Chapter 6
SIX
BULWARK
The insertion modifier whined, following the instructions programmed into it to weave the complex circuitry into the prototype's mesh. Mei, focused on me, her breath shallow and fast, her eyes wide, the scent of her arousal in the air.
Positive agitation, my alien body language subroutine reported.
I moved closer, one slow and deliberate step, and reached out to touch her cheek.
A flush crept up her neck, staining the skin rose-gold.
I had run an in-depth scientific evaluation of every piece of media that depicted alien mating practices that displayed behaviors similar to what I observed in my mated brothers, or what INF-GRA 32811 had directly reported.
He had gone into great detail about what his mate liked, and I had adjusted my media information-gathering parameters based on that and came up with a mating plan, the one she had just accepted.
I slid my hand lower, tracing a line down the side of her neck and along her arm, noting how her skin formed small raised bumps in the path of my touch. "Let me."
Her breath hitched. I shifted, angling her body with a gentle nudge, moving her away from the insertion modifier until her back was to the mixed matter printer.
Another touch, this one brushing her hair from her face.
She tilted her face up toward me. My hands drifted down to her hips, fingers circling them. I lifted her, the movement seamless.
The printer’s surface was cool against the sides of my hands as I settled her on top.
A pulse throbbed in her throat. I shifted my fingers, circling the bottom edge of her shirt.
The women were all still wearing the dross uniforms from storage, though some had taken to cutting them up in different manners to make new, inefficient shapes.
“Bulwark—”
Her voice was a low tremor. I didn't stop. Didn't speak. Just kissed the hollow of her throat as I lifted, listening for the quickening of her breath as my fingertips traced the bare flesh over her hipbones.
Her species had exceptional synaptic response times, one reason they were held for so long before processing so that the harvesting procedure could be adapted to their delicate but valuable nerve fibers.
Those same response times meant the right touch in the right place would fire through her brain with remarkable speed.
My thumb brushing against the inside of her hipbone, teasing at her soft vulnerability, would send her heart racing.
My teeth, lightly closing in close to her artery, not hard enough, not even enough to pinch, but only to graze, would leave her gasping.
My touch was deliberate and focused as I undressed her.
Touch was communication within the body: mechanoreceptors beneath the skin's surface registering the faint gradient of pressure, bulbous corpuscles picking up the body's subtle stretch, firing action potentials along afferent nerve fibers.
Those electrical impulses climbed through the dorsal root ganglion, raced up the spinal cord, crossed over, and projected to the thalamus before mapping onto the somatosensory cortex.
A single localized touch couldn't stay isolated because the nervous system's architecture refused to keep it contained.
The signal didn't just end on a sensory cortical map; it bled into the autonomic system, triggering a subtle release of oxytocin and activating C-tactile afferents…
those slow, unmyelinated fibers built specifically to register gentle, emotional touch.
It was the science of resonance. A light pressure of my lips against the smooth skin under her breasts didn't just register at the site; it sent a sympathetic wave down through the spinal cord, causing her heart rate to shift, a faint tremor to ripple down the small of her back, and the breath in her lungs to catch.
One point of contact, transforming into an entirely different sensation elsewhere in the body, bound together by nothing more than delicate electrical currents and chemistry.
I expanded the sensations moment by moment, touch by touch, until her entire body was reacting to me, her sensory system engaged throughout her full body, her thighs trembling as I spread them apart, the soft mound of her opening before me as I knelt, hooking her legs over my shoulders, as she perched naked and exposed at the edge of the printer.
I took a good, long look.
I stroked down the outside of her lower lips with my thumbs, parting them to reveal the inner petals, glistening with the evidence of her desire. This desire was both physical and mental, woven together by the actions I had shown over time to prove I was patient, dedicated, and here for her alone.
My instincts raged, demanding that I claim her.
"You are so beautiful," I said, and she looked away from me, her cheeks flushing as she twisted in place, like she wanted to run away from my words, but I didn't let her go.
When I tasted her, I tasted the sound of her gasps, the feeling of her fingers brushing over the back of the pliable plated scales that framed my skull.
I tasted the sweet nectar that my tongue coaxed from her, and the warm, wet grasp of her as I slid my finger inside of her.
I tasted the motion of her hips from the way her thighs clenched around my face as she gave into me, relaxed into the pleasure that I teased from her body through focused, deliberate touch.
My secretions coated her, becoming a thick layer with only the smallest hole that my finger kept open.
"Please," she begged me, her inner channel clenching around my finger as if it could suck me in, her hands urging me upward. "I need more."
I knew she hadn't reached a climax yet, but that wasn't the goal of my tasting. I kissed my way back up her body, claiming my mate by claiming the full focus of all of her senses. I ached for her.
