“Take this off,” she murmured, tugging the bottom edge upwards. The shirt was a loose fit in his human form – he’d bought them a little big to be able to fit them as salases – and it came off easily. He tossed it to the side of the room, waiting to see what Lynette’s reaction was.
Her eyes were fixed on his chest, and he saw her swallow hard. His cock hardened further. Gods above, he’d never had a woman look at him the way she was. Even when he’d been able to find an amicable woman willing to sleep with him, it had been more a case of resignation or desperation. They’d turned the lamp down and hidden beneath blankets – and Koradan supposed he’d been no more enamoured with his partners than the women had been with him. The only women who’d been willing to sleep with him had been relatively ugly themselves. One had a disfigured nose, another had a lopsided mouth due to only having one tusk instead of two. And it had suited everyone involved to close their eyes and pretend they were with someone more appealing.
Lynette wouldn’t be doing any pretending. Her eyes were fixed on him, roaming up his chest, down his arms… and lingering at the bulge in his trousers.
She stepped forward, kissing him again, one lean thigh pressed in between his legs. She rocked against him, and he had to fight not to grind himself against her. The warm pressure at his groin felt divine.
Lynette was guiding them towards the bed, even as she continued kissing him, and he let her lead, paying far more attention to the feel of her mouth against his than to where they were going. This was a unique experience. As he’d told her, salases didn’t generally kiss each other, but he thought now that they were sorely missing out. The taste of her and the slick warmth of her tongue were entirely captivating.
Suddenly, the edge of the bed came up against his legs and he fell backwards, landing with Lynette on top of him.
“Sorry, am I being too pushy?” she asked. She tried to pull away, but he wrapped his arms around her waist, stopping her from going too far.
“Not at all. I wasn’t… um… Sorry if I’m being a bit too hesitant. I’m not used to this...”
“Do you want me to slow down?”
“No! Gods, no. It’s just… Are you sure this is what you want?”
She nodded, looking him in the eye. “Yes.” Her thigh was pressing against his groin again, and he couldn’t help rocking his pelvis up, holding her hips steady to rub against her.
“That feels so good…”
Despite his declaration that she wasn’t going too fast, she seemed a little more hesitant now. Her hands were roaming over his chest, but her expression was less open, her smile fading to a studious frown. And Koradan realised that he was basically letting her make all the moves, just going along with her directions. That was hardly a good way to make a woman feel desired.
Deciding to try taking the lead a little more, he slid his hands up inside her shirt, being careful not to scratch her with his claws – before remembering that he didn’t have claws at the moment. The realisation made him bolder, and he skimmed his hands up her back, feeling the texture of her skin – softer and slightly smoother than a salas’s – then around to cup one breast. She gave a breathy moan as his large hand cupped the soft flesh and she pressed into him.
“Take this off,” he murmured, tugging on the edge of her shirt. She nodded, sitting back, but straddling him the way she was, it pressed their groins together again, Koradan’s erection trapped beneath the junction of her thighs.
“Oh, fuck…” he breathed, his hands gripping her hips to rock up against her again. As he did so, she stripped the shirt off, revealing two beautiful breasts that were surprisingly pert, given the fact that she’d had a child and had presumably breastfed him. Human anatomy was similar enough to a salas’s, at least in this regard, that he assumed they both fed their young the same way.
But further down on her right side there was a deep purple mark on her skin. It ran from the bottom of her breast, over her ribs, almost to her belly button, with rounded lobes and a splotchy section at the bottom.
Lynette saw him looking at it and immediately tried to cover the mark with her hand. “It’s a birthmark,” she said. She looked away, letting her hair fall into her eyes. “Sorry, it’s not very pretty.”
Slowly and gently, Koradan took her hand and pulled it away, revealing the mark to his eyes. And at the same time, his erection swelled again. Gods, he needed to get his pants off.
“You said before that I don’t know much about human beauty standards. The same is true about you and Chalandrian beauty. This…” He ran his fingers reverently over the mark. “This is exquisite.” Her frown said that she didn’t believe him, so he explained, “In Chalandros, people are attracted to colour variations. People whose skin is entirely one colour are considered plain. It’s not idle flattery, Lynette. This is beautiful.” He traced the edges of the mark again, then leaned up to kiss it. And since her breast was right there, he kissed it as well, gratified when Lynette relaxed in his arms and let out a breathy sigh.
Compared to the other women in the village, Koradan supposed that Lynette might have been considered stocky by human standards, plenty of hard work in the paddocks keeping her muscles toned and well formed. But compared to a typical salas woman, she was slight and slender, with a long neck and delicate ears.
He turned his attention to her other breast and felt her hands in his hair. She rocked her hips against him, then drew back, looking down at him with a heated expression. Holding his gaze, she slid off his lap, then undid her belt, then the buttons on her trousers. She slid them down her legs and off her bare feet, leaving her clad in only a pale set of underwear that hung low on her hips.
Koradan was suddenly ragingly curious about exactly what lay beneath that scrap of fabric. He reached for her, tugging her forward, then slid his hand inside the garment. Then he tugged it downwards, noting on the way that there was a distinct line across her thighs where paler skin met darker. It seemed too straight to be natural, so he asked, “What is this?” as he traced the line.
“Oh, that’s a suntan line,” Lynette said. “From working outside in short pants. Our skin turns darker when it’s exposed to the sun on a regular basis.”
A slow grin lit his face. “Oh, I could have fun with that,” he said, thinking of all the gorgeous patterns that could be created on a human’s skin. And just from simple exposure to the sun. And he remembered all over again what a blessing it was to be able to go out in the sun at all. In Chalandros, people avoided it as much as possible, due to the searing heat.
“Right now,” Lynette said, kneeling down in front of him, “I can think of other ways we could be having fun.” She undid the laces of his boots and tugged them off, then stripped his socks off as well. Human feet, he noticed, were actually very similar to salas feet. How interesting.
Then Lynette ran her hands up his legs, from his ankles all the way to his waist, and took hold of his belt. She undid the buckle, while Koradan’s attention was far more focused on the shapely curve of her buttocks. He leaned over and ran a hand down the curve, making her jump, then laugh. “Patience, Koradan. Let’s get your pants off first, then you can have all the fun you like.”
Once his pants were undone, Lynette moved back and he stood up… and then hesitated as he suddenly remembered that he didn’t actually know what he was going to look like down there. It was disconcerting to have such a private part of himself remade, to think that a witch had actually had to consider such a thing when crafting her spell. Or had she overlooked that part and left him as a salas would be? If so, then his evening with Lynette was about to come to an abrupt halt.
Lynette seemed to pick up on his discomfort, because she put her hand over his, as he held his pants up, and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “It’s okay,” she whispered to him. “We’ll just take a look and figure it out from there.”
Something, at least, was working, because he could both see and feel the hard ridge of his arousal. And if it was a different shape or colour than he was used to, then he would just learn to adapt, as he had done with everything else in this new world. Steeling himself, he dropped his trousers and took a good, long look at his new genitalia.
