Deviously using food as a distraction for my boys – works every single time – I provide myself with some time and space for my visit to the storage room, aka the female’s lair. The estrogen hideout. The lady cave. You get the drift.

On the off chance that Drahta are water drinkers and omnivores like their male counterparts, I carry a little of each with me there on a little tray.

Opening the sliding double door just a hair, I quickly slip the foodstuffs into the room on their makeshift tray, then take several large steps back. All the way to the other wall, actually, and then a couple down the corridor.

Then, nothing happens.

I get nervous. I didn’t lock the door or anything when I left her before. Maybe she left the room in the meantime, and found another hidey-hole?

(Or maybe she died.)

I frown darkly at myself. Oh, fuck off, you meanie.

I sit at a large, if not safe distance away (because, really, there’s no such thing as a safe distance when your attacker moves like Catwoman on steroids) and gently twirl the language chip between my fingers. As I contemplate how much I fucked up if the A’Draht really is gone or dead, there is a flash of movement in the dark behind the door. My pulse kicks up a notch with twin relief and dread.

(You talked a big game to your lovers, Valerie Greene. Too late to turn chicken now.)

“I know, I know,” I murmur to myself and count the seconds. How long would a hungry A’Draht need to eat and drink up? I brought a double portion thinking she might be hungry after… how many days had she been sitting in this dark storage room, I wonder?

(You can ask her if you manage to put the translator into her noggin.)

“When,” I snap at my inner Captain Obvious and creep half a step closer to the door. “When I manage. Because I fucking will. Now shut up and watch me.”

Somewhere towards the back of my brain, that crow in that tree quietly rustles his feathers and I know that Rune is paying attention to me – and ready to step in and take over.

So I hike up my big girl panties, channel my inner Steve Irwin by the way of Cesar Milan, get up off my ass, and walk towards that door with strides that, I hope, project confidence. Assert dominance. Calm. Firm. Aaaand smile!

The makeshift tray on the floor is empty. The makeshift bowl isn’t on it anymore and the big pieces of space lembas bread are gone, leaving not even crumbs.

I pull the door half-closed behind me, using the light from the corridor to navigate the room which appears to be deserted, just like the last time I came in here looking for refuge after my hissy fit.

Stooping down slightly, I scan the shelves and – yep. There she is, just where she was before, half-hidden from my sight now behind boxes and crates full of whatever.

I must say, I like her better a couple of meters away from me than right in my face. It boosts my confidence to know that I’ll at least see her coming for a full couple of seconds if she does attack me.

We make eye contact, her big, glossy eyes reflecting the light back at me. She doesn’t blink. I try a close-lipped smile just in case she interprets teeth as a sign of aggression.

(Like she’s a baboon?)

Shut it.

“Hi,” I say, not too loudly. “Uh. Well. There you are.”

You gold star conversationalist, you.

I clear my throat. “My name’s Valerie. You can call me Val, or Ree, or Valerie. I, uhh… I come… in… peace?”

I trail off somewhat uncertainly on that last bit because she’s started to move towards me, her unblinking eyes fixed right on me. Before I can decide to turn tail and run (regroup temporarily, I mean!), she’s out of the shelf and slithering onto the floor on all fours.

Her eerie white-eyed gaze is laser-focused on me as her head is tilted in a strangely feline/lizard-y way, her intensity pinning my feet to the ground so I can’t even back away. The delicate slits of her nostrils are moving visibly as she takes in my scent.

Confidence, Val. Confidence!

Much easier said than done.

Ohh, dammit, I should’ve gone to the loo beforehand.

“I know we didn’t meet in particularly favorable circumstances,” I explain, and my voice only wobbles a little bit, “but I hope that first… first impressions… uhm.”

She’s sniffing me. From my toes up. In addition to the tip of her nose skimming along my instep and ankle, her feelers are extended and reaching forwards. They wriggle like tiny snakes, brushing the skin of my calves and then my thighs.

(How long ago was your last shave, Val?)

You serious right now? We’re about to get mauled to death, ankles first, and you’re worried about calf stubble?

(I’m trying to distract you.)

Well, it’s not fucking working. You’re only making me angry.

The alien buries her face in my crotch and takes a deep whiff.

Eep. Terrible, thanks for asking!

“I hope you don’t expect me to do you afterward,” I mumble stiffly through a grimace, and she thankfully starts moving further north, stopping first at my belly button for quite a long time, then at my right armpit (which makes me feel all giggly), and lastly at the two bite marks that Bane left on top of each other on the side of my neck in our last bouts of passion.

