“The inside of my thighs are also highly sensitive to gentle touch.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Also, there are times when my genitals cry out to be stroked, but they are only receptive under certain scenarios.”
I hesitated, before responding, “Is this one of them?”
Silky turned around and looked up at me, tilting her head. “You–” She swallowed her words, with difficulty. She appeared to have trouble breathing. In a voice that was half gasp and half hiss, which left little room for her to make understandable human speech, she told me, “You must discover that for yourself.”
With a grin that grew wider and hungrier by the second, I looked into her face. For over two years I’d looked at her but now I was seeing her for the first time. She had a new sheen about her dimpled cheeks. The water running off the upturned tip of her nose gave it a cuteness I’d never seen before. I traced a fingertip along a hairless eye ridge, noticing for the first time their covering of tiny grooved and angled scales that made the water drip away from her eyes, like filigree guttering.
She was a marvel.
I ran both hands through her kesah-kihisia. They were plumper and hotter than a few moments earlier.
“NJ, don’t ever stop. Why have you never done this before? You’re so good.” She purred, a deep rumble shaking her entire rib cage. “NJ, we survived. I didn’t think we would this time.”
“Shhh. You’re here with me now. That’s all that matters.”
“I don’t know how it is for humans,” she said, “but with my species…” She hesitated. “The aftermath of mortal peril can leave us feeling…”
I kissed her forehead, and as I did so I touched her belly – with the hard tip of my manhood.
“As you can see,” I said, “it’s the same for my species.’”
She laughed “That’s an unconventional way to salute me, Sergeant.” She grabbed me and squeezed. “You should deploy this more often.”
Damn right I would. But I was hungry for something else that simply would not wait. I leaned down into that alien mouth to kiss her, but… her eyes!
“What’s the matter? NJ? You’re frightening me.”
Her eyes were burning, melting. My human cleanser! Of all the things – she was borrowing my human soap and it was melting her alien flesh.
“NJ? Answer me, damn you!”
“Your eyes. The black region around them is melting. Chemical burning, the black epidermis flaking away.” Half my mind was trapped in the memory of my hand burning in the corrosive smog of Ares-6 as I felt the life leave Sanaa’s dying body. But the other half freed itself and flicked the shower into its special decontamination mode.
Silky screamed as the furious water jets flailed her bruised body, crushing her to squat down with her arms as a protective shield over her head. I hated to hurt her but bruises would heal.
She pushed upward against the jets and switched off the water.
“That won’t help,” she gasped. “Too late. I know what it is. An allergic reaction. Listen carefully and act quickly. In the equipment pouch on my belt is a round tin. It’s a special trauma kit. Bring it!”
I leapt out the shower in a burst of steam and skittering, wet feet.
My fault! My stupid fault! Klin-Tula had no Kurlei-specific hygiene products. Normally, she substituted alternatives compatible with human infants, but now she was covered in my cleaner and Fates knew what chemicals that contained.
My feet lost their fight for traction and I slid across the damp floor on my belly, dragging myself the last few inches to her heap of clothes.
Mercifully, my fingertips quickly found the bulge of a round tin in her pouch. I ripped it out and returned to my feet.
For years I’d told myself that humans and aliens don’t mix. I should’ve listened to myself. The differences in psychology and physiology provided an infinite possibility for tragic misunderstanding. Such little details as using the right cleanser got people killed.
I glanced at Silky from across the bathroom. She looked and felt impossibly calm. It was a form of shock I had encountered before.
I raced back to her, opening the tin. “What do I do?” I shouted.
“Give me the bottle and the applicator. Quick!”
I did so, wincing, because her face was such a mess. The black outer layer around her eyes had melted away and was draining down her face.
I glanced at the tin in my hand.
For some reason, she didn’t use the trauma kit. Her gaze was glued to me.
My mind rewound a few seconds, to the moment when I read the writing on the tin.
I glared at Silky. “Make-up remover?”
She used the sponge attachment to work away the blackness from around her eyes.
“Seriously?” I growled. “Frakking make up?”
“Yes, frakking make up, and why not? I’m not an animal. I’ve always cared for my appearance even though the only one who ever noticed was my reflection.” She put her hands on her hips and dared me with a look of challenge. “Are you angry with me?”
I didn’t know where she was headed with this. Didn’t care. I scooped her up in my arms, lifted her out of the shower and kissed her, crushing her black lips hard against my own.
She opened her mouth and rubbed the moist and slightly puffy inner surfaces of her lips over mine.
There was much drool.
I broke away slowly, alien spit running off my chin.
She wiped it away from me, resting one hand on my cheek. “It’s all right, dear,” she told me, “You will learn how to do this properly, I’m sure.”
I smiled. Then frowned, remembering that I was still furious with her. “Wait! I will learn?”
“Indeed. I know the kissing of lips is important to your species, but it is obvious you are not very good at it. Perhaps it is lack of practice.”
Silky wriggled out of my embrace, gathered up her clothes from the bathroom floor and strode through the bedroom and out into the kitchen.
I took the opportunity to study her feet-outward alien gait, and the lyrical movement it induced in her behind.
