She'd been on my couch in human form for three hours.

I was watching something. She had opinions about it. The lamp was aimed at the space she'd said it should be aimed at. The knives in the kitchen were still wrong and she hadn't mentioned it twice.

At some point I clocked that she'd held the form the whole evening. She'd come in, become Amber at the door, and stayed Amber. It was a choice, and the choice cost her something I didn't know the size of.

---

"You know you don't have to do that here," I said.

She looked at me.

"The form. The apartment's private. The neighbors don't pay attention." I paused. "Whatever you're comfortable with."

She kept looking at me. Not suspicion. She hadn't expected this particular sentence.

I waited.

---

The instant after that she was in her true form.

I can't describe the transition because there wasn't one. One second she was Amber on my couch. The next she wasn't. Crimson skin in the lamp light. White hair. Wings folded compact. Amber-gold eyes with no whites to them. Her tail laid out on the couch cushion in its usual way. Sitting in my living room at nine on a Wednesday, looking at me.

"You're beautiful," I said.

I meant it the way I'd tell someone their drive was corrupted. Not performing the observation. It was just the read.

She was quiet for a beat I didn't measure.

Then she reached for the remote.

"What do you want to watch."

---

Her tail went to the couch cushion.

Same movement as always. The body underneath it was completely different. The behavior was not.

The lamp was aimed correctly. The knives were still wrong. I had said the thing I said. I wasn't going to add to it.

I stayed very still.

---

She didn't shift back. Every time before, she'd been human when things moved in this direction. Not tonight. She stood up from the couch and walked to the bedroom and the walking was not ambiguous.

I followed.

---

She lay on the bed and reached into the nightstand drawer. She came up with a small bullet vibrator. She'd put it there at some point and not told me.

She turned it on. The hum filled the room.

She spread her legs and pressed the head of it to her clit and looked at me.

"Watch me. I want you to see this."

Her red skin against the white sheets. Her legs open wide, her pussy wet and bare, the bullet buzzing against her clit. Her other hand on her tit, the silver nipple ring pinched between her fingers. Her hips lifted small rolls into the pressure. Her tail curled and uncurled on the bedsheet. She worked herself while I stood in the doorway and her amber-gold eyes stayed on me the whole time.

Her sounds built. Not the structured sounds of the first weeks. Rawer. Coming apart faster. She came with the bullet pressed hard against her clit, her back arching off the bed, her wings spreading wide across the sheets, the old language spilling out of her.

She didn't turn the bullet off. She looked at me.

"Come here."

---

She went down on me slow. She took my cock in her mouth and worked the shaft with her tongue, then slid lower. She took my balls in her mouth one at a time, rolled them, sucked, her tongue warm and wet. Her tail wrapped around my cock and stroked me while her mouth worked my balls. The tip of her tail circled the head of my cock in precise passes, squeezing in small pulses, while her tongue moved down across my taint, slow and deliberate.

Her tail was doing things I had no reference for. The precision of it. The grip, the pressure changes, the way it worked the head of my cock while her mouth was somewhere else entirely. *I've been significantly underestimating the tail.* The thought didn't survive what happened next.

She looked up at me with the amber-gold eyes, her hand cupping my balls, her tail still stroking me.

"Your cock is mine. Every part of you is mine."

---

She pulled me on top. I pushed into her pussy and she was wetter than she'd ever been. The bullet still buzzing against her clit, pressed flat between our bodies. The combination took her sounds apart inside ten seconds. Her tail wrapped around the back of my thigh, pulling me deeper. Her wings were fully spread under her, filling the bed. She dug her nails into my back. Sharper now, drawing lines. Her pussy clenched around my cock, the bullet hummed between us, her legs locked around me.

"Don't stop. Don't stop. Fuck me. I'm going to come on your cock."

She came hard. The bullet and my cock and her whole body shaking, the old language raw and long. I kept going. She was still coming when I felt the circuit catch. The fullness, the heat pouring through me into her. The sigil flared bright on her abdomen.

---

She rolled me onto my back. Cowgirl. My cock in her pussy and the bullet still in her hand against her clit. Her tits above me, the silver nipple rings catching the lamp light. Her tail around my wrist. She rode me until she came again. The second, her voice coming apart on the way down. Then she lifted off and turned around.

Reverse cowgirl. She took my cock in her hand and guided it to her ass. She sank down onto me slow. The tight heat of it, her body taking me completely. She held the bullet against her pussy while she rode my cock in her ass. I had her red back in front of me, her wings folded, the point where my cock disappeared into her each time she pushed down. The hum of the bullet and her sounds in the old language and the wet sound of her pussy and the tight grip of her ass around me.

She came a third time. Shaking. The sigil at full brightness. I came inside her ass.

She turned the bullet off. She set it on the nightstand. She lay down next to me and her tail curled around my ankle and her breathing took a long time to come back.

This time her eyes stayed on me through the whole thing. Clear and present and chosen. She didn't lose it. The first time she'd come apart. The second the same. This time she held it, and I could see her holding it, and the difference was the whole point.

---

After.

She was Amber again. I didn't see the shift. I never do. The light changed and when I looked over she was in the form I'd met her in. Platinum hair, blue eyes.

No explanation offered.

I didn't ask.

For a while neither of us said anything. The lamp was at the correct angle. The parking structure outside was doing its usual flickering.

She fell asleep before I did. The tail was there: the asleep version, the one without intention.

In the morning she was still there. Still in true form, wings tucked compact against the headboard. She wasn't scrambling to cover anything. She was looking at the ceiling.

"Coffee," I said.

"Please."

That was new. She hadn't said please before. I sat with it for a second — the small specific weight of the word, on a Wednesday morning, in my bedroom, from a thing that had been on my couch in human form for three hours the night before because she'd thought she had to be.

I went and made it.