Cutie Pi (Holidays of Love Book 3)

by Ellen Mint

  “What? Why not?” How bad is it?

  Don’t panic.

  God, I could really use an intergalactic handbook right about now. Page through it and see what a Yaxha… No, what a Dra’id looked like to prepare myself.

  “We’re an ugly species, unwanted by the universe at large. I know I should not have lied to you for so long. I’m sorry.”

  Stinging rose in my eyes at the pain in his voice. I’d call it tears, but I didn’t even know if he had ducts to cry them.

  “I only… For a moment there, I thought I’d remain as I was. As what you could stomach looking upon. But it’s too late now.”

  “You’re alive. That’s all that matters,” I shouted, my cheeks turning white-hot. From the self-hatred radiating off of Nolan. From my body issues rising with his. From my joy at knowing he survived. And from the gurgling in my gut wondering why I cared so much.

  “Please, stay where you are,” Nolan said.

  “This is silly. We’re on the same ship. I’m going to have to see you.” I began to slowly turn when he cried a sharp spike that pounded straight through my eardrums.

  “Stop! I can take you to earth, your home. You remain in here and I’ll…I will…”

  “Nolan.” I opened my hands and let them fall to the side. Pulling in a slow breath, I tried to imagine the tension melting off of me and draining from my dangling fingertips.

  “I can’t!” he sputtered. “Watching disgust rise in your eyes would… I’d prefer the Kirkan’s quick death.”

  Blinking rapidly to shake away the tears, I pulled in a shuddering breath. He sounded close to the edge himself. If I couldn’t even pretend to find him appealing would he…? “Please,” I said gently, “trust me.”

  “I…I do. You may, do what you wish at your discretion.”

  Now or never. If I didn’t turn, he’d slink away to the bridge, deposit me on earth, and vanish forever. But if I did turn and found something disagreeable? Would it be as good as a knife to his heart?

  I glanced down at my wrist, the red welt still evident even with his healing touch. He saved me, risked his financial future for my life. Certain, I twisted on my knee and gazed across the room.

  Blue and purple iridescent scales struck me first. Smaller than my thumbnail, they coated a thin but elongated chest. As he breathed, the color shifted, the purples along the edges switching to a softer blue, then back. It was amazing and hypnotic.

  My gaze traveled down, shocked to find a full dozen of abdominals popping up over his stomach area. The pants cut off the biggest question I had, but I noticed his legs were slim and bent at a forty-five-degree angle. He stood upon a much higher ankle than humans, and naked toes with claws clicked against the floor.

  Steeling myself, I began to raise my head higher. And higher still. The shirt he wore while human turned into a tight crop top on the seven-foot-tall man before me. His naked arms dangled at the side, showing not one but two elbow joints in both. But I kept going...

  And fell into the yellow stars I knew by heart. His eyes were deep black orbs, perfectly spherical, and filled half of the wide and bulbous head. But I knew them. I knew every glittering dot inside.

  “It’s you,” I said, tears rising in my voice.

  “It…” he said, his lips puffing open. They’d thinned to a small strip compared to his borrowed human look, but the lilac skin encircling his mouth was clearly lips. Nolan raised a hand and scratched along one of the stubby tendrils rising from his scalp. There looked to be five in total, all short and folding back to a point at the top of his head. It looked like an eight-bit bouffant made of shimmering scales.

  With a shrug, he said, “Tell me the truth. No sparing of my emotional concerns. I need to know.”

  “You’re…”

  “Hideous?” he said. There was no nose, but the black slits where his face protruded outward fluttered faster. “Disgusting? Unimaginably ugly?”

  “Beautiful,” I gasped.

  That caused him to rear back in shock. “Trini. I can’t— Don't lie to me. It won’t help.”

  “How can anyone…?” I said reaching for him. Nolan froze, his hand hanging in the air at first to impede me. But as I drew closer, he only watched. I glanced a single finger against his covered shoulder and slowly pulled it down. “…not find this beautiful? Sorry, handsome. Very handsome, and…”

  Stumbling past the cloth, I drew my skin against his scales. They slid against me like silk embroidered in an endless, geometric pattern. A thrill rolled through me, and I kept following the soothing path of scales further, watching his color shift as I went.

