by Lyn Gala
“Fuck,” Max whispered. His fingers fumbled as he tried to open his pants.
“Fuck,” Rick echoed softly, and then the tentacle slipped inside Max’s mouth.
Max gasped, and then Rick rubbed his collarbone before more tentacles wrapped around Max, undulating and twitching as Rick pushed him back toward the bed. Max found that sucking on the tentacle, unfastening his pants and walking backward was a combination he hadn’t mastered.
He lost his balance and stumbled. Rick tightened all his tentacles so that Max was caught, supported by about a dozen tentacles at once. Rick was strong, but he rarely showed that strength. But he had no trouble lifting Max to the bed.
Max shoved his pants over his ass before Rick could do his rip-and-tear routine. He had a thing against clothing. Rick took the opportunity to shove the pants to the floor, and then Max’s underwear followed, leaving soft, cool tentacles pressed against Max’s hot skin.
Knowing what Rick wanted, Max curled his arm around the closest tentacle before tickling the spot where the underside met Rick’s body. That made all Rick’s finger tentacles wiggle in pleasure. Yep, Max knew his octopus. He grinned as the tentacles around him shivered and undulated.
Rick curled a tentacle around Max’s thigh, pulling his legs apart so Max’s hole was obscenely exposed. “You are a naughty octopus,” Max said.
“Max like naughty.” Rick had a two-toned belch.
He wasn’t wrong. Rick pressed against Max’s hole, and Max moaned. A hundred touches all demanded his attention at once. Max breathed harder as his skin grew more and more sensitive. Fingers danced over his shoulders and his nipples and the backs of his knees, and Max’s brain couldn’t keep up with the way his whole body hungered for more.
That called for a counterattack. Max pulled on a tentacle, exposing the “underarm” area, which was a prime tickle target. Max ran his fingertips over the sensitive skin, and Rick shivered. However, a questing tentacle ran across Max’s pebbled nipple, the fingers teasing and tugging at it as the tentacle curled around.
Max’s cock twitched and heat gathered in his balls. At one point he hadn’t liked the idea of tentacles in his bed. He’d been an idiot. Rick was a sexual god. “I missed you today.” Max ran his hands up those well-muscled tentacles. “I’ve gotten used to spending all day with you.”
“Max stay inside. I am happy,” Rick said. Even without proper grammar, he was very easy to understand. But as much as Max wanted to make Rick happy, he didn’t want to give the rest of the universe carte blanche to disrespect his family. He had to get them to see Rick the way he did—as a gentle genius—a shy creature who had an endless capacity for love.
Rick tightened the tentacle around the base of Max’s cock. Max’s body arched and his breath grew quicker. Rick had such an advantage with all those tentacles and hundreds of fingers, all of which could tease and torment at once. Apparently in addition to being a gentle giant, he was a little bit of a sadist. Just a tiny bit.
That feeling was reinforced when Rick’s fingers pulled at Max’s nipples and teased the slit of his cock at the same time. Max’s whole body was hot enough for spontaneous combustion. Max couldn’t control his reactions when Rick got his tentacles going. A tip pressed against Max’s hole, and he gasped.
“You...” Max grunted as the tentacle eased in.
“Me,” Rick said with confidence. He entered Max with a single, strong thrust that stole Max’s breath. White dots floated through Max’s vision as Rick pressed against his prostate. Throwing his head back, Max sucked in a hungry breath as he trembled.
Rick rumbled, his voice a vibration more than words, or at least the translator didn’t offer any specific translations. Max squirmed, ramming his hips into the air to take the pressure off his ass, but Rick took the opportunity to drive farther into Max.
Soft touches teased the inside of Max’s thighs, and he started begging. “Please” and “more” and “fuck, yeah” fell out of him, but Max had stopped paying attention to his mouth because his brain was focused on every tender brush of cool skin against his. Rick’s fingers whispered across his chest and thighs, but that strong tentacle up Max’s ass was demanding. Unyielding.
