black dress, sleeveless but closed in the back. Although Clark had liked seeing her bare scales from behind, she felt a little uncomfortable airing out her back in public, and they happily compromised on something low-cut that didn't leave her back exposed. The bottom hem reached down to about halfway between her hips and the floor, giving it a semi-modest look even though she had no legs to show. To top it off, the viper also bought a little pearl pendant to wear about her neck, a simple piece of jewelry that rather nicely complemented the lighter accents of her scales. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only accessory she had: ADVENT didn't want her carrying a plasma rifle into a civilian area, but they also didn't want her to be unarmed, so they issued her a sleek little pistol that looked more like the guns ADVENT troopers used. Luckily, the pistol's waist/thigh/tail holster fit easily under Hssara's dress while still being drawable, and the polymer belt even matched the fabric.

As the pair turned to face one another, the excited gleam in both their eyes was as clear as day, and in what felt like a moment frozen in time, the two of them stepped closer together. "You're absolutely stunning," Clark murmured, "That dress, that necklace…"

Had she skin instead of scales, Hssara would have blushed, but she quickly came up with a counter-compliment. "And you look simply dashing in that suit… shall we?" She daintily extended one scaly, clawed hand, and Clark didn't hesitate to take it, but before leading her away, he pulled her into yet another kiss. Both of them could feel yet another intimate spark blossoming, but when Clark checked the time on his phone, it broke the two of them out of their spell and sent them rushing back down to the van.

This time, Hssara entered through the back but decided to "sit" beside Clark, fastening her seatbelt as her lover entered their destination. "Autopilot, take us to the italian place… and maybe hurry it up a bit."

"Destination and travel parameters set. ETA: 22 minutes." With that, the van backed itself out of the spot and headed off toward the restaurant a tad faster than usual.

The first half of the ride was mostly silent beyond Clark tapping one foot, but when they got stuck at a red light for what seemed like several minutes, Hssara turned to ask her human lover something: "They'll hold our reservation if we get there a little late, right?"

Clark was quick to offer a comforting smile as he took the viper's hand. "Oh, yeah, we've got about a fifteen-minute window. Don't worry, we'll make it."

As if to agree, the light flicked to green, and the van quickly resumed gliding toward their destination. The odd couple stayed silent for a few minutes, but Hssara gradually decided to ask something: "Are there a bunch of rules I need to know, or…"

"Nah, you don't need to memorize the whole etiquette checklist," he replied, rubbing slow circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. "Just keep your napkin on your lap, take things one bite at a time, put the utensils on your plate when you're done… and pretend to chew." The last bit of advice was something he formulated right after watching her swallow a whole roast chicken in a matter of seconds. While she usually split her food up like a human, she didn't —and as a matter of fact, couldn't— chew her food, something that most humans found strange.

However, Hssara and Clark had discussed the issue before, and while her lover had quickly grown used to it, she'd agreed to accommodate less desensitized humans. "I think I can do that much," she replied, giving his hand a reassuring squeeze before dipping into a more sarcastic tone. "I'll do my best not to embarrass you at such a prestigious establishment."

"Oh, I'm sure you won't," Clark cooed, returning the squeeze with a warm glance. "And even if you did, who'd have the balls to call out such a beautiful creature?"

A few minutes further down the road, the van slowed to a stop, then turned right into the restaurant's driveway. A digital sign above the building read "Il Macellaio Migliore" in flowing red cursive, and below that, two gilded doors led into the fancy foyer. In front of the restaurant was a valet who visibly tensed at the sight of the ADVENT van, but the young man did his best to hide his emotions as the vehicle pulled up in front of him. The valet's courage was tested again as Hssara came slithering out of the door, but once Clark stepped up beside her, he seemed to recover a bit of decorum. "Might I have your keys?" he asked, extending one dignified hand with the other behind his back.

Hssara seemed a tad confused, but Clark was quick to intervene. "There's no keys, it's self driving."

"Ah… I see." The valet seemed both eager and anxious, but he quickly suppressed both emotions. "I'll tend to the vehicle, you two may head on inside."

"Thanks!" Hssara replied, giving the valet a sunny grin as he circled around to the driver's side door. Once the young man punched in the propper codes to get the thing moving, she turned back to Clark with a slightly worried expression. "Clark, I…"

"It's okay," Clark replied, "Just keep on walking…" With that adage in mind, he and Hssara walked and slithered forward through the door into the foyer, after which they were greeted by the dimly lit yet brilliant facade of a fancy restaurant. A few renaissance-esque paintings adorned the walls, and several ornate iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling, providing dim light to the cloth-covered tables below. Only half of the tables were occupied, and those that were either didn't take notice of Hssara or did their utmost not to seem startled.

Moments after crossing the threshold, the odd pair were greeted by an Italian woman in an impeccable red dress, and if she was at all fazed by her guest's reptilian appearance, she didn't show it in the slightest. "Greetings," she said with a slight accent and slighter bow, "And welcome to Il Macellaio Migliore. Mr. Hopper and Mrs. Hssara, I presume?"

"That's me," Clark replied.

"Exccellente. If you would kindly follow me, your tables are just over here."

As the hostess led the two of them to an empty table a short ways away, Clark gave Hssara's hand a reaffirming squeeze. The table was set with a small electric candle in an immaculate glass tumbler on top of a pristine white tablecloth, and at first glance, the chairs seemed to be of equal quality. After the hostess pulled out a seat for him, Clark sat to find it strangely comfortable, but his suit jacket felt oddly tight as he got settled; the arms seemed just a tad short even though it was supposedly a perfect fit, and the shoulders just didn't seem all that flexible.

However, before he could ruminate too much on his suit, his attention was drawn by the hostess. "Are you comfortable with a chair, signora?" she asked Hssara, seemingly out of courteous curiosity than anything else.

"Uh… sure, I think so," Hssara replied, eyeing the cushioned wooden piece of furniture before trying it out. With a bit of maneuvering, she coiled a few times around the base before "sitting" down, adjusting a bit before seeming content.

The hostess gave a curt bow. "Exccellente. If you have any issues, please let any one of the staff know. A server will be by momentarily with your menus." With that, she turned and left, leaving Clark and Hssara alone at their very own table.

"So, what do you think?" Clark asked after a few quiet moments, "Not too fancy?"

Hssara took another look around at all the guests, then settled back into her chair, seemingly unsure what to do with her hands. "Well, I mean… it's pretty nice. I kinda see what you mean by 'under duress,' but… the staff almost seem too nice."

Clark raised an eyebrow. "Is that a bad thing?"

"No, it's just… different. Guess I'm just used to you being the only one who sees me for me."

As their conversation died down, both of them began to notice the soft notes of classical music wafting through the air, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. Both Clark and Hssara stopped and listened for a moment, but a few moments later, they were politely interrupted by a man in a sharp vest and bow tie. "Good evening," he said, "I'm Jarred, and I'll be your server tonight." With that, he passed a set of elegant menus out to both Clark and Hssara. "Can I get either of you a drink? Wine, perhaps?"

"Uh, sure," Clark replied, and Hssara nodded in assent.

"Would you like a wine menu, do you have a specific vintage in mind, or would you simply like to go with the sommelier's recommendation?"

Clark gave Hssara a confused glance, hoping she might be able to offer some advice, and a moment later, he felt the tip of her tail curl around his ankle. "The third one," he eventually replied, "We'll take the recommendation."

"Very good, sir. Would you like a moment to ponder the menu, or are you ready to order?"

"Um…" Both diners turned their attention to their menus, and it was then that Clark noticed the minimalist style: there were three sections for the three courses of the meal, and under each were two or three choices. "I, ah…" He didn't know what some of the more exotic terms even meant, but just at a glance, he thought he knew what looked best. "Hssara, do you want to look it over, or…"

"I think I'll just have what you're having," she replied.

"Alright… then we'll have the chopped salad to start, but without tomatoes."

The waiter paused for an awkward moment before saying, "And for the other courses?"

"Oh, right, ah… we'll have the lasagna, and, um… the crostata." He wasn't sure what a crostata was, but based on the detailed description, it sounded like some sort of pie.

"Excellent choice, sir. I'll have the salad out in a moment." With that, he collected the menus and left, stranding Clark and Hssara once again in their own candlelit oasis. The viper looked even more beautiful in the dim light, her yellow eyes popping from the same darkness that blended with her dress, and her curt smile revealed that she was thinking similar things about Clark.

"About the food," Hssara began, "Lasagna is that dish with the layers of wavy noodles, cheese, and tomato, right?"

"Mmhmm." Throughout their relationship, he'd discovered his scaly lover was quite fond of Italian food, and she seemed particularly drawn to romanticized images of lasagna's melty folds. However, after a few more minutes of soaking up the ambiance, it felt like something was missing, and Clark quickly realized it was their lack of conversation. "How'd you discover you were into humans?" he asked, posing the first question to pop into his head.

"Well, I…" Hssara seemed a bit surprised by her human lover breaking the silence, but relaxed a bit as she focused in on him. "It started back in Nevada, in the training facility where I was brought up. We had scheduled 'enrichment' classes where we got exposed to human media, and I always seemed to understand it better than my peers. Then, once we got older, we got access to this massive compilation of data from the internet… most saw it as pointless, but I dived right in. It didn't take me long to learn what porn was, and afterward, well… I kinda got sucked in. After we were done training with dummies, I used to volunteer to clean up, and while no one else was around, I… did things."

Shame seemed to weigh on her shoulders the slightest bit, prompting Clark to reveal his own dirty secret: "I did regrettable stuff in puberty too… believe me, I know what it's like to want something you can't have that badly."

Hssara couldn't help but grin. "Did stuff like what, hump pillows?"

"Oh, I was classier than that. I managed to buy a sex toy under my parents' noses with a gift card, and once I started screwing that lump of silicone, I didn't stop until I'd poked a damn hole in it." Clark paused a moment as he thought back to his teenage years, but now that he was rewinding his memories, something else popped up that he'd never really noticed. "Actually, I think I actually started getting into mons… I mean, aliens, back when I was in high school. I watched a lot of weird stuff, and it's probably why I… you know."

"Why you let me strip you naked and screw you silly?"

Clark shrugged with comic indifference. "To put it bluntly."

Hssara briefly drummed her nails on the table, took a look around the restaurant, then refocused on Clark just as the waiter returned with a cart. "Here are your salads," he said, placing the bowls in front of both diners. "What kind of dressing would you prefer?"

The various bottles were already lined up at the edge of the cart, and it took all of two seconds for Clark to come up with his choice. "I think I'll go with caesar," he said, "How about you, Hssara?"

