by Amanda Milo
Side by side, Aurora and I ascend the stairs and enter into the hotel, where the interior is well lit and lavishly furnished. Coming from my planet where antimicrobial textiles are the only offerings as far as resting amenities go, it’s quite something to see beings freely setting their posteriors on cushioned seats that countless other beings surely touched and breathed on.
I lean down to Aurora’s ear. “Aren’t they worried about communicable diseases?”
Aurora looks surprised before she follows my gaze. Then she looks puzzled. “Simmi, we’re going to have fun when it’s time to introduce you to the public restroom.”
We stop at a queue that stretches ahead of a staffed desk, where a solicitous clerk accepts credits in return for lodging.
When it’s our turn to be served by the clerk though, Aurora’s steps are tentative.
Gaze bouncing between them, I ascertain that the male is making Aurora nervous. Aurora, who can take down marauding mosquitoes—barehanded, is nervous around this seemingly smiling man.
My eyes narrow on the cheerful-appearing clerk—who pales under my glower. When Aurora doesn’t speak and he does nothing overtly threatening, my eyes narrow further, and I cast my gaze around, on the lookout for what it is about him that’s troubling her.
I don’t find anything.
To Aurora, I murmur, “I’m particularly beside myself at the opportunity to spend the rest of eternity in a mizzling stall. Is something about your opportunity to do the same upsetting you?”
She starts to reply—but then she hesitates. I frown when she begins chewing the inside of her cheek. “One room, or two?” she whispers.
“Why are you chewing on yourself?” I whisper back. “Mouths are full of bacteria. You could be—”
“Uh, sir?” Another clerk rushes up to us—but he stops well back, and tips his head to Aurora. “Ma’am.” The man’s eyes shift nervously up to me. “We heard about the, uh, incident earlier that y'all had, and we wanted you to know, not all of us here feel that way about offworlders.” He gestures around his lobby, which is populated by many aliens with almost no two alike, to prove his point. “We want to offer you one of our premier suites—half-off our regular rate if you’d like it, just to be friendly-like.”
“We’ll take it,” I confirm. Aurora visibly relaxes beside me, but I don’t take my eyes from the man in front of us. “And all the soap you have to offer.”
The man’s mouth curves up. “We’ve got you covered, sir. And ma’am, we happen to have an unmated Rakhii on staff here. Would you like a complimentary vial of his saliva for your, ah…” He gestures to his throat, then glances uncomfortably to Aurora’s throat marks and dark-spotted wrists.
I gape at him.
Aurora takes my hand and replies, “That’s so kind.”
“‘KIND?!’” I hiss.
Aurora squeezes my fingers. “That would be wonderful, thank you.”
“I must have misheard,” I say to everyone in our vicinity. “Did he offer us saliva?” I turn my stare down to Aurora. “Did he say saliva?”
“My feet will really appreciate the Rakhii spit too,” she tells him.
I glance down and gasp a horrified reverse-squeak. Aurora’s feet are a scabbed, swollen, torn mess. How painful for her! And how dangerous. The number of bacteria that must be festering in their wounds…
Aurora flicks me on my arm and leans in to whisper, “Later.”
The man looks from her to me, then carefully asks, “Name?”
“Sim—” I start.
“Murrdhr,” Aurora says at the same time. It takes me a moment to understand that she’s supplying the man with this name for me. I look to her, but she’s facing the human. Still, she manages to focus on me out of the corner of her eye, and with this eye, she drops her brow in such a way that I feel warned not to correct her statement.
Aurora shrugs at the man nonchalantly. “It’s Simurrdhr, but he’d rather everybody just called him Murrdhr.”
This statement makes the man’s gaze shift over my frame in a nervous, jerky fashion, his eyes stark. He’s afraid, I realize.