  “And what?” Nolan whispered, his breath curling against my ear. I didn’t realize he’d stepped closer, but the warmth of his body drew me in.

  I gazed up into his stars, my neck straining at the far reach. “And…”

  He tipped his head down and I cupped his cheek, or what would be the cheek on a human. I pressed in, feeling a hint of bone below the skin instead of a hollow. But it was the rhythmic tumble of scales that calmed my body and soul as I tried to pull Nolan to me.

  “Comforting,” I said. His forehead brushed against mine, every nub of the tendrils softly knocking in a hypnotizing roll. My eyes closed and I guided his purple lips to mine. Heat zipped through me, the edge of his scales tingling against my skin. Invigorating. Soothing. Exotic. Familiar. My heart throbbed faster as the taste of him ensnared me. Sultry and nutty, I wanted to open my mouth for more. For all of him.

  But Nolan pulled back, the tall man slipping from my short grasp. As he touched his lips, fear swarmed through me. What if he didn’t feel it? What if my kiss was awkward or disgusting to his species?

  His body shifted, the scales growing more opaque and brighter. I watched, terrified I did something horribly wrong when he pulled up the side of his lips.

  “That brightness is how we smile. But I can try to keep doing this too,” he said, pointing to his mouth.

  “Nolan, what…?” My brain fell numb trying to process ten different thoughts at once. I wanted to know more, to understand everything about his people, but my mind caught on one idea. “You can’t be called Nolan? What’s your real name?”

  His glow faded, and slowly the pattern along his arms shifted until they became the same grey metal structure of the wall. “I’m called Yigrzbngr.”

  “Yig…um, Yigraz…?” My lips fumbled with the alien word, setting off another burn of embarrassment across my body. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can pronounce it.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. It requires two tongues to get it right.”

  “Two?” I sputtered. “You have…two tongues?”

  He opened his mouth, and two light-blue tongues dotted with purple spots whipped back and forth across his flat teeth.

  “Wow, I…what can you do with two tongues?” They moved independently of one another, both capable of folding the tip to a point or flattening on command.

  A soft chuckle that I’d often heard pressed against me in bed caused me to look into his eyes. He put away his tongues, but whispered in a sultry voice, “More than you can imagine.”

  “Nol…I mean, Yigraz…” More than my inability to form his name tripped me up, my brain sprinting with the idea of him exercising both tongues on me. Oh, God! A moan slipped free and my guilty eyes darted to him.

  He shuffled closer, not needing to walk far with his long gait. Slowly, Nolan raised his hand, revealing pads on the three fingers and a thumb. I stretched my hand open, and we pressed our palms together. My partnerless pinkie swung around to ruffle down the scales along the back of his hand. Why did that feel so good?

  How would it feel across all of my body?

  “Trini,” he whispered, raising his second hand. I instantly pressed mine to his, and he lowered his head.

  “Yes?” I breathed back to him.

  “Let me show you what I can do.”

  “Please,” I begged, “please do.”

  One tongue lapped acro
ss my bottom lip, nipping the tender skin until my toes curled. The other darted deep into my gasping mouth. I swung my arms around his neck, clinging for life to his vast shoulders as a lightness enveloped me. Beyond the burning heat of his body plying my lips apart and rolling over my tongue. Past the intoxicating taste and smell that sent my synapses reeling. Effervescence floated through my capillaries like tiny bubbles of champagne.

  Nolan’s tongues both found their way inside my mouth, and he rose out of his lean taking me with. I yelped in surprise when the four-fingered hands fully encompassed my ass. The tips of his fingers spread outward, kneading my cheeks. They rolled back and forth like small beads of a massager working away all the tension.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?” I gasped, lifting my legs to slot not around his waist. I had no hope of reaching that far. They settled around what I assumed to be the ribcage, and…fuck. As I slipped my bare skin over the sides of his scales, the slight embossing of each strummed through me. I wanted more.

