Chapter 7

7

- Maeve -

The first touch of Arelion's warm tongue on my naked, overexcited sex feels like a welding torch. I gasp and buck my hips, and the heat spreads all through me.

"More," I demand as his tongue slides to the side, over to my thighs. "Again!" I'm not even sure which language I'm speaking. I just know that I need this desperately, that I'll die if I don't get more of that sensation.

He teases me, letting his mouth do tight circles around my liquid heat. Just as I'm about to grab his head and direct him to where I want him, he takes my whole sex into his mouth and sucks .

I groan so loudly it surprises that tiny part of my brain that's still sane. I've never made a sound like that in my life.

Arelion makes his lips form a seal around my girly parts, and then his tongue goes wild within that confine. The heat increases all through me as my whole pelvis seems to melt.

Strong arms pull my thighs apart, and I have no choice but to lie back and open my womanhood to the giant alien and whatever he might want to do.

I get the feeling that he feasts on me, and I wouldn't be surprised if he were to take a bite out of that defenseless flesh. But I also know I would be fine with it if he makes me feel this way. This is the best I've ever felt — there's no fear or overthinking — there's just intense sensation and overwhelming need.

I have no idea what he does down there, but I know I never want it to end. Sweet space, he's doing this to me and I just have to come along for the ride… this is the way it has to be…

The wet sounds are hotter than any porn I've ever seen. I hear my own voice keening and moaning, my own hips jerk and buck with no input from me.

"Oh keep doing that… more… harder. Harder! Yeheeheessss…" Before I know it, I'm coming on his tongue, shamelessly climaxing in his mouth, bucking and whimpering and clenching my thighs together as far as he will allow.

And it doesn't stop. His tongue keeps stirring my overheated cauldron, keeping me on a boil and sending me into some soft, purple, and delightful ecstasy that I never want to return from.

And, I realize in a hot flash that makes me come again, I don't have to.

"Maeve."

I slowly, reluctantly return to the world. "Nooo…" I whine.

"Are you all right?"

I open one eye, not wanting to. My upper body is on the soft grass, while my legs are still in the cool water. It's wonderfully comfortable, and I could just be here all day. I close my eye again. "Sure."

Arelion is staring at me with those intensely yellow eyes. "At least you're talking. That's progress."

I pull myself together. With that endless climax, some of my weird and intense hunger is sated, and I try to think rationally. "I disagree."

"We shouldn't stay here," Arelion rumbles. "We have to get away."

I stretch, shivering with pleasure. "Do we have to?"

He slowly stands up, his incredible cock still looking painfully hard and stiff. "Yes. Get dressed." He pulls on his pants, but can't seem to close it because of the activity at his crotch.

"I'd love to take care of that," I tell him in English, a hard surge of heat going through my crotch at the mere thought. I'm pretty sure this horniness can't be all me. There's something weird going on in this alien greenhouse.

I slowly get up. My limbs feel distant and still warm, as if some wildfire has just burned through me. I locate my bra and put it on, as well as the jumpsuit. My panties are soaked with water and a lot of other fluids, but that can't be helped right now. Damn, what the hell happened to me?

Arelion fights with the drawstring on his silver pants, but his cock is still as hard as ever and resists all his attempts to be reined in. "Stupid nonsense…"

"Would it help if you couldn't see me?" I ask, still having trouble taking my eyes off that alien hardness. "Or I could… you know…"

"Fine," he grunts. "Get out of sight."

Flattered that I have that effect on him, I duck under some hanging foliage and walk uphill for a few yards until he can't see me. But I can see him just fine — his shimmery blue feathers are hard to hide, even in a dense jungle like this.

"Maybe I should just go over there and suck him off," I mutter to myself. "Or just let him do me a couple of times. Give him some release. Like he did for me." The heat in my core is building again, and I'm on the verge of acting on that impulse when Arelion turns and marches stiffly towards me.

"Feeling better?" I ask, noticing how the fabric strains to keep his bulge in check. The outline of his alien rod is shown in sharp relief. Oh my, what would that feel like?

"Somewhat," he grunts and marches past me, moving with a charmingly awkward gait. "I hope the exit isn't far away."