She reached down in between us, her hand gripping my length as she set it against the plug I had made of my secretions.
My finger had kept enough of a hole open that I had a weak point to press against, and as I did, the substance tugged against her skin, and she threw back her hands, catching herself as she leaned back, her face tilting up to the ceiling as she moaned.
"Why does that feel so good?" she asked.
I began my rhythmic pulses as I worked to get through my own self-created barrier so I could sink into her and give us both what we needed.
"My origin species' mating secretion stimulates the nerve endings when it comes in contact with human skin because it is seeking feedback that your species' skin does not provide," I said. "I have been informed that the result can vary between comforting and pleasurable."
"Oh," she said, her eyes snapping back into focus as she thought about my words, her mind becoming active and intellectually engaged.
Those were the wrong words for this moment.
"It feels good because you are a dirty slut and I am going to ruin you," I said, using some of the word choices from the list that INF-GRA 32811 had added to the shared data storage, giving another thrust that would tug against her mound.
"You opened up to me like a good girl, and I am going to fuck your wet pussy until you can't take it anymore and you come so hard you forget anything exists but the feeling of me inside of you. "
The tip of my mating appendage slipped through, the head touching the soft, warm flesh of her body, pressing into her, sliding below the folds to nestle firmly against her opening. I had been careful with the level of force I used, the tip of me barely pushing into her.
"Yes!" she hissed, her eyes flashing.
I could barely control myself.
The sensation was immense. The wet grip of her against my head, the thick scent of our bodies together, the murmur of the insertion modifier as it went through the task we had so painstakingly programmed into it.
She had set a cruel boundary: that we had to be done by the time it was, and I was determined to honor that. INF-GRA 32811 had made it clear that three of her pleasure pinnacles were the minimum standard for a mating session, and I wanted our first mating to set a higher standard than that.
For that, I had to overwhelm her.
I had turned on her nervous system and fine-tuned it to be receptive to pleasure with my careful stroking and teasing; now it was time to use aggressive force and carefully chosen words so that her mind could only focus on me and what I was doing to her, making it easier for her to reach those layered, cascading peaks.
I reached up and fisted her hair, staring into her eyes as I tugged her head back and forced her to look at me as I pressed into her, sliding inch by inch into her depths.
"Wanton harlot, you take me so well," I hissed as I nearly lost myself in her.
She let out a small laugh, and I realized I'd chosen the wrong words. That wasn't what she wanted when she said she wanted a mixture of disdain and worship.
The easiest way to bring her back was to slide out and then give a hard thrust, plunging into her with such force that she let out a grunt and a gasp.
"You think I'm ever going to let you go," I hissed, trying possession.
I accented each statement with another hard thrust, modulating the strength of them so that the cries that slipped from her lips were on the border of pleasure and shock.
"I'm going to fuck you over and over again until you know nothing but the sensation of my body against yours.
You're mine to use, mine to pleasure, mine to adore. "
"FUCK!" she screamed, and then I felt her inner channel clutch around me, fluttering as she rocked her hips, and I followed their motion, gritting my teeth to keep myself from spilling my seed into her desperate grasp.
As she came down from the height, I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her body against mine, trapping her there as I slid in and out of her, slow, gentle strokes.
She squirmed, letting out small gasps as I used a hand on her lower back to press her mound against my lower abdominals, the tugging of my secretions pressing hard against her small external nub of pleasure.
"Be a good girl and come for me," I whispered.
She came again, crying out with a keening sound as the rhythmic slapping of my thrusts filled the air, and I struggled, needing my release but needing to make it, needing to get to at least the bare minimum before I lost myself and fully bred her.
Then I realized I couldn't, that all of her was too much.
"I can't…" I said, gasping out the words. "I can't hold back."
"Fuuuuuckkking fuuuuck meeeee!" she wailed and pushed her upper body down flat against the glass top of the fully enclosed printer, my hand on her chest as I jackhammered her, her throaty breaths punctuating each of my rabid thrusts with needy, desperate cries.
She let out a feral scream, her heels digging into my backside, her channel fluttering and convulsing around me, and I lost myself entirely to the heat, the pleasure, the connection, the utter joy of finding a mate so spectacular and intelligent.
I thought nothing in existence could save me, and yet I had been saved.
I had been rescued and reborn into a life filled with such exquisite pleasure that my mind could barely comprehend it.
I felt the hot spurt of my seed filling my mate with need and wonder and something…. something I suddenly understood. I'd seen it in shows, but now I knew what it was, what it felt like.
"Mei," I murmured, staring down at where she sprawled, sweaty and breathing hard, her eyes glazed over with a soft smile plastered across her face. "Mei, I love you."
"You'll get over that," she said, lightly patting the back of my hand.