“Not that I’m at all against, like, oral and stuff like that, seeing that, you know, I have enthusiastically dived into much, much weirder things these past couple of years, but I… I kinda like to get to know her first, y’know? Like, her name and her, I dunno, address, star sign, or favorite color or whatever. Hopes and dreams? Favorite John Hughes movie? Her income situation? See which way she’d put up the toilet paper? Because, really, I can’t trust my most delicate body parts to someone who would hang it under.”

Babbling doesn’t exactly help, but not babbling makes things worse, so I babble. Don’t judge.

Then she’s all the way upright (just a few inches shorter than me, actually) and looking me in the eye – and then sniffing my mouth and nostrils, which is really, really weird, but nothing in comparison to her tentacly feelers combing through my hair and exploring my head.

“Really wish you wouldn’t do that,” I giggle-squeak when one foraging wormy appendage goes full wet willy on my left ear.

As she stands there, I get a chance to have a closer look at her in the light of the corridor. There, down the side of her neck from behind her earlobe to her very pronounced, weirdly shaped clavicle, is the gill Rune told me about. It’s closed right now so that only a thin, darker line remains, like a single leafless branch of ivy crawling up the side of a slender marble column.

The translator chip enclosed in my fist suddenly seems really bulky and razor-sharp.

Not as sharp as the claws on the A’Draht’s hands, mind you.

Speaking of hands, she’s leaning down and grabbing my empty hand with both of hers, and turning it this way and that, and—

Oh boy. (Or rather Oh girl.) Bane’s, Rune’s, and her tongue are definitely from the same planet.

A rush of goosebumps goes up and down my spine as she deftly licks between my fingers, doubtlessly to get to the last remnants of edible matter clinging there after my previous cooking session.

“Don’t get any ideas picking dinner out of my teeth, eh,” I try my best to joke even as the sweat rolls down my armpits. “And please don’t eat my fingers. I need them for, uh, stuff.” I should have been more careful with the food. Back at the brothel, I always was so very cautious after that first near-miss, locking everything away and scrubbing myself thoroughly after kitchen duty, not wanting to give anyone any ideas. Living wild with my boys has made me careless, among other things.

Then again, it also made me ballsy as hell, which is why I somehow manage to grab the A’Draht’s hand with my recently licked one and give it a squeeze.

She gives a wheezy little Yorkie bark. It doesn’t translate to anything in my brain, and I can’t really tell if it’s a positive or a negative sound, but I decide to have massive amounts of faith for just a little bit longer. I mean, she hasn’t torn into me yet, so that’s something, right? Right.

“Come on,” I coax, pulling her gently but firmly and sliding the door open. “We’re gonna get ourselves cleaned up, and then I’ll shove that damn translator chip into your brain, and if you haven’t killed me, I’ll get you more food after that. Come on. Come, come.”

She seems very wary. That makes two of us. But hey – my very diverse work experiences have given me plenty of opportunities to hone the high art of faking it till you’re making it.

Not to brag or anything, but my co-workers at Hernandez Rentals called me The Client Whisperer.

A distracted customer is an uncomplicated customer, Miss Greene! Oh, look, Mr Hernandez did teach me something besides how to avoid your sleazy boss’ grabby paws without getting your scantily clad ass fired.

Praying that Bane and Rune will both stay well clear, I march “upwards” through the spiraling corridors of our spaceship, dragging the lethal alien girl behind me like she’s my little sister and we’re at Disney World. I chatter on endlessly about showers, dinners, aliens, the teacup ride, and Mr Hernandez, and make sure she’s listening to me even though she doesn’t understand a word (yet).

I’m bullshitting so successfully that I actually run right past the washroom door. I double back, pull the (now somewhat confused) alien female (man, she needs a name, stat!) in after me, flick on the lights, and shut the door with a hydraulic ‘whoomph’.

So far, so good. What now, Valerie?

“Shower,” I decide, and point. “Come on, Missy. Gotta get Tulun D’tel out of your pores, gonna make you all nice and clean. You’ll love it.”

Famous last words.

‘Missy’ hisses at the first spurt of water, and then at the spray of it coming down on her naked shoulders, and then at me for pulling her farther into the shower nook. Then, she starts wrestling with the shower head as though it’s a cobra, getting water everywhere except on herself. Then, she hisses at my demonstrating the use of soap. Then, she crouches down in miserable defeat while I work some shampoo into her hair– a process made much more difficult by her feelers, which tangle around my fingers like sentient ramen noodles. Then, she licks sudsy (and rather brownish, euugh) water off the floor, and splutters because it obviously tastes awful, and then hisses at me again because it’s clearly all my fault.

Forget ‘Missy’. It’s Hissy. Or Pissy.