  Ravenous, I glided my thighs up and down over the wider scales circling his midsection. It felt like…there was no comparison. Warm, breathing, shifting scales slipping over me, softly rubbing and massaging my inner thighs until I bounced against the start of his endless rows of abdominals.

  A hand released from me, only to nestle in my hair. His padded fingers cupped clear across the back of my head as Nolan kissed me deeply. The twin tongues slicked over and under mine, setting off a tingle running through me that nearly turned into a tickle.

  “I was afraid you’d never look at me again,” he whispered. Each word warmed this new voice to me. Made my heart ache to hear another and another.

  “Nolan.” I paused in kissing him even with my lips buzzing as if I downed a dozen hot wings. His lilac pair had shifted in hue to a deep red as if to match mine. My eyes darted down to find that the red traveled like a straight arrow down his chest and disappeared below the pants keeping us apart.

  “I…I ruined everything for you.” The adrenaline surge vanished in an instant. I’d been running on anger at being deceived, and fear of nearly dying. But waiting in the shadows was my creature of shame, knowing it’d get its turn. “If you hadn’t rescued me. If you’d taken the research and…”

  “Trini.” His vast palm swept over my cheek, every finger reaching back to caress my ear, hold the hollow of my jaw, and dip down to my lips. “You can’t ruin what I truly want.”

  I stared through my shaking tears into his eternal black eyes and the stars within. His thumb fluttered over my lip, tugging it open as the pad massaged my tender skin. God, every touch of his skin raced straight to my pleading core. Instinctively, I started to grind against his chest, the silken panties revealing my rising arousal to both of us.

  Below my thighs, a rumble rose as powerful as sitting on a motorcycle. I tried to hang on, terrified I might skid out and fall when I watched Nolan’s scales shift. The reds along his chest deepened to a crimson and his limbs became a purple so dark they nearly looked black.

  “Trin…” he moaned my name just as he dove forward. Those strong back legs kicked us into the air like a kangaroo. I giggled and cried in shock, clinging to his burning chest, when the ship’s anti-gravity controls took hold.

  Together, we gently floated down while Nolan tugged on the ripped bodice of my shirt. The seams gave way in an instant, exposing my belly and the underside of my breasts. When his hands swept below the tattered remains of my shirt I cried out in joy.

  His finger padding cupped and kneaded in perfect harmony across the near whole of my chest. I moved to arch my back, aching to feel more, when my spine bounced against something soft. Nolan followed, his knee sinking into the mattress, then the other.

  He towered above me, his torso nearly as tall as I was. So that’s why the bed’s so big. My brain threw out that thought, pleased with itself, when Nolan found my nipples.

  “Oh, fuck!” I gasped. Rolling his fingers over them, he encased both straining points in his padding. More pressure than lips, but softer than a human’s fingers, my body cried in bliss at the touch bursting through me. Deeper. More!

  I tried to arch my back, but the mattress kept shifting, holding me in its snare and his. Nolan strained his single hand across my chest, the fingers long enough his thumb and the smallest one could reach both of my nips. God. I writhed against him, so lost in the euphoria I almost missed the palm sliding down my bare stomach.

  His lips, however, sent my heart fluttering.

  “Trini,” he whispered, kissing above my belly button. His hand slipped below the waistband of my leggings, causing me to bite my lip. The fingers continued their exploring, parting through my black curlies, then straight down my straining lips.

  “Sweet and sour!” I screamed incoherently as his gentle padding immersed inside and swerved over my clit. My body pressed into him, pleading for more. Nolan maintained his gentle swirl, encompassing the whole of the hood in his finger padding and softly changing the pressure with a roll.

  “May I show you—?” he asked, causing me to look up at him. His skin turned brighter, which I took to be a good sign. Opening his mouth, he flicked at his teeth with both tongues before finishing, “—what else I can do with these?”

  “Yes, yes. YES!” My cheeks pinked at the burst of enthusiasm and I tried to glance away. “Yes…” I whispered one last time, and Nolan started to laugh.

