Safe and Warm

Hello! This is my debut story, please let me know what you think! I look forward to writing more in the future.

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The cave at first seemed like a godsend. Lyram bolted for it the second she saw its mouth through the darkening air. Getting caught out in the woods on a rainy night like this was asking for trouble, for fall nights in Sellaria came with frost enough to kill wayward travelers. Lyram did not want to find out what night would do to her when she was soaking wet. Any shelter was better than none, and as she took the last frantic steps to the entrance, she could not care less for how little attention she paid her surroundings.

It had been a foolish thing, thinking she could make it to the next town so lightly packed. Barely enough food for the night and morning, only a few warming crystals and her knife in her pack, and she hadn't even bothered to pack a coat. No wonder the other elven rangers all scoffed when she told them she was off with a few hours daylight left and clouds on the horizon. Why they hadn't stopped her was another problem altogether. So what if she was the newest ranger at camp? She was a hundred! She had seen plenty since graduating from the academy a year ago. She could handle anything.

Except, of course, the cold. Her breath hung in clouds before her as she inhaled deep and steadied herself, hand on the freezing stone just inside the cave. Quickly, she undid her pack and rummaged inside for the first of her heating crystals. She dashed it against the side of the cave and watched it spark to life with a warm, artificial glow. Feeling inched back into her fingers. Lyram gave a sigh of relief and slid down with her back to the wall. After a few moments of clutching the crystal close to her chest, she gave a mighty shiver. Warming crystal and shelter or not, her clothes were still soaked.

Lyram sparked two more crystals to life and set them on either side of her, equidistant from the entrance and her pack. She pulled off her boots and stockings first and laid them beside the crystal to her right to dry. Her trousers and ranger's doublet followed and went to her left. Now down to just her single long undergarment, Lyram stuck the first crystal directly before her in a careful triangle with the other two. Thin red lines of light ran between all three and in seconds the air around her grew warm. A perfect bubble of heat and dryness, just large enough for her to stretch out in.

Thunder crackled outside, and Lyram flinched. But the cave seemed sloped, and no water came in. She sighed as she felt herself thawing out. The storm would last the night at most, fall storms were always quick. She wasn't completely out of luck yet. But she didn't feel completely safe.

The light from the stones did not fully illuminate the cave. Her eyes moved about carefully, slowly. There were not really shadows, but there was plenty of darkness. Something nagged at her, stories of rangers lost on the road and never heard from again, not all of them killed. There were plenty of fates worse than that. Plenty of things lurking in the shadows.

Over the sound of the rain, Lyram swore she heard something. It wasn't quite a hiss, and it wasn't quite a whisper, but it had that effect. Something soft and languid, stealthy and quite unlike the first few threats she had thought of being in the cave: wolves and bears and the like. Her pointed ears twitched this way and that, trying to hone in on the sound.

She turned to the source of the rustling and nearly leapt from the warming triangle she'd created.

There was a woman in the cave with her, emerging from the gloom with, of all things, the expression of someone just waking up from a nap. Her eyes were still closed and she was rubbing one with a balled fist. She yawned and stretched, and in the pause created by the long motion Lyram noticed three things at once:

Her fangs, her clothing, and her tail.

She had to focus on one thing at a time, and the tail really was the thing that shocked her the most. The woman did not walk forward, but drifted forward on long, scaly tail of iridescent scales perfectly matching her thin, embroidered green and gold silk halter top. Though Lyram thought herself fit enough, ranger training was nothing if not intense, what part of the woman's body not covered in scales was more perfectly formed than any should could imagine. Tan skin looking temptingly soft in the dim light from the crystals, the serpentine waist drifting flawlessly into breasts just contained by the halter top stretching with another heaving yawn. But Lyram forced herself, though it was not hard, to focus intently on the woman's face. It was framed by her copper hair and though, still muddled with the freshness of her sleep, was striking not only for the fangs just poking out from plush lips below a slightly pointed nose, but also for her suddenly open, vibrant green eyes that were at once wide, and immeasurably deep.

She was in one sense, gorgeous, and in another downright adorable, and somewhat unsettling. A lamia. There were stories, and not all of them bad. A few sounded even...

Lyram shook herself. The eyes, she warned and reminded herself. It was all she could do to avoid the appearance of staring.

