Nepenthe Page 5

  The surface shimmered in wavelets when he rose up again, and Yesmín stood at the edge of the fixed floor, watching him with wide eyes and fussing hands.

  “Is it … safe?” she asked. “For me?”

  The waterberth was deep enough that he might submerge himself to rest, but if the human entered, he suspected the level would barely reach the lower curves of her breasts.

  “You are very safe, Yesmín.” He drifted closer to the edge and looked up at her. “For what reason would I lure you into harm? I want you to carry my eggs.”

  The woman closed her eyes and gave a slow shake of her head. Muttered something under her breath that might have been an imprecation or a prayer.

  In a relay of bent limbs, she lowered herself to the floor and sat on the ledge. Her feet dipped into the water, and the human allowed it to come halfway up her leg, to the swell of muscle before the knee joint. She did not come further, but leaned there on her palms, and Dae Keth decided her posture would serve him, in the beginning.

  He approached the human where she sat, his ten arms pushing him along from below the water’s surface, while much of his upper body remained above, in the open air. When he arrived alongside her bent legs, Dae Keth tapped out a quick, specific rhythm on the rim of the stationary floor with his fingers that looked so much like hers. Lights glowed to life, all submerged along the perimeter of the waterberth. They were enough that he could set the overhead lighting to a dimmer level, and Yesmín let her eyes roam, watching the changes as he made them.

  It was now, here, that he would begin implementing advice from Io Rae.

  Gently. Slowly. They are not our lianae. She will not expect you to fight her—you will terrify her with that sort of aggression.

  The Magistrand allowed one of his arms to come feeling up from below and to curl around a female ankle when he found it. The woman took in a measured breath and let her eyelids go closed until she exhaled.

  “Are you warm enough?” he asked.

  She made some noise of dry amusement. “I see you specifically didn’t ask if I was ‘comfortable.’ ” she said. “I’m warm enough.”

  “A good place to start.”

  Water lapped at her legs, the light below the surface making them brighter there, and Dae Keth moved in front of her knees. Another of his arms sought another ankle. She was warm. More of his long, suckered limbs took an interest, and the rows of tiny cups clung to her skin, pulling his grip higher until it climbed from the water and wrapped around each knee.

  Her jaw had gone slack.

  If she were a Nepenthe female—a liana—they’d be locked in a battle for supremacy right now. Instead, Yesmín sat there, stunned, while his arms drew her knees wide and he ushered his upper body between them, there at the ledge. He brought his human hands out of the water and braced them on either side of her. Those dark eyes made their way up to meet his.

  “Earlier,” he said, and each of his suckers that touched her could taste her neural tension, “you referred to me as ‘some alien who’s about to fuck’ you.”

  Dae Keth thought she might implode from exhaling so far and not taking a breath. He leaned closer, their strange dynamic a thrill, and made his voice quiet. Gentle, as the Ptolarch had said.

  “Is that what you expected when you agreed to be my host, Yesmín?” His arms curled around the largest portion of her upper legs. “That we would fuck?” He dragged her closer to the edge. Closer to him.

  “Oh god.” The words shuddered out of her, and it could only be a good sign, if she was invoking a deity.

  The Magistrand brought one of his human hands up to trace out the shapes where her throat settled into the top of her chest. The valleys between and below the breasts. Lights from under the water cupped the lower curves of her body, and a map of tiny bumps had broken out over broad areas of her skin. Her nipples had become smaller, darker points.

  Io Rae had been very specific.

  “I understand,” he said, “that there is a place I might touch you, where you will call out for your god again. Many times.”

  The white of her teeth sank into her lower lip. “There … is,” she said, “but … please don’t let that be the first thing. I—I need to work up to it.”

  Work … up to …

  The translation was inexact, but her thoughts were enough.

  “What should be the first thing?”

  Her eyes scanned back and forth, searching him. “A … kiss maybe?”

