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The haze of my rut was clawing at my mind, but I had weathered enough of my rut cycles alone that I was used to it. I could control myself. At least, I knew I could as long as I wasn’t actively mating. I hadn’t done that yet, so I didn’t know what it would be like once I was actually inside a female.

“Ooooooooooh,” she sighed out. “Cheese and rice, you meant you would give me head. No, I won’t die if you lick me. Unless you have venom or something like that? Or barbs?”

.

“I am not a female,” I said. “Mating with me will not amputate you.”

Saying those words out loud broke fully through the haze of my lust. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t give in to the mating urge after so long of keeping myself safe.

“Amputate?” she said, her voice high-pitched and squeaky. It made me want to wrap myself around her, and I satiated that urge simply by circling her, coiling on top of myself as I spun around her, inching closer to her.

I gritted my teeth.

I needed to let her go. I needed to find how she snuck into my den and close up the hole.

“Yes,” I hissed. “You are female, are you not? You snuck in here to capture me in my rut and sever my manhood with your nether teeth.”

The sound that burst from her was so bright and loud that it startled me.

She was… laughing?

“WHAT?” she shrieked.

“You are laughing?” I asked, rearing back, lifting my body up in the air as I stared down at her. She had doubled over in the center of my coils, her arms wrapped around her soft middle. She was pleasant-looking for a biped, more of an even tube of flesh that demonstrated good health in a naga.

“I don’t have TEETH down there!” she cackled. Then suddenly she straightened, her laughter dying down as her tone sobered. “Wait, are you saying female naga can amputate… body parts… with their… with their…”

She sucked in a deep breath.

“Mating is dangerous for males,” I said. “Is it not that way for humans?”

“Human females are often smaller and weaker than human males. I mean, there are variances in genetics and physical training, but on average, we are significantly weaker. If human males are raised stupid or listen to stupid people,” she grimaced. “They end up thinking they have the right to mate with females whether the females want to or not, and then they hurt them. Some of them will do that to other males as well if they can.”

“This is the natural state?” I asked.

“No, not at all,” she shook her head. “Human males are perfectly wonderful if they grow up in environments that teach them to be loving. The harm comes when they are led to believe things that aren’t true, like believing they are better than women or that physical strength gives them the right to control others..”

“Naga females are raised to believe they have the right to maim,” I said, recalling what my mother had taught me. “They don’t have to do so to procreate.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the human female said.

“Why are you sorry?” I asked her.

“I’m sorry that you’ve been afraid that mating would hurt you,” she said. She reached out and set a hand on one of my coils. I continued to move around her, allowing my tail to slide under her hand. She left it there, her fingers spreading out to stroke along my tail. “I am sorry I laughed at you.”

“I don’t require your apology,” I said. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

She lifted her hand up, and I missed her touch, wishing she would place her palm back down against me. I shifted a little closer, coiling in on her so that my bulk was mere inches away from touching her. My flesh burned for her. She was not of my kind.

She was safe.

“What do you require?” she asked, her voice breathless.

“For you to leave,” I said.

She sucked in a harsh breath.

“Or for you to let me taste you,” I finished. “To let me rut inside your toothless cavern.”