"Well, you're not a virgin, are you?" Anna asked me with an amused smirk from behind the rim of her coffee cup.
Very rarely did I feel as though I was under attack in my own living room, but this was definitely one of those times. My usual afternoon ritual of coffee and studying for classes with my friend Anna had drifted off-track into casual conversation like always, but after a tangent on love life at university I was now having to field some awfully personal questions.
"No!" I sputtered defensively, my lower body anxiously slithering around the base of the beanbag I was lounging on. "I've had two human girlfriends, it's just that the last one was two years ago! I swear I've told you this before."
"Oh? It's news to me," she giggled slightly, that irritating grin on her face persisting. "And here I thought you were more experienced."
"How much more experienced do you expect me to be?" I scoffed humorously in an attempt to regain some hold on the discussion. "You know Anna, it almost sounds like you're making sexist assumptions about male romantic habits."
"Honestly, I'm surprised you've never been with another Lamia."
My slightly jovial expression immediately shattered into one of confusion when I processed her observation. She was right—in all my twenty-two years I had only ever pursued human women.
"You've never even thought about it before!" Anna observed, reading the look on my face. "How is that possible?"
"I don't know!" I said hastily. "What about you, huh? You ever dated within the species?"
Her smug expression didn't falter at all, and I knew immediately that I had failed to find a weak spot. "Why yes, my very first boyfriend was a male Lamia, I'll have you know."
"Bet you went for a softie," I mumbled with the roll of my eyes.
"What was that?" Anna said sharply, raising one of her eyebrows and hitting me with the full effect of her dark brown eyes' piercing glare.
"Constrictors always go for the soft ones," I elaborated, motioning to Anna's lower half—an impressively long and muscular snake's body covered in green and black-spotted scales which identified her as an Anaconda-species Lamia. "You probably dated a corn snake."
She immediately broke into a scowling blush. Bingo.
"You did!" I cackled maliciously. "You had some skinny redhead for your first man! I bet he was real sweet. But the things you must have done to that poor boy…"
"Shut up!" Anna snapped, her face growing redder by the second. "You don't know anything about that!"
"Your little frown there is telling me quite a lot," I shot back. "It looks to me like I'm not far off the mark."
"And it looks to me like you're trying to change the subject!" she retorted, suddenly looking quite mischievous again. "You've really never had eyes for another Lamia?"
I bit my lip out of frustration. In a flash, I was back in the hot seat. "Look, I don't really have an answer, okay? Humans are always the ones with eyes for our kind, so I just sort of took it the other way around!"
"Aw, c'mon! I'm sure a few Lamia girls have had eyes for you at some point! That cobra blood makes you awfully handsome, after all…" she trailed off, eyes drifting to the black-and-white patterned scales of my nervously shifting lower body.
Anna's words made my gut twist in a strange way. I had never heard her talk about me in such a borderline flirtatious way. "Anna, I—"
"Haven't you ever been curious, Theo?" she continued, looking thoroughly lost in her own world of debaucherous dreams. "Thought about what it might be like to wrap yourself around a girl who can do the same?"
I opened my mouth to try and choke out some kind of reply, which was when I picked up on a shift in the air. Though all Lamias are perfectly capable of smelling through their noses, we tend to trust our tongues a lot more for assessing scents. On instinct, my tongue quickly flicked out to sample the atmosphere, then drawing back in to press up against the roof of my mouth. When it made contact, my senses exploded with a sweetness that was thick and overpowering, sending a bizarre twinge through my core.
Anna noticed my reaction—a sudden and powerful shake of my head and shoulders—and snapped out of her dreamy gaze with a look of horror. "Shit!" she yelped, setting down her coffee and grabbing my hands with a deeply worried expression. "Theodore! What's going on?"
Her hands felt incredibly soft, so gentle in holding mine that it seemed to be all I could focus on. "I… I don't know…" I groaned quietly, feeling the beginnings of a headache. "Some kind of scent in the air. It's… sweet. Really strong, too."
"Oh, no no no!" Anna cried, her beautiful face suddenly looking quite guilt-stricken. I don't think I had ever appreciated how pretty her eyes looked before. "I must have started giving off pheromones by accident! I'm so sorry!"
I couldn't help but chuckle weakly, coughing slightly as the heady sweetness continued to saturate my senses. "So… is this how you reel in all the men in your life?"
"Very funny, idiot," she scoffed, looking irritated but relieved that I still had my wits about me. "It's a problem I have, from time to time. I've always been bad at keeping my pheromones restrained, so sometimes I shed them without realizing it. Usually when I get… carried away."
"You mean horny?" I croaked, sinking back into my beanbag chair and massaging my temples in a futile attempt at dispelling the pink fog which seemed to be sticking to the inside of my head. "I could have sworn you were having some dirty thoughts about me for a second there."
"Maybe I was," she mumbled quietly.
"What?" I coughed, sitting upright with surprise.
"I was!" Anna squeaked nervously. "I've got a crush on you, idiot! You seriously haven't taken the hint?"
My heart felt like it seized up, and I froze in place with a shocked expression. "N-No, not really…"
"God you're stupid sometimes, Theodore," she murmured with a gentle smile, leaning forward to take my face in her hands. "Yes, I have a crush on you. I like you, dummy. Do you think I spend all this time at your place for my health?"
There was a silence between us for a moment that felt like it lasted hours. Her deep brown eyes stared softly into my own faintly yellow ones, the distance between our faces being almost nothing. My heart was pounding, head still spinning from the pheromones in the air, and without thinking I leaned forward to kiss her.