by Robin Lovett
“You can trust me. I swear it. Only my tongue. No fingers. No penetration.”
Relief storms over her face, and her eyes fall closed. “Yes,” she breathes and lowers the zipper of her uniform all the way down.
I’m a bit breathless with how far she’s come in two days—and how many times. Yesterday, she wouldn’t even trust me to be alone with her; now she’s stripping naked for me.
I help peel her uniform down her legs and have to fight against my own quaking hands. The slope of her thigh, the curve of her hip, and the firmness of her ass are all on display for me now. This is what I’ve dreamed about.
I fight against a sense of sorrow. The thing that wasn’t a part of my fantasy—her being in pain. Her undressing for me only because it’s a biological imperative for her—for some reason that I still don’t understand. A harsh insecurity leaps in my chest.
This isn’t about her desire for me. This is about her body and that’s all.
But it’s all right. I’ll still savor the gift of her. Even if she doesn’t see me as a gift in return.
It shouldn’t bother me. Sex is sex. We feed the desidre. I’ve done this with a hundred lovers and never thought anything of them using me for the pleasure of feeding. It was mutual.
But this time, it bothers me.
It doesn’t matter, though. She needs me. I’ll help her.
I remove her boots, yank her uniform from her ankles, and she’s naked, suspended in the air, her legs dangling, and breasts perched in weightlessness.
I’m frozen in wonder. The eroticism of just looking at her short circuits my mind, and I forget to move.
I can’t screw this up. I remember being worried I might not be able to uphold her boundaries after sharing the amuria orgasm with her last night. But I’m not worried now. I’m certain I’d rather die than do something to her she didn’t want.
“Koviye!” She screams my name and fumbles with her fingers between her legs, grasping at herself.
“I’m here.” I dive for the apex of her thighs and reach my hands between them.
She grips my hair and twists it tight in her fingers. “Now,” she whimpers.
I wrap her thighs around my face and take the barest of moments to gaze at her folds, glistening and swollen. My cock tightens as though it’s had no release, and I groan in my own agony. I can’t think about what else I’d like to do to her, right now. I only care about what she tastes like.
She widens her thighs for me and presses my mouth to her.
Her scent—it strikes me first. This is the essence of her fragrance that I’ve been drawn to. I kiss her with my lips, then open to taste her.
One dip of my tongue, and euphoria bleeds into my veins. This is what I’ve longed for with her—this intimacy. For her to trust me with her body so explicitly.
I palm her ass, dig my fingers into the flesh-covered muscle, and bury my face in her.
Her groan is so deep, it’s as though from the bottom of her soul.
Woman—that’s what she tastes like. The way a woman tastes. My first. There is no comparison for my other experiences; there is only this. And her wetness pooling and filling my mouth.
I stroke her with my tongue, feeling the textures of her, the deep crevices and many layers. I could explore her forever. But she has other plans.
Her grip on my hair shifts my mouth higher, and my tongue presses against the hardened spot at the top of her slit. “There!” she gasps. I circle the spot with my tongue, and her thighs tighten against my cheeks.
She likes this spot, this place where she rocks against my cock and comes. It’s foreign. The Fellamana have no such spot, and I’m hungry to test it for what she likes.
I wrap my lips around the nub of flesh and suck.
“Ah!” Her hands fall from my hair, and I glance up at her.
We’ve drifted to the glass ceiling. She’s stretched out, her chest parallel to the glass, her palms press to it beside her head. Clouded steam fogs the glass in circles around her hands.
I notice her eyes are closed, and not wanting to take my mouth away from her but not wanting her to miss this, I say, “Open your eyes.”
She does and gasps.
She can see the stars, while I make her feel them.
I return to her favorite spot, resume my sucking, and add what I do best.
Through my mouth and hands, I pour into her all the desire I’ve had pumping within me since I met her. I’ve been holding back from her. Out of respect for her.
But I think the time for that is over. No more holding back.
