Salsa grimaced and punched the cold, hard, uncaring wall that blocked the stairway behind her.

She’d bounded up the plush stairs after Cira, but when she realized she’d never catch up to the velociraptor gal she stopped on each floor to look for Fiona. After two floors with no sign of her, a steel shutter had crashed over the passage behind her, leaving her in the lobby of whatever floor she was on and the team further separated.

Salsa sniffed the air, hoping to catch a scent to lead her. The hotel was shrouded in as much dust as darkness, but she caught a whiff of sweet, tart, pungent, minty, spicy—in short, she could smell food down one hall. A slight burning and wax—candles?

As she jogged down the hall Salsa sniffed for anything familiar. She recognized a sharp, clean lab smell with a hint of stale dust and nervous sweat: Fiona’s scent. She ran faster; Fiona supported their efforts with good information, but on her own she usually got in over her head.

Salsa burst through a door to another stairway. With another sniff she loped down the stairs following Fiona’s scent. The food and candle scent also grew stronger—as did something new, a sweet and sweaty perfume almost noxious in strength. She swung open the door at the strongest scent and strode into a dark room with tables and wooden chairs. Near a fallen chair and bigger plush chair smoke trailed from a table, on which Salsa found melted candles. She brushed a finger over the moist candle wick. Someone had just put out the flame.

She looked up and gasped.

“Fiona!”

A crimson tail patterned with rosy hearts lifted Fiona to the ceiling. She appeared to be hugging it, but the tail clearly gripped her as it curled around her legs and chest and arms and neck. Fiona had informed the team enough about snakes for Salsa to know that regardless of how it looked, she might not be hugging that tail of her own free will.

Salsa bounded off the table with agility to put a hare to shame. A hand’s reach away from Fiona, a thicker heap of the red tail dropped on her. She fell with the scaly weight and smashed into a table below.

With a moan Salsa stumbled among the table pieces. Her head and body pulsed, but not from pain—her rough tail was too tough for that. When that serpentine tail touched her she’d felt a wave of sensual pleasure flow through her. She shivered to shrug it off. Best not to touch the tail and whatever toxin those scales had.

Salsa glanced up to see Fiona taken through a trapdoor in the ceiling. The owner of the tail descended from the ceiling. Her tight top and hot pants strained against her full breasts and swaggering hips. Had they met in a club Salsa might have approached her, but she bared her teeth and steeled herself for a fight.

The lamia chuckled and flicked a forked tongue.

“Now, little sharky,” Jb said with a chastising wag of her finger, “you weren’t supposed to find me yet.”

“Release Fiona!” Salsa shouted. She pointed an accusing finger at the lamia. “Let go of everyone you’ve kidnapped!”

“I don’t think she wants to leave. I think she’d rather stay and worship her love goddess.” Jb grinned and stretched, twirling her full figure and toned body. “Wouldn’t you rather stay and worship me, too?”

Salsa leapt at Jb and punched. Jb swayed aside, and Salsa staggered onto another table. As Jb lowered to the floor Salsa turned, ready to charge. She couldn’t let the lamia’s smooth voice distract her. She looked over Jb’s body but stopped: she really shouldn’t let all her tight curves distract her, or—she glanced at Jb’s tail—she risked letting those tight curves grab around her.

She sniffed the air. Jb’s scent filled the room and even overpowered the candle smoke. Pheromones, Salsa thought. If she fancied herself some type of goddess she’d have a lot of tricks up her glove.

Following a glance to her case of chemical supplies Salsa ran to the broken table where she’d left it. She dove under Jb’s tail to her supply case and threw a glass bottle at Jb. Jb blocked it with the glowing pod on her shoulder and the bottle shattered. Thick smoke spread through the room.

“Trying to avoid looking at my glory?” Jb chuckled.

Salsa sniffed the air. She could still smell Jb’s cool sweat and scales, but she smelled less sweet and perfumed. The smoke neutralized the pheromones, and unless Jb had heightened senses, she’d have a harder time seeing Salsa.

