Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 8: brought to you by cheap Wet N Wild makeup

Shay flees the sexy snake man and loses her makeup. He realizes she's better looking without it. Curtis moves up the evolutionary ladder and discovers FIRE--or, rather, cooking with fire.

_____________________________________

Alas, Shay had never been the type to be okay with sitting around when she had a problem, even if all she could do was stress herself out sick trying to think of just how to solve said problem.

So that's what she did. She stood up and started walking around, careful of her tender ankle and hugging her middle as her stomach churned.

Can't just run for it, can I? She looked out the cave and tried to remember which side of her the sun had been when she'd been totted away. But barring aside the fact that the chest and arms had been completely ripped, the ethereal features and the giant snake ass were distracting enough. Looking at the sun had been the least of her worries. Not to mention night was almost near and she had already pushed her ankle pretty far. At this rate, it would probably give out.

With that thought, she sat back down, or at least, she did her best without getting gravel in her butt again.

"Stupid, freaking fur mini-skirt." If it weren't for the fact she was captured by a man, she'd tear that stupid thing off and go in her panties. But, for all she knew, just showing that much more skin really did it for a man in this wonked up place. "Holes in the fur my ass, why can't they just use that cotton?"

The blood rushed out of her face as that thought hammered the last nail into her coffin.

Forget not having pads, this world's' estrous cycle' was essentially the same as being in heat to these males. Like the reptile needed any more reason to force himself on her.

Screaming started up in her thoughts, feeding the hysteria she had just beaten down.

"No, no, breathe, this isn't going to fix anything." She pressed her hands hard over her ears and closed her eyes, forcing her breath to slow down. Okay, first, realistically speaking, if --and she hung on the 'if' like a drowning man to a life line--he rapes me, he seems to be gentle enough not to make it one of those hit and kill affairs, not to mention he isn't the same species as me so there isn't any guarantee at all that I'll get pregnant.

Because that would have completed the ultimate nightmare right there: being forced to birth a den of squirming baby snakes. Sure she had no aversion to snakes--she'd help her uncle catch garter snakes to keep as pets--she certainly wasn't up to birthing them.

Shay shuddered.

Running blindly into the night was sounding better and better.

The inevitable conclusion was that sitting here left her with no hope. Running for it left her with a string of it.

Then she remembered the shadows in the hole by the village where she had found the skin. She had been thinking of it because of how much prettier the scales had become in the sun once she'd climbed out, like the finest costume satin. And the village had been...

West.

Light from the set sun still grayed the sky. She reached for that grayness as she left the cave, starting at a careful trot which inevitably turned into an all-out sprint as the carefully controlled panic burst forth.

Her ankle panged. She stumbled. A tree scraped her hands as she caught herself, then used it to push off into a gamboling run.

She'd hardly gotten far at all when a burst of rustling leaves brought a hard coil of muscles about her waist. The jerk of it lifting her knocked the air from her lungs, turning her scream into a guttural "Ack."