With my desire twining through and filling her, it will make her orgasm full of my Exstare. It will be overwhelming. The climax itself will be torturous in its ecstasy. But it’s what it will give her after that I really want for her.
It should give her greater satisfaction. It should sate her.
I hope. Gods, I hope.
If I can’t relieve her pain, I will feel a failure.
I slow the movements of my tongue, holding off her orgasm until her entire pelvic area is flooded with my Exstare, and I can feel her laced with me.
Then I suck on that spot she loves and flick my tongue along the delicate flesh—again and again.
Her sounds escalate—her reactions are sweet music.
Her body gathers and suspends. She grips my head with her thighs, as though she’d pull me inside her if she could. The energy pulsing from her changes. I’m not sure how it happens or why or what it is. As she starts to come, as her climax builds and crests—it enters me.
It shocks me, and I’m unprepared.
Her pleasure waves through me. It cascades and swarms from my mouth down my throat and down my spine. My whole body ignites and pulses with the same bliss streaming from her. And—it makes me come, too, unlike any way I have before.
The pleasure fills me and then releases me, and I’m left clinging to her, my face buried in her belly, inhaling against her skin and clinging to her waist. Unable to let go of her.
I’m shaken and overwhelmed.
I have no idea what that just was, but it was—almost as though—it can’t be but—it felt as though she has the Exstare, too.
Which is impossible.
She’s sitting in her chair in the cockpit and eating some food rations I gave her. The orgasms I gave her made her ravenous, evidently. She’s dressed in her uniform again, her eyes glued to the instructions I translated for her on the info screen.
I’m unable to get close to her. It’s almost like after her dream last night, after her creating amuria orgasms on her first try, I don’t know how to be near her. I’m too stunned and confused.
“Are you going to stare at me for the next fourteen hours or what?” she says without looking at me.
“I—um—”
“You’ve done nothing but stutter since I came down off that ceiling.” She turns in her seat to look at me. “Thank you for that by the way.” A smile graces her lips. “Watching the stars while you…” She swallows hard, and her eyes drift over me and my clean uniform. “What are you wearing?”
“I was in need of clean clothes after…” I’m never modest. Except now, apparently—about the fact that she made me come a second time without touching me. I haven’t told her. I don’t think she knows. But she can know I soiled my suit. It now has a double-sized blue stain on the inside.
She’s staring at my Fellamana clothing—a fabric that is not nude precisely, but the Fellamana value being able to see each other’s emotions. The changing tones of my skin are visible through the fabric. I’m covered in essential places. But that’s about it.
Her eyes seem to glow with pleasure staring at me. “Was that in the back cabin?”
“The uniform I made in your style is being cleaned.” I leave a pause to let her remember why it’s dirty and wait for her mouth to form an O-shape. “When it’s done, I can put it back on if you like. For now, this is what was available.” I almost offer the option of me being naked instead,
as a taunt. That would be my normal next statement. But I stop myself.
I don’t want to be naked. I’m hard again, already. Inexplicably. Just watching her sitting in that chair wearing that uniform I want to take off of her again and again. I can still taste her on my tongue. I’ve memorized the fragrance of her and can still scent her in the air.
Her gaze finally rests back on my face after minutes of hungering over me. “You don’t have to change,” she says easily.
I tilt my head trying to translate what she said. The colors of her emotions aren’t as clear to me as they’ve been. Her aura’s an amalgam of rainbowed emotions. I didn’t know one person could feel that many things at once. Or maybe my intuition is off like the rest of me.
Perhaps that’s part of why I’m so uneasy. I don’t know what she’s feeling. “Are you better?” She seems better, but she’s so good at hiding things, I want to check.
She nods easily. “Much. That was…” She sighs and shakes her head, and at least that emotion is clear in her expression: surprise, gratitude. “That wasn’t like any other orgasm I’ve ever had. I don’t know what you did, but it’s like…” She runs her hand over her middle. “It’s like my body is satisfied.” She says it with such disbelief, like she never expected it.
