Tempted by Celestial Bodies

Chapter 7

chapter seven

eve

The chances of the council who ran this belt of planets being truly benevolent had seemed pretty slim to me, but they’d looked after me. I had my own apartment, free food and medical care, basic clothing, and training in anything I could want to learn. I couldn’t see the cost to anyone or anything…and I’d looked.

The weight of Irosabsuul’s eyes on me made me smile. I wasn’t buying the whole fate schtick, but if I was in a fish cult, at least it seemed to be based on helping people find their joy.

“How did you locate the Refugee Service?” he asked me, under the soft glow of the mosses that covered the roof of the underwater cavern.

Locate? Find. “They didn’t have much sense of humour, but they were okay.” The whole universal translator killed wordplay. And then sometimes raised it from the dead. I gave the rope an absent flick to unspool some more, feeding it into the net I was weaving with the new, softer, silvery rope. It was a gazillion times better than whatever trashy shit he’d had on hand. Watching all their informational projection video things had been a lot less annoying once I realised they wouldn’t be upset if I wove while I watched.

It hadn’t been my fault that I’d naturally just made a net-shaped creation. It was the last thing I’d worked on, after all. My brain was tired. Two weeks ago, I didn’t know aliens were friendly, after all. They were lucky they didn’t all get cute crocheted dicks. Here, fishy, this is a Jacob’s ladder.

He’d been shocked by how much I’d made already. Obviously he’d never sat through the onboarding protocol. I’d forgotten ninety-five percent of it and the remaining information was mostly useless factoids entirely removed from any beneficial context, but by hell I’d made a badass net.

And at some point, I’d figured out where I was supposed to be, too.

While he was swimming out to secure it over the ocean trench thing, or whatever it was called on this planet, I stayed in the peace of the underwater lab, listening to the quiet sounds of the fish in the tanks and a few of the potions dripping through beakers and vials as he distilled something that probably was really important for the fish’s scale strength or some shit.

I did wonder what it really was for.

When my ass went to sleep, I explored, and the cool retractable crutches made snooping around much more satisfying. I wished I could read the glyphs he’d stored in the little holographic notepad things, or decipher the reasoning behind the seemingly healthy fish in some of the tanks. It would come with time.

I could get used to the musical sound of falling water. I turned, following the noise, and found him boosting himself into the lab, seawater running from his beautiful lilac skin.

Whatever their bullshit “Calling” science said, he didn’t make me less agitated and I didn’t believe for a second their bioresonance crap had anything to do with my ADHD, but he was hot. And I did really like chilling out with him.

He looked at me as if relieved to find me still present, and I felt a small, answering twinge in the vicinity of my heart.

“We should return,” he said. “You require a meal.”

I made my way over to him. The sea behind him was dark, but something large and pale swam past. A chill went up my spine, but he looked over to me as if inviting me to admire something particularly special.

“That won’t eat us?” I asked him.

His eyes crinkled but he didn’t smile. “No. They won’t eat us.”

Cool. So, a whale-like creature, then. I paused beside him to collapse the crutches and tuck them away. One day, I wouldn’t need them. Meanwhile, at least their painkillers were amazing.

“The net you made was high standard,” he said, his expression earnest.

I wondered if maybe he’d like a crocheted little dick. Or a beanie done to look like a boob, with a nipple on top. “It was pretty good,” I agreed. “Was it the right size?”

“It fit precisely,” he said. “Just like you do.”

I knew instantly he wasn’t talking about me sitting around in his lab, and it surprised me that the sentiment made my belly twist pleasantly. He was right: I kind of did fit. I didn’t need to talk to anyone except him, here, didn’t need to do much except swim and weave and look at fish. I’d never thought it was possible, so I’d never dreamed it. Now I was here…

I couldn’t imagine wanting anything else.

“Science, right?” I asked, unsure if I was amused or irritated.

He offered me one bundle of tentacles at the end of his arm, and I put my hand into the mass without hesitation. The sensation of being firmly held was comforting.

“You have currency?” he asked me. “And autonomy?”

Something low in my belly twisted. “Isn’t that all standard-issue?” He’d told me it was, before.

“You are choosing to be present,” he said, and I felt the suckers tugging pleasantly on my skin, like a million tiny kisses. I hadn’t known I’d wanted that, especially not on my forearm. The sensation was so distracting I barely mustered up a nod for him, lowering myself to sit on the stony edge of the water. He still held my hand. Given how dark and huge the sea was beyond us, I didn’t mind that.

He lowered himself with me, slipping in ahead of me as he always did. But he was too close for me to climb into the water alongside him, gazing up at me with a hungry expression that didn’t require a shared language to be clearly understood.

Heat unfurled slowly in my limbs as he settled his torso between my knees, gazing up at me. “I do not know your social norms to ascertain your wishes,” he said. “I would enjoy intimate contact with you.”

A wash of nerves went through me, unexpectedly disorienting. Agreement was on the tip of my tongue. You sure would, buddy. My body hummed, and I remembered how I’d kissed him, how he’d wrapped himself in me and carried me like the most precious thing he’d ever touched.

“Same,” I said, holding onto the shit-stirring for later, when I knew more of his language, or he knew more of mine, and we could spar on even footing. Because there would be a later. “How do we do this?”

His tentacles unwrapped from my hand and went to the centre of my chest. I let him lay me back across the cold stone, my broken leg floating beside him, painless and safely wrapped. The other he settled over his shoulder.