"I'll have the same," the viper replied with a small smile.

"Caesar it is, then." The waiter picked up the appropriate bottle, unscrewed the top, then applied a modest glob to both salads. Then he set two wine glasses in front of the diners, and after filling them halfway with rosy-looking liquid, he left a venerable-looking wine bottle on the table between them. With all that done, he wheeled the cart away, allowing Clark and Hssara a bit of privacy as they stirred up their salads.

Clark quickly noted the utter absence of annoying little tomatoes in his dish, while Hssara was more interested in the dressing itself. Her tongue flicked the air, almost as if trying to taste the dressing on her fork from a foot away, and Clark recognized it as her sniffing the new scent. "How is it?" he asked, unsure how she'd react to the spicier ingredients.

"It's… interesting. Kinda spicy, kinda fruity…" She quickly slipped the leaves impaled on her fork into her mouth, and though she flinched a tad at first, she let out an approving hum. Clark could tell she was savoring it by the way she rolled it around her mouth, and once she swallowed, her lips bent in a contented grin. "It tastes great," she remarked, hardly hesitating to skewer and devour another mouthful. "How's yours?"

It was the same tangy dressing he'd come to know and love, this time with the imperceptible spice of extravagance thrown in. "Mine's good," he replied.

Hssara raised an eyebrow. "Just good?"

"I don't know," Clark replied with a shrug, "It's a good salad. I don't really know how spectacular you can get with sauce mixed into leaves."

"Hrmm… I guess you're right."

Her human immediately sensed something lurking just under the surface. "But…?"

"I dunno…" Hssara thoughtfully stirred her salad around with her fork for a bit before stabbing a meager clump of lettuce, which she ate and swallowed in the blink of an eye. "Salads are pretty common for humans, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then maybe that's it, I just haven't gotten desensitized to it. The tangy sauce, the hint of these little green things, the crisp crunch of lettuce… I'm not sure I've had anything like it before." After thoughtfully staring at the tines on her fork for a minute, she took another bite, this time pausing to savor the flavor.

"Does Area 51 not have salad bars?" Clark asked between mouthfuls. Ever since he'd heard she was trained in Nevada, he couldn't help but imagine the secret-shrouded base as her home, a hub of alien activity away from prying human eyes. It had become something of an inside joke between them, and its very mention brought a smile to Hssara's lips.

"No, just rows of protein paste dispensers," she explained with a witty flourish. "You know the stuff they eat on the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix, that runny snot-stuff? That's breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. Forra, we didn't even have meals, just 'food breaks' with none of the circumstance."

After finishing another mouthful, her human replied with the same sarcastic wit. "Sounds efficient."

"Oh, it was… it took me all of ten seconds to down a can of the stuff, then it was back to guard duty." With one last bite, Hssara finished her salad, leaving her fork with nothing to do but fidget about. Her attention swiftly shifted to the glass of wine, which she picked up and studied with a curious eye. "I thought wine was supposed to be dark red?" she said half to herself, "This just looks… yellowish."

"Well, there's different kinds of wines," Clark said, turning the bottle to face him. "Looks like this one's a white wine… not sure what 'sauternes' means, though."

While her human lover had been eyeing the bottle, Hssara raised the glass, took a few "sniffs" with her probing tongue, then raised the rim to her lips and sipped. "Mmmm, it's sweet," she remarked, "It's got a bit of a kick to it, but still…"

In Clark's experience, wine always tasted like grape juice turned rotten, but as he took a sip of his own glass, he realized she was right. "Huh… how about that?" It didn't take long for Clark to formulate a new line of questioning while Hssara enjoyed her wine, but before he could propose it, his scaly lover posed a question of her own: "What do you think of ADVENT?"

Clark paused mid-bite. "What do I think? I…" He couldn't help but lower his last forkload of salad back down to his bowl. "I think they're alright, I guess. They united the world, built tons of infrastructure… I'm sure they might have skeletons in the closet, but that doesn't negate all they've done for humanity." After a moment, he realized he might sound a bit like a boot-licker, and he wasn't surprised at Hssara's slightly confused expression. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just…" Hssara rolled her fork back and forth between her fingers a bit, and it almost seemed like she was reading the spinning tines for answers. "Back in Nevada, they always used to go on and on about how humans were rebellious, how they detested authority, how their us-them mentality made them pre-inclined to uprisings and mayhem." She paused for a moment, realized how that might have sounded to Clark, then added, "I know not all humans are like that, it's just.."

"Oh I don't disagree," Clark said with palms raised absolvingly outward, "We have a tendency to bite the hand that feeds us, for good or for ill. Before ADVENT, we had the federal government, and before them, we had the british." He wasn't quite sure how familiar Hssara was with early American history, but she seemed to get the gist. "Sometimes it's for the greater good, but more often than not, sacrificing a bit of freedom is worth the security an overarching government gives us." The two of them sat in silence for a moment, unsure how to push forward in talks of tyranny and liberty, so Clark decided to do a simple turn-around: "How does ADVENT look from your end?"

Hssara couldn't help but let out a tiny sigh as she set her fork in her bowl. "It's… nebulous, I guess. From what we're taught of the Elders, their civilization stretches back billions of years, back before humans even existed, and ADVENT is just one facet of an intergalactic-" Clark got the feeling she was about to say empire, but the words died in her throat. "-network. It's just so big, and Earth is just one more stop on the chain."

While Clark had heard numerous theories of the aliens' past, he'd never really thought to ask Hssara about it before now. "How much do you know about the Elders?" he asked, already preparing to retreat to calmer waters.

"Well…"

Before the viper could get very far, she was interrupted by wheels rolling on the tiled floor. A quick glance revealed it to be the waiter, but instead of making himself fully known, he stealthily cleared away their empty salad bowls, then replaced them with plates of barely-steaming lasagna. "Bon appetit," he quietly murmured, then headed off as quickly as he'd come.

As soon as the plate touched the table, Hssara's eyes widened, and her tongue flicked intently out of her mouth, oh-so-eager to tuck into the juicy slice in front of her… but she had manners enough not to swallow the thing whole. Instead, she followed Clark's lead in using a fork, and after popping a cleft portion into her mouth, she let out a long murmur of content. It took her a while to fully savor the combined flavors of cheeses and sauces, during which she simply swished the thing around her mouth, and once she was done, she reverently gulped it down. "Tejoasa," she chuckled, "That tastes amazing!" Before Clark could reply, she'd already stuffed another chunk past her lips, and she listened to her human lover with a whole maelstrom of flavor in her mouth.

"Glad you like it," Clark purred with a grin, already halfway through cutting a chunk of his own for himself. "My grandma used to make it like this every once and a while… I might be able to find a good recipe online so we can make it together sometime."

Hssara hastily gulped down the piece already in her mouth, but even before, she was already nodding her assent. "You mean we can make this back at the apartment? Fora ioca, that'd be perfect!"

He'd be sure to add the ingredients to their shopping list… but for now, Clark was still curious about the Elders. "So what do you know about them?"

"The Elders? Well, most of it is pretty vague: many generations ago, they were fallible like humans, but after overcoming their own weaknesses, they found the 'path to enlightenment.' Then they decided to spread their revelation across the galaxy, and a few thousand years later, here they are."

Clark's brow furrowed in thought. "What do they mean by 'enlightenment?'"

Hssara seemed about to answer but then paused to devour another bite. "Y'know, I'm not quite sure," she replied after swallowing, "I'm not even sure if 'enlightenment' is the right term in english… it could mean sapience, it could mean something religious, it could even mean the psionic stuff they use." Moments later, she washed it down with some wine, nearly draining the rest of the glass.

"Hold on, psionic stuff?" As far as Clark knew, psionics and telepathy were firmly in the realm of science fiction… but given the other things the aliens had done, it actually wasn't that off the rails.

"Yeah, it's how they do mass communication," Hssara replied, "Just beaming thoughts around like texts… even I've got a psionic chip." She briefly tapped the base of her skull, indicating her rough estimate of its position. "It's kinda secretive, but not really, all the conspiracy nutters have it more or less figured out." Clark wasn't entirely sure, but it almost sounded like her words were getting the tiniest bit slurred.

"So what exactly does this chip do?" her human lover asked, "Can they… spy on you?"

Hssara just shrugged. "Probably, but even if they can't jack into my thoughts, they've still got a million other ways of keeping tabs." Clark had just begun to ponder something serious when his viper companion blurted it out: "Don't worry, they aren't weird enough to go watching our sex tape or anything… haspa, choja klevuvri hymja yug jyucta'go."

The last few words from her lips were most definitely slurred, and as Hssara began refilling her empty glass, Clark wondered just how susceptible a reptilian alien would be to alcohol. "Maybe take it easy on the wine," he suggested, "We're not here to get drunk."

She paused in her pouring, took another look at the now half-full glass, then shrugged. "It's just one glass," she replied, "I'm not gonna get that drunk off just one glass… right?" To punctuate her statement, she cut another piece of lasagna free with her fork and gobbled it down, doing her best to seem prim and proper.

Clark stood down, but he couldn't help but wonder whether vipers had different biology than humans when it came to their livers. Maybe they were more susceptible to alcohol, or maybe he was just blowing things out of proportion… yeah, that might be it. He carved off another piece of lasagna in thought, but Hssara offered another question halfway through it. "You've been with human women, right?"

After finishing his chewing, Clark couldn't help but feel like this was a leading question. He could feel her tail gently squeezing and curling around his ankle, which usually meant she was either nervous or excited… or some combination of the two. "Yeah, I've been with a girl or two… why do you ask?"

"Just curious," Hssara replied, "I was wondering how it was screwing something with four limbs."

"I, ah… well…"

"Well? How was it?" Hssara's slit-pupil eyes gleamed with mischief, and her subtle grin lacked any sort of subtlety. "How was it screwing one of your own kind?"

Clark briefly glanced around to see if her indecent talk had reached any of the other tables, but the only attention they received was the occasional glance. "It was… different," he eventually conceded, "I suppose it wasn't as interesting as with you, what with no tail and all…"

"Wasn't interesting how? C'mon, I want details!"

"Well… it was awkward. She just kind of lay there as I did my thing, and afterward, she just kind of… dozed off." Back in his college days, it had seemed at least a passable sexual conquest, but after three weeks of tangling with a viper, it seemed downright dull. "Both of us put in a fair bit of work for the foreplay, but after that… I think she might've gotten bored."

While Clark spoke, Hssara hastily swallowed what remained of her food, then finished off her second glass of wine while Clark was busy savoring a sip from his own. "That certainly wasn't your fault," she purred, "I've seen what you can do in bed… that janva vsuyegh must've been a square."

