No Easy Way Down
The sex had been interesting. Not in the, "Oh my god, I'm having sex with an alien" way that he half expected it to be the first time he got her naked, but nonetheless interesting in a way that never let him forget that what he was having sex with was an alien. There were some things that seem to be universal, or at least common to both Humans and Sebaceans. She liked kissing, for one thing. But she didn't kiss like any woman he'd ever kissed. She was like a predator, swallowing back his tongue, stealing his breath. She kissed him like she was fucking his mouth. And she loved it when he stroked her back and shoulders, but she was always begging him harder, deeper into the muscle so she could feel it. She wanted him to throw out the Southern gentleman manual and dig into her until he risked hurting her.
The first time they made love-- a phrase that she has picked up for the sole purpose of sneering it back at him-- it didn't really work. In fact, it didn't work at all. He climbed on top of her like the big alpha male claiming his consort, only to find himself thrust into a world of crushing pain. He yelped, withdrew, and curled into the fetal position. "Ow," he said. "Christ."
He stared at the wall so he wouldn't have to see the look on her face. "What, Human women don't have vaginal muscles?" she said.
"Not like those."
"I suppose... it's something you'll have to build up a tolerance to," she said.
"Build up a tolerance? You nearly tore it off!"
"I did no such thing."
"Sure feels like it. I think you sprained it."
"Well, then," she said, "I guess we'll have to try again tomorrow." He could feel her disapproving gaze bore into his back. "Wuss," she muttered.
"I heard that," he said. "And where'd you learn 'wuss,' anyway? Did I teach you 'wuss'?"
"Who else would I have learned it from?"
"Fine," he said.
"What's fine?" she said, but he was already nuzzling between her legs, hoping to find something that at least vaguely resembled a clitoris. He found something promising and went at it with his tongue. It took a few variations on his usual technique to get her to respond, but soon she was gasping things that were way beyond the comprehension of the translator microbes. She moaned and pushed her heel into his back. At least he was good for something.
"All right," she said, "apology accepted." She pulled him towards her as she sat up. "And before you congratulate yourself for expanding my horizons, yes, my people do that, too."
Her breasts brushed his chest, and she ran a finger down his spine. Her touch and the aftertaste of sex lingering on his tongue were stirring his erection back to life. He was still sore, but not so sore that he was about to turn her down. "I could be gentler with my tongue," she said. "If you're-- if you're not in too much pain."
"No pain," he said. She teased him until he was aching everywhere, left bite marks and bruises on his neck and his stomach, licked his nipples because she liked how he reacted to that. She'd discovered those a couple of weeks earlier and still acted like they were the grooviest thing she'd ever seen. "Sebacean males don't have these," she'd explained. Now, she circumnavigated the tip of his cock with her thumb like she was taking measurements. When she took him into her mouth, she was as gentle as she'd promised, so much so that it almost tickled at first. But she could read his body, and she adjusted. He held himself back, wanting to feel her as much as possible.
After he came, she rose, smacking her tongue across the roof of her mouth like a dog trying to swallow peanut butter. "What's wrong?" he said.
"Nothing's wrong," she said. "It tastes different."
"Different how?"
"Not bad. Different different."
That more or less summed it up. Oral sex suited them just fine. There was an intimacy to it, and an equality, and besides, she was good enough at giving blow jobs that he didn't really need anything else. After a few weeks, he could have drawn a map of her genitalia detailed enough to make him the star of Earth's first conference on alien anatomy. He knew the spots that made her sigh with arousal and the ones that made her sigh with boredom.
He needed to get inside her.
Her vagina plagued him. It kept him up nights when she was snoring spooned in his arms. He knew that remembered pain was always less severe, and he was starting to think that his memory was a gross exaggeration. He could get in there. It would be fine. And if not, he'd get used to it.
One lazy afternoon, his head between her legs, he decided to donate a finger to the cause of scientific exploration. She squeezed tight around his finger as he pushed it in. Yeah, that pressure was as bad as he remembered; it was practically cutting off his circulation. But his fingers were less sensitive than his penis, and it was tolerable. She arched her back. "Oh, more," she said. He stuck a second finger inside, and she was still begging, so he added a third. She was pulling up fistfuls of bedsheet. His fingers were numb, but sweat was rising on her breasts, and her mouth was locked half-open. No wonder she'd been disappointed when he'd begged off intercourse.
He stopped not because she had come down from her orgasm, but because he was nearly convinced that his hand would get tired before she slowed down. He sat at the edge of the bed, flexing and cracking his knuckles. "Just making sure nothing's broken," he said.
"That was your hand?"
"What did you think it was?"
"I don't know," she said. "I thought... you might be prehensile or something."
He watched her watch him; she had a faraway, satisfied look on her face. "I think I have a new favorite part of your body," she said.
She'd beg for that thing he did with his hands, and he would hold back, just to mess with her. The truth was, it turned him on to look at her while she came. It was hard to watch a woman when you were fucking her the old-fashioned way. He wondered why he'd never cared what a woman looked like in ecstasy. If he'd known about the rigid curve of her body, the way she seemed transported to some more pleasurable universe-- if he'd known how hard it would make him and how much more it would make him love her-- he wouldn't have given up fingering girls after he'd lost his virginity. If he'd met women like her, he might have skipped the whole virginity thing and just asked for another blow job. He would have had to.
