Growing into the Job, Post 577a: Melissa Returns, p2

I came back slowly.

At first it was just warmth. A weight on my chest. Then the smell - soft, sweet, familiar, grounding. Light came next, hazy through my fluttering lids. And then - her.

Melissa’s face filled my entire world, hovering inches above mine, smiling down at me with this breathless, relieved brightness that punched straight through my dazed fog. Her eyes were shimmering - actually shimmering - and her lips were curved in a way I’d never seen before. Softer. Excited.

“Hi,” she whispered, like she’d been waiting hours just to say it.

My mouth opened. I tried. Nothing came out.

Her smile widened, dimples and all. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

A full-body shiver ran through me. I remembered the day, hearing that same exact line from Gianna on vidchat. And then, of course, there was the episode with Tiger, the cat who got much more than my tongue.

Before I could even gather a thought, Melissa tugged gently at the fabric covering my cheek.

“Let’s get you untied…”

Her voice was bright, almost giddy. So different than when she had left me, earlier, when she’d been so, um…intense. Now she just sounded…happy. Like just seeing me awake lit some spark in her. My head was still foggy, cottony, floating, but I watched her through half-lidded eyes as she worked.

She unwound the sports bra from around my face with careful fingers, making soft, little worried hums each time the elastic tugged at me. Then she moved to each bedpost, untying the stretched bras with a kind of tender determination. The tension released limb-by-limb, letting me sink back toward the mattress but with the bras still lashed to my wrists and ankles.

As she leaned over me, I caught her appearance, what she was wearing, in pieces. She’d changed since she’d left me. Now a crisp white blouse, fitted across her chest in a way that made my breath hitch when I looked for comfort where I would normally - god help me - try to find it: down her top. She was also wearing a pair of yellow slacks, a taut fabric that hugged her womanly hips, and her hair was up in a messy bun.

It shouldn’t have been possible for someone to look this gentle and yet be so overwhelming at the same time. Her body above me was graceful, warm, intoxicatingly voluptuous, and I felt myself slipping already into fascination. And her smile? It hit me harder than the scolding earlier, harder than the panic. It was…prettier. More luminous. Her eyes had a glow that hadn’t been there hours ago. I swallowed, unsure if it was the after-effects of everything that made her look so beautiful - my god. My day had been full of trauma. What had happened with her sister, Ashleigh, and the pink bottle, the acute shrinking? The terror of nearly dying alone in the woods? The bomb scare at the office and the episodes with Angie, Jewel and the others? How was I still managing?

So, Jesus…the way she looked at me. It had a strange, aching pull, like a childish instinct I didn’t want to name. I felt…vulnerable, but loved. That warm, needy way a toddler may feel after they’ve misbehaved, been punished, and then cried in someone’s arms.  They hug them anyway. A surrender that makes a bond stronger.

Her fingers brushed my face after she’d slipped the last knot free of the bedpost, and my mind stuttered.

“Sorry I had to tie you up, honey,” she finally said.

I blinked. Her voice was so soft.

She settled beside me on the bed, on my right, huge weight bending the mattress towards her. I slid toward her without her meaning to pull me in.

She leaned over just enough that her huge right palm rested flat and warm on my bare chest - directly over my heart. It was pounding so hard I was sure she could feel it.

“I just…” She bit her lip, looking down at me like she was afraid the truth might break something fragile. “I didn’t want you hurting yourself.”

My breath caught. I didn’t say anything, not yet. This was Melissa apologizing.

“When you were gone, when you were away, I had such terrible thoughts,” she continued, “To think you could crash, because of the rain, or get lost…” Her brows pulled together. “I couldn’t let that happen. Sorry, but that’s a risk I won’t ever take with you again.”

The sincerity hit me like a shockwave. But what was she saying? My heart was slamming against her palm, and her eyes went down to it.

“You have no idea,” she whispered, voice trembling at the edges, “how special you are to me.”

My throat tightened.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

Those words made something deep in me quiver so hard I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. I just stared up at her, breath stuck in my chest, pulse racing under her hand, knowing - knowing - we had to talk. But for the moment, all I could do was feel the warmth of her gaze, the love in her smile. She’d possibly been altering me - causing my shrinking, whether knowingly or not - for months now. And I knew she’d done wrong, been too aggressive with me today. I think she knew it as well.

