Chapter 7: Under the Skin

I walked around the courtyard holding the cellphone over my head, searching for a signal. God damn it, how many satellites had the ADVENT fleet plowed through during their time blockading the planet? I couldn’t get any damned bars. Vi watched with amusement from her perch on the roof of the barn, idly guzzling barbecued pork as I wandered around the property cursing. I hadn’t had any idea how to prepare the pig carcass Kadavy had given us, but Vi apparently did. I had given her a knife and left her to it, and after an hour she had brought me some cuts of meat to cook. I didn’t care to ask where she had learned the skill, on her home planet before ADVENT had conquered it maybe? Was it some cultural thing passed down from snake to snake? It didn’t matter.

I kicked the dusty ground, frustrated, then turned to look at Vi. She had no problem scaling structures, what if she lifted me up onto the grain silo? Might I get a signal up there?

“Hey Vi, Vi!” She rolled onto her back, pretending not to hear me, swallowing a cut of pork as she basked in the midday sun. “Come on Vi, this is important!” She peeked her head over the side of the roof as I approached, looking down at me with a disinterested expression, and huffed. ‘Go on.’

“Can you lift me up onto the silo? I need to get a signal on my phone.”

She smirked and crossed her arms, lounging lazily.

“Come on!”

She slithered down off the roof, her body long enough that the lower fifth of her tail could be on the roof while her torso flopped to the floor. I yelped in surprise as she plucked me off the ground and slung me under her arm, winding her way across the courtyard with alarming speed. My stomach turned as she climbed the tower, curling around it and placing me gently on the top. She steadied me with her hand as I got my bearings, huffing with amusement at my dizziness, then returned to the ground.

“T-Thanks,” I muttered, watching her scale the barn and return to her stash of pork, letting the sun beat down on her white belly as she spread out across the tiles. I raised my phone, waving it over my head, and saw one bar light up. Yes! My idea had worked. Maybe I could put a satellite dish up here or something to make it easier to get reception, the house had a landline but the service was extremely spotty lately.

I fumbled in my pocket for the number I had been given when I was discharged, along with the promise of help, should I ever need it. I was a little embarrassed to call in the favor so early, but it was the ideal way to get in touch with the local government, if anyone knew what the situation was it would be XCOM. I dialed the number, and put the phone to my ear tentatively, listening to it ring. After a moment there was a click as someone at the other end picked up, a woman’s voice coming through a little distorted due to the inconsistent signal.

“Avenger here, report.” Report? Whose number had they given me? Logistics? The control room?

“Er ... hey. I was given this number when I was discharged, they told me to call if I needed anything.”

“Oh, ok, hold please.” I waited, and after a moment I was transferred to some other department, a male voice greeted me this time.

“Hello, how can I help you?”

“Hello, I was er ... given this number when they discharged me from XCOM, the Commander told me that I should call it if I ever needed help with anything.”

“Oh, I see. Can you give me your service number, Sir?” I relayed the six digits of my service number and waited for him to check it against their database. “Ah yes, I have your service record here Sergeant, what is it that you need?”

“Ok, bear with me because it’s going to take me a minute to explain my situation. So when I was discharged I returned to my family’s farmhouse, we own property in Kansas. When I got here, I figured I would start up production again and start harvesting crops, because without ADVENT operating the supply system there are likely to be food shortages in the cities. My neighbors are doing the same. Problem is the haulers that ADVENT used to send to collect the grain aren’t running anymore, we have whole silos of food going to waste because we don’t have a way to get it to the processing plants, and no way to get in touch with any local governments who might be able to help us. I wanted to know if you guys were in contact with any authorities, and if they might be able to arrange transport?”

“Give me a moment Sergeant, and I’ll get back to you about that.” He left whatever console he was operating, and I heard muffled speech in the background. After a few minutes he returned, and there was interference as he put his headset back on.

“Hello, Sergeant? Are you still on the line?”

“Yes I’m here.”

“The United States government is operating in Kansas, but their control is tenuous at the moment. We do however have both resistance and local government contacts in Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka. If you can hold for a little longer I will contact them and see what their situation is.”

“Thanks, that would be great, I’ll hold.”