“Is that unusual for you?” My heartbeat picks up. There’s an intensity to her voice. What she’s saying is no casual thing. And there’s a hope in me. Maybe this was as remarkable to her as it was to me. I feel vulnerable, praying that it’s true.
She stares at me, and her gaze swallows me. I lose myself in the luscious bronze of her eyes. “I can’t remember ever feeling so—” She cuts herself off, as though realizing she shouldn’t say it out loud.
But I’m on tenterhooks. I push off the wall to drift closer to her. “Ever feeling so—what?”
Her jaw tightens, and she shifts uneasily—like she’s desperate to say something but is afraid to.
I want to tell her not to be afraid, that she can tell me anything. But I can’t. Because as my pulse leaps into my throat, I become afraid. Is this…is what she’s trying to say…is this thing she’s having trouble with finding words…is it the human thing? This alien concept of heart and feelings, the desire for connection and monogamy beyond a sexual relationship?
I’d never thought about it, that she could form this human attachment for me. That the most dangerous thing in my pursuit of her is not whether she refuses me, it’s whether she loses her heart to me in the way humans do. And in the way of the Fellamana, I can never return it.
My heart wrings tight in my chest like it’s caught in a net. To be attached to someone in that way scares me. I am Fellamana. I can’t do that. Monogamy is not how we have evolved as a species. As someone with the Exstare, I’m incapable of it. But I forgot the consequences of getting involved with a human who suffers from such an affliction. But she’s only part human. I haven’t asked what the relationship culture is among the Ulreya.
Perhaps this is what she’s been afraid of this whole time. Perhaps that’s the reason why she has the boundary of no penetration. Maybe that’s how it works for her. If we have intercourse, her heart will attach to me.
“Jenie…” I want to tell her it’ll be okay. I want to be able to assure her I won’t hurt her. But it would be a lie. If she, as the humans say, “falls in love with me,” I will hurt her. In a very cruel and terrible way. “I’ve come to understand that humans are primarily a monogamous species. Do the Ulreya have the same tendency?”
I don’t realize how hard I’m praying she’ll say no, until she says the opposite. “The Ulreya mate for life. Even more strongly than humans.”
Disappointment pours through my entire system, and I have to ask the next question. I hope that she will and won’t answer at the same time. “Can I ask you, is the reason you cannot have penetrative sex because you will lose your heart to that person?”
I can hear her breathing, see her chest rising and falling rapidly. And I realize, the reason I cannot read her emotion is that I’ve never seen it before. It’s a human emotion or an Ulreya emotion, I don’t know which, that I can’t understand. It’s something the Fellamana don’t feel.
She inhales a heavy, shaking breath. “Yes.”
It hits me in the chest and knocks the air from my lungs. There is no cure for her condition. It has something to do with how the Ulreya mate for life. Whatever it is, full intercourse between us is impossible. I will never be able to share that with her.
But that’s insignificant next to the pain I may already be causing her. Going by the strange emotions I see around her and the intense vulnerability I hear in her voice and see on her face, my Exstare may have already activated her heart’s attachment to me. By accident.
I should separate from her. I should give her space. Coming on this mission with her, leaving us alone together was a mistake.
I turn to go, but she grabs my arm and stops me. “Wait.” She pulls me down to her lower level, takes my face in her hands, and kisses me.
Her lips are slow and delicate at first, her mouth tender and warm. I sink my fingers in her soft, glorious hair bound at the nape of her neck and suck on her lips, accepting her kiss, feeling her.
Her kisses envelop me with these feelings she’s developing for me. They wrap around me, and I luxuriate in them, these foreign sensations of attachment. They feel so good, I want to encourage more of them from her. I want to dive within her and strengthen them with my Exstare and let her free all of this rich emotion she’s growing for me. That’s what I do with my Exstare, free people to feel their own feelings of pleasure.
