Nepenthe Page 6

  “It’s … among Nepenthe,” he said, “it’s extremely taboo. By claiming someone performs this act, it’s … a heavy insult.” Things in his chest cringed. She would understand, and she would be horrified. He had gone too far, no matter what the Ptolarch had told him.

  Yesmín’s smile returned, slow this time, and her thoughts were … devious?

  “And is that what you want from me, Dae Keth?” she said. “You want me to be a dirty girl for you?”

  Rows of suckers clamped and unclamped all along his arms at her tone, at the sound of his name, but …

  “Girl?”

  Her smile grew. “A young woman. Inexperienced. Innocent maybe.”

  This human did not seem any of those things, but Dae Keth could perhaps see the implications. Power games.

  “But why would I want you not to be clean?” he asked.

  “Dirty is taboo,” she said. “For us.”

  Concepts shifted together and Dae Keth shivered. Smiled in understanding.

  “Then yes, Yesmín.” He let his arm twine about her wrist. “I would like you to be a ‘dirty girl’ for me.”

  There were the teeth, biting her lip again. She wriggled closer to the edge and held his gaze. Lifted the wrist with his arm curling around it, palm up, until the fingers turned backward to point at her face.

  Tongue followed teeth to slide along her lip. The human tilted her head, only breaking eye contact for long enough to find her mark, and then watching his eyes again to take in the reaction.

  Yesmín drew the hot, pink organ along the tip of his arm, from the base of her palm to where it curled around the first of her fingers.

  Dae Keth shuddered.

  “Yesmín.” He could hardly make words. To see her—to feel her!—doing … that. “That is … mmnnhh.” His inner eyelids drifted closed and then open again with the rolling of his lavender eyes.

  “Why, though?” She still held his arm near her face. “Why is it so bad? Among your people?”

  He shook his head and the rest of his jealous arms clamored beneath the water’s surface. The one she held gripped her palm, her forearm with its suckers, shameless. “We use our arms for everything,” he told her. “To move about. To manipulate objects. To complete tasks. They are not food to be placed in a mouth. Or words to come out of one. They are … filthy.”

  She returned a subversive eye to the limb she held.

  “Are they?”

  Again with the tongue. And again, she watched him as she did it, tracing that slow path that only ended in another of her smiles. This woman was taunting him. The Magistrand hovered between her knees, slack-jawed.

  Almost as agile as one of the arms, her tongue extended to draw the whole tip into her mouth. When she pulled him in a light suction, Dae Keth nearly fell backward into the berth. His human fingers dug into the meat of her thighs.

  Yesmín lifted her chin until the arm tip slid out, over her lower lip. “Are they sensitive?” she asked, and then dipped her face to lick her way down the tapered end, again.

  “The … the suckers aAAre—Creator!”

  Hot, wet mouth surrounded him, and she scrubbed the texture of her tongue among the first, tiny rows of delicate mouths. Dae Keth had to brace himself, but his greedy arm was already curling further, trying to ball more of itself inside the scalding little space.

  Yesmín gave a musical hum, and he felt her thoughts accept his advance as a challenge. Her lips parted wider around him, and she lapped at larger, more reactive suckers the more of his length she took. There had to have been some limit, because her other hand came up to circle the invading limb, to halt his progress.

  But progress had been more than enough.

  The Magistrand tried to hold himself upright on his human arms while she lathered attention on him as though it were acceptable. As though it were not a shocking act.

  In her mouth. Her mouth!

  She closed her eyes. Dragged some of him out with her grip so he could see the obscenity. All his suckers smearing fluid over her chin as his arousal began to seep.

  “You taste like …” Her tongue cleaned her lower lip. “Limes.”

  Her thoughts were clear. Some small, green fruit. She swallowed him down again.

  No one. No one had ever. No liana, no raja. It was too much. The sight of it. The very idea.

  Dae Keth moved without thought. The rest of his arms pulled him up over the edge, crowding between her legs, looming into her space until the woman had to lean back. Her eyes got wide, but he was carrying her shoulders to the floor, weighing her down at the hips with the living mass of his arms.

