Odd Jobs and Side Effects - The Lizardman Contract (FurtherTales)
This is part 4 of an ongoing erotica series, but this chapter can be read as a starting point. The rest of the series can be found in my story index!
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The past week had been... interesting.
I spent two days in the eastern farmlands running a wolf pack off territory they'd decided was theirs, which should have been a three day job. Wolves are usually loud and stubborn about leaving territory, but this pack settled down the second afternoon as if asking nicely was all it took. No complaints from me, but in the back of my mind I couldn't shake how strange it was.
After I got back to town I took up a contract to clear out a stirge colony that had taken over a warehouse on the south side of town. Stirges are usually bold, but they're manageable. These ones came at me in a frenzy right from the start, much more aggressive than the size of the colony warranted. I went home that night exhausted, smelling like rotten iron.
I figured those last two jobs were just how it goes, good jobs and bad jobs, but then there was the juvenile basilisk. It had wandered in about a mile outside of town and settled into a livestock barn. Three parties passed on it before the guild asked me very nicely to do them a solid. I was able to fold equipment coverage into the contract, which helped, but juveniles are unpredictable enough that I'd gone in bracing for a fight. I didn't get one. Instead, it seemed to follow my every direction as soon as I got there, and I was able to guide it back into the hill country caves where it belonged in just under five hours.
I did a lot of thinking on the walk back home that night.
The warmth I was feeling in my body never quite went away after that cave job. That night in Cole's room helped, sure, but there was still that low level heat in my core that I couldn't shake. Sometimes my hands were too warm, my palms radiating heat even in cold rain. Sometimes I was aware of every point of contact my clothes made with my skin, the drag of fabric with each step, the weight of a hem against my thigh. And sometimes it showed up in spikes of uninvited, lingering arousal. It was the worst at night, alone, my mind drifting somewhere I didn't really encourage it to go.
I'd been telling myself that it was all residual, something that the tentacle creature's biology had introduced into mine that would work its way out after some more time. But it'd been a full week and it wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't getting worse either, just... present. I was still functional, and taking on three decent jobs in a week was proof of that. I was managing.
I was almost feeling like a person again as I sat down across from Tanya for drinks at Cole's bar.
She was already halfway through her drink, which was usually a sign that she had something on her mind. Tanya was barely a year into the contracting life. She'd mostly figured out how the guild worked; contracts, collateral fees and so on, but she still struggled with party politics. She'd been with the same party this whole time, but the way she talked about them lately, it'd been fracturing for weeks. I warned her that there'd probably be a split coming, but she was still optimistic. I never cared for parties.
Cole swung by as I settled in, dropping off my favorite northern brew.
"You know, most of my regulars drink better stuff than this," he said.
"Some of us have good taste," I said back. "Put Tanya's next one on my tab." He grinned and headed back to the bar.
Tanya took another sip of her drink, some kind of mead, and looked up at me. "So, we took a job last week," she said. "One of those removal contracts, but get this - it was a lizardman who was burning trees on the client's property. Actually burning them."
"Huh." She was right, that was odd. Lizardfolk were typically scared off by fire. "So how'd it go, did you figure out why?"
She shook her head, looking back at her drink. "None of our approaches worked. Whenever we tried to get close, he just got between us and the fire. Every single time." She took a sip. "We'd split up, he'd track the closest one. He wouldn't move more than a few feet when we tried to draw him off the fire."
"How was he defending it?" I asked. "Aggressive, or just like, in the way?"
"That's the thing, he was always just in the way. Persistent. He didn't want to fight but he would take up that defensive posture, you know?" She paused, looking down at her glass. "But at one point he just... stopped, and looked straight at me. He got closer than he'd gotten to any of us, just standing there and looking at me for a moment. Then he went back to the fire." She shrugged, looking at me again. "Still not sure what that was about."
I had a theory. I wasn't sure if I wanted to share it. "What kind of look?"
"That's the thing. Not threatening. Just..." she paused. "Focused. Like he was trying to figure something out about me." She shook her head. "That's when it all went bad. One of them said we should just kill him and be done with it. Another one reminded him you can't just kill a non-threatening creature, and then it just..." she sighed and took another drink.
"That bad, huh?"