Melissa was looking at me like I was the center of the room, the reason the air moved, the reason she breathed. It was dizzying. Disarming. And, given her considerable size and my, uh, meager one it was, quite frankly, a little terrifying.

But her voice, when she spoke next, was gentle - and strangely determined.

“I’ve…decided something,” she said softly.

My stomach tightened.

Her hand was still on my chest, warm, steady, protective in a way that made my insides curl inward. She inhaled slowly, as if bracing herself.

“I’m going to make something of myself,” she murmured, and the certainty in her tone sent my pulse jumping. “Not just for me, or for the office. I’m going to make something of myself for the world. And for you.”

My mouth went dry.

She looked past me, as if seeing something in the middle distance - some imagined future only she could glimpse. “For so long I was, like, being told to become something other people wanted: my mom, my mom’s friends. They all had plans for me. But now I have plans for myself.” Then she looked back down at me. “I’m going to protect you, by becoming something new,” she said, voice low and resolute. “And I’m going to do it by getting powers you’ve never, ever imagined. You’ll see. I’ll show you.”

A chill went through me, sliding down my spine. Not cold. Not warm. Something else. Something darkly confusingly…stirring. It kept me mute, afraid to speak. 

I swallowed.

For the first time today, Melissa wasn’t spiraling outward, losing herself in instincts or fear or frustration. She was turning toward me, towards us, completely focused in a way that made my breath hitch. But that focus scared me, too. Because - yes - she was changing. Growing. Becoming more and more superhuman by the day. She wanted to ‘make something of herself’? Something even more than what she was right now? God help me it excited me that I was part of it but I knew I had to talk to her about what Angie had said, her claims about what Melissa was doing to me with her pheromones - and I definitely had to tell her about what had just happened with Ashleigh, with her sister…and the fucking cat. Maybe that was where to start. I had to tell her the truth, and I had no idea how she would react.

I was still trying to gather the courage when she tilted her head, studying me with a soft frown. She knew something already. 

“Jay…” Her eyes moved down my body, then back up. “What happened when I was gone?”

My heart lurched.

“You’re smaller,” she whispered, almost reverently, with equal amounts of confusion and a barely-hidden thrill, “And… messier.” Her brows, though, showed her concern and were knit with worry as she looked me over. Yeah, she could see I was smaller and covered in my own mess. “Baby, what happened to you? Did you…?”

She ran her finger over the semi-dried jizz on my chest.

“Squirt? And I didn’t feel it?” She was now even more confused. Like something wasn’t right.

My palms went cold. My throat tightened. “I…” My voice cracked. “Melissa, I need to tell you something. Two things, actually. Well, maybe three.”

She nodded immediately and squeezed my chest lightly with her broad palm, an instinctive gesture of comfort that still managed to make my pulse stutter. Her hand was so huge…fingers powerful, spanning my ribcage…long, perfect nails, painted. 

“Okay,” she whispered. “Tell me.”

I exhaled shakily as I looked up at her, looming over me, the cords in her elegant neck taut, glossy lips pursed. “Well, when you left…the bra on my face…it smelled like you, still…”

She watched me. 

“….so I was, uh, like…turned on. The whole time. Really bad…”

Oh my god this was so humiliating. 

“…s-so first, when your cat came in, to the bedroom, jumped on the bed and rubbed against me, I…uh…”

“Tiger?!?” she exclaimed. 

“Yeah…it, I…I couldn’t help it…”

She looked at the mess on my chest again, with wider eyes and sharp attention. She looked like she knew something but wasn’t saying it. I decided to press on. 

“A-and then-“

“Ashleigh.”

How did she know?

“Y-yeah. She brought in a bottle. It was, like, different, but I was hungry…”

“And…?”

“a-and she…”

“She made you come again, didn’t she?”

“Y-yeah…” I answered, feeling the shame and vulnerability all over again. “A-and…I think I felt so bad, so humiliated that it brought on a shrinking fit…”

She looked mad again, brows knotted. Thoughts were steamrolling through that brain of hers, such as it was. I knew I needed to be contrite.