The shark darted among the tables and circled around Jb, whose movement grew stiff, uncertain. Jb swung her tail and knocked over the tables, but Salsa leapt over it. When she circled close she leapt to attack Jb.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Jb said as if chastising a silly girl, and she blocked Salsa with her arms. The shark aimed a punch for her head. Jb blocked with her rubbery shoulder pod, which released dazzling pink mist. Salsa paid it no mind: the smoke would stop any pheromonal effects. As Jb’s hair twirled around them she swung an arm through the mist and caught Salsa in a wrestle. Her hidden muscles fought Salsa’s, not enough to overpower the shark but enough to take her by surprise. She grazed Salsa’s head with a swing of her hand.

Salsa knew not to tangle with a snake lest she whip her ensnaring tail around her. She kicked at Jb to disentangle them. Once free Salsa leapt back and crashed over a chair to the floor.

Jb was stronger than she looked even without the tail. Salsa needed a way to tip the odds in her favor.

The shrink formula! That should do the trick. She dashed back to her supply case. Her first batch had to be taken internally to work, but that usually wasn’t feasible except against monsters with a mouth the size of a dump truck, so she’d developed one that worked by contact. She slipped the glass vial under her lab coat and ran around Jb for an opening.

“Now, my pretty,” Jb said, whipping her tail at Salsa to grab her, “why don’t we call it quits? Let’s just hug it out, let’s kiss and make up.”

“No chance in hell!” Salsa leapt over Jb and hurled the vial at her. As the formula drenched Jb she gasped and grimaced.

“What is this stuff?” Jb flicked it off her hands. “It stings, like my skin is tightening–” She choked.

Salsa grinned as Jb shrank, from her head to her clothes, which unfortunately didn’t shrink faster—that would’ve been hilarious. Jb did look ridiculous with a huge tail past her shrinking body, but the shrinkage trickled down her tail as she dropped to half Salsa’s height, a quarter, smaller still.

“Oh me!” Jb said, hands to her face. “This is unexpected. This is incredible.”

Salsa stomped next to the ankle-high Jb and plucked her by the tail between a finger and thumb. She grinned her rows of sharp teeth at Jb.

“Not so tough now, are you? You’re looking a lot like a strand of spaghetti now.”

Salsa’s next words caught in her throat.

Jb started giggling.

She’d expected the lamia to put up a tough act or beg for mercy.

Instead she hid behind her twin-tail hair like a nervous schoolgirl!

“Oh my, Salsa, you’re even more amazing than I knew!” the diminutive Jb squeaked.

“I am?” Salsa shifted from frown to smile to frown. “I mean, yeah, I am! I mean—wait, how did you—”

She assumed Fiona mentioned everyone’s names.

“I-I’ve been a bad girl, haven’t I?” Jb said.

She peeked out from behind her hair. Salsa stared—Jb was blushing.

“I’m sorry,” Jb said. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I just—I wanted to bring you here.”

“You wanted to bring us here?” Salsa furrowed her brow. Did Jb need something taken care of, or was this a trick?

“You.” Jb hugged and stroked Salsa’s finger. “I wanted to bring you here.” She covered her blushing face in her gloved hands. “I saw you months ago, a big, strong, beautiful shark gal, confident, powerful, smart in her coat and smart-looking in that sexy top and shorts, with a strong, sexy tail—”

Salsa blushed.

Did this lamia really do all this just because she was too embarrassed to say hi?

Salsa tried to remember if she’d seen Jb somewhere before. Maybe . . .

She cleared her throat. “Okay, okay, but I have to—we’re gonna have to take you in. I mean, keep you under wraps—”

She lost her voice as Jb wrapped her tail around her finger. She’d never felt such a pleasing massage on her rough skin before, like a solid, squeezing strand of lotion. She groaned and coughed.

“First we need to get everyone you’ve taken here out!” she barked. She had to stay in control of the situation.

“Of course.” Jb gave a shrinking bow. “I’m sorry for causing all this trouble.” She snapped her fingers.

Salsa looked up. She had no way of knowing if Jb really— She stumbled as the communicator in her pocket beeped.

“Salsa, are you there?” Akames said through the communicator. “We found everyone. Fiona, too. Top floor. They’re all groggy but safe.”

“Oh.”

Salsa looked blankly at the communicator. Was that it, then? She looked at Jb.

