My brain takes exactly one second to go through all the idiotic scenarios – Bane, naked female, hanky-panky, caught in the act, tears, screeching, it’s not what it looks like, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, let’s stay friends, blah, blah, blah.

Then the rest of reality filters into my head.

The naked woman – female, rather, clearly not human (skin’s too gray, claws are too long, and are those feelers?) – is not straddling him sexily, cowgirl style, but rather perched on Bane’s stomach like an oversized bird of prey or a medium-sized gargoyle on a cathedral roof. The claws of her feet are digging into his body armor – and, depending on how long and sharp they are, through his armor, through his hide, and possibly into his intestines. One of her hands is pressed against his face like she’s trying to gouge out his right eye with her four-inch nails, but he’s holding her back with his free hand clamped around her wrist, just barely. His tail is curled tightly around the other, and also hooked around her shoulder, keeping her from leaning forward and sinking her dagger teeth into him.

There is a shiny short blade next to Bane’s right hand, the hilt just a couple of inches away. His fingers are clawing at the air like he’s trying to reach it but is unable to.

And there is blood spattered on the floor. A lot of it. Pooling, in some places. Around Bane and underneath him.

I don’t think before I find myself moving very quickly, which is probably the only reason why Rune doesn’t stop me; my brain doesn’t give him (or me) any warning.

My chain barely slipping out of Rune’s grip, I clutch the slick silver links in both hands, leaving some slack between them – just enough chain to sling around that female’s neck and pull as I run past her.

It has already been established that I’m not strong or hardy, but I’m also not exactly a featherweight, and gravity and momentum, combined with a desperate fire in my gut and a generous helping of Batshit-Crazy, can and do have a marked effect on females who try to kill one of my alien boyfriends.

The female gives a strangled hiss like an angry cat as she notices that she has company and a pretty new necklace, and then the hiss cuts off abruptly when my leash knots up and pulls tight against her throat. She’s bodily whipped off Bane, flying a couple of feet through the air. My force even breaks the hold Bane has on her with his tail. She crashes sideways to the broken-tiled ground and slides along a bit.

I somehow manage to stay on my feet, the chain clutched tight even as it bites into my palms.

“Leave him alone!” I holler dumbly at her, momentarily flashing back to 2000-something when life was easy and consisted of faintly amusing YouTube videos of hysterically weeping Britney Spears fans. My greatest battles back then were fought against acne, bad hair, lacking make-up skills to accompany a very slim make-up budget, and an unfortunate attraction to Chad Kroeger. My existence was uneventful, boring, and sedentary and it made sense(ish).

As it is, I’m completely dazed with adrenaline, and I proceed to give a mighty war cry – it comes out closer to a war warble, but who the hell cares? – and yank on the chain with all my might even if it makes my palms burn with the friction and rip open, hauling her physically away from Bane as far as I can.

For the next few moments, she fights blindly, winding and twisting madly around on the floor and pulling the noose around her neck tighter all by herself, making the most unholy of screeching noises. It reminds me uncomfortably of Gollum fighting against the elven-made rope.

I always felt real sympathy for poor, pitiful Smeagol in that scene.

Then she finds her feet – her all fours – refocuses and dashes towards her new opponent.

That’d be me.

Well, there goes my pity.

“Shit!”

I try to duck away, but we’re literally tied together through my leash, and the thought occurs to me that I should maybe have taken off my collar before rushing at her. Then again, there wasn’t time. There wasn’t time for pulling one of the small knives I have on me, either.

(You are the least competent fighter ever, Val.)

“I’m more of a lover!” I shriek in panic, replying to my inner voice – didn’t mean to talk out loud, but the fear elicited by having a berserker alien lunge towards me at crazy speed with her two-inch talons extended and about to sink them into my eyeballs loosens my tongue as well as my bladder. Warm wetness spurts down the insides of my thighs and calves.

Aw nooo.I swear if I survive this, I will kegel the crap out of my pelvic floor. All this peeing myself is seriously getting out of hand!

I screw my eyes shut and fold up like a lawn chair, throwing my arms up in a feeble attempt at protecting my head and bracing for pain.

But then Rune is there. By the sound of it, he plucks my attacker out of the air and slams her to the floor, cracking a few tiles and possibly a couple of smaller bones in the process, then starts wrestling her. I feel my leash go very taut for a terrifying second, then fall entirely slack like it’s been severed. Opening my eyes again, I catch a glimpse of the female retreating up the stairs and into the front hall from which we came, Rune very close on her heels.

At this point, I should probably finally take off that collar and the chain dragging on it, or possibly take out the aforementioned knives just in case she comes back, or maybe even wipe the insides of my legs because eww, Val.

But there’s a rasping sound, almost like a cough, and I’m instantly at Bane’s side, all but slipping in his blood and crashing my right knee into the ground somewhat painfully. None of it matters.

“Bane!” I kneel next to his head, leaning over him, hesitantly touching his face. His skin, speckled with blood and slick with perspiration, is colder than I’ve ever felt and it freaks me the hell out. “Oh, my god. Bane. Bane.”

There are two deep gouges running from his cheekbone, grazing the socket of his right eye, all the way to the back of his head, oozing blood the color of red wine. His teeth are stained pink. His limbs are twitching like someone hooked him onto an electrical current.

There are blood-red specks in the yellow of his eyes and he’s not looking at me but past me at the open roof and the sky. His pupils are dilating and constricting erratically.

“Can you hear me? It’s me. It’s Val. I’m here,” I babble frantically, fluttering my wildly shaking fingers over him, over his face and torso and arms, the latter two clad in armor that has clearly been put to the test recently. So many new dents and gouges. The female’s toe claws really did pierce one of the plates, and below that, there’s a glossy pool of blood and mangled skin. Shit. Shit. Shit. How much blood does a Dryth have? How much does he need? What if she hit one of his vital organs? Do Dryth have vital organs? Blood types? Does donation work? Tourniquets? Compression dressing? Stitches? What?