“I can kiss just fine,” I told her. “Have you ever kissed before?”
“Many times.”
I tried matching her answer to what she had told me in Schaek’s office. “On the mouth? Lips to lips?”
“Of course not. No one but humans would perform such an unhygienic act. Do you not realize that food goes into that orifice?”
She took our longest data cable out of the drawer in the kitchen cupboard and held it aloft. “Don’t worry,” she said, “we have help.”
As so often, I didn’t understand what she meant, but was content to go with the flow. The cable, though, I did understand. My heart beat faster at the thought of jacked-in sex, of making love in our minds and bodies simultaneously, and with a natural empath too. I was about to explore realms of pleasure where no human had ventured before.
The prospect of sexual nirvana receded when I realized that in her other hand, she was holding her personal comm unit, into which she was explaining to someone her husband’s poor kissing technique.
“Stop that!” I told her.
“Would you mind coming over?” she asked the person on the other end. “You could teach him.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath through the speaker, and realized with horror who she was talking to.
“Never gonna happen,” I heard Shahdi reply. “It would be like… eww… kissing my dad. I’ve a better idea. Hey, César, would you be willing to teach Silky how to kiss like a human?”
I reached for the device, but the little alien devil snatched it away, giggling.
“He’s up for that,” said Shahdi. “A little too eager. Shall I put him on?”
I won the device away from Silky and threw it at the armored inner wall. I glimpsed Shahdi’s shocked face looking at my naked form before she exploded in a spray of shattered plastic and circuitry that would keep th
e cleaner bots busy for a long time.
I grabbed the cable in one hand, Silky in the other, and walked through to the bedroom where I flung us all onto the bed.
I picked her up and wrapped her around my hips, and then moved in to suck at her lower lip, flicking the tip of my tongue across its bumpy surface.
Her hands kneaded the muscles in my back, which felt divine, but when she pulled me in I held back. I gazed into her mesmerizing black eyes for a long while, and then told her that I loved her.
I’m not good with words – I prefer to speak in actions – which is why I’d saved these beauties up for a special occasion, practicing them for months just in case I needed them.
You see, to be sure she didn’t think I was speaking lightly, I told her how I felt in her own Kurlei dialect.
Which was beginning to seem a bad idea as I waited for her to beam with pleasure and hug me with delight as she thanked me.
Instead, she sucked at her lower lip, as if she were seriously worried.
What had I actually said?
My old Spacer friend, Conduit, had served with a Kurlei Marine contingent, and I’d asked her to teach me a few Kurlei phrases.
Silky rubbed a thumb across the rasping stubble of my chin. She seemed thoughtful. “I’m not sure I can give you what you want. I am not sure sex the way you want is possible between us.”
“I know we’re not evolved to… you, know, be reproductively compatible. But that’s no reason for us to not have a lot of fun exploring each other.”
“It is not the physical aspect, NJ. I am not sure whether I can match your sexual desire.”
I shook my head, completely confused. A minute ago we were naked on our bed and hot for some long-overdue action. I realized that loving an alien was never going to be smooth sailing.
“NJ, do you know the meaning of the words you spoke?”
“I think so. Tell you what, why don’t you remind me?”
Lilac bloomed across her white cheeks. I could feel her mind blushing. “NJ, on my world, the sex between males and females is aggressive. Functionally reproductive and often violent. Occasionally fatal. Lovemaking of the kind your species likes to talk about only ever takes place between females. It’s more restrained.” Her eyes flicked to a distant memory. “Longer lasting,” she purred. “What you told me was an expression. It means to…”
I didn’t know whether it was embarrassment, an overdose of excitement, or translation that made her hesitate. I took the chance to brush her cheek to feel the heat in them through my fingers.
“Go on,” I told her.
She swallowed hard. “You spoke the ultimate expression of lust. It is an invitation from one woman to another to make love without restraint. With abandon. As if with a male.”
I laughed. “You adorable, crazy alien. I am a male.”
“A human male, yes. If we really did make love without restraint, your mind would explode.”
I laughed. “Are you serious?” I thought on that. “Wow,” I said under my breath. “What a way to go!”
“I do not joke,” she snapped and I could feel the worry in her mind. “I think the cable link may be too much for us today.”
I threw it to the floor and licked her behind her ear, making her shiver. I tried to give her a reassuring grin. No heads had exploded so far, and I could do this all afternoon.
She groaned as I flicked a trail of long tongue kisses down her neck. I was about to work further down to her breasts and those hardened nipples and beyond, but I suddenly switched, heading north not south. I licked her kesah-kihisia which felt smooth and plump like warmed peaches. Flicking her onto her side, I stretched behind her and put one of the tentacle-like alien appendages in my mouth and sucked.
Her whole body locked rigid, but her kesah-kihisia didn’t. They began swaying like fronds brushed by an underwater current.
I was suckling greedily now, getting mightily turned on by the sexual heat emanating from Silky. I was getting her full blast on every channel: her mind was groaning with pleasure even louder than the gasps from the mouth, and both were erupting in unison with the spasms along her spine. Best of all was the way the excitement I felt burning within her turned me on, and she, in turn, fed on the desire she could read in my mind.