 “I’m s-so sorry, Melissa. I know it’s your sist-”

“I’m not mad at you,” she said, “I’m mad at her. She knows better. And I dunno if it was that you were embarrassed that made you shrink. You said the bottle was different. Was the milk pink?”

The formula? That Ashleigh fed me from the bottle? Is that what did it?? “I-it…yeah, it was…”

Melissa huffed. If I didn’t know any better I’d say steam came out of her nose. “I am going to have a talk with my sister. I’ve told her how you get and she took advantage. She used you just to, like, get under my skin…”

‘H-how I get’?” I repeated. My wrists were still looped with her bra-strap, slack now, but the size of the cup dwarfing my own hands - and how that made me feel - made something in me twist.

“Yeah…I’ve told her. She knows what my perfumes, like what I filled my bra with, what they do to you, how you can’t help yourself sometimes.”

“Y-yeah…about that…” 

The words scraped out of me, thin and raw.

Melissa didn’t pull her hand from my chest. If anything, she settled it more firmly - like she was bracing me. Or bracing herself. Her palm was so warm compared to the cool air of the bedroom, sinking heat into my sternum like a toasty, weighted blanket. The blades of her manicured nails, though, were right above my skin. Her eyes stayed locked on mine, steady in a way that made my pulse stutter. Aside from our hearts, the room had gone quiet, the faint hum of the AC the only sound.

“All right,” she whispered, “what else?”

The calmness in her voice made my stomach flip. This was not the frantic Melissa from the forest, or the possessive one that had tied me up. This was…something more deliberate. Older. Like she’d finally decided she wasn’t going to run from any of this, or lash out at it. And she knew something was up. Even when she wasn’t invading my thoughts – and I didn’t feel her doing that now - she could read me like a book. 

“So, uh, during the evacuation at work, Angie…uh…”

“She ra-…she forced herself on you, didn’t she?”

I paused. I swallowed dryly. “Y-yeah…she did do that,” I admitted, remembering the, uh, blowjob-plus-puke in the stairwell with Angie earlier today, “but she also told me some things.” My stomach was roiling - I was afraid that this could turn into a confrontation, and my chances in a fight would be next to zilch. So I tempered what I was saying. “I…I don’t know whether to believe her, if any of it’s true.” I tried to chuckle. “I mean, it is Angie…”

Rather than reach out for me - I could see it in her eyes, that the thought of another woman assaulting me against my will was making her upset beyond words, at some deep core - Melissa let me talk. 

“Melissa…” I continued, as my mouth went even drier. I figured, though, in a fit of reckless bravery, that I should just say it, go for broke. “What Angie told me. Is it you? Are you - are you the one shrinking me?”

Her expression didn’t flicker. Not once. Then - quietly, after a little pause - she nodded. Not ashamed. Not defensive. Just…honest.

“Yeah,” she said softly, the bed creaking as she unconsciously leaned closer, “It’s me.”

The bottom dropped out of my chest.

She lifted her other hand and rested it lightly at the side of my ribs - not pinning, just holding me with both hands. Her fingers spanned nearly from my spine to my sternum. The heat from her skin made the bruised muscles under my ribs tense involuntarily and my cock, the bastard, start to stiffen anew. I did my best to ignore it. 

“I told you I’d be honest,” she said gently, “So I’m being honest. It’s my pheruh…my pherey…my perfumes. They’re…strong.”

A breath. She thought, to herself, for a long moment before continuing. 

“My body reacts to things without me telling it to. Like, quickly.  When I need something, when I really want something, when I commit to something - it figures out how to get it. Especially, I guess…” Here, she paused again, and looked me deep in the eyes with her golden-green gems, “…especially when it comes to you.”

I felt heat rush through me - fear, yes, but something else, something involuntary curling beneath it. She saw it. She always saw everything on my face - or read it from some place deeper - before I could hide it.

“I don’t do it on purpose,” she said, "It's not, like, part of some plan I made. I don’t want to weaken you. But you get close to me and my body just…decides what’s best. It…”

She searched for the word, frustrated.

“…adapts. It, like, responds.”

My throat tightened. “Responds how?”