Again, I am reminded that I know nothing about Dryth anatomy, not really. I only know how to fuck them and love them against all reason, not how to care for them when they need patching up.

Useless again, Val.

I grit my teeth. Now’s not the fucking time.

“Bane. I-I’m here, and Rune is also here, fie-fighting with that bitch. It’s going to be all right. It’ll-It‘ll be- It’ll be all right. There are slugs everywhere outside and they might be lah-looking for you, and possibly Rune, a-and maybe even me, and the-the-the chick seemed far from duh-done, but I swear to you, it’ll all be oak-okay eventually. It-It will. Yeah?”

It’s ridiculous, me making these promises. I know I can’t really help him at all. Fuck, just looking at him so badly hurt that he can barely twitch has me on the brink of needing help for myself as well. I’ve already started stuttering with nuh-nerves, guh-goddamn it.

Bane spasms once and his head rolls a little to the side, exposing the back and side of his neck to me.

There are… I squint. Are those quills sticking out of his skin? Chopstick-sized quills?? They are whitish-yellow with grey flecks, there are four of them, and if their girth is any indication, they are embedded at least three inches deep.

I don’t think. I just grab one of them and pull.

Bane goes eerily still. His eyes roll around in their sockets until the pupils finally lock on to me.

He sees me, and I swear he hates me at that moment.

Still, I pull, and pull, and pull – “God damn this shit!” It’s more like five inches, and of course there’s a wicked-looking barb at the end.

The first stinger comes out with a wet sucking sound that makes the hairs on my neck curl into corkscrews. The swill of blood that follows the giant toothpick stinger seems somehow thinner, almost watery. Should that be disconcerting or is it normal? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t know anyfuckingthing. I’m like Jon Snow’s even more ignorant cousin, Joan Sleet.

I grab the next one and pull, and then the next. It’s hard work and I’m sweating and panting by the time the last quill keeps slipping through my wet palm. When it slides out of my grasp the fourth time, I have to stifle a frustrated sob. What if these are just the visible quills? What if there are several more, so deeply embedded in his skin that they don’t stick out at the top, somewhere else on his body, hell, on his back, or below his mangled armor…?

And what happens if I break this last one? What if the tip, or the barb itself, stays lodged inside? Do Dryth get infections? Is there something like penicillin in space? Does penicillin even work that way? I forgot everything about it except that its name literally means ‘little penis’.

“Damn it, why did I have to have completely useless jobs before being abducted? Why couldn’t I have studied to become a doctor, or a Navy SEAL, or a freaking astrobiologist? I am entirely unprepared for any of this! My one and only skill is googling stuff and overeating on close to zero funds – I realize those are two skills, but counting isn’t one of them, so there!”

I tell Bane all this (stutteringly and through teeth that chatter like crazy) while I further mangle his neck and eventually manage to wrench the last visible stinger out of his skin. God, my palms hurt and throb like the dickens.

And my eyes, too, and not just because I’ve been crying like a little bitch this entire time without even realizing it, I think.

And my elbows, for some reason?

And my chest.

“Fuck, my chest hurts,” is actually the last thing I say with the last bit of breath before I suddenly start drowning in air.

As the light in the world suddenly dims around the edges of my vision, I look down at my hands. My palms, raw and seeping blood from pulling on the chain earlier and now from dicking around with the quills, feel kinda sticky against the makeshift bra I have on when I pressed them against my sternum. There is some yellow-ish goo on my skin which was seeping out of those stingers like resin from trees.

Oh. Uhm.

Poison?

Oh, of course, Val.

Well. Fuck.

You are in such deep sh

***

It occurs to me that every out-of-body experience is actually just the inside-of-body experience of a physical nuclear meltdown.

Half of your brain is telling itself a soothing little fairytale about body-independent survival in a last-ditch attempt at triage and crisis management.

The other half is running around with its hair on fire.

That must be why I could swear I watched myself actually drowning – in blood? Or is that wine? It seems a lot darker than it should be – and then floating – like I was sitting in my Volvo? Oh, God, are we doing all this crap over again? – and then gasping for air – because those assholes forgot to make some holes into my box! Let me out. Let me OUT! LET ME OUT!!!– and then moaning from the pain in my chest.

Oww, my boobs! Is someone sitting on me again?

Wait. Why would someone be sitting on me? Is that a regular thing that happens?

Actually, it’s less my boobs and more my entire ribcage that’s hurting. Holy hell. Was I in an accident? Did my stupid car finally croak? Did we end up in a ditch, with the steering wheel sledgehammering my sternum?

I swear I saw a news report about this man who had his entire lower jaw punched off of his face by his steering wheel, and he- uh. Something.

Or did they – I gasp – did they put my car into the scrap metal press with me still in it? I used to have nightmares about that exact scenario. I blame the trash compactor scene in Star Wars.

I open my gritty eyes and all I get is bright whiteness.

Huh.

I spend a full minute trying to figure out how the fuck I, Valerie Magdalena Greene, could possibly have ended up in heaven.

Note the absence of gates, pearly or otherwise. 

Hm. Okay, so maybe this is limbo? Purgatory? (What’s the difference anyway?) Or maybe it’s the place where Harry met Dumbledore after his erstwhile death? Or the pre-program of the Matrix? Am I going to learn Kung Fu now?

I’ve always wanted to learn Kung Fu, I think. Or Krav Maga. One of those. All I know so far is that sitting on people is way more effective than previously thought… although it escapes me exactly how I know this.

I’m trying to think of more pop culture items to make sense of my current situation, and how I know that hell can’t be bright white (seriously, how do we know that?), when a darker shape moves into my field of vision.