I walk after him, enjoying the sight of his tight, round, and breathtakingly muscular butt in those tight pants. Maybe we can find another waterfall higher up, and I can get him to strip again…

No, this isn't normal. I was never this openly flirtatious, and certainly not this shamelessly needy. Damn, I threw myself at him back there. And while I've low key lusted for him the whole time, it just became impossible to resist. To the point where I took off my jumpsuit without a second thought and then… well, it was really nice.

But it wasn't enough. It was too superficial, not deep. Still it's all I can do to not ask him to take me for real, to plunge into me, deep and hard…

I have a vague feeling we're walking in a spiral leading up, like a spiral staircase except without the steps. Lost in feverish, purple-tinted fantasies of what I want that peacock alien to do to me next, I practically walk into his butt when he stops.

"Finally," he groans as he rips many branches and stalks off the wall we've reached. "A door."

It's hidden behind deep layers of greenery and flowers. Petals and leaves fly as Arelion goes at them like a weed whacker. It's another glass door, and one press of the control panel makes it hiss open with a screech of metal. The mechanism can't have been maintained for decades.

Arelion staggers out, and I follow. The air outside feels much thinner than the soup-like atmosphere in the greenhouse, and after the door hisses closed again I can feel how my head is clearing up.

I kind of wish it wasn't. Now I'm struck with the full wave of horror after how I behaved in there.

"Sorry, Arelion," I begin. "I don't know what came over me. I shouldn't have just taken my clothes off and practically begged you to…"

"No no," he interrupts. "It's I who should apologize. The air in there… I wasn't in control…"

We start blabbering our regrets.

"No, I really should have behaved with more class. You must think I'm a terrible…"

"Absolutely not! Oh, I can't believe that I… are you all right, Maeve? I didn't cause any…"

"I'm fine! What you did was nice, I wanted it. I'm just… it was great, but now, I'm so embarrassed…"

"I had to do something , but what I actually wanted was really too much and…"

"You showed perfect restraint, Arelion. It is I who went too far…"

"No, you had no choice, with those chemicals in the air! And the water was even worse. I know you were not yourself, and neither was I." Arelion takes a deep breath. "Now let's find out where we are."

The room is a total mess of alien items that have a vaguely scientific look to them. Most of them are old and broken, strewn around the floor as if someone has abandoned a laboratory in a hurry, leaving it open to vandals and looters. Nothing looks like it has any value.

"I hope there won't be any more craziness," I sigh. "I have to get off this station and continue on my way."

"Leaving could be a challenge," Arelion says as he walks around the room, pieces of broken equipment being crushed under his boots. "The owners of the station are looking for us, and I suspect they know where we'll reappear from this section."

I straighten my clothing, trying to ignore the unpleasant feeling of my wet panties. At least no moisture is seeping through my jumpsuit and embarrassing me further. "And they're probably watching the hangars really well."

"Probably," Arelion agrees as he looks out of a glass door across the room. "But I see no adversaries yet. Bring your stick, and we'll see how bad things get."

"Arelion."

He turns and raises his eyebrows. "Maeve?"

I look down, feeling self-conscious but wanting to say this. "Thanks for rescuing me. Again and again. And for saying I'm attractive. I really appreciate it."

"You did well in the labs," he rumbles. "Without you, I'd still be stuck in that mirror room. Your attractiveness is just a fact. But perhaps it should be stated more often, since you appear to be in doubt. Shall we go?"

The door hisses open, this time without much protest. Arelion looks outside. "No obvious dangers."

We end up walking through several rooms and halls, all deserted and full of various alien items I can't identify. Weird contraptions hang from ceilings or stick out from walls, and I'm sure these rooms have also been full of experiments.

My embarrassment had left me as soon as it came. I'm fine with what happened back in the greenhouse room. If given the choice, I would have been fine with even more happening. Arelion is a remarkable male, and I'm not ashamed of being attracted to him. He's a bit of a jerk, sure, but he has a nicer side, too. I think he really had to fight himself to not just ravish me back there, and while it would have been okay with me, I do appreciate the way he showed restraint. I think it speaks volumes about what kind of person he really is.

Another door hisses open, and Arelion peers out. "Finally a hallway. Nobody there."

"Nobody there yet ," says a voice behind me.

I yelp and duck instinctively.

Arelion takes two quick steps closer until he's between me and the voice.

There's an alien standing behind me, leaning up against the wall. He's a tall and spindly humanoid, but his skin is too orange for an Earthling. Pale eyes peer at me from behind a mass of white fur, which is some kind of beard as big and thick as a lion's mane. He's wearing long, black robes and looks seriously old.

