Amoeba

by Piers Anthony

  Tod discovered that he had an almost painfully stiff erection. What a show she was putting on! He had never imagined that she would be capable of it, considering her prior diffidence. She had to have known how, from observing dancing women in her home frame; the vampire had persuaded her to emulate those motions. What a transformation!

  Now she was close, and the musky smell of her body further inflamed his passion. She stepped into him, her torso still gyrating. She caught his hands in hers and brought them behind her, setting them on her flexing buttocks. The touch was electric. His whole body seemed to be on fire with desire.

  She nudged up against him, her breasts brushing his chest, then pressing possessively against it. She caught his head in her hands and brought it down to hers for an ardent kiss. She had kissed him before, but this was infinitely intensified.

  “But do you really want it?” he gasped as it ended. He knew the answer, but wanted it on the record, as it were.

  “Yes!” she pushed against him so that he had to step back, but one of her ankles hooked behind his, and he fell to the soft ground beside the trail. She was on him, kissing him again, her taut belly jammed against his. His hands were still on her bottom, feeling its muscular deformation as she pressed ever more closely against him.

  Then he was sliding inside her hot crevice and hotter channel, plunging to full depth. He spurted into that hungry orifice, endlessly, as if he had not had sex for a year. “Oh, Veee!” he breathed.

  “I love you.” Then: “Your presence inside me excites me. Now I know that yours is the first penis I truly wanted there. Now I am coming too.”

  And she was. He felt her vagina tighten around him, pulsating, as the throes of her orgasm wracked her body. He was done with his, but this was a new and exciting experience for him, being there for hers, a thrill in its own right. She had truly wanted him, physically as well as emotionally. He found that transcendentally meaningful.

  Finally they relaxed together. “Oh, Veee!” he repeated. “That was worth waiting for!”

  Her orgasm had not made her lose track of the game. “And now how do you feel about Vanja?”

  “I—still desire her,” he said, surprised. “But I think I love you.”

  “That will do.” She kissed him. “Now we should rejoin the others.”

  “We should,” he agreed laughing. With the motion of his belly he realized that he was still pleasantly inside her.

  She got off him, produced a cloth—where did she keep such items?—wiped him off, then herself. Then they found their clothes, dressed, and rejoined the others. They had never been out of sight of them, but this was a matter of attention rather than distance.

  “Now he is half yours,” Vanja said. “Excellent technique, I might add. I don’t suppose you have any vampire ancestry?”

  “None,” Veee said, smiling. “We just happen to know how to do it, when we have reason. You gave me reason.”

  “All I did was tell you to emulate a dancer, in costume and motions. You learned rapidly and well.”

  “I knew I had to, after seeing you seduce him. Whatever I could do, I had to do now. So I did.”

  She certainly had, Tod thought. It was a one hundred and eighty degree turnabout from her former willing reticence. She had gone from pleading with him simply to take her, to taking him. But it also meant that the vampire was some teacher, when she tried. She had known what aspects to have Veee focus on. How to bring out the full illustrious woman in Veee.

  “That was a most interesting demonstration,” Bem said. “Vanja agrees; she found it stimulating.”

  “How do you know that?” the vampire asked sharply.

  “You forget that I have been in close contact with you throughout. I felt your body responding, especially when she made him take hold of her posterior bifurcation and then took his copulatory projection into her pelvis.”

  “I did,” she confessed. “When I dance I am transported. When I see a dance I live it myself. Similar for sex; I can’t see it without feeling it. When she seduced him, I felt as if I were doing it myself. Oh that flowing sperm! I got wet.”

  “You did,” Bem agreed.

  “I think my chill is gone, and I am feeling better. You may unwrap me now.”

  Bem did, and Vanja stood naked. Then her painted apparel appeared, clothing her. Tod was amazed by how thoroughly that coloration changed her body, making it sexily decent instead of sexily exposed.

