Chapter 3: The Shrinking Back
The vibrations of her voice faded into the settling dust. Chad pushed himself up on trembling arms, still perched on the colossal terrain of her toe. The silence was a physical presence, thick and granular with plaster particles dancing in the slanted light from the broken window. He was so high up, the floor a distant landscape of wreckage. Then, a new sound—a deep, internal gurgle, like water draining from a vast cistern.
Angela’s body shuddered beneath him. It wasn’t the shudder of climax, but of contraction. A sudden, violent inhalation sucked at the air in the room. The immense pressure of her flesh against the walls lessened by a fraction. The ceiling, which had been bowing under her skull, groaned upward.
“Oh,” she said, her voice changing. The booming resonance cracked, thinning. “Oh, fuck.”
It was reversing. The growth was not permanent. Chad watched, transfixed, as the world around him began to expand. Or rather, Angela began to recede. The slope of her toe diminished under his hands, shrinking like a slow-deflating balloon. The arch of her foot lowered, the ceiling rushing away. The walls seemed to step back into their proper positions, though now scarred and buckling.
Her breath came in sharp, panicked gasps that grew higher in pitch as her lungs reduced in capacity. “It’s… stopping,” she wheezed. The process was not gentle. It was a rapid, relentless diminishment. Her skin rippled, flesh flowing inward. The titanic pillars of her legs tapered. The mountain range of her breasts sank, softening into familiar hills.
Chad slid down her shrinking foot as it fell away beneath him, tumbling onto the hardwood floor with a thud. He scrambled back, watching the impossible deflation. Within minutes, she was no longer a room-filling goddess. She was simply a very large, naked woman curled on the ruined floor. Then she was just Angela, his Angela, gasping and covered in a fine white powder, her curls matted with sweat and dust.
She was normal. He was normal. The apartment was a warzone.
For a long minute, they just stared at each other across the debris. The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the plink of a loose piece of trim hitting the floor. Angela moved first. She uncurled, wincing as she sat up, plaster dust cascading from her shoulders. She looked at her hands, turning them over, flexing the normal-sized fingers.
A slow smile broke through the grime on her face. Not a smile of relief, but of dawning, ecstatic triumph.
“Holy shit,” she whispered, her voice her own again, but raspy. She looked at Chad, her eyes blazing. “Did you feel that? Did you feel all of that?”
He could only nod, his throat locked. He was still painfully hard, a relentless throbbing against his zipper that shamed him. His mind felt flayed open, every nerve exposed.
“I felt the whole house,” she breathed, crawling toward him over the splintered wood and shredded fabric. “I felt the pressure of the walls in my back. I felt the floorboards under my ass. And you…” She reached him, her hand, so small now, coming up to touch his dust-caked cheek. “I felt every inch of you inside me. Like a fucking live wire.”
Her touch was electric. He flinched, but didn’t pull away. “I was scared,” he admitted, the words scraping out. “I thought you’d crush me. I thought the house would kill us.”
“But you didn’t want it to stop.” It wasn’t a question. Her thumb stroked his jawline, leaving a clean streak. “I could feel that, too. Your little heart going crazy. Your cock, like a rock, even when you were smothered.”
He swallowed, ashamed of the truth. “No. I didn’t want it to stop.”
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear. Her smell was overwhelming—sweat, sex, dust, and that underlying, potent herbal scent. “Then we’re not done,” she murmured. Her hand slid down his chest, over his belly, and palmed him through his jeans. He bucked into her touch with a strangled groan. “The tea’s still in my system. I can feel it… simmering. It needs an outlet.”
She unbuttoned his jeans with deft, urgent fingers, yanking them and his boxers down to his thighs. His cock sprang free, flushed and leaking. The cool, dusty air was a shock against his heated skin. She didn’t bother with foreplay. She shoved him flat onto his back amidst the rubble, a sharp piece of wood digging into his shoulder blade.
Straddling him, she positioned herself over his aching hardness. She was soaking wet; he could feel the hot slickness of her against his tip. Her folds, now a familiar, intimate geography, glistened. She sank down onto him in one slow, deliberate, engulfing motion.
“Fuck,” he gasped, his hands flying to her hips. The fit was perfect, tight and consuming, but so different now. He was inside her, not she around him. The shift in perspective was dizzying.
