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  I do something I’ve been wanting to do for some time: I cup her face between my hands—careful not to smoosh her too-pliable, flexile features in my grip—and stare at her.

  This staring is different, with her awake and aware and fully permitting me my eyefuls. Not stuck in a cycle of concern-inducing rapid twitches.

  “What are you looking for?” Skynan whispers, eyes searching mine.

  I smile. “Just you.”

  To my shock, Skynan lunges up and smacks her face into mine.

  CHAPTER 17

  I rear back—almost taking her with me, but at the last moment I manage to release her face as I tumble off our resting pad.

  My posterior lands on my tail, which should cushion my fall.

  Except that my tail is no kinder a surface to land on than the floor. Especially when one considers it’s covered in a row of spike-like bony protrusions. “Ow.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Skynan squeaks, hands over her mouth before she drops the self-hold on her face and rushes for me. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!”

  I straighten, breath leaving my nose in a loud puff. “I wasn’t frightened.”

  Skynan’s lips suck inward for a moment. “Okay. Is… ‘startled’ a word you would find acceptable?”

  I consider it, and nod. “Yes, that’s fair. Startled is an apt description, thank you.”

  Skynan smiles dazzlingly at me. “You’re welcome.” Then she shocks me by placing her hands on my shoulders. “Let’s do that again. Is that okay?”

  With me sitting on the floor like this, we’re nearly the same height. “You want to strike your face against mine again? On purpose?”

  Skynan grimaces, and brings a hand up to scratch at the corner of her eye. “It’s a kiss, you know—the brushing of mouths that I told you about?”

  Mouth-brushes. A kiss.

  When Skynan was describing human mating practices, I committed every detail of her human-mating list to memory.

  I would never have guessed that a violent colliding of faces has anything to do with the human mating dance. Brushing mouths, with Skynan’s lips being so soft, sounded so gentle. Slow.

  With great care, she shows me it can be. Leaning forward, she runs her soft lips over my unforgiving lips, exploring me.

  When she pulls away, I find I want her back. “May I push my mouth on yours?” I ask.

  Chuckling to herself, she bites her plump lower lip and nods.

  I dive in, my hardness compressing her silkiness, and when I’m satisfied emotionally with this closeness but have developed a physical ache that’s nowhere near to being sated, I draw back. Her lips, I see, have plumped even more, flushed with higher color from the abrasiveness of my face. Worried, I bring my fingers around her chin ever-so-gently. “Do your lips hurt?”

  Her eyes shine and her focus on me steals my breath. “No, Erreck, they don’t hurt. You’re making me feel good.”

  “I had hoped so—you make me feel… everything,” I finish, breath stolen at the way she’s gazing at me, her lids lowering, her eyes almost black. It’s because of her pupils, I realize; they’ve expanded, nearly swallowing all her eye-coloration. “Has your vision changed?” I ask.

  There’s a definite pause. Skynan nictates, her pupils shrinking a little, her lids lifting back to normal, not looking nearly as heavy. “No. Why?”

  “Your eyes look…”—strange—“different.”

  She tosses her head back, a quiet laugh escaping from her throat like a bark.

  Oh my. Humans are strange.

  “Arousal makes my pupils expand,” Skynan explains.

  Excitement bursts inside my thoracic structure. By inviting me to brush her lips, Skynan is encouraging me to arouse her; I like her striking speed just fine. “Nancy, was your mouth-strike your signal that you want to mate with me?”

  Skynan nictates. Then she licks her lips, the ends of her mouth quirking up. “I’d be interested to know what you’re thinking, Erreck, but yes—my end-goal is to mate with you.”

  How sobering. How welcome.

  To both our extreme surprise, my tail is suddenly wrapped around her midsection, hauling her closer. “Please teach me your signals. I wish to be very familiar with them.”

  Skynan’s eyes are smiling. “Very familiar?”

  “I never want to miss your interest,” I tell her, searching her gaze. “And if it wouldn’t offend, I greatly look forward to learning the set of human display behaviors which will attract your attention and encourage you to copulate with me.”

