Page 10

Zorn

Once we leave the city, I enjoy watching the scenery as we tour the countryside. This part of Earth is different from my homeworld—richer, greener.

“I don’t get away from the city often enough. It feels like we’re exploring together,” she says. When she swerves to avoid hitting a four-legged mammal crossing the road, one of the sexbots in the back says, “I’m so hard for you I can hardly wait.”

“Their statements are . . . sexually exciting to you?” I ask.

“Some find it sexy. Having no males around, and knowing you’ll never have access to one, you take what you can get. Because I grew up seeing the inner workings of these things, I find it hard to ignore that they’re just made of plastic and computer circuits.”

“You’re so wet for me,” one of them says, although the last word sounds like a belch.

“These phrases?” I ask. “They’re what females want to hear?”

“Absolutely,” she answers, nodding. “We did research on that. These phrases are golden.”

I decide to commit these to memory. If I ever get the opportunity to use them with an Earth female, I want to get it right. Although the only Earth female I’m spending time with will know where I got my script.

Even though I’m certain we’re going in the right direction, my connection with Zoriss doesn’t seem to be getting stronger. It confirms my suspicions that he’s hurt or sick.

“I’m worried,” I admit, then wonder why I’m sharing these feelings with her.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

We’re in rural country, with rolling hills and big four-legged mammals roaming in fenced pastures. Annora hovers to a wooded area and sets down between trees in a sunny spot.

“I thought you’d like to bask, and we can talk,” she says as she turns off the hover and flashes me an interested smile.

Really? She wants to hear my thoughts? My worries? Is she actually interested in me, or is she just guilty because her mother bought me and threw me in a cage?

“Thanks. That’s thoughtful.” I figured we were just tolerating each other as we played games all day and waited for our thirty days to expire. I examine her lifted brows and shining green eyes. I believe she really wants to hear what I have to say.

After a quick trip to the edge of the woods to take care of personal business, Annora pulls out the sandwiches we made before leaving and a couple bottles of water.

We chat between mouthfuls about the minutia of our lives.

Our discussion slows and then halts, perhaps because I’m focused on every little movement of her mouth as she eats her food.

I never would have believed how sexy such a mundane action could be.

“The roof is flat. Let’s bask,” she says, smiling.

A moment later, we’ve laid out blankets on the roof of the hover. I pull off my clothes and climb up.

“Need a hand?” I ask reaching down to help her.

“Um . . . you’re naked.”

“For basking. Basking requires sunlight on skin.” I flash her the Draalian equivalent of a smile—lips closed to hide my fangs—and reach my hand toward her again.

Remembering the pose of the male on the side of the van, I sit back and offer, “Here. I’ll sit like this.” I mimic him, pointing the knee nearest her to the sky. “Will that work?”

She hesitates as a flush creeps from the top of her shirt up her throat to pinken her cheeks.

“Just basking,” she scolds, “no hanky panky.” Then she reaches out and I lean forward and pull her up.

I’ve basked thousands of times in my life, it’s what my species does. I’ve done it alone and in front of my family and in unison with countless comrades in the planetary army. I’ve never done it in front of a single female before, and never one so close.

It never occurred to me that my cocks would stand at attention. I flip onto my stomach and wonder if she noticed.

Annora

How do I unsee that? Two hard cocks.

I’ve seen thousands of hard cocks. Made of plastic. Usually of the solo variety. We even developed a couple of alien lines. We have cocks and bots of the three species who’ve been approved to come to the planet to mate.

I was part of the design team for the Draalian thrusting machine. That one was hard to get right. The spacing between the members had to be perfect or the machine provided more pain than pleasure.

Although I’ve held, carved, and painted plastic cocks, I’ve never been two feet away from a real one. A real, hard, erect, pulsing—shit! I need to redirect my thoughts and remind myself that I find Draalians revolting.

He turns onto his stomach and says, “Perhaps because you’re an only child you don’t know what it’s like to have a connection with a sibling. Zoriss and I have been together our whole lives. We love each other. We enlisted together and protected each other in battle.

“The psychic connection? I can’t exactly read his thoughts, but his emotions bleed into me, and mine to him.

