by Amanda Milo
She fits the two sticks across her arms and rocks herself in such a joyous manner that I am slightly confused when her eyes begin to produce tears. She chokes on what certainly sounds like laughter when I carefully cup her jaw and examine her sweet face, and attractive spots. Nothing appears amiss... She’s running a rapid, excited dialogue that I simply enjoy hearing because her voice is so lovely. I have to conclude that her tear production in this context must be a Gryfala-oddity, because her happiness cannot be mistaken.
She is so excited to have materials to nest with!
So I gape when she lets her new sticks fall—seemingly forgotten—and her small hands are gripping onto the muscles of my forearms and she’s leaning in, her gaze locked on mine with a focus that makes my tail thwap against the floor. “Tac, wheyn? Wheyn weel wee bee theer? Wheyn?!”
I stare into her eyes, which have very, very pretty striations of color. It’s like the beach sand on the Cor’ranaq planet—but the relief and affection in her eyes rivals the warmth of even that majestic seaside. “I don’t… are you asking when you can start?”
She tilts her head, and her flat top teeth are revealed as she sinks them onto the pillow of her bottom one. I don’t know why, but seeing this up close makes me feel as if that lip is beckoning to me. I lift up my ears and try to refocus. Her body has started tremoring. Creator… anxious?
My claws are bothering me so I drag them along the tops of my thighs. “Of course you’re anxious. If I had eggs forming inside me I’d be keen to start too,” I give a low croak at the mental picture and she blinks.
Wanting to make her happy, hoping to assuage the worst of the intensity that has her in thrall, I vow I’ll forego sleep if I must in order to ready the nesting space. I hold up one finger. “One. I should have your nesting site set up in one day!”
Another burst of exultant sound, and she’s throwing herself on my person. I can’t say I’m regretting her reception to this news: I’m not. I’m so far beyond my expectations with this turn of events. My throat vibrates with my exclamation of “Hoorassa!” and she laughs. Ha! And Grake said she’d grow standoffish!
“Tac! Yoo are TEH BEST! Eye kipt tryying too teyl yoo, and teyl yoo: eye neeed tem. They need meh. Tank yew, tank yew, tank yew, Tac! Tank yoo—!” With this, she bursts into true tears—not the silent leaking but the messy, loud stormfall—and none of her unfathomable words get any easier to understand.
I hug her to me, and gently sifting my claws into her mane, I apply pressure until her face fits perfectly at the hollow near my throat. “Vsshhp,” I soothe as I move to stroke my hand down her back. “Vssshhp.”
She laughs into my neck.
The collection of tears coupled with the puffs of her warm breath over my dampened skin makes me shiver.
What a pleasant feeling.
She pulls away a little, and now, she’s neither laughing, nor actively sobbing. Her face is serious, and intent, and on top of her relief she looks…
Sad. And… soft.
My eyes dart over the features of her face, trying to read what this means. Beautiful blotchy coloration, brows drawn in a bittersweet meeting, lips parting with a wistful-sounding breath...
Her gaze flits over my features now, and I’ve no doubt she’s trying to read me too.
I don’t know what she finds.
But I do know, that this time, when her lips cover mine, she doesn’t pull away.
CHAPTER 33
TAC’MOT
Her kisses are stealing my breath, my thoughts, my sanity. Her hands find my shoulders and she adds weight to where her palms meet my skin, sliding under the fabric and pressing me back. I follow her lead, feeling the burn of my abdominals as I make our descent slow, luxuriating in her weight on top of me.
She works the buttons free, divesting me of my shirt entirely, and admires my chest with an appreciative little noise that has my foot thumping the bed.
I feel the softness of the skin of her knee as it slides its way across my hip, then my belly, then fits itself on my other side as she raises up, straddling me.
I pinch the beads adorning my cirri. This escalated quickly.
I stare up at her. I wish I was a normal male, one who couldn’t hurt a female—unintentionally or otherwise.
She traces a fingertip over my rapidly mottling skin. I’m growing too excited.