“This is how you remember it, right?” she panted, beginning to move, rolling her hips in a grinding circle. “Me on top. You underneath. Just a normal fuck.” She leaned forward, her breasts swaying above his face. “But it’s not normal anymore, is it? You’re thinking about my foot. You’re thinking about my cunt when it was the size of a cave and you were just a speck in it.”
She was right. The images burned behind his eyes, fueling his thrusts as he drove up into her. Every clench of her internal muscles was a ghost of the massive, pulsing vice that had trapped him. He was fucking the memory as much as the woman.
“Say it,” she demanded, riding him harder, her ass slapping against his thighs. “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”
“Your… your toes,” he choked out, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her ass. “Sucking them. They were so fucking big.”
“And what else?” She quickened her pace, her breath coming in sharp hitches.
“Your pussy,” he grunted, losing himself. “Swallowing me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. It was the hottest fucking thing.”
Her orgasm ripped through her suddenly, silently. Her body locked, her back arching, her cunt clamping down on him in a series of brutal, rhythmic spasms. The only sound was a sharp intake of breath through her teeth. Watching her come, feeling her utterly in control even in her vulnerability, tipped him over the edge. With a raw shout, he erupted inside her, his vision whiting out as he pumped his release deep into her clutching heat.
She collapsed onto his chest, both of them slick with sweat and dust, their hearts pounding against each other. The ruin of the apartment came back into focus—the cracked walls, the destroyed furniture, the afternoon light cutting through the particulate haze.
After a while, she pushed herself up. She looked around, a practical glint entering her sated eyes. “We need to clean this up. Or explain it.”
“How?” he asked, his voice drained. “How do you explain this?”
“We don’t.” She stood, his softening cock slipping wetly from her. She walked, naked and unselfconscious, through the wreckage toward the kitchen. Her gait was different. More deliberate. She owned the space completely, even in its destruction. “We say there was a break-in. A freak gas leak explosion. Something. I’ll call my cousin with the contracting crew. Pay him cash.”
She filled a glass with water at the sink, which was miraculously intact, and drank it down. She looked over her shoulder at him, still lying on the floor. “The tea worked, Chad. But it’s unstable. The growth, the shrinkage… it’s a cycle. It needs to be balanced.”
He sat up, pulling his pants up weakly. “What does that mean?”
She turned, leaning against the counter. A tiny, focused smile played on her lips. “It means the effect isn’t one-way. What goes up must come down.” She eyed him, her gaze traveling the length of his body. “Next time, we try it on you. A bigger dose. See how small you can get. See how long we can make it last.”
The words should have horrified him. They did. But beneath the cold lance of fear, a deeper, darker current pulled at him. The memory of absolute smallness. Of her absolute bigness. The curiosity was a gnawing hunger.
She saw the conflict on his face. She walked back to him, stepping over a broken table leg. She crouched, bringing her eyes level with his. She smelled of sex and promise.
“You want to,” she stated softly, tracing the shell of his ear. “You’re terrified, but you’re already wondering what it would be like to really be my tiny thing. To live in my pocket for a day. To see how I’d use you.” She kissed him, a possessive, gritty kiss. “We’ll get the place fixed. Then we’ll experiment. Properly.”
She stood and offered him a hand. He took it, letting her pull him to his feet. His legs were unsteady. He looked around at the apocalyptic mess that was their secret, the evidence of their new, terrifying language. A secret that demanded exploration.
“Yeah,” he heard himself say, the word tasting like dust and destiny. “Okay.”
Later that afternoon, Angela suggested they get out of the ruined apartment. “Let’s go to the mall,” she said, her tone breezy, as if proposing a coffee run.“I need some normalcy. And maybe some new shoes.” Chad agreed, eager to escape the scene of their catastrophe.The normalcy sounded like a lifeline.
They walked through the sprawling, echoing corridors of the Westgate Mall, surrounded by the bland murmur of piped-in music and distant conversations.Angela seemed perfectly calm, her hand warm in his. She pointed toward a high-end shoe store up ahead, its facade sleek and modern. “Ooh, let’s check that one out,” she said, her eyes sparkling with a familiar, hungry light he mistakenly took for retail enthusiasm.“Sure,” Chad said, allowing himself to be led. The store was quiet, hushed, with thick carpet and gleaming displays.A lone sales associate glanced at them before returning to her phone. Angela made a beeline for a display of intricate leather sandals with towering heels. “These are ridiculous,” she whispered, a playful grin on her face. “Help me try them on?”