By the end of it, we’re both mostly bedraggled, mostly clean, shivery, and annoyed from getting water in our eyes. Whose brilliant idea was this, anyway?

And just as I bitch and moan about this girl’s manners and pointless ideas that lead to nothing, as if the universe wants to prove me wrong, the entire side of her neck splits wide open.

Wide. Open.

Think Japanese R-rated tentacle splatter horror movie swordfight scene.

Absolutely capital-G Gaping.

Holy moly. I was not prepared for that sight. That slash is so wide and it looks like some other, crimson-colored creature is bodily climbing out of her.

I’m guessing the humidity in here may have triggered the gill to open, or maybe it’s an at-will thing and she’s trying to get the soap out of her filaments…?

GAPING.

Yeah, nope. Rationalization doesn’t work this time. I’m just staring at her, mouth open.

As she turns and moves this way and that, it seems like she’s wearing some experimental haute couture monstrosity, a crimped, ruched, frilled collar...thing of some sort that fans out and flows down from behind her ear to her sternum, the contrast of vivid blood-red to her grayish skin obscene. The exposed gills are moving, pulsing and squirming like so many worms, and Jesus Christ. I thought I’d seen basically everything in this universe, but this is definitely… something.

I wonder for a moment whether I am ever as startlingly, arrestingly alien to them as they are to me, and in which ways.

Then I remember the chip that has been sitting in the sweaty palm of my hand almost the entire time (I put it aside for shampooing). It’s the key to de-alienating this creature and me, one key to coexistence and – possibly – mutual survival…. and I surge forward before I can think twice about how absolutely bloody foolish it is to ambush an apex predator like this.

I shove my fingers into that red, writhing gash, push the chip in, right up there at the base of her skull bone, and feel the spongy tissues give way. It feels like slotting a plastic coin into a mass of warm shiitake mushrooms. Except that this coin is sharp around the edges and carries some sort of electrical charge.

There’s another loud hiss, and then a shout.

The hiss is hers. I guess those lovely red velvet filaments come with nerve endings, and they don’t like it if you shove pointy bits of plastic into them. Surprise!

And the shout is mine because she bites me in the right upper arm. Hard.

She’s biting me. Biting. I am actively being bitten by her.

Fuck. FUCK! I’m yelling in shock much more than in pain – I’m sure that’ll come later – because there’s an alien attached to my arm via her teeth. Like… her TEETH are FULLY INSIDE MY ARM.

A bird screams in my brain, rattling my skull, and then the bathroom door bursts open.

The A’Draht rips herself from my flesh, my blood and a bit of skin splattering from her mouth over the floor, curiously less red than the inside of her gill was – I gasp and holler and clap my other hand protectively over the gaping wound.

I watch, as though through a high-res lens, as she whirls towards the two mountainous Dryth barging into the small chamber with a warbling war cry.

There is a scuffle, too fast for my human eyes to exactly follow. All I know is that one small, wet, cold, underfed female is taking on two males, and though she’s fierce and cornered and desperate, and helped by the cramped quarters in which everything is taking place, it’s quickly going exactly as one might expect.

Before long, the battle moves outside onto the corridor – Missy has attempted to flee. I scramble after the trio on wobbly legs and barefooted, sliding more than walking across the slippery bathroom floor. I catch myself against the door jamb just as Bane, crouching above the female, lifts his taloned hand.

“Stop!” I yell at the top of my lungs. “BANE! STOP!”

He doesn’t. His hand comes down, ready to slice at her neck, and the female blocks it with an arm and a frantic wriggle. Barely.

Oh, no. No, no, and no again. I didn’t let myself get nibbled on for nothing.

“Bane! Damn you! If you don’t stop and back off right the hell now, I swear I will never cook for you again! I will never do that thing with my mouth again! I will NEVER TOUCH YOUR SPOT AGAIN! I may even leave this goddamn ship AND NEVER COME BACK! Stop it! Right! Now!”

I don’t even know where all of that came from, but man. I am serious as a heart attack right now.

Bane finally stops at that and lifts his face to glare at me. I glare back as much as I can. Which is a considerable lot. Thanks, mom. You taught me well in that department.

“Back. Off. Now,” I spit at him even as I tremble in every limb, “and take him with you.” I jerk my chin in Rune’s direction. Rune is right next to him, wrestling with the female’s tail. Pretty sure he doesn’t need a translator chip to catch my meaning, too. “Right now. You aren’t going to lay another finger on her. If you do, I swear I won’t lay another finger on you.”

Oh, my arm is throbbing something fierce. So is my left knee because I stumbled in the bathroom on the way to the door. I am cold and goosepimply all over and there is the distinct possibility that this isn’t going to end well.