“I have the one who did it, I think.”

“The victims said something about a goddess,” Twilight said. “I thought they were talking about me, but then they snapped out of it.”

Salsa grinned to Jb.

“So you did free—” She shook her head and glared at the communicator. “Wait, why do I have this? How is it even working? The communicators—I thought they were all a mess back at the office.” Cira had tried to ‘upgrade’ them shortly before they left.

“I put them back together again just before we left!” Cira said.

“Oh. Right.”

That made sense, she broke and fixed things fast.

But then, Salsa wondered, why hadn’t they stayed in contact with Fiona when they got separated, with Cira, with everyone?

A flash of red and pink broke her train of thought.

Her concern seemed unimportant anyhow. Cira fixed the communicators before they left, and that’s all there was to it.

“All right, then,” Salsa said. Jb smiled to her, and she smiled back. “Let’s meet back with my team. I’m not sure how I’ll explain this to them, though.”

She moved to place Jb in her pocket, but Jb swung up and kissed her on the nose. Salsa blushed as Jb cuddled her snout.

“My dear Salsa,” Jb said, “I’m quite cold. Do you have someplace warm you could keep me?”

Salsa grinned.

“Lucky for you, you’re the perfect size for the warmest seat in the house.” Salsa opened her mouth wide and exhaled. “Feel that hot breath?” Jb inhaled and moaned. Salsa stuck her tongue out, saliva dripping off it. “You happen to be small enough to fit in one bite.”

Salsa lowered Jb like a spaghetti strand onto her tongue. She tasted like a rich dessert, a sweetmeat with actual meat, scales scraping and massaging her taste buds with pleasure. As Salsa pulled back her tongue Jb kissed it, and she felt a surge of sweet numbing tingles, like rich chocolate melting over her tongue. Salsa blushed and hung her tongue out.

She wasn’t supposed to be the one to blush!

“Your tongue is so soft and warm,” Jb said as she hugged it. She slithered and wrapped her tail around the tongue.

Salsa blushed harder. Jb tasted like the sweetest, savoriest ambrosia, like spiced chocolate with a sensual, squirming texture as she rubbed and wrapped her body around Salsa’s tongue. She felt a fragrant mist spill through her nose and mouth and sighed at the luscious pleasure coursing through her senses, alternating her body between relaxed and excited. She hung her tongue out, unwilling to swallow—to swallow would be to not have Jb on her tongue.

“And your brain is soft and warm too, isn’t it?” Jb giggled as she stroked a hand along Salsa’s snout.

She stared at Jb’s arm. How had she reached so high? Salsa stumbled at a growing weight over her tongue, from a spaghetti strand to a cinnamon roll to a slithering submarine sandwich. Jb’s tail slipped off her tongue and over her shoulders, heavenly scales squeezing in a growing massage. A single touch radiated sensual pleasure down her shoulders like the creamiest of lotions, and her arms hung like stones.

Something was wrong. Jb shouldn’t be growing. Yet it felt right, and Salsa sighed in dreamy pleasure as Jb stroked her face with her gloved hands. Jb rose over her snout and ran a hand over her long ears. Salsa shivered as Jb’s hold grew.

“A goddess has an impeccable taste, you know,” Jb said. “The sweetest ambrosia, divine to taste, divine to feel.”

She reached normal size and squeezed Salsa’s neck in her scaly tail, which piled around her in heavy coils as it grasped her arms and legs and tail and chest. She weighed down Salsa’s shoulders, bound her arms, squeezed her legs, slithered under her lab coat for more skin contact, and she curled her tail around Salsa’s in subsuming coils.

Jb directed her gaze to her eyes, which pulsed with red and pink hearts. Salsa’s thoughts drained away as the hearts filled her mind with lust. Jb’s growing body—squeezing tail, flowing hair, stroking hands, bulging breasts—hovered over her and filled her mind.

“Anyone who gets a taste of a love goddess,” said Jb as she traced a spiral with the tip of her sweet tail over Salsa’s still-hanging tongue, “finds they simply can’t resist.”

Salsa stared as the world warped around her and filled with hearts.