I watched Vi sunbathing on the roof as I waited for the operator to return, her belly slightly distended from all the pork she had eaten. I felt like telling her to pace herself, but she knew her metabolism better than I did, she might not need to eat for a week after such a large meal. She seemed to be sleeping now, her ample chest rising and falling softly.

I realized suddenly that I was frustrated, going two nights without sleeping with her felt like two years, this little spat we were having was starting to drag on longer than I would have liked. We were both stubborn, each biding our time in the expectation that the other would soon be proven wrong, that couldn’t be a healthy way to resolve the conflict. Maybe I’d try talking with her again, try to get her to see my side of things.

“Sergeant, are you still on the line?” I returned the phone hastily to my ear.

“Yes I’m still here.”

“Good news, our resistance contact in Topeka confirms that the city has a supply issue, they have processing plants standing idle. If you can give me the coordinates of your farm, they can get trucks out to you. I’ll give you the number of their office so you can talk to them yourself.”

“Brilliant, that’s exactly what I had hoped, thank you.”

I took down the number, then thanked the operator again and hung up. I would give the guys in Topeka a call later in the afternoon, right now I had a prior appointment with some Mutons. I stood up and called to Vi, waving my arms.

“Hey Vi! I need to get down!” Either she was asleep, or pretending to be. I called her again, and this time she stirred, flexing her winding body and looking up at me drowsily. “Come get me!” She slid lazily off the roof and made her way over to the silo, crawling up the cylinder and lifting me below my arms, she deposited me on the ground then returned to her perch again. “Where are you going? We need to visit the Mutons again.”

She grumbled unhappily, waving her hand at me dismissively as she lay on the roof.

“Oh fine, later then, but it’s important. I’ll give you two hours, ok?” She chirped her understanding, then rolled out of view.

I sat alone in the living room, lounging on the couch as the embers of the previous night’s fire glowed in the hearth, tapping at Vi’s tablet and trying to figure out how it could be used to communicate with our alien neighbors. The text menus were all in ADVENT script, impossible for me to read, I would probably have to employ Vi to guide me through the user interface.

I heard the front door open, and turned to look over the headrest of the couch to see Vi slinking into the farmhouse.

“Hey Vi, you ready to go?”

She didn’t reply, and slid her way around the side of the couch, planting her heavy head on my lap. I set the tablet aside, surprised.

“What’s with the sudden change of attitude?”

She rolled her eyes, huffing dispassionately, and raised her long fingers to scratch at her head.

“You got an itch?”

I rubbed the top of her head, her scales shiny and smooth under my fingers, and she wriggled her long body. Her hood was drooping and she was avoiding eye contact, as if she were embarrassed by something.

“What is it? Your tablet is here you know.”

She shook her head softly, and clawed at her snout, scratching her nose. Her long body was twisting slowly, writhing as if in slow motion as she rubbed her cheek on my chest. Was something wrong with her? Should I take her to a ... vet? She nudged me more ardently, pushing her forehead against my jacket as if trying to scratch herself on the zipper. Concerned, I ran my fingers over her cool skin, tracing the contours of her fleshy hood. My eyes widened in surprise as one of my fingers caught on something, it was her skin, she was shedding her outer layer. I peeled away a section, as if she was coated in clear, dry saran wrap. It came off easily in a sheet, not quite transparent upon closer inspection, it was patterned with the indents of her fine scales. She grumbled and crooned as I ripped more of it free, seeming to alternate between discomfort and gratitude as she scratched at her neck with her claws. She was a reptile after all, it made sense, but I had never seen her do this before. What had brought it on so suddenly? The cold weather maybe?

“Ok ok, stop wriggling, lie down on the couch and I’ll help you.”

She huffed, nudging me aside to lie with her belly on the cushions, she perched her head on the armrest and watched me with her yellow eyes, waiting. If she could blush, I got the feeling she would have, she was attempting to sulk yet here she was forced to come to me for the most intimate kind of help.

I patted her head, and she huffed again, ‘don’t get fresh’.