"You know the group's been coming apart for a while." She looked out the window. "This was just the last thread."
"Oh Tanya," I said, tilting my head and holding my hand out across the table. She took it and finished the last of her drink, just in time for Cole to drop off her second round. We sat there for a minute, and I thought about that lizardman's behavior. The way he kept putting himself between Tanya's group and the flames, persistent, not aggressive, just immovable. The way he'd broken off to look at her specifically. It sounded like he was defending that fire the way a mother would defend her nest, and the moment with Tanya sounded less like a threat and more like something else entirely. All of it sounded so off.
"Lizardfolk hate fire," I said, almost to myself. Tanya looked up at me, and I continued. "They can't stand intense heat, just naturally. They avoid fires, they don't build them."
"Well… he built that one."
"Yeah." I turned my glass. "Is the contract still open?"
---
I went to the guild on the way home and I signed the lizardman contract, telling the rep I'd have it resolved by the next day. It had the standard removal language, an urgent fee, with a bonus on completion.
I set out early the next morning.
The property was a small logging operation, a cultivated forest that was sectioned off and harvested in rotations. The outer sections were healthy and organized, tall established trees all around the same age, with older trees in the previous section and younger trees in the next. There were cut stumps flush to the ground, cleared paths, and the smell of fresh sawdust.
The further I went in, the less organized it looked. There was a younger tree that was leaning oddly, its base cracked and splintering instead of a clean cut. Then another, the bark stripped in long gouges higher than I was tall. As I kept getting deeper there was more damage, splintered trunks and drag marks in the ground. It was always the younger, thinner trees. This was definitely the work of my lizardman, like he'd been bending and pulling them out by force rather than cutting them.
I reached the clearing that Tanya described, but the fire pit here had been cold for a while. It was built up deliberately in a small gap between trees, and it clearly took him some time to set up. There were drag marks continuing on from here. Clearly he'd moved on from this pit and taken a tree or two with him. Good for me. That made it easy to follow the path to him.
There was the distinct smell of smoke in the air as I followed the drag marks. It threaded through the trees like a warning. I followed it until the forest opened into a natural clearing of rougher ground and older earth. The fire pit here was almost twice as big as the first, built more sturdy, burning brightly.
The lizardman was sitting as close to it as he could physically get.
I stopped at the tree line and watched him. He hadn't noticed me yet. He was tall; seven feet or more, broad chest and wide shoulders. His scaled skin caught the firelight in dull greens and browns. His whole body was curved in toward the flames, oriented around them completely.
But the fire was taking a toll on him.
His skin was dry, cracking along his arms and the side of his neck, the sheen of his scales long gone. Lizardfolk don't sweat, they need moisture to keep their skin healthy. For him to sit this close to an open fire, forgoing that need entirely... he was desperate for something in that fire. From the look of him, he wasn't finding it.
I saw enough. I stepped out of the tree line, and he noticed me before I took two steps. His head sprang up, and he was on his feet faster than his size should have allowed. I stopped, hands open at my sides, and let him look. He didn't advance, he didn't posture. He just stood there between me and the fire, looking right at me.
He opened his mouth and made a rough clicking sound. Then he said something, almost a word, but it didn't translate. He tried again, sounding it out slower, like he was feeling out how to shape the sounds.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I said, keeping my voice even and calm. "I just want to understand the fires."
He stood up straighter. "Fi...res..." he said, slowly, with a deep rasp in his voice. Then he said something else, a shorter sound that I couldn't parse.
"I know," I said. I didn't, but it felt right. I took a slow step forward. He didn't move at all. Okay, that's something. I took another step, even slower. He just tracked me with that focused, unreadable attention. I stood there, two steps in. "You built a good fire," I offered.
Something in his expression shifted at that, his eyes blinking with both sets of eyelids. He took a step toward me. Then another. I held my ground, and he stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up slightly to meet his eyes. He looked at me for a long moment.
Something about the space between us felt wrong, but I had trouble understanding what it was. I crossed my hand to my elbow, feeling heat in my palm, and then it came to me. He was standing so close to the fire. He should have been radiating excess heat. But if anything, the air was a little colder with him standing so close to me.
