The doors of room suddenly open.
"Lady Suzy!" the Commander’s deep, booming voice roared as he burst into the office, his massive hand already gripping the hilt of his greatsword. "We heard a blood-curdling scream and smashing glass! Is the rogue asset—"
The Commander stop mid-sentence, his scarred eye widening as he looked at the sheer disaster on the floor. Jared was face-down on the rug, surrounded by a thousand glittering pieces of a priceless crystal vase, snoring softly in a puddle of his own drool.
Before the door had even hit the wall, my snake instincts had completely overridden my brain. I didn’t wait around to be turned into a target for twenty elite guards. I dropped off the mahogany desk like a shadow, zipped across the floor using Quick Dodge, and shot straight up the back of Bae Suzy’s leather chair.
Before she could even flinch, I slid myself right under the back hem of her sleek, form-fitting rogue armor, coiling my cold, matte-black body tightly around her bare lower waist.
Suzy’s entire spine stiffened like an rod. A soft breathless gasp caught in her throat as my sleek scales made direct contact with the warm, silky skin of her lower back. Her fingernails dug so hard into the edge of her desk that the wood make a small noise under her pressure.
"Commander," Suzy said, her smooth, voice hitting a strained, slightly higher note than usual. She forced a rigid, icy smile onto her face, though her eyes were flashing with absolute, panicked warning as she looked down at her chair. "There is no rogue asset. Director Jared simply had an... intense disagreement with my filing system and took it out on the decor."
"Are you certain, milady?" the Commander asked, stepping further into the room, his steps clanking loudly on the marble border of the rug. He squinted suspiciously at Jared’s twitching body, then looked up at Suzy. "You look flushed. And your posture is..."
"My posture is fine!" Suzy snapped, a dark blush creeping up her pale neck.
Underneath her leather tunic, I was having a major tactical crisis. The space was incredibly tight, smelling intensely of river mint and warm, sweet skin. Because I was a three-foot-long Phantom-Fang Assassin, staying in one tight coil around her waist was actively suffocating me. I needed room to breathe.So, I started to move.
I slithered downward, my frictionless, matte-black scales sliding smoothly over the curve of her hip, my nose nudging against the soft, warm skin right beneath the edge of her leather defensive shorts.
A sudden, sharp shudder ran through Suzy’s entire body. Her thighs visibly trembled beneath the desk.
"Ah...!" a low, helpless, and incredibly soft moan escaped her full lips, echoing clearly across the quiet, tense office.
The Commander’s jaw dropped. The two elite guards standing at the doorway instantly looked at each other, their eyes widening in pure, unadulterated shock. Nobody had ever heard the terrifying, cold Director of the Silver Crest Guild make a sound like that in their entire lives.
"Lady Suzy?!" the Commander stammered, his face turning a bright shade of awkward crimson. "Are you... injured? Did Jared poison you?"
Suzy’s hand flew to her mouth, her face turning red as she gripped the edge of her chair to keep from jumping out of her seat. Deep inside her clothes, I wasn’t stopping. In fact, her frantic movements were only squeezing me tighter, forcing me to slither further down, my cold belly tracing a slow, agonizing path right along the smooth, sensitive contour of her inner thigh.
"Stop it, you absolute monster," Suzy’s furious, desperate voice rattled directly inside my mental link, her thoughts screaming at me. "You are completely crossing the line! If you don’t stay still, I will freeze you to death right inside my armor!"
’I can’t breathe, manager!’ I hissed back mentally, my snake head nudging even further down, her body heat completely overwhelming my reptilian senses. "Your gear is tightened to maximum corporate specifications! If I don’t move, I’m going to turn into a leather belt before you do!"
Suzy let out a ragged breath, her chest heaving violently beneath her armor as she forced her eyes back onto the Commander. "I am... perfectly functional, Commander," she wheezed out, her voice dripping with a mix of arousal and pure, murderous rage. "A minor muscle spasm from the trail. Take... take Jared away. Right now. Leave the core on the desk and clear the room!"
The Commander didn’t ask a single follow-up question. The absolute tension in the room was so much . He quickly grabbed the unconscious Jared by the collar of his purple cloak, dragging him out of the office like a sack of turnips while the guards scooped up the crystal pieces, slamming the doors shut behind them.
The second the lock clicked, the absolute silence returned. Suzy didn’t wait a single second. She threw herself out of the chair, reached straight down the back of her leather armor with both hands, and violently yanked my three-foot-long body out into the open air.
"You complete and utter bastard!" Suzy roared, her face completely flushed, her black eyes flashing with a mix of exhaustion, fury, and heavily panting breath. She held me out at arm’s length, her hands shaking violently as she glared at my face. "I am the Director of the largest guild in this province! I could have twenty high-level mages turn you into ash for what you just did!"
’Hey, hold on! Look at the context!’ I thought, letting the System flash the blue text right onto the desk in front of her.
[I was saving the deal! The Commander had a giant sword! If he saw a Tier 3 Phantom Viper sitting on your desk, he would have sliced me in half and asked questions later!]
"That doesn’t give you permission to crawl down my thigh!" Suzy shouted, her breathing still ragged as she dropped me onto the desk. She leaned against the wood, her long black-and-silver hair completely messy, her hand resting over her racing heart. "You did that on purpose! You —You’re a human soul inside that body, aren’t you? You knew exactly what you were doing!"
[BARRY: I am a claustrophobic snake, manager. It was tight, it was hot, and I can’t stay in one place for long. It’s an evolutionary defect of the Phantom-Fang path. I was just trying to find a ventilation shaft.]
Suzy stared at the floating blue text, her jaw tight, but as the seconds passed, the sheer absurdity of arguing with a talking snake next to an inkwell finally broke her anger. She let out a exhausted sigh, rubbing her temples.
"Unbelievable," she muttered, her voice dropping back down to that smooth, velvet tone. "Five hundred gold coins, Barry. That was our deal. Meet me here tomorrow morning at dawn. The board of directors will be handling Jared’s replacement, and I will have your formal payment ready—whether you want it in cold hard currency or raw magical beast cores to fuel that ridiculous evolution of yours."
[BARRY: Sounds like excellent corporate synergy. See you at dawn, Director.]
I didn’t wait for her to change her mind. I activated Active Camouflage, my matte-black scales refracting the candlelight until I was completely invisible, and slid quietly out through the open window crack into the cool night air of the capital.
Inside the office, Bae Suzy stood alone by the desk for a long time. She looked down at her leather armor, then smoothed down the fabric of her shorts, a sudden shiver running through her core once more. She reached down, her fingers tracing the exact path my cold scales had left along her skin, only to find the linen beneath her armor completely ruined and dripping wet.
"A ventilation shaft..." Suzy whispered to herself into the dark, empty room, her full lips curving into a deep and intensely sexy smile as her black eyes gleamed in the moonlight. "You arrogant little worm. You better bring your best skills tomorrow morning, because I am going to make you work for every single coin."