But I had been so close. So close. I can feel that this still can work. I am closer than either of these two could have come. I want to accomplish something truly meaningful.

I want to save us all. All four of us. Just a little. Just this once.

“Valerie,” Bane growls, his voice deep, rumbly and foreboding like the leftmost key on a piano keyboard.

“Don’t Valerie me right now.” I grit my teeth. “You can spank my insubordinate ass when I’m done here, but only if you unhand her and step away.”

This can end so, so badly. As far as I know, the A’Draht can turn on her mating fever thing any minute, and this will all slide into chaos. Dammit, I still don’t know where the venomous, poisonous quills came from.

(And maybe her teeth-)

I SWEAR TO GOD RIGHT NOW, SHUT UP!
 
(That thought is loud enough to make the bird give a concerned little ‘quok’.)

If she makes a wrong move, Bane or Rune will hurt her or kill her, and I don’t know that I will ever be able to look at them the same if they do.

“NOW, Bane.” I hammer the words at him.

Seconds tick by, thick as molasses, while my heart threatens to cave in my chest.

In one fluid motion, both Bane and Rune get up and step away from the A’Draht, and I barely have a split second to sigh in relief before she uses her newly won freedom and resumes her attack on my boys.

Yeah, that’s going to be another hard no from me today.

I jump forward, grab the girl’s still wet hair with my now bloodied hand – just to hold on to something, really, and because hair-pulling is a time-honored tradition in female wrestling and sibling combats – and throw myself bodily into her. We topple together, she underneath me, hitting the floor quite hard. My arm flares up like I dipped it into a vat of fire, but I grit my teeth and ignore it. Thank the heavens for adrenaline.

While she’s still gasping for breath I get situated as quickly as possible and straddle the middle of her back, grabbing the tip of her tail with my free hand like a snake-wrangler might grab a venomous python. (Please don’t have quills, please don’t have quills, please-)

Missy shrieks like a harpy and wriggles like a maddened eel. I wriggle around on her myself to avoid getting my thighs filleted and shish-kebabbed by her flailing claws.

It… it works. Probably because she’s running out of steam after the fight against Bane and Rune, and maybe also because I’m still not a featherweight, but anyway.

Don’t get sat on by someone heavier than you. It’s rule number 1 in the Small Creature’s Handbook of Brawling, babe.

She snarls, throwing me a death glare out of the corner of one eye, and I tisk. “Yeah, yeah, you silly bitch. I’m just trying to save your life here. Hiss at me, why don’t you.” And then, to Bane who has inched closer again, after my tackle, “Not another step, honey, or you can kiss your creature comforts goodbye. I mean it. You’re not gonna lay another hand on her. Stay away.”

As though these were the magic words, the female suddenly goes entirely and absolutely still underneath me. For a split second, I am almost afraid she’s having a seizure or something. Out of habit, I ask, “Hey, are you okay down there?”

Then her head moves weirdly. For a long, long moment I don’t understand what she’s doing. It’s just too unexpected. Then, I realize…

She’s nodding.
 
 “Is …Is that a ‘yes’?” I ask like a dumbass – don’t at me, my brain is still whirling and my body is starting to throb as the first rush of adrenaline is waning and I can’t think of a better question to test my hypothesis right this second.

She nods again.

Huh, so that’s that a universal thing, apparently? Fascinating.

“Y…You can understand me now.” It’s not a question, more of a statement. Still, the female nods a third time while glaring at me continuously with her gnarly devil eyes, except that her primary eyelids are blinking rapidly in likewise universal bewilderment. All the fight has apparently gone out of her.

Oh. My. God.

I think… I think I did it.

“I don’t want to fight you,” I quickly tell her, just getting that out of the way. “Do you hear me? Please, stop fighting.”

Hesitation. Blink blink. A nod. Okay.

Aww, yes!

“If I get up, will you attack me or my two idiots?” I ask, excitement flooding me in a dizzying rush. “If none of us attack you first, I mean? Which we won’t, I promise?”

Another short hesitation, then she shakes her head. No attacking.

So, all head movements appear to be universal. That’s so interesting! If I ever get the chance, I’ll absolutely publish my findings in some parascientific magazine. (Right after my treatise on the superiority of alien penises, that is.)

“Nobody here will hurt you,” I reassure her again, and quickly glance at Bane and Rune. “Nobody. Do you understand?”

Hesitation.

Nod.

Perfect!

One more thing.

“Will you make anyone impregnate you anytime soon?”

Firm headshake.