Before I could think on that, he lowered his head and opened his mouth, and a long, thin, black tongue flitted out and ran along my forearm. I knew reptilian tongues were just how they read the world, but it still startled me. I held still while he flitted it over my arms. It was soft, slightly moist, slightly cold. His tongue moved to my wrist, then up to the side of my neck. My breath hitched, and I felt that heat rise in my chest.
His tongue retracted and he lifted his head. His eyes were a little more clear, more focused. His shoulders dropped slightly, and his posture seemed to ease. I think his head even nodded a little. "War...mm," he said, carefully.
"Yeah," I said. "I run warm these days."
He shifted closer to me, his body blocking out the fire behind him. His tongue flitted out again, just for a second. "More warm... than... fire..." he said, with that clicking noise flowing under his words.
I cocked my head at him. "I... don't understand."
He looked at me, blinked again, then he put one hand on my arm, just below the elbow. Three thick, clawed fingers holding my forearm gently. I noticed two things at once. First, his palm was cold to the touch, colder than the air around us. Second, my own skin was warming under his touch all on its own. He gave a satisfied rumble in his throat.
"What are you looking for?" I asked slowly, still observing him. "In the fire."
He was still for a moment. Reptilians go genuinely still in a way mammals never do. We sway, we breathe, we shift our weight without knowing it. He was just completely motionless while he considered. His throat clicked before he spoke. "Fire... has..." He stopped. Started over. "Fire was... having. Some... thing." He tilted his head, blinking longer this time. "Gone."
"Gone?" I asked.
He clicked affirmatively, blinking again. His hand held my forearm a little tighter, and his body inched closer to mine. "You have. Thing." He thought again, then added "Still have."
I had no idea how to answer that. I looked past him at the fire, still burning, having done nothing for him but crack his skin. I thought about how he'd been sitting by it when I found him, how much he'd endured for this 'thing' he was after. "How long have you been out here?" I asked.
He looked down at me, tongue flitting again. Then he extended his free hand, away from his body, taking one finger and running it in the air across his torso, stopping at his opposite shoulder. I understood it to mean that he'd been here for a while. Weeks, not days.
My arm was getting warmer under his hand. I should move it. I'm just here on contract to get him out of here. And yet, he wasn't acting threatening at all. He was clearly in distress, but I still had no idea what was causing it. The professional thing to do is to stand back and assess the situation.
But I was watching what the contact was doing for him. His shoulders were losing their tension, his hunched posture slowly unwinding the longer his hand stayed where it was. I still wasn't sure why my body was heating up at his touch, but it was doing more for him than the fire had. It felt important to understand why before I did anything else.
"This 'thing' of yours," I said, "you weren't finding it in the fire."
"No," he agreed, this time with some certainty. His throat rumbled again. "Did not... understand."
That made two of us. But I think I was starting to.
He pivoted more towards me, and his other hand moved to my opposite arm. I looked at it, feeling his cold hand, feeling my body react with more warmth under it. Too close. Time to back up. I started to, but I heard - and felt - the rumble in his throat, lighter this time, his eyes closed as he relaxed even further. Were his scales showing a little more luster? Okay, maybe a little longer...
"Warm..." he said, quietly.
I didn't reply.
I started to wonder what good moving away would even do at this point. If I did, he would likely lose that warmth he was looking for, go back to building fires and burning himself. That wouldn’t solve the contract. I couldn't remove him by force, that would just be cruel at this point. And actually, so would removing myself. I sighed, and shifted my thinking away from how close he was and back towards the real problem.
His tongue flitted out and brushed my neck again. It lingered, and my lips parted in a small gasp. His hands moved from my arms to my back as he took a step forward. His chest was right at my face, broad, his scales dry but shifting. I felt my body flush with warmth as he surrounded me, and I took an anxious step backwards without actually going anywhere. My hands rose up to his arms, feeling his scales, his musculature underneath them. "Um..." I said. Very astute. "I'm not-"
"Yes," he said. He clutched me a little tighter, and I brought my foot back. One hand rose up my back to my neck, his thick fingers tracing the skin under my hairline, making me shiver, my skin radiating heat around him. He rumbled deeply, and I felt it from his chest. His other hand moved lower, and it caught the hem of my shirt, ducking under it. The cool of his hand on my lower back should have startled me, but my skin was so warm it just felt comfortable there. Too comfortable.