  Eyes not leaving mine, Skynan’s lips quirk even higher. “Happy to teach you.” It’s her turn to hold my face between her hands. Patiently, she places her lips against the unforgiving surface of my face, leaving almost no spot untouched by her softness. At least until she gets to my eyes.

  She hovers, her lips over my nictating orbs. Finally, she huffs a laugh. “You have to close them.”

  Dutifully, I do. “But why—”

  Her lips tap to my eyelid, and I jerk out from underneath her, my third eyelids wicking over my ocular surfaces.

  “Erreck?” she asks, tone a tad wary. “Not the eyes?”

  “Why would you try?” I ask in confusion. “Simmi would have a fit.”

  Skynan sits back, arms folding over her sternum, right under her bi-globes. “I would never have tried to kiss Simmi.”

  An image flashes into my mind of Skynan leaping on Simmi, her face on his. A kiss. My antennae jerk upright. “I don’t like you saying his name in our resting spot.”

  Skynan’s brows rise. “You started it—you said his name first.”

  “Yes,” I agree, surprising her when I rise up to catch her by the back of her neck and around her shoulders and drag her against me, holding her to my sternum. “But I care very much when you say his name here.” I take a deep breath, gazing down at her. “Please close your eyes.”

  Her mouth firms and her nose goes up, but after a moment, she closes her eyes.

  Carefully, I try to touch my mouth to her lids, but they’re even softer than the rest of her, even more delicate. Against the thin skin that flutters slightly under my contact, I whisper, “I’m sorry for my reaction. I wasn’t expecting it. This is… very alien for me.”

  Eyes still closed, Skynan’s hand reaches up, patting my neck, my cheek, until she finds my jaw. “For me too. We are very alien to each other.”

  I move my mouth to her forehead, nuzzling against her there where I feel the skin is more resilient to my chitin’s attention.

  Skynan lets me do this for a few moments before she moves out of my hold in favor of going back to putting her lips on me. It’s like she’s learning my body by way of her face. I did ask her to show me how to encourage her. I suppose for her people, this could be a regular courtship ritual, and in that light, I’m quite grateful she’s taking the time to teach me. I want to reciprocate in case she enjoys receiving my touch as much as she apparently enjoys giving. Because I have very little sensation, I focus on her, on her reactions when I touch her, and find she seems to be growing more and more aroused. I can touch her anywhere and she responds. Brushing my fingertips at the almost downy-soft skin behind her ears makes her bite her lip. Nuzzling her throat makes her respirations accelerate. Running my hands down her arms, over her elbows, and catching her hands makes her shift and squirm.

  She also shifts and squirms when I brush my touch down her side.

  “Let me take off my clothes,” she pants. “I want to feel you.”

  I find the concept interesting: she can sense my touch through her garments enough to get excited. I wish my chitin was as responsive to her.

  However, I still find I’m mentally aroused simply because she’s trying to please me, because she’s touching me and taking the interest and time to explore me.

  When she’s completely naked, my antennae brush over her belly, and her skin flutters at her flanks. I repeat the touch, and her knees open to receive me between them. When I adjust so t
hat I can nuzzle her at the juncture of her legs with my mouth, Skynan gasps, “Yes! Please touch me there, with your… tongue.”

  My eyes snap open. Over the line of her body, my gaze connects with hers; it’s a small contact, but she throws her head back and arches her spine, as if the power of our gazes locking alone is pleasing to her.

  If she believes touching her with my tongue will bring her more pleasure, I’m more than willing to investigate.

  Tentatively—not in the hesitant sense, but in the careful, mindful sense—I stick my tongue out, and tap her between the legs.

  Skynan’s entire body twitches and her hands slap to either side of my head. “Yes! More!” she instructs.

  But I’m beyond being able to hear her for the moment. Her taste is being absorbed on my tongue, a tart, musky sweetness like nothing I’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling before. If there were a food like Skynan tastes, I’d spend all my extravagance stipend on it.

  Hungrily, I drag my tongue along the seal between her legs, up to a small protruding organ that, when I pinch and roll it between my fingers, makes Skynan writhe and moan and beg for me to keep touching her.

