The Serpentine Bodyguard Pt. 04

"Yeah, she might've been watching."

While it was tempting to check in on Nijia and make sure she wasn't offended or something, Clark began to put two and two together regarding his lover's competition. "What's going on between you two?" he asked, brow furrowing conspicuously.

Hssara faltered just a bit. "I was... just teasing. Showing a little dominance, you know?" Her smile was nonchalant, but Clark could tell something was lurking below that.

"Dominance? What... are you jealous of her?"

The viper's tension arose as offense. "Jealous? Me? No, of course not, I just..." She was about to say, "Because I thought she might try to seduce you or something," but trailed off as she realized how ridiculous the notion sounded. "I just... okay, maybe I was a bit jealous. I just... worried... you might get... I dunno, more attracted to her?" The more words came out, the more she realized she'd stuck her tail in her mouth.

With Hssara faltering, Clark couldn't help but let offense seep into his own voice. "You really think I'm that shallow? That I'm just gonna trade you out for a newer model like a damn phone?"

"No, I... I'm sorry." Hssara's gaze turned downward as she realized how little faith she had, but before she could mope more than a second, Clark pulled her down to cuddle beside him.

"It's okay," he sighed, "I... I can understand where you're coming from. Don't beat yourself up about it, we all make mistakes. Lots of mistakes."

"Yeah..." The viper took a moment to snuggle a bit closer to her human, breathing in his comforting scent for a moment.

"And besides," Clark remarked, "I don't even think she's my type. She's just... a bit too passive."

Hssara stopped for a moment, tuning her ears to a far-off noise that sounded like someone using a vibrating toothbrush for a dildo... and that was precisely what it was. "Well, I think you're her type," she quipped, "Either that, or she's just really excitable."

"Huh?"

"Shh, just listen..."

Sure enough, Clark began to make out the wet buzzing and stifled moans, but it still took him a moment to realize just what the noise was. He heard a few alien words that he recognized, but that was because Hssara sometimes screamed them as she came. "Oh... oh. You think she's doing that because she saw what you were doing?"

His viper companion shrugged. "Probably. She was looking at us real funny, like... what's that human expression with the deer?"

"Deer in the headlights?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm..." Clark pondered the situation for a moment, and in the peace and quiet, he could hear Nijia madly making love to the "guest" toothbrush they'd bought just in case. "Maybe we ought to talk to her about it. I mean, part of the reason she came was to learn about viper-human interactions."

Hssara raised an eyebrow. "And that includes felatio?"

"Well... yeah. I mean, intimacy is still interaction, right? Wouldn't you have wanted someone to... you know, show you the ropes?"

"Hey, I did just fine with just the two of us," the viper replied, pretending to be offended.

"Yeah, and Nijia's not like you. She just seems... I dunno, confused, like she isn't sure how to go about it."

"So you're saying we 'show her how it's done?'" Again, she showed mock offense at what sounded like a weird idea at first, but as her mind mulled it over, its outrageousness was actually rather attractive. Nijia would be like her perverted apprentice, following along as they used Clark as their testing ground, sucking and breeding and squeezing the human all over until her protege knew her way around. Maybe they could even try some viper-on-viper action... "I suppose we could do that."

As much as Clark's thoughts were on the same dirty wavelength, he felt a bit more reluctant to dive straight into debauchery. "Well, we probably shouldn't open with that," he replied, "But if she's willing, and she doesn't feel pressured into it..." The second he trailed off, he and Hssara both heard a muffled groan from the guest bathroom, signifying an end to Nijia's heated troubles. Afterward, Clark couldn't help but envision her dazedly toweling both herself and the toothbrush down, and when he heard the door open, he decided it might be best to come clean. "Let's try not to be too confrontational," he murmured to Hssara, and his viper lover nodded.

When Nijia came slithering down the hall, she looked like she'd just run a mile, gently panting while her eyes glanced nervously around. Once she saw Clark and Hssara looking at her, a shiver of fear ran down her spine, and she hoped to the goddess they didn't hear her. Was she too loud? Did she make too much of a mess? That wasn't one of their toothbrushes, was it? Was it?

"Nijia, I think we ought to talk," Clark began, "About, ah... about some stuff you might be going through." Christ, this was awkward... now he knew what his middle school health teacher must've felt like.