“Because those two beefcakes belong to me, capisci? If anyone wants to have their babies, they’re gonna have to clear that with me first.” I realize I’m probably riding this point a bit too hard, but a girl’s gotta mark her territory early. “Do we understand each other?”

Firm nod.

“Attagirl.”

Well, here’s to hoping that Drahta have a firmer knowledge of Drahta reproductive biology than Dryth do, anyway.

“Okay. Uhm.” Now that she’s not fighting me anymore and we’ve established the terms of a cease-fire, sitting on her seems awkward, intrusive, and quite a bit rude, really. I mean, I don’t even know her name and here I am, sitting on her and we’re both naked and stuff. “Well. I’m gonna… get up now. Please don’t, uh, try to kill anybody. Also, maybe don’t run away and hide again. I need to talk to you. Okay?”

Another hesitation – or maybe the translation chip just has a bit of a lag. Then, finally, another nod.

I exhale, cautiously optimistic for the immediate future, and look up at Bane and Rune who are pouting and brooding, respectively, at a small distance, unblinkingly watching the two of us.

“Alright. Okay. I’ll trust you. Okay? Okay.”

I get off of her, much less gracefully than the two Dryth did, and quickly walk backward to give her space.

She springs up onto her feet, tail lashing back and forth, teeth out, eyes zipping from Bane to Rune to Bane to me and back, but she doesn’t run and she doesn’t come at me or them again. Her gill is tucked back into her skin, safely housing the translator chip now.

I breathe in and out, and then I fall onto my ass, suddenly sapped of strength.

And then I start to laugh like a lunatic.

Surely, it’s just because of the adrenaline and the rush of endorphins because I did it! It has nothing much to do with the blood dripping down my arm.

Or with the fact that her teeth could be-

Surely the shiny black stars that suddenly appear in my vision are totes normal.

Surely.

***

I come to in the forest bedroom I haven’t shared with my boys for normal sleeping purposes in way too long and look up at the shade sails for a long moment as I let the various aches and pains of my body wash over me. Ah, shit, here we go again. Heeeat of the moment…

My arm is wrapped up tightly in something that probably comes from the vegetation around me, and it throbs a little, but not worryingly so. So does my knee. My tongue is sticking to the roof of my mouth and my head is a little woozy.

But… who the fuck cares? I did it!

I grin triumphantly and gingerly hoist myself up onto my elbows.

Whereupon my grin falls a bit. Uh-oh.

Bane is perched upon the flat rock on my right.

And he’s glowering right at me, and he’s visibly, significantly, generally, royally, mightily pissed.

I mean, he stares at me as virtually always, but the pissy-ness is wafting off of him like a bad stench. Can’t really blame him, can I? I hectored him with food and nookie and threatened him with leaving, and he caved. Things turned out fine (as far as I know right now anyway), but it was touch-and-go there for a while and yet again I undermined his… principles? Supremacy? Male-ness? Probably wounded his pride as a fearless alien overlord, too, or his honor, or some bullshit like that.

“Look. No one got killed,” I start my self-defense preemptively. “No one got seriously injured. No one got impregnated. And I’m pretty sure I made a girlfriend. All in all, I’d say–“

“Come.”

I freeze mid-sentence and find myself gulping although my mouth is dry. Something about the tone in that single word… makes me giggle nervously while also raising all the small hairs on my thighs and arms. What a strange blend.

It does not even occur to me to not follow his command.

“Al…. alright, be right over-“ I say, rolling onto my side and pushing myself up to get to my feet.

“No,” Bane barks at me like the General he is.

Maybe he has residual Princess Leia powers, or maybe I’m just hyper-tuned into him, but I swear I can feel that word blast against me like a pressure wave, bodily pushing me to the floor. It makes something inside clench and squeeze.

“Come to me.”

I squint at him. “Youuu… want me to come over, but without… uh, getting up? You… you do know I can’t teleport yet, right?”

“Now, Valerie Greene.”

Oh, sweet Jesus. The sound of my first and last name on his lips… it does things to my body. If he ever learns my middle name, I’ll be so fucked.

“Alright…?” I sigh. Coming to him, but not by walking on two feet. That’s a solvable riddle, actually.

I get on all fours like a puppy dog.

Good thing I left my dignity back on Vurn X’lora, eh?

The new position revives my current vaginal companion and I bite my lip as I feel gentle undulations start inside my body. Hnnngh.

Slowly, with only the absolute required minimum of sexy chest-and-pelvis movement, I crawl my way over to him. I press my lips together to avoid a smile when I see certain Drythian body parts, though hidden behind a loincloth, responding to my performance.

He absolutely can’t take his eyes off the sway of my nipples.

Note to self: Fuck dignity. Crawl around the floor more often.

