Page 74 of Smut Lovers

Chapter Five

Willow

T his is crazy. I’m being crazy right now.

I was walked through the early sunrise light alongside Orion, bucket of pythons in one hand, his in the other, on our way to meet a witch.

Not only was I considering staying—which was bonkers!

—but I was considering never going back.

Who was I? The Willow I knew was always on the hustle.

The next big episode, the next great collab, the next idea.

I was always looking ahead in hopes of one day getting out of that fucking house with all my sanity intact.

Maybe I lost it along the way because no regular person would agree to this…

maybe I finally realized that all this hustling got me nowhere. All it did was break my heart.

“So, this witch?” I broached the subject lightly. “She’s nice?”

“She doesn’t throw small children into her brick oven and eat pies made of toes, if that’s what you’re asking,” Orion teased, throwing me a self-assured smirk.

“I wasn’t, but now I’m super glad that you said that, what a relief,” I laughed even more nervously than I had before…this was bonkers.

But he was hot, and I’d made worse decisions on a whim because it might get me somewhere.

I’d agreed to putting myself into student debt because I had this fantasy of college that never lived up to the hype.

I’d said yes to moving home when my mother sweetly suggested it would help me pay back the loan faster.

I’d seen one video of a guy stomping through the glades with his grippers out and thought, ‘hey, I can do that.’ I am clearly not the beacon of sensible decisions!

Orion was delicious, however, and that might be my saving grace. He was handsome and funny and surprisingly witty.

“Espbeth is a crotchety old hag, but you’ll love her.

I do.” Orion tugged me toward him, and I narrowly avoided a rock under a mountain of sludge.

The muck crept away from us as Orion slithered past. It was odd thinking how out in the open he was and yet I’d never heard of him.

Never seen him before, in all my years of shenanigans and tomfoolery in the Everglades.

The only reason I’d even considered this snake hunt was because I knew the glades like the back of my hand.

Spent years running through them like I could never get lost. And here he was, big and impossible with a killer smile.

“I don’t think you’re really selling me on her, just yet,” I teased.

“You’ll see,” he chuckled warmly. “She’s pretty good at fixing people’s problems. So, whatever it is that chased you into the glades, she can probably fix. If not, I could always give them a visit.”

I snorted, rolling my eyes. “I don’t think turning my parents to stone would fix it.”

“Ah, so it’s your folks. Hmmm, that does complicate things. I was one of several hatches for my parents, so I’m not as fond of my folks as you might be of yours.”

My mouth fell open. “Hatches?”

“Well, basilisks tend to have four to five hatches in their life time. Seven to nine eggs each.”

“Seven to…hey, uh, you wouldn’t happen to be secretly wanting me to hatch eggs for you, would you?” I squinted at him suspiciously.

Orion tossed his head back with a laugh that rumbled up through him. “You would truly be fucked now, poor thing, if that was indeed what I wanted. You let me stuff you without even a thought.”

“Hey!” I huffed.

“Well? Am I wrong? Or am I not still buried in you?” He countered, glancing at me playfully.

I flushed despite the scowl on my face. Orion pulled my hand up to his mouth, kissing the back of it.

“I’ll see to it that Espbeth gives us something for that.

I am not sure, see, most of my siblings are so far removed from me I hardly speak with them.

I’ve not heard of other basilisks breeding with a human. ”

Breeding? I guffawed with a burning blush rampaging across my body.

That word never used to hit me like it did with him.

Breeding was only used by rich people to forgive their elitism.

Good breeding! Of which I was not. However, the act of breeding?

I’d never considered a family or anything beyond just getting out of that fucking house.

“I mean, if you did, you don’t think I’ll lay eggs or anything,” I confessed like he’d squeezed the words from my lungs. “You couldn’t breed me if you tried, right? We’re just not…compatible like that?”

Orion stopped our progression to turn to me fully. I froze, like he’d actually laid those eyes on me and turned my body to stone. I felt a shiver run the length of my body as he cocked his head to the side. All that pretty, obsidian hair fell to the side like a velvet curtain. His lips were curled.

“Now, tell me, Willow. You wouldn’t happen to be interested in being bred by a basilisk, would you?”

A wheeze so forceful ripped out of my lungs that I thought for a moment someone had stabbed me in the back.

Some seven-inch dagger right between my ribs into my soft flesh, all the air escaping me in quick succession.

He pulled my hand back to his mouth again.

This time, the kiss was searing against my knuckles.

If human combustion from infatuation and arousal was possible, I would have exploded into little horny bits.

Am I interested in that? I never had a chance to really explore what I wanted or what my future might look like. This is absolutely crazy, right? Because I liked the way it sounded. I liked the way it made me tingle from crown to toe.

“I hardly know you,” I murmured, already melting into his touch.

“What a better way to get to know someone?” he purred.

“I think I do know you.” The giddy, nervous laugh bubbled out of me. “And, you know, since I know you like an audience…”

I trailed off, watching his body curl up closer around me. That tail looped around and thumped against the ground to my right.

“Do go on,” he snickered, kissing down my arm until he was scraping those dangerous fangs against my racing pulse at my elbow.

“We could do a series? Let people watch you breed me? And then some?” I raised a brow. This is it, isn’t it? I’m making a series of sex tapes with the basilisk I found in the Everglades, all while letting him breed me? But, they didn’t call me the Florida Gremlin for nothing!

“You, my pretty little morsal, are the best thing that’s stumbled into my lair.

” He whisked me forward by the arm, his other hand driving into my dirty hair.

I didn’t care, not as he kissed me hard.

I moaned into his mouth as his tail slithered up my leg, ready to likely rip the clothes off me, when someone cleared their throat a few feet from us.

I gasped, ripping back to look at a woman standing on the back of a gator.

Tan skin, red hair, freckles over every inch of her, and a belt covered in weird looking glass vials.

“I know you dig having an audience, Orion, but I don’t fancy watching you shove your cocks down this girl’s mouth or whatever it is you like. What did you drag me out here for?”

“Espbeth!” Orion pulled me up against his side to wave at her with his other hand, like his tail wasn’t possessively wrapped around my legs. “I need a favor.”

“You turn another poor creature into a lawn ornament? Cause I can’t de-petrify shit.” Espbeth put her hands on her hips as she stepped down from the gator onto the muck.

“No, not yet, but Willow’s got a request.” Orion glanced at me expectantly.

I froze while the witch stared at me with a hardened gaze.

I realized in that moment her eyes were an icy white iris over obsidian lens.

A strange pressure came over my shoulders, and I felt an overwhelming urge to confess everything.

Not just what I wanted, but the one time I snatched a lip gloss from a Walgreens and walked out without paying for it on purpose.

Thankfully, she snorted and shook her head. “What’cha need?” she asked, tossing the hair off her shoulder.

“Uh, can I use your wi-fi?” I blurted out, pulling out my phone from my back pocket. “And a power port?”

“Yeah,” Espbeth laughed, twisting on her heel and stepping back up onto her gator. “Bring the pythons, and we can trade for more, like your shit outta ya momma’s house, but I ain’t gonna charge you to use my wi-fi.”