"I... hang on..." I said, looking up at him. He had his eyes closed. Okay. The cracks along his neck were... starting to fade? They looked a lot less severe than when I first saw him. Okay. My heart beat faster. I've done stranger things for contracts. I'll let him feel me, heal up or whatever, figure that part out later. He'll be easier to move on once he's feeling better. I hoped.
He was holding me to him now, and I felt his tongue dancing on my neck in various places. His hand under my shirt spread across the small of my back, his other hand rising to cradle the back of my head. It was actually starting to feel nice. But then his hand slid higher, his cool palm dragging up the line of my spine. His other hand lowered from my head, and I felt him start to tug the neck of my shirt up, his other arm raising the bottom hem. I caught his wrist on instinct.
"Wait- hold on," I said, my voice tighter than I wanted. I swallowed, remembering to slow down my words. "This is... fast."
He tilted his head, his hands stopping, and he blinked, going still again. His tongue flicked out, tasting the air near my throat. The low rumble in his chest pitched up, turning into something almost pleading. His grip on my shirt didn't loosen.
I took a breath. My skin was already prickling where he touched me, heat flowing from my body like it was trying to answer him for me. It's skin contact. Just more surface area for him. That's all. I let go of his wrist.
"Fine," I muttered, nodding.
His voice clicked, and he didn't wait for further permission. He peeled the fabric of my shirt over my head in one smooth motion, his hands immediately feeling my skin again. I felt his hand rise up my back, his claw hooking under my bra, flicking it open. I wasn't sure if he was skilled enough to unclasp it or if he just pulled it apart, but either way it was falling to the ground. Yeah, okay.
Then he lifted me. He simply slid one thick arm under my ass and scooped me up, effortlessly. My legs instinctively held his hips for balance. He pulled me into him, my bare chest against his, and the sensation was… intense. Cool, smooth scales pressed against my stomach and my chest. The rough texture of his ventral plates dragging across my nipples as I settled against him.
"Easy," I breathed, more for myself than for him. My hands held onto his shoulders, my fingers pressing into heavy muscle. He was still cold, but my body was hot, and I could feel that heat pouring into him everywhere we touched. His scales were taking on a subtle green sheen, like they were drinking me in.
His tongue returned, flitting out and writhing on my bare skin. It traced the side of my neck first, tasting the flush rising under my skin. I shivered. It flicked higher, under my jaw, across my cheek, even brushing the corner of my mouth. I turned my face away reflexively, but his tongue followed patiently, exploratory. The cool, damp texture of his thin black tongue sent sparks down my spine. He rumbled, his hands squeezing my ass through my shorts as he pressed my body against him.
The tongue flitted down my collarbone, then it wriggled in the tight space between our chests. I leaned back a little. I felt it curl underneath the swell of my breast, and I sucked in a sharp breath as it slid back up, circling my nipple. "I-I don't think that's-" It coiled around it and squeezed, the cool wetness of it making my back arch in his grip. "-fuck." It uncoiled, and the forked tip of his tongue flicked over my now-hard nipple, making me sigh. Then it darted to the other nipple, coiling around it just the same. "Ah-!" My fingers gripped his shoulders a little tighter while his tongue flicked and teased it, his hands kneading my ass.
Wherever his cool scales touched, wherever his tongue flitted and slid on my body, my skin burned hotter in response. It should have been uncomfortable. Instead, it felt like a balance of some kind. I could feel my heat radiating outward, sinking into him in waves. His voice rumbled and clicked in response, his grip more firm, his skin looking less and less damaged.
His tongue kept dancing on my tits. I was breathing heavier now, my forehead resting against his chest, right under his chin. I could feel the low, persistent heat in my core flaring brighter. A different kind of heat, more needy. My hips squirmed, my ass wriggling in his grip, and I didn't want to admit how slick I was getting between my legs. I was half thankful and half frustrated that my shorts were still on, with the frustration starting to win out.
This is still for the contract. I closed my eyes and held onto him, trying to hold onto myself. This is just helping him stabilize. Skin contact, that's all. "Mmh..." His tongue coiled around my nipple again, lingering there and rubbing. I pressed my chest back into his. Then I felt a tugging at the back of my shorts, and my eyes flew open.