My attention moves to an alien with pebbled skin in a shade of unsettling green, because he’s approached us. Somewhat off to the side of us, he moves to lean his hip against the counter. I can’t tell from his outfit if he is an employee here or a fellow customer of the establishment. I can however tell that while I’m observing him, he’s observing Aurora. My dorsal protuberances inflate, all of them quivering slightly.
The alien must spy this because his gaze flicks to me, to my dorsal tubes, and he holds up his thumb and sticks out his foremost finger, tipping it down, pointing it away from himself, perhaps at Aurora. He remarks, “That is one fine piece of ass you got there.”
Ass translation as supplied by my translator:
A foolish person.
A person’s buttocks.
A person’s anus.
A braying animal.
There are no animals nearby, he sounds genuinely complimentary, and he’d better not be referring to my anus; thus, I assume he’s referring to my buttocks. Nictating at him in consternation, I wonder why he’s even interested in appraising my posterior. “Is there a particular reason you’re inspecting my ‘ass?’” My words come out clipped, even terser than normal. I’d never be accused of being polite with strangers, and since the mercantile altercation, I’ve somewhat adopted the role of a fearsome predator before these people. I’ve never had the opportunity to be either fierce or a predator before, and I’m finding the experience surprisingly enjoyable.
“Haikur,” the clerk who checked us in calls to the male, “uh, I suggest you don’t go lookin’ at Mister Murrdhr’s woman, understand?”
The alien, this Haikur (who had paled considerably at my question, turning almost yellow), upon hearing my (newly adopted) moniker swiftly takes the brim of the odd hat he’s wearing, and tugs it at me in some sort of display. I haven’t the faintest idea what the gesture means but he also tugs it somewhat sheepishly at Aurora. “Ma’am. And sorry, sir—I meant no disrespect to your lady.”
I straighten. “You meant no disrespect to my lady?” What does his opinion of my hindquarters have to do with Aurora? My eyes narrow and I angle my head, confused.
He starts backing away from me, his hands coming up defensive but open.
An arm slides around my back and curls over my hip. “Baby? Please don’t fight,” Aurora somehow whispers in a way that is not a whisper at all. “We don’t need anybody dead or they’re gonna run us out of this town too!” Her voice carries all around the entire lobby.
Everybody goes quiet.
All eyes are on us. On me.
My cheeks swell.
Before I can speak, Aurora takes my hand and pays by way of the money satchel she’s been carrying throughout our journey.
The clerk asks us if we have any bags.
“Bags?” I repeat, confounded. My translator offers sack.
Like a grocery sack?
I peer down at Aurora who takes my hand and pats her satchel. “We have everything right here, thanks.”
With a relieved-sounding breath, the clerk motions politely for us to follow him past milling aliens and humans, moving us in the direction of our room. “You’ll be staying on the second floor; I’ll lead you there. Stairs or lift?”
“Stairs,” Aurora answers.
Ahead of us, I see a human couple. The man is walking beside a woman, his arm companionably wrapped around her back. When another man walks by though, the paired man’s hand placement changes: his hand deliberately lowers along his companion’s spine, just above her posterior.
It’s an interesting gesture that initially seems to have no purpose; she’s already walking, and she doesn’t appear to need his guidance.
But it has a fascinating effect on the man who’s walking by. He’d been eyeing the woman but once the first man dropped his hand as if to claim territory over the female’s backside, this man’s gaze av
erted, and he continued on his way.
Intent on asking after this claiming custom, I lean down to Aurora, brushing her hair away from her ear so that I can whisper into it.
Unexpectedly, Aurora shivers, her startled eyes flying to mine, and she sucks in a breath.
When I stare at her in bafflement, Aurora searches my gaze—then sighs. After a moment in which I can nearly taste her… disappointment?—she glances away.
Her reaction is so curious, it short-circuits my desire to have a cultural discussion. I pull back to study her. And when she meets my gaze again, it’s with a rueful sort of set to her smile.
With the confidence borrowed from watching the human male with his companion, I place my hand above Aurora’s posterior—and Aurora trips.