Chad nodded, kneeling on the plush carpet as she settled into a velvet-trimmed bench. She slipped off her simple flats, wiggling her bare toes. Her feet were pale, the nails painted a deep red, still somehow innocent-looking.She handed him a sandal. The leather was buttery soft, the straps complex. “I can never get these things buckled by myself,” she said, her voice a touch too innocent.
As Chad turned the sandal over in his hands, examining the clasp, Angela’s other hand dipped into her purse. He heard a faint rustle of paper, a quick, discrete movement.He looked up. Her head was tilted back, her throat working as she swallowed something dry. Her eyes met his, and in that instant, he saw the gleeful, predatory glint from the apartment.It was too late.
“Here, give me your foot,” he said, a cold dread beginning to pool in his stomach.She lifted her right foot. He cradled her heel, his thumb brushing her arch, and guided her toes toward the sandal’s opening.As he did, he felt a subtle, firm tension under her skin. A low, cellular thrum.Her foot, resting in his palm, felt warmer. He slid the sole into place.He was fumbling with the first ankle strap when he saw it. The pale skin of her instep seemed to tighten. A faint blue vein grew more prominent, rising to the surface like a river swelling after a storm.The leather, which had been slightly loose, suddenly grew snug. He tried to pull the strap across the top of her foot.It wouldn’t reach.
“Angela,” he whispered, his voice cracking.
“Just a little tight,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on the mirrored wall ahead.Her breathing deepened. A soft, almost inaudible groan escaped her lips, one of pleasure.Her foot expanded in his grip. It wasn’t a sudden pop, but a steady, relentless filling.The leather creaked in protest.
The strap he was holding snapped, the polished buckle pinging off a glass display case. The sales associate looked over, frowning.Chad watched, paralyzed, as Angela’s foot outgrew the sandal. Her toes, once neatly aligned, pushed against and then over the front of the sole. The delicate straps strained, bit into her swelling flesh, and then gave way with a series of sharp, tearing sounds.Her bare foot, now visibly larger, rested on the carpet.It continued to grow. The arch rose higher.The heel broadened, pressing down on the thick pile. “You took it,” Chad hissed, scrambling back on his hands. “You fucking took it here.”
Angela didn’t answer.She was staring at her own reflection, a wild smile stretching her lips. Her entire body shuddered on the bench, which groaned under a sudden, increased weight. Her thighs, encased in denim, swelled against the fabric.The seams along her hips hissed and split. The bench’s legs screeched against the floor.
“Ma’am?” The sales associate took a step forward, her phone forgotten.Angela’s growth accelerated. It was the same relentless expansion from the apartment, but unleashed in public. Her shoulders widened, brushing the sides of the ornate mirror frame.Her head lifted towards the high ceiling. The bench beneath her shattered with a thunderous crack, dropping her onto the floor with a impact that shook the entire store. Displays of shoes wobbled and toppled.Chad crawled backward, hitting a wall of shelves. He watched in absolute horror as Angela pushed herself up to her knees.She was already too big for the space. Her back pressed against the ceiling tiles, which bowed and cracked. One of her massive hands, now the size of a welcome mat, swept out for balance and crushed a spinning rack of ballet flats into twisted metal and shredded leather.A woman near the entrance screamed.The sound seemed to ignite Angela. Her laughter boomed through the store, deep and resonant, vibrating the glass in the cases. “Oops,” she boomed, her voice already changing, gaining that terrifying, sub-bass resonance.
She tried to stand. Her head punched through the ceiling tile and acoustic grid, sending a shower of white dust and broken metal onto her dark curls.Fluorescent lights swayed above her. Her shoulders slammed into the structural beams on either side with a deafening metallic clang. The entire storefront window webbed with fractures.People outside were stopping, pointing, their faces masks of confusion morphing into terror. Angela was trapped in a half-crouch, the store now a tight cage around her burgeoning form. This confinement seemed to infuriate her. She roared, a sound of pure, frustrating expansion, and shoved outward with her elbows.