I felt the cool length of a thick, muscular tail curling around my hip from behind. It had a lithe, thin tip that hooked neatly under the waistband, tugging downward in slow, deliberate pressure. "Wait-" I started, twisting in his hold. My legs tightened around his waist, but that only gave his tail better leverage.
He rumbled, looking down at me, his tongue squeezing my nipple before retracting. "Need..." he said, pausing. "Need... all." His hands squeezed my ass, his tail tugging at my shorts again. His double-lidded eyes blinked again, slowly, waiting. I swallowed. My hips wriggled. I tried to rationalize it; more skin contact, faster contract completion, accelerated thermal transfer, but I couldn't ignore the need in my own body on top of it all.
"Alright," I said, softly. I moved my legs back from his hips, letting him hold me up as his tail slid my shorts and panties down over the curve of my ass in one smooth tug. I kicked off my boots, letting them fall to the ground below me, the rest of my clothes landing on top of them. His hand cupped my bare ass. I spread my legs and wrapped them back around his waist, pressing my naked body completely into his.
The shock of full skin contact stole my breath. I was used to the sensation of his scales on my stomach, ribs and tits, but the added sensation without my shorts in the way took it to another level entirely. My bare thighs met his lower abs, his muscles tensing on my skin. My pussy, more wet than I wanted to admit, pulsed at the cool of his lower abdomen. His voice rumbled again and I felt it everywhere, making me whimper in his grasp. "Fuck," I whispered, my forehead dropping to his chest.
My arms wrapped tighter around his thick neck. One of his hands held me firmly by my ass, the other hand flat on my back. More of my skin was touching him than not, his scales gaining a richer, healthier luster, the cracks already starting to smooth. He gripped my body more and more firmly.
His tongue slithered out to coil around my breast, and his tail curved around my lower back to wrap around my waist. Then I felt something else entirely. It was thick, hot - actually hot - and unmistakably alive as it slid up between my spread thighs. Smooth and fleshy, no scales, firm and rapidly hardening, pressing right along the length of my soaked slit. "Oh- shit," I gasped, and his cock throbbed against my pussy.
My eyes widened, and my hips jerked back on instinct, but there was nowhere to go between his grip on my ass and his tail around my waist. I was pinned exactly where I was, the heavy length of his cock trapped between my body and his rigid abdomen, gliding along my pussy with every small shift.
"Thats-" I started, shakily, "O-okay, that's enough... We're not- I'm not here for that..."
He clicked softly, almost soothing, his tongue flicking back up and sliding along my jaw. His hips rolled forward, dragging that thick cock along my pussy again. A soft moan slipped out of me as his head caught my entrance. "Need," he said, simply, and his tongue met the corner of my mouth. I opened it to say something, anything, but my voice faltered, and his tongue slipped inside.
"Ah," was all I could manage as it flicked on my own tongue.
His cock kept sliding against my folds, making me feel the full length of it. The shaft was lined with ridges, the smooth texture bumping on my clit, up and down. Each pass made my thighs tremble on his waist. I tried to keep my hips still, I really did, but my body betrayed me. My hips rolled forward greedily to chase that friction, my soaked pussy clenching against that hot, heavy length.
He needs the warmth. I'm just... giving it to him. I lied openly to myself, my fingers digging into the back of his neck, my pussy pressing into him rhythmically. His tail squeezed my waist, and I let myself lift up slightly before I realized I was doing it, letting his cockhead press against my entrance. My head spun, desire burning in my core.
"Need," he said, his tongue still flicking on mine.
"Need..." I moaned. He was right. My hips wriggled, my pussy spreading around his cock. He rumbled, his head twitching inside me, my hips rolling to take him in deeper. "Fuck..." The stretch was overwhelming. His cock was thick, and those ridges dragged along my entrance, my pussy rippling as each ridge slipped into me. My walls gripped him, inch after inch, until my pussy was wrapped tight over nearly half of his length. His cock was hot inside me where his scales were cool against my body, the contrast- the balance, feeling right in a way that made me dizzy.
He held still for a moment, that reptilian still, buried halfway inside me, letting my body adjust. I could feel my own warmth pouring into him even stronger now, radiating from deep in my core, soaking into every one of his scales. They gleamed like polished river stones. Then his cock pulsed inside me, stretching me and making me gasp. He pulled it out, just an inch, then he pushed it back inside, deeper this time. I groaned into his scales and rolled my hips with him. "Gods..."