  “Now we are four,” Bem said, resuming his normal configuration and coloration. “Shall we proceed along the trail?”

  “Might as well,” Vanja agreed. She came to Tod and took his right hand. Veee, almost defensively, took his left. Tod was not sure how to react, but he found that he liked being the object of such attention.

  “We can alternate nights,” Vanja said to Veee.

  “No, we can share.”

  “We will lie on either side of him, and alternate taking him in.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’m glad you girls have decided my business,” Tod said, attempting mild irony.

  “Women always decide,” Vanja said. “The difference is that now we are doing it openly.”

  “Where I come from, a man has one woman at a time. How can I handle two?”

  “You are no longer where you come from,” Veee said, echoing the essence of what the vampire had said to her.

  “You can’t ‘handle’ even one,” Vanja said. “Go with the flow.”

  Tod pondered. He needed a rationale to enable him to be comfortable with two women at once, when he’d never really had one woman before. The prospect of endless sex excited him, but he feared mischief in the larger relationships. He had been on the verge of working it out with Veee; then Vanja had come on the scene and complicated it enormously.

  “In my land,” Veee said, “a chief may have one wife and several mistresses. Only the wife has authority.”

  “Mine too,” Vanja agreed. “I was willing to be the mistress, but the wife feared I would win him over in time and become the wife.” She laughed. “She was savvy in that respect.”

  “Man’s wife better half,” Tod quoted from memory, trying to make light of it. “Mistress better hole.”

  “She has to be, without legal standing,” Vanja said. “Sex is her only claim on him.”

  And there was the answer. “Then I will think of Veee as my wife, and you as my mistress.”

  He waited for the explosion of outrage by one or both of them, but it didn’t come. They were amenable?

  It seemed they were. Veee had declared her love for him, and won her share of him. Vanja was less committed, willing to settle for a temporary affair before she moved on.

  “Tod’s blood made you sick,” Veee said, changing the subject. “Yet he’s not of this trail realm. It should have been an animal’s blood that affected you.”

  “That’s right!” Tod agreed. “Unless she’s allergic to the blood of creatures not of her home frame.”

  “In which case I will starve,” Vanja said wryly. “My term as mistress may be of brief duration.”

  “Unless the compatibility of the trail means that you can eat the blood of its creatures,” Veee said. “Tod is from a different land. It may be only the blood of visitors that poisons you.”

  “I can soon find out.” Vanja changed to bat form and flew away. Tod felt her hand become a claw before she let go.

  They walked on in silence. Tod was uncertain what he hoped for. Objectively he suspected that he would be best off to be free of the vampire, but he did still hunger for sex with her, and did not like the thought of her dying. Probably Veee was wrestling similarly with her own conflicting feelings. Bem must be leaving it to them to work out, having no special stake in this triangle.

  The trail came to another field of colored fruits. They stopped to eat their assigned colors.

  The bat returned, and became Vanja. “I can eat local blood!” she exclaimed. “You set me straight, Veee.”

  “I am glad
,” Veee said.

  “But again, you could have been rid of me, had it been otherwise. Why do you care?”

  “I have come to know you somewhat. You are a person, with needs and feelings.” Veee paused. “And you caused me to do what I had to do, to commit to Tod. I appreciate that.”

  “You are not much for jealousy, are you?”

  “I am a realist. We can all get along, as we understand each other.”

  “I must win your friendship,” Vanja said. “Not merely your tolerance. I think I want that more than I want the man.”

  “I have not agreed to that,” Veee said.

  Bem flashed merry colors. “You must court her, Vanja. She is slow to yield, but surely worth it when she does.”

  “Yes!” Tod breathed.

  “Yet I wonder,” Veee said, holding up a blue berry. “Have we assessed the situation correctly?” She was delicately changing the subject again.

  “Don’t eat that!” Tod said.

  But Veee bit into it.

  They all waited. Time passed, and she did not get sick.

