Chapter 10 Shiloh
SHILOH
The bath was nothing but a big tub Rivven usually used for laundry.
And yet it was utter bliss. He’d placed it in front of his big wood stove in the kitchen and had begun dutifully filling it with pails of water from the sink’s tap immediately after I’d asked.
I’d offered to do it myself, knowing that he’d already had a long day of chores and likely needed rest. But he’d seemed as painfully confused about the suggestion as he had been about me helping with the dishes.
So eventually, I just gave up and let him do it.
There hadn’t been any other dishes to wash.
And the rest of the kitchen was pretty damn spotless.
So I’d had nothing to distract me from watching the repetitive bunch and pull of the thick muscles in Rivven’s shoulders, arms, and back as he poured bucket after bucket of steaming water into the tub for me.
“Will that do?” he’d asked when it was a little more than halfway full. “The water’s starting to run cooler now from the tap. But I could set some boiling for you.”
In all honesty, I would have loved the water level just a little higher. But the idea of keeping him here for more time, doing even more work for me after his long day, was not at all acceptable. I could always boil my own water on the stove if I needed to.
“This is great,” I’d told him before thanking him profusely. He withstood my gratitude kind of stiffly, like I was pelting him with little pebbles instead of polite words.
“Of course,” he’d said. As was his custom.
And then he’d left me to it.
I’d hustled upstairs to grab some toiletries from my bag.
Shampoo and conditioner. I didn’t have anything for body wash – I’d planned to use my shampoo.
But I ended up using a bit of the oily, herbal-smelling soak from the kitchen sink, and that seemed to work just fine.
Which meant I could save more of my shampoo.
Apart from my paints and brushes, my shampoo and conditioner were the nicest, highest quality things I had.
The tiniest of luxuries that I allowed myself.
My hair smelling like the almond and coconut conditioner that was currently soaking into it, I closed my eyes and just breathed.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a bath. My apartment certainly hadn’t had a tub. When I’d suggested it, it had almost been a joke, simply because I hadn’t seen anything resembling a shower in this building.
But Rivven had immediately jumped into action to make it happen for me.
I could feel myself smiling as I soaked in the pure pleasure of the warm water.
I couldn’t stretch out my legs, but that was alright.
I could lean back against one side of the tub with my knees bent, and that was pretty fucking perfect to me.
The wet heat of the water seemed to ooze right into my bones, my muscles, sapping the residual tension from the fading migraine.
I’d marry a man just for this.
I sighed at myself, feeling bad for even joking about it inside my own head. I mean, I’d kind of already done that, hadn’t I? I’d jumped into this program, not because I wanted to get married, but so that I could have access to a different sort of life.
But then I’d met Rivven. Sweet, generous Rivven, who so obviously deserved to have somebody love him. And I knew I had to take this seriously. Much more seriously than I’d ever thought before,
When I’d signed up, it had all felt so mercenary. I hadn’t anticipated that anybody’s heart might be on the line.
And there were the other two men as well. Xennet and Dorn. I’d have to give them my fair consideration, too, whenever they arrived.
But I wasn’t thinking about them as I enjoyed the luxurious languor of the bath. I was only thinking of Rivven. Of the food he’d made me. Of the bed he’d given me.
Of the things he’d told me.
I didn’t want to pity him. I had a feeling, like the way he seemed so awkward about my thanks, that he would hate that.
But I did feel for him. I felt for the child, cut off from the world he’d known, and then literally cut off from one of his own limbs.
The child – and man – who I believed now suffered from panic attacks as a result.
I’d never had migraines before Daddy died.
Before I’d given up on doctors, more than one had told me it was likely due to the stress of grief.
And then there had been the financial stress of trying to survive without him, the physical stress of my job, and everything had just compounded until my head felt like nothing but bundles of nerves knotted by pain.
I supposed we both had our triggers, Rivven and me.
I was sincerely glad that he and Warden Hallum had found a way for him to avoid his. That he’d built a life that might bring him some peace.
