Chapter 1: Countertop Surprise
The citrus scent of the cleaner still hung in the air, a sharp, clean counterpoint to the warmer, darker smell of Lewis’s skin. Rei had him pressed against the polished granite, her mouth on his, all soft insistence and teasing bites. Her fingers worked at the button of his jeans.
“Wait,” he whispered, breathless, laughing a little into the kiss. “Isn’t this a little… fast?”
“Uh-huh,” she murmured, not stopping. Her other hand slid under his shirt, flat and cool against the small of his back. “Problem?”
“No. No problem. Just… unexpected.” He’d only come over to borrow a charger. Thirty minutes later, they were here, and he was utterly lost in the dark pools of her eyes, the mischievous glint that promised something he couldn’t name.
She pulled back just an inch, her smile a secret. “Good. Now hush.”
He obeyed. His hands found her hips, small and delicate under the thin cotton of her dress. He could have spanned her waist with them. She felt fragile, almost birdlike, and it made him gentle. He kissed her neck, her jaw, the shell of her ear. She let out a soft sigh that tightened everything in his stomach.
“Lewis,” she breathed, the word a vibration against his lips.
“Yeah?”
“Just… do what I say, okay?”
He nodded, a quick, eager jerk of his chin. This was already the strangest, best night of his life.
She guided his hands, whispered instructions against his throat. A push here, a shift there. The kitchen was quiet except for their breathing and the low hum of the refrigerator. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting a sterile, bright glare over everything. He felt exposed, electrified.
Then she arched against him, and her moan changed. It deepened, roughened, like gravel shifting in her throat. It was no longer a sound of pleasure he recognized.
He opened his eyes.
Her face was clenched, eyes screwed shut. A tremor ran through her, a violent shiver that wasn’t a shiver. The small hands on his back spasmed. He felt her fingers—were they thicker?—dig into his skin like blunt hooks.
“Rei?”
A low groan answered him, a sound that seemed to come from the floorboards. The granite countertop beneath her palms gave a faint, alarming creak. He stared, disbelieving, as the smooth material of her dress began to pull taut across her shoulders. The seams at her shoulders puckered, then strained.
Pop.
A button shot past his ear, clicking against the window behind him.
“What the hell?” he managed, trying to pull back.
Her eyes flew open. They were the same dark brown, but the playful light was gone, replaced by a fierce, almost animal intensity. “Stay,” she gritted out, and her voice was wrong. It was layered, deeper, a chorus of itself.
He was frozen, not by obedience, but by pure shock. The transformation wasn’t cinematic. It was visceral, biological. He heard the wet, fibrous sound of muscle expanding, saw the cords in her neck stand out like cables. Her shoulders broadened, rolling and swelling under the fabric with a series of sickening, subcutaneous ripples. The dress, now a pathetic flag of surrender, tore diagonally across her chest as her pectorals defined themselves into slabs of granite-hard flesh.
She threw her head back, and a full, vibrating roar tore from her throat. It wasn’t human. It shook the glasses in the cupboard.
Lewis stumbled back, his hip hitting the opposite counter. The sweet, demure girl was gone. In her place was a powerhouse of a woman, towering over him now, her silhouette blocking the light. Every line of her was hardened, exaggerated, a cartoon of strength made terrifyingly real. Her biceps swelled, pressing against the tattered remains of her sleeves. Her thighs, now like tree trunks, strained against her tights.
“Rei, please, stop—what is this?” His voice was a thread.
She looked down at him, panting, her breath coming in great heaves that made her colossal chest rise and fall. A slick sheen of sweat covered her new topography. She didn’t speak. She took a step forward.
He scrambled backward, but the kitchen was a cage. His back hit the cold stainless steel of the refrigerator door with a hollow bang. There was nowhere to go.
She reached for him. Not with a lover’s touch, but with a mover’s grip. Her hand, enormous and powerful, closed around his bicep. He cried out. It was like being caught in a hydraulic press.
“Down,” the layered voice commanded.
“You’re hurting me!”
“I said down.” She didn’t shove him. She simply applied pressure, an inexorable, crushing force that slid him down the smooth fridge door until his knees buckled and he was on the floor, staring up at the ceiling light, half-blinded.
She loomed over him, a monument of muscle and tension. The flickering light played over the valleys and peaks of her shoulders, the stark line of her jaw. He saw her pulse hammering in her thick neck.
“Just… lay still,” she growled, the words an effort.
Before he could process it, she was on him. Not in the way he’d imagined minutes before. This was a claiming, an imposition of weight and heat that forced the air from his lungs in a pained whoosh. Her knees, like boulders, pinned his thighs to the linoleum. One massive forearm pressed across his chest, not playful, but immobilizing. He was trapped, utterly, completely. He couldn’t have moved if the house were on fire.
Tears of panic and confusion sprang to his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. He could only stare up at the terrifying, magnificent creature she had become. The scent of her was different now—ozone, salt, something metallic.
She lowered her head, her dark hair falling around her face like a curtain. The playful glint was back in her eyes, but warped, magnified by this new form. It was a look of pure, unadulterated hunger.
“Don’t… run,” she breathed, the heat of it washing over his face.
Then she began to move. It was a relentless, powerful rhythm, a counting of a different kind. Each motion drove him harder into the unyielding floor. The world narrowed to the crushing weight, the rhythmic groan of the floorboards beneath the linoleum, the raw, guttural sounds tearing from her throat, and the dizzying, frightening realization that the sweet girl next door had been a secret all along.
And he was just now, painfully, discovering what it was.