  She let him. Melted into it, reaching to smooth palms over his chest while her many plaits splayed over the floor behind her head. Yesmín opened wider for him, and the Magistrand groaned.

  “Shameful,” he said, reveling in it. “Do you like the way I taste, human?”

  The woman writhed on the floor and moaned her affirmative, eyes closed and legs splitting around him. He could feel her mating organs, slick against his flesh again, and not from his own excretions.

  Another of his arms slunk to join the first, the relay of sucking mouths leaving a wet trail between her breasts. This arm crept behind her neck and around before scaling her chin. The length of flesh already between her lips pulled back enough to make room, and the second tip slipped in alongside the first.

  Yesmín opened her eyes at the breach of the second arm to see him braced above her on human palms. Could she understand? Could she see on his face that this was the most lecherous thing the Magistrand had ever done? Whatever she saw, it didn’t slow her. Dae Keth felt her tongue trace along between the two limbs, the attention to his suckers blatant.

  He couldn’t stop himself. Arms began climbing her body like vines. How many could she take? How many could he, before he collapsed from too much sensation?

  A third tip. A fourth.

  They fought and played with her tongue, and the woman spoke unintelligible words around him.

  A fifth and sixth and she could not move the muscle to make anything near speech. Just muffled grunts. Her hips began to rock against him in a rhythm.

  His seventh and eighth arms rose to catch her wrists. To pin them to the floor at her sides. Some guttural noise came from her chest at this restraint, and Dae Keth only saw the whites of her eyes as they rolled up.

  “Take the last two, my chosen?”

  Dangerous words to blurt in what was supposed to be a political encounter. But she was nodding, mouth already agape with six of his arm tips.

  He pushed the last two into the fray.

  The tapered end of each limb was barely inside, but Dae Keth could feel her from so many points at once. And then from the group, one of his arms chose to be the instigator and filled the hot cavity with far more than the tip.

  Yesmín’s lips stretched taut and her tongue writhed against him. The dominant arm began to scrub its length in and out, the rows of round mouths singing against receptive flesh. His own clear fluid began to leak down the sides of her face around all the invading arm tips.

  His grip on her wrists coiled tighter and the Nepenthe Magistrand indulged in impossible vulgarity. The dirtiest parts of him squirmed in this woman’s mouth, and she choked and sucked and moaned in a delirium.

  And then she began to swallow.

  Human muscle drew at his leading arm and, before he could stop it, a length of him had slipped down her throat. Wet, spluttering noises vibrated up his arm. Ruffled the seven other tips. Breath hissed in and out of her nostrils. When she opened those dark eyes and looked at him, Dae Keth’s body jerked in its pleasure.

  It was not the same peak he’d achieve from implanting his first egg, but it was unlike anything he’d ever felt. Currents raced along his arms. He could see his own skin vacillating between bright purple and black. He shuddered, open-mouthed, hunching over her until he thought his human arms might give out.

  When the crest subsided and he had an iota of self-c
ontrol, Dae Keth pulled his arms away. The one down her throat made her cough, and the front of her neck bobbed in its wake. He let go her wrists, and she brought a hand up to sluice his fluids from her face. Drank him off her fingers.

  “Dirty enough for you?” Her voice was hoarse.

  “Exceedingly,” the Magistrand said, tingling arms circling behind her waist. Dragging her to him, even as he carried them both backward toward the water. He leaned to kiss the shameless mouth, and could taste himself, sticky and acidic.

  “Are you ready to be my host, Yesmín?”

  She let him cradle her there at the edge. Let him place more kisses along her throat and shoulders.

  “I … don’t know,” she said, head lolling. “But yeah, I should … w—yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m …” Yesmín inhaled. Exhaled. “I’m … ready.”

  It was likely to be the best he would get. They were in his quarters for a purpose and, while they had been blessed to give and receive pleasure, their agreement was for her to experience the implantation process.

