by Claudia Rose
We’ve each been stimulated to orgasm by aliens while the other looked on. How do we manage any sort of normal relationship after that? Jenna wondered. She wasn’t sure whether a deep intimacy was even achievable between them given the bizarre memories they now shared, and the fact that when she thought of what had been done to her in front of Bruce she felt robbed of all self-respect. For years, as she’d pursued her goals on the triathlon circuit, she’d brushed-off Bruce Glenn’s overtures and forbidden herself to think about him. But now he had become the central person in her world, and she feared the vulnerable situation this placed her in, with its tremendous risks of pain and rejection. What if he decided to repay her for her cruel behavior? Nervously she glanced at the door the aliens had disappeared through. Perhaps she should follow them and escape this uncomfortable state of affairs. She could always re-impose the barriers of distance and unfriendliness that she’d hidden behind for so long. Bruce was certainly used to those.
Sensing that Jenna was somehow slipping away from him, and assuming wrongly that it was because she’d been in the path of the eruption that had seized his loins, Bruce broke the silence.
“Jenna, I’m really sorry about what just happened. I don’t know what that “woman” did to me. I certainly never meant to hit you when I…sorry…I mean…when it…”
He trailed off lamely, staring miserably down at her.
It was enough to cause Jenna to forget her almost-decision of moments ago to retreat back into her defensive shell. Bruce sounded so awkward and contrite—and fearful. She felt an unusual tightness across her chest and was seized by the need to reassure him. Placing her hands gently on his forearms, she responded with absolute honesty.
“Bruce, I know you didn’t mean it to happen and, really, I didn’t mind. The only thing I care about is that you’re all right. I was terrified you were badly injured and might even die. Right now you’re all I’ve got, and I couldn’t stand to lose you.”
As she confessed these most-private feelings her lower lip began to quiver and her eyes brimmed with tears.
Bruce, too, was gripped by emotion. He had never expected that the untouchable Jenna Walsh—the greatest woman triathlete the world had ever known—could be so vulnerable. For years he had worshipped her from afar, suffering the pains of unrequited love as she rebuffed his every approach. Now she needed him! It was the fulfillment of his most secret dream.
In a purely instinctive gesture of comfort he took her in his arms and drew her tight against his wide, muscled chest. She found it a place of immense security and responded by cuddling into him, the top of her head finding the natural hollow beneath his chin. Her hands gripped the hard planes of his back to press her more firmly to him. She made no sound, but for a few brief moments her body shook as the terrors of the last few hours found an outlet in weeping.
Bruce could hardly credit that he was holding the woman he adored in his arms. Her hair, when he buried his face in it, carried the lingering scents of Hawaii’s crystal waters. And her skin! It was as warm and silken to the touch as he’d always imagined it would be. He began very gently stroking her back to reassure her.
Eventually Jenna’s sobs subsided, but she had as little inclination to break off the embrace as Bruce had. She found his thick torso reassuring in its solidity and with one ear pressed to his chest she could hear his great athlete’s heart steadily pumping. She opened her eyes, which had been shut tight to hold in the tears, and found herself looking directly at the dusky point of his right nipple. The tiny peak, protruding above the sandy hair that lightly covered his pectorals, aroused her enormously. She had to taste it.
Jenna’s moist tongue quested towards the unsuspecting nub. When she gently whisked across it, she sampled the salt of the Pacific Ocean. She licked harder, and the smoothness of the surrounding aureole puckered in response.
Bruce had felt Jenna’s distress easing. But he didn’t expect that the cessation of weeping would be followed by the commencement of foreplay. In fact, while he was comforting her he’d been trying to shut his mind to the physical fact that their naked bodies were pressed hard together, lest she think his sensitivity to her distress was motivated by lustful ulterior motives. But as he’d held her shaking body he had felt himself growing increasingly aware of her magnificent breasts pressed against him, and his sensitive shaft, which had recovered remarkably quickly from its earlier Grand-Prix-winning performance, felt like it wanted to race again. It was all he could do to stop his body acting of its own accord.
For this reason, when Jenna’s tongue slid moistly over his nipple, he started with surprise and almost pulled away. But she prevented this by wrapping her arms more firmly around him and raising her face to look deeply into his eyes. Her own arresting eyes—the one a darker blue than the other—were a little reddened from her tears, but she grinned mischievously.
“Did that tickle?”
“I think so,” Bruce affirmed. “But you’d better try again to be certain.”
“I will. But first I need to tell you how sorry I am for the appalling way I treated you these last few years. I’ve got no good excuse for having been such a bitch, being world champion seems so meaningless in this situation, all I can do now is try to make it up to you.”
Bruce’s response was to seek the sweetness of her mouth with his own. Jenna’s lips were soft and warm. They parted to match his, gently at first, and then with increasing urgency and pressure. The kiss was more intoxicating than wine, leaving both of them light-headed with desire. The tip of Jenna’s tongue, which had moments earlier been seeking out Bruce’s nipple, ventured hesitantly across the threshold of his mouth. His own tongue encountered this delicious invader and for long moments they slipped and curled around each other, intensifying the urgency and desire both felt.