It’s… uh.

I squint.

It’s the devil.

Double-huh.

I always thought he’d be red and rubbery, like the shiny demon that shined in that Tenacious D video, but he’s dark gray with a silvery sheen, like graphite, with darker stripes – scars? – cutting right across his face. His eyes are a tarnished gold-yellow. His oddly-angled head doesn’t have ears, which strikes me as a bit strange. I feel like he should have some.

Okay, so much for heaven or limbo. Pretty sure Lucifer doesn’t hang around either of those places.

(Does he? Man, I shouldn’t have daydreamed through religion class.)

Maybe hell is indeed my OBGYN’s examination room like I’ve always hypothesized, and this is my cold-handed doctor’s true face? That would also explain why the examination chair – and therefore my hoo-ha – looked straight towards the exam room door. Only the absolute devil would configure his room like that.

“Breathe deeply,” the devil says in perfectly understandable English through very sharp, white teeth.

“Y’know I always thought you’d speak Latin,” I tell him – very, very slowly because my tongue seems to have had a minor stroke of some kind. “And that you’d have horns and be hideous.” Valerie Greene, what’s that supposed to mean? “Sorry. I mean. You’re really suh… sorta hot. It’s cause you’ve got good she… sheep… shiekbones.” Yeah, close enough. “I mean. You’re handsome. A… handsome devil. Ha! Ha! Oww,” I whine a little and clutch my chest - which is entirely bare.

Huh, again. I’m topless.

Naked, actually. Buck ass nekkid. Is that normal in hell?

“Va’l-ree,” the devil says and locks his yellow eyes with mine.

Sssnap!

All at once, my recent past hits me full in the face. The recent events come into focus so abruptly and hard that it drives the air from my lungs and sends another sharp bolt of pain through my torso.

“Bane!” I gasp, sit upright through the screaming pain, and lift my hands even though they are jittery and weigh a couple of tons each, wanting to touch him just to make sure he’s actually there and actually whole.

“Oh, God! You’re alright. Are you alright? Please, tell me you’re alright!”

I scramble to sling my arms around him, desperate to feel his living presence against me.

Bane has never been a big hugger. Sure, he grabs me when we’re fucking and holds me tight and down with that casual ease of his. He likes to physically put me where he wants me.

Embracing for its own sake isn’t really a part of his repertoire.

Which is why I almost start bawling when I try to pull back from my awkward hug – to respect his low-key hug-aversion and also to take stock of his injuries – and he doesn’t let me go but pulls me into him again, both arms around me like steel bands slinging around my back.

He buries his face into my hair. I hear him inhale my scent. It makes my heart clench with relief so profound that it hurts.

I cling to him as he tightens his embrace even more, making me feel small and sheltered. Safe enough to let myself dissolve into some pathetic mewls and trembles as the residual fear from my recent double brush with death (his and mine) filters through my system. I lay my head on his shoulder, tuck my face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in, in turn, and run my hands across every square inch of skin I can reach, caressing it and reacquainting myself and taking stock. This part is still here. And this one. Hello, this patch of skin, this and that scar. Hello, hello. So good to meet you all again. Hey, new bump and graze. I’ll put my mouth on you shortly.

“I am so fucking angry with you!” I cry-shout at him, angrily wiping my snot on him like vengeance is mine. “You went away all by yourself and whi-without telling me because you bloody bonehead thought I’d luh-leave you for any random homo sapiens and then you didn’t come back and-and-and I was worried sick damn you! And then I saw you there and for a moment I thought you’d die and there was so muh-much blood and I don’t know how muh-much Dryth can take be-before they-“

“Ree,” he interrupts my rambling, leans back, and then in and presses his mouth to mine. I must be half-frozen because his lips feel like a brand, searing my skin, and his tongue is like a literal tongue of fire.

I spend a split second worrying about how awful I must taste – I can’t even remember the last time I brushed or flossed. Eww – and how my body is still partially out of commission and really kinda sore from whatever the actual heck really happened to me, but those worries fly out the portholes when he wraps my hair around his fist and tilts his head to deepen the kiss.

If I hadn’t realized some time ago that I’m in love with a freaking alien, I’d probably have noticed it this very instance because fuuuuckkkk. It’s absolutely mindboggling how good it feels to be kissed by him, how the touch of his tongue to mine warms me up and tingles through me from the dome of my cranium to the tippy tips of my toes, smothering all my aches instantly like the strongest, happiest painkiller. It makes me all melty and gooey inside, like caramel and honey and Nutella, and God, I am hungry and thirsty for him like I’ve never been for any food or drink.

In fact, it’s something more than hunger or thirst, something that’s more than just physical. More like the worst type of homesickness, if home was a person instead of a place, and that person is more like a limb that’s missing on your body, something important, like an eye or your right thumb or your left butt cheek, except even more important than that. I’ve missed him like I would miss my own name if I ever forgot it. It’s pure, distilled yearning.

I somehow manage to keep a tight hold on Bane while I go boneless underneath his kisses, and also rub myself all over him, all while pulling him down on top of me. Gonna put ‘multi-tasking pro’ onto my CV.

Bane keeps kissing me as we lie down, and as his right hand makes a slow, torturous, wonderful journey down my body. My neck and throat, my chest, both breasts and nipples, my tummy and the dip of my navel, the V of my groin, and my throbbing pussy which he only grazes – torture! – and then down my flank, gripping the swell of my ass firmly and proprietarily on its way down, really digging his fingers into my soft flesh there.

I can’t help the tingly butterflies that flutter around in my stomach at that grab-and-touch. It triggers something primordial and pushes some mammalian button that survived socialization.

Being grabbed just feels so crazy good when the one who’s doing the grabbing is right.

Stupid, really, for my Mr. Right to be a package-deal happy meal that includes two alien barbarians. What’s stupider is that they are the only thing that really made sense in my entire life so far, ever. Guess that says nothing good about me.