The front wall of the store exploded outward in a volcano of glass shards, brick, and drywall.Shrieks from the mall corridor became deafening. Angela straightened to her full, grotesque height, now perhaps eighteen feet tall and still growing. She stood amidst the ruins of the store, her denim shorts now reduced to tattered scraps around her colossal thighs, her tank top stretched into a transparent band beneath the overwhelming swell of her breasts.
She took a step forward into the open mall corridor. Her bare foot, now longer than a park bench, came down.It didn’t just step on the tiled floor. It came down on the crowd fleeing in panic.
Chad watched, vomit rising in his throat, as her immense, pale sole flattened a group of three people who hadn’t scrambled fast enough. There was no graceful cinematic collapse.It was a wet, brutal compression. The sound was a sickening crunch of bone and a simultaneous, muffled splorch of visceral matter. Her foot settled, grinding slightly as her weight shifted forward, smearing the remains into a broad, crimson paste streaked with fabric across the polished floor.She took another step, her other foot lifting. It was dripping.Strings of gore and torn clothing clung to her arch and between her toes. She looked down, seemingly fascinated by the mess, then shrugged, a gesture that made her mammoth shoulders displace air with a whoosh. Her next step was more deliberate, aiming for a cluster of screaming shoppers frozen near a fountain.The foot descended like a fleshy asteroid. A man tried to dive out of the way, but her descending toes caught him across the back. He was pinned, not instantly crushed, as the ball of her foot slammed down around him. His screams were cut off abruptly as the full, immense weight settled, a brief, muffled squelch the only epitaph. Her foot completely obscured him, sinking slightly into the softer subfloor beneath the tile.
“Angela, stop!” Chad screamed from the wreckage of the store, his voice lost in the chaos.
She either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. She was growing faster now, her body stretching upward, pushing through the mall’s second-level railings. Her thighs, thicker than car trunks, rubbed against each other with a sound like sandpaper on leather. As she grew taller, her lower body began to crowd the entire corridor.She momentarily lost her balance, staggering sideways. Her colossal hip and thunderous thigh slammed into the front of a pretzel kiosk, obliterating it in an explosion of twisted metal, glass, and dough. The attendant, a young girl, was caught between Angela’s thigh and the structural column behind the kiosk. There was a horrid, wet pop as the girl was compressed into an impossible space, her body bursting like overripe fruit against the unforgiving surface.Angela righted herself, now brushing against the skylights three stories up. She looked down at the ant-like figures scurrying beneath her. A new, darkly curious expression crossed her gigantic face.She slowly, purposefully, began to lower herself into a sitting position. Her target was the central seating area, a large, circular arrangement of padded benches.
Her enormous ass, vast enough to blanket a small apartment, descended.It didn’t just sit on the benches. It engulfed them, and the people trapped on and between them.Dozens were caught. Some were crushed instantly under the direct, plummeting weight. Others were smothered around the edges, pressed face-first into the denim-clad valleys and folds of her rear and thighs, where they writhed for a few seconds before suffocating, their struggles growing weaker, then still.
The smell was immediate and horrifying: coppery blood, released bowel and bladder from the dying, crushed food, and above it all, the overwhelming, musky scent of Angela’s own sweat and excitement. She sighed, a gust of warm, fetid air that ruffled the hair of those still running farther away. She shifted her weight, a continent moving, eliciting fresh, wet crunches from beneath her.
She looked back toward the shoe store, her planet-sized eyes finding Chad’s tiny, petrified form.She smiled, a crack splitting her face wide. “See?” her voice thundered, shaking the remaining windows. “Different venue.” She lifted one of her dripping, city-block feet and idly scratched her other calf with it, painting red streaks across her skin. “Come here, Chad. Let’s go for a walk.”
Her invitation hung in the air, a toxic cloud mingling with plaster dust and the iron-rich scent of fresh carnage. Chad stood frozen in the skeleton of the shoe store, his shoes sticking to a floor now varnished in red. The screams around him had fractured into isolated whimpers, the desperate scraping of dress shoes on tile as the last survivors tried to navigate the mountain range of her legs.
Angela didn’t wait. She shifted again, a continent grinding its tectonic plates. The circular bench arrangement beneath her had vanished, compressed into the flooring along with the people who’d been sitting there. A wide, damp stain of mixed fabrics and organic matter seeped from the edges of her denim-clad hips. She sighed, a sound of immense pressure release, and leaned back slightly.