  He pulled them into the waterberth. Arms circled to carry her well away from the ledge, out into the middle where he was most at ease. She clung to him and let her eyes move around the water’s surface, curious.

  Dae Keth was growing addicted to sharing these kisses in human form with her. So many nerves. And she was so responsive. He tilted his face down for more, and she met him with ease, the act becoming familiar between them.

  Below the surface, one of his arms curled behind first one of her knees and then the other to hoist and bend so she would split for him. So he could align. His mating sheath stirred inside him and began to explore the warm, underwater contact of their bodies, seeking the place where it might extrude.

  Between kisses, she panted, palms on his chest. “Do you … how do we do it?”

  There. The place he’d entered with the tip of an arm.

  “Do you have a—oh!”

  Nepenthe muscle injected his sheath into her body, the viscous fluids his skin produced in arousal slicking the way. It began to expand. To fill. Above it, his anchor jutted out right after, a reaction his system couldn’t help, even though he’d attached to her from the wrong position for it to be of any use.

  “Oh—oh my god.” Her hips moved, but he was holding her close. Water rippled around them, and one of her hands splashed into it to feel for herself where they’d joined. She was so hot inside. So hot.

  “What is this?” Her fingers found his anchor jutting semi-firm and pointless above the link of his sheath.

  “It’s my anchor,” he said, arms shifting around her back and beneath her thighs in support. “I understand the Ptolarch coupled with his chosen while she was facing away. And apparently the females of your kind do have dual openings, similar to our lianae. He was able to join them for the duration that way, but I won’t be able. Not from this position.”

  Human eyes widened. “The duration?” She squirmed against him.

  “It will take the whole night at least,” he said, “to implant all my eggs.” His sheath rippled at the suggestion.

  “Th-the whole night?” Her hands moved to his human arms and gripped, as though she would push him away. “I … this is real.” Her gaze darted. “This is really real. Oh god.” Her feet kicked underwater, thoughts choppy with waking fear.

  Dae Keth held her tighter. Pressed their bodies close.

  “Be still,” he said, and the words came harsher than he’d intended. “I … I need you to … be still.”

  “Why do I need to be still?” Her voice had risen, panic spreading.

  The thrash of her thighs made him twitch inside her. Blood flushed beneath his skin and his control jittered. She was not a liana. She might not maim him, but his body didn’t know the difference.

  “Mating instinct,” he said through a tight human jaw, his chin buried in the meat of her shoulder. “Your struggling will set it off. We have to overpower our females. Best them in combat.”

  “In combat?” Her feet tangled in his arms. Her spine twisted. “Dae Keth, I don’t—I don’t know, if I could just have a min—”

  “Form of the Creator, shhh!” He wrapped her tighter. “Be still! I don’t want to harm you!”

  But the human female was beyond reason. He was an alien trying to mate her, and the reality was too much. She thrashed in his grip, a live catch, and he saw purple.

  Subdue.

  A noise of aggression churred in his throat.

  Implant!

  He had her by the elbows, suckered arms circling, dragging her limbs behind her back. More arms fought her wild legs below the surface until he had a grip high on each thigh and forced her wide so she had no leverage to eject him.

  The woman was babbling pleas and profanities in her own tongue, but he was a Nepenthe in mating fugue, and all higher thought had gone but to give her his eggs and flee with his life.

  The base of his anchor scrubbed, useless along the seam where his sheath already pumped his fluids inside the woman. Her hands tried to grasp and claw, but he secured them as well, arms dragging them down and away under the water. If he couldn’t keep them joined in the usual way …

  An arm tip rose to wriggle below his sheath.

  “Dae Keth!”

  He squeezed it past that second entrance and did not go slow. The female squawked at the invasion, but he needed to lock them together. His sheath began to churn in and out, working toward the ejection of that crucial first egg. Within the tighter rear entrance, his arm tried to imitate the work of his anchor, balling itself up into a mass too large to be pulled back out.