  Tod picked a red berry. He ate it. It was delicious. Nothing happened.

  “We assumed that I consumed a cloud of bad air,” Bem said. “But perhaps it was merely initial air.”

  “And we all get sick the first time we eat here, whatever it is, berries, air, blood, semen,” Vanja said. “It is an initiation, an adaptation. Thereafter we belong.”

  “And because I am acclimatized to the environment of the trail,” Tod said, “I am in effect part of its substance. You would have sickened had you tried the blood of any of us, or of a native creature. Assuming any creatures here are natives; they may all be imports, as we are.”

  “You saw the key, Veee,” Vanja said. “You had the courage to risk an illness I know from experience you would not want to repeat. For the benefit of all of us. You have insight, courage, and loyalty.”

  “I just like to know what’s what,” Veee said modestly.

  “I must have your friendship.”

  “You could bite me.”

  “I want it earned, not coerced. You are the best woman Tod or any man could have; you are the best friend any woman could have. I am a fair judge of character, and I know this already. I will do my best to win you. In the interim I will act toward you as a friend would act, trying to be in this respect the best I can be, hoping in time for your return sentiment.”

  Veee did not answer. What could she say? That she liked the prospect of sharing her man with a luscious seductive vampire, or befriending that same creature?

  Then, amazingly, Tod saw a tear on Veee’s cheek. Then he knew that Vanja had already won her case, though it might take time for the full realization of it. Veee, too, wanted a true friend, just as she wanted a true lover. She richly deserved both.

  Chapter 4:

  Wizard

  The trail wound on through a highly varied landscape. It reached a large lake or sea whose water was pleasantly warm.

  “I must test for predators,” Bem said. It went to the edge, extended a fold of skin, and seined the water. “There is no predator near,” it announced. “We can safely use this water.”

  “Thank you,” Tod said. “It is a comfort to have your reassurance, after some of the dangers we have faced.”

  Bem made an appreciative band of colors around its knob.

  “I want to bathe,” Vanja said. “You must join me, Veee.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I will go nude, and this will arouse the man. You must arouse him similarly, at least until his emotion sets and is constant. Thereafter I will be able to seduce him, but not seduce him from you. His desire will be evenly divided between us. This is the way it must be, so that we can share him without rancor.” As she spoke, her painted clothing faded, leaving her bare. Tod wondered whether her jet black pubic hair was real, or more coloring. Did it matter?

  Veee nodded. She doffed her robe and accompanied the vampire to the water.

  Tod stayed back, watching them. Vanja’s hourglass figure was supremely evocative from behind, as she had to know. But Veee’s more solid form, with its powerful legs and muscular buttocks, was similarly evocative, as she too had to know. When she had donned the grass skirt...

  His erection was straining at his clothing. What the hell. The girls were out to seduce him, and he was more than willing. He got out of his clothing and let his member stand tall.

  Meanwhile Bem entered the water. It formed into a shape roughly like a giant skate or manta ray and swam with a kind of flying motion. Versatile creature!

  Veee and Vanja waded in, then swam. They splashed each other laughing. Their breasts flashed as they leaped half out of the lake. Their hair, matted in the air, spread voluminously in the water, brown and black. Then, acting together, they swam on their backs, their legs toward him as they kicked high. Their junctures showed momentarily as the water rippled across them. They were openly tempting him.

  “I think the only thing more intriguing than single courtship is double courtship,” Bem remarked from its vantage to the side. “I believe they are inviting you to play.”

  “You bet!” Tod ran to the water and dived in, rushing to join the women.

  They met him together. Veee flung her arms about him and pressed her breasts to his chest as she kissed him. Vanja ducked underwater, then came up against him facing away, her hands busy. In a moment she was feeding his stiff penis into her cleft and pushing her bottom back to take him all the way in. He climaxed immediately as Veee’s kiss turned into tonguing. It was as though he were ejaculating into her, powerfully and wonderfully.