The brick facade of a boutique behind her groaned in protest as her expanding back made contact. “Mmm, that’s better,” she rumbled, her voice causing the few remaining ceiling lights to flicker. She was still growing. He could see it in the slow, relentless tautening of the shredded fabric across her thighs, in the way her toes, each now the size of a torso, lazily curled and uncurled, scraping troughs through the gore and tile.
A security guard, brave or stupid, ran into the open space before her. He fired a pistol, the reports sharp and pathetic. The bullets pocked her shin, leaving dimples that smoothed out in seconds like wounds in clay. She glanced down, amused. Her hand, a fleshy behemoth, swept down not to crush him, but to corner him. She placed her thumb and forefinger on either side of a decorative planter, pinning him against the wall behind it.
“Chad,” she boomed, her attention returning to him. “I won’t ask again.” Her other hand descended toward the store where he cowered. Fingers like fleshy pillars wrapped around the broken storefront support, and with a wet crunch of failing concrete, she ripped the entire entrance away, exposing him completely. The dangling ceiling groaned, shedding more dust.
He stumbled out, his eyes streaming from the particulate air. The scale of destruction was Biblical. And at the center of it, she sat, a goddess of casual slaughter, still subtly inflating. Her left thigh, as big around as a delivery truck, settled more firmly against the wall of a burnt-out pretzel kiosk. The metal shrieked, buckling inward. From the second-floor balcony above, a teenager leaned over the railing, filming with a phone. Angela’s shoulder, swelling upward, brushed the bottom of the balcony. The structure shuddered.
She noticed. A wicked smile split her face. She didn’t stand. Instead, she leaned her weight into that side, pressing her shoulder and the colossal curve of her arm into the balcony’s underbelly. The metal supports squealed, then shrieked. With a catastrophic groan, the entire section of balcony tore free from its moorings. It collapsed, a waterfall of screaming people, twisted metal, and shattered glass. It crashed onto her shoulder and spilled down the titanic slope of her back like rubble down a mountainside. Some bodies bounced into her hair. Others slid, broken, to the floor near her waist.
“Oops,” she chuckled, the vibration dislodging a mangled body from her collarbone. It fell with a wet slap. She was enjoying this. The sheer, amoral physics of it. Her growth continued, slower now but inexorable, a filling of every available space. Her right foot, lifted slightly, hovered over a cluster of people who had taken refuge in a phone repair booth. They stared up, paralyzed, at the landscape of her sole. Dirt, blood, and shredded denim from her ruined shorts were ground into the crevices of her foot-skin.
She lowered it, not with a slam, but with the slow, inevitable pressure of a hydraulic press. The booth’s roof caved instantly with a plastic crunch. The people inside disappeared from view as the fleshy mass descended, sealing them in a dark, final pocket. A muffled, collective crunch, like a car compacting, was the only eulogy. When she lifted her foot a minute later, the booth and its contents were a pancake of polycarbonate, silicon, and boneless pulp.
“The things I could feel in the apartment,” she mused, her voice conversational despite its volume. She reached down between her own legs, a movement that made the ground tremble. Her fingers, thicker than fire hydrants, tugged at the remains of her denim cut-offs. The material, already strained beyond recognition, gave way with a sound like ripping sails. She discarded the rag, exposing the dense thatch of dark curls at her junction, and the immense, parted lips beneath, glistening with an arousal that was palpable in the thick air. “The walls, the ceiling, your tiny, frantic tongue.” She dipped a finger into herself, the movement causing a minor earthquake. “But this… this is texture.” She pulled her finger out, slick and gleaming, and casually rubbed it against the side of a nearby escalator, smearing her fluids over the stainless steel. “All these little lives. So brittle.”
Chad reached her ankle, a cliff face of smeared blood and torn skin. He placed a shaking hand on it. The warmth was colossal, mammalian. She twitched, a tiny tremor for her that nearly knocked him over. “Good,” her voice rolled over him. “Now climb. I want you up here where I can see you.” He began the ascent, using seams in her skin and the rough material of her sock, which was torn and ridden up around her ankle, as handholds. The smell was intense: copper, voided bowels, dust, and her own powerful, salty scent.
As he climbed her calf, he saw the smothered world from her perspective. The wreckage was not random. It was the intimate impression of her body. The long smear where she’d dragged her foot. The pulverized circle where she’d sat. The people were not just dead; they were incorporated, reduced to stains on her skin, textures under her weight. He pulled himself over the plateau of her kneecap, his clothes soaked in the ambient gore that coated her.