As we drove each other to ever higher plateaus of passion, in this erotic positive feedback loop, my eyesight began to fail. I was experiencing the same effects as high-gee acceleration, just before blacking out.
Silky was slick with sweat, having moved beyond spasms into a soft puddle of quivering flesh.
Fates! If this was the effect of sucking her kesah-kihisia, what would this feel like if I switched to more erogenous zones?
Silky always swore she could not read my thoughts, but she sensed something of my notion because it jerked her mind into a fresh height of excitement.
Which sparked a fresh peak in mine.
Silky screamed.
She kicked me away, gasping. “Too much! To touch my kesah-kihisia so aggressively. It’s too much.”
I had no answer. All I could do was wait for my heartbeat to return to a normal pattern, and for the blood to return to the parts of my body where it was supposed to be. It really was just like coming out of high-gee black out.
“Relax,” she told me. “Let me…”
Now what? I hadn’t the strength to speak, but I could hear the embarrassment in her voice.
She told me something in Kurlei. Then she took a deep breath and translated. “There is a part of your body that fascinates me,” she said. “Kurlei males do not have what you possess.”
She dragged me up the bed, and I allowed her to draw my arms above my head to rest on the pillow. She straddled me and, with a twist of her subtle hips, I was inside her, gripped warm and comfortable and so very right.
I’d worried about this moment – whether we were truly as compatible as our outer appearance suggested – but I’d never dreamt we would feel so good.
I grunted with satisfaction, my sigh fading to an elegant vibrato as I shuddered with sensation.
Silky was so fixated with my unique human body part, she barely noticed me moving inside her.
I focused on her pretty face and saw that she dripped not only with sweat but with drool as her mouth dropped open and tongue lolled out with the intoxicating sight of… Well, strange though it seems, she was once again staring at my nipples.
Her long, oval belly did the maw-chomping motion as her guts churned with the allure of my manly chest.
Any doubt that they were the focus of attention was pierced when she grabbed them between finger and thumb, pinched, and twisted hard.
I screamed.
I like it rough from time to time as much as the next guy, but these were the same fingers that had reached through my flesh to pull out Sanaa’s AI casing, remember?
“Sorry,” she said in a drunken drawl. “Did that hurt?”
“Eek!” I answered.
She grimaced, sobering slightly. “My nipples possess more pleasure receptors than every other part of my body,” she said.
“Good for you. Mine don’t.”
“However,” she continued, “the nerves are buried deeply and require vigorous and prolonged stimulation before coming online.” She placed my hands over her breasts. “Would you like me to teach you?”
“Ungh,” I replied, when she began a rhythmic squeezing of her buttocks.
We were bruised, utterly exhausted, and my poor nipples had been subjected to the most excruciating torture.
None of that mattered.
We embarked together, Kurlei and human, on a journey of sexual discovery.
My ghosts were still dumb, still recovering, but I could sense their presence and their desire to get in on the action too.
But that could wait for tomorrow. This afternoon was just for the two of us.
I figured we deserved that much.
——
We didn’t break until sometime after dark when
dehydration finally drove me to the kitchen. After downing a jug of water, I returned to Silky with the refilled jug on a tray with two glasses.
Once she’d drunk her fill, she put a hand to my chest and held it against my heart. It was a gentler form of the positive feedback that had nearly knocked us out earlier. She broadcast love and contentment, and the emotions washed back and forth between us on a current of shared empathy.
I shuddered, exhilarated and a little scared at the strength of the bond we were exploring. As I folded myself fully into this feedback loop, I heard a crystalline sigh from Silky like breaking glass. I marveled at the beautiful and inhuman sounds she could make, but I pulled my mind free, deeply ingrained instinct telling me to always hold something back in reserve.
That’s when I noticed the grenade lying on the floor, nestled contentedly amidst the shards of glass beneath the shattered window that looked out over the street.
Time froze.
Long enough to hear a distinctive scurrying from the sidewalk as our assailants ran off. Littoranes.
Time returned to the world, but it did so slowly. Not in a conscious effort to withdraw to the fast-time in my head, but sometimes sheer terror can slow the world all by itself.
I had time now to take in the full horror of the fist-sized-black object, a little scuffed and scorched from the exhaust gases in its launcher and its forced entry through the armored glass.
What to do? Throw the grenade back out the window, or cover it with my body?
There was no time.
The grenade was too far away.
I like to think that somewhere deep within my brain, I carefully considered these options. But I acted purely on instinct, and did neither.
I scooped Silky off the bed, and – holding her before me – ran for the shelter of the bombproof bathroom.
I didn’t make it.
The blast was an iron bar smashing my lungs and the inside of my skull, a frenzied blade slicing my back in a cascade of agony.
Which cut off abruptly.
Yet I was still conscious, flying through my apartment, and about to slam into the armored inner wall. Silky folded before me inside my grip, but I could hear nothing, feel only numbness.
Then my eyes went offline, and I felt my ghosts being ripped away, screaming as they tried to cling to existence but were cast into oblivion.
Second Strike Page 31
