She knew about the roof.

I'd been in the building nine months and had never been to the roof. The door on the top floor had an access bar. I'd assumed it was alarmed.

She'd gone up in week six. Curious about the sight lines.

"The door isn't alarmed," she said.

"How do you know."

"I opened it."

We were on the couch at one in the morning. Saturday had run long in a good way. She was looser at this hour. Less managed. More her.

"Do you want to see it?" she said.

---

Low wall, tar paper, the AC equipment in the northeast corner. Koreatown after midnight: still alive, 6th Street visible, traffic still moving on Vermont, Silver Lake and Los Feliz a collected warmth beyond. Farther out: downtown.

She went to the low wall and sat on it.

I stood back from the edge.

"It's secure," she said.

"I know it's structurally secure."

She looked at me. Then back at the city.

I went and stood next to the wall. Not on it. Adjacent.

The air was cleaner up here. City sounds but different. Street-level noise gone. The AC unit hummed.

"What do you remember from up here," I said. "From before."

She was quiet a moment. "It was smaller. The 1940s. Maybe four stories in this block. The grocery on the corner was a pharmacy. There was a ballroom two blocks east."

I thought about that. "You were here then."

"I've been in Koreatown most of the century." She looked at the towers. "Koreatown wasn't Koreatown. Then it was, more and more. I stayed."

"Why."

"It kept changing. Nowhere in the city changed faster." She looked at the skyline. "Most places slow down. This one didn't."

"What changed most."

Quiet longer this time. "People stopped looking at the sky. Not just here. Everywhere. By the time the phones came it was already happening. But I noticed it here first. The way people stopped looking up."

I looked up. The sky above Koreatown at one in the morning had maybe six visible stars. The rest was the light signature of a city of four million.

"Is that why you came up here," I said. "To look."

She turned and looked at me.

The expression was the one I still didn't have a name for. Warm. Open. Not managing any of it.

"You still look up," she said. "When there's something to see. You stopped and looked at the eclipse. You pointed at the coyote."

I remembered the coyote. Third week, coming back from dinner. It had been in the alley behind the building, just standing there. I'd stopped, and she'd looked at me looking at it.

"That was a coyote," I said.

"In Koreatown."

"That's unusual."

"Yes." She was still looking at me. "You looked at it for forty seconds before it moved. You weren't scared. You were interested."

"Coyotes are interesting."

"Nine hundred years," she said. "Most people aren't interested. They want the coyote to leave so the alley is normal again." She turned back to the city. "You wanted the alley to stay interesting."

I thought about this.

"Is that the thing," I said. "The tell."

She didn't answer. The AC unit ran.

"Part of it," she said.

The AC unit ran longer. She was looking at the city and I was looking at her looking at the city.

"My name isn't Amber."

I waited.

"Amber is the part on the driver's license. PeakForm. The dentist. It's also me, the way someone can be the version that fits on a form. It isn't made up." A pause. "But it isn't the name."

"What's the name."

"Inara."

"Inara."

"Yes."

I sat with it. The skyline did its thing.

"Who else knows."

"No one you'll run into."

"Just me."

"Just you."

"And in public."

"In public, Amber. Always."

She was watching me take it. Not braced. Open.

"Inara," I said. To hear it.

She made a warm sound.

---

I don't know when the conversation ended. The silence changed.

She was looking at the city. I was looking at her. At some point she was just looking at me.

She moved first. She always did.

Her hands on my jacket, pulling me toward her. She kissed me hard. Not the careful version. Like she wanted it and was taking it.

My hands on her waist. The low wall behind her, the city behind that. She ran warm, always, and at one in the morning on a roof in Koreatown she was warm and her mouth was on mine and nothing about it was careful.

"Here," she said.

"On a roof."

"On our roof. It's been ours since week six."

I thought about that. Our roof, which I hadn't known about until an hour ago.

I let her pull me down.