Her tail began to slowly creep up Clark's ankle as he finished his entree, and the human only really noticed once it neared his zipper. "Hssara, c'mon," he hissed, "Quit screwing around."

"Fine, fine," the viper sighed with a comical pout, "I was just flirting around." She moved her tail back down to the floor, flicking it dejectedly as she rested her chin on her hands. "What fancy-pantsy topic would you rather talk about?"

Before Clark could answer, the waiter came by once more with his cart, this time replacing their empty lasagna dishes with primly-sliced sections of a pie. He also left the bill sitting on the tablecloth, and as a way of retreating a bit, Clark hastily signed the receipt and put the company card in the slot. "I dunno… how'd you get from Nevada to here?"

"It wasn't hard," Hssara replied, "I got orders to go from basic guard duty to bodyguard detail, and they put me on a troop carrier here. Whole flight took about half an hour, then it was another half hour from the ADVENT base to here." She picked up her fork, then scooped out a bit of pie with the edge. "Not exactly an odyssey worth telling." The viper then popped the chunk past her lips and rolled it around a bit to savor the taste before suddenly lighting up with devious inspiration. "What kind of weird stuff did you watch?"

Clark's brow furrowed. "What weird stuff?"

"You said before you watched some weird stuff in high school that got you into monsters. Like what?" The horny gleam in her eye was one Clark understood all too well, although she'd never flaunted it in public before… so long as you didn't count the times at the office… and once in the clothing store… and twice on the street…

Without interrupting, their waiter slipped by and picked up the bill. "Well, mostly clean stuff," Clark replied, "There was this one movie, Outpost 32… it started like a horror movie, but the protagonist starts to sympathize with the monster during the second act, and-"

"Come on, Clark, you know what I mean."

He could tell from Hssara's expression that she'd be willing to watch it with him sometime, but right now, she was after something more embarrassing. "Really? You want to talk about this here?"

Hssara knocked back her third glass of wine of the night, then leaned enticingly across the table, doing her best to flash her scaly cleavage at her human companion. "Oh, I wanna do a lot more than talk," she purred, "But I'm sure wrapping you up and fucking your brains out would be quite the faux pas, no?"

While he couldn't help but imagine that very scenario, Clark wasn't nearly as prone to getting taken by drink… or by arousal. "And here I thought you were shy about such fancy surroundings," he sighed, picking up his wine glass and taking a classy sip.

"Oh, what're they gonna do, lecture us to death? None of these yuppies have the balls to get between a viper and her prey… and even if they tried, they'd be no match for me."

Like a guardian angel, their waiter slipped by and dropped off the card, leaving as quickly as he came once Hssara's eyes started to follow him. After slipping the card back into his wallet, Clark moved to stand, eager to get somewhere private for both their sakes. In response, Hssara took the dessert plate and swallowed the remaining half of the pie in one gulp before following her human lover. No one seemed intent on stopping them as they headed for the door, although the hostess quickly sent a text to someone, and a few moments after they exited the restaurant, they heard the familiar sound of their van driving close. It curled back around into the driveway, and after popping the door open, the valet came around to the front. "All yours," he said, "Hope you enjoyed dining at Il Macellaio Migliore!"

Neither Clark nor Hssara paid him much mind as they hastily embarked the van, scrambling into their seats as classily as possible before closing the doors. As soon as they were behind tinted windows, Clark let out a sigh of relief, then said, "Autopilot, take us home."

"Destination confirmed," the autopilot declared, "ETA: 25 minutes."

Clark then turned to find Hssara leering intently at him, and now that they were out of the public's prying eye, he was ready to accept her advances. As soon as he began to move, his serpentine companion slithered out of her seat and into the wide-open back, then watched with a jubilant predator's poise while Clark took off his suit jacket. The van's ADVENT technology allowed both its passengers to comfortably move around while it drove, and after draping his blazer over the back of his seat, Clark turned to deal with the inebriated viper. "Alright," he sighed, "What'd you have in-woah!"

He burst out in exclamation as Hssara's tongue shot out, wrapping around his waist and yanking him straight into her tail's grasp. Before he could react, his lower half was bound in the scaly coils, and Hssara loomed over him like a boastful conqueror. "You know what I want," she purred, lifting her dress and removing her holster. Clark could see her slit was already starting to get plump with arousal, and after a few moments, he decided on a somewhat novel plan of attack.

His arms gently reached up and began pulling Hssara's hips close to his face, and as he did so, the viper draped the hem of her dress over his head. The shroud of darkness did little to hinder him, however, as he knew his lover's nethers like the back of his own hand. Clark traced along her supple slit with a single finger, collecting the slimy product of her arousal from her warm pouting vulva before popping it into his mouth. The oddly acidic taste just made him all the more aroused, and after rubbing her muff some more, he pulled her close and planted a kiss right on her hungry lips. Right as he did so, Clark heard Hssara let out a quiet gasp, prompting him to slowly lick along her slit like it was the world's tastiest popsicle. "Oooh, get in there," he heard the viper moan, and her scaly hand gently pushed his head into her hips.

Not one to disappoint, Clark quickly began lapping away at her womanhood, gingerly spreading her outer folds apart to get at her silky insides. "Ahh, haspana," Hssara moaned, leaning into his face as her coils clenched around him. After a few minutes of sensual licking, she was dripping wet, threatening to soak both their clothes in feminine fluids, but it only spurred Clark onward. After giving her a final kiss, he slipped two fingers inside her warm, slimy nethers, and it took him all of ten seconds to find her hardened g-spot; rubbing it in tandem with some more licks forced another moan from her lips, and her hand not-so-gently pushed his face into her groin.

"Mmmmmmm, pok teot," she sighed, her hips grinding into Clark with careless intensity. With her coils holding him in place, the human almost felt like the viper's personal sex toy as she rubbed her slick slit all over his face… but he didn't mind one bit. All he cared about was Hssara's building pleasure, and from the way she was pressing, it felt as if she were trying to stuff his whole head inside her. "Mmmff… just like that…"

Any reply Clark could make would have been muffled by her grinding advances, so he instead let his hands do the talking. After slipping a third finger inside, he maneuvered her down while kissing his way up her belly to where he navel would have been, causing her scales to shudder from the tantalizing sensation. Her coils were beginning to constrict around his legs, a sure sign he was doing a good job, and after a moment, he decided to kick things up a notch. A fourth finger popped into her muff and joined in stroking her g-spot, and soon enough, most of Clark's hand was stretching out her nethers. "Haspa chuc vyt… is that your whole hand?"

Now that his tongue wasn't busy slurping up the stuff coating his hand, Clark was able to grace her with an actual response: "More or less. Is that too much?"

"Eh… yeah, if you could just- oooohh, that's it." Once Clark knocked it down to two fingers and doubled up on the speed, he could feel Hssara bend over him, and her warm tunnel clenched with intimate delight. "I'm getting close," she finally groaned, "Just… keep going, okay?"

With his free hand, Clark got out from under her constricting dress and looked her right in the eye, then took her scaly palm when it pressed into his own. "Sure thing, gorgeous…"

As Hssara's moans grew more intense, she lay back onto the van's floor, taking him with her and keeping his fingers tucked firmly in her folds. Her whole body was constricting around her human lover, tensing like a spring with pure bliss, and when he switched back to licking her delicious snatch, she couldn't help but hump against his head. "Ahhhh, haspa… Clark… I'm gonna… oooooaaaaaahhh…" The minutes of foreplay came to a head in a smooth yet potent climax, spurred just enough by Clark's intent licking to keep her going. Her coils squeezed but stopped far short of being painful, and after a minute of gently writhing under her human, she relaxed back onto the floor with a contented sigh. "You sure are good at that," she tipsily cooed, looking down to meet her human's eyes, "I thought I was the one with the prehensile tongue…"

While he was tempted to climb free of her coils and snuggle on top of her, pressing his face to her breasts and his raging erection to her groin, Clark quickly realized he'd get his nice suit pants soaked by Hssara's dripping snatch. Instead, he relaxed in her coils while petting what might've been her legs if she were a human. "Eh, you still take the cake on that one," he sighed, "This little number can't do a third of the things you can."

"Maybe… but you've got another trick up your sleeve, my simian friend." Hssara suddenly began uncoiling herself from around Clark, turning to face him and the boner barely held back by his pants. "C'mon, dontcha want something for yourself?"

"Well I-"

"You have arrived at Bretton Arms Apartments." In the heat of the moment, neither of them noticed the subtle jolt that signaled their arrival, and as the both squinted toward the dashboard, it appeared they had made it all the way back home.

"Well, I'd love to," Clark said, "But I think we really ought to get inside first."

Hssara looked to him, then down to his boner, then to the back door, her eyes squinted as she calculated her various chances. Eventually, common sense won out over her inebriated lust, and she quickly re-donned her holster and pistol. "Fine, but when we get there…"

The trip up to their apartment was tense, to say the least, with several residents giving odd looks to the stain on Hssara's dress or the residue still clinging to Clark's hand. He worried she might go after him in the elevator, ripping both their fine clothes to shreds and rutting like animals, but thankfully, Hssara kept her composure until the apartment door closed behind them.

As soon as Clark turned around, the viper hoisted him up with near-superhuman strength, tackling him onto the couch before retreating back to his pants. Despite her claws, it didn't take her eager hands long to undo Clark's belt and fly, after which she yanked everything below his waist down to his ankles. It took her a few seconds to pop off his shoes and socks, giving the human a chance to pull off his sweater, and in short order, Clark was left wearing nothing but a smile. Hssara reared up, looming above him, then pulled her dress over her head, revealing every inch of her gorgeous body. However, he only got a brief moment's look before the viper pounced down on top of him, giggling as her scaly body pinned him to the couch.

Clark didn't mind the body slam one bit, and he swiftly began kissing Hssara on the lips, pushing back and giving every bit as good as he got. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, and his tongue did the same, conjoining them in a slimy makeout session that lasted until Clark rolled them both clean off the couch. Hssara wound up on the bottom, pinned as the human held her wrists above her head, but she wasn't about to complain; his bare skin felt so damn good pressed up against her body, and though it was tempting to wrap all around him, she rather liked watching him have his fun. Clark's lips drifted down from her face to her neck as he began probing around with his cock, and as soon as it brushed Hssara's engorged muff, he fully sheathed himself in her vagina's cozy embrace. "Oooh, fuck you're tight…"

"And you're still so big…" Clark and Hssara exchanged a long, loving gaze as they got adjusted, fidgeting around with their nethers entwined until both were satisfied. Then, the human started ever so slowly thrusting with his knees on the ground, earning a moan from the viper's lips and coaxing one from his own.