Oh, goddess, they knew. They knew about it all. Had she skin instead of scales, Nijia would have turned as white as a sheet, and her posture shrunk defensively. "I... I-I'm sorry," she stammered, "I'm sorry about the toothbrush, I-I'm sorry for staring, I didn't mean to-"

"Hey, relax," Hssara interjected, "We're not mad about any of that. I've done way worse stuff this week alone."

When Nijia stiffened with confusion, Clark calmly took over. "Between the two of us, we think we know what you're going through. I know it's confusing and weird, maybe even a little shocking, but we're here to guide you through it. Why don't you come sit down?"

"A-alright..." The grey viper slithered over to an armchair over to the side, then sat herself down, clawed hands nervously fidgeting in front of her belly.

"We're not going to judge you," Clark continued, "And we don't want you to feel pressured, either. Like I said, Hssara and I have been over the same hurdles when we first got together."

"We know you're into humans," Hssara said, cutting straight to the point. "It's not exactly normal for us vipers, but it's nothing to be ashamed of."

"I... I know," Nijia murmured, "But... I'm still sorry about the toothbrush. I shouldn't have... you know."

The other viper merely grinned. "Hey, I don't blame you, when the urge hits, it hits you hard. I can't tell you how many times I've had to drag Clark into the bedroom for a little satisfaction..." To emphasize, she threw an arm around Clark's shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss. "I also understand why you'd use a toothbrush, but as it turns out, humans make a whole slew of sex toys made just for getting us girls off. As a matter of fact, I've got a few over in my-"

"We can get to the collection later," Clark said, pulling back Hssara as she tried to slither out from around him. "For now, I think we can just... answer any questions you might have, even if they're embarrassing."

"Um... alright." She paused for a moment, wondering whether or not he meant to answer her questions right then and there, but eventually decided to give it a shot. "So... is it normal for couples to do things like that?" When Clark seemed confused, she did her best to elaborate without sounding too obscene. "That thing you did, under the blanket?"

"Oh, ah... well, it's somewhat normal to do in private," the human explained, "It just depends on the couple in question. Doing it while we have guests over is considered bad form." He fixed Hssara with a scolding scowl with his last sentence, causing the viper to roll her eyes.

"Yeah, you don't do that kind of thing in public," she added, "Even when no one's going to see, and you're really, really horny." Hssara fixed Clark with her own mock scowl for a moment, then broke into a naughty grin.

"I see..." Despite her session with the toothbrush, thinking about a human and a viper going at it still managed to get Nijia hot and bothered. She pondered asking something more probing, like "How often do you do it?" or "Do you stick it in her you-know-where?" or "Can I join in?" but she managed to hold her tongue. When she felt a slight pang of hunger, she decided to latch onto it as a distraction and asked, "Is there anything to eat?"

"Eat? Yeah, there's plenty of stuff in the fridge." Clark hiked a thumb back toward the open-air kitchen to the stainless steel refrigerator, which he knew was full of ready-to-eat snacks and leftovers. "What's ours is yours... although we're probably going to order dinner in about an hour."

Nijia knew about human's odd feeding schedules, but she wasn't used to abiding by the strict three-meal-day. "Well, I... still think I'd like to eat something," she replied, 'standing' up from the chair and slithering her way over to the kitchen. Seeing how a viper was living here, Nijia expected to find ration packs full of protein-paste, but all she found was human food. Wrapped in tinfoil, stored in angled paper boxes, crammed into tupperware... no matter how it was packaged, she seemed to remember disliking the bizarre flavors of human food. "Do you have any protein-paste?" she called back to her hosts, already knowing the question was bad form before it left her lips.

Clark and Hssara briefly exchanged a confused look, after which Hssara spoke up. "No, but there's some stuff called cottage cheese that's pretty similar. Should be in a white and blue container."

Clark couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. "I thought you hated that stuff?" he murmured.

"Yeah, because it's a lot like protein paste."

Both human and viper turned back to where Nijia was browsing through the fridge, watching intently as she picked up the container. After popping off the lid, Nijia scooped up a bit with one claw and sampled it, first with her tongue and then with the rest of her mouth. The taste was a little off, she thought, but it was close enough to what she was used to, and the slimy texture was oddly comforting in the foreign environment.