---

The tar paper was not comfortable. We learned that fast.

Her hands under my shirt, her mouth on my neck. She was warm underneath me and her legs were around me and she was pulling at my belt when her shoulder blade hit something on the roof surface.

"Inside," she said.

"Inside," I said.

Down the stairs and into my apartment. By the time I locked the door she'd shifted.

True form. By choice. Crimson skin, white hair, horns, wings folded against her back. Her tits heavy and round, the silver nipple rings catching the hallway light. She was pulling off her clothes before I had my shoes off. The tattoos down her ribs, curving under her tits, trailing along her hips. Her tail swaying behind her.

She pushed me toward the bedroom.

---

She went down on me slowly. The rooftop was still on both of us — the quiet of it, the six stars, the things she'd said. She took my cock in her mouth and worked her tongue along the underside, then took me deeper. All the way down, her lips stretching around the base, her throat tight and hot around me. She held it there. Swallowed. Then pulled back and went down again.

She moved lower. Took my balls into her mouth one at a time, rolling them with her tongue, sucking gently, the wet heat of her mouth on me. Her tail wrapped around my cock and stroked me while she worked. The heart-shaped tip circling the head in slow passes, smearing the pre-cum around. A succubus licking my balls while her tail jerked me off. My brain had nothing for this.

She went lower still. Her tongue dragged across my taint, slow, deliberate. Then lower. She pressed her tongue against my rim. Circled it. Her tail still working my cock. Her hand cupping my balls. She looked up at me with the amber-gold eyes while her tongue was on my hole.

"Tell me if you want me to stop," she said.

I didn't tell her to stop.

She tongued my rim with slow, deliberate strokes. Then worked her way back up: taint, balls, the underside of my shaft, and took my cock back into her throat. The whole sequence. Top to bottom and back. Nine hundred years of knowing what men want, and she was proving every one of them.

---

She pulled me on top. Crimson skin hot under my hands, wings spread beneath her on the bed, horns framing her face on the pillow. I pushed into her and her pussy was hotter than before, wetter, tighter, the slick of her coating my cock on the first stroke. I could feel it running down onto the sheets.

Her tail wrapped around my thigh, pulling me deeper. Her nails dug into my back. Sharper than they used to be. Not claws, but close.

"Harder," she said. "I can take more than the human body. Don't hold back."

I didn't hold back. Long strokes, pulling almost all the way out and driving back in. The bed frame hit the wall. Her wings shifted beneath her. Her tail tightened around my thigh, pulling me in on every stroke. She made sounds that weren't English. Her voice losing all structure. Her tits moved with every thrust, heavy and full, the silver nipple rings catching the lamplight. I watched my cock sliding in and out of her, the slick of her on me, the wet sound of it filling the room. Her pussy clenched around my cock and her hips rose to meet me and the neighbors were going to have opinions about Saturday night.

I pulled out. She knew what I wanted. She cupped her tits, huge, H-cups, crimson skin, and pushed them together. I came on her chest. Across the crimson skin, across the silver nipple rings, a stripe up to her throat.

She dragged her finger through it, brought it to her mouth, licked it clean. Then rubbed the rest in: across her tits, her stomach, slow circles, like it belonged there. She lay there with my cum on her crimson skin and her tail around my ankle. Something out of art people don't hang in their living rooms.

"I'm going to need a minute," I said.

"Take your time." The amber-gold eyes. Warm. Open. "I'm not going anywhere."

She wasn't.

---

Later we were on the couch. She was in true form and didn't shift back.

"The coyote. The eclipse. The roof." She paused. "You." A beat. "Things are more interesting than I expected."

Nine hundred years, and things had gotten more interesting.

"The eclipse was a good one," I said.

She made a warm sound.

Her tail was around my ankle. Neither of us was going to sleep yet. I hadn't expected to mind that. I didn't mind it.

"Our roof," I said.

"Ours," she said.