  Then they released him and came up for air, in their fashions. They played with him, splashing him, racing him, teasing him, until he began to react again. Then Vanja kissed him from the side, caught his hands and set them on her breasts, while Veee wrapped her legs about him, leaned back, and took him in. It took longer, but they managed to make him climax again, marvelously. It was weird not penetrating the one he was kissing or fondling, but had its novelty and considerable appeal. He doubted that they were climaxing with him; it was more complicated for a woman. They were doing this as a challenge and to assert their dominance in this respect. They surely enjoyed making him respond, and that sufficed, at least for this occasion.

  “I could get to like this,” he gasped as his pulses ebbed.

  “It’s just the beginning,” Vanja assured him, gently nipping his ear.

  “We have plans for the night,” Veee agreed.

  Maybe that was when they would get their own climaxes. “I hope I survive them.” All three laughed.

  In due course they emerged, joyously clean. “I thought vampires were cold blooded,” Tod said as they dried in the sunshine.

  “In spirit, not body,” Vanja said. “And hot-blooded when it comes to sex.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And you see, you don’t have to choose between us,” Vanja continued. “You can have us both, simultaneously.”

  “I noticed that too.”

  Dry, they dressed in their fashions and moved on along the trail, which continued along the shore.

  Vanja sniffed the air. “Predator,” she announced. “I’ll investigate.” She transformed to bat form and took off.

  “I am surprised you, um, indulge so freely, after your prior caution,” Tod said to Veee.

  “I have to, to match her pace, lest she take a larger share of you. But I confess that this situation gives me leave to do things I would not have dared try alone. In my realm a forward woman is anathema.”

  That explained a lot. Veee had been loath to make any kind of sexual decision, until Vanja had become a catalyst. Now Veee was evidently enjoying being wanton. The pendulum might swing back the other way, in due course, but it was fun for now.

  “You are getting to like her,” Bem said.

  “I am,” Veee said seriously.

  “There’s something about her, apart from her expressed desire to be frie
nds.”

  “Some affinity we have for our companions,” Tod agreed. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but we four have something in common.”

  “Disaffection with our home worlds,” Veee said.

  “That, too.”

  The bat returned and transformed. “Four-footed creatures, too many to balk.”

  “Wolfkeys,” Veee said. “They pursued us before, but we escaped them. We need to find a safe retreat for the night.” Because the day was getting late.

  Tod looked out across the water. “There’s an island. We could swim to it. Can the wolfkeys swim?”

  “Surely they can,” Vanja said. “Probably as well as we can.”

  “You could fly across and be safe,” Veee reminded her.

  “Only if I could thereby help the rest of you cross.” The vampire pondered, then amplified: “I am not normally gregarious or loyal to a group, but I do settle my debts. You helped me when I was ill, and now I value the friendship, sex, and warmth you provide.” She glanced at Veee, Tod, and Bem as she said the words. “So I have become committed.”

  Bem was sampling the water again. “Worse news: swimming predators have been alerted by our water sport, and are forging rapidly toward us. They seem to be large fish with electrical properties. I suspect they touch prey and shock it, stunning it, then tear it apart and consume it.”

  “Crossbreed of sharks and electric eels,” Tod said.

  “Shocks,” Vanja suggested.

  He smiled. “Shocks,” he agreed.

  “We are in trouble,” Veee said. “If we swim, not only with the wolves following us, the shocks will intercept us. But there must be a way to escape them, as there was before. Assuming we were brought here for a reason.”

  Tod looked about. He saw no trees large enough to hold them. There was only the open beach and the water. “There may be a way,” he said. “Desperate, dangerous, but possible.”

  “We are interested,” Bem said with its typical understatement.

  “Timing is of the essence. It’s a matter of vectors. Vanja, can you scout the shocks and tell me how far away they are and what their swimming velocity is?”

  She became the bat and flew out across the water.