Her thigh stretched before him, a vast, sloping plain of flesh that blocked the entire corridor. On the other side of it, he could hear new screams—people trapped between her body and the storefronts, being slowly compressed as she widened. A high-end jewelry store’s window exploded outward from the pressure, gemstones and silver scattering like useless glitter. Her growth was a silent, spreading suffocation. She wasn't just killing those she touched; she was becoming the environment, a fleshy prison for hundreds.
“Hurry up,” she said, her voice a localized rumble in the muscle beneath him. He scrambled up the final slope, the denim of her shorts—now just a torn waistband barely containing the swell of her hip—providing a frayed rope to haul himself up. He reached the summit of her thigh, just beside the terrifying heat radiating from her exposed cunt. The view was nauseating. He was level with the second-floor balcony wreckage. He could see into the broken skylights of the third floor. Police and emergency lights strobed far below, at the distant mall entrances, blocked by the rubble of her destruction.
She looked down at him, her face a handsome moon above. Sweat beaded on her upper lip. Her eyes were black with dilated pleasure. “See what we made?” she panted. Her hand, the one not smeared with her own juices, came down. It didn’t grab him. It settled next to him, palm up, on the vast plain of her thigh. An invitation. A platform. “Come here. To me.”
He crawled onto her palm. The lifelines were canyons. The smell of blood and crushed mall was strongest here. She lifted him, slow and deliberate, bringing him toward the center of the storm—her face. Her hot breath washed over him, smelling of cinnamon gum and something deeply organic, like wet earth. “They were in my way,” she whispered, as if sharing a secret. Her other hand returned to her sex. She began to rub slow, huge circles over her clit, which was now the size of his whole body. The sound was a wet, obscene smacking that echoed through the shattered mall. “But you’re not in my way, are you, Chad?”
He was silent, trapped in the cradle of her hand, hovering before the cavern of her mouth. Her tongue, a wet, pink muscle as large as a sofa, slid out to wet her lips. It glistened under the emergency lights.
“No,” he finally whispered, the word swallowed by the immense, wet sounds of her masturbation.
“No,” she agreed, her voice husky with building pleasure. Her finger worked faster, sinking knuckle-deep into her own opening with a sound that was all liquid and friction. The ground shook with her movements. A structural beam somewhere gave way with a deafening crack. “You fit just right.”
She brought her hand, with him in it, down between her legs. Not inside. She pressed his tiny, grimy body against her swollen, slippery labia, rubbing him against herself like a living, breathing toy. The heat was a furnace. The scent drowned out everything. She used him to stimulate her clit, grinding his form against the hypersensitive nub. He was a speck, a texture, a tool. “Feel that,” she moaned, her voice shaking the world. “Feel how wet you make me. How much bigger you make me feel.”
He was being baptized in her. Each grinding motion coated him completely, a sticky, pungent second skin. He could feel the gigantic throb of her pulse through the flesh mashed against him. Her breathing hitched. The rhythmic squeezing of her internal muscles around her own finger created a suction that pulled at the air. She was close.
With a final, guttural roar that blew out the remaining glass for a hundred yards, she came. The orgasm was a cataclysm. Her body arched, lifting her ass off the devastated floor momentarily before slamming back down with an impact that felt like the world ending. A flood of her release, hot as a geyser, erupted around her finger and over Chad, drenching him, her hand, and cascading down her inner thighs to wash over the rubble below.
In the shuddering aftershock, her growth, which had plateaued, surged once more with a final, violent push. Her hips widened, crushing the last standing storefronts on either side into dust. Her back pressed through the broken balcony and into the third-floor food court, where fleeing figures were crushed against concession stands. She settled, panting, a true behemoth filling the mall’s central artery from ground floor to roof, her head now nestled in the shattered remains of the upper-level cinema. Silence, thick and heavy, descended, broken only by the creak of dying steel and the slow drip of fluids.
She brought her hand up, dripping. Chad lay in her palm, gasping, soaked in her essence. She looked at him with sated, heavy-lidded eyes. She licked her lips, her tongue missing him by inches. “Next time,” she breathed, the words a warm, spent wind, “you drink the tea.”