While his hips picked up speed, Clark's face immediately gravitated toward Hssara's ample chest, and once he planted a tender kiss on her clavicle, she didn't hesitate to press his face into her cleavage. His lips kissed and licked while his hips thrusted away, accenting the act with an air of pure intimacy, and though her tail didn't have a limb to grasp in a death grip, it still coiled and writhed all the same. "Yu rebo iea," she moaned, hugging her human lover as tight as she could while his hips built up steam.

"And I love you," Clark replied, looking up from her cleavage before taking one of her invisible teats in his mouth.

After all this time, Hssara still had no clue why him sucking on her smooth breast felt so good, but with his cock hitting her g-spot at just the speed she liked, all she cared about was that it felt good. "Mrrrrrrgh…"

Suckling on her tit's scales was a tad awkward for Clark, too, though watching Hssara squirm more than made up for it. His hips continued pumping back and forth, massaging himself with the soft ridges and folds of her muff, sheathing himself in her cozy wet warmth before pulling back.

Clark kept going until he heard a thump behind him, and as he briefly looked up, the human noticed Hssara's coils had fallen off the couch and were winding up. Once he looked back to his serpentine lover, he couldn't mistake the spark of frisky mischief in her eyes. Before Clark could say anything to dissuade her, she'd grabbed him tight and begun to hastily slither toward the bedroom, and before the human could do anything about it, Clark found himself pinned up against a bare patch of wall with Hssara pressing against him. "Sometimes I forget how strong you are," he sighed, crossing his legs behind her hips as she began rocking back and forth.

"Well, how about a little reminder?" she tipsily purred, effortlessly holding Clark's weight up while she humped against him. Somehow, it felt even better to be on the receiving end, to just sit there while his monstrous lover took care of his every desire, so Clark just held on for dear life as his beautiful partner rode his cock into the ground. "Aww, does someone like getting fucked?" she drunkenly tittered, "Do you just wanna lay back and get ravaged by a giant talking snake?"

"Oh god… yes," Clark sighed, "Yes, yes, yes…" He could feel himself beginning to near a climax, and as Hssara continued her relentless assault on his nether regions, filling the air with passionate squelching, the pressure built up further and further. "Hahhh… fuck me like you hate me."

"Mmmff… as you wish." Thrusting turned into slamming as Hssara picked up the pace even further, battering her human lover against the wall in the most erotic way possible. With each wet, squishing thrust, Clark could feel his balls bouncing off Hssara's scaly underbelly, and her mouth began firmly sucking on the side of his neck, keeping her teeth out of the way while asserting her dominance all the same. It was like she was trying to suck his soul out two ways at once, and Clark didn't last long under the predatory assault.

"I'm… cumming!" As soon as his pleasure peaked, Hssara slammed her scaly groin against his own, planting his tip as deep into her slimy, thirsty muff as it could go while squeezing all around it. Clark felt pinned, helpless, and somehow that made things even better. His cock swiftly blew its load in several powerful spurts, getting his seed as close as it could possibly get to her reptilian womb, giving her everything she could ask for one sticky gush as a time. While his body tensed from the orgasmic pleasure, Hssara pressed her lips once again to his and drove her tongue inward, slipping straight down Clark's throat in an intimate invasion. The human didn't know whether to be aroused or disgusted, but as surging pleasure slowed to a pleasant haze, he began leaning strongly toward the former.

However, Hssara wasn't entirely done with him, and after pulling her tongue free from his gullet, her hips resumed their wild locomotion. Clark could feel his tip hammering into her g-spot, filling her body with tense bliss, and a few moments after coming to his senses, he felt Hssara squeeze him tight with climactic intensity. Her canal convulsed around his manhood, her arms squeezed him almost as hard as her coils, and her lips let a tiny whimper of utter ecstasy, to which he responded by hugging her tight. "Mmmm, that was wonderful," he sighed as she began to come down from her own orgasmic high, "You really ought to pull this dom act more often."

Once her senses weren't clouded by primal release, Hssara gently let her human down until his feet touched the floor, then pulled their soaked nethers apart with a satisfying squelch. "Hm… you're even cuter as my helpless prey," she replied, "But I think that wine's starting to get all the way through me…"

"Me too," Clark admitted, "And I'm sure hammering me into the wall like that has gotta be quite the workout, but would you mind carrying me?"

Hssara's lips curled into an adoring smile. "Sure thing, cutie."

After riding the "viper express" into the bathroom, Clark got started on a shower, and after taking care of a bit of other business, Hssara joined him. It was a tad awkward having her thick scales coiled around the shower's floor, but having someone to wash his back and keep him company was more than worth it. As it turned out, scales were much easier to clean than hair, and after rinsing off her lover's sweat and spunk, Hssara devoted her attention to her mammalian lover, taking care of his lower half while he washed the sweat from his brow. Between the two of them, it didn't take long for him to get clean, and after stepping out of the shower booth, Hssara's ultra-powered scale-dryer made quick work of the remaining moisture.

Five minutes later, both human and viper were warm and content on the couch, each clad only in a plush blue bathrobe. Playing on the TV was some new drama that was thinly-veiled ADVENT propaganda, but neither Clark nor Hssara cared about the quality; as long as they had each other, they could stare at a blank screen the whole time and not change a thing. The viper had her tail coiled and draped over her human's legs like a thick blanket, while her torso sat beside him and gave a kiss on the cheek. "So, any thoughts on the evening's events?" Hssara murmured, "My drunken antics didn't ruin the night for you, did they?"

"Oh, of course not," Clark replied, "The food was phenomenal, the ambience was excellent, and the company was…"

"Monsterous? Predatory? Obscene?" Hssara couldn't help but flash her needle-like fangs through her smile, and part of her wanted to playfully bite him on the ear.

"...delightful," the human finally said, "You were delightful, even if you were a bit pushy toward the end."

"Aww, thanks… but I probably would have died on the spot if I'd had to go it alone." The two of them kissed one more time, then settled in to watch the show's goody-two-shoes protagonist as he meandered through the show's events. After a few half-watched episodes, Clark and Hssara were both feeling fatigue beginning to drag their eyelids shut, and before they could fall asleep on the couch, the viper carried her human lover to bed.

They both disrobed, then crawled under the covers together, where Clark was happy to get wrapped up in Hssara's scaly coils. "Goodnight, Hssara," he sighed, body squeezed tight and head nestled comfortably in Hssara's cleavage.

"Goodnight, Clark," came her quiet reply. It didn't take long for both of them to drift off under the heavy comforter, and as Clark breathed his last conscious breaths, he couldn't help but wonder how long all this would last.

As it turned out, the quiet peace of their embrace wouldn't even last the night. When Clark awoke, it wasn't to the sound of Hssara gently whispering in his ear or to the feeling of sun playing across his eyelids, it was to the sensation of his shoulder being shaken, and as he came to, he heard Hssara muttering to him in an oddly tense tone. "Clark, someone's coming," she hissed, "I need you to get under the bed and stay there until it's over." She was swiftly uncoiling herself from around him, too, and Clark thought he could hear her sinking to the floor.

In his still muddled mind, her ward wasn't sure why someone would be coming in the dead of night, at an hour when he couldn't see his hand in front of his face without the lights on despite the bedroom's windows. "What? Who's coming?"

"Four people, all wearing combat boots." He could just barely make out her yellow eyes in the darkness, and they shone with something he'd never seen before. It wasn't worry, it wasn't discomfort, it was fear, the primal fear you only felt when the next minute determined whether you and your loved ones lived or died. "Clark, I need you to get under the bed, now."

Surprised by the fear in her eyes, Clark shook some of the cobwebs from his mind and complied, dropping to the ground before crawling under the bedframe. There was just enough space to fit him, and he felt ridiculous without any clothes on, but now he could hear something, a steady rhythm of clunks that sounded like jackbooted soldiers. Someone really was coming, and as he watched Hssara retrieve both her plasma rifle and discarded pistol, Clark realized this must be the scenario ADVENT feared. Insurgents were coming to take him away, and the only thing standing between him and a dingy torture chamber was Hssara. He scooted back as far as he could, the rising tension dulling the awkwardness of dust on his bare groin.

Hssara took position by the door frame, cocking her rifle and activating its glowing green power cell. The insurgents were getting closer, and now Clark could hear their guns clunking and rattling as well. It sounded like four fully-kitted commandos… how the hell did they make it into the apartment building? A brief image flashed in his mind of a balaclava-clad psycho slitting one of his neighbor's throats, and he quickly decided he didn't want to think about it any more than he had to.

His thoughts, however, were quick to stir up again as the boots stopped in front of his door. There was a bit of incoherent muttering, then someone began to pick the lock, roughly raking the pins until it popped open with a click. Once the door swung open, the bootsteps resumed, now inside the apartment where he and Hssara had spent the best three weeks of his life together. "Remember, no shooting," a male voice hissed, "Just grab him and gag him." Clark could hear the rough-hewn combat boots stomp around his apartment, searching for him, checking to make sure there weren't any threats lying in wait with flashlights on the ends of rifles. He briefly glanced over to where Hssara was hiding by the door and found the viper frozen still, lying in wait without moving a muscle.

Suddenly, the bedroom's doorknob began turning slowly, and a few moments later, the door gently swung open. All Clark could see of them were their boots, but he could tell they were scanning over his bed with a flashlight. "He's not here," a different male voice said, walking to the closet and checking it. How long until they checked under the bed? Hssara was still standing there by the doorway, waiting, unnoticed by the insurgent… how long until she sprung into action?

"That's impossible," the first voice replied, walking through the open doorway to meet his companion. "Recon said-hrrrk!" Hssara suddenly surged forward, wrapping herself around the first insurgent and crushing the life out of him with all her might. An instant later, Clark heard what he could only assume was a shot from her plasma rifle, and the second insurgent toppled to the ground with a massive scorch mark on his chest. Before the other two could react, Hssara fired another shot and dropped one, but the other got off a burst from his assault rifle. The sound was deafening, and Clark could hear the bullets tearing through the apartment's walls, but before the insurgent could fire again, Hssara made a noise akin to spitting. Something splattered, and the still-living insurgent began screaming, but his voice died after being yanked close and whacked with the rifle's butt.

The whole encounter was over in seconds, and in the sudden moment of silence, Clark managed to look at the man who'd been shot beside him. He had long brown hair gathered in a bun, and nothing about his outfit said he was a terrorist… he just looked like some blue-collar worker from off the street. However, the assault rifle beside him said differently, and as the man let out a pained groan, Clark reached out and began pulling the weapon toward him.