The ridges of his cock popped past my entrance one by one, until I felt the broad head kiss my cervix with a heavy, deep nudge. A broken moan tore out of me, the heat washing over my body completely. The contract had long since left my mind. I stopped thinking about anything except the way my overheated body was taking him, gripping his cock like a desperate vice.
His tail held my waist, his hand on my ass guiding me as he pulled his hips back, sliding his cock out, then pushed it back inside completely. "Hah-!" My pussy squelched around him, my walls clenched his ridged length. My nipples dragged along his rough chest with every deep thrust, my body bouncing in his grip as he started fucking me in earnest. His tongue flicked along my collarbone, lowering to flick over my hard nipple again, curling around it and tugging. "Ahh-!" I cried, my legs squeezing him tighter.
I rode him openly now, sharp moans echoing into the trees, my hips rolling with every deep stroke, chasing that blunt pressure against my cervix. Each time he bottomed out, a fresh pulse of heat blossomed deep in my core before washing outwards, all over my body and back into his. It kept rising. It wasn't just pleasure anymore, the heat flared up in my belly, burning brighter with each drag of his cock, each bump running under my clit. My skin glowed with it, and I stopped holding anything back.
He rumbled, the sound feeling richer now. His hand squeezed my ass harder, his claws digging into my soft skin. His tail pulled me down possessively with every thrust. His body was warming up now, his cock feeling even hotter inside my pussy as it fluttered and squeezed, milking him with every thrust. "Ah… ah… hah…" I panted, my head falling against his chest as my orgasm built like a wave I couldn't outrun. I didn't want to run.
My thighs shook around his waist. My nails dug into his shoulders. I didn't care how it looked anymore, rocking my hot, naked body on his, whimpering, moaning into the air, my pussy clamping down around him as he just kept driving those ridges deep, over and over. I cried out, loud and shameless, my pussy clamping down around him. Wave after wave rolled through me, milking him in strong, rhythmic pulses. The heat inside me exploded outwards, radiating from my core, through my skin, pouring into him in one final, overwhelming rush. "Ohhhh... ohh..." I trembled in his arms.
He rumbled, his voice building into a genuine snarl, and he slammed deep into me one last time. His cock swelled, his head trembling right at my cervix, his ridges locking against my fluttering walls. Thick, heavy spurts of cum flooded into me, hotter than his cock, even hotter than my own burning core. Pulse after pulse poured straight against my cervix, filling my pussy so fucking full with every jet. My eyes rolled back and I squeezed my legs around him, holding him for dear life while his cum pushed my own orgasm even further. All I could feel, all I could even see, was pure heat flowing into every part of me, mixing with the fire already burning in my core.
He held me there, buried to the hilt, letting every last drop of his cum drain into me while my body kept feeding him heat. When the final pulse faded, he let out a long, low rumble that vibrated through both of us. I blinked the sweat from my eyes and looked up at him.
His scales gleamed with a healthy, oily luster, the dull cracked patches gone entirely. The desperate tension in his shoulders had vanished. He stood taller, broader, every muscle relaxed and powerful again. Even the air around us felt warmer, the cold hunger that had been eating at him finally gone. Whatever had been missing from him, I had poured it straight back in.
"Warm," he said, almost sighing in his clicks. "...grateful."
He slowly lowered me until my feet touched the ground. His tail loosened around my waist, curling back behind him. His hands lingered for a moment before letting go. My legs buckled as he stepped back, and I caught myself on my knee before sitting down somewhat gracefully. My thighs were trembling, my breath ragged. His cum leaked down my thigh in slow, warm trails, but the heat inside of me didn't ease. If anything, it burned hotter. My core felt like a furnace, roaring, demanding, nowhere near satisfied.
He stepped back, facing his dying fire, while I pressed my thighs together. A helpless shiver rolled through me. My palms were radiating heat, but not nearly enough to cool my body down. I watched him look back at me, clicking in satisfaction, ready to leave this forest behind. Ready to leave me behind.
But I still needed more, and I wasn't sure I could pretend otherwise this time…