  I’m so excited as I watch her reaction to my playing that I stab my tongue too firmly against her seal—and I shove right inside of her.

  More of her taste rolls down to meet my tongue. Her sounds become squeals, and she blindly reaches for her garment, using her top-covering to cover her face, suppressing herself.

  I wish she didn’t have to. Each and every one of the sounds that escape her makes me feel positively feral.

  As I lick her, my antenna grasp her firmly by her hips—and they may not be very big, but I’m pleased to note they’re strong enough to pin her in place.

  Her whole body stiffens suddenly—but before I can do more than feel alarmed, her entire body hugely, languidly, relaxes—she falls boneless and limp, or she would, if she weren’t panting for breath. When she drags her garment away from her face, she’s wearing the biggest grin I’ve ever seen.

  It makes me feel seven dormitory floors tall.

  I lip-brush the silky inside of her thigh. Skynan raises her head and looks at me dreamily. Then her eyes widen.

  Concerned at her startled expression, I pull back so I can glance at myself, following her gaze, and—

  Shocked, I stare down and as a glow flares to life across the surface of my chitin.

  “Luminescent,” Skynan breathes in wonder, wobbly as she sits up, her fingertips touching down on the markings, tracing over me in ways that should evoke no particular sensation let alone the rabid desire for her that her touch is igniting.

  I meet her eyes, my gaze no doubt filled with all the wonder I feel. “Yes. It means my body believes I’m taken.”

  “Heck yes you are—or you’re about to be,” Skynan says, and her eyes are heavy-lidded as she examines all of me. “You do want to do it like this, right? Or should we do something else...?”

  “Stop?” I ask in horror.

  She throws back her head and laughs. “I meant: do you want to be on top?”

  I want whatever she’ll have with me, any way she wants to join with me. I scramble up onto the resting pad, towering over her even on my hands and knee structures. I’m so excited, it feels as if my sternum is about to burst open. “Now what?”

  “I’m on Control,” she breathes.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Contraceptive and hormone control; no offspring,” she explains, her fingers tracing up the outer ridge of my arm.

  “Oh. I’m sterilized,” I say in a rush, pressing my lips to her stomach, unable to stop myself from touching her.

  Horror eclipses Nancy’s sultry loveliness.

  I rush to rectify this. “It was voluntary. To cut down on the number of Affected being propagated, the program offered voluntary sterilization. Mostly they accept the applications of Affected individuals, but they also approved my application.”

  “What made you make the decision?” Skynan asks, voice careful.

  Grimacing, I try to put my motivation into words. “The progeny we work with may not be mine, but from the way it harms my emotional state to observe their struggle, and the way it hurts my mental state to watch them lose every hard-fought battle… I know that it would all be infinitely worse if I propagated, and it was my own offspring I’d doomed to an Affected bassinet.”

  Skimming her hands over my shoulders, Skynan says nothing to this. Her expression looks pensive, so I don’t speak either, and instead, turn my attention to furthering my education. I have a very studious nature you see, and I intend to learn all of Skynan. With my fingers.

  And my mouth.

  I really enjoy learning her with my mouth.

  When her body has tightened and relaxed for the third time, Skynan encourages me to trade the area between her legs in favor of suckling her bi-globes.

  They’re delightful. Malleable, springy, cushioned lumps that just encourage me to squeeze them and press them together and suck on the strange tips that harden.

  While I’m exploring them with abandon, Skynan encourages me to mount her, positioning me between her legs, her thighs climbing my sides until she’s lined up her breeding channel against my groin plate.

  Instinctively, I press myself against her, grinding.

  Skynan moans. “Inside me, I need you inside me…”

  I lean back. As if by her command, my groin plating lifts, and my crozier—my hooked penile projection—extends.

  Watching this, Skynan’s gone frozen. “What… do you have there, handsome?”

  Oh, I like it when she calls me handsome. My sternum bows out with pride. “This,” I say confidently, grasping the thick length of my base in my hand, “is my crozier. It stores itself in a coil.”

  “Huh,” she says faintly, her knees sliding off of me as she sits up. “There’s ah, a lot of it there, isn’t there.”