"Clark?" Hssara's voice called out like an angel from heaven, and Clark couldn't help but feel the slightest pang of relief. "Are you okay? It's over… they're all done." As the human crawled back out from under the bed, he heard Hssara close and lock the front door, and once he'd gotten back to his feet, the viper flicked on the lights and hurried over to him. "Tejoasa… okay, you're not hurt." Once her eyes had finished checking him over for wounds, she suddenly turned away, but not before Mark noticed the gash along her bicep. It looked like a graze, and while he couldn't express enough gratitude that she hadn't been actually shot, he still began to worry.

"Hssara, I think you got hit," he said, "I… should we get a doctor?"

Though her human lover was a tad stunned from the shock, Hssara was already beginning to clean up the scene. She used sets of cuffs gathered from her duffle bag to truss up both unconscious insurgents, then began piling all their guns onto the bed. "I'm fine," she said while tossing an assault rifle onto the mattress, "Just… get dressed." As if noticing her wound for the first time, she then opened her mouth and grabbed one of her fangs, forcing out a bit of venom onto her palm before rubbing it onto the graze. She winced in pain, but she was obviously immune to whatever toxins made the venom an antiseptic, and it seemed to staunch the orange blood flowing from the wound.

Almost in a trance, Clark began getting dressed, doing his best to ignore the men laying scattered about his apartment like a child's broken toys. A brief glance revealed that Hssara's other shot had nailed the third guy in the chest, the same as the man beside the bed, while the final one had had venom splashed in his eyes. It hardly even clicked that Hssara was the one who'd done it, and as he watched her shakily don her armor, he couldn't help but feel she was just as much a victim as he.

Once they were both dressed, Hssara tapped a few holographic buttons on her bracer and seemingly started a call. "Semgata," she began, "Yu'bo tegyu sejo emo oyutfgi cobom, gqueh josoucoja, gqueh sukgaloc…" She paused for a moment, glancing at Clark. "…Umja emo kciseh gluu suco. Lowocg yunnojyugo usgyem em ni resugyem."

While Hssara was busy with the call, Clark couldn't help but wander over to the pile of guns on the bed, gingerly picking up an assault rifle from the top. He'd seen a dozen like it in movies and shows, but this was the first time he'd ever seen one in reality. It was heavier than expected, and as Clark held it in both hands, he realized the barrel was still warm… this must be the one that wounded Hssara! As soon as he realized what its wielder had done, he dropped the gun back onto the pile, where it landed with a metallic thunk.

"Clark? C' mere…" Without thinking, the human turned around and made his way over, causing him to walk headfirst into a hug from Hssara. She grabbed onto him like a life preserver in a sea storm, nestling her head in his neck and sniffing deep of her scent, and it took Clark a second to think to hug her back. As he did, Hssara leaned into his arms, almost shuddering as they held each other close. Neither said anything, but they didn't need words to express one simple fact: neither of them was at all prepared for the carnage that now surrounded them.

Eventually, their embraced loosened enough for them to move to the couch, where Hssara leaned against Clark like she was desperate for warmth. "It's… it's okay," he said, unsure if he even believed the words himself. Despite that, Hssara seemed to take comfort in them, and though she didn't say anything, Clark could almost feel her nerves calming. "Everything's gonna be alright," he cooed, "Everything's going to be alright…"

After some inscrutable length of time, Clark heard the faint roar of an ADVENT response carrier outside, and shortly thereafter, heavy boots began clunking down the hall toward the door. Hssara must have unlocked the door because the six ADVENT troopers on the other side immediately opened it and stormed into the living room. Two immediately went to get the living insurgents at gunpoint, two swept the bedroom for threats, and two stood guard beside the door, freezing in place like statues as their commander marched in. "Clark Hopper, Lieutenant Hssara," he said, "Report to the roof." His voice was almost robotic, and the way he stiffly turned to bark orders at the rest of his men made him further seem like a mindless automaton.

Not wanting to interfere with the imposing troopers, Clark and Hssara got up and began making their way down the hall. Along the way, they saw more ADVENT goons ushering their neighbors back into their apartments, and in the stairwell, one was positioned on each floor up to the roof. On said roof, the response carrier was hovering inches above the ground, and standing before it was a woman in a sharp white suit. Instead of trying to speak over the roar of the engines, she simply beckoned the oddly matched pair toward the carrier, and after both of them had boarded, she pressed a button that slid the massive door shut.

Once the compartment sealed, the roar dulled to a persistent hum, and a series of seats folded down from both walls. "I'm doctor Calkins," the woman in the suit said as she took a seat, "I know you two have been through a lot… please, sit down."

After a brief glance at one another, Clark and Hssara did just that, picking two adjacent ones with their hands clasped together.

The doctor most certainly noticed, but she hardly seemed disturbed by the union of human and alien. "You're both safe," Calkins said, "The situation's fully taken care of, nobody else is going to hurt you… just try to breathe."

Clark took one long, shaky breath, and Hssara quickly followed his lead, both of them trying not to think about the troopers taking over their apartment building. Suddenly, the carrier shuddered as the engines intensified, and human-sized harness bars swung down and locked into place.

"We're taking you both somewhere safe," the woman continued, "Somewhere well-guarded and highly secure."

"Who are you?" Clark eventually asked, still unsure of whether to trust her. She certainly seemed like someone who would be trustworthy, but after their rough-hewn brush with death, certainty felt all too suspicious.

Calkins opened her mouth, closed it again, then finally said, "I'm what you might consider Hssara's caseworker. I was assigned to keep watch over the two of you, and…"

Hssara, meanwhile, looked like she'd never seen this woman before in her life. "You watched over us?" she replied, "Through my implants?"

The doctor took a second to formulate whatever would be the best strategy to approach with. "Not just your implants," she eventually said, "ADVENT has eyes everywhere, and-" She stopped suddenly as if she'd just put her foot in her mouth, pondered saying something else, then seemed to go with the least distressing of whatever options she had in mind. "To put it plainly, you two are a bit of an experiment… this is more than you need to know, but higher-ups are watching, trying to research human and alien relations."

At the thought of being just an experiment, Clark couldn't help but squeeze Hssara's scaly hand, and she returned the gesture with equal force. "So… what, we were set up?" Suddenly it made sense why his bodyguard wasn't a typical ADVENT trooper… and why they'd hit it off so well.

"To put it bluntly, yes." Calkins hesitated a moment before saying something further. "You two had compatible deviancies, and… well… the Elders were interested to see how they'd play out."

Deviancies… like Hssara's thing for humans? Like his thing for monsters? "Why are the Elders playing matchmaker?" he finally asked, his question seeming as absurd as its context. "Don't they have… things to run?"

"It's a low level directive, and-" Calkins stopped as another shudder shook the carrier, and Clark could hear the engines dying down. "Looks like we've landed," the doctor said, popping up her harness and gesturing for them to do the same. "I'll tell you more on the way."

Without anywhere else to really go, Clark and Hssara got out of their seats and followed along. Once they were up, Calkins popped open the carrier's massive door once again, this time to reveal a militarized compound crawling with ADVENT security. Most of them were the standard troopers, but more than a few mechs stood guard at the various gates, and a number of different aliens were scattered about; some of them were ones Clark had never seen before, but as Dr. Calkins began leading them off the landing pad, he didn't get much of a look.

"The Elders have a sort of hierarchy," she continued after flaunting her security badge to a trooper, "The west coast is one of the the larger territories, and as with all the others, it has two governors called the Alpha and the Omega."

Clark briefly glanced at Hssara, and while she might have heard this at some point, it certainly wasn't something remembered.

"As intended, they have opposing personalities, intended to check one another." By now, they were approaching the monolith of a building at the center of the compound, and once they were inside, Calkins turned to face them both. "Hssara, go down to medical and have that wound looked at. Clark, come with me."

Both human and viper hesitated for a moment, holding onto each other's hands as if it was the last connection they had, but eventually, Hssara pulled hers away. Clark could see the worry in her eyes as she slithered off down the hall, and he had no clue what would happen to them… but he vowed right then that he'd see her again. With that, he followed the doctor further into the belly of the beast, but her lowering tone made it seem like she'd been waiting for Hssara to get out of earshot.

"Clark, there's something I need to tell you," she said, briefly looking over her shoulder before turning a corner. "The Alpha has been against this experiment since day one, and after watching Hssara's vitals, he's convinced she needs a wipe."

"A wipe?" It took Clark a second to understand what she meant, but once he did, he didn't even believe it. "You mean like a factory reset? They just wipe her memory and start over?"

"Not just her memory," Calkins replied, "The Alpha wants to purge her personality and insert a more… traditional model. No human attraction, no empathy, just-"

Suddenly, Clark roughly grabbed her by the bicep and stopped in his tracks. "That's why she's going to medical, isn't she?"

"Yes, but-"

"I can't let that happen." Without a doubt in his mind, he turned around and prepared to rush headfirst to his lover's rescue, but this time it was the doctor's turn to grab him by the arm.

"The procedure isn't set in stone yet," she snapped, "And even if it was, you've got no chance of making it to her by yourself. We're going to meet with the Alpha and the Omega, and if you play your cards right, you'll get to see her again, alright?"

It took a second for Clark to process what she'd just said. "You want me to… to talk to the Elders?"

"Exactly. Now come on, we haven't got time to waste." With that, she resumed her brisk walk down the halls, and Clark followed behind.

It didn't take too long for them to reach an empty room with several screens lining the walls, and as Calkins punched something into a central console, they began to arrange themselves on robotic arms. Most slid back, but a few clicked together to form three identical pictures, and with a few more button presses, they flickered to life with light. An ADVENT logo flashed on the interlocked screens, then faded into grey, and after a few seconds, the grey brightened into three different images. On the left was a capital 'A' that Clark recognized as the symbol for alpha, on the right was the symbol for omega, and in the center was a live feed of what appeared to be Martin Cubrela, the CCA's ADVENT supervisor. "Hello, Doctor Calkins," Martin began with the slightest hint of a smile, "I heard the news, and I'm glad Clark's okay."

The omega symbol then pulsed with light in the pattern of sound, and as a smooth male voice filled the air, Clark realized this must be the Omega speaking. "Indeed, the one called Hssara performed admirably. Two confirmed kills, two captures, and all she had to show for it was a graze." Clark wasn't sure what to do in the presence of an Elder, even if it was just a symbol on a screen… should he bow? No, probably not… somehow, he got the feeling that kowtowing wouldn't do him any good.

