Nepenthe Read online

  Prehensile arms wrapped and squeezed around both his legs now, ascending at least to his knees, as alien as the subject in question.

  “The transfer and incubation of eggs is a biological process,” said Mur Desh, as though he gave a lecture, and they were in no way half-entwined. “Beyond that,” he said, “we don’t tend to take sex into account when seeking a pleasure joining.” Alien hands braced on the table edge, on either side of Kiral. “And I am quite sure we are each capable of pleasing the other, just as we are right now.”

  They were so close they might have kissed, had the Nepenthe known what that was. The alien had a scent. Like green things. Kiral swallowed.

  “That’s what you want then?” he said. “For me to please you?”

  “You claim to be adept.” There was no impatience in Mur Desh’s tone. If anything, he heard amusement. “But I can see you prefer clear terms. Yes. That is what I want.”

  Kiral glanced to one side and back again. “Here?” he said. “Not in your private quarters?”

  The Nepenthe smiled and lifted a hand to trace the collar opening of Kiral’s shirt. “Mm, would that be humiliating for you? If someone were to see us?” Mur Desh cocked his head. “Ah, but no. You are not ashamed of your choice to share your body. It is that others might see you, vulnerable.”

  Damn!

  How the fuck was he supposed to ‘guard his thoughts?’ This alien knew everything, and just as quick as Kiral knew it. How the hell did they function like this?

  “No one will enter this place,” said Mur Desh, brushing right past Kiral’s worries about the security between his own ears. “Your people don’t know the way, and none of mine will think to come to the repository with everything else going on. Others will not be privy to what we do.” The alien’s smile showed ridges that reminded him of teeth. “Unless you wish them to, Kiral.”

  Unless you …

  This smooth motherf—it was Kiral who kept people stuttering! Who made jaws go slack and breath come shallow while he maintained the seduction at a high, rolling boil. He had done more weird shit than half the fleet, and charmed plenty of other men into doing it with him, and he was going to stand here, waving away the vapors like some fluttering virgin?

  I think the fuck not.

  He locked eyes with Mur Desh and reached behind his head to pull his shirt over the back of his neck. Shoved the garment out of the way on the tabletop at his back. Why should it even matter? He hadn’t seen one lick of clothing worn among the many-armed race.

  Light glimmered in the alien’s eyes. “I had wondered whether you would shed your layers. Will you leave the rest?”

  Kiral refused to look anywhere else while he unfastened his trousers. He would not back down. Not now.

  Under the fascinated Nepenthe gaze, he shucked everything down past his knees, underthings, too, and pushed them off onto the floor until he was bare. Even his feet. Mur Desh gave him just enough room not to bump his head when he straightened.

  Rather than twitch under the perusal of bold alien eyes, Kiral stood there, spine straight, weight on one leg in a light challenge. It was better than trying to cover himself in a nervous fig leaf of hands, as though any of that was likely to matter to the Nepenthe.

  Your move.

  Mur Desh gave him a smile and lifted a hand. “May I?”

  And here we fucking go. You are about to go down this road with an alien.

  Kiral nodded.

  Webbed fingers rose to touch the side of his face. To push against the stubble of beard there, and then up along his temple to explore the texture of his hair. The pace of his heartbeat ramped up, no matter how cool he wanted to play it.

  “Fur in some places and not in others,” Mur Desh remarked. “A common adaptation on your world?” The exploring touch left his head to trail through the sparse hair on Kiral’s chest, and then to dip under an arm.

  He muttered some response to the incongruous academic question. If the alien had asked him to repeat himself, he wouldn’t have been able. His head was like a sieve for rational thought with the many-armed purple being touching him as though he were an expensive curiosity at a bazaar.

  “What would you do?” said the Nepenthe, withdrawing his touch. “If we were in your territory, instead of mine? If I were a human you wished to entice?”

  Kiral allowed his thoughts to touch memories of men he had ‘enticed.’ At least two who’d spent their last days on the planet below. A darkened server floor, banks flickering with dim light, not unlike the space they stood in, now. Hurried breaths and small, wet sounds in a far back aisle between racks.

  “I’d suck your cock until you forgot your name,” said Kiral, taking the dive.