Without thinking twice, she tilted her head back and downed the whole thing, swallowing the mass of curds in one massive gulp. Clark couldn't help but feel slightly disgusted, and Hssara saw it as bad manners, but both of them hid their reactions as Nijia turned around. "Thank you," the grey viper called back, then dropped the empty container into the trash.

"Speaking of food," Clark began, "I think it's about time we ordered something ourselves... how's Chinese food sound?"

"Sounds great," Hssara replied.

With a small grin, Clark pulled out his phone and began punching their order into the app. "Orange chicken and chow mein?"

"Damn straight."

Clark then turned to their guest, who was in the middle of slithering back to her chair. "Nijia, do you want anything?"

At first, she was tempted to refuse, but after a moment, she decided it'd be rude to refuse their hospitality. "Uh, I'll just have what she's having," she said, slipping down into her chosen seat. Surely if Hssara could choke down human food, she could too... right?

"And... all done!" Clark finished up the purchase with a few taps of his phone, then started up the movie once again. "Should be here in about thirty minutes." With the food on its way, he sat back beside his serpentine lover and continued watching the film, using it as a bit of white noise while he pondered. How far should he take things with Nijia? Was it weird to bring her into a threesome with him and Hssara? Well, it was definitely weird; everything was weird when you lived with a giant snake creature, but was it too weird? Besides, he couldn't see any tactful way to probe her opinions on the matter. "Hey, do you want to fuck me and my snake girlfriend?" was the best he could think of.

Hssara, meanwhile, was already past the point of asking and had moved straight on to fantasizing. She and Nijia would both coil around Clark, each enjoying an end of their human plaything, and she'd show her pupil all the ways to make a human squirm. She could just imagine the way Clark would dazedly wriggle in her grip, moaning into her nethers while Nijia hesitantly rode his cock... goddess, just the thought was starting to get her wet. For a while, she pondered conscripting Clark's fingers or maybe even recruiting Nijia for a bit of lesbian action, but Hssara ultimately managed to keep it in her pants.

Nijia couldn't help but battle her feelings toward Clark, her lust and longing sabotaged by deep-seated memories of scorn. She knew that it was supposed to be wrong for vipers to mate without permission, and yet all she could think about was gently making love to Clark in Hssara's place. Maybe Hssara was right, maybe these urges were nothing to be ashamed of... but at the same time, it still felt forbidden. She wound up bottling a fair bit of arousal in her own breast over the next half hour, twisting it and cramming it into someplace it couldn't reach her loins... but that didn't stop her from thinking about her time with the toothbrush.

All three of them were snapped out of their ponderings by a knock at the door, and since Clark was pinned to the couch by her coils, Hssara got up to get it. When the door opened, it was one of the ADVENT troopers from outside, emotionlessly offering her a plastic bag of goodies. "Package cleared and secure," he said, prompting Hssara to take it and close the door. She could feel the delectable warmth from within as she brought it over to the dinner table, and once she began untying the knot at the top, all the sweet aromas of hastily-made food rolled out.

"Let's see... there's the obligatory rice... chow mein... some more chow mein... Clark's mongolian beef... and the rest is orange chicken." After unpacking the little white boxes, Hssara slithered over to the cabinet to get forks for her and Nijia, rightly assuming that their new roommate had no clue how to use chopsticks.

Meanwhile, Nijia watched Clark pulling apart two of the wooden utensils, then arranging them between his fingers like a pair of pincers. "How... is that normal for humans?" she asked, curious why she'd never heard of such items before if they were.

"Well, sort of," Clark explained, opening up his box of beef and picking up a piece. "They use them over in Asia, and the custom came over with the food. Not everyone uses them, but..." He paused to pop a bite into his mouth. "... I'm something of a stickler."

"Hmm..." Nijia pulled a second pair out of their paper wrapper, split them up, then began trying to figure out how to use them herself. One went between one set of fingers, then the other one got held like a pencil... wait, no, the first one went like this... no, like this.

Even with the wordless instructions on the back, she couldn't manage the refined pincer motion Clark did so flawlessly, and she was just about to ask the human for help when Hssara stuck a fork in front of her. "Trust me," she chuckled, "It's impossible. Just use a fork, it's way less of a headache."