“Oh, keep still, you grumpy creature,” I chided. I tried to hook my fingers beneath the sheath of skin on her nose, peeling it away in a clean section. She rubbed her face on the arm rest, trying to help me along. It was oddly satisfying, the fresh scales beneath had a clean luster to them, like a newly waxed car. I ran my fingers under her chin, pulling the skin away up to her jawline where the sensitive flesh of her hood began. I tugged it over her forehead and rolled it down her neck, pushing my fingers between the soft bands that lined her cobra-like hood, and she shivered. I smirked, the interior of her hood was extremely sensitive, she liked me to trace the outer rim and the space where it joined her neck with my fingers when we fooled around. I knew how to push her buttons and she was especially vulnerable right now.

I caressed the spongy flesh under her hood, the same soft, white material that made up her underbelly. She grumbled and shuddered, a muscle spasm rolling down the length of her body to the tip of her tail. I ran the tip of my finger along the skin where her hood met the delicate scales of her neck, and she purred, her eyelids drooping as she ground her wide hips against the couch beneath her. She seemed to come to her senses after a moment of being lost in the sensation, and glared at me with her amber pupils.

“Hey, I can let you do it yourself if you’re gonna be like that.”

She exhaled a sigh, and flared her hood to allow me easier access. I pretended to be feeling around for shedding skin, but I was merely teasing her, tickling her erogenous zones. Her juices must be flowing by now, it wouldn’t surprise me if her genital slit was open beneath her scaly rump, soaking the cushions underneath her as she tried to hide her arousal. I pinched the rim of the hood, eliciting a gasp and a shiver from her, and she reached up to bat my hand away. I stifled a laugh, and returned to the task at hand, rolling the growing ring of dry skin down her neck. She wriggled and squirmed as I reached the base, pausing above her shoulders. She was lying on her belly, her ample breasts squashed beneath her considerable weight, but we were going to have to pass by those too. I would have to trace every contour of her body with my hands, and she noticed me smirking at the prospect.

I stroked the line of her spine with my hand, again making a show of feeling around for peeling skin as I took every opportunity to tease her and indulge my own desires, as much as my frustration had grown over the last couple of days. I rubbed her shoulders and she sighed again, enjoying the massage despite herself. I wouldn’t be able to peel away the arms in a complete section, I realized, and so I tore a section away at the shoulder, like a sleeve. She extended her left arm for me so that I could tug the skin down, turning it inside out and rolling it down to her fingers. It stuck to her claws before breaking away, and I held the ghostly sleeve in my hand, examining it. It was so light and transparent, the elegant patterns that her scales created were printed on it like stamped leather. I did the same with the right arm, though she refused to lie on her back to give me easier access. When it was done she scratched the few spots where a few flakes had remained, visibly relieved.

I realized that it was going to take a while, we had been here for a good ten minutes already and we were only at the shoulders. I continued where I had left off, pulling the skin down her slender back, tracing the dimple of her spine with my fingers as I went. She was so strong, her back and shoulders were detailed with taut muscle that protruded beneath her doughy fat layer to give her the definition of an athlete. I could feel muscle running all the way down her back to her rump. The skin snagged about half down her back, and she shifted unhappily.

“I have to get at your front too, or it won’t come off, roll over for me.”

She hissed her displeasure, and I gave her springy ass a light slap, my hand clapping on her round rump as she grumbled and began to shift. She turned on her side then collapsed onto her back, her heavy breasts doing an admirable job of retaining their firmness, even as gravity fought for possession of them. They were larger than my head due to her exaggerated size, and to this day I was unsure of the purpose they served. I knew that some reptiles on Earth birthed live young rather than laying eggs, but I had never heard of boobs on a reptile. Regardless of her strange alien biology, her pink nipples were engorged and erect, protruding through the protective scales that usually shielded them. I noticed that she had twisted her lower body away from me in a futile effort to conceal her inflamed loins. She wasn’t fooling anyone.

I stroked the base of her neck and shoulders, miming trying to find the break in her shedding hide, but taking the opportunity to caress the glass-smooth skin above her breasts. The scales on her pale underside were so imperceptibly small that without closer scrutiny they felt like human skin. I resisted the growing urge to place a sucking kiss at the nape of her slender neck and initiate a fight that would surely end in rough sex, instead biding my time. She had been in a sour mood since we had argued over the Mutons, and I knew she was just as frustrated as I was. If I played my cards right I could break her resolve and have her initiate the frantic make-up sex that I could feel brewing, and absolve myself of any blame after the fact.