Words can’t express how much I don’t care right now.

Eventually, Bane’s hand reaches the hollow of my knee, pulling my leg up and draping and hitching it around his back, opening me up for him.

And then his cock slides into my pussy without any more preamble. I moan into his mouth. My muscles stretch and burn and flutter around the slick, hot invader. It’s not exactly painful. Close to it, but the good kind of close.

I twitch my hips up and spread my thighs wider for him, opening my mouth more, inviting him deeper into me in every way. He accepts the invitation, coming in, seizing power right away and crushing me deliciously. His tongue and his cock pump into me in the same rhythm, just a little bit faster, a little bit more intensely than I can comfortably take. When I moan and try to writhe away, he clutches me more firmly to hold me still and just continues.

He is the devil and he still likes it when I fight him.

My insides start quivering when a ball of heat starts coiling up underneath my belly button until my entire abdomen is like a flower bud waiting, desperate, to burst open in an explosion of color. I roll my pelvis, trying to rub myself on something, anything, trying to find more clitoral friction somewhere, but Bane’s very mobile body knows how to evade me, and his even more mobile cock only indulges me only at precisely its own pace. I scratch my frustration into his broad back, even try biting his lips and tongue but I guess I’m basically like a little kitten to him.

He plays with me.

Fuck me, why does that feel so mind-numbingly good? Why do the obscenely wet squelching sounds our bodies are making turn me on and send waves of goosebumps up and down my neck?

I teeter on that edge of glory for long, amazing, terrible minutes, and I know that Bane can feel the flutters of my sheath around his cock. I know that he knows how close I am to exploding all over him, and how desperate. Just to be sure, I tell him every time my mouth is empty, though. Gonna come. Gonna come. Oh my god, gonna come, please!

The moment I think I might die from arousal and release deprivation, he suddenly pulls back from me. His tongue leaves my mouth and his cock slides out of my pussy and I guess now I am dying. My empty vagina clenches on nothing but air – and it occurs to me that, for the first time in a long time, there is no spike there, either. Holy crap, this might be worse than death. I grab at Bane’s back and neck mindlessly, and cling to his hips with my legs, looking pleadingly into his bright gold eyes.

“Please! Please!” I beg breathlessly, “More, plea-!”

His right hand leaves my knee and comes up to lay against my throat, pinning me down and effectively cutting off my words.

“You take what I give you,” he says, and the words and the tone shoot pure heat straight down between my legs.

Oh, mother of mercy. Yes. Yes. Yes.

I nod frantically and hush another “please”, which turns into an “Aaahh!” when I feel his cock reach and breach my back door and surge up into me the other way this time.

I’m truly far from being a prude, but even millions of light-years away from Earth where that stupid idea came from, anal sex still has a stigma in my head that has to be eliminated anew every single time. There’s just something forbidden and obscene about being taken through that hole.

Dryth don’t share that notion whatsoever, but I know they know I have it. Bane and Rune know there’s something special for me about being fucked in the ass, something that especially disarms me and leaves me a trembling, twitching mess on the floor. They know that I can get anal orgasms and that those take longer to build, hit harder, and leave me just a little unsatisfied and also colt-legged.

Pure evil. I have created monsters.

“Oh my fucking-aaahd,” I slur as Bane’s cock stretches and lengthens and flexes inside of me, massaging and rubbing against my tender ring, filling me up to the brim in yet another way, then proceeding to hollow me out when he pulls back only to ram back inside again.

I break out in sweat and whimper. I never whimper, but I can’t help it right now. I feel like an egg that’s cracking. Helpless, I search his face. “What are you doing to me?” My voice is small, high, and trembling.

His answer is a baring of teeth – quite far from a grin or a smile – and the tightening of his hand around my throat and a thrust forward of his hips, which drives his cock into me to the very hilt even as it expands inside. A thrill of fear and arousal thunders through me. I cry out, and then again as he does it again, and again. I can feel his lubricant smear down my ass cheeks, can hear the sucking, squelching noises caused by hard, hot cock shuttling in and out of a tight, yielding opening.

He fucks me like he almost lost me. Which… fair enough. I try to fuck him back the exact same way, for the exact same reason. We’re making war while we’re making love, and it feels so good. So good that I don’t care I’m losing.

Tears are streaming down my temples when my body is ready to capitulate and fly apart through nothing but anal pounding and being ever so gently, firmly pinned and choked. The muscles of my pussy clench on themselves, and the feeling makes me moan like a demented porn star.

And yet again he feels it and pulls back and out just before the moment of no return.

This time, I lie limp and gasp for air. My whole body is pulsing like it is one big, racing heart. I am soaked in sweat and tears and other fluids, I can feel the hair on my neck actually dripping perspiration, and my skin is radiating heat and glowing rosy red. Between my legs, everything feels puffy, sodden, and tender.

I want to demand he finish what he started, but I’m out of words and out of breath and if he did grant my wish I think I might actually faint.

Obviously, Dryth don’t do time-outs, especially not during battle when their opponent is reeling. Taking his hand off my neck and leaning back onto his heels, Bane towers between my spread legs. “Watch,” he commands.

I weakly lift my chin and look down between our bodies. His cock, jutting out from between his strong thighs, is twitching and pulsing like mad, tinged an angry-looking red-black, and as I watch, he rubs the underside of the tip on my belly once, twice, and then sprays his warm seed all over me with a loud, deep, dangerous grunt.

The pearly liquid splatters onto my stomach and my heaving, sweat-slicked chest, a couple of droplets even hit my face, my mouth, and I reflexively lick the specks off even as my head falls back again, powerless.

I feel… baptized. And alive. So alive.