But clearly, he must have wanted more than just that. He was participating in this program, after all. He wanted a wife. And not simply a warm body to do chores, either, based on how gobsmacked he’d been by me helping with the dishes and offering to fill my own bath.
I wondered, when he thought about a wife, what he imagined. What did he associate with the word?
Companionship? Connection?
I believed that he deserved all that and more.
Sex?
The water felt suddenly hotter.
I realized then that I didn’t have a clue how Zabrians fucked.
I reached out of the tub, grasping for my comms tablet among my discarded clothing. Once I had it, I opened the information packet that I’d been sent on Zabrians and the program, this time paying closer attention to the sections on anatomy.
Zabrian ears are extremely sensitive, the text read, both to tactile stimulation and when it comes to capturing sound. Image attached.
The image that greeted me was a photograph of a pair of round, pale purple ears poking out from silver-white hair. It looked like Tasha had taken a picture of her husband to illustrate the first point.
Differences in human and Zabrian anatomy are few, but significant. Zabrian females, for example, do not have breasts. The Zabrian Genital Situation is top of mind for all the brides here-
Um. The what now?
-many having expressed shock and confusion at the appearance of the cock tail. Without sufficient preparation, injury to the cock tail is not only possible during sexual encounters, but very likely.
What the hell was a cock tail?
Zabrian eyes glow bright white when the Zabrian in question is experiencing strong emotion. This can include, but is not limited to, pain, shock, anger, grief, affection, or arousal.
This brought me up short even more than the mysterious (and somewhat ominous) mention of the cock tail.
Rivven’s eyes were white when he looked at me.
A lot.
I didn’t think I was causing him any kind of pain, anger, or grief just by being in his vicinity. And he’d been around me for long enough by now that my appearance shouldn’t have shocked him.
So that left affection…
And arousal.
My stomach clenched. I scrolled a little further, finding another image below. This one didn’t appear to be a photograph, like that of the Zabrian ears above. This one looked like something someone had drawn by hand on their tablet. I gasped, realizing at once what it was.
It was a dick. A big, green dick. A hard, jutting, extremely erect organ with a darker green sac below and what looked like a writhing tentacle above. There were three bits of text in the diagram, each with a line pointing to a different part of the drawing.
Penis.
Testicular sac.
Cock tail.
The cock tail line was pointing at the tentacle-ish thing that sprouted above the penis. I clutched my phone hard so that I wouldn’t drop it into the water, my gaze glued to the image. Just below the drawing was one more line of text. Image courtesy of G. Jaya.
Jaya. The name was familiar. I thought it might have been one of the other brides Tasha had mentioned at some point today. And I remembered seeing a flash of green in the flipping pages of the calendar…
Had she drawn this based on her husband’s anatomy? I was vaguely embarrassed and also supremely grateful. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to come face to face with a dick tentacle without any sort of warning! A previous bit of text came back to me with new, cringe-inducing meaning.
Without sufficient preparation, injury to the cock tail is not only possible during sexual encounters, but very likely.
That’s what Rivven was packing under there? A big, hard dick with a tiny little tail?
Fascinated, I kept reading.
The cock tail is a prehensile part of the Zabrian sexual anatomy.
It is also an erogenous zone. Female Zabrians have a similar appendage inside the vaginal canal that the male counterpart grips and entwines with during intercourse.
During intercourse with a human, the cock tail still attempts to “join” with its counterpart, often achieving this goal by wrapping around the clitoris or entering the anus.
Lord have mercy.
I wasn’t too prim or prudish. I’d had sex.
But no one had ever lassoed my clit with a separate, prehensile part of their dick before.
Part of me was slightly terrified.
Another, larger part wondered…
What the hell had I been missing out on until now?
Would Rivven’s do that?
My skin tingling, I pictured him, his big, blue body locked up tight with tension while he was lost in the throes of pleasure. His eyes that bright and shining white while he pushed inside me, the cock tail writhing and thrusting, needing satisfaction, needing to squeeze…
Except I was the one squeezing now.
Squeezing my bare thighs together.
I took several calming breaths – that were entirely ineffective – and put my comms tablet back down on the floor.