Max was caught between those two storm fronts.
Max arched his back and came with a cry, his body one overstretched nerve as come shot out and splattered across his lower stomach. Rick trembled and twitched, his tentacles tightening until Max had trouble breathing. Max tried to speak, but couldn’t catch his breath and he panted as the orgasm left him feeling about as energetic as a beached fish.
Rick pulled his tentacle out, leaving Max hollow. “You are damn good at this sex thing,” Max finally managed to say.
Rick caressed Max’s neck before settling his weight down against Max’s side. Max fought his lethargy to pull Rick closer to him. Their bodies pressed together, Rick’s cooler skin a balm against Max’s heat. “I test Max body. I like Max body.”
“I like Rick body,” Max said. There was so much more he wanted to say. He wanted to reassure Rick that he cared more about him than he ever had any other creature in his life. He wanted to stand in front of a judge and promise “until death do us part.” Ironically, he wanted a white picket fence and a little house, even though they lived on a spaceship with three kids who would not want to live on Earth.
But Max was too tired to sort all his feelings. He would settle for having Rick in his life forever. That was all he needed.
Chapter Fifteen
Kohei came into the room, moving fast enough that Max abandoned the computer model of Tribes armor he was designing. Carrington’s lead warrior now understood the value of having weapons caches on board, and he needed to strike while the purse strings were open and the Tribes people were thinking about invasions and the need to stockpile a few supplies. “Max Father, a human wants to come into the ship.” He blasted the words loudly enough that he sounded like James.
For a second, Max could only stare. “What?” he asked.
Kohei rotated a quarter turn. “Query to clarify.”
Max stood. “Query. Did you say a human? Are you sure?”
Kohei blew raspberries. “I know species of father mine. Is human. Two boned leg tentacles with unbalanced walk. Small head very far off body. Two boned arm tentacles with only three major joints. Long, oddly placed finger tentacles. Human.”
That was a creepy description of humanity, but accurate as well. “Where? The main door?” Max trotted past Kohei on his way to the elevator. “Query. What name did he give?”
“Asking of name intimate. I am no rude.”
Max stopped in the elevator and forced himself to wait for Kohei to get all his tentacles inside when he wanted to hit the urgent button on the thing. “Wait. Do all species consider asking for a name rude?”
“Clarify. Query. Statement was query?”
“Yes, that was a question.” Kohei did not have Xander’s familiarity with the language, but then again, he was the child Max had ignored, so that was his fault. “Query. Do all species consider asking for a name rude?”
“Many species,” Kohei said. “Hidden people do not, but they will often give different names depending which personality to display. Other peoples often do equate rudeness with asking of name where name does not correlate with close relationship. Official designation is enough.”
That had so many cultural bombshells in it that Max couldn’t deal with all of them. For now, he cared about the human at his door. The elevator opened, and Max hurried out with Kohei trailing after him. “Query. Did the human leave his official designation?”
“Official designation: human seeking entrance to ship of Hidden people.”
Max sighed. Gene Roddenberry must have been kidnapped by logical aliens at some point because aliens were more like Spock than coincidence could explain.
He opened the main door and froze. He stared at her and she stared at him, and both of them had their mouths hanging open. Max found his voice first. “Dee?
”
“Max! Oh my God, it’s you!” Dee had never been a touchy-feely person, but she threw herself at Max and caught him in a huge hug. Kohei went all curly fries, and then his tentacles got stiff and he moved forward.
“Dee! It’s so good to see you. I saw your plane shot out of the sky.” The second he said that, Max knew what had happened. Like with him, the aliens had plucked her out of the plane so she didn’t die the way Dan had when debris tore through his parachute. “Fuck. Were you on the same police ship that took me in?”
“I have no idea,” she said, “I was unconscious for a time, and then I hid in the world’s tiniest room.” She backed up a step and glared at Kohei. She probably figured he was eavesdropping.
Rather than dribble and drabble out the weirdness, Max decided to get it all out on the table. “Dee, this is Kohei. He is one of three offspring I was a surrogate for.”