"Who's there?" the lamia asked, blinking blearily. Her eyes focused, and widened as she spied the soaking wet, somewhat shivering, elven forest ranger with a raised knife standing in a triangle of softly glowing heating crystals. To Lyram's dismay, her mouth curved slightly in a surprised smile. "Oh! A guest..."

"H-hi," Lyram managed. She cleared her throat, fought the warmth tingling into her cheeks. "I'm, uh, Lyram." She inclined her head a little. "I'm sorry if I'm, uh, intruding."

"Oh not in the slightest." The woman, the lamia Lyram corrected herself, gave another yawn. Lyram's hand went to her mouth as watching the lamia yawn forced her to copy. "This isn't really my home, but when it gets chilly I just get so... sleepy." She smiled again, and held her arms under her breasts in a way that just so pulled Lyram's gaze down. Lyram flushed when the lamia giggled at her. "I'm Shara, by the way."

"Hi," Lyram said, then kicked herself for repeating herself dumbly. Shara really was gorgeous, and she had taken Lyram by surprise, but that was no reason for her to go completely stupid. "It's raining."

"I hear that." Shara raised herself up on her tail and looked past Lyram. "Pretty bad, too. You shouldn't be out in weather like that."

"Hence me being here," Lyram tried.

"Hence..." Shara drew the word out into a long hiss that sent a not entirely unwelcome shiver down Lyram's spine. Down and, Lyram swallowed, further than a shiver and a tingle like that had any reason going. Shara's eyes drifted to the warming crystals. She inched nearer. "Those feel... lovely..."

"They're nice," Lyram said, fighting the urge to step back as the lamia drew nearer still. "Certainly helping dry my clothes."

Shara blinked.

"Not all of them, though," she said, smirking. "That looks rather wet, too."

Lyram looked down and raced to cover some part of her, all of her, with her arms. Her undergarment, her white undergarment, was indeed soaked through as the rest of her clothing.

Shara giggled.

"It's..." again that shivering, tingling hiss, "nothing I haven't seen before."

"T-that doesn't mean I w-want to show it off!" Lyram said, her voice peaking higher than she meant it.

Shara rolled her eyes.

"Why not? You are not an unattractive elf."

Lyram froze.

"Excuse me?"

"Plenty of you come by and hardly notice me in the trees or grass." Shara gave another sleepy yawn, and the sound of it only further relaxed Lyram. She fought another while Shara spoke on, "I like watching you. You are such curious things, faster and quieter than those humans some valleys over. More respectful, too. I always figured that I'd frighten you or something if I tried to speak with you, but here we are." She smiled a little. "This isn't so bad, is it?"

"N-no..." Lyram admitted. "I don't hear entirely bad things about your kind, either."

"Is that so...?" Shara stretched the word again. "What do they say... about 'my kind'?"

"I'm sorry, Lyram said. "That was rude." It did not do to be rude to the things that lived in the forest. That was basic ranger training. She had to be polite. Had to stop staring, and getting so tongue tied. So what if some of those stories involved... well... That tingle returned to her cheek. Shara really was growing more and more adorable the longer she swayed where she was. She looked somewhere between a sleepy lover in search of cuddles, and someone deeply, intently fascinated by Lyram's presence.

Something not unlike cuddling was heavily wrapped up in the legends of lamias, Lyram reminded herself. She blinked and turned, with some effort, from Shara's swaying.

"I'm sorry if I woke you," she said.

"Why sorry?" Shara asked. "It's not often I get company, you know."

"Oh?"

"Mhm..." Shara's voice burrowed into Lyram's ears, sounding so soft and plus and... "People seem scared of me."

"I'm sorry."

"You should stop apologizing," Shara said, laughing in a way that sent another delicious shiver through Lyram's whole being. "You do not seem like the rest."

"I don't?"

"Not at all..." Shara slithered into view again, smiling wide and invitingly into Lyram's face. "You aren't scared of me, are you?"

Lyram at once wanted to blink away and in another instant to keep looking. Shara, even here, seemed to sway this way and that. Somewhere, as she tried to figure out if the swaying was a nervous habit or something unique to lamias, Lyram met Shara's gaze. Her eyes were the most beautiful part of her, really. Endless, sparkling and... Lyram's own eyes narrowed. Spiraling?

"N-No..." she managed, her tongue feeling heavy.

Shara swung up above Lyram, pendulous figure drawing Lyram's gaze with it.

"There..." Shara said, comforting and a little patronizing, not that Lyram really cared. "You've no reason to be afraid."