  “Of course,” I agree. “It’s primary function during intercourse is to extend the length of a Genneӝt female’s groin tunnel. When it isn’t turgid with desire, it retracts.” I draw my fist down my shaft, simulating the grip of a female, shoving the ring of muscle here low enough that my crozier engorges in girth, making Skynan’s eyes widen.

  She scoots closer. “What does this do?” she asks innocently—but her touch as she captures the curled hook of my crozier in her hand is anything but innocent.

  Voice gone hoarse, I explain, “The hook bounces against the fleshy frontside tunnel of a female.”

  Suddenly, Skynan’s crowding my lap again, her smile so wicked, my eyes nearly cross. “Is that so? I believe I’m going to enjoy this in my tunnel.”

  My crozier stands straight up.

  “I fervently hope you will,” I agree, claws gripping the silken skin at the backs of her knees, raising them to my sides again.

  Skynan grabs my crozier about midway up the shaft, and draws it towards herself.

  Her touching me makes me make some noise—garbled platitudes mostly—and my teeth chatter, my fangs clacking as sounds of appreciative agony break from my throat. And when she guides my length into her body, I’m certain I’ve died and found the afterlife.

  She feels so, so good.

  She feels phenomenal.

  I fight myself until I plant my hands into the resting pad on either side of her head, where my clawed digits give in to the instinct to dig in. Instinctually, I want to clutch onto Skynan—but with her soft skin rather than hard plating, I don’t dare give in to the urge. I imagine it though, that it would be safe to gather her into my arms and hold her as tightly as I want to, to wrap myself around her so that Skynan is captured with me forevermore, just like this.

  That scenario is far, far too tempting.

  As if she can read my mind, Skynan bites her lip, smiling up at me, and she places her hands on my shoulders. “Are you going to move?” She slides one of her hands down my sternum, stopping her touch low on my abdomen. “Pull back.”

  With heavin
g breaths, I do. My crozier is revealed, glistening with Skynan’s wetness: her excitement for this act. And for me. At this thought, my hips buck forward, and I shove back inside her. It’s an inelegant, unintentional move—but we both groan as her inner walls are force-fed my length.

  Skynan slips a hand between us and I follow her fingers with my gaze, and watch raptly as she touches her protrusion, stimulating herself underneath me.

  I yank my hips back, my tail snapping behind me, and I plunge back inside her, thrusting hard enough to make my standard-issue resting pad slide on the smooth, flat frame it rests on. To keep Skynan from scooting away with it, I wrap my long fingers around her thighs and jerk her onto me, making her posterior spank against my chitin.

  “Oooh!” Skynan pants, eyes rolling back in her head. Intrigued, I thrust, and let her body slide away an increment as the resting pad beneath her is pushed forward another fraction, and then I jerk Skynan back to me, pounding into her with wet, loud sounds.

  Her posterior flesh ripples satisfyingly when I connect with it—when any part of me connects with it. I’m overtaken with the urge to slap and squeeze it, and I’m rewarded with the sight of Skynan seeking out her top garment again so that she can muffle her building cries of ecstasy.

  Suddenly, her inner channel begins to ripple. Pressure increases from along the tip of my crozier to the base where I’m sunk to inside of her, because her insides have become a vise.

  A spendpod rockets up my shaft, expelling into Skynan so forcefully, even my dorsal protuberances suck in.

  My spendpods will be empty of course… although, I didn’t account for her alien body’s reaction: will she be able to absorb my organic seed material or will her body react negatively?

  All worry, all thought stops when the curved end of my crozier bumps past an inner obstacle and slips into a snug tunnel nook inside Nancy, where the tip unfurls slightly—and begins to brush against her wildly.

  The noise Skynan makes is barely muffled by her top garment.

  Every time my crozier tip pets her insides, her insides flutter in response—gripping and clutching my shaft. I’m being hit with wave after wave of inward pleasure-shivers, and I’m gazing down at Skynan with an abundance of overfull feelings spilling out of my cardiac muscle region—when Skynan goes utterly still beneath me.