For long minutes, we just breathe together. I bathe in the warmth radiating off him and in my own exhaustion – the good kind, not the kind you feel after doing sports or some crap like that. Bane gently rubs his essence into my skin like he knows exactly that I’m absorbing him through my pores.

Eventually, Bane speaks up.

“Take it,” he says and his voice is a roll of thunder.

I groggily look into Bane’s eyes to gather his meaning.

“Take it,” he orders through clenched teeth, grabbing my left wrist with his right hand and physically putting my palm onto his recently spent cock.

I startle a little. Here’s something I normally don’t get to touch.

I always thought they were either too sensitive or entirely numb just after ejaculation if they didn’t detach for staking purposes. They usually both move away from me, out of my reach.

I slide my palm along the still rigid but slowly softening shaft, feeling the cartilage of the rib-like structures along its length go spongy. The secretions are almost like jello now in their consistency. Also, I could swear I feel a pulse, like a heartbeat, underneath my fingers – which is strange because I never noticed a heartbeat in my Dryth before.

Bane shivers entirely under my palm and I know my numbness hypothesis is wrong.

This is almost fascinating enough to make me forget my state of utter exhaustion and sexual frustration.

Bane growls – literally growls, like a displeased leopard – when my exploring hand reaches the base of his cock. “Take. It.” He pumps his hips forward slightly.

Again, I’m clueless about what he means – until his cock suddenly weighs down in my hand and I am left holding his heavy, gently pulsing and squirming length in my palm, like it’s the most lovingly crafted ten-inch vibrator with inbuilt lubrication that seeps through my fingers and drips down the back of my hand.

I could make fun of this moment, it would be absolutely too easy.

How many irate women have ever threatened a guy with literally ripping his cock or his balls off? Now, look at me. How much better would mankind as a whole be if this was an option for the males of my species? Men would give their cocks as courting presents, with little red bows on them. It would be downright lovely, and women would know what they’re in for before entering a sexually dissatisfying relationship. Cocks would become collectibles and you could make a fortune with yours on eBay (Then again – who sells a boner on eBay? A boner that you made? That shit goes on Etsy).

Or you could throw it at somebody and that somebody would literally be able to go fuck themselves. Endless possibilities.

But the look in Bane’s eyes tells me that this isn’t at all the time for humor. That this is a significant moment for a Dryth like him. Just like that encounter in the cleansing unit weeks ago (which I have thought about every waking day, to be frank), this is the closest he knows how to get to actually communicating.

Neither Dryth-ish nor English has the words for him to do properly that, to frame what is really happening inside of his head or in his heart.

But he’s trying. For me, he’s trying to catch sight of his own feelings, some of which he previously didn’t have or didn’t acknowledge, and inventing a new language for them with the few tools he has at his disposal to express them. To me.

He’s trying. For me. Because of me.

I appreciate that more than I, in turn, know how to adequately tell him with words.

So, I lift my body up and crane my neck to press a short, sweet kiss to his lips, then stay like that for a long, weightless moment. Noses and breaths touching, our eyes are so close I can see the different striations and textures of his iris – and behind those, maybe, his very soul, that wildly beautiful beast that likes to play with me and break me a little every time we come together.

At this moment, I am so fucking grateful for him that it almost makes me want to cry. It was so unlikely, so absolutely improbable, but he found me in a brothel at the ass-end of the universe, and then he came back for me, and now he is keeping me. I am such a lucky, lucky bitch.

Up close, I see how his eye color darkens to a deep orange-red, and then he follows me back down onto my cot, chasing and catching my mouth with his and resuming the conquering he had done before. Meanwhile, his hand reaches between us and finds mine, the one that is still clutching his spike, and guides both between my legs.

My eyes fly open when I realize what he wants from me, and the heat that has abated a little during this short and weird but oddly sweet interlude flares up right back to where it was before.

I let my thighs splay open as far as I can and angle my pelvis so I can notch the tip of his spike against my entrance, and then guide it inside of me.

“Haww-oly shit, it’s so big,” I stammer because, haww-oly shit, that thing is indeed a lot bigger than my usual. I now understand that those always went in like neatly, tightly wrapped Christmas packages, with the ribs holding everything together and compressing them so they had manageable oversized-tampon proportions.

This thing? It feels more like that ten-and-a-half-inch Doc Johnson American Bombshell dildo you don’t dare to buy, let alone try when someone gives it to you as a prank gift at your bachelorette party.

But I’m not just trying, I’m doing it. I want – actually, I need this. All that energy that Bane’s pounding me generated hasn’t gone anywhere. I’m still absolutely desperate for my orgasm, and I can’t stand the thought of being empty at all. It’d rather be full to bursting.

The spike is dripping with lube, my pussy is dripping with my own juices, but it’s still not enough for it to just slip in. The last four inches encounter resistance and the feeling of this huge cock languidly moving against my inner walls makes me tremble all over, too much to keep a firm hold of it and keep pushing.

“Help me. Bane, please,” I beg, and before the words are even fully out of my mouth, he has grabbed me and re-arranged his legs so that one of his massive thighs lodges right between mine and pushes up against my groin, forces the spike deeper into me, and also provides a solid, almost brutal pressure against my swollen clitoris.

I open my mouth for a shout but all that comes out is a helpless little squeak. My masochistically inclined lower body twitches spastically against his thigh, rubbing itself and my clit against all that muscle, and my legs flail as they try to find purchase and also cope with the sparks of electricity suddenly zapping through them. Something wraps around my ankles – Bane’s tail – and binds my wayward limbs together, immobilizing me further.

Bane moves his hips ever so gently, and I squeak again, just a little louder this time, and jerk all over like I’m being electrocuted. My head goes fuzzy for a second.

“So full,” I hear myself gasp, “Oh fuck! Oh! God of…fuck!”