I come to sit right by his feet and gaze up at his face. He looks like a granite statue of a wrathful demigod, ominous and terrible and alluring. Not lovely, no, but beloved. By me. I can’t help the slight smile as I behold him, freaky eyes and scraggly scars and all.

That smile slides right off my face when he leans forward and opens his mouth to growl another single word at me.

“Insubordinate.”

“Wha-!”

Before I can get the rest of the word out, I’m already draped across his lap.

Upper body dangling down the side of his thigh. Hands reflexively, desperately pressing against the floor to somehow keep it from coming up and smacking me in the face. Feet and legs flailing around and getting snared and bound by his tail.

Bare, insubordinate ass right up in the air.

The one I remember I told him he could spank when the whole drama was over.

Ohhh.

Oh no.

“Okay, okay, Bane, I get that you’re angry at me because I coerced y-“

SLAP.

“Ah!”

No warm-up. No warning. Just the sound of his palm meeting the soft, pale flesh of my ass, the ripple, and the feeling of being licked by heat, the frisson all the way up to my cranium, the scary tingles underneath my belly button.

“Bane, please, I’m-“

SLAP!

“Oww!”

I twist my shoulders (as much as my bite wound and its bandage allow anyway), wriggling my hands up and behind to soothe the pain and ward off his next strike, but he catches my wrists easily with his free hand and presses them both against the middle of my spine. It makes me bow and arch more and gives me the sick feeling of an imminent nose-first crash onto the floor. My legs flail and my hip slides around on his thighs.

“Bane-“

SLAP!

“Owww! No!”

Just three slaps, but my ass is already entirely throbbing with fire. I know he’s still very much holding back. He knows how fragile I am, and exactly how much force I can take – and that’s the exact amount he’s using, plus that extra pinch. As always with Bane, just a little too much.

“Please-“

SLAP!

“But-“

SLAP!

“Urrgh, fuck!”

SLAP!

From then on, I can only grunt. My blood is pounding in my dangling head and also in my ass cheeks. My hips and belly which are holding my entire weight against his lap are starting to groan. It’s hard to catch a breath. I’m getting a bit woozy.

Four more slaps. Five. Six. Seven. His hand is so large that it feels like he hits most of my ass every time. When I clench my glutes to make it hurt less, he makes sure to hit my upper thighs instead, hard.

The pain makes me sweat all over, hollows out my underbelly, and brings hot tears to my eyes. With every slap, I jolt forward, and I constantly feel like I’m about to slip and fall and break my face on the floor. I screw my eyes shut but then the feeling gets worse, so I open them again, but now they’re starting to sting with the tears that can’t spill properly due to gravity.

SLAP! SLAP!

And yet… And yet.

SLAP! SLAP!

The rhythm, the physicality, and even the helplessness of it all… It makes me very, very wet between my legs. The spike is making it worse, rippling right along inside of me, kissing my cervix with every jolt. Each hit reverberates through my entire core, shivering along my inner walls. Hell, the nudge and press of his current appendage against my skin through his loincloth makes me clench.

By number twenty-five or so, my head is pounding like a bass drum and spinning dizzily, my tummy and hips ache fiercely from the pressure of my own body weight, and I’m also panting and trembling in heat, moaning more than grunting my curses.

I hiss a breath when Bane’s palm comes to lie down on my ass and he pulls my cheeks apart just a little, separating my sticky, sloppy labia and allowing the cool air to lick at my hot slit. I feel my juices smearing along the inside of my thighs. My abdomen is a big knot of sexual tension, desperately waiting to burst. My heartbeat is in my forehead, my throat, my chest, my abdomen, and pounding in my swollen clit. I hang my achy head with a shivering sob.

His hand slides off my butt and up my spine, to my arms. To my right arm, almost gingerly probing the bandage there, gently tugging on the end that has come a little loose through my flailing and writhing. Fixing it.

And I… I think I get it, then. I get what this is really about, and I know what I have to say.

I clear my throat. God, my mouth was dry before, now it’s desiccated all the way down my lungs from all my gasping. I lick my lips and try again.

“I’m sorry,” I say, barely a whisper now.

I try to lift and twist my upper body enough so I can see his face out of the corner of my eye at least. It makes the muscles in my everything tremble with effort, but it’s worth it. His eyes meet mine, golden-yellow and so stern. So strange and inhuman, and still so familiar now.

“I’m really sorry, Bane.”

I’m sorry I scared you.

I don’t say that last part. I don’t think I need to. We both know. Could be that his language doesn’t have the word for it, either, for that feeling he must’ve experienced when I got attacked and got hurt and could’ve easily died.