"A surprising result," a harsher voice called out, "Given the subject's inherent deviancies… had she full function, she likely would not have been wounded at all." Judging by the flashing A, Clark guessed it was the Alpha speaking… how they'd gotten two alien overlords up at this hour was utterly beyond him.

"I don't mean to sound rude," Martin began, "But why the call, Dr. Calkins? As I understand it, things were moving according to plan…" He turned slightly, and even through his tinted sunglasses, Clark could feel attention being directed at him. "...But it seems someone has decided to alter the plan."

"I've come to advocate against wiping the one known as Hssara," Calkins began, "And I've brought her ward here for testimony."

"What's there to advocate?" Alpha suddenly snapped, "The matter was decided; the one known as Hssara is to be reclaimed and reassigned to the one known as Clark."

The sound of that word, "reclaimed," sent a shiver down Clark's spine… to think that the person he knew and loved was just some inanimate thing to be mind-wiped and repurposed made him feel sick to his stomach. What were they doing to her now, he wondered… were they already fixing the electrodes to her head? Did she know the danger she was in? The urge to run off to her rescue surged in his breast, but Clark just barely held himself in place.

"No matter is fixed while there's new evidence to be assessed," Omega countered, "It seems the one known as Clark may have a reason for keeping the one known as Hssara as she is." Clark felt the attention turn to him, chilling him to his core… not just because two of the individuals were ancient alien beings, but because he was bargaining for Hssara's life. "Do you have a reason, Clark?"

The words caught in his throat as he tried to speak, but something gave him the little bump of courage he needed to continue. "She's not just a monster," he blurted out, "She's a person… she loves, she cares, she… her favorite movie is the Princess Bride, her favorite food is lasagna, her favorite color is teal blue…"

"Consistent examples of deviancy," Alpha coldly commented.

"But perhaps that's what we've been missing," Omega added. "Aesthetics are one thing, but introducing deviancies to improve anthropomorphization…" He --or at least Clark thought of him as he-- paused for a moment, then asked, "Do you love her as you would a human?"

"Of… of course," Clark replied, some well of confidence surging within him. "She's not different… she thinks just like a human, it's just her body that's different, and… if that's what's considered deviancy in this world, I don't want to live in it."

"Ah, yes," Alpha drolled, "'I'd rather die than be without her,' how cliche."

"But the fact that a viper is the subject of that affection is rather intriguing," Omega countered, "We've received negative responses across the board regarding vipers, and yet here is a human that would rather die than be without one… there is serious potential between the two of them."

"Are you honestly suggesting we deliberately introduce deviancies for the sake of public relations?" Alpha snapped, "That's absurd! To think what might happen if-"

"I'm not saying we introduce it to all," Omega interjected, "Just a few key specimens placed in the public eye. We've already seen what a well-positioned figurehead can do in other contexts…"

"The Omega is right," Dr. Calkins added, "After seeing the human and viper courtship firsthand, negative reactions around their floor decreased by 30%. It may aggravate a small percentage of the population, but with the right positioning, that vocal minority can be effectively ostracized."

"So we put the two of them on as a media puppet show?" Martin asked, "What a 21st century idea… I like it!"

"And, as the one known as Hssara has already demonstrated," Omega concluded, "She is combat-capable even with her deviancies. If this proves to be successful, it could be the breakthrough that His Holiness has been looking for."

Even though Alpha's image remained motionless, Clark could imagine him taking a deep sigh away from the microphone. "Though I still believe this to be a poor choice of tactics," he eventually said, "I understand the potential boons of such an unconventional approach. I hereby approve the use of this 'tabloid story' plan to win over public opinion… even though the very concept sounds asinine."

"I approve its use as well," Omega concurred, and after the last syllable had left the speakers, both symbolic screens suddenly switched off, leaving Clark and Calkins staring at Martin's grinning face. "I'll start getting it all set up," he said, "In the meantime, get some rest… you've both earned it."

And just like that, Hssara's neck was no longer on the chopping block. As the final screen returned to black and Dr. Calkins beckoned him to follow, he wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or horrified or what. He'd saved Hssara, for now at least… but how long would it be until Alpha got his way? What if the experiment failed and… and… and they just swept her away like dust. Clark dumbly began following behind the doctor as she led him back down the halls, back toward where Hssara was supposedly waiting, and despite his best efforts to tamp down his emotions, tears began rolling down his cheeks. They didn't stop as he reached the infirmary, and they didn't stop as he reached his serpentine beloved, falling into her arms like a sack of sand. He didn't know what to say, didn't know how to tell her that she'd almost been wiped from existence, and so he just squeezed her scaly body with every ounce of strength he had left.

He half expected Hssara to act confused or perturbed, but she simply embraced him right back, holding up his weight as he wept into her shoulder. Dr. Calkins said something to Hssara that Clark didn't hear, after which the doctor left the two of them alone in the lobby of the medical facility. There was no one else to see or hear them, so Hssara just let Clark ride out his emotions, expressing the terror and anguish she'd felt before in an explosive display that she simply wasn't capable of.

"They… they were going to… to wipe you," Clark eventually sighed, "Just… poof. Everything, gone."

As he pulled back and met her gaze, he realized with a sense of horror that she knew exactly what she was talking about. Her eyes went wide in an all-too-familiar expression of dread, and her quick glance back toward the medical office seemed to realize how close she'd come to oblivion for the second time that evening. "I… I wondered if it'd ever happen," she eventually replied, "Back in Nevada, they sometimes threatened us with it, but I never thought…" Suddenly, Hssara reared up just a bit and pulled Clark close, planting a quick series of kisses on the top of his head while hugging him to her breastplate. After a moment, she slithered back down, and Clark could see the anxious worry in her expression. "Did… how did you find out?"

"Calkins… she told me, then took me to a meeting with the Elders in charge."

"The Elders?" Hssara seemed as shocked as if Clark had just said he'd had dinner with the president. "You actually met them?"

"Well… er, not really, they talked through some screens." It was then that he noticed something in Hssara's hand, a long neoplastic package of some sort. "What's that?"

The viper briefly held it up, revealing alien writing and a syringe symbol. "This… well… it's something to take the edge off for both of us, but… well, I think it's best used in private. The doctor said there were some safehouse rooms on one of the upper levels… should be roomy enough for both of us." Her voice still held a tinge of worry, but her expression managed the tiniest hint of a smile.

Clark briefly looked around, half-consciously trying to see where someone might be keeping tabs on them from. Now that he knew the two of them were ADVENT's latest propaganda experiment, some part of him felt eyes following his every step. However, aside from a few beady-eyed security cameras, there wasn't anything to confirm his suspicions, and he quickly refocused on the present. "Alright, lead the way."

He and Hssara made their way toward one of the facility's elevators, and as they approached, two other vipers came slithering synchronously from the opening doors. At first, the two aliens seemed surprised at the sight of a human and an alien standing so close together, but as soon as they noticed Clark and Hssara's clasped hands, their curiosity turned to disdain. Both slithered off in a different direction with the air of two haughty southerners, leaving Clark and his serpentine companion to board the elevator alone.

On floor 4, several out-of-place wooden doors lined a hallway marked as "secure holding rooms," and Hssara quickly picked one of the nearer doors to open with her keycard. It swung wide to reveal a room akin to what Clark had seen in human hotels… but as he and Hssara entered, Clark realized that it just seemed off. The first thing he noticed was the far wall, where drapes and curtains surrounded not a window, but an LCD screen that showed a gorgeous view of a wooded lake. Then Clark saw the single painting on the wall, and though it was a simple landscape of a sailboat, something about it seemed manufactured. Next, he began to pick up on the tiny, immaculate details, how the remote was laid precisely in front of the TV, how the sheets on the queen-sized bed were folded with millimeter precision. It was like an AI with OCD had tried to make a room as appealing to humans as possible while also following some hidden agenda.

"Something wrong?"

Clark was suddenly brought back to reality by Hssara's voice, and he saw his unnatural tenseness reflected in her expression. "No, no, it's just… too neat."

Hssara took a brief look around, then shrugged. "Some aliens have an eye for precision," she replied, slithering over to the TV, "Me, I'm rather fond of the human way of doing things." After picking up the remote, she turned on the TV and punched in a channel, causing the static to change to a serene beach view with all the accompanying white noise. "Why don't you just… relax. I'll just be a moment." Her voice dripped with almost forced sensuality, and before she could make it into the bathroom with her mysterious package, Clark called out to her.

"Wait, Hssara…" As she turned back to face him, he could see the stress in her eyes, and even before he asked it, he knew the answer to his question: "Aren't you worried?"

"About?" She was trying to tamp down her emotions, he could see that much… but his stupid mouth couldn't stop from prying.

"About what almost happened… about you almost getting wiped. What if it happens later on? What if they decide you're useless and decide to replace you with a newer model? What if-"

He stopped as she held up one finger, and he could tell she was just barely holding back her pent up anxiety… but then her pleasant facade just crumbled into dust. "I'm… I'm worried, is that what you want me to say?" she snapped, "I'm afraid that someday I'll cease to exist, and you'll be left with another viper. I'm afraid of what you might try to do to get me back, and I'm even more afraid of what they'll do to you afterward!" Her face was twisted with anguish, and though there wasn't anything dribbling down the sides of her face, Clark knew she was doing whatever the viper equivalent of crying her heart out was. "I'm afraid of having to dance with death every day for the rest of our haspota lives because ADVENT doesn't tolerate weakness, and the fact that if for some reason either of us become a liability, we'll both be put down without a second thought!" She thrust forward the box, showing Clark the label like it explained her opinions perfectly. "Right now, in this hell I would've called home, this thing is the only chance I've got to not feel like… like this!"

She seemed about to storm out of the room, but then her rage imploded, and she simply flopped to the ground in a coiled heap of emotion. While Hssara did her best to hide her head, Clark padded over and sat down on the ground beside her, placing one gentle hand on her tail while keeping some space between them. "I'm sorry," he sighed, "I… I didn't mean to-"

Suddenly, Hssara's torso darted out of the pile like a bolt of lightning, tackling Clark to the ground. At first, Clark thought it was some sort of attack, and he was fully willing to accept the brunt of her fury, but then he noticed her arms embracing him tightly. The human could also feel her tail twisting and writhing, and to help soothe her wholly, he relaxed and let her slowly wrap her coils around him. Before long, Clark was utterly immobilized in her embrace, but the human wouldn't have had it any other way. They just sat like that for what felt like ages, with Hssara's whole body squeezing around Clark like he was a giant stress ball, letting his scent and warmth and tender hugs gradually whittle away at her emotions.