"No reason..." Lyram repeated, eyes widening and mouth tugging in a smile as Shara shifted left and right before her, beautiful eyes endlessly enchanting and her beauty so, so tempting.

"None at all..." Shara sighed, leaning closer and filling Lyram's willing eyes and mind with the sight of her. Only her, shining and swaying and smiling and so close and so beautiful.

The swaying should have ticked Lyram's alarm boxes, but it didn't. Her internal warnings hushed because, somewhere in remembering to be polite she remembered it was only good manners to look someone in the eye when speaking to them.

And Shara's eyes had been green, hadn't they?

Not yellow... Lyram knew. She leaned in. No, not yellow. Gold... Now not gold and then not green and then maybe black and gold again and...

Lyram's eyes widened further.

"Um..." she said, her voice sounding dreamy and distant.

Something in the back of her head tried shouting over the fascination she felt at the green and the gold and the swirling and the pretty and then she forgot the worry and that she was wet and exposed. Her arms drifted to her sides and she leaned forward.

"Sh... Shara?" she asked.

"Hm?" Shara asked back, swaying slightly to the right, then further and further.

Lyram's neck turned, following the gold and green and black and then she turned entirely around. She kept Shara, Shara's eyes, in front of her. Her feet stepped her in a circle. She was still in the warming crystals, and that meant she was safe. It made perfect sense to her, somehow. It meant she didn't really have to worry about the sudden tightness around her waist.

"Right?" Shara asked.

"I uh..." Lyram licked her lips. "What?"

Shara giggled.

"You looked so tired," she said. "Aren't you sleepy from all that running?"

"Sleepy?" Lyram asked.

"Sleepy..." Shara half-hissed, half yawned.

Lyram yawned with her. As her mouth closed, she felt herself smiling. Her eyes itched a little, she didn't think she'd blinked in a while, but that was fine. It wasn't as though she could rub them, though she kind of wanted to. Her arms were too heavy. Her arms...

Another little warning. She could not move her arms. They were at her side and they were... Lyram's eyes narrowed in focus, then widened as Shara drew nearer. The gold and green and pretty and shivering, tingling, warm hiss of a giggle. Another loop of something unimportant squeezed Lyram's arms and worked their way up a little further. A little tighter.

"So stressed..." Shara stretched the word out as she rose above Lyram, tiring her eyes and her neck out further. But the gold, the pretty, the green and the warmth and tingling. Lyram rose on her tiptoes to follow Shara up and up as whatever was around her slid up and up. "I just thought you needed to relax... a little..."

"A little..." Lyram repeated, feeling herself slur a little. It was hard to focus on words, on anything other than the everything happening to her. "Shara?"

"Hmmmm?" Shara smiled wider and leaned in closer and Lyram felt so much warmer and softer.

And whatever the everything was felt so, so soft and warm and comforting. It was like being massaged by a hundred gentle hands while being swaddled in the plushest blankets. When it moved over her breasts, Lyram could not help but gasp. No one's touch compared to this, none that she'd known. At once a squeeze, everywhere and evenly, a fondling that stole her breath and tugged her on and up.

Up, because her feet were no longer on the ground. What was up was not quite up, either. Shara drifted overhead while Lyram drifted down and her thoughts drifted on rippling waves of gold and emeralds and smiles and sighs and then the softness was over her shoulders and at her neck, holding her chin as more gently than any lover she'd ever known.

Then Shara blinked, and her eyes were decidedly green.

Lyram finally, blissfully, copied her blink. The plush fog in her mind settled and began to fade. It was like sobering up from a night of heavy drinking, only without the hangover. Her mind felt slow... sluggish and so like the everything around her that she didn't really want it to ever speed up again.

Then she tried to move, and a colder chill inched into her thoughts.

Shara's tail wound its way from her knees to her neck in one long, soft, warm, and utterly inescapable embrace.

And the moment Lyram realized just how inescapable it seemed, the chill turned back into an uncomfortably welcome tingle. The buzz in her brain returned without the aide of Shara's eyes, and in remembering her eyes Lyram recalled the sudden and helpless effect they'd had on her. In a voice more pleading than she would have liked, she asked: "What did you do?"

"I helped you relax..." Shara said, her voice drawing out the final syllables and drawing Lyram closer to her. "You want to relax... right?"

"I..."