  The image her mind projected with this suggestion was strong. Clearer than he might have expected, considering she was imagining attempting such an act with him. Dae Keth smiled.

  “Show me.”

  Yesmín gave him a final helpless look before her focus moved to his mouth. A mouth that should be shaped just as her vision of that human male she’d made plain in her head, if his abilities had served him. This would be new for the Magistrand, as well: interacting with this altered physiognomy.

  The woman tilted her face up and closed her eyes, just as her initial thoughts had shown him. Dae Keth came down to meet her, ready for anything.

  When her lips met his, it was one of the softest, most unique contacts he’d experienced with another being. Not the brutality of a Nepenthe joining, but a tentative entry into a mutual agreement. Yesmín entreated with that first touch for him not to hurt her. For them to find some pleasure together.

  It was novel. Exciting even, but he let the woman lead the way in this act that could bring ease to her fears.

  Her jaw pressed them closer, and lips cushioned between them. The human had muscles even here, tiny, but agile in their subtle way, and she applied her mouth in a delicate way against his.

  And then that tongue he’d seen slipped out. Tested him.

  The nerve endings in his borrowed form danced like moonlight on a sea. So much to feel, to taste with this human mouth. She pushed further, entering his space with the slick organ that wove her speech, and rewarded Dae Keth for his patience.

  The Ptolarch had been correct. The inside of her mouth was so far the only part of this woman that felt normal to Dae Keth. Familiar and wet, while the rest of her skin was so dry. If he did not horrify her, there was at least one other place he’d been told would feel like this.

  He tilted his face. Made to reciprocate, his own tongue in this form gliding to join hers, his jaw moving to deepen the connection. Some low noise hummed up from her chest, and her unguarded thoughts swirled with surrender; shame commingled messily with acceptance of the present.

  Dae Keth could see why this ‘kiss’ among her kind would serve as an overture to their greater acts of pleasure. His suckered arms curled this way and that below the water’s surface, restless. Two already circled her upper legs, and three more left the water, climbing. Seeking possession.

  One of Yesmín’s palms had risen to lay on his chest, and she worked herself against his mouth, growing confidence chasing any dregs of fear. The moist heat of her breath unfurled between his lips when another of his arms went around her waist, squeezing, but never crushing. She was not trying to escape.

  Yet.

  His last two free arms explored, orderly rows of suckers tasting, latching to curves and planes in relays to pull his touch along. Words came to him through her thoughts as he met each new place: hip, navel, shoulder, nipple.

  There came a point when Yesmín was no longer active in the kiss. She only held herself upright, breath coming uneven as Dae Keth learned her flesh.

  Pride bloomed in his chest, the same as when he admired an efficient crew under his command, and the Magistrand broke the one, wet contact. Her eyelids fluttered, and her hazy focus tried to land on him again; first his face, and then her eyes slid down between them to take in his human arms still braced on the ledge, while his natural, glossy limbs draped about her as living seaweed on rock.

  The picture had to be as alien for her as the meshing of tongues and lips had been for him. Dae Keth hoped she found in it the same exotic sensuality
.

  “Does a kiss please you elsewhere, Yesmín?”

  A fine shudder was her first reaction, followed by vivid thoughts that showed him—as Io Rae had described—just where else he might taste her. But her words evaded, parts of her mind rebelling and still unprepared to request it aloud.

  “Just about everywhere,” she said, closing her eyes again.

  It wasn’t a prohibition. Perhaps a plea for him to understand without an admission of what … yes, what her thoughts were telling him made her feel a traitor to her purpose here. With him.

  Dae Keth leaned in to begin a new kiss at the side of her face and, in immediate confirmation, Yesmín turned her head, exposing her throat to him. She wanted what he’d read in her thoughts. He would not make her feel the shame of asking for it. It could be his fault. The Magistrand never felt guilty about the few pleasures he took for himself.

