by Calista Skye
I flee through the snow, which is thankfully not too deep. Shit, I don’t know this guy that well. I have no idea what might set him off and make him genuinely mad. And a mad caveman alien must be the most dangerous being on this planet.
The snow is cold against my feet and my lower legs, but I hardly notice it. My breath is ragged in my throat as I dare to turn my head, just to check.
Juri’ex is gaining on me, but he’s not used to running in snow and it looks like he doesn’t trust the ground under his feet. And now that I’m looking, he’s clearly not mad at all.
But I keep running. I like the snow under my feet. I like the cold temperature. I like being chased by a man who can fuck me better than I thought was possible in a finite universe.
I change my course slightly so that I’m going towards the column of smoke. If the Ex went to the trouble of making this winter level, then surely they must have had the sense to also incorporate…
I round the final tree. Yes. They did. There’s no smell of sulfur, but that’s fine. It’s fake, anyway.
Juri’ex is still behind me, so I run around the hot spring and stop on the other side. I take the time to put one finger in the water. Here by the shore it’s warm, but no more than it has to be. I wonder how real those bubbles in the middle are. Well, they’re real enough to create that pillar of steam.
I ready another snowball and throw it at Juri’ex’s face when he comes within range.
He easily swats it away and bends down to make a snowball of his own. Then he winds up and I squeal and turn around, because he’s not that far away and he can probably throw that thing as hard as any cannon.
His snowball hits my butt, making it sting, but not at all as bad as it could have. Encouraged, I turn to retaliate, only to be met by a well-aimed shot right in my face.
It makes me squeal, but it’s far too loosely thrown to hurt anything but my pride.
I make another projectile, and then we have a great little snowball fight across the hot spring.
I lose very badly, of course, and my butt is quite sore when I plead for mercy. “You win, you win. I give up.”
Juri’ex discards the snowball in his hands and comes around the edge of the bubbling water. “Then I shall claim my prize.”
“Uh-huh. I didn’t know there was one.”
His eyes glitter. “Oh, there is one. And it is very wonderful.”
I shoot my hip out and turn my face away. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He comes in close and wraps his arms around my chest, cupping my breasts. Steam is rising from his huge body. “Can’t you guess?”
“You’re a warrior,” I sniff, “so it must have something to do with iron or hunting or the jungle.”
“Correct!” he growls into my ear. “I just hunted you down. In this cold non-jungle. To use my iron on you.” He reaches down to grab the hem of my skirt, pulling it upwards.
I let him. “Which iron is that?”
“The one you like the most.”
“Oh. The sword?”
“I will never use my sword on you. And it’s steel, not iron.”
He pulls the dress all the way off me, while I cooperate fully and the heat rushes to my girly parts. I like it when he scares me a little first. The panic so easily turns into horniness when the danger is over.
I turn around. “Is it your other sword? The weird one?” I cup the hardness in his pants.
He smiles. “You should have a prize, too, for guessing correctly.”
“Can’t my prize be the same as yours?”
He nods while reaching around me to caress my butt with one hand while he takes his pants off with the other. “There is a beautiful symmetry in that.”
I unceremoniously grab his cock and barely manage to suppress a gasp from the sheer size and heat and wonder of it. “Let’s get clean first.”
I test the water with my toes, then take one step in. The Ex have thoughtfully made steps that look like natural rock, and soon I’m covered with the warm water up to my neck. “Try it!”
Juri’ex carefully places his sword within reach, then comes in beside me. “This is too comfortable for even the Ex to find believable.”
“These things exist on Earth,” I explain. “Not always in cold landscapes, of course. Nice, huh?”
He sits down and relaxes, while the tip of his cock stands proud of the surface. “Very nice. Too nice. It could make a warrior lazy.”
“It’s okay to be lazy sometimes,” I assure him, absentmindedly grabbing his cock again and jerking it. “Taking a hot bath is good for the soul.”
“And for other things,” he says and sighs, while his cock twitches in my hand. “Maybe do it a little slower, or it might— that’s better.”
“Don’t you dare come yet,” I warn him sternly. “You promised me a prize.”
“I want nothing more than to give you that prize.”
I’m getting good and ready for it, myself. And this arrangement of steps give me an idea. “See what you can do with this.”
I stand up, turn around, and get down on my hands and knees on the steps. The rocks have an artificial softness to them, like most things in the hanging gardens.
I dip my back and spread my knees, presenting myself perfectly.
“Holy Ancestors,” Juri’ex hisses softly. “That is the most incredible…”
“You like it?”
He doesn’t reply, just puts his hands on my hips and probably studies my charms, as in all my charms.
I’m fine with that. Juri’ex deserves to see all of me. I arch my back a little more to offer myself to him as blatantly as I can, hoping he gets that this is not just for looking. And that I am very ready.
“You are a wonder,” he sighs and adjusts his position behind me.
His cock slides between my thighs and touches my hot, over-eager pussy, making me both moan and squirm.
“Fuck me,” I groan in English, mostly for my own benefit. “Take me.”