"Besides..." Shara leaned in closer yet, her eyes narrowing slightly. "You're so warm, and it's so cold out. Why don't we help each other a little, hm?"

"Mh?"

Shara's grinned widened, and she inadvertently revealed her fangs.

"I'm warm and comfortable with you here... and are you going to say you are so uncomfortable where you are?" The coils around Lyram tightened, at once massaging and fondling with a tightness so desired and so, so sure of their purpose. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes..." Lyram breathed.

"You've heard about this before, haven't you?" Shara asked.

"I... s-soemthing. Yeah."

"Yeah..." Shara was getting closer still. "What did those stories mean to you? Did you... say..." she was so close Lyram could feel the hissing in her bones, on her lips, "want this...?"

"Want?" Lyram felt herself leaning in, entirely indepent of the warm, soft, incredibly tight coils around her body. "I... oh." They constricted her still and she never knew she could feel so helpless or how badly she had ever wanted to feel something like this before. She could never have dreamed it could come from the embrace of something, someone, literally legendary to her people, someone who offered an escape beyond her dreams. That this someone could look as she did, speak as she did, could bind and twist and so thoroughly seduce and ensnare her and her desires was everything she could have wanted before she even knew she wanted it. What wouldn't she give to let this continue? So, Lyram cried out: "Y-yes. Yes. Please!"

"Please...?" Shara drew the word out as her hands cupped Lyram's cheeks. "Do you know what would be ever so warming?"

"I... uh..." Lyram flushed. "Hm?"

"Hm..." Shara said through a pursed-lip grin. "Do you want to lose it all to me, here and now? It's your choice to have none. You know all the stories, don't you? What it would mean, what it could mean. I don't have to. But isn't it so tempting? You're already so comfortable, so snug in my embrace. But there's so much more I can offer you if only you tell me you want it. If only you say yes... ask me to take it. Well...?"

If there was any hesitation left, it faded the second Lyram realized the distance between her lips and Shara's could be overcome by simply inclining her head. She closed her eyes, silenced the final possible worry left, and closed that gap without a thought.

Shara's fangs were not as much a factor as she would have thought. They seemed almost to retract with the kiss, leaving Lyram nothing but soft, delicate, endlessly tempting lips to lose herself in. Shara's arms wrapped around the back of her, one hand going for her hair while the other played with the nape of her neck around the same time as her coils, warm and tight and forever enthralling, tightened and fondled and massaged Lyram's entire body at once. It was ethereally ensnaring, the embrace of a lamia, something that threatened and promised to consume the entirety of Lyram's mind, body, and soul. That it should reach the point of having Lyram want to give it willingly was just icing, something extra. She would, in a breath in a heartbeat, in an instant, lose it all.

She knew this even before the kiss ended and she found herself once more staring into eyes one moment green and one moment gold and then black and green and gold and... and then the coils shifted slightly and a warm, soft, delicate hand was lifting the final layer of Lyram's undergarments and moving so, so surely and deftly up her thigh.

"We should try to stay warm..." she said. "Come here."

"Here?"

"Right..." Shara's hand moved up. "Here."

Shara's fingers were as soft and delicate and ready as the rest of her. As her eyes spun and glittered and her smile widened with tempting, sure lust and amusement, two of her fingers traced lightly around and around in ever shrinking spirals, closer and closer to the warmth between her thighs. Lyram whimpered, raised herself as she could in her tightening bonds, and opened her mouth.

"Please..." she whispered, almost perfectly matching Shara's early half-hissing speech.

"Please!" Shara leaned in, glowing eyes almost closing. "So nice..." She paused. "Are you sure...?"

"Yes..." Lyram said, her voice almost failing her.

Shara kissed Lyram the same moment her fingers entered her. They moved slowly, drawing out whimpers and moans from Lyram, though these were hushed by the fullness, the deepness of Shara's own desirous lips. Her coils tightened further, squeezing and massaging and holding Lyram in a full body embrace that kept her helpless, deliciously unable to resist anything happening to her. She would not have resisted anyway, could not dream of resisting anything so entirely consuming.

Lyram wriggled in the tightness, the pleasure of feeling herself entirely in Shara's mercy. Between catching her increasingly ragged breaths and tightened and arching in time to the now steady, sensuous rhythm of the lamia's fingers and squeezing, she leaned in to kiss her more fully. Her tongue worked its way forward, slipping past the points of fangs and finding, to surprise and delight, Shara's own forked one waiting for her.