For a moment she thought she saw a different scene: her face planted against the smooth wooden floor, Jb above her laughing with a cruel smile, a message at the edge of her vision: Brainwashing 74% complete.

Her vision shifted back to Jb’s sweetly smiling majesty as swirling, spinning, pulsing hearts danced around her and permeated her world. Jb’s pink mist filled the air, tickling Salsa’s senses with promises of rosy bliss for sweet surrender.

“Let me show you my world, dear Salsa.” Jb’s words echoed through her head, her rich voice like molasses slowing Salsa’s thoughts. “My dimension of love, where I am from. Wouldn’t you like to come with me? To follow me, follow me forever?”

“What?” Salsa muttered, eyes pulsating with hearts in a mirror of Jb’s. She tried to think, but Jb’s words spun through her head, latched on to her thoughts and transformed them into love. The more she tried to think the more she thought of Jb, serving Jb, obeying Jb. “No, I was . . . You . . . I can’t . . .”

“You can do anything I want you to, little sharky,” Jb said.

With a start Salsa realized that wasn’t just a nickname. Jb grew and rose bigger than Salsa. Her tail expanded around her in a heavy sea, a sea of love Salsa sank into. As Jb’s growing coils enveloped her Salsa collapsed onto fluffy clouds. She questioned where the hardwood floor went before Jb’s influence blew that memory away. Her divine tail buried Salsa in bliss. She bowed to the powerful lamia, mind swimming as she drowned in divine coils. Her rough skin felt like jelly under Jb’s scales.

“You don’t want to deny an all-powerful love goddess, do you?” Jb cupped Salsa’s chin in a hand, then a finger as big as a hand.

Salsa tried to deny her love goddess, but her thoughts twisted away from her control, her gaze caught on Jb’s growing form. She could be crushed under any part of Jb’s body: her tail, her breasts, her lips, all glowing divine by the rosy light of her shoulder pods. Her river-sized hair draped along Salsa and she felt herself swept away in a stream of love.

“I can make your wildest dreams and deepest fantasies come true.”

Jb curled her long tongue under Salsa and wrapped it around her, cradling her arms and legs and squeezing her tail and body in dripping coils. The shark grinned mindlessly as her head and body sank against Jb’s soft, slithering, squeezing tongue like a moist, moving blanket. Her warm breath swept over Salsa like a hot bakery making Valentine’s chocolates, melting her mind like chocolate goo.

“As long as you let me turn those dreams and fantasies into mine.”

Salsa’s mind dropped into a drunken love overload, every thought overwhelmed with lustful desire to let Jb have her way with her as her mind flooded with hypnotic passion. Her thoughts dissolved—her mission, her team, her memories, all subsumed by love and lust for her love goddess, senses swayed to Jb’s control, hopes and desires transformed, reshaped.

Jb lay forward before Salsa, the size of a building to her, high hips and swelling breasts big enough to squash her. In one hand Jb rested her head, and in the other she lifted a heart pendulum Salsa could have curled onto like a bed. She smirked.

“Follow me. Follow your love goddess.”

She swayed the pendulum, the heavy weight as heavy as Salsa’s numb mind.

“I . . . yeah . . .” she mumbled, “follow my love goddess . . .”

“You shall worship your love goddess,” Jb said.

“I . . . I shall . . .” Salsa smiled wide, tongue hanging out. “I shall worship my love goddess.”

Salsa’s mind dropped as Jb tightened her control and her tongue. Her hot breath and sweet mist swirled in Salsa’s senses until her mind sank into sticky hypnotic bliss. Jb lifted her to her mouth, and she swallowed Salsa into her divine dimension of hypnotic love.

The hypno-goggles Jb had slipped over Salsa’s eyes during their brief wrestle completed the brainwashing. Salsa grinned with hanging tongue, staring mindlessly at the hypnotic visor’s imagery, more real to her than the old reality. Jb slipped the goggles off her sweaty face and replaced them on her forehead, but Salsa’s eyes continued to obediently pulse with hypnotic hearts. Jb smirked and cooed to Salsa about what a good girl she was obeying the visor’s programming, and she traced a finger under her chin and led her further into the hotel.

She’d fallen to the love goddess.