She wasn’t stupid, she knew exactly what I was doing, but that was the beauty of the unspoken language we shared. I could always tell what was going through her head, and she could read every blush and lingering glance as if they were lines of text on her tablet screen. We were both excited and wanting, playing a game of chicken to see whose resolve would crack first.

I slid my hands down to her ample chest, dragging the skin behind them almost as an afterthought as her wide hips rolled in response. I passed over her mounds, almost as large as basketballs, their pliant surface yielding beneath my fingers. Like kneading dough I sunk my fingertips into the cushiony fat, inviting and velvety, the firm breast tissue beneath rising up to meet them as she pushed her chest out and her back arched off the couch. Her eyelids fluttered and she loosed a low sigh, if she had thighs she would have been rubbing them together. I slid my hands down her chest, curving them to cup her boobs and test their weight in my palms, ensuring that my fingers glanced her tender nipples. She glared down at me, her eyelids drooping, as much barely contained lust as anger now.

I tugged the layer of shedding skin lower, arriving at her taut belly, her bulging abdominal muscles protruding from beneath her chubby fat as she twisted and flexed them in response to my questing touch. She had an hourglass figure, with a pinched waistline that flared into wide, child-bearing hips, or perhaps egg-bearing? I wasn’t sure yet. I followed the defined abs on her belly with my digits, saliva pooling in my mouth as I resisted the urge to press my face against them, feeling their firmness as she wriggled in response. Her muscle flowed like a liquid, coursing through her powerful body, at once hard and acquiescent.

My erection strained against my clothing now, sore and aching, but I doubted she could see it below the bulk of her body. I roamed down to her hips, sliding my palms over her voluptuous curves, digging my fingers into her rump and trying to turn her over. Realizing that she couldn’t hide her arousal any long, she huffed with insincere displeasure and gave in, shifting her weight as the couch springs creaked beneath her. She turned her groin to face me, the scales that concealed her genital slit were splayed open, exposing her glistening pink flesh. Strands of her thick juices leaked free, her familiar musky scent rising to my nose. She turned her snout up at me, trying to maintain an air of aloofness, but trembling with arousal beneath my hands.

If she thought I was going to make the first move, she was wrong.

I dragged the growing roll of patterned skin down to her pubic mound, glancing the erogenous zone with my fingertips as I gently peeled the smooth bulge, her abdominal muscles clenching attractively a short distance above it. A few beads of sweat decorated her waxy skin now, catching the light that seeped in through the still grimy windows, and I could feel the heat that radiated from her. She was feverish, her breasts bouncing softly as her breath came in labored gasps, her excitement dripping from her twitching hole. She propped herself further up on the armrest to allow me access to more of her body, resting her elbows on it and letting her ample chest hang heavily, nipples hard and swollen. She watched me with a lurid expression, chewing softly on her puffy lower lip with her toothless jaws.

I skirted around her genital slit, feeling the warmth coming off it, almost enough to burn my fingers. I glanced her splayed labia, swollen and ready, and a shudder flowed down her body like a ripple on the surface of a calm lake. Her loins were quivering, moving with a life of their own as I slid my finger around her entrance, ensuring that I applied enough pressure for her to really feel it but never getting close enough to sate her mounting need. I could see her restraint cracking, it was apparent in her body language, it was all she could to prevent herself from plunging one of her fingers into her moistening tunnel as she strained against the impulse.

She was rolling her hips against my hand reflexively as I peeled the skin past her vulva, unconsciously seeking out more stimulation, apparently the surrounding scales were very sensitive and she bucked when I pulled the shed skin away. Her emission had dampened the skin around her groin, and it clung to the fresh scales beneath with heavy strands of clear liquid that broke away when I tugged. Her vagina itself had no skin to shed of course, and as I passed it and moved down to her thighs, it left a lemon-shaped window in the almost transparent sheet. I stroked her ‘thighs’ as I moved down, the muscles analogous to those of human legs shifting under her hide as I reached the base of her long tail. She lifted her body to help me as I traveled down the length of her coils, trailing off the couch and almost out of the room. She pulled her dexterous, almost limb-like tail in the opposite direction to ease the shedding, she did most of the work as I held it still and she sloughed out of it. After a few minutes I was left standing with a Viper-sized pile of shed skin heaped on the carpeted floor.