Like the devil he is, Bane quickly finds a rhythm that is just that iota faster, just this side of punishing and unbearable  - and therefore utterly, completely perfect – and I’m a mess made of tears, swearwords, and sweat by the time I’m ready for my orgasm to literally kill me. I just know not having an orgasm would kill me worse.

“Bane. Bane. Bane,” I chant with every thrust of his and clutch at him like I’m drowning, which I think I am, pressing my forehead to his. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, please.”

My Dryth, now almost sunset-eyed, growls again. His words are harder to understand. Maybe it’s the impending mating fever taking over. Maybe it’s because my brain is in the process of turning into a steaming bowl of porridge. Oh my God. Oh my God fuck my God oh fuck oh fuck---

“Touch, Ree,” he snarls. “Touch.”

I nod stupidly, letting the grateful, hot tears in my eyes tell him that I’m happy to touch him all over, every bit of him, however and however long he wants me to, repeatedly, that there isn’t a place on him I wouldn’t put my tongue, that he only has to point me into the direction.

And then he does point me, by plucking up my wrist yet again and sticking my hand between our bodies until my fingers slide over and into his-

Oh. Oh, fuck yes. That spot. I have been dreaming about that spot and doing wicked things to that spot.

I dip my fingers deep into the gash his penis has left, and my big, strong General gives a strangled cry as his whole body seizes and heavily pushes down on me, trapping my hand where it is.

Good. I didn’t mean for it to go anywhere anyway any time soon. Also, God, that weight on me is heaven. My pussy squeezes tightly on a pre-orgasmic ripple as the feeling of being trapped settles onto me.

I try some come-hithering and scissoring and quickly find out that the rim and the upper inside seam of his anatomy are the most shudder-inducing bits, the ones that make him make unlikely noises and drive him to bite at my shoulder with his teeth – and also ram his thigh forward and impale me on his massive cock like he wants to give as good as he’s getting, or maybe punish me for making him feel like that. I bite him back and scream my exhilaration into his skin.

Neither of us lasts much longer than half a minute, which feels both much too short and also like an eternity. Like we’re spending lifetimes entwined like this, rocking, crashing, melting into each other, him snarling and keening like an animal over me, me gasping and moaning and swearing helplessly underneath him. So very close, so very much together.

Another exhale. Shivers, shudders, shakes.

Another inhale. His scent. His moans. His essence.

And then the world ends and everything is suddenly dissolving into bright white.

I stop breathing for what feels like a considerable amount of time while every cell in my body and every synapse of my brain sparks with joy so intense and overwhelming it is tinged with pain.

Oh my god you survived and I survived and don’t leave me and I love you I love you I love you.

I scream, but only inside my own head. This feeling is so vast, it swallows up all words and sounds and coherent thoughts.

I shake and shiver and hold on to Bane.

He, in turn, holds on to me through it all.

***

Coming back to my senses slowly, I find myself lying prone on some sort of cot-like bed in what has to be one of the bridge-adjacent rooms on our spaceship. I am bathed in sweat, bio-lube, and Bane’s cum (and snot and tears in the facial area, and a couple of drops of blood around my right shoulder because Bane really did bite me.) and shivering from the cooling wetness.

The wonderful companion who could’ve kept me warm has fled from me and is now lurking some fifteen feet away in the doorway, watching with his yellow cat eyes and his tail lashing back and forth like he’s contemplating whether or not to whap me.

I mean, if his special anatomic situation means that he now experiences female-level orgasms, I can’t really blame him for his apprehension. Female orgasms still blow my mind and make me drool cross-eyed, and I’ve had those for a decade or so. I’ve worked up to them slowly and got used to them. Imagine having all those delicious sensations dumped on you all at once after a whole life as a guy, with your sorry little 1.7-second-climaxes. Must be a little scary at least, even to a big, strong dude like him.

I lift my hand towards him – good grief, it weighs a hundred and twenty pounds at least – and wave my fingers like he’s a waiter at a restaurant. “Some assistance here, please.” My throat is parched and sore from all that gasping and screaming. Still, I manage a slight smile.

Bane considers me for another minute, then vanishes for a second and eventually returns wearing a loincloth to cover his weak spot, clutching a soft black cloth in his hand that drips water onto the floor. He kneels down next to me and begins cleaning me up, starting with the shallow bite wound he inflicted on my shoulder, then moving to my face and working his way south from there.

I close my eyes and let him pamper me.

As if this particular touch, not ardent like the one before but caring and gentle, switches my nerves back into normal mode, all my aches start flaring up wherever he touches me.

There is a bump on my forehead the size of your regular oreo (ow) and a corresponding one at the back of my cranium, nestled in my hair (oww). My left cheek feels swollen and tender and crusted. (Oww.) My shoulders and arms hurt like that one time I moved into a sixth-floor apartment and the elevator was broken so we had to carry the mattress and the solid wood bedroom closet (pivot!) up the stairs. (Ugh.) Also, my entire chest and torso is aching and I wonder if it’s possible for the chest wall muscles and the diaphragm to get sore. How the hell that would even happen?

There’s a different type of soreness in my abdomen, a much-preferred one. Bane’s spike is inside me, not as lively as the ones before but entirely impossible to ignore on account of its girth and length. I can feel my nether muscles gripping and releasing it, trying to accommodate and arrange themselves with the big intruder. The feeling makes me shiver a little and I hiss when Bane’s ministrations lead him into that area.

As Bane reaches the soles of my feet with his moist cloth, gently and thoroughly cleaning up even between my toes, his gaze meets mine and holds it for a long moment.

Despite all my physical discomfort, I can’t help but feel good. I am sated beyond satiation and one of the people I love the most in the entire universe is right by my side, caring for me. What more could I ever want? I smile at him and almost, almost give in to the overwhelming need to tell him I love his alien ass and to vow that I’ll make him (and Rune, too) understand what that word means.