Nijia tried getting the chopsticks to work one last time but finally relented and took the fork. However, one challenge was replaced by another when she popped open one of the boxes that Hssara put in front of her. "Wha... what's this?" she asked, staring perplexedly at the tangle of wormy strings mixed with chunks of something.

"It's chow mein," Hssara said with an almost mocking tone, "You wanted what I was having, remember?"

"I didn't think it would be... like this." While the smell was interesting, Nijia couldn't get over the odd shape of the noodles. How were you supposed to eat it, scoop it up between the fork's prongs and slurp it down?

Hssara was quick to demonstrate a more polite way, wrapping the noodles around her fork in a bundle and impaling a chunk of vegetable on the end before popping the whole thing into her mouth. "C'mon, try it," the other viper said with a bit more empathy, "I guarantee it's better than that protein paste crap."

Nijia's brow furrowed as she pondered whether or not Hssara could be right, but ultimately, she decided it'd be better to at least try it. The grey viper followed her cohort's lead, spooling up some noodles before swallowing the fried bundle. To her surprise, it wasn't nearly as unpleasant to eat as it looked, and the flavors she briefly tasted were like none she'd ever had before; she took another bite, then followed Hssara back to the couch with her meal in hand.

It didn't take all that long to finish the movie, and during the final confrontation between Dracula and the heroes, Nijia came to appreciate both human dishes she'd been served. After a life of eating bland but nutritious paste, the unhealthy flavors of fried noodles and sweet, tangy sauce lit up her taste buds like fireworks, nourishing her burgeoning imagination and leaving her thoroughly satisfied. Sitting there next to Clark and Hssara, she felt she actually had a place with the two of them; it wasn't a place she fit into very well, and Nijia knew it would probably be temporary, but it was more of a place than she'd had before. The question of how she'd gone from stiffly guarding ADVENT's supply depots to lounging around eating human food briefly crossed her mind, but she brushed it aside, assuming all that was in the past.

By the time the credits rolled, the odd trio had all finished their respective meals, and the three of them were left wondering what to do next. While Clark gathered up the dishes to either throw out or stick in the sink, Hssara began punching up the next episode of Crimson cove, but before she could hit play, she was addressed by an eager yet nervous-looking Nijia. "Do... do you mind if I ask you some more questions?"

The other viper was naturally a tad surprised but quickly evened herself out. "No, ask away."

Nijia briefly glanced over to Clark to make sure he wouldn't overhear, then fought down a sudden bubble of worry that rose in her breast. "What's it like being with a human?"

It took Hssara a second to deduce her meaning, but when she did, a wry smile spread across her lips. "You know, you could always find out for yourself," she replied, her voice dripping with coercive cunning. "I wouldn't mind loaning you Clark for a while, and I bet he'd be more than willing to show you the ropes..." The half of her that was joking merely planned on taking part in Nijia's education, pointing out the do's and don'ts she and Clark had learned so far. The half of her that was serious, on the other hand, had a full-blown threesome in mind, a tangle of limbs and coils with her beloved human lover caught in the center...

Where her host had slutty bravado, Nijia only harbored terror. "You... you think he'd..." Suddenly, she heard the sink shut off, meaning that Clark was coming back. Oh, goddess, he was going to hear them, and then... and then...

"Whatcha talking about?" the human asked, "Decided on a show?"

"Ah..."

Fear rendered Nijia speechless at the last possible second, but Hssara quickly picked up the conversational slack. "Oh, I was just about to answer some more burning questions," she began, "But to be honest, I think a demonstration would work better."

"A demonstration?" It took a second of examining Nijia's wide-eyed stare to realize what kind of demonstration she was talking about. "Well, uh... I guess we could. If you're up for it, of course."

"I... I..." Two raging urges surged in Nijia's chest, making her feel lightheaded and weighed down at the same time. On the one hand, this was the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to experience something she'd been craving for a month. On the other, it was a degenerate act that no viper should ever participate in, on top of the weirdness of thrusting herself into their relationship. "I..."

"It's okay if you don't want to, I mean-"

"No!" The word just slipped past Nijia's lips, and the surprised reactions from both Clark and Hssara proved she was out of line. "I just... I don't know, it's just weird. I've never really... done anything like this before."