Distance and state of mind effects our ability to connect.

Something’s wrong. Terribly wrong. He’s far away, but I know he’s sick or hurt.

And his emotions are uneasy. I’ve never felt this from him before, but if I had to put a name on it, I’d call it rage. ”

His gaze flicks to mine. “I’m worried.”

Before I’m aware of what I’m doing, I’m patting his shoulder. It’s what you do to a friend who’s in turmoil, right? I’ve done it dozens of times with my girlfriends. Never with a male.

My mouth goes dry and although I want to swallow, I can’t. Nor can I break the connection as our gazes are tethered to each other.

Time seems to slow down. I’m aware of every single thing in my world right now as if it’s in slow motion. The crisp smell of the autumn air and the warm sunlight caressing my face. Those things hover at the edge of my awareness.

But front and center, I’m aware of Zorn’s scales underneath my palm. I didn’t notice them the last time we touched when I pulled him onto the basking rock. I certainly notice now. They’re softer than I would have expected, and not slimy like I imagined.

No, they’re firm and smooth and the scales are textured in the most interesting and unique way. I was hoping he’d look away, break the connection, but we both seem caught in the same web.

“No, I can’t imagine being that connected to another living being,” I say as I address the surface conversation, the pretense of the reason our lips are moving.

Under all that, though, I’m committing to memory the exact cadence of his heartbeat, because I know with certainty that it’s beating in time to the pulsing of the cocks I glimpsed a moment ago.

In my frantic efforts to unsee the majestic beauty of two blue cocks, my mind bombards me with a picture from my memory banks of how he scented the air when we stuck our heads out the attic window and I got a glimpse of his forked tongue.

At the time, it didn’t repulse me, but it did scare me.

Now, though, I have the most compelling desire to know what it would feel like for that tongue to stroke mine.

I’ve grown up watching movies with excellent CGI.

I’ve seen men and women falling in love and making love and living the type of lives people used to live all the time before AD-90.

I’m imagining all of that now. To hell with the plastic Draalian thruster I designed.

My mind is throwing me much more detailed images than that.

I picture him leaning close to me, scenting the air next to me, then flicking that sexy forked tongue at the entrance to my mouth until I open to him. I imagine his fingers combing through my hair, his lips stroking mine, his mouth telling me all the sexy, dirty things he wants to do to me.

I shove those thoughts out of my head and focus on him. He feels it the pull, too. I know he does. He doesn’t want to talk any more than I do.

“I got a long bask in yesterday,” he says as he shakes his head to break our connection. “We should probably keep moving.”

“Right.”

He jumps down and points his tush toward me as he shimmies into jeans that fit him like a second skin. Although No Shame has created hundreds of models of sexbots over the years, I can’t think of one that has such a perfectly shaped ass.

I’ve seen pictures, all chalked up to ‘doing research’ for the company. I’ve looked at old pics of men when they roamed the Earth, prior to their extinction event. I’ve trolled old porn sites and still pictures.

I’ve committed to memory the sexy divots on either side of the tailbone, and the indentations on the side of their haunches.

Some of the sexbot models I’ve helped design have those very qualities.

But none of those asses are as gorgeous as the one that just wagged at me as Zorn wiggled into his jeans.

And none were several luscious shades of blue.

I freeze for a moment, almost paralyzed, as I memorize the picture.

He reaches up to help me off the roof and I reluctantly accept his help, unable to get down without it. I’ve read a hundred romance novels about electric sparks arcing between men and women. I could only imagine what it was like—until today as I experience it firsthand.

It’s like a low-voltage live wire, reminding me I’m alive. The energy zings to the hardening tips of my breasts and pools between my legs.

“You should teach me how to pilot this vehicle,” he says as if nothing just happened on the roof of the hover. “I can function on little sleep. It was part of my military training. I can drive while you get some rest.”

“Sure.”

The hover’s easy to fly. It’s designed to do everything without any input other than giving the destination. What we’re doing, though, avoiding well-traveled routes, skirting cities and towns, and using backroads, requires my full attention.

He’s a quick study, and it’s him in the driver’s seat when we pull away from our rest stop.