The First Inch: Part 3

The binding still burned under her skin when Mia reached the third-floor landing. Heat rolled off her in waves, thick enough that the hallway air felt heavier. She did not stop at her own door. Her knuckles hit the wood of 3B twice, hard.

Scott opened it in a T-shirt and boxers. His mouth went slack. She was already taller than he remembered, shoulders carved, the line of her waist a clean cut above hips that filled her denim shorts until the fabric looked painted on. The tank top sat tight across breasts that had no business fitting it.

“Mia.” His voice cracked. “What—”

She stepped into him. One palm on his chest shoved him backward into the living room. The door slammed. She kicked it shut with her heel and kept walking him until the backs of his knees hit the couch.

“Clothes off,” she said. “Now.”

He stripped with shaking hands. She watched him, the fever in her blood answering every tremor. When he stood bare, she hooked her thumbs in her own waistband and shoved the shorts down. They caught on the new swell of her ass and tore along one seam before they hit the floor. The tank followed, peeled over her head, already strained to a shine.

Scott dropped to his knees like the air had gone out of him. His mouth found the inside of her thigh. The suck of his tongue sent a surge through her that was nothing like the old, polite pulses. This one hit like a fist. Her spine lengthened with a loud pop. Another. She rose an inch, then two, watching the top of his head drop lower.

“Jesus,” he whispered against her skin. “You’re—you’re getting—”

She fisted his hair and pulled him higher. “Don’t stop.”

He didn’t. His hands climbed her hips, then her waist, then the undersides of her breasts. The catalytic heat answered with violence. Her chest swelled under his palms, heavy and sudden. The last stretch of the tank, still half on her arm, split down the middle with a wet rip. Fabric hung in two ruined flaps. Her breasts filled his hands and then overflowed them, nipples tight, the weight new and greedy.

Her shoulders widened. Dense muscle packed itself along her upper back. She felt powerful and brand new and desperately hungry all at once. Scott’s fingers dug into the thickening muscle of her ass as it lifted and rounded, firm and heavy. The last of her shorts gave way with a sound like tearing paper. Denim peeled off in strips.

“More,” he said, frantic now. “Please. I can feel it. You’re huge.”

She pushed him onto the couch. The frame creaked. She climbed over him, thighs already longer, and took him in one slow sink. He filled her and she still had room. The stretch made her breath catch. She rolled her hips and the serum detonated.

Her spine popped again, louder. She grew past six feet while she rode him, the couch groaning under the new length of her legs. Her knees hit the cushions farther apart. Hips flared with a soft, rhythmic swelling that made the remaining scraps of denim fall away. Glutes thickened, heavy rounded mass that pressed back against his thighs every time she dropped.

Scott’s hands shook on her waist. He could not span it anymore. “Mia. God. Look at you.”

She looked down at him and liked the view. He was smaller. She was not. The thought sent another rush of liquid heat through her core. Her breasts ballooned outward, the skin tight and hot, the weight dragging her forward until she had to brace a hand on the back of the couch. Wood cracked under her palm.

She did not ease off. She took him harder, using the length of her new legs, the power in her thighs. Every thrust fed the change. Muscle carved itself cleaner along her arms. Her height climbed in jerks she could hear in her own vertebrae. The coffee table beside them splintered when her calf swept it. A lamp went over. She did not look.

Scott begged in broken pieces. “Don’t stop. You’re—fuck—you’re still growing. I can feel you getting taller. Your tits, they’re—”

She put two fingers in his mouth to shut him up and kept moving. The climax built like a second storm under the first. When it hit, it tore a cry from her throat. Her body surged in his lap. Breasts swelled fuller still. Shoulders carved themselves into broader lines. Hips flared until she filled the couch like it had been built for someone else. The last of the growth rolled through her like another orgasm, leaving her trembling and taller and unmistakably colossal above him.

The couch frame gave with a wet crack. They dropped six inches into broken springs. She stayed on him, riding out the aftershocks, her ruined clothes in pieces on the floor, his living room wrecked around her knees.

Scott stared up at her, dazed, still inside her, still hard. “You’re past six feet. I think you’re past. Your shoulders—your ass—” He laughed once, helpless. “I can’t even—”

She lifted off him slowly and stood. The ceiling felt closer. She turned in a slow circle, still catching her breath. The serum’s heat had settled into a low, satisfied throb that was already looking for the next spark. This was no longer a hint of softness or a modest inch. This was a body that took up space, that would make a man look twice and then keep looking. The tank and shorts on the floor would not have closed even if they had been whole. She already knew that. She did not care.

Scott sat in the wreckage of his couch, naked, staring at the way her glutes sat high and thick, at the heavy swing of her breasts when she breathed, at the new height that put her navel closer to his eye line than it had any right to be.

“You’re glowing,” he said. He sounded almost confused by how much he meant it.

She felt it. The heat in her belly had not gone out. It had only banked, waiting. The binding had taken the ceilings off. Every touch could do this now. Exponential. Violent. Hers.

She stepped over the broken lamp and looked down at him one more time. His gaze stayed on her, worshipful and wrecked. The first flicker of something greedy moved under the shock. She wanted to see it in a mirror. She wanted to feel it again. She wanted more men, more stretch, more of this raw power sitting in her bones like a second pulse.

Scott reached for her calf, fingers sliding up the newly firmed muscle. Another small, warm wave answered him. Her jeans—what was left of them—were already gone. She did not need them.

“Stay there,” she said. Her voice came out lower, sure. “I’m not finished looking.”

He stayed. She walked the length of his ruined living room, feeling the last of the stretch ease into place. Taller. Firmer. Fuller. The air around her had weight. She liked the way it felt. She liked the way he looked at her as if she were the only thing in the room and also too much of it.

The hunger did not fade. It sharpened. The binding had not just locked the change in. It had taken the brakes off. She could feel that truth in every inch she had just claimed, in the torn fabric, in the broken furniture, in the man still staring like he might never stand up again.

She stopped in front of him and let him look. Let him take in the new scale of her. Let the heat bank and wait. There would be more. There had to be. The first inch was gone. What came after had no top she could see.

Scott whispered her name like a prayer he did not know the words to. She smiled, slow, and felt another faint pulse answer even that.

The night was young. Her body was not done. Neither was she.