Lower down Jenna could feel Bruce’s engorging shaft pulsing hotly against her belly. In response, a melting moistness at the juncture of her thighs left her weak at the knees. She moaned into Bruce’s mouth, and sagged against him, breaking the kiss to murmur in his ear.
“Bruce, darling. Make love to me. I want you so desperately.”
The decision to consummate their mutually intensifying desire was all-but fatal. In seconds agonizing pain had felled them, as if knives had been driven through the back of their skulls to the very center of their brains. Although neither could hear the other, both were screaming. Bruce had collapsed to his knees clutching the back of his neck with both hands, while Jenna had toppled to lie prostrate on the floor, holding her head and gasping in torment.
All she could think was that she was dying. Then miraculously a hand pressed against the back of her skull and immediately the pain began to subside. In a few moments it had ebbed completely away. She opened her eyes to find Ranisha kneeling over her, with the other aliens towering above, their faces masks of concern.
“You will be all right,” Ranisha reassured her. “I must tend to Bruce.”
She turned and laid her hand on Bruce’s head. In seconds he too had recovered and was able to sit up.
“What happened to us?” he asked.
It was the male Vedi who answered.
“The Reven’s controller chip sensed you were acting against the interests of their experiments, and so it chastised you. Come through to the communal zone and I will explain fully. There are certain things we cannot do here, and lovemaking without the Reven’s sanction is prime amongst them. You have just had a taste of what Ranisha endured when she healed you and assisted you in expelling the poisons from your body through sexual “relief”. After such an impressive ejaculation I thought you would have taken longer to recharge yourself. I have to say, even I am impressed with your powers of recuperation.”
With that curt conclusion, he turned smoothly on his heel and exited the room. The others followed and this time Bruce and Jenna went too.
* * * * *
On the bridge of the Reven spacecraft, Psi276 stared passionlessly at the pyrotechnics of a dista
nt supernova. He turned slightly as the door to the bridge opened, admitting Alpha19.
“Report 276.”
“We are close to terminal speed, and on schedule for arrival at the Homeworld within twelve rotations. I have communicated our successful capture of specimens to the Council and they have authorized us to proceed with all haste to complete the experiments. They estimate that five to six trials will be sufficient to finalize the data and determine the optimum gene configurations. We will then be ready to insert the new DNA into our next series of clones.”
“What of the specimens?”
“All are satisfactory. The female Vedi resisted the controller chip’s discipline long enough to cause the male Terran to ejaculate. But that is of no matter. He will have plenty of time to rest, and he did have an injury that required healing. It is the female Terran that is more vital to our research, and I had already scheduled her for the first day of testing. The Terran male seems to be extraordinarily virile, however. Only shortly after the episode with the female Vedi, he was trying to couple with the Terran female. This time both were disciplined by the controller chip.”
“The female is not too damaged to participate in tomorrow’s experiment is she?”
“No. The Vedi assisted their recuperation.”
Psi276 paused to look into a small monitor.
“Right now all the specimens are taking refreshment, and the Vedi appear to be using the thought projector to explain where they are and what is about to happen to them.”
“That is of no matter, it makes no difference what they know. Continue 276, I will be in the laboratory if you need me.”
Chapter Six: Sex, The Universe, and Everything
The room Jenna and Bruce followed the aliens into was much larger. Like the space they’d just left it had no windows, but a number of sliding doors indicated that other rooms led off it. The décor was an unimaginatively clinical white, but the lighting was good and it was well furnished with a quantity of comfortable couches. At one end there were some openings about a foot square, like small dark alcoves. A large flat screen, like a giant television filled the opposite wall.
The aliens chose couches to settle on.
The Trrivv, Fritti and Mmerr, seemed more catlike than ever. They took the longest time selecting a place to arrange themselves. When a suitable space was found, each turned around a few times, before settling into a supple ball and then gazing expectantly about them. Their tails, which stretched out their full length, undulated from time to time, the tufts at the end twitched, seemingly of their own accord.
The Gortsoitrevnians, Mort and Zhorta, took seats next to each other. Jenna thought they moved with surprising grace for such massive creatures. They sat upright, their feet planted firmly on the floor and their hands resting loosely on their knees. Their heavy, massive, muscled frames reminded Bruce of comics he used to read as a boy featuring the Incredible Hulk. But the weighty beauty of their faces unsettled that comparison. Once seated, they took on the stillness of statues, only their eyes, which followed every movement in the room, showed that they were anything other than giants carved from blocks of stone.
The Vedi had taken places beneath the huge screen. Each assumed the lotus position. One pair of arms rested on their knees, the other pair dropped loosely at their sides.
Bruce and Jenna were the last to sit. They selected a spot together as far from the others as it was possible to get. There they perched gingerly on the edge of the couch, like a pair of chickens debating whether to fly the coop.
The male Vedi’s voice sounded in their minds.
“Finally we are all ready to talk. I know that partial greetings were exchanged prior to our arrival. You Terrans have met the Trrivv and the Gorts. I have learnt from them that you go by the names Bruce and Jenna. You have also had some contact with us, certainly Bruce has communed intimately with Ranisha.”