He opens his mouth and says, “We have to talk.”

… well, damn. Welcome back to the real world, Valerie Greene.

***

Just to clarify: I’m not running this time.

I’m powerwalking.

The difference is quite easily explained: When you’re running, it’s because you’re scared and you want to be somewhere else, so you won’t be scared anymore.

When you’re power walking, it’s because you’re fucking pissed, and you need to be somewhere else because the likelihood that you’ll physically explode out of sheer anger is too high.

So I’m powerwalking, pummeling the ground with my feet. Oh, and yelling. Swearing. A lot.

“We have to talk”, he said.

He talked. I listened. And then the swearing commenced.

So, apparently, the female who was in the process of murdering Bane in Tulun D’tel was an A’Draht. As in, the female counterpart to Dryth. Bane had spotted her – caught her scent, really – at the food market where some asshole was selling her. And then he freed her. It wasn’t exactly a smooth operation. There were some, uh, casualties.

Which… okay. If I saw a fellow human in a cage about to be sold to and eaten by some random moneyed alien with weird appetites, I’d probably want to free them, too. Even if it were entirely unwise to draw that kind of attention to me on a planet that’s basically Slug Central.

Thing is, I’d probably make sure that the human I’m freeing won’t drive me half-mad with mating pheromones and then battle me three-quarters to death once they’re free.

You see, the problem was that Bane’s spike hadn’t re-grown at that point so he couldn’t answer the A’Draht’s challenge and sate her. Thus, a long, pointless fight between the two ensued, and the female had a clearer head, the power of her ‘mating rage’, and her poison darts on her side. That’s how she ended up almost killing Bane… which, as you know, is where Rune and I came in.

Speaking of me and poison darts – Drahta poison apparently paralyzes essential muscles, so when I touched those darts and poisoned myself, my respiratory and cardiac muscles decided to take a spontaneous double vacation.

Lucky for me, Rune was nearby and had just successfully subdued the female so he could tend to me. Which he did by using his Princess Leia powers to remotely force my muscles back to work.

For six days. Six whole days.

Imagine being given CPR for six continuous days by someone who doesn’t know what CPR actually is and only has the vague sense that something in your general chest area should be pumping blood and something else should be pumping air. I know next to nothing about Dryth inner anatomy; in the same way, human anatomy is rocket science to Dryth. (Or worse, since they, you know, understand rockets.) In short, it’s no wonder my ribs are a little bruised and that my brain was a little mushy even before Bane gave me orgasms.

It is a wonder that I’m alive and relatively functional. A miracle, really.

Rune somehow got all of us out of the city, across the moss desert, and back to the ship, all the while animating my vital organs with his brain powers.

So far so good.

Except that Rune and a recuperated Bane then decided to take the female onto the ship in order to somehow take her back to her home planet.

For shipping and security purposes, they then proceeded to put her in a box.

I imagine it was a bit like trying to put your highly vet-phobic cat into a cat carrier after telling it that you’re Going To The Vet.

Except that you replace that carrier with something more like a coffin. And you replace your cat with something more intelligent, more humanoid, and rational than a cat – i.e. something that categorically doesn’t belong locked into a fucking box.

“And how did that go for you?” I asked Bane innocently and he proceeded to glare at me.

“You,” he merely said and then his glare level-upped when I couldn’t help the smirk.

“Oh, me?” Seemed like I had something of a moral backbone of steel, even while mostly unconscious and running on instinct like a Girl Power! Sleepwalker. I was kinda proud of myself, really.

I mean, yeah, the chick had almost killed Bane (and me), but it wasn’t exactly her fault she’d been angry and scared, right? She’d obviously been kidnapped from her planet, probably put in several different boxes to be shipped to distant planets, and then sold for fucking and/or eating purposes, and she would naturally have assumed that Bane was going to be the literal death of her.

Our biographies are so similar that she is practically my soul mate. My alien sister from another alien mister. We’re one soiled polyester suit away from being twinsies.

Bane had given a growl and poked the tender bump on my forehead which, I was sure, was probably a black-and-blue horn and which I assumed I had received during my prison break moment. I flinched back at the pain. He growled again, then reached out again and instead touched first my shorn hair, then my cheek which now sported an X-shaped scab that would probably turn into a scar. When I slapped his hand away, he caught my wrist and turned my hand palm up. I hadn’t noticed before, but the skin there was peeling like I’d received second-degree burns recently.

“You put yourself in danger, Va-l’ree.”

I had snatched my wrist out of his grip and felt a stirring of anger at the phrasing and the implied meaning. “Oh, and you didn’t?”

He pulled his upper lip up and exposed one canine in what was probably a Dryth show of intense displeasure but looked to me a lot like a disparaging sneer. “You are human.”

That’s what he said.

What I heard was, ‘You’re a weak little guppy. Guppies stay put in their aquarium and shut their fishy little mouths when the sharks swim away into the deep, dark ocean.’

Speaking of miracles, it was a miracle that my eyebrows didn’t fly off and break clean through the roof at that point.

“You don’t say! I had almost forgotten!” I (gingerly but theatrically) slapped my own forehead like the little dummy I was, making a show. “Remind me again what that means, oh Wise One!”

Remember how aliens in general don’t get sarcasm?

“You do not have strength,” Bane somberly reminded me. “You shall not leave this ship.”

Rationally, I knew (and know) the former, and I understood (and understand) that the latter was probably the most sensible thing to do. More than that, I didn’t want to leave the dang ship at all – I wanted to stay in here. Ideally forever. With them. Both of them. Screw the rest of the universe. I’ve never been a sightseeing-outdoors-socialize-with-strangers kind of person anyway, and I’ve seen enough of space to last me a lifetime already. Gimme orgasms and the occasional cuddle and a bit of food and I’m a happy, indoorsy camper.