Careful!
Right now, I wish I were her sort of normal.
She stretches to kiss the tip of my chin, before she moves to my cheek, and just when my eyelids begin to feel heavy though in no way am I feeling slumberous, she pulls back and seems to be making an intense study of my face, throat, and shoulders.
To be like Grake, or even Brax. Someone she would consider committing to.
I believe I know what she is finding. “Tara,” I breathe. “This isn’t good.”
I look down at my skin, and my worst fears are confirmed. My spots aren’t the angry warning markings of impending threat—this is the good news. The bad news is that these are the enticing courtship display markings. Not a benign ‘I am interested in you female’ signal. No, this is much more serious. This is, ‘You are my mate, and I am calling you’.
My mate.
I only have memories, memories dulled by time, of my own parents affectionately, unabashedly displaying for each other. I believe I am remembering true that my sire’s markings looked much like mine are right now. I’m both saddened and… proud to see them, to see them now, with this female—and to be reminded of what he had with my dam. To think that I care for Tara as much as he cared for her.
When I look at Tara, I am not deterred at all that she does not display the reciprocal large sun flecked and brown patches like a female of my kind would.
Instead, Tara’s brown patches show all the time. They are tiny, and small compared to mine, but they are always on display. Just like her kindness. Whenever she has looked at me affectionately, I have secretly enjoyed the fantasy that her spots were for me. Were a reflection of her inner feelings for me.
Just like mine are in actuality playing out for her.
Her physiology can’t show me that she wants me by the changing of patterns along her skin, but she is signaling me by her changing smell.
My elated pitch change in my “Hooorassa!” makes her smile.
Her hand drops over my heart. I meet her gaze, and am mesmerized as she begins to speak. Although I don’t understand her words, I am not mistaking the fondness she has for me in her tone as she admires my mate-calling pattern.
I place a reciprocating hand on her chest, which is covered entirely by my shirt. She wears my shirt, she sleeps in my bed; she finds my quarters and my presence so comfortable she has the urge to lay eggs. I’ve never heard of a Gryfala that deviated from her hobs or her Rakhii. Right now, Tara has neither, but she is not without the option. Yet… She didn’t choose Grake. She didn’t choose Brax. Tara is choosing me. She’s showing me in all the ways she can that she wants me.
I. Accept.
CHAPTER 34
TARA
“Tac,” I breathe, watching the brilliant colors seep into his skin.
I think the spots are his version of a blush.
Iridescent emerald green splotches with a striking black outline start forming on his face before spreading like syrup on a sundae; random drip patterns begin to appear all over his skin. Okay, so it’s his version of a blush all over. It’s striking, it’s strange, it’s… his colors are so nice, his body is so nice, he is so nice that Tac is… alien or not—he’s sexy.
Earlier, something had been bothering him. He’d started to look sort of ashamed. Then it was overridden by… what? I don’t know. But now it’s like the significance of this event happening—
I’M GOING HOME TO MY GIRLS!
...It’s like the two of us saying goodbye forever in just a few hours has clicked for him and now he’s starting to talk. A lot.
I nod at all the moments I’m pretty sure are appropriate. I acce
pt his arm sliding around my back, gently urging me to flatten against his chest.
A chance to cuddle against this chest? Okay!
I snuggle down and breathe him in. Masculine, appealing—not like Brax’s sex-on-a-platter-hot-fudge-deliciousness’ scent draws me in—but in the way that an attractive man smells, the way that I can’t help but appreciate.
Appreciate a lot.
Of course, this isn’t the only thing I’m appreciating. Up close like this? Tac’s muscles… I have to force myself to glance away before I start drooling. I’m a mother of two. I have two babies who need me. I will be with them again in a matter of hours.
Thanks to Tac.
In a matter of hours, I also have to say goodbye. It’s time to pull myself together.
But I’m human, not dead.
