Chapter 11 #2
She laughed. “To relax and focus on yourself and your body and how you feel after finishing the session. To find any areas of tension. To meditate. To be at ease.”
“Ah, I see,” he said before falling silent.
Neither of them moved or spoke again for a few minutes.
Holly was supposed to be using this time to rest and reflect and relax, but all she could think about was Romival.
How he was laid out right beside her, within reaching distance if she tried.
His breathing had slowed to match hers. There was nothing but them and the gentle hiss of misting rain on giant leaves.
She fully expected Romival to get bored and start asking questions – like how long this was supposed to last or something. But he didn’t. He remained quiet and still and contemplative until she couldn’t take it anymore and sat up quickly, too quickly, clearing her throat as she did so.
“Okay. That’s it,” she said, watching as his eyes popped open.
He immediately focused on her. As though he knew exactly where she was going to be. And kept his eyes on her as he sat up, slower than she had, resting his elbow on a single bent knee.
Posing. Gorgeous. Sexy.
She needed another round of yoga to calm herself down.
“Very relaxing,” he said. “And the poses were varied and fluid. It seemed designed to work out the body without straining it.”
“Yeah, basically. I mean, there’s more intense yoga and stuff and I’m hardly an expert. I just do it to relax and calm myself.” She shrugged. “But it’s also good for you. I’m glad you liked it.”
“I really did. May we do this again?”
“Sure, anytime.” She beamed and he nodded, standing gracefully.
“An excellent warm up as well. Stand. We’ll begin your self-defense training.”
“Wha-? Oh! Right now?” She scrambled to her feet, wiping her suddenly sweating palms on her leggings. “Okay. I, er, I don’t really know much. Or anything. So…”
“That’s fine. I will teach you what you need to know. First, how to pull yourself free if someone grabs you. Give me your arm.”
Holly wasn’t sure what to expect from Romival as a teacher.
He was a great student for sure, though she knew she wasn’t a great instructor.
However, she didn’t need to worry. She was starting at zero on the fighting skill scale, but he didn’t appear troubled or displeased.
He calmly talked her through the various moves he wanted her to know.
And they were all quick, sharp movements.
Meant to free her from being grabbed just long enough so that she could get away.
Usually by taking advantage of the joints.
He showed her how to slam her arms down against the inside of someone’s elbow if they held her by the neck and how to bend back someone’s finger if they grabbed her arm.
He told her that her opponents had three eyes to take advantage of and she should never feel bad about poking one.
He also told her that the upper eye, called the eye of truth, moved almost purely on reflex.
Some domini could control what it looked at, most could not, and fewer knew how to keep it from broadcasting their moves in the heat of a fight when they often forgot to consciously move it.
He told her to aim for the cock, to look for dirt or sand or glass to throw into her opponent’s eye, he told her to use her teeth, to rip at their ears.
“Aren’t those all dirty tactics?” She asked, grimacing when he told her exactly how easy it was to rip off someone’s ear.
“Dirty tactics?” He repeated the words like they didn’t make sense. “You are trying to defend your life. There is no such thing as a dirty tactic. There is only victory or defeat and any outcome that comes away with your life is a victory.”
“I guess,” she mumbled.
“Come, now show me again how you break free if my hands are around your neck.
He trained her for a full mark. Showing her, on the whole, very little, but making her practice the same moves over and over again. Training them to become muscle memory. Pushing her until she was sweating and shaking with fatigue.
“You did well,” he said when he finally called halt.
He summoned his combot – both of theirs had been floating around while they worked out – and started typing something she was too tired to read.
“I’m going to send you some exercises to complete after you have done your yoga.
Something to help build your arm, core, and leg strength. ”
“Woo…” She said dully, raising her fist.
He grinned at her through the holo display before typing a bit more and closing it. “There. Sent. I might not be able to do the yoga with you every morning, so if I can’t make it, you can do those rather than practice with me.”
She grinned, hands to her hips. “Setting me homework too. You are most definitely a professor.”