Still, we both know.

“Thank you for saving me,” I add and hang my head back down with a strained yet relieved grunt.

I don’t think I’ve ever thanked him in words for all the things he’s already done for me. Barging in and pulling the A’Draht off me when she was about to chew my arm off is really just the latest act of life-saving kindness in a whole series of such actions.

Instead of answering, Bane lets go of my arms, and I reflexively put my palms on the floor again with another grunt, thinking he might finally let me up.

But then one finger of his one free hand slides into the crack of my tender ass and to my back hole, and the spanking hand, itself also flaming hot, glides up the insides of my thighs and to my weeping pussy. Palming it. Squeezing it. Massaging it.

I arch and sigh an ‘Oooh my go---d’ through clenched teeth. His touch is so, so good, always so good. How is it always better than the time before that? How does he do that? It’s like he keeps leveling up every single time.
 
My muscles tremble with the effort of still hanging across his lap, legs still bound by his tail, my hips still pinned to his thighs by his ministrations. I still hurt and ache and strain… and the distress mixes in thick with the pleasure completely disarms me.

I feel the pads of his fingers shallowly probing my hot, dripping hole. My muscles squeeze and quiver and my core weeps for him as he dips, nudges, plays with me.

Before long, I’m a cursing, shivering mess, rolling and twitching my hips against his fingers and knuckles. His wonderful, torturous, magical fingers-

I hear him inhale deeply and feel the wet nudge of his new appendage against the side of my belly. Inside of me, the spike pulses in time. Expands. Deflates. Expands again. Writhes, just like I do.

The pressure builds and builds with every nudge of his fingers against my clit, every pass through the ring of muscles of my rosebud.

“Bane! Fuck! Bane!” My voice rises to a desperate yell as I grind myself – and am ground by my alien overlord – to an orgasm that roars through me like a steam train, white-hot and shrieking and absolutely unstoppable.

And then the shrieking continues because my insatiable, unyielding alien is not satisfied with one orgasm. He is not satisfied with two fingers. Not satisfied with just massaging my nub. Not satisfied with however many spanks he has rained down on my sore buttocks already.

He knows I have more to give him. Always, always more. And there’s always more that he wants to take from me.

The spanking continues, just barely less severe than before, sometimes hitting my pussy lips with his strikes, all the while massaging and probing both of my holes with his other hand, and pinching my oversensitive clit so hard it makes the yelp get stuck in my throat.

By the time he’s done with me, I feel like an overcooked noodle, inside and out, soggy and sloppy and loose and done. I break out in a round of emotional, exhausted tears when he carries me off and then beds me down on the soft grass mat and allows me to curl up in the fetal position. He then grabs the water bucket and gently cleans me with the cloth, because he loves me and is one of the two best goddamn aliens in the universe.

“You know I’d never stop cooking for you if you asked, right?” I babble through sore vocal cords and bitten lips and then inhale on a hiss because the cool, wet cloth feels like nettles on my sore butt. “I just said that. I like feeding you. Makes me happy. And I don’t think I could leave, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”

He doesn’t answer. I can’t see it from this angle, but I know somehow that his tail is swishing in a pleased little figure-8.

“And I do that thing with my mouth also totally for my personal gain. ‘Cause I like it. Doesn’t have a thing to do with you. Nope.”

I’ll be asleep within the next two minutes. One fifty. One forty-five. Can hardly keep my eyes open. Soo sleepy.

“You know, I was thinking,” I say, my words just a little slurry. “I’d probably totally love to put my mouth on your spot, too. Kiss and lick and suck you there.”

There’s a noise, a thump and a glugg. Someone knocked over the water bucket. Heh, what a klutz.

The last thing I feel before I drift off entirely is a little tug at my bandage.

***

“Knock, knock”, I call and rap my knuckles against the door at the same time. Whatever material alien spaceships are made of, it doesn’t resonate at all, so I have to improvise a little.

I look back at Rune and give him a nod and a smile.

Waking up after my post-orgasmic power-nap, feeling like a well-kneaded bun of bread (tasty, tasty bread), I now finally get to have that long-overdue talk with my future bestie. Of course, she didn’t hang around outside the bathroom after I fainted. Of course, being wary as she is, she would retreat back into the familiar dark corner she had hidden in before.

Rune escorted me to the storage room. Although he doesn’t say a word to me, and I don’t say a word to him (because I know he can’t understand me and that’d be a bit rude), I understand deeply that he’s just there for support. Just in case he can help, not because he thinks I need a bodyguard now, or a warden.

Maybe it’s because I went to the kitchen for a quick bite first and he can smell the food on me.