“Like this.”

She didn’t move closer. She didn’t touch me any differently. She only breathed in - slow - then let the breath ease out across my skin.

It wasn’t just the air. It wasn’t just warmth. It was something else, a soft, invisible pressure settling over me, sinking through me like a mist or steam, wrapping around my shoulders and coiling under my jaw. 

Then, I breathed it in. A faint sweetness - warm skin and something floral but alien - slid into my lungs and made my head go light. My breath hitched. A tremor rolled through my arms before I could stop it and my erection surged even stiffer.

Her eyes brightened, as if she felt my reaction shiver all the way through me…and it excited her.

“That,” she whispered, “That’s what I mean. Those were my perfumes, and they can change people. It can change them into what my body thinks is best for me.”

“Th-th-they just shrunk me??”

Melissa bit her lip, and pressed on. “Those weren’t ones that shrink you. Those I don't think I can stop, they come out of me really slowly, like, gradually. The ones I just used - they’re for just, like, pleasure.”

I swallowed hard. It was pheromones. This woman has pheromones that make her a bioweapon. I’m dating a bioweapon. I was flabbergasted.  “That was…that was so intense.”

To that, she chuckled, charitably. “That? That was just little,” she admitted, “Barely anything.”

I stared at her, heart thundering. She watched me with a focus I had seen in her before. Like she was cataloguing every tiny shift in me, both analyzing it and cherishing it.

“I can do more,” she said, almost shy and almost thrilled, “If you want.”

My breath caught as I saw her pupils widen, and felt her fingers curling gently at my ribs, like she was holding herself back from pulling me into her.

“Do you want me to?” she asked, and the room trembled around the edges, as if the temptation was a physical pull, a gravity well centered on her. A part of me - and not a small one - begged to just nod and let her do her worst, to let myself go under.

But I managed to shake my head. 

“N-no. Not right now.”

Melissa inhaled, long and slow, then let it out in a little nod. “Okay, that’s okay,” she whispered, as something strange flickered across her face. Not anger, or hurt, or even disappointment. More like… she was learning the shape of a new feeling. Respect? Restraint? A boundary she didn’t like, but accepted as the right thing. “That’s okay, sweetie,” she repeated, “that’s all good.”

Then her thumb brushed my sternum, featherlight.

“You asked if it was me, my perfumes shrinking you,” she said softly, as her eyes met mine again - clear, earnest, almost unbearably beautiful, “That’s part of it. But there’s more you need to know.”

My pulse kicked. “More?” I acted surprised, but somehow I knew there was more. I definitely knew there was more.

“I haven’t just been changing your body’s size,” she said, contritely now, “but it’s been me that’s made it so you…you can’t eat anything, anything other than your formula. Or be away from me, my perfumes - or the girls’, or the stuff they’re pumping through the vents here - for any time at all.”

A beat. There were others that knew about this too? But, my main thought was: You’ve been making me physically dependent on you?!?

“I’ve been making you physically dependent on me.”

“Oh my god, Melissa…” I groaned, almost as a sob. Had I known that, too?

“And I’ve changed you so I’ve been able to be in your, like, thoughts, and dreams…”

“Jesus-” 

‘Not to hurt you!” she implored, emphatically, “Never to hurt you! Just to…just to protect you better, to keep you better, keep you safe.” Her voice wavered, just once. “It’s just…it’s just what I am. Or what I’m becoming.”

The room tilted. My stomach dropped, my scalp prickled. My toes curled reflexively against the blankets.

“Melissa…” my voice came out thin and papery, my hands shaking where they rested against the sheets, “I don’t know what to say…”

She nodded, acknowledging what she’d done - though unconsciously as it may have been. And though she was not quite apologetic, she honestly looked earnest, like she wanted to come clean with me. “And I’ll tell you more,” she whispered. “If you still want to hear it…”

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thank you thank you thank you to Joshua67, our first-ever Melissa-maker, for another great image. We appreciate the care and hard work he puts into bringing GITJ to new life.

this was the first (part a) of a larger Post 577 that the Publishing Department here at theBasic originally planned to release. The second part (part b) will be set loose into the wild when the Editing Department gets off its lazy asses.