While on the ground, Clark noticed the package on the carpet a few feet away, but he didn't even think about mentioning it until Hssara's breathing had returned to an even rhythm. "So what exactly is that thing?" he asked, "Some kind of drug?"

At first, Hssara was a tad confused, but she quickly followed Clark's gaze to the box. "Oh, that… it's a modification for my venom. Turns it into a sort of sedative…" Once she began unwinding from around Clark, she reached over and picked the thing up, popping it open to reveal a blue neoplastic injector. "They've been prototyping it for prisoner capture, but as it is right now, it's more therapeutic than anything… the medic got special orders to give me a dose.Supposedly it works on us vipers too, since we don't have any natural immunity."

It took a second to get free from Hssara's winding grip, but Clark eventually managed to pull himself into a cross-legged sitting position beside the viper. "How's it work?" he asked, "Do you just pop it into your arm, or…"

"I don't know… the doctor said to read the instructions." Hssara dumped the injector into her palm, and with it came a little nylon strip printed with something. As her eyes traced over it, Clark watched her expression turn to one of slight amusement, and she quickly showed him what appeared to be a series of pictographic instructions.

The first image was what appeared to be an armored viper disrobing, followed by her using the injector on both her bare breasts, then re-dressing, then biting a human who appeared intoxicated and arrested in the final panel. "Wait," Clark murmured, "They want you to inject it into your tits?"

Hssara couldn't help but give a shrug and a grin. "They are venom glands," she explained, "Makes sense that this mod thing would go in there."

Clark looked down to her contoured breastplate, then back up to her eyes, the sheer absurdity of the situation helping to melt his previous woes. "Those are venom glands?"

"Well, yeah… I mean, what else would they be?"

"And they just happen to be located on the chest?"

Hssara crossed her arms over her armored cleavage while giving Clark a mock scowl. "Are you really complaining after all the times you fondled 'em, licked 'em, put your-"

"Alright, alright," Mark interjected, "I get the concept… just never thought about it much at all."

They both paused for a moment, inspecting the injector. "So… wanna try it?" Hssara murmured.

Right then, Clark realized something important that he really should have noticed when he read the instructions: "You're going to have to bite me for this, aren't you?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So… you'll be biting me."

The viper rolled her eyes, then opened her mouth wide to show off her fangs. The things were six inches long at most, and needle-sharp, probably enough to pierce human skin with just a little push. "They're not that bad," she replied after closing her mouth, "It'll just be a little prick."

As much as his instincts told him not to let the giant snake monster bite him, Clark knew from experience that her tail could do quite a bit more damage. "Alright," he sighed, "But first we gotta get the thing injected…"

"Well, I could use some help getting this thing off," Hssara replied, turning around to reveal the armor's well-hidden straps and buttons. Clark had plenty of experience with popping them in tandem with the viper's bracers, and in a matter of seconds, Hssara was down to bare scales. "Alright, now we just… pop this off, twist this… there's the needle… guess I just-" she let out a tiny grunt of surprise as the needle pierced through the cracks in her scaly breast, automatically injecting half its payload. "And then with the other…" Another grunt and mechanical click indicated she'd injected the other side, and after turning around, she revealed the injector's empty payload. "Alright, all done!"

There weren't any marks that Clark could see, and Hssara didn't seem to be in any worse shape… maybe this really was the miracle cure they were looking for. "Is there a waiting period?" he asked, "You know, for the venom to switch over?"

"It said about ten minutes in the instructions… and I think I have an idea for how to kill some time." After setting down the injector, she turned her back toward Clark and slid onto the human's lap, rolling her bare shoulders in invitation. Clark knew just what she was after, and after all the madness of the past few hours, he thoroughly enjoyed the stability of a good old fashioned back rub.

His hands started at her shoulders, squeezing and kneading the tension from her muscles under her pliable scales. She wasn't all that different from a human in the way knots cropped up, and as Clark moved lower with a bit of elbow action, Hssara couldn't help but groan. "Oooohhh ioca… that's the spot." She made sure to push back hard against the deep-reaching massage, allowing Clark to really work on all the stress bunching up her muscles, forcing his knuckles into her steely sinew. "Mmmmmm…" Most of her woes wound up either along her shoulder blades or shoulders, and it took no time at all for her human lover to smooth things out; he had all the grace of an expert masseuse, and his hands were already used to her unyielding scales. "Ah… right there…"

When his hands got down to her hips, she gradually began to roll off his lap, and he did his best to accommodate her, moving straight down her spine to her tail. Hssara did her best to get it straight as Clark made his way down it, earning a few grunts and sighs at the particularly tense spots… but then, the viper sat up somewhat suddenly. "I think it's working! I can feel… something."

Clark hardly faltered in his slow progress down her winding tail. "Does it hurt?"

"No, it just feels… weird. Like… I dunno, tingly." Hssara began cupping and fondling herself, seeming to experiment with the odd sensations. "It's… almost kinda nice, like when you do that real light thing with your fingers… only deeper."

"Hmm… any idea how long it's been?" As he reached for his phone, Clark realized he must have left it back at the apartment in all the chaos, and he wasn't going back there anytime soon.

"Eh, I dunno… I was never much good at guessing time." She opened her mouth wide, then gently pressed on a fang to squirt some venom into her palm. "Well, it still looks like the usual stuff…"

"Then let's wait a bit." He kept on kneading his way down her tail while she relaxed onto her elbows, and it didn't take long for him to reach her tapered end. As he did, he could see her doing another 'venom-test,' and this time, the result elicited a hum of curiosity.

"Alright, now it's starting to get mixed with this blue stuff…" Clark slid over by his side, prompting her to show off the little pool of venom in her palm; it looked like a muddled mixture of bluish and greenish, both mixed together into a cyan-esque goo. Once he'd gotten a good look at it, Hssara slapped her palm to her mouth and swallowed the whole thing, and it took Clark a second to remember that she was immune to her own venom. "So, where do you wanna get bit?" she then asked, turning to her human companion with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

"Uh… well…" Clark tried to think back to the last few times he'd gotten injections… usually it was straight into his shoulder, and that was how he decided to do it this time. "Right about here," he finally replied, tapping the muscles of his left shoulder.

"That works." Hssara and her human companion sat there on the floor for a moment, each trying to get a read on the other's state of mind until the viper broke the tension. "Mind if we wait on the bed?"

"Oh.. not at all." Clark got to his feet and removed his shoes, after which he slid on top of the bed's immaculately folded sheets. Once he was comfy, Hssara slid up and began gently winding all around him, eventually snuggling up by his side inside the ring her tail formed. After she gave him a quick peck on the cheek, Clark turned and returned the gesture, then went right back to staring at the ceiling. "They're probably watching us," he eventually sighed, the melancholy of their situation slipping right back into his thoughts like a black ooze. "They've been watching us ever since we first met…"

"Well, yeah," Hssara replied, "They watch everything we do… even before we got together, they've got us both on scanners, security cameras, web trackers. They don't really do anything unless you do something wrong… and when someone does commit a crime, the system gets them tracked down in hours."

She was entirely right, of course, crime had dropped to unprecedented levels during ADVENT's time. There wasn't any bias in the legal system either, just pure, merciless justice… but some paranoid part of him couldn't stop pondering the inevitable cost. "Don't you feel weird, knowing all the times we made love are available for someone to watch?"

"If by 'someone' you mean ADVENT, then I really don't." Hssara propped herself up on one elbow, and Clark turned to look at her face-to-face. "They're a lot of things, but I don't think perverted is one of them. It's not like they just broadcast it to the public, it stays confidential." Both of them couldn't help but smile at all the lewd memories they'd made in their time together, all those intimate moments wrapped up in each other literally and figuratively… "And even if they were to post all our sex tapes online for all the world to see, it's up to us to give a damn… shame is a social contract, after all." With that, she reached up and milked one of her fangs, dribbling out a bit of pure blue venom that she quickly lapped up. "Speaking of shame, why don't you take off your shirt?"

As much as he wanted to play the paranoid conspiracy theorist, insisting they both cover themselves in tinfoil to block out the Elder's psychic rays, Hssara's infectious optimism took hold. So what if the Elders wanted to watch them? Their copious amounts of previous sex showed that they could do what they wanted to each other, and now that he looked back on the meeting with the two elders, he realized all but one of the people in that room had supported them. "Alright," he sighed, "Just try to be gentle…"

"As you wish…" In the heat of the moment, Clark had just put on a white t-shirt, and once that was off, his chest and arms lay utterly bare. He could see Hssara's eyes ogling his naked skin as she slithered on top of him, and as her smooth scales pressed up against his belly, he couldn't help but feel a similar spark of arousal in his own chest. For a brief moment, when her breasts were pressed just slightly against his chest, and her eyes gazed down at him, they both got the urge to do something more, but the moment swiftly passed them by.

Hssara then slid over just a bit, taking hold of Clark's arm and lifting it up, bringing her mouth mere inches from where her fangs were supposed to go. As she opened wide, flexing her needle-sharp teeth over his bare skin, the human decided to close his eyes, leaving him only the sensation to go off of. First, he felt her open jaw wrap around his bicep, followed immediately by two pinching pinpricks that must be her fangs. It didn't hurt nearly as much as he thought it would, and as she pulled back just a tad, he could feel the new venom flowing in, then gently making its way into his bloodstream once her fangs finally pulled free. Finally, she planted a tender kiss on each of the two puncture marks, prompting Clark to open his eyes and see her smiling back at him.

"There, all done," she cooed, "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"No, it really wasn't… that… bad…" Clark's voice began to trail off as he felt the strangest sensation take root in his mind… it was almost like his mind was floating on a warm, fluffy cloud. "That's… woah…"

"Clark? Are you okay?"

Somehow, her voice had ascended to an angelic melody, and as he looked over to her serpentine visage, it seemed like the most beautiful thing in the world. "Yeah…" What had he even worried about before? Whatever it was, this scaly angel would protect him… and he couldn't help but be grateful for it. "Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?"

She let out a small chuckle. "Guess those drugs work fast, huh?"

"No, I mean it." He gradually pulled him into a hug, pressing his skin to her scales and relishing their cool smoothness. "You're beautiful… and kind… and caring… and I'd be lost without you."

"Okay…" Although Clark couldn't see it through his drug-addled haze, Hssara didn't know if the drug was supposed to have this much of an effect, but as the human needily snuggled against her chest, she decided to lean into it. "I love you too, Clark."

"Mmmmmm…"

They sat like that for a while, pressed against each other in a tender embrace, but as time wore on, Hssara began to feel something prodding underneath her, something she recognized instantly. "Is that a gun in your pants?" she snarkily asked, "Or are you just happy to see me?"