“I’m sorry!” I rush, catching her before she falls. “Did I put too much pressure? I attempted to keep the contact light—”
“Simmi, it’s fine. You just surprised me,” she whispers, keeping hold of my supporting arm and straightening. She flashes our guide a sheepish flare of a smile and she promptly moves to follow him up the staircase.
I abandon my attempt to protect her back, but Aurora reaches around and captures my hand, planting it at a spot just above where her tail would sprout, if she possessed a tail.
It’s lower than I would naturally have selected to make first contact, and something about the way her flesh shifts against my palm with every one of her steps is distracting to my nervous system. I’m experiencing the strangest struggle to swallow.
I hear words from the clerk who guides us as if he’s speaking underwater. Aurora twists, catching me with my gaze nearly glued to her posterior, where each of her steps is making it pleasantly bump against my hand. More than pleasantly.
My cheekbones heat, and I have no more than time to wonder if I should apologize when Aurora’s eyes warm with… approval. She doesn’t change the position of my hand where she placed it, and instead, she turns back to the clerk and answers whatever question he had for us. I have no idea what they are saying; the establishment could be caving in on us, but all I can focus on is how much I like touching Aurora.
CHAPTER 16
The mizzling stall was glorious. A sterile-surfaced walk-in unit just like my dorm’s—but so much larger, with multiple mizzling spray heads. When Aurora asked if I would like to go first, there was a pause before she added, “Or… we could shower together.”
We each took half the mizzling stall, and I used every soap the establishment provided—including a slippery one that Aurora informed me later was conditioner, saying it is less meant to clean and more a preparation used to repair damaged hair.
It made my chitin glossy.
I think I approve.
Aurora smiled to herself a lot during our shared sanitizing. She kept glancing over at me as she washed herself, first shyly, then with curiosity, then with amusement.
When I glanced over at her, I saw the skin on her fingers and feet had undergone an autonomic nervous system reaction; her skin puffed up, swelling and wrinkling, providing extra texture so that her body could better grasp such essential items like soap.
How very fascinating.
Once we dried off with incredibly downy-soft cloths, we stretched out beside each other just like we did in the wilderness—but this time, it was on a sleeping pad designed in heaven and possibly containing actual clouds.
It’s that soft. I fell asleep instantly.
***
Aurora kisses me awake. “Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.”
Although she’s not the first human to refer to me as a beauty, I’m ridiculously gratified that she finds me pleasing to her eye. I gaze up at her as she hangs over me. She’s in the blue dress she changed into after her cleansing.
“You are a vision, already risen and shining and beautiful,” I say in greeting, my vocal cords swollen with the fluid that naturally collects over the darkcycle’s sleeping hours. I dislike this process because this fluid is mucus-like in nature. Anything—even if it is a perfectly healthy response—should receive treatment if its leaking mucus. If I were home, I would turn to my citrus and other acidic fruit preserves which I purchase with my extravagance stipend. Just a small amount of the citrus preserve sees improvements to the vocal cords which are otherwise being attacked by clinging mucus strands.
I move to sitting then standing—and I’m surprised at how comfortable my joints feel upon rising. I stare down in wonder at the resting pad. “This is much more cushioned than my standard-issue foam pad,” I share. “And what are these?” I lift up the edge of the giant cloth square we rested on. “What are these layers of cloth? Anti-germ barriers?” If so, how clever; I will lobby for all Genneӝt to have these.
“Blankets, Simmi, geez. Your planet sounds scary.”
“Ridiculous,” I scoff. “One couldn’t compare the terrible wilds of this place to my planet. We Genneӝt are perfectly civilized.”
“You just don’t have blankets.”
“We definitely do not have anything as strange as these blankets,” I concede, enjoying the way she’s smiling as she playfully teases me.
“Well,” she says, eyes bright, “thanks to you, I managed to survive the terrible wilds of this place without a blanket, and I lived.” The surfaces of her eyes glisten. “I really mean it. Thank you. I hope I never forget the way you…” She shakes her head on whatever she was about to say. “I won’t forget any of it.”