She liked watching him, but not when he came. She'd watch him shave. Watch him stretch in the morning. Watch him while he complained that their bedroom was ridiculously cold, while the corridors were so hot he worried she'd feel ill walking through them, and why couldn't Talyn get it together and settle on a temperature for the whole frelling ship? "Are you listening to a word I'm saying?"
"Yes," she said.
"No, you weren't."
"I was."
"What was I talking about?"
"I have no frelling idea," she said.
"Then you weren't listening."
"I was listening to the sound of your voice," she said. He wasn't sure whether to be insulted that she didn't think his tirades were worth her attention, or amazed that she could be so enamored of him that she was happy to sit and listen to the sound of his voice.
"Are you bored?" she said.
"Why would you think that?"
"With us. With me. With... you say the sex is fine, and I'd believe you, but it always... seems like you're looking for someplace else to put it."
"It is," he said. "It's great. Your mouth, your hands... great."
"But."
"But nothing," he laughed. She was lying topless and barefoot on her back. He crawled on top of her and wrapped his arms around her hips. He rested his chin below her navel. Kissing her stomach, he slid a hand down her pants and squeezed her butt. "But sometimes we, you know..."
"No!" she shrieked. It took her a moment to recover. "No, what I mean to say is, we... I don't think it would be terribly comfortable. Sebaceans don't have much sensation there, anyway, and-- Humans actually do that?"
"Some girls like it," he said weakly.
"I can't see why," she said. "It's not like you've got anything up there that would make it much fun." She took a deep breath that resonated through his jaw. "You-- you don't, do you?"
"Of course not," he said, immediately realizing that he'd spoken too soon. "Well... not the females, anyway."
"You've got a thing up your ass that makes you come?"
"There's... a gland. I mean, so I'm told. It's not like I've ever... actually stuck anything up there to find out."
"You've got a thing up your ass that makes you come, and you've never been curious enough to go looking for it?"
"Well, we--" He cleared his throat and started over. "Men who... it's not something heterosexuals usually do."
"Hetera--? That didn't translate."
"People who have sex with people of the opposite sex."
"You've... never had sex with another male?" she said.
"No!" he huffed. "You've had sex with a woman?" Not that the idea didn't turn him on, but she could have told him.
"You need a little stress relief, you take what's nearby." She stroked his hair. "And the point is, that's not how I think about you. I-- before you, I'd never even been with the same person more than once. And I feel like... if you're not deliriously happy, I'm doing something wrong."
"I'm happy enough that I don't need you digging around in my butt."
"Would you-- would you let me if you knew it would make me happy?"
He might. He should, in fact. He should let her get it out of her system so that when they were both embarrassed at the failed experiment, she would never bring up her wonderful idea ever again. "Hmm," he said.
"You've got me intrigued. And I'll stay intrigued forever, if you don't want to let me, but I--"
"You're going to pester me for a long time before you give up?" he said.
"Probably."
"You'll... need some lubricant," he said.
"You've got a thing up your ass that makes you come, and the way in isn't self-lubricating?"
"Hey," he said. "I didn't design it." He lay on his belly and waited for her. She rustled him out of his pants and sank lingering kisses into the small of his back. He was tense all over, and he couldn't fight it. She rubbed his back in slow circles. He made himself think about the way breathing sounded. Finally, his muscles gave in to the soft insistence of her touch. She held him as she teased his asshole with a goo-covered finger. When she started to push it into him, it felt icy. Not entirely awful, though, just not really supposed to be there. She moved it around a little, and suddenly she grazed something that made his eyes roll back in his head.
"Did I find it?" she said.
He moaned.
She moved back and forth over that spot, just with the one finger, and with every stroke he felt a spasm, rising to something that felt like coming but not quite. The feeling ebbed but came back. He was hard but not urgently hard, and when he came the second time he realized that he wasn't ejaculating. He realized that this was what happened when he did what he did to her. He realized that if he ever made it home and someone asked him jokingly whether any of the aliens he met had probed him anally, he might have to lie.
His erection was starting to get uncomfortable, and he ground against the bedcover. She took him gently in her free hand and let him release into it.
"Well," he said, "that was weird alien ass sex."
"And you enjoyed every microt of it," she said.
He couldn't really argue.
These singular events were not the things that changed him. He watched his old self fall away little by little. Sometimes he stood in front of the mirror, pretending to be dislodging a pubic hair from between his teeth, but actually making sure that the change was still not Scorpius-wholesale but slow and Harvey-beneficent. He reminded himself that wherever he went, he would understand everything other people said. He would always have a voice in his head that was himself and not himself, nagging and guiding from the corner of his mind. He wondered if, on the slim chance that he actually returned to Earth in this lifetime, he would be able to take a woman home and let her lie down for him, spread her legs, smile while she faked her orgasm. He was getting close to accepting that he'd fallen for a woman who had ruined him for anyone but herself. And that it wasn't really much of a problem, in the scheme of things. He only needed one. He only needed her.