He chuckled, turning to their clothes. “Come. We still have questions to ask. You may go first since I got my scans yesterday.”
Holly smiled, rushing to grab her wrap. She thought he would be so excited to ask his own questions that he would forget that he told her she could ask some as well.
The two of them dressed before returning to her room.
This was the time she would usually shower but since she didn’t want to leave him waiting – and she definitely wasn’t brave enough to invite him in to join her – she instead sat at her little table immediately.
He set his combot to record her answers as he lowered himself onto the lounge beside hers.
“So, have you thought of your question?” He asked, reclining back at his ease.
She hadn’t, but her mind latched onto the first thing she could think of. “Why did you suddenly start studying medical sciences?”
He looked surprised but didn’t hesitate to answer. “So I could study you. Of course. I have studied biology, but I wanted to know more so I could apply it to you. The disciplines aren’t so very different. One is just more focused on practical skills.”
She blushed. “Okay. I mean, I can’t believe you’re that dedicated to studying a blush. They really aren’t that fascinating of a phenomenon.”
“That is where you are wrong. Regardless, however, your blushes are only the beginning. I plan to study multiple things about your body. Why your vessels appear blue through your skin, why your mammary glands are so thick, exactly how your reproductive tract works and how it might be that it accepts the seed of another species-”
“Whoa!” She stopped him, her face burning, covering her cheeks with her hands. “Romi! You can’t just-… Did you just say you’re studying why my boobs are big!?”
He grunted in the affirmative, unconcerned.
“You human females all have different sizes, which is fascinating. Your breasts are the smallest of the five, but still, you have more than a domini female would have when she isn’t nursing.
You aren’t nursing, correct? You don’t have a pup or produce milk without carrying one, do you? ”
“No and no,” she sputtered. “That’s not… It’s just like a genetic thing. My mom has small boobs, her mom has small boobs, my kids will probably have small boobs.”
“If you’re not nursing, though, why are they so enlarged? Are the milk production glands already fully formed though you are not lactating? Or will they get bigger when you do?”
“Romi, stop talking about my boobs,” she mumbled, her heart racing.
“Then, may we talk about your uterus?”
She cheeped, embarrassment deepening. He had no shame. And because he had no shame, he took that odd sound as permission.
“It’s much thicker than a domini female’s. It also has a high rate of cellular division according to my scans. Is that normal?”
“I don’t know. Ask Scarlet.”
He looked at her thoughtfully, chin in hand. “Would my seed implant in the same spot in your uterus as a domini female? Would it implant in the same way? You have two ovaries. Do they release eggs simultaneously or individually?”
“Romi,” she moaned, her heart pounding hard in her chest. She knew he was just speaking hypothetically, but the way he specified his seed made it seem like more than that.
“Not to mention the pleasure organ that emerges outside of your-”
“Romi!”
“Ah, you are right. Forgive me. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m trying to focus right now on your color changes. And why your skin absorbs color. The scans actually provided some insight. Your skin is hydrophobic, but oils seep right through. Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” she breathed, grateful the topic had changed. She liked how interested Romival was in his studies, but he really had no filter. “I think I read that somewhere.”
“Would you allow me to use oil paints on your skin? To test just how deep the color goes?”
“Er, sure. I don’t mind. Was that your question?”
“The other questions don’t count?”
“No!”
He chuckled. “All right, my question is this: What is birth control?”
“Huh?” She blinked, confused.
“I found the term mentioned in some of Donivi’s reports. He mentioned something about a medication within Scarlet and Alanna used to control birth. I’m confused because neither of them are pregnant. Can your people control when you birth your pups with medicines?”
Holly laughed. Not really surprised that’s what he assumed birth control meant – that was the literal name, after all – but it seemed so odd a misunderstanding to her.
“No. No, that’s not… Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh.
Contraceptive is the more accurate name.
It’s a medicine that keeps females from becoming pregnant. ”
“Why would you want that?”
His immediate confusion finally stopped her giggles. He seemed genuinely confused.