So when Tac tentatively wraps his fingers around mine, and guides them to slide across his heated skin; I don’t stop him, I meet his tender gaze and together, we ease the fabric of his suit open like he’s gift wrapped for me and we force it over his wide shoulders, revealing his incredibly built body…
I’m human, not dead!
I swallow and I have to marvel at the fact that I don’t even feel a curl of hesitation about what we’re leading to here.
There is nothing wrong with me enjoying this while I can have it.
While I can have it. I have to leave behind sweet, funny, kind Tac.
I take a deep breath and blink until my eyes don’t burn.
I look back into the imperturbably patient, affectionate gaze that is no doubt watching every emotion play out on my face. Adorable, affectionate Tac with his body built like an athlete’s; all sinew and muscle, and restrained power.
I want to express how I feel for him, what I feel for him. I want to do it in a way he can share it with me, because I know he feels it for me too. I’ve seen it in the way he smiles at me. I feel it in his little touches. In the way he holds me at night when he doesn’t have to. This ship is huge: if he didn’t want to, I wouldn’t even share a room with him. I’d wonder why he hadn’t forced me to show him some ‘gratitude’ this entire time—but I know why.
This is Tac.
I can’t see Tac forcing me to do anything I don’t want to do.
I want to do this.
Planting my free hand on his pectoral (he HAS a pectoral! Not a cute little man-boob moob: a sculpted, hot, both literally-and-figuratively, honest-to-alien Pectoral. Rawr.), I scoot my butt backwards until I’m sitting in the cradle of his hips. Because of his body structure, this puts me between his knees, which rise up to my elbow’s height on either side of me. It seems odd, but at the same time… it’s just Tac. He effortlessly curls up (all that jumping around he does sure has done pretty, pretty things for his abdominals) so that he can keep ahold of my hand as I scooch backwards more, until the backs of my calves slide over the sinew of membrane that connects the top of his legs to his torso, then I carefully fold and drop my knees so I can tuck them on either side of his big muscled butt.
I’ve never been with a guy whose butt and hips are bigger than mine. Of course, his is solid muscle but still. It’s nice. Not just his butt—that’s nice too but no, the way I’m feeling: it’s nice. I don’t feel self-conscious at all.
This adds points to the scoreboard of whatever ridiculous mental field my psyche has apparently been playing in without my conscious knowledge, or permission for that matter. I didn’t even know that was an issue for me, but here I am, grateful all of a sudden not to have a stupid, subconscious worry about it.
I wriggle my smaller-than-my-partner’s butt until I’m comfortably seated on Tac’s wide, thick tail. But I start to lift my weight off of him when I think to ask, “Does this hurt?”
Tac pats my knee reassuringly. Keeping eye contact, I settle my weight on him again, and am relieved when he smiles slightly, showing no strain at all. Guess it’s fine.
Then he looks down. He utters a long, low warble.
It’s rather flattering.
My skirt has ridden up to my upper thighs, but I’m gonna leave it because I’m enjoying the way Tac’s having trouble breathing as his gaze darts from my face to the barely-hidden area between my knees.
I turn my attention to his body. For the first time, I really look at his lower half.
His suit is a fitted, dark material that accentuates the huge quadriceps in his thighs and, as I run my hand along one, I follow where his knee turns into his extra long tibia, I guess. Extending behind me, they taper into thick, strong heels which are firmly planted in the top cover of the bed. His feet are actually very gracefully built, and are almost as long as I am tall I notice as I sit atop him like this. I can also see that each one of his toes is tipped in a claw. But they’re pointed, and sharp, unlike—I turn our connected hands over, peering at his nails—his dull, slightly rounded off fingernails. He’s been trimming and buffing them then because I remember that they were pointy too, when we first met.
Tac is staring at them but in a shocked way that has me smiling. “What is it?”
He brings our hands up closer to his face, like he can’t believe something. Absently, his other hand moves to scratch at the rougher textured skin over his ribs.
He stops and looks at the claws on this hand too.