Vi stretched, undulating her long body and raising her arms above her head. She scratched off a few remaining flakes of skin from her belly and rump, then stood on her tail and turned to admire her fresh skin. She was radiant, each individual scale reflecting light like a cut jewel, she preened and crooned happily. I caught her glance as her yellow eyes met mine, a familiar sultry expression on her face. I felt the tip of her long tail coiling around my ankle, and before I could react, she pulled my foot out from under me and dragged me across the ground towards the couch. I was hefted off the floor, and she caught me in her fat coils like someone snatching a baseball from the air, crushing the breath out of my lungs as she wrapped me like a hotdog in a bun. A shiver ran down my spine as I felt her pointed claws massage my scalp, my arms were trapped by sides and she was too strong for escape to be an option. I looked up at her, swallowing hard as she fixed her predatory gaze on me, a smirk spreading across her thick lips.

“Hey ... no hard feelings right?”

She tightened her body around me, the firm muscle within squeezing me almost painfully beneath the layer of cushioned fat, and she huffed with amusement as I winced. Yeah yeah, she could constrict me until my head popped like a grape if she wanted to, but that wasn’t her M.O. She enjoyed the chase, perhaps a throwback to her carnivorous ancestry, and a pulse of mild fear stalled my heart as I considered that she could get pretty rough when she wanted to. She had never hurt me, well, not seriously. But I had teased her, she had a devious glint in her eye now, and my breathing began to quicken as I realized it was going to be one of ‘those’ encounters. It excited me more than I cared to admit, and my erection betrayed me, pressing against her newly burnished scales.

She hooked one of her claws into my collar and tugged it slack, exposing my shoulder as my face reddened and I started to squirm in her grasp. I wasn’t seriously attempting to get away, but like a cat with a mouse she enjoyed it, and it only fed into her voracious sexual appetite.

She struck suddenly, and I felt a flare of burning pain in my shoulder as she plunged a far more significant length of her hypodermic fangs into my flesh than I was used to. I yelped, my writhing now genuine, and she lingered there as a drop of blood rolled down my chest to stain the shirt beneath. It stung, and just as it started to become unbearable she withdrew, retracting her fangs and gazing down at me. I twisted my head to see the wound, two punctures, deeper than was reasonable for a playful love bite.

“What the hell Vi...”

My head swam suddenly, the room spinning, and with a start I noticed a droplet of green venom leak from one of the bite marks. What the fuck, had she poisoned me? Why would ... she...

She huffed from above, laughing at me as my face began to burn and a strange heat coursed through my veins. I would be dead right now if she had delivered a fatal dose, so what was this? Why did I feel like my fingertips were tingling? Why was I so fucking hard? My throbbing erection pressed almost painfully against her coils, and she held me steady as my legs started to weaken.

“Vi ... what did...” I was having trouble formulating sentences, the words muddling on my tongue. She reached across and lifted her tablet from the coffee table beside the couch where I had put it down, tapping at the screen with a smug expression.

[LOW DOSAGE, I PUNISH]

“Punish? What ... are you...” She had administered a microdosage of her venom then? An aphrodisiac? No that was ridiculous, but a hallucinogen? That was a very real possibility, I knew of frogs whose poison could produce a kind of ‘high’ when ingested, and cobra venom was reportedly used as a hallucinogen in India. How did she know how much to administer? Was this something her people did recreationally?

I shuddered as a wave of pleasure rolled through my body, buzzing like electricity, and my eyes blurred as Vi’s silhouette loomed over me. I felt slow, lethargic, yet more aroused than I could stand. What was this venom doing to my system? Every beat of my heart felt like it was pushing magma through my veins, yet my senses were heightened, I felt as if her warm breath in my hair might be enough to bring me to orgasm.