Surprise, and amusement, ran through me, lightning fast. I resisted the urge to prop up on my elbow and ask if we could kiss or something first. When I felt his cheek rub against my inner thigh and the touch of his suckers across my belly I was glad I had. The new, made-to-purpose clothing I wore was peeled off slowly. The air was cool where it was removed, his touch warm. I closed my eyes and felt him exploring the curve of my belly, the dip in my waist and the sides of my breasts. The world could’ve vanished, right then, and I wouldn’t have known it. There must have been a million points of contact—each tentacle had dozens of suckers, and each sucker was warm and firm against my skin, the sensations all clamouring for my attention.

The silvery sound of water running from his body as he lifted himself a little higher met my ears. I felt it trickle over my leg and shuddered. Heat pooled as one set of his tentacles explored the curve of my breast. I felt them slipping beneath, wrapping around, flattening over. My breath caught as his other arm draped up my body to wrap around my throat, a tender caress. Something brushed the corner of my lip and I opened my eyes as the warmth slipped into my mouth a short distance and latched onto the end of my tongue, holding gently. Every point of contact was a siren’s song in my head, a symphony that overwhelmed all thought.

Between my legs I heard him groan and a shiver ran up my spine in answer to his call. Those points of contact became more intense, like the dial had been turned up on the suckers all at once, then relaxed.

I turned my head a little, better to take what I could of a tentacle into my mouth, and was rewarded with another groan and a flex of pressure on my neck in the most delicious fashion.

On my thigh I felt his lips press, hard, into my skin. Careful to not jostle him I found his head and twisted my fingers into those ribbons of hair, cradling his skull.

As if he’d been waiting for permission he turned and latched onto my clit, and bright lights exploded in my vision. My legs jerked and he gentled, his tongue sweeping rhythmically. On my breast, his touch found my nipples and I gasped, my body arching involuntarily. Thoughts of what I wanted next were simultaneously crystal clear and utterly impossible for me to grasp as I struggled to process the myriad of sensations. His tongue swept over me and the fantasies ebbed and flowed as hunger coiled. Inside my mouth, he stroked my tongue and it was all I could do not to pant. I was held entirely exposed and felt like the most fragile, precious thing in existence.

I was climbing toward my peak when his touch slipped away from my breast. A mewl of disappointment slipped from me, my body throbbing with hunger. I tried to move, to look and see what was happening, but his arm along my body pressed me back with a gentle pressure and his licking tongue was joined by a light suction that made the muscles deep inside of me flex and shudder.

His touch moved down my thigh and I parted my legs further, the thought of feeling him inside of me bringing me to the edge. But he held my leg tightly. In his hair my hand flexed, wordlessly begging him for more.

The moan he let out stole my air. Something hot and hard nudged at my cunt a moment later and I arched again, out of sheer reflex, pressing close to that rigid promise.

I couldn’t make sense of it and it didn’t matter, because a moment later he was deep inside of me, aggressively lapping at my clit and thrusting into me at the same time, and all I could do was close my lips around the warm appendage in my mouth and let the sensations sweep over me. The white lights dancing in my vision joined together and the echoes of my own gasping breaths were all I could hear. My hips moved helplessly as the muscles inside of me flexed, contracted, and locked down, hungrily holding him close.

His groan was deeper and joined my own desperate breaths perfectly, the sweetest fucking song. My legs clamped around his head but his movements never once faltered, not until I’d come apart and his moan chased mine. A moment later I felt his orgasm pulse through his body, the rhythmic throbs of it making him bob in the water and dragging us a little deeper, muscles in his shoulders spasming beneath my calves.

My balance unsettled, I threw out an arm and caught myself against the lab floor where I was perched with my ass in the water and my back against the stone, then realised a moment later it was an unnecessary precaution. He’d rightened us both, boosting me further up and away from the water, his breaths as quick as mine.

I glanced down in time to see a softened, but decidedly phallic, organ slip out of me. The hand that had been on my thigh quickly tossed some water over his chin and the slit in his throat and chest as he did a quick clean-up of his softening cock. The grip he’d had on my own throat stroked the same spot on me that his slit was, tenderly, as his organ slipped away. It retreated behind the slit in his neck and chest. Now I knew what it was, I could see the faint, almost invisible silvery line tracing down his throat, and recalled noticing it when I’d first seen him.

I wonder if “sex-starved” is a thing for his people. I flopped back, confident that wouldn’t be a problem for him while I was around, and definitely too happy to give a fuck about the mechanics of it. He nuzzled again at my thigh and a shiver went up my back. My clit throbbed in contentment, responding to him still.

“Is your body comfortable?” he asked me, the words low and rumbly.

Something deep inside of me squirmed in pleasure at the timbre change of his voice. I’d done that to him. “It is.”

“Can I make you more comfortable?” he asked me, and there was definitely suggestion in that question.

If I was any more comfortable, I might die. “Nup.”

He nuzzled again. “We should return home,” he said, and sighed in regret.

I blew out a long breath. I did need to go home. That was why I’d organised a flying car back here, to him. “I don’t think either of my legs work now.”

He was quiet for a minute. When I caught his eye, he was looking at me thoughtfully. “In the future, I will endeavour to stop your arms from working, too.”

Amusement swept through me. Apparently, we were figuring out this translator stuff. “Is that your calling? To fuck me out of my mind?”

He rested his cheek against my thigh, that mischievous twinkle in his eye. “It has eased my agitation. It must be true.”

With a gentle, confident touch, he pulled me fully into his arms. I breathed deeply, then let him take us into the deep. As theories went, it was pretty solid.