Or maybe it’s because he just likes to be near me.

I bite my lower lip against a fond smile and a rising girly giggle. Yeah. Maybe that, too.

Then I take a deep breath. Okay. Focus, Valerie.

“Hello in there? This is, uh, this is Valerie. I’d like to talk to you! Uh… You can hiss or something if you don’t want me to come in, yeah?”

I listen for a long, long moment. No sound. Alllllrighty, then.

I slide into the storage room, on the lookout for the alien woman for the second time in barely a day. Things are different now, though. I am a lot less tense, for one. And also, the A’Draht isn’t hiding this time.

Nope, she’s right there. On the floor, knees up to her chin, looking at me. Her eyes are large and round and alien (duh) and full of universally recognizable uncertainty.

I don’t like that last one. It makes me… kind of sad.

I sigh as I look into her eyes and practically feel the bond forming within my heart, made of stainless steel cords, shooting out from my chest and lassoing her whole.

It’s both way too early – I don’t even know her name yet – and way too late – she almost killed my one boyfriend, attacked my other boyfriend, I almost strangled her, she bit me, we have a bit of Jerry-Springer-worthy history there – and overall way, way awkward, but it is what it is.

Someone once said that humans will pack bond with anything. Animals, plants, inanimate objects, Mars rovers that sing Happy Birthday to themselves, Roombas with or without googly eyes, imaginary friends made of six pixels – anything. Hell, I pack bonded with a pair of violent intergalactic barbarians (and with my 2003 Volvo before that, the piece of shit. I seriously kinda miss that car). I will not shy away from doing so with this bitey little broad that’s sitting here, looking like a teenager who lost her parents at the mall but is too proud to ask for help.

If it’s the last damn thing I do.

Deep down I already know she belongs with me, so help me Ripley.

“Hi. Again.” I wave. Because I’m a bloody rock star in social situations. “I know it’s not super polite of me to stand here and look down on you, but… Do you mind if I stay standing up? Sitting and squatting is, uh, a bit uncomfortable right now because… of… reasons.”

As he walked me to the storage room, Rune did notice the lingering, glowing redness of my buttocks – actually, he inspected it like he knew full well the details of how it got there. I could feel the flare of sexual heat inside my body when he did. I already feel the sequel to that particular scene on the horizon, and it makes my knees a bit wobbly.

The alien shakes her head “no”, she doesn’t mind.

The alien. The alien woman. The A’Draht. The female. Ugh, enough with this already.

“Sooo what’s your name?” I ask. When she doesn’t say anything, I go on, “I’m Valerie. Valerie Greene. And you already knew that because I already told you, though. I’m, uh, human. From a planet called Earth, originally. I call the guys Rune and Bane. Their full names are a bit too extra for me. Uhm. Rune’s the slightly taller one with the darker eyes and the… stuff on his head.” I wriggle my fingers on top of my head to illustrate the Mohawk.

No reaction. That’s… that’s okay, I guess?

“He’s right outside right now.” That sounds like a threat, Val. “I mean, not for any particular reason. Just cause… he can go and be where he pleases. You know? We all can, on this ship. You included. You’re not a prisoner or anything.” Which doesn’t remind me at all of the fact that I myself don’t really know how to get off this ship. I cough.

Silence. An unreadable look out of her inversely-colored eyes. Gosh, this is simply going great.

“So anyway. Your name?” I ask again.

She hesitates, then shakes her head.

“Uhh. Does this mean… Don’t you have a name?”

A more vigorous shake, then she stops, thinks for a moment, and nods instead.

“Right. Okay.” I’m confused.

What now?

I’m having a short flashback to meeting Bane for the first time. Everything was easier because he spoke English, but there was still plenty of cultural miscommunication.

“Do you… Would you want me to give you a name? Something I could… we all could call you?”

She blinks once, twice. Her tail twitches on the floor and I have no way of guessing what it means. Good gods, I feel like I have so much to learn about this person, and nowhere to start.

“Look, I don’t want to call you ‘hey’ and ‘you’ to your face all the time, and think of you as ‘the female’. That’d be kinda rude. If you want, I can give you a couple of alternatives and you pick the one that sounds best to you, ‘kay?”

She opens her mouth and barks “Kay!” at me. Loudly. It’s not exactly a word, more like the sound of a feral animal. I actually flinch a bit because I didn’t expect it and because the girl’s got lungs.

Long story short, her name is Kay, and yes, I realize that this… makes her a Pokémon.

Which makes me her, uh, trainer, I guess?

Good thing I have virtually nothing else on my schedule, and some experience on my CV when it comes to alien taming.

Gotta teach ‘em all.


***TBC***