But in this case, it’s dangerous. In this case, I can’t.
Her mouth grows hungry, and soon, her tongue is ravenous against mine, and we are groping each other hard—as though moments ago, we didn’t just share an orgasm. As though our desire has never been quenched and never will be.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I whisper against her mouth, and I grasp her wrists, so she can’t touch me.
“Why?” she huffs through panting breaths. “We can be creative. There are other options. Like you said.” She tries to free her hands, to reach for me. When I hold her hands away from me, she moves her pelvis forward and rubs against the outline of my hardened cock. She licks her lips. “It’s my turn to taste you.”
I thrust my body away from her, letting go of her completely.
Confusion mars her features. “Koviye, please, don’t be a tease.”
“You’re losing your heart to me. This stops now.”
Her confusion deepens to a glare. “No, I’m not.” She points at my crotch. “Not unless you put that cock inside me. Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“But your emotions are changing. What if because of my Exstare I—”
“Your Exstare?” she gapes. “What’s that? What haven’t you told me?”
“The way I can make you feel things just by touching you. The way I can strengthen your pleasurable emotions and ease your stress. The best translation for what the Fellamana call it is ‘the Power’.”
“Power? So that’s how you make me come with your hand.”
“The Fellamana word is Exstare.”
She squints at me. “Are you like a Sex God or something?”
I refuse to answer that question. “I’m worried that my Exstare is causing you to lose your heart to me.”
She shakes her head. “You let me worry about my heart. It’s my problem, not yours.”
“It is my problem if I hurt you!” I yell, disbelieving she can be so careless about her own well-being. “I refuse to do that.”
“I’ve had dozens of lovers before and never lost my heart to one. Not even Assura. What makes you think you’re so special?”
I inhale to respond, to assert that she’s wrong and in denial of her emotions, but I stop myself. I could be reading her all wrong.
This could be all arrogance on my part. “So, it doesn’t happen that easily?”
“No!�
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I want to ask her what emotion she is feeling, so I can better interpret all the colorful energy waves I’m seeing around her, but I don’t get the chance. All I know is that every instinct I have is telling me to pull back, to put an emotional barrier up between her and me.
The control console beeps. “Communication received.” The computer speaks dryly in the human translation I programmed. “Message from…Ten Systems. Sent from…Hades. Message for…Lt. General Jenie. Sent by…Special Operative Assura.”
Chapter Thirteen
Jenie
I dive for the console as fast as I can, all talk of my burgeoning emotions, my deepening feelings for this alien, and my physical responses to his extra-terrestrially-ordinary orgasms pushed from my thoughts.
I tap the blinking icon on the screen and order, “Play message.”
Assura’s lovely face pops on the screen, except… “Oh gods!” I cover my mouth in shock. Her skin tone has changed to gold like the Ssedez aliens. And, shit, so has her tongue. She looks like one of them, the same way Nemona did after she mated Oten and he filled her with the venom from his fangs. “Gahnin bit her! That gods-damn Ssedez bit her so many times, she changed into him, just like with Nemona. What the hell?” My anger is so thick, I forget to listen to what she’s saying.
Koviye tries to talk. “Maybe—”
“Shh!” I cut him off and hit replay.
“Jenie, if you get this.” Assura looks off frantically as though worried someone is coming. Her words are fast, her voice agitated. “We’ve commandeered the Hades. The crew is locked in the main hanger, and Gahnin is—well—I have to go help him. Dargule is hopefully under his control but—” She takes a heavy breath as though striving for calm, which is so unlike her. She’s cool under pressure. She’s commandeered vessels before. This is routine for her. She’s trained for this.
But I suppose she’s never had to fight off Dargule before.
“I’ve stopped the Hades’ engines.” She adds their location coordinates. “Send backup.” She leans closer to the screen and says in a softer, more intimate voice that I know is meant for me. “I need you. Please come.” The screen goes dark.