  “You’re a wonder to a man’s ego,” he said and pressed his lips below my belly button. “A wonder to a man’s fingers.” He slipped one inside of me, the full length of it plunging deep. I gasped in shock and struggled to rise when his lips brushed over my panty line.

  He began, “A wonder to a man’s…” and answered by biting down on both my leggings and underwear. In one swift tug, he pulled them lower with his teeth while his wide hands curled over my hips. Abandoning the feral thrill of ripping off my panties with his jaws, Nolan hooked the second of his elbow joints into them while his gaze never left mine.

  The soft scales of his cheek glided down my inner thigh while Nolan flexed his thumbs against my waist. My skin shivered at the gentle pattern rushing past when the pointed tip of his tongue lapped around my clit.

  “Oh…” I started, my bottom swaying with his arching tongue when the second slicked over my lower lips. My body cried in triumph of one touch caressing back and forth over my clit while the other explored the deep chasm below. Waves rising higher with each tide, winds increasing in speed with every passing cloud. His licking and sucking passed such a ramping pleasure through me, my fingers lashed out to find a port to cling to.

  It was his hand that caught mine, the alien fingers cupping around it and stretching up to my wrist. I’d never found myself in safer hands.

  “That’s…” I tried once again to praise him when Nolan wrenched me for a curveball. Both tongues swept in rapid circles over and under my clit, swirling in a mad synchronicity against the hood and diving down together.

  Holy fuck. Total game changer. Heat from the lips pressing around me, and the slickness of his pirouetting tongues, sent my body thrashing to the highest mountain tops. I tried to cling to him, to press to his mouth carrying me to places I could never dream. But every sharp arc from his tongue sent me shivering away, even as a whimper built in my throat.

  A hand wrapped around the base of my arching spine, his fingers pinching into my waist. With that hold, he held me in place. “Please,” I gasped, “please don’t…”

  Stop.

  Leave.

  Let me die in orgasmic bliss.

  The hand held in mine began to slip away, his fingers sliding down my wrist. I reached forward, renewing the bond. A bright light grew from Nolan’s red and purple body, his color so vibrant it nearly turned neon.

  I wanted him. Didn’t care what he had in his pants. Didn’t matter if it wasn’t evolutionarily compatible. We’d find a way.

  “Sweet mother of God!” I screamed to the unending cosmos as his twi
n tongues erupted an orgasm. It raced through me like lightning seeking the ground. My heart froze in my chest, my skin burnt to a cinder, my neck strained back as if in the throes of rigor mortis, and my dangling toes curled up.

  Perhaps it only lasted a moment, or for an entire eon I hung in that state of eternal euphoria. Relativity in action. All I knew, as the pleasure ebbed to a comforting ache deep in my belly, was that I hungered for more.

  Nolan’s tongues retracted, leaving me gibbering like a loon. I had to bite down on my knuckles to stop the inanity while he gazed down at me. All the blackness in his scales vanished, leaving him an even paler purple than before. “Does the doctor approve?”

  “Ye…yes,” I stuttered, jerking my head in the sharpest nod possible.

  At first, his color burst brighter, but slowly he raised his lips as if trying the smile on for me. “That…Trini, you wouldn’t believe how happy I am to—?”

  He’d started to glide up the bed to lay beside me, but my palm caressed over his exposed stomach. I couldn’t cease playing with the waistband, my mind churning with what could be under there. Wafting my fingers back and forth over the scales in a circular formation, I tried to screw up my courage.

  The longer I touched him, the redder his chest grew. Nolan raised his head, his nostril slits trembling as great purple lids slid over his eyes.

  “Do you like that?” I asked, picking up the tempo and watching his throat shudder.

  His lids popped open, and he touched my elbow. Didn’t try to stop my arm, but held my palm against his stomach. “You don’t have to,” he said.

  “What if I…?” Embarrassment rode across my body. It’d taken years of fumbling to learn how to do the handful of techniques to appease human males. He could come to hate me if I did it wrong.

  Nolan’s chest slowed in its heaving, his belly’s color shifting back to blue. But the stars in his eyes glowed as if he wanted me to continue.

  “What if I want to?” I asked. “What if I want to know, want to see and understand?”