She looked stunned. This is why he had avoided his home planet... that and he might be arrested for desertion because he had chosen family over returning to the Air Force. Eventually she said, “Max” in a low, horrified voice.
Max didn’t want his children exposed to even more prejudice, but he didn’t want to tell Dee to go fuck herself. It was a difficult position. “Kohei, why don’t you go in and ask James to look at the work I’ve done on the Tribes armor.”
“Max Father,” Kohei said. His tentacles were a confused mass of curly fry and stiff outrage.
“We’re going to go for a walk and talk,” Max said. “Go back and check with your brother.”
Kohei placed two tentacle tips against Max’s leg. “It’s fine,” Max promised. “Go back inside.” Kohei’s tentacles pulled up a little tighter, but he did turn back toward the elevator, and Max headed out of the ship. Only then did it occur to him that he wasn’t armed. The news of a human visitor had knocked the common sense out of him. Well, they didn’t have to go far, and if Max knew his family—and he did—they would be watching as long as he was in sight of the cameras. But the cultural taboo against listening in public would come in handy because Dee was about to say some heinous shit. He could tell from her expression.
In the air, she was focused, aggressive, direct. And that tended to be her conversational style, too. When she looked up from her book, she was grotesquely honest. They called her Ditzy because she was the polar opposite of that term.
“Let’s go lean awkwardly against the informational kiosk,” he suggested. Names, mass transit, and chairs. Aliens didn’t know what they were missing.
Dee chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve spent lots of time wandering the streets, and I haven’t yet found a decent place to sit. Do you think they do that to prevent people from congregating?”
“Or tentacles don’t get tired like boned tentacles do.”
“Boned tentacles. Yeah. I’ve heard that one.” She leaned against the kiosk Max had pointed out and stared at Rick’s ship. Max cleared his throat and tried to compose his thoughts. He thought it was hard communicating with aliens, but humans left him equally tongue-tied.
“Hey, I get it,” she said. “You do what you have to do. Isn’t that what they taught us in those survival classes? I’m not judging.”
Funny. Her promise not to judge made him feel pretty damn judged. “When I took the job, the translator said I would be a nanny.”
She snorted.
“It was the only job that paid enough that I would have some hope of getting home.”
Her face contorted. “Yeah.” Her sigh was soul-deep. “I would have taken the job, too. Up until two days ago, I was working as a translator for pennies. Of course, that was before I was told the work was no longer necessary because someone had a much more complete human translation interface than the sad attempt I had made. Now I’ll have to find another crap job. If someone told me that I could get home by acting as a surrogate for one of those parasites, I would have.”
The word hit Max like a punch. “Whoa. Rick and the kids are not parasites.”
Dee’s expression turned slightly pitying. “They lay eggs in the bodies of other animals. I'm fairly sure that's the technical definition of parasite.”
“They ask before laying eggs and pay quite well. Humans hire surrogates all the time. Are we parasites?”
“Um, we have the ability to have our own children. The Uglies literally can't give birth to their own children. And if one wanted to have a child and couldn’t pay a surrogate, don’t you think they would put their eggs in someone anyway? In fact, as I understand it on their home planet they raise animals specifically for the purpose of carrying their young.”
Max crossed his arms over his chest. “As I understand it,” he said, mirroring her words, “humans raise animals for the sole purpose of killing them, ripping their bodies apart, and then eating pieces.”
She had the grace to look chagrined. “That does sound bad.”
“I'm fairly sure that every sentient species is going to sound psychopathic if you describe them honestly enough.” That did not say good things about the nature of sentient life, but Max was pretty sure he was right. Maybe it took a certain level of aggression to reach space. But of all the species Max had read about, the Hidden ones were the least psychotic of the bunch. Either that or Rick was hiding the really embarrassing informational tapes.