Still, it’s not fun to have your face rubbed in your weakness, with an extra helping of chauvinistic bullshit on top.

So I did the reasonable thing.

I escalated.

“ExCUSE me, but I can’t help but notice that you’re the one who almost got his ass killed first! In fact, may I remind you that I was the one who saved the aforementioned ass in the nick of time! Seems to me like you do not have the strength, either!” I hollered, poking at the two brand-new scars adorning his face. Just half an inch higher and he might have lost his damn eye. “If anyone should be under house arrest, it would be you! So, you shall not leave this ship!” I widened my eyes in challenge and crossed my arms over my chest. “How d’you like them apples, huh?”

He visibly struggled with the meaning of that last sentence for a second, then dismissed it – and God, that irked me at that moment. It irked me so much.

Not as much as his next words, though.

“The filters needed to be replaced.”

My mouth fell open. “Needed? Past tense?” My heart started up an anxious flutter. “Meaning that you went out into Slug City, by yourself, again while I was out? While Rune was too busy keeping me alive to have your back out there?”

Which, d’uh, Val. Not only was he still a freaking apex predator who could freaking go out into whichever city he wanted, whenever he wanted, without asking me or anyone. I also could feel the gentle vibrations of the ship underneath my body, meaning that we had continued our journey. The conclusion that the filters had been replaced (and fuel had probably been bought and everything) was obvious, my dear Watson.

Bane didn’t reply because of course he didn’t. High and mighty Dryth Generals don’t need to explain themselves to anyone, least of all too weak, little guppies.

So I called him an ass in several ways. It was entirely irrational, but I was just so fucking scared for him – the last memory I’d had was him on the floor in a pool of blood not looking at me and clammy and twitching like a dying, half-gutted fish.

But fear has never sat well with me, and I don’t think I’ve ever seriously been this scared in my entire life – not even when my car flew away with me, or when I met my first space slug – so I cranked my gear shift and switched to boiling rage. I traditionally found that much easier to handle.

“Listen up, buttercup,” I bitched at him, pointing a finger at his face and channeling my inner Karen speaking to the teenaged underpaid part-time clerk. “You may be fucking me, and you may have technically abducted me, but I’m still neither your property, nor your pet, nor some sort of princess child you get to keep things from! You also don’t get to put me in a tower and lock the door and tell me to stay put. You don’t get to tell me what to do, especially not with my body. And you sure as fuck don’t go out to get yourself killed while I’m dying, you… you fucking prick! What if I had woken up and you were dead, huh? And it would’ve been my fucking fault! What the fuck would I have done then?!”

That’s when I took off, without giving him a chance to not answer me. Wobbling like a newborn calf, because my legs were still rubbery (either from being in a coma for a week or from being fucked seven ways from Monday and left with the biggest spike ever in my hoo-hah), but take off I did before he could see me really start bawling.

So here I am, on my way to my usual brood spot on this ship, walking like I’ve spent my entire life on horseback, mumbling expletives under my breath, repeating the recent conversation in my head, and trying desperately to normalize my breathing.

You know how your breath stutters in your chest when you in- and exhale while trying not to cry? I loathe that.

I loathe the fact that I’m a girly, weepy mess – have been for some time, really, looking back at the recent past. What’s worse is that I know I really have no right to be angry at all, that I feel underappreciated and ignored by the two people who appreciate and pay attention to me more than any other living beings ever have in my life, and that me being angry at my human weakness is like being angry at the universe for being big and cold and mostly void.

You’re becoming a self-centered dum-dum who throws tantrums and cries for no good reason. MTV will invite you as a ‘My Super Sweet 16’ birthday girl soon.

I grimace at that unpleasant epiphany, then draw deep, deep breaths as I push open the door to the ground floor storage room with the empty shelf space and the little porthole. The shelf is a little fuller than before – yet more evidence for Bane’s successful shopping trip, grrr – and I gripe and grumble as I push random stuff out of the way and slide in.

Silence and darkness fall around me for a while so I can almost hear my nerves settling as I shimmy my shoulders to get the porthole into my line of sight. Right now, it shows only solid blackness, but we might pass by some star system or nebula soon enough.

“Until then, we’ll just lie here… and count our breaths… and untwist the panties we haven’t been wearing in weeks now,” I tell myself and my inner bitch. I feel her reluctant agreement. “In… and out… Good job, crew.”

For a little while, I force myself with gritted teeth to think of something entirely different, something that doesn’t have anything to do with me. I hum commercial jingles and recite the one poem they made you learn in elementary school which you can’t forget except by lobotomy. I try to recall Green Eggs and Ham, and the lyrics for the opening song of Full House.

Just as I hit the ‘When you're lost out there and you're all alone’-line, there’s a bright flash of light through the porthole that illuminates everything for a split second – we must’ve turned and maybe zipped past a sun. In that flash of light, I see a shape or a color or something out of the corner of my eye, not more than three hands’ width next to me, and my brain temporarily files it under ‘stuff Bane bought in Tulun D’tel’ while it’s still busy figuring out the next line of that darn song.

“Something-or-another waiting to carry you hoooome”, I mumble-sing to myself, except that my brain now insists on reprising Swing Low Sweet Chariot because that song also features some home-carrying, which is not helpful at all.

Then there’s a record scratch of a moment and my blood suddenly chills to ice, my breath freezes in my lungs. Time itself seems to come to a stop.

That color next to me was light gray.

That shape was humanoid.

There was a human-like face, two eyes, one mouth, and one nose, except grayish and with feelers.

Oh. No. No no no.

When Bane told me, more than slightly irritated, that I had freed that A’Draht from her box, I assumed that that had happened while we were still parked on KV4022 and that she had fled the ship.

(You know what they say about assuming, Val.)

I’m.

So.

Absolutely fucked.

***TBC soon***