Clark took a second to realize what she was talking about, and he hastily pulled back once he did. "Oh… sorry. I didn't mean to-"

"It's okay," Hssara interjected, pressing one scaly finger to his lips. "I think we could both use a little bit of fun. Here, take off those pants… then I wanna get under these covers."

As soon as he heard her absolving words, he hastily got to work undoing his pants, then pulling both them and his underwear off in a single stroke. Once he was down to bare skin, he and Hssara gradually worked to get the covers down to the foot of the bed, then back over both their naked bodies, insulating their own warmth as they huddled back together. It was a dance they'd done on countless nights together, but with Clark's mind warped by the experimental venom, it felt like he was doing it all over again. "So, uh… how should I… you know.?" he murmured, his rock-hard erection probing against Hssara's almost imperceptible slit. She was just so beautiful, and her body felt oh-so-enticing pressed up against his own…

At first, Hssara wanted to crack another joke at how obviously stoned he was, but after a bit of careful consideration, she decided not to make fun of the poor human. "Why don't you just crawl under the covers and put your tongue to work?" she suggested, and Clark hastily complied. After slipping backward and pulling the covers over his head, it felt like he'd entered a whole other world, one filled with an almost choking warmth and stuck eternally between two cozy sheets. He had to grope around quite a bit, feeling along with his hands as Hssara gently relaxed on her back, but he found her slit once again, and he hastily got to work lapping at the supple thing that he couldn't even see in the dark.

Meanwhile, all the owner of said slit could see was a big lump moving about under the covers, but she felt every bit of it when a tongue traced along her vulva. "Mmmm, there you go," she sighed encouragingly, "Really get in there… ahhhhh…" He was licking, slurping, suckling, all the things he'd done before and more, and despite his addled clumsiness, he was still managing to get her as slick as a seal.

Under the covers, Clark almost found himself consumed by his other senses in sight's absence. The subtle squelch of his tongue pushing her lips apart, the stirring scent of her loins warming with arousal, the musky taste of her fluids along his tongue, all of it kept him wrapped in what felt like some ethereal dream. All he had to do was keep licking, keep exploring inside the warm, wet, squishy cave with finger and tongue… and each wriggling motion was rewarded with a muffled moan from above.

"Ohhh, haspana," Hssara moaned, hips bucking up against the human's zealous onslaught. Part of her worried he'd forget to breathe, but the rest was too caught up in the blissful sensation of him making out with her snatch, of his fingers, massaging her g-spot just the right way. "Ef tejoasa, iea'lo obo nelo ham fytuf!" She couldn't help but reach down and stroke the giant lump under the covers, and in response, it seemed to double down on its crusade of pleasure.

Amidst his feasting, Clark could feel Hssara's tail writhing for something to hold, and he was happy to provide the grounding it so desperately needed. He let it coil around his leg, binding him all the way down to his foot, then allowed himself to be rolled over and over, wrapping the thick, scaly thing around his abdomen. Though he couldn't tell from under the covers, Hssara was coming close to rolling off the bed, and with her human lover all wrapped up in her coils, his pleasuring wasn't going to stop anytime soon. "Gahhh… getting close," she groaned, "Just… keep… ahhhhhh!" Though she tried to keep her grip from crushing Clark's entwined body, she couldn't help but give him a firm squeeze, forcing just a bit of air out of his lungs in the process. It didn't help that he kept the same feverish pace, slurping and fingering her through an explosive orgasm that just didn't seem to end. Even as the surging pleasure faded, he continued his reverent worship, and it wasn't until Hssara reached under the covers and grabbed his hands that he stopped.

It shocked Clark to feel two scaly hands reach into his pocket world and pull him away from his work, but as they led him through a portal of light, he quickly understood their purpose. Crawling headfirst into the almost blinding brilliance was like being born anew, and he was immediately greeted by a beautiful visage. It was the serpentine goddess, rewarding him for his reverent work, and as soon as he lay on top of her, she tenderly pulled the covers over his back and hugged him tightly. Now, the slickness of her groin was right up against his own, his member pressed against the top of her slit, and with a few subtle motions, he'd slip into her silky embrace. "Should… should I…"

"Yeah, just slip it in." Hssara couldn't help but smile at Clark's starry-eyed stare, how his pupils were dilated like crazy, how his mouth hung open in an amazed grin… damn he was cute. "Just kinda… mmmmm, there you go." With a little shift, the human's engorged cock slipped right past her lips and into her snatch, filling out the sensitive tunnel in a way she didn't realize she needed.

Clark let out a surprised gasp as he slid in to the hilt, the drugs in his veins amplifying the slimy warmth surrounding his manhood. He'd never felt something this sweet, this divine, nestled deep in the body of a goddess while she hugged him tight… and as he looked up to meet her gaze, he realized she wanted more. "Is… is that good?" he murmured as his hips began to gyrate, firmly massaging her in all the right places.

"Mmhmm… c' mere." Hssara gently pulled him down onto her, guided his head to rest between her breasts, and then hugged his warm body close with one hand in his hair, soaking up his warmth skin-to-scales. He still had her tail wrapped about his lower half, allowing her to embrace him head-to-toe as he continued humping. After the day's events, after both falling apart and being pieced back together by each other, after realizing how much of a death grip ADVENT had on them both, it felt liberating to just make love like no one was watching. Clark was oh-so-warm, and with all the motion under the covers, things were only getting warmer. "Ahhhh, chuc kolhos…"

While he had a mammal's biology to keep him toasty, Clark instead appreciated the angelic smoothness of Hssara's scales, how her leaking fluids and his sweat worked to make them nigh-frictionless under his thrusts. As icing on the cake, he had his head nestled up against Hssara's soft chest, and resting his head on the goddess's bosom felt terrific. "Oh, goddess," he quietly moaned, "It's so… wet, and warm, and… mmf…"

It took a second for said goddess to realize he was talking about her, and she couldn't help but crack an amused grin at his deluded worship. "Shhhh, just enjoy," she whispered, "Your goddess commands it."

In silent acknowledgment, Clark relaxed his head against her and continued humping away, filling the air with the soft sounds of shifting sheets and squelching juices. Each thrust of his rubbed right up against a familiar nub, causing Hssara to light up in just the right way, and after ten minutes of slow, passionate lovemaking, her own moans were joining the symphony of sounds. She seemed to clench around his whole body in rhythm with his movement, pushing back on inward strokes and pulling back when he retreated, amplifying the already astronomical pleasure coursing through his nerves… but it didn't seem to compare to whatever his goddess was experiencing. Another potent climax was building in her loins, and this time, Clark got to watch as pleasure overcame her features.

"Oooohh, tejoasa…" she moaned, "Gonna… gonna… ahhhh!" It wasn't nearly the explosive sensation of her previous orgasm, but the surging pleasure still made her squirm and squeeze Clark with both arms and tail. The human slowed down just a bit to smoothly ride her through it, but once it began fading, he started right back up again, his strokes dulled somewhat by the refractory haze. "Are you close?" Hssara asked after a bit, knowing her human lover didn't usually hold out much longer than her… and his drug-addled mind deserved a chance to focus on its own pleasure.

"Close?" Clark paused for a second before realizing what she meant. "I… not really…"

He thought Hssara would be disappointed or annoyed, but instead, she appeared curious. "Really? Not at all?"

"Well… no." He'd paused in his thrusting, remaining fully sheathed as shame began to creep into his mind. "Do you want me to stop?"

"No, of course not," the viper cooed, absolving him with a gentle stroke of his hair. "Just keep going until you want to stop… those drugs must have some pretty potent side effects, and I don't want you to feel left out."

Clark nodded, then resumed his rhythmic motions, and while it still felt absolutely heavenly, he couldn't feel much of that familiar pressure in the base of his groin. Maybe there was something wrong with him… or maybe he'd been blessed to better please the goddess. With that thought in mind, he gradually regained his former zealous enthusiasm, and a few minutes later, his tip was massaging Hssara's g-spot in all the right ways.

It didn't take long for Hssara to fully recover from her last orgasm, and as she did, she felt halfway down the path to a second. Her human lover was just so dauntless, continuing on without the slightest sign of exhaustion or worry, and after a few minutes more, she came again. Her nethers pulsed, her body shivered, her tail squeezed, but Clark was still going strong when the explosive bliss faded. At first, she expected him to finish shortly after, or at the very least some sign of fatigue, but as a third wave of ecstasy began building, she resolved to see how far her human lover could take her into the realms of pleasure. As the night wore on and the symphony of sounds continued, her body shuddered with a third climax, then a fourth, and then a fifth, each draining more and more vigor from her already exhausted mind. By the sixth, she felt only half-conscious, but she still noticed as Clark began to finally tense up on top of her, his thrusts slowing as a guttural moan left his lips. "That's it," she whispered, "Let it all out…"

In Clark's hazy mind, he could feel something cataclysmic building, something beyond the holy pleasures of screwing a goddess, something that made his whole body tense with anticipation. He didn't know if such a feeling was a bad omen, but as Hssara whispered in his ear, he decided it was worth the risk. He let out a moan as his thrusting faltered, his resolve broken by the impending climax, and then the pressure came flooding forth. All he could do was hold on tight as his body emptied his sticky load straight into her womb, shooting the gooey ropes with the force of a fire hose for almost a full minute.

Hssara could feel his spunk fill her to the brim before spilling out onto her scales, glazing both their groins in a sticky mixture of their combined fluids, and she did her best to squeeze all she could while holding Clark tight. The poor human shuddered as if possessed, moaning and gasping as untold pleasures surged through his nerves, hugging onto her scaly body like she was his anchor to reality… and then, his muscles swiftly went slack. His head slumped onto her chest as the rest of him relaxed in her grip, and Hssara couldn't help but smile in satisfaction. "Mmmmm, that looked fun," she sleepily chuckled, "But… Clark?"

It was then that she heard the human's heart rapidly slowing, and as she looked over his limp form, she realized he'd fallen asleep. It seemed that great pleasure came with great consequences, and after everything he'd managed to do under the new venom's influence, it seemed his mind had now paid the price.

The viper's mind briefly pondered all the mess they'd left under the covers, all the sweat and jizz and vaginal fluid staining the previously immaculate cloth, but as fatigue tugged at her conscious mind, Hssara decided they could clean it up in the morning. She simply pulled the covers up a bit over Clark's back, adjusted his head between her breasts so that they were both comfortable, then relaxed back onto the pillows with her arms still around her lover. "Goodnight, Clark," she quietly whispered, "I love you…"

And with that, she too succumbed to sleep's cozy embrace amidst the moist aftermath of their rutting.