Then his eyes flick to me, and it’s a speculative look I have no way of decoding. I settle back, petting his other leg, smoothing my hand down the length of his ‘shin’. That’s when I notice that Tac seems to be growing decidedly uncomfortable as I examine him. I smile sheepishly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel self-conscious.” I bend and pop a kiss to his knee.
I watch his throat bob before he rips off a bead from his brishker and thrusts it at me… before he seems to come to terms with the fact that his gift of this delicate, decorative brishker bead is wasted on me. On account of me not having a set of dragon-fish eyebrow extensions. Oh, what human women would do if we had to pluck these, youch. At my snicker, he sends me a huge smile—before he excitedly begins to unwind a leather wrap bracelet from his wrist. The one he never takes off.
Right now? Technically, he still doesn’t take it off. Instead, he keeps one end on his wrist and with the other, he ties us together.
“Ummm…” I look down, not sure if I should laugh or be worried. It’s Tac. He’s not going to hurt you, you idiot. I settle on a grin. “Ha. Kinky,” I tell him.
“Kink-eeee!” he agrees with great enthusiasm.
Now I’m laughing.
He says more words, asks a question, points forcefully to a spot on his chest—I’m lost, but I peck a kiss on it.
He freezes.
Very softly, I also kiss his still-pointing finger. “It’s fine,” I try to reassure him. “I think your spots are cute,” I say and point to a few of my own. “See? I’d be such a hypocrite if I had a thing against spots, right?”
Tac hoots like he can’t believe how awesome the world is being to him right now. This guy has a vocalization range somewhere between exotic bird and a tree frog. It’s weird, but it’s also cute and he sounds so happy it makes my chest feel like it’s filling up. I just like him. Because you’ve got to enjoy a guy who pulls no punches and shows this level of zest for all the good things that happen to him. And… as he stares down into my eyes, I know that he’s trying to show me that he considers me one of the good things.
I inhale slowly and try not to let the sadness overwhelm me. Just enjoy the time we’ve got left.
The foreign tug on my wrist makes me shake my head, but I still make my lips curve up at him, because he looks weirdly happy that our hands are tied together. Whatever floats your boat, Tac. “I’m going to miss you so much,” I tell him. I can feel my voice catching when I say the words. I can see the way his smile falters, because he hears it too. He can’t speak my language, but he knows that I’m sad.
I have a connection with Tac, but I want more of a connection. I want to show him what I feel, what I’ve been feeling, for awhile now.
I examine the fastener on his pants. I take my time, leaning down to get close, and I make sure to I aim my exhalations over his bulge, and yes, yes I do enjoy his tortured little moans and whimpers.
When I look back up at him, I say, “You want to take care of this part, or should I?”
He rips off his pants so fast.
He doesn’t dislodge me to do it; he’s literally pulled so hard all the snaps popped open.
I didn’t know this, but Tac is a commando sort of guy so it’s right here, popping up to say hi. And wow, it’s um… it’s alien. His equipment is almost completely covered by a mottling emerald pattern, like the color is pooling where his body wants the most attention, but that’s not even the strange(est) part:
He looks like he’s got five ‘heads’; one fitting snugly on another. The coronas, or… rims, or flanges? are raised on them and are definitely eye catching. Five. Mushroom caps.
My thighs clench, and I squirm just a little—but because I’m sitting on his tail, he notices.
He makes an encouraging noise.
And he watches with fascination as, starting at the tip of my thumb, I lick a line down to the webbing and then up the inside of my pointer finger.
I think he’s starting to wheeze.
Experimentally, I circle just behind the first head—and Tac’s tail almost bucks me right off.
His teeth are showing as he gasps at the air, eyes wide and wild and hot, and his four ears are flicking and twitching like his nerves are uncontrollably firing on account of him being electrocuted.
I grin.
He sucks in a breath.
And I bring my tongue to the tip of his cock. At least this time, I’m prepared for when his tail lifts off the bed again. Knees planted, I lean forward more so I can bring my butt up enough for his tail to work itself out. I don’t bother dropping back down. Instead, I grab his base and bring my tongue along his very interesting shaft.