He slides the tip up and down my pussy once, but we’re half in the water still and I don’t know if he can find much lubrication there. But further in I know there must be ample amounts.
He thrusts into me, and once more my sex gives way to his hard invader. I’m getting used to him now, but the slight burn is still there as if to remind me of his size.
This time he’s less patient than before, and I’m okay with that too when it feels this good.
And it feels better than ever. Maybe my pussy adjusts a little more each time. Or maybe it’s the knowledge of how his incredibly weird and alien cock feels inside me, that it takes each spot in my sex and caresses it with just the right mix of force and gentleness. I swear it raises goosebumps in there.
I was never a fan of this position, but now I know why: I just didn’t have the right man. For this one, I relish in being taking like this, in the most primal and submissive way possible.
I’m being taken by the best man I’ve met. The best man I’ll ever meet, so protective and so full of mischief. He really knows how to act so angry he scares me half to death before I realize it’s just an act.
I groan and moan and squeal in delirious happiness as Juri’ex fucks me from behind. He’s being rougher than before, which this position does invite. I love to feel that he can be like this too, not always the gentlest lover. A girl needs to be taken sometimes. And I need it now.
I start to whimper with each thrust, a sure sign that I’m going to come soon. His cock churns me up and draws all my heat and attention to it, forcing me to forget everything else.
And now his second cock is on my clit and I give in to the climax I’ve been trying to hold off. He forces it from me, decides exactly when I may come.
And then he leans over me, puts his mouth on the back of my neck, and bites me. It’s a gentle bite, just enough for me to feel the sharp points of his fangs. At most other times, it would have been scary. Now, it just pours extremely explosive fuel onto my blazing fire and m
akes me explode from the sheer primal feel of it.
I scream out my joy and climax while we come together and Juri’ex sprays his juices wildly inside me, his mouth still on my neck.
I can barely support myself on the edge of the warm pool, breathing hard and trying to recover.
Juri’ex licks my jaw bone from behind with his dexterous tongue, then kisses the spot he bit, takes me into his arms, and lifts me back into the water. He holds me up, half of me above the surface and the other half up in the cool air.
He rocks me in the clean warmth, back and forth.
I just melt into it and let myself relax more than I can remember ever doing.
- - -
“Don’t you want to sleep somewhere else?”
I slowly drift back into wakefulness, still clinging to Juri’ex’s powerful body. “How long was I asleep?”
“Not long,” he lies. It’s much darker than before, and the horizon is a deep orange.
“Uh-huh.”
He puts me down on the upper step, where I’m out of the water, and hands me my dress.
I pull it on and once more check the special pocket. Of course, it’s still empty.
The water has heated me up, so walking back through the snow is only pleasantly cool.
“I’ve been thinking about the Weirdness,” I say as we stomp through it, leaving one set of small footprints and one set of large ones, very far apart. “I think you’re right about the one on the amusement level. It’s just for kids. I mean, it’s real. You can’t fake something like that. But it’s not the main one. There’s a much larger one somewhere else here.”
“And now you want to find it,” Juri’ex calmly states, but there is a coolness in him that I don’t think comes from the snow.
“Yes. Right now, if that’s all right with you.”
He suddenly freezes and turns his head this way and that, as if he heard something, reaching up to touch his sword.
“What is it?”
He focuses on me again. “I’m not stopping you.”
“Juri’ex, is something wrong?”
He points to the elevator beam. “I promised to help you in your search. Shall we go up or down?”
There’s nothing colder in the universe than a cold caveman with turquoise eyes, and it kind of scares me to dig too deep about what’s eating him. Partly because I think I can guess what it is. “Down. All the way. Past all the levels of the hanging gardens.”
He silently draws his sword and walks backwards into the beam.
16
- Juri’ex -
I promised to protect her on her mission, and I will. I arrive first to each of the levels, and then I wait for Ashlynn to arrive before I go one more step down.
There are many levels. One is just a long beach. Another is a new city with different buildings than the first. Yet another is an ancient city where the buildings are reduced to rubble, something that Ashlynn calls a ‘ruin’. There’s a level with cliffs, there’s one with boulders, and many with landscapes and scenery that are too alien for me to grasp.
On one of them, Ashlynn waits for the robot to arrive. “I’ll just tell Delyah what we’re doing.”
Then she speaks her own language, while her friend replies through the robot. It is an unpleasant display of alienness, as if Delyah’s soul inhabits the mechanical being. Of course, I know she’s still up in the control room, but it all serves to stress how alien Ashlynn really is. How different, how incompatible with me.
She finishes her conversation. “She says okay. But she’s having more trouble with the ship. Many of the consoles have gone dead. She says that we should return up to her as soon as possible. Just in case.”
“There might be danger?”
“We don’t know. Probably not. But this crazy old ship has done weird things before.”
We continue down until we get to a level that’s dark and where there’s no particular landscape. There is no sky on the ceiling and the level appears much smaller than the others. The walls are a uniform white, and there’s not much to see here. The room is round, like the other levels, but here the emptiness makes the roundness that much more obvious.
“I think we’re under the hanging gardens now,” Ashlynn says. “This look like a service level. Let’s try to go further down.