It seemed to Jenna that the Vedi smiled inscrutably as he said this last part, but it was hard to be sure.
“All that remains, therefore, is to tell you that I am Ghanjihi, who was the Premlord of the Vedi, but who is now, like you, a captive of the Reven.”
He paused as if this should mean something.
“Fine,” offered Bruce, who was feeling that it was time that he asserted himself a little on behalf of the Earth. “We’re all on a first name basis, and you’ve all witnessed me casting my seed about the place. But there seem to be a lot of things that you…ah…people know that Jenna and I don’t understand. So how about answering a few simple questions. What just happened to us that was so painful? What the hell are the Reven, and what do they want with us? Is this where we get vivisected, or are we going to be left to starve until we begin chewing on each other?”
Mort the Gort gave a deep rumbling laugh as Bruce finished speaking.
“No my friend,” he offered. “There will be no mutilation or suffering for us to undergo. Provided we do not mate outside the Reven experiments, any pain we do experience will be pure pleasure. And between those pleasures we will have all the nourishment we need.”
He rose gracefully to his feet and strode to the alcoves at the end of the room. There he inserted his hand into one and withdrew a handful of something that looked like mashed potato. Then he reached into another and withdrew a tumbler of clear liquid. He walked across the room and offered the food and drink to Bruce and Jenna. Both hesitated, clearly reluctant to accept strange food from an extraterrestrial Neanderthal.
“Don’t worry,” urged Mort. “This is the height of Reven technology. It will match itself to your metabolism and give you both pleasure and nourishment.”
Gingerly, Bruce extended his hand and accepted the offering. Mort smiled down at him benignly.
“Bruce, wait!” Jenna clutched at his arm. “We don’t know what it is, and we don’t know who we can trust here. Don’t do it!”
“I know it’s a risk,” he conceded seriously. “But it must be twenty-four hours since we’ve eaten, and right now, given that all of life’s a risk, a quick death’s preferable to slow starvation.”
“Then wait while I get some. If we’re taking risks, then we’re taking them together!”
Jenna jumped to her feet, brushed past Mort, and crossed to the alcoves. When she inserted her hand the food simply materialized in it. Likewise, when she reached into the second alcove the cup felt as if it were literally growing between her fingers. She walked back across the room carrying the provisions. Mort’s broad back was still between her and her seat.
“Shift, King Kong!” she commanded sharply.
Mort jumped aside with surprising alacrity, giving Jenna a deep, inscrutable look as he did so.
For her part, Jenna was too numb with fear and exhaustion to care what Mort might think.
“Okay, on the count of three.” She said as she sat back down by Bruce. “One, two, three!”
Wearing expressions on their faces as if they were expecting to sample animal manure, Jenna and Bruce put the potato-like substance into their mouths.
The result was as startling as anything that had happened to them in these last few hours was. The bland looking food was the best thing they’d ever tasted. It was not only delicious, but also amazingly substantial for something so light. It didn’t have a recognizable taste for the first second or two that it rested on their tongues, but Bruce found that if he thought of a particular food then the substance began to taste more and more like the food he was thinking of. It was the same with the liquid, he could alter the flavor of each mouthful into something different. In a few sips he had graduated from iced coffee and Coca-Cola, to beer and a fine French wine. Jenna had made the same discovery, and together she and Bruce ate with intensifying pleasure as an array of delicious flavors stimulated their deprived taste buds.
The aliens watched the looks that crossed the Terran’s faces with satisfaction.
“Well,” purred Mmerr. “They seem to be enjoying themselves a little. Perhaps they will become mo
re sociable.” And her tail twitched at the memory of the mauling it had received only a brief while earlier.
“What is this?” gasped Jenna. “It’s delicious! How does it become whatever we wish it to be?
“It is Reven technology,” replied Ghanjihi, as if that explained everything.
“So who the hell are the Reven?” Bruce demanded for a second time, around a large mouthful of food.
“And what do they want with us if they’re not planning to cut us up?” chimed in Jenna, who had the manners to swallow first.
“It is a very long tale,” Ghanjihi answered. “But it is one that you need to see and hear. Let us all take refreshment, and then I will tell you of the creation of the Universe and the history of humanoid evolution.”
The others helped themselves to food and drink from the alcoves, and then settled back on their couches. Bruce and Jenna, who were in much better spirits having eaten, felt able to relax. Bruce settled back into the comfort of the couch, and was pleasantly surprised when Jenna curled up against him. Cautiously he put his arm around her, and was rewarded with a smile as she snuggled even closer.
Ghanjihi assumed a more formal posture and began to speak.
“Before the beginning of the Universe there was nothing. Even the void did not exist. Then nothing became something. And something became many things. “
As he said this, he raised one of his arms to touch the screen above him, and immediately it sprang into life with a picture of a multi-colored array of lights shooting brilliantly outwards from a glowing and pulsating central core.
“And many things exploded with a cataclysm (which your Terran scientists imperfectly refer to as the “Big Bang”) the like of which will never again be witnessed in this dimension until time ends.”