  Something glinted in Nepenthe eyes. “The pictures your thoughts show me are intriguing,” said Mur Desh, and now one of the prehensile arms crept along the bare skin of his ankle. “The sheath I use to implant my eggs would be the closest match for this ‘cock’ of yours”—and here, the alien’s focus dipped to that same organ of Kiral’s, which already plumped and twitched at the mention—“but I can’t afford to lose an egg down your throat. And if you are as skilled as your … very confident thoughts make you out to be …” A tilt of Mur Desh’s head carried an ocean of innuendo, even across species. “Then I almost certainly will.”

  Kiral would never deny he had a thirst for the exotic, but his body’s response to a speech both jarringly alien and seductive at once came as a shock, even to him. His erection stood out, stiff and shameless, and his mouth had gone dry while that lavender gaze held him.

  “Do you have … something else? You want to put down my throat?”

  Nepenthe features shifted into what was most definitely a grin. “As a matter of fact, I do.” The tip of another suckered arm rose to curl around one of Kiral’s dangling wrists. If his cock got any harder, it would turn to glass.

  “Though I admit,” Mur Desh said, tugging Kiral closer with the circling grip, “the images in your memory intrigue me. You brought pleasure to your partner … what expression do you use for it?” Something agile flicked along the back of his calf. Higher. “Yes. ‘On your knees.’ ”

  Oh shit.

  “I believe I would enjoy that,” the Nepenthe said.

  For several heartbeats, Kiral could only stare up at him. It was him who was used to shepherding partners along to the places he wanted. But now another made suggestions, and nothing in him wanted to resist.

  Kiral sank to his knees, eyes on that alien face.

  Waiting.

  Where he expected—he didn’t know what, some phallus? Another bizarre limb the Nepenthe might introduce? Instead, one of at least ten sinuous purple arms curved around his back. Up over a shoulder, where rows of tiny round mouths propelled the limb in a relay past his Adam’s apple. The tip of the arm, slick where it hadn’t been before, mounted his chin and drew a line along Kiral’s lower lip.

  So this is what he wants.

  Kiral made his jaw slack. Accepting.

  Nimble alien flesh eased into his mouth.

  Then the taste hit.

  His salivary glands twanged, the slick film coating Nepenthe skin acid like citrus. The sour jolt came not as a ‘no’, but a decided ‘yes’, and Kiral closed lips and tongue around it to let the flavor permeate.

  When Mur Desh made a low, shuddering sound, and his inner eyelids floated halfway closed, some still-functioning part of Kiral’s brain did the math. This wasn’t just the equivalent of a blowjob he was giving, here. This was something more. Something dirty.

  He brought a hand up to trace fingers along the arm tip, where it left his mouth. Kept a careful watch on Mur Desh while he took a gentle hold of the limb and fed more of it inside.

  The Nepenthe groaned.

  It wouldn’t be the first time he’d won someone over by doing something obscene. Kiral drew the curling tip deeper and ruffled his tongue through the suckers—from which the acidic fluid issued, he learned—and the thicker part of the arm circl
ing his back pulled him closer. Rows of larger mouths along his shoulder blades and spine latched on and tugged at his skin.

  Kiral let his hands drift up, lost for a moment, as there weren’t hips, per se, where he’d braced himself to work the cocks of his past. His touch landed on something of a waist, if he could call it that, where Nepenthe arms branched out from torso, and let his thumbs press into the velvety, purple flesh.

  Two more eager arms found his wrists and began to coil, reaching around to his elbows to pull him close. Another questing tip rose to one corner of his open mouth and pushed its way inside to compete for space.

  Squirming lengths of muscle began to scrub in tandem along the sides of Kiral’s tongue. Neither he, nor Mur Desh, would look anywhere but at each other’s eyes while the act played out. Large areas along the Nepenthe’s face and neck began to gutter between the deep purple he’d already seen and a much brighter hue. More and more slick flesh crammed to fit in the cavity between Kiral’s tongue and palate, his lips stretching taut, jaw wide.