I enter the beam again, but nothing happens, so I step back out of it. “Either this is the very bottom, or there is another way to continue down.”
“Then I guess we have to find it.”
We separate and walk all around the level, but there is no white column like the beam that takes us up and down.
Finally, I end up in the middle of the huge, round room. And then I see it. There’s a light in the floor. Just a small, white light that I can’t see unless I’m right on top of it, like I am now.
“Ashlynn,” I call, and my voice echoes from all around the room.
She walks fast towards me. “Found it?”
“Found something.” I point.
She squats down. “What a weird place to put a light.”
“Press it,” I suggest.
She does, and then she yelps as the floor gives way under us.
I instinctively grab her and draw my sword at the same time.
A round portion of the floor disappears down a shaft, right where we’re standing. And we go down with it.
“Another kind of elevator,” Ashlynn says. “You’d think they could stick to just one design.”
I keep quiet. We’re descending into an unknown area, and it’s better not to alert anyone there that we’re coming.
The elevator slows down, then stops. This level is quite small. It’s only a platform that seems to be floating in the air. It’s round, and there are thigh-high railings all around the outer edge of it. Narrow walkways radiate out from the platform, leading to spindly-looking ladders going down.
There are many alien-looking machines here on the platform, much like up in the control room.
Ashlynn steps off the elevator, and so do I so that we’re not separated if it suddenly goes back up.
We go over to the railing and look down.
Ashlynn’s knees buckle, and I have to catch her before she hits the floor. But I get a glimpse of what there is below us, and I have to struggle to keep upright.
“Weirdness,” she wheezes as she regains her balance. “Another one. And it’s huge.”
I quickly glance down. “I can see no difference.”
“I can. Trust me, it’s bigger. Or rather, it has more energy than the first one. Much, much more. You’re right. That other one is just a pale copy. This is the real one, the one that powers this ship in flight. Can’t you feel it?”
We stand quietly for a heartbeat or two.
“The air does appear to vibrate very fast,” I concede. “I have never experienced anything like it.”
“Me neither. This is it, Juri’ex. This is the center of the spaceship. This is why it can go faster than light. Those things down there are pure tachyons from another universe. The energy must be infinite.”
Again, she uses many of her alien words. Each one sends a barb to my soul. She is so different and alien!
“Please hold me,” she says. “While I take another look. I’ll just see what’s around it.”
I steady her with my arm, studying her face while she leans out and studies the Weirdness beneath us. Such soft curves! Her eyes are so large, her nose so small. Her cheeks so round and unblemished. Her ears tiny and delicate. Her hair fine and long and silky.
Her face so quizzical sometimes, and other times filled with wonder. And during Mating, so concentrated and open.
The way she strokes her hair behind her ear, the way she absentmindedly scratches her thigh when she thinks.
The way she looks at me gratitude every time I bend a branch out of her path.
Her easy determination when she eats a piece of fruit. Her obvious enjoyment of it.
Her scent. Her voice. Her warmth. Her
closeness.
Her way of lightly punching my shoulder when she is happy.
Her tiny whimpers sometimes when she sleeps.
The way she has discovered something good about herself inside this spaceship.
Why did the Ancestors put me through this?
“I’m sorry, am I hurting you?” Ashlynn says, worried.
I must have let out a groan of the pain. She is hurting me very badly. “No.”
“Okay, good.”
I close my eyes and lean my face down into her hair, letting that scent fill my nose as one last luxury.
“Okay, I think I got it,” Ashlynn says and steps back. “Let me think. Those are tachyons. But not just a few. That is an endless stream of them. An endless stream of tiny particles going faster than light. They briefly dip into this universe from another one. Like a flat stone skipping once on the surface of a lake. We are the fish seeing the splash from that one skip from below. The stone continues on its way. But if there were endless stones, then they would seem solid and you could try to hold on to them and let them take you up into the air.”
She leans her behind on the railing and taps her lips with her hand, deep in thought. She has never been more beautiful.
“That Weirdness is the endless splash from the infinite mass of skipping tachyons. A billion trillion of them, every microsecond. So if you dip something into it, you disturb the stones. But the stones have infinite energy. They cannot stay in this universe for more than the tiniest amount of time without losing all their speed, which would be impossible. Nature is forced to either create an incredibly violent reaction or let the stone take you with it out of the lake. Under absolutely perfect circumstances, you can hitch a ride on them. They take you along, into their universe, going faster than light. Then, when you get to your destination, you can let go and splash back into the lake. Back into your own universe. That has to be the way this works!”
Her rising excitement is echoed by an increasing darkness in my soul.
She steps forwards and looks down again. “If anything from this universe were to get in the way of those tachyons, what would happen is either complete, destructive chaos or hitching a ride. The destructive chaos is infinitely more likely. See that, Juri’ex? There’s a loop of something hanging down from under this platform. When it dips into the Weirdness, it forces the whole stream of tachyons to take the ship with them! Shit, that must be so dangerous! One millionth of a millimeter out of position, and anything could happen. As in, everything would explode.”