“Okay, okay. I am working on the required mental adjustments here,” she promised. “They’re sort of creepy. I mean, if you have one, it can have sex with itself and then drop hundreds of eggs in hundreds of different animals and the next thing you know, the planet is buried in Ug— Hidden ones.”
“Have they done that?” Nothing in Rick’s nature suggested that he would shove eggs into an animal and walk away. He had hovered over Max and even though he kept a certain distance from the children, he would shiver in pleasure when Max described how well they were doing in their studies. He was a proud papa octopus.
“Not that I’ve read about,” she admitted. “But I haven’t heard of anyone actually having spider eggs erupt from their bodies, and that is still an ongoing nightmare of mine. Sometimes the possibility is enough to give someone the creeps.” She shivered dramatically.
“Rick is my common-law husband,” Max said.
Her mouth fell open. Literally. He could’ve counted her teeth if he’d wanted to. He didn’t.
“When he found out that I had misunderstood the job description, he offered to abort the children. He was a big ball of curled up tentacles and misery, but he would have done that if I wanted. He respected that I had a choice about whether or not to have babies in me.”
She opened her mouth without speaking, closed it, and then cleared her throat. “So, he wasn’t a sick fuck who knocked you up and forced you to carry his children, so you married him?”
And that was the Dee Max knew and generally tried to avoid. “No, that’s when I looked at him as a person and not an employer. He’s kind and a giant worry wart and a good father and weirdly obsessed with Darth Vader and Jar Jar Binks.”
“What? How the hell does he know about Star Wars?”
A half-second too late, Max realized that he didn’t want Dee to know how close he had been to Earth. Being stranded was one thing, but she would not approve of his plan to go AWOL... or rather to stay AWOL. “I like to tell them stories. By the way, I’ve told them the version where Jar Jar is a secret sith who uses the drunken monk martial arts to make everyone underestimate him. So if they start talking to you about Jar Jar, be prepared for weirdness.”
Both her eyebrows were making a run for her hairline. “So this Hidden one,” and boy couldn’t Max hear the air quotes around that, “likes Darth Vader and sith infiltrators and you think he’s a keeper?”
“He’s equally obsessed with Galen Erso and Buffy Summers.”
“Who?”
“Galen Erso. The Empire forced him to help design the death star, so he built it in a way to destroy it and then gave the plans to the rebellion, and Buffy Summers is the vampire slayer.”
/> She studied him for several long minutes. “You watch too much TV.”
“I did before I enlisted. Afterward, I didn’t have enough time to truly indulge my addiction.” He grinned at her, but she did not seem to appreciate his humor.
She rubbed a hand over her face. “Look, I get that this Hidden one has been kind and that you have an emotional connection to its kids. I get that.” She took a breath.
Max jumped in before she could say anything more offensive than the shit she had already said. “Don’t even assume this is some sort of fucking Stockholm syndrome. Rick hired me. He didn’t threaten me, and when Hunter aliens invaded the ship, I protected my family because they are my family.”
She leaned closer. “But did you have a choice? I know what it feels like to be alone. I get it. Aliens are not exactly touchy-feely sorts. I always thought of myself as an introvert, but I am crawling out of my own skin without someone to talk to, someone to touch or hear laugh.” Her voice projected more desperation. “It’s so fucking hard that my head aches with the pressure of being alone most of the time. However, the Uglies are not your only choice. The main docks have small living quarters that anyone can claim for the night. They’re clean and secure. And food is free if you don’t mind bland staples. Living with this alien is not your only choice. You can have a decent life here. I’ll show you the ropes. And now that the translation computer works, maybe there will be more opportunities... other opportunities. You can’t limit yourself to one plan. There will be other ways to get home.” She caught his hand in hers and held on with a strength that startled Max.
He stared at her, horrified by the pain he could see reflected in her features, but repulsed by the suggestion that he should choose her over his family. He squeezed her hands back and wondered how long it had been since she touched anyone. Had anyone offered her any kindness? His heart warred with two obligations. He couldn’t abandon her, but he couldn’t expose his children to the sort of casual prejudice she was showing.