  He wanted to push back. To not be a mere passive recipient of whatever brand of alien debauchery this was, but to actively work at Mur Desh’s pleasure. He ran his palms up his new lover’s sides, squeezing. Did his best to work tongue among the forest of tiny cupped mouths that slipped and slid between his teeth, along the insides of his cheeks.

  There were low, rhythmic sounds from deep in the Nepenthe’s chest at his efforts. Movements became more forceful and erratic and, much like a human would have, Mur Desh palmed the back of Kiral’s skull to hold him in place. To use his mouth.

  A glut of the citric fluid coursed under his tongue, and something about the taste made his balls tighten. Mur Desh let out a growl of triumph Kiral understood on some primal level and forced a final length of suckered flesh further, deeper, until he gagged, and it slid into his throat.

  When his muscles convulsed in attempts to expel the foreign body, the alien shuddered. Several limbs tightened their grip on his shoulders, his arms, his neck, and Kiral let his eyes water. He let himself choke and sniffle while Mur Desh flashed purple and black, the one rapacious arm working in and out amid obscene glottal noises and obstructed coughing.

  “Kiral!”

  A vicious plunge and aggressive bark of noise all but shoved Kiral to his heels, but then the alien limb withdrew so fast it took his breath with it. He would have fallen forward and landed on his palms if Mur Desh hadn’t been in the way. As it was, the Nepenthe gathered him close with the help of way too may suckered arms. Kiral had to turn his head to the side and endure a round of recuperative hacking after the assault on his gag reflex.

  There was a time he couldn’t measure in which the two of them only struggled to breathe. Mur Desh to ease down from his peak, and Kiral to grapple with what had just happened. Many limbs wrapped his kneeling body, even as the effort in his muscles gave way and he sat back, ass on heels.

  And then, movement.

  Nepenthe arms pooled around them both, a flowing mass, and Mur Desh sank low in a fluid motion a human could never achieve by going to their knees. Webbed hands smoothed over his shoulders, flattening to trace the contours of his chest. His eyes rose to meet the alien’s, and they were at a level, now.

  Mur Desh had called out his name.

  “Consider this an apology, Kiral.” There it was, again.

  “For what?”

  “For underestimating.”

  Something agile and slick brushed the underside of his scrotum, and Kiral sucked in a small breath. At least two of the suckered limbs curved around his upper back, and he felt lines of round mouths tug at the skin.

  “Come.”

  Enough of Mur Desh’s arms found a way to push between Kiral’s knees, under his buttocks and out to the free space behind him, it was as though Kiral straddled a lap. He didn’t know what to do with his hands and ended up resting them on the Nepenthe’s upper arms, which made the alien smile.

  Citric fluid tingled on his chin and swollen lips as he stared into lavender eyes, curious but no longer tense for the alien’s next move. He allowed his body to relax into foreign, cradling limbs. Between them, his prick bobbed, incorrigible.

  “A great many images formed in your mind,” said Mur Desh, “while you worked for my pleasure.” The hold of the limbs adjusted on Kiral’s back. “This was among the clearest.”

  Shifting movement below, as though a slick, heavy rope dragged along his thigh, and Kiral dropped his eyes to see a curling arm tip reach for him. To spiral around his cock, tiny sucking mouths attaching from the narrow purple tip to drag more of the exotic limb, thicker as it went, up around the jutting heat of his erection.

  Kiral shuddered and his spine hunched. Mur Desh held him up, the causal strength in those two supporting arms a small terror he pushed to the side. Sliding, Nepenthe flesh wound from his base to his plump cockhead, so close together that all he could see was the weeping slit peeking out at the top.

  As Kiral stared, open-mouthed, the spiral grip contracted. He let out a ragged groan. The alien made a soft noise. Amusement and satisfaction.

  “It is not a human mouth, but I believe it will serve,” said Mur Desh.

  And then a sleeve of little round mouths began to suck.

  “Shit!”

  Kiral’s ass flexed, thrusting his hips up. His grip shifted to the back of Mur Desh’s neck, to brace. The agile limb surrounding his cock began to squeeze and tug.

  “You have strange profanities, human.” The Nepenthe made some attempt to have his taunt sound bland, but Kiral knew his reactions entertained. “Do I take them to mean you enjoy yourself?”