  “Oh god! Oh god, Dae Keth!”

  He couldn’t tell even from her thoughts whether she wished it to stop or continue. Inside her, his organ plumbed, its inner passage expanding. The egg dropped, and he could feel it slipping along the path in his body. Lining up.

  Dae Keth jerked his makeshift anchor toward himself, sealing them together so there could be no mistake. Slippery and firm, the egg squirted along his sheath, halting and then blurting forward with the rhythmic contractions of his tissues.

  When it popped free into his host, The Magistrand roared with sensation.

  Yesmín let out a cry and thrashed where he kept her impaled, his makeshift anchor balled tight and holding her fast. His human arms compressed her ribs in their grip, and he rode out the ebb of shuddering muscle spasms.

  She was at least two things with him, there in the water, and one of them was alarm.

  “It’s … movING!”

  “It seeks”—he grunted with a final splurt of fluid to follow the egg—“a chamber for incubation.”

  The woman made a yip of sound and bucked the cradle of her body against him. “It’s … it’s in my …”

  Something of horror and wonder made her thoughts hazy and clear at once. Her breasts swelled against him with the heaving of her ribs, and Dae Keth remembered to loosen his grip. The fugue was fading with the first egg secured and their bodies locked together—they’d passed the critical point, and it would now be a matter of endurance.

  He allowed their upper bodies to separate and loosed his hold on her arms. When he could see her face again, she met his eyes out of breath, and with a slack jaw.

  “Have I hurt you, Yesmín?”

  “N-no?”

  The human didn’t know what to make of their joining. Neither, entirely, did Dae Keth. It wasn’t as though either of them had ever mated outside of their species. Her internal tissues shifted, caressing his sheath. All his limbs were intact, which could not always be said for a successful coupling with one of his own kind.

  She brought a wrist out of the water and turned it this way and that in the wavering lights from below. Rows of reddish marks decorated her arm where his suckers had contributed to the restraint. More would be waiting on her thighs, when he released her.

  The human palm rose to his chest, to place the pads of the five digits there. And then she e
xtended her spine. Tilted her face.

  Kissed him?

  After his inner eyelids snapped closed and open a few times from shock, he sank into the gesture. Her tongue was slow, the palm on his chest, now sinking to his side in a lazy grip. When they relaxed apart, Yesmín’s features had softened, tired, but her earlier panic had drained away, as well.

  “You said ten? Maybe … twenty eggs?”

  He slid his human hands into the water to grasp and squeeze the parted rounds of muscle that had worked her bucking hips. “Can you endure?” he asked. The tips of her long plaits dripped now and made tiny ripples at her back.

  She gave him something of a smile. “Do I have a choice?”

  “You do.”

  Dark, human eyes regarded him, the heat of her still clutching his sheath and arm. “I … I’m kind of terrified,” she said. “Of what comes after this. Incubating? I mean … I have to go out and tell all the other women that they have to agree to …” She made some vague motion of her head. “To allow something that … that none of us had any experience to prepare us for?”

  The Magistrand allowed her to sit with her worries a few breaths longer, before asking, “What do you want, Yesmín?”

  She chewed her lip. “I … said I would do it.”

  “But now one of you has had experience,” he said. “Aside from the Ptolara.”

  The woman closed her eyes and let out a slow breath. Her thoughts turned not with disgust for him, but for fear of the unknown to come. An ache in her being for a dying people. She did not wish to disappoint them. To tell them there could be no agreement with the Nepenthe.

  Dae Keth did not wish to return to Io Rae a message of failure, either. The High One had trusted him in this.

  “Yes,” she said at last, opening her eyes. “Yes. The rest.”

  Relief spread out in his veins.

  “It will be easier, I think, if we were to realign,” he said, glancing down to the place they came together in the water. “I would be able to anchor properly, and support you in the water as you grow tired.” He withdrew his coiled arm from her second entrance, unraveling the length as he went. Yesmín let out a noise that rose at the end with the rush of slick flesh and suckers.