  The soft skin of her throat was a new terrain to explore, smooth and yielding under the nuzzle of his human lips, the clamp of his human teeth. The woman took in air and her spine curved, arching the breasts and stiff nipples toward him. He brought one of his human hands away from the ledge and wrapped it in her dangling plaits, an anchor to hold her head back; to keep her vulnerable in this way that elicited response he might never achieve in a liana of his own kind.

  There was more. More of her. The structure of bones beneath her flesh made her hard in unexpected places. At the base of her throat, for example. He drew his tongue along the smooth ridge there, and this portion of her gave up the mildest taste of salt. Her throat gave up another moan.

  The breasts, were they sensitive, too?

  Yes. Yes they were. His mouth there had her leaning back on a palm, pressing her body into his attention. The dark nipple was a bud of texture for this borrowed tongue of his to learn, and Dae Keth made a percussive trill of sound in his chest when one of her hands rose to splay over the back of his skull. To encourage.

  And when he tugged the tough little point into his mouth with a firm suction, the woman squirmed. Pressed herself to him, and his eyes came open. There at the ledge, he felt the other wet mouth from the High One’s account, this one as hot and pliant as the first, sliding against his body.

  Noting success, Dae Keth brought a group of suckers from one of his busy arms to bear on her other nipple while he continued his discoveries with the first. She gasped at the new sensation, and immediately after it, the Magistrand learned this human enjoyed a light nip of teeth, as well.

  But these were distractions. He knew where she wanted the kiss.

  “Lie back,” he said as he lifted his head, but the woman was in a fog. Two of his natural arms served to drag her with a gentle care until her shoulders met the floor. Dae Keth sank back into the water, though the original two of his arms still circled her thighs and held them wide.

  Here. Here is where they would mate, and her thoughts of his mouth there made Yesmín tremble.

  Though the rest of her skin was a deep brown, the glossy center where her legs met became complex. A scatter of fur, ruffled flesh, dark like her nipples, but a hint of pink at the center. He brought himself close, and inhaled a rich, humid scent. Fascinating.

  He kissed her.

  Yesmín let out a sound he might mistake for pain, if he were of a race that could not sense thought. She wanted this, but also had no experience to cope. Not with one of his kind, at least.

  The heat from the surrounding flesh was greater here, but Dae Keth brought his tongue to this kiss, as well.

  “Holy shit!”

  It was a profanity from her, he was sure, though it made no sense. Her body tried to open to him and close him out at once. Her desires were clear, however, and his arms kept her from fleeing pleasure.

  The Magistrand plied his soon-to-be host with these kisses. He lapped with his tongue. He explored crevices and entrances with the nimble organ, all while she squealed and squirmed. Here was the passage where he would penetrate her and implant his eggs. And here was the second Io Rae had mentioned: a waste opening, but if this female was like the Ptolara, she would accept his anchor here, when the time came.

  Yesmín panted, spine inverting so that her breasts fell back when he sent a curious arm to survey her mating channel. It appeared compact, but he was able to introduce an impressive length of suckered flesh before the space inside felt full. A higher core temperature, indeed!

  Her noises were low, drunk and floundering now, and he left the arm in place to learn her inner textures, its tiny mouths mapping and tasting every surface. Where he could, he made the kisses continue. Until they encountered the source of her urge to have his affections center here.

  “Dae Keth.”

  Her hand came to squeeze at his shoulder, and her thighs drew up nearer to her body. She presented herself to him, and the Magistrand accepted such an offering with a new greed.

  It was only the sparest dollop of flesh, above the entrance where his arm curled. A pert little nub, but when he took it in his mouth, the woman blossomed open as though she would feed it to him.

  And to hear her speak his name.

  Dae Keth lavished attention on the tiny gem, delighting in her desperate writhing, her pleading sounds. Already, his Nepenthe flesh was exuding the viscous fluid that would prepare her to accept his eggs, and he wriggled his arm inside her, coating her passage for what would come.

  Her noises reached a fever pitch, and Dae Keth kissed her as her thoughts swam in affirmatives to urge him where and how.