  Something wriggled from below, and then another arm tip lashed around the base of his testicles in a circle.

  “Nnh!”

  Fuck profanities. He couldn’t make words.

  “Like this, yes?” More nursing mouths, where the delicate skin stretched taut, and his balls stood away from his body in the alien hold. “You don’t have to speak it, Kiral. Your thoughts will show me.”

  The Nepenthe must have been able to sift through his mind more efficiently than he could label what was there. Every affirmative, no matter how vaguely formed, seemed to fuel each new stroke and pull.

  Kiral closed his eyes.

  Mur Desh did unheard of things to his captive prick. His oversensitive balls. More of that viscous fluid seeped from the suckered limbs, and the alien’s hungry work made squelching noises around his sack and pole. Kiral’s breath made shallow huffs, and there was a new sensation. Warm. Humid. His lover nuzzled his face below Kiral’s chin, and what had to be an alien tongue slipped out to taste his throat.

  Their bodies pooled there, entangled on the spongy floor of the data repository, lush fauna dampening their sounds in the massive space, tiny lights flickering from every niche and wall. His knees parted around an impossibly attentive lover, hips beginning to move in that rhythm of the release he wanted.

  “There is more,” said Mur Desh, words hot at Kiral’s ear as the alien pressed their upper bodies together. “You have strong memories. Pleasures shared with more than one at a time? Enchanting.”

  Whatever the Nepenthe murmured came to him only as a sensual blur, its colors and flavor running together with the slick, moving wonderland engulfing his cock and balls, driving out all ability to process language.

  Until a new touch crept up inside his thigh from behind.

  A tapered limb, wet and seeking, wriggled along his taint. Between the cleft of his muscled cheeks.

  “Here, is it?”

  Kiral made an embarrassingly high-pitched noise when the fine, agile tip squirmed at his entrance. Exhaled in a rush when it pushed its slippery way into the knot of muscle.

  “Mm,” Mur Desh confirmed. “Yes. Here.”

  The invasion did not stop.

  Alien fluids did away with any resistance as more of the limb snaked into his hole. His jaw was wide in disbelief at the ease with which he took more, more, the girth increa
sing, as it went.

  And the mouths! The suckers!

  He made some insensible bark of sound. Nepenthe flesh began to slough in and out. There was no relief on his cock.

  “Mur Desh! Rrrggh!”

  “Yessss, cry out my name, Kiral. We have chosen well.”

  Kiral could only make animal sounds. Multiple dexterous limbs catered to every sensitive focus. A surging, squishy arm worked in and out of his asshole, slathering his thighs and cheeks with fluid as it went, the pace growing too brisk for him to catch his breath. The first busy arm still spiraled in a grip on his shaft, tugging and suckling in cascading waves, and there was no forgetting the other that squirmed around his balls.

  A webbed alien hand rose to grip his throat.

  Kiral spluttered.

  I’m gonna … gonna …

  “Yes,” said Mur Desh. “You will.”

  The writhing flesh scrubbing his rectum bunched. Curled. It nudged forward and prodded a place that made Kiral’s world explode.

  “AaghhFUCK!”

  The orgasm came from inside his bones.

  Unceasing alien limbs milked his spurting cock, pumped wetly into his ass. He knew his nails bit into the back of Mur Desh’s neck, and each time the coiled appendage tapped his prostate, radial bursts of light went off on the insides of his eyelids. He let out a yell with each, as though he’d been shocked, and the slickness lubricating his prick grew hot with the mingling of alien fluids and his own semen.

  The sensations went on—on!—until he thrashed in the Nepenthe’s hold.

  Too … too much!

  It was unsustainable. The tip of his cock blazed with more feeling than he could process.

  “St-stop! I ca … I can’t!”

  A noise vibrated in Mur Desh’s chest that could have been a growl. The movements slowed. Eased.

  Kiral’s chest heaved. Muscle relaxed and slid from inside him, sending a shiver up his spine with the long pull of slick, nubby suckers past his fluttering hole. The grip on his shaft eased, massaging their combined juices along his hot flesh before the arm let go altogether. There was a final, gentle squeeze to his sack before the Nepenthe disengaged.