Page 75 of Smut Lovers

Chapter Six

Orion

E spbeth’s house was a long, brown cabin style home on stilts.

Her yard was all moss and little white flowers that were spread like freckles all over the ground.

The stone gator still sat in the middle of a ring of perfect amaneta mushrooms. I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or genuinely a fairy trap, but I wasn’t curious enough to find out.

Up the long path, Espbeth and Willow walked on large paving stones while I traveled up through the silky moss.

Most of the time, I didn’t recognize how big I was until I glanced back at my tail, but now, a little, smoky gray cat was pouncing on the end at the very edge of her yard.

Which isn’t so much a yard as just the end of her protective spell.

“Basil, quit biting the basilisk’s tail! I can’t fix it if he turns you to concrete.”

“Basil?” I chuckled, gently hoisting the feisty, slinky creature off the moss and up to the porch.

“Sometimes he’s sweet, sometimes he’s savory, and if you don’t like him, you’re wrong.” Espbeth stopped at her door and pointed to the welcome mat which specifically said ‘go away.’

“I like it,” Willow snickered, wiping her muddy feet on the brown bristles. The mud fell away in giant globs, melting through the floor of the porch. Basil sauntered up to her ankles and immediately started weaving through them. “Hello, good sir, you are super soft.”

“Come on, we’ll get you washed up real quick and your phone charged. Orion, you’re not gonna fit.”

“I’ll wait outside,” I grumbled to myself.

Not like I wanted to go in or anything. It wasn’t fair to pout; I genuinely didn’t fit.

I curled around the porch, the tip of my tail toying with a bush, only to stop as Espbeth threw something at me.

It wrapped around my neck, and all my frills shot out of my body.

A soft, cashmere scarf draped around my shoulders, and I blinked rapidly in confusion.

Something changed within my stomach, and I crawled out of my tail like it were a sleeping bag.

Scales as hard as steel covered two legs that ended in sharp claws.

Espbeth jabbed a finger in my face. “Don’t rip up my floors, or I’ll throw your ass back outside.”

I grinned at her but was speechless as I tested out my new limbs. Legs? I could just waltz in anywhere now! I spun around in a circle while simultaneously stomping them.

“Like ‘em?” Willow teased.

“Sometimes things would be easier with two legs...” Only, I trailed off as I stared down my body and found my pocket closed off by hardened scales. “Rude.”

“You ain’t ruttin’ her in my house! It’s just rude!

” Espbeth snarled before beckoning us inside once more.

I followed, happy as a clam, after the two woman, making sure to accentuate each step with a stomp or flick of my new limbs.

When I passed Espbeth in the doorway, she glared at me but shifted her attention to Willow.

“What were you planning to do with those snakes?”

“I think you know what,” Willow grimaced.

“I do, but he doesn’t.” Espbeth nodded her chin at me. I blinked at her, then at Willow, who stammered. She threw out her free hand once to her side before setting down her bucket of dead pythons with a sigh. I’ll ask the witch who just met my lovely snackable human how she knew that…later.

“I went to college to get a degree that I thought I wanted, then got overwhelmed and hated every second of it, so I decided to leave. I owed the government money, and turns out, the second you confess to being done, they start asking for the money back. I was living on my own with a shit job, slowly draining every dollar I had, so my mom offers me to come back home. At least I won’t lose the roof over my head, right?

Until she shows up in my room in the morning, demand I pay her for the gas I used in her car or the food that I ate in the house or the electricity.

The internet. Everything, so I was just as in the red as before.

And she had access to my bank account, took forever to figure out how to get my own account—and look, point is my mom never wanted me to be independent, she just wanted another money lackey, like my dad.

So, I was out here looking to catch something big enough to pay my way out of debt and get out from under her thumb.

” Willow glanced at me, then at Espbeth.

“Ouch,” I murmured. “I don’t know what some of those words were, but I think contextually I understood.”

Willow snorted, rolling her eyes, but Espbeth just glared at me. When her ire ran out, she put out a hand for the bucket of snakes. “Gimme them, I can’t give you coin for it, but I can do you one better if you’re serious about it.”

“I’m so serious, I want out,” Willow blurted out like she’d lost all the air in her lungs. She grabbed up the paint bucket handle and clung to those pythons. “You mean it? You can fix this?”

“You give me those snakes, and I’ll do one thing for each snake.

The big boy? I’ll make your mama forget she even had you, won’t even be able to recall your name.

You’ll be a ghost, a whisper to her. The two little ones, I’ll make all your clothes appear here in duffle bags.

All your stuff will be in boxes on my porch.

You can decide what to do with ‘em from there. Plus, ‘cause I don’t want you botherin’ me every time you try to upload stuff, I’ll give you something that makes that brick work like you live in the middle of Miami.

Everything after that, you gotta figure out yourself.

” Espbeth nodded at the bucket with a serious look on her face.

“Deal!” Willow lurched forward, putting the bucket into Espbeth’s hand.

Now, I’ve never seen magic work in front of me before, quiet magic.

The kind that changes the world around me.

Minus the tail thing, that was just cool…

and maybe an illusion? I was unsure on the semantics of it.

But as Espbeth wrapped her fingers around Willow’s, closing a circuit around her, it felt like lightning came off both of them.

Like their skin was a lake with a downed powerline sitting on the surface.

Everything in the room stood on edge, including my hair and half my frills.

I sat back on my heels, watching with wide eyes as little smokey plumes slithered up Willow’s arm.

They curled around her skin then slowly sank in.

Another spark came off her, and four duffle bags fell out of the ceiling.

I heard the telltale thud of something hitting the porch like hail behind me shortly after.

Then Espbeth put aside an empty painter’s bucket, and a large, obsidian black serpent with pointy scales running down its back coiled around the witch.

“Where’d he come from?” I huffed.

“Jealous?” Espbeth sneered at me.

“No,” I muttered, despite how cool, sleek, and shiny the new snake was. When it raised its head to stare deep into my soul, I faked a lung at it. The snake licked its own eyeball at me, unimpressed. Fucker.

Espbeth, also unimpressed, motioned for Willow to head off into a bedroom off the main room, leaving me and the witch alone.

When my delicious snack glanced at me, I shooed her off with a flick of my hand.

Willow snatched up her bags and dragged them into the room, the sound of zippers and fabric being quickly followed by the sound of a shower.