“Well, I mean, you don’t want to just have babies at every opportunity.”
“Yes, I would. Anyone would. Any species in the known universe.” He cocked his head, staring at her as though she were speaking a different language. “Do humans not want pups? Why would you not want pups? Are you not biologically hardwired to try to reproduce?”
“Well, I mean, sure. Yeah. That’s one of the common impulses, and everyone likes the act of making babies, but if you just started popping out kids willy-nilly, you’d end up with dozens of kids and that’s not good for anyone.”
“That sounds like an absolute dream,” he countered, his eyes burning with desire. “I read that you humans were fertile, but I didn’t think it was so easy for you.”
“It’s not for domini?”
He gestured negatively. “A female only goes into estrus once a year. During that time, she will release four to five eggs successively. However, it is random and the odds of them implanting successfully after fertilization are low. And the chances of being fertilized are also low. That is why males of my species have a knot. There must be an abundant amount for our sperm to successfully reach an egg. And our sperm is not long lived.”
“What’s a knot?” She frowned, confused.
“An area of flesh at the base of my shaft that expands the moment before ejaculation and traps my seed inside you to maximize the chances of conception.”
Holly hesitated, surprised. “You… You have a plug on your dick?”
“Well, by universal standard definition, domini have a pseudoknot. Ours isn’t a true knot because it doesn’t lock inside you completely. It’s removable without pain, and the flesh will stay swollen until the pressure around it is removed instead of after a period of time.”
“Oh.” Holly cleared her throat, trying not to think about just how raw and primal that sounded.
Not at all what she would associate with her sexy wizard.
She forced the thought from her head as she tried to focus back on the topic.
“Er, I know humans ovulate once a cycle. Which, they say the average is like twenty-eight days, but it’s a bit different for each woman. ”
“Twenty-eight days!?” He repeated the words like he had choked on them.
Holly nodded. “Yeah. Approximately. I’m a bit irregular, so mine aren’t that predictable, or that frequent, but that’s apparently the average.
We release one egg at a time, but then, yeah, our males do the same as you.
Shoot as much as they can because sperm doesn’t live long and just play the numbers game that one reaches the egg. ”
“You are fertile so many times a year,” he murmured, still focused on that, now staring at her lower belly with a combination of fascination and desire.
“Yeah, we are,” she murmured, drawing up her legs.
Not because she was uncomfortable with his staring but because she liked it a bit too much and it was making an ache begin between her legs.
“And that’s what the birth control is for.
We’d be having too many babies to be able to even support if we were left to reproduce haphazardly. ”
“Higher functioning species never reproduce that fast,” he said, staring at her with renewed fascination and desire. “Usually, only shorter-lived species will produce so many offspring.”
“Romi?”
“Hm?”
“Can you stop looking at me like you want to eat me?” She mumbled, shifting in the lounge.
He smirked, a single fang gleaming in the light. “But I dearly would like to eat you. I wish to taste the sweetness between your thighs and discover for myself your pleasure organ.”
“Romi!” Her face burned and he chuckled.
“I know. I must be patient with you. One last question before I go see to my duties.”
“Hey, it’s my turn!”
“No, you asked about domini female reproduction, and I answered.”
“What? That counted?”
“You also asked me about my knot,” he pointed out calmly.
“That shouldn’t count either.” She pouted, sinking into her lounge as he laughed at her antics. Crossing her arms over her chest to try to keep her rapidly beating heart in check at the reminder of his knot that she was suddenly very curious about seeing.
“My last question for today then: How do your males increase their chances of conception?”
She frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Well, domini have a pseudoknot. There are species that have a true knot. Others that directly ejaculate inside the womb, some that have a hormone injection – either as a venom or in the ejaculate – that promote ovulation, some that have secretions that plug the channel to prevent release of the seed, and so on and so forth. How do human males do it?”
“That’s not really… Men don’t really have things like that.”
“Of course, they do. All males have something.”
She hesitated then shrugged. “I don’t really know of anything. Maybe Scarlet will know?”