I felt ill, but also amazing, phenomenal. Damn it, my brain was boiling in my skull, I couldn’t make sense of the stimuli. The room shifted back and forth like everything was off-kilter, the colors bleeding into eachother like a watercolor painting subjected to rain. I felt Vi’s claw draw a circle on my cheek, and suddenly it was all there was, as if the world had dropped away from us. The sensation was so amplified and so ‘loud’ in my brain, like my nerve endings had been boosted, and I felt an electric shiver roll down my spine.

Vi’s fangs pinched my ear as she leaned down to chew, piercing through my haze of confusion and arousal like a bolt of lightning. I heard myself gasp, but I felt as if my body was acting of its own accord, my conscious mind merely a spectator in the scene that was playing out despite me. The heat was becoming unbearable, my nerves were on fire, my fingers and toes tingling uncomfortably as the venom did its work. What exactly was it doing? Hallucination, partial paralysis, what were the effects?

I winced as Vi’s teeth pricked my skin and her long, sinuous tongue wound its way into my ear, slippery and warm. My erection was raging, my hips thrusting against the soft meat of her coiled body that still bound me as some primal reflex took the reigns, she blew warm breath in my ear and chuckled at my struggling.

She crawled her fat lips down to my neck, pressing her fangs against my jugular, not deep enough to break the skin but with enough force that it made me squirm in her grip. I felt her tongue sneak out of her mouth to taste the sweat that was starting to coat my body, dragging the smooth, hot organ across my skin. She pursed her lips and left wet, sucking kisses as she proceeded lower, nibbling at my shoulder, her scaly hand sneaking around my neck to compress my throat gently. I felt oddly vulnerable, and on some level that excited me. My eyes closed and my head lolled backwards to rest on one of her waxy coils as her grip tightened and she choked off my sigh, her other hand slipping under my shirt, her claws scraping down my chest.

I wouldn’t have been able to resist her if I had wanted to, I was aware of some mild paralytic effects through the fog that clouded my mind, I could feel my limbs but they were weak and unresponsive as if I had been sleeping on them. I was shivering, but I was unsure if it was excitement, or some other effect of the toxins that she had pumped into my body. I tried to speak but I couldn’t formulate the words, and her grip on my throat was tight enough to stifle me.

She dragged her claws down my belly, sliding her fingers under my waistband and gripping my pulsing member in her cool hand. It was beating like a second heart, as stiff and sore as I had ever felt it, and her touch sent a jolt of electrical pleasure coursing up through my beleaguered body to flare in my head like a blinding light. The intensity of it was almost intolerable, and I sucked in a gasp of air despite the fingers that closed around my neck. Blurred colors began to dance before my eyes as she started to stroke up and down, pulling back my foreskin so that my tender glans rubbed against the cotton fabric of my underwear. My hips thrust into her hand, but her grip was loose, and she denied me the relief that I sought.

My body was coated in a veneer of sweat, it was soaking my shirt and my underwear, I was burning up. I could hear my blood pumping in my ears and my heart pounding in my chest, as if her venomous kiss had sent my entire vascular system into overdrive.

“Vi ... I can’t...” I managed to whisper, and her hand left my neck to cradle my red cheek in her palm. She leaned her head down and pushed her oversized lips against mine, her tongue worming its way into my mouth. Multicolored stars drifted across my vision as the organ roved and twisted, filling my head and bulging my cheeks, the tang of her metallic saliva tickling my taste buds. Every glance of her tongue set my mind fizzing, I felt as if someone had replaced my brain fluid with cola, and I leaned into her in a vain attempt to meet her kiss with my own woefully inadequate example. Lubricated by her copious drool, the long, thick organ pushed deeper into my gullet, my throat muscles fighting the intruder as she gripped my face in her hand to keep me steady as the sordid embrace dragged on. The impossibly deep and violating kiss made my eyes water, and she withdrew a little as I began to choke, returning the tapered tip of her winding tongue to my mouth where she painted it across my palate and tasted the lining of my cheeks. God this wasn’t a kiss, it was a sex act, wanton and base. A string of her thick saliva escaped our locked lips as she ravaged me, dripping to my chest, and her sinewy tongue curled around mine to wrestle with it. The two slick muscles battled, Vi’s breath hot on my face, the sound of her wet smacking filling my ears from the inside.