She came in and looked at the apartment the way she'd looked at it the first time: not curious, more like a spot check. Framed print, coaster, window. Everything confirmed.

"I wanted to understand what happened," she said. "Professionally. I've got questions about the mechanism."

"Sure," I said.

She looked at me. I looked at her. The professional framing lasted about two seconds.

---

She crossed the floor first. Same as before: no ambiguity about who was moving toward whom. Her hand went to my shoulder and I was already turning toward her and her mouth was on mine and the research was over.

Her top came off and I had my hands on her tits before it hit the floor. Full and heavy and warm, the nipples stiffening under my thumbs. I pulled her closer, my mouth on her neck, her waist under my hands, and she made a sound against my ear that had nothing professional left in it. Her hand went to my cock through my jeans and gripped.

She dropped to her knees. My cock was in her mouth in seconds. Not slow this time, not teasing. She took me deep on the first stroke, her lips tight around my shaft, her tongue working the underside, her hands pulling my jeans down my thighs. The wet sound of her mouth on me filled the hallway.

I pulled her up and she wrapped her legs around me and I carried her to the bedroom. She was already wet when I pushed into her: slick and tight, her pussy gripping me as I slid in to the base. She gasped. Her back arched and her tits pressed against my chest and her hips started moving before I did.

Then something changed. Faster than Sunday. Maybe thirty seconds in her rhythm went ragged. Her hands stopped doing organized things. Her voice dropped into sounds that had nothing to do with nine hundred years of practice.

That fullness from Sunday was back, building faster this time. Not draining. The opposite, heat moving toward me, accumulating. I didn't have a name for it. I didn't care.

She pulled back just enough to look at me.

Then she wasn't Amber.

Not at the end this time. Earlier. Somewhere in the middle, with her over me and her hands on my chest: one moment the woman, the next moment not. Red skin saturated all the way through. White hair falling forward. The horns swept back, crimson to near-black at the tips. Wings extending from her back, the bone-white frame and deep red membrane catching the apartment light. Eyes amber-gold all the way through, no white anywhere, looking at me.

She looked at me like she was waiting for something.

I pulled her back down.

The sound she made when I pushed back into her: I don't have a word for it. Her wings went to full extension, too wide for the room. She didn't notice. The tail found my ankle. The sigil on her lower abdomen was glowing, bright against the red skin.

I fucked her like that. Red skin under my hands, the wings open over the bed, the sigil bright against her abdomen. Her pussy was tighter now, hotter, her whole body gripping me differently. She rode me with her hands on my chest, her tits, fuller now, the nipple rings catching the light, swaying above me, the wet sound of her on my cock filling the room. Her hips moved like nothing she was doing was deliberate anymore. The sigil pulsed brighter with every stroke.

She came saying something in a language I didn't know. The sigil peaked. Her wings shuddered and her pussy clenched around me and I came inside her.

---

Afterward I stayed still.

Wings folded down against her back, not retracted, just compact, the right wing angled against the headboard. The tail had settled somewhere. The sigil had gone dormant. She lay in my bed in true form with her eyes open, staring at my ceiling.

The ceiling crack. Still there.

She hadn't expected to still be here. I could see it in her face. Not distress, just surprise. She'd come over to understand what had happened. That had been an hour ago. She was still here.

I kept my breathing even. I didn't say anything about her still being there.

Something quiet, almost to herself.

"That wasn't supposed to happen again."

I didn't say anything.

"When I feed, I'm in control. Always. The sex is real. The pleasure's real. But I manage it. I hold the channel, I take what I need, and I decide what my body does the whole way through." She was still looking at the ceiling. "I don't have orgasms during a feed. Not the kind where I stop being able to decide."

She turned her head and looked at me. The amber-gold eyes, no whites. The horns pressed into my pillow.

"Sunday I did. That's why I changed — I lost the form because I lost everything else with it." A pause. "Tonight it happened again. Faster."

I looked at her. Red skin. White hair on my pillowcase. The tail doing something near the foot of the bed.

"I don't know what you are," she said. "I thought I did. I came here tonight to find out." She looked at the ceiling crack. "I still don't have an answer."

The "there's more" from Wednesday. This was the more.

After a while I said: "Do you want coffee."

She looked at me.

"Yes."

---

She went to the bathroom. I got up and started the coffee maker. The same mediocre brand. It ran through its cycle and made the same sounds it always made and produced the same coffee from the same grounds.

A few minutes passed. When she came out she was back in human form — platina blonde, blue eyes. She looked like someone who'd made a decision and wasn't ready to say what it was.

I handed her a mug. She looked at it, then at the bag on the counter.

A sip.

"Still," she said.

I almost laughed.

At eight-thirty she was still there. She left around nine. Neither of us mentioned the extra time.

I watched her go. The door closing on her, on a Wednesday at nine, was not a thing I had expected to mind. I minded it a little. I put that away for later.

I thought about the ceiling crack for a while after she left. I would tell the building manager on Monday.