My mouth curves. “I’m not likely to forget our wilderness trek either. Not anytime soon.” My smile dies as our eyes lock and a weight builds up behind my sternum. “Not ever, I hope.”
Aurora offers me a tremulous grin. “You don’t even want to forget the leg-munching mollusks?”
This immediately earns her my most severe scowl.
She throws back her head and laughs.
I pounce on her, knocking her flat to her back on the bed.
Her eyes fly open wide. “Simmi?”
I have both of her hands pinned under mine above her head. “Yes?”
She nictates rapidly. “W-what are you doing?”
Rather than simply answering her, I lean in, eyes slitted as I stare into hers, and I touch our noses. “Aurora?”
“Yes?” she replies breathily.
“I could never forget those leg-munching mollusks if I tried.”
Clearly expecting me to say or do something else, startled laughter bubbles up from her, until she’s shaking under me.
I start to pull away from her, but before I can, she laces our fingers together, tugs my hands back down, leans up—and she kisses me.
And this is a different kiss.
This is different than all of our kisses.
Aurora angles her head to the side, deepening the way her mouth fits against mine, and she laps at the seam of my mouth until—I don’t even know how this encouragement encourages me, but I open my mouth for her.
If someone grabbed me in the street and licked a line across my lips, I would never open up my mouth to permit more.
Somehow, that’s exactly what I want from Aurora. And she gives it, tasting, touching, lapping at me—teaching me, and soon, I’m doing the same to her.
One of her hands frees itself from mine and she wraps it around the back of my neck, her fingers stroking a line up from between my shoulders, along my dorsal tubes, to the inner curve of my neurocranium.
Heaviness settles pleasantly around my hip—her leg—and then something prods me beside my tail—the heel of her smooth healed foot.
I start to pull away, asking, “Wait a moment, I have a concern about sanitation. Did you apply alien saliva—” but Aurora sharply increases the pressure she’s applying her foot to my hind end which causes me to surge forward, knocking my groin against Aurora’s.
“OH!” we both shout, and Aurora nips me on my bottom lip.
“The bacterial agents in saliva—” I start to say, but she nips me again.
Mating instincts flare to operation
; I’ve never sensed that I had them before Aurora, but I recognize them for precisely what they are, and for precisely who they’re for. A vibration begins building in my chest; it’s a growl working up my throat.
Aurora releases my lip with an almost, almost apologetic lick. But her eyes are too intrigued to ever be mistaken for anything within the realm of regret. Her gaze skates over my face, and what she finds makes her breathing slightly labored. Soon, she’s almost panting beneath me.
I bring my hips smartly into hers. A warning. A punishment. An erotic promise. Is she certain about this? “Do you know what you’re doing?” I ask her dangerously.
Aurora’s lips curve over mine. “You.”
To my great shock, she tightens her leg where she has it wrapped around my midsection, jerking us to the side, and using our momentum to roll us until she is on top.
My dorsal tubes squish flat and my tail thuds to the floor.
“This okay with you?” she asks me, eyes searching mine.
Wordlessly, I nod.
Aurora pokes me on my sternum—or tries. My chitin has no give so she taps it more than anything. “Say something.”
“You’re demanding.”
She taps me again, a grin stretching her lips this time. “Say something else. Something flattering.”
“My antennae are very handsome by Genneӝt standards.”
Aurora shouts her laugh and taps me with a loud thunk. “Something flattering about me!”
My arms come around her so fast, the twitch she makes is almost a flinch—but her features smooth out, especially when I raise my head and use my nose to trace the worry lines at her brow, and the sudden tightness over her cheekbones and jaw. When she’s relaxed over me, I whisper, “You’re very patient. Even when you shout at me to stop shrieking.”
“You were panicking,” she defends. “I had to do something to get your attention.”