  There it was.

  There. If he stuffed her channel just so, with little twitches and a flutter of suckered mouths. If he latched his mouth to the nub and suckled …

  The woman growled and sharp ridges at the ends of her fingers dug into his shoulder. Muscles within her began to pulse and squeeze. Dae Keth did not stop.

  He brought more arms to hold her at her waist. He palmed handfuls of the taut-nippled breasts. He made her wail and jerk until she was limp and shaking her head.

  Come. That is enough. You still have a long way to go.

  The Magistrand had brought this human pleasure as she’d asked—and had become far more aroused than he’d expected in the process—but now he let her go. Drew all his arms back, even from inside her, and swished them in the water, bathing himself in liquid comfort.

  She lolled there at the edge of the floor, ribcage heaving and sated. Her feet slipped over the ledge and sloshed into the water. After a time of catching her breath, Yesmín’s eyes were on the ceiling. Her own lazy hands roamed her body.

  “That … that was …”

  He could not repress a smile of accomplishment. “Did you ‘get something out of it,’ Yesmín?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes I did.”

  The woman pushed herself up on an elbow to find him again, and Dae Keth returned to the ledge. When her fingers slipped between her legs, as though to assure her she was still intact, she came back with digits glossed in both their fluids. To his mild horror, the human raised them to her mouth.

  “Hmm.” She cocked her head after slipping that pink tongue out to sample. Met his eyes. “Is this … is this you I’m tasting?”

  It was his turn to be at a loss for words.

  “Well, I, um … yes?”

  “Hm.” The quick grunt of a sound would have been inscrutable without the benefit of her thoughts. The woman cleaned her fingers by putting them in her mouth, considering. She did not hate his taste.

  Dae Keth slipped between human knees again, and Yesmín allowed it. After the release of her pleasure, many of her earlier reservations had fled—he could see it in her lax muscles, her serene posture as she waited for him to get close again. Curiosity threatened to boil him from the inside out.

  “Will you … answer a question?”

  Will you truly ask this aloud?

  She looked down at him, where he hovered in the water, his human forearms resting on the floor on either side of her thighs, his shoulders of a height with her nave
l.

  “Maybe.”

  Dae Keth could respect the tactics of not leaping to agree simply because he’d plied her with sensation. But this was a day among days. If ever he could act out of character and display some licentiousness, surely it was here. Now.

  “Is it true,” he began, “that women—human women—are willing to”—Form of the Creator, he was going to say it—“to take Nepenthe arms … into their mouths?”

  “Your … arms?” Her eyes traveled from his hands to his elbows, skeptical.

  He shook his head in amusement. “No, these arms.” A pair of suckered limbs crept over the edge, but rested, idle.

  Yesmín took his meaning. “I thought those were tentacles,” she said.

  Bipeds. Honestly.

  “These are arms,” he said, glancing at his insulted appendages. “I am not a … a squid.”

  “Alright,” she said, placating, “they’re arms. Where did you hear this rumor, anyway? Though I can probably already guess.”

  “The High One was explaining his joining with the Ptolara.”

  “Nepenthe just … talk about their sex lives with one another, do they?”

  Her tone alone told him that with humans, this was not so. “I did explain we are not a secretive people,” he said. “And I had only asked for the information from him because you became frustrated discussing it.”

  Yesmín watched him for a breath, considering.

  “That’s fair.” She slid a hand from her knee to rest on his forearm. Her fingertips traced patterns on his skin.

  “Do you confirm it?” His words came out quiet, as though perhaps he could deny them if she questioned what she’d heard.

  “I mean, if he said it happened …” Yesmín gave a delicate lift to one shoulder. “I don’t know why he’d lie to you about it.” Her pattern-making fingers wandered from his human arm to the suckered one resting alongside it, and she explored the texture there before meeting his eyes again. “Are you saying … you want that?”

  It was the Magistrand’s turn to squirm. How could she be so direct about something so … so …