"Greetings, Arelion," the alien creaks in accented Interspeech. "You've been looking for me."

Arelion pulls me behind him in a protective move I can't help liking.

"I have, Archmagus Yomeran. You've led me around the galaxy for a good while."

The alien leans to the side to look me up and down. "What attractive company you keep. We Fire Mages are out of the wedding business, if that's the reason for your pursuit."

"It's not," Arelion says. "This is Maeve. Maeve, I would like to introduce Archmagus Yomeran, a highly esteemed Fire Mage and Master of the Interspatial Arcana."

I straighten up and give the alien a little wave, only slightly embarrassed about my reaction. "Hi."

He returns my wave with a big, four-fingered hand with two thumbs. "Hi yourself, Maeve. I see you're from Earth. This is not the place to be for females like you. But then, I would struggle to come up with any better place."

"You knew I was looking for you, Archmagus?" Arelion asks, his voice neutral. "And yet you did nothing to make my search any easier."

"I can guess why you wanted to see me," the alien says, still leaning up against the wall, "and I wanted to see how much you want it."

"Are you satisfied that I want it enough?"

The alien stifles a yawn with one hand. "Perhaps. Keep in mind that you have not always wanted it at all."

Arelion gently pulls me behind him again, as if he expects trouble. "Things have changed."

The archmagus gives a single nod. "I seem to have led you practically to your death. Outside in that hallway, the owners of the station are waiting for you two. They have set up some quite heavy weapons out there. Your ship is of course lost forever. You have no chance of getting away. They will kill you and take the female to sell. And I can't help but feel that perhaps I am partly responsible for this."

"Partly?" Arelion asks, some anger seeping into his voice. "I would never have come to this damned void of a station if I didn't think you'd be here!"

"Precisely my point."

Arelion's fists tighten, and it looks like he wants to explode, but he reins himself in. "If we somehow get out, do you agree to help me with the business back at Eo?"

Yomeran gives me an amused look, as if he and I are in on some kind of joke. "I promise nothing. I haven't looked that closely into it. But if I happen to be in that general area of space, and I have time, and I'm feeling so inclined, I might come by and make something happen."

I don't understand much of the conversation. The archmagus seems bored and uninterested, and I don't think I like him much. There's something about him that makes him seem unstable.

"That's a lot of if s," Arelion calmly points out. "And none of it matters if we don't get away from here."

The alien stretches and starts walking towards the door. "Uncertainty is a fundamental property of the universe," he drawls. "The if is a main part of everything you see. And so, we shouldn't be surprised when we see it crop up everywhere." He pushes a button, and the door slides open. "For now, I will reduce the if about your continued survival. That will have to be paid for with additional uncertainty elsewhere. I will try to make it entertaining."

"Thank you," Arelion growls as he takes my hand. We walk over to the door.

"Entertaining for me , I mean." The archmagus steps out into the hallway. "Remain behind me until I vanish. Then your next course of action should be obvious."

We stay behind him. Looking past his tall, spindly form, I spot a group of black-clad aliens at the other end of the hallway. They've set up two big tripods with mean-looking weapons on top of them.

Arelion freezes. "This looks like a trap."

"It is," the alien says as he walks, not turning his head. "The whole station is on a war footing now. They won't give up until they kill you. Every part is guarded. Movement is restricted inside the station, except in the experiment area you just came from."

We follow the alien as he walks along the hallway, straight towards the weapons.

"Is that why you dragged me here?" Arelion asks. "To make me go through those experiments?"

"I thought it would be entertaining," the archmagus says lightly. "And I was right. The gravity room made me laugh. But honestly I never thought you'd survive that last room, with the intensity of the pheromones in there. Many reckless explorers, both in pairs and in groups, have stayed there and done nothing but mate until they've starved to death or died from exhaustion. Once they start their… hm… amorous activities , they tend to enter a trance they normally can't break out of. According to the records, you're the first couple to escape on your own. It must have taken great self-control, and that's why I'm still here. Perhaps you are worthy of that position you seek. It would be a rare thing."

"Rare indeed," Arelion agrees and gives me a tight smile, as if I know what the hell they're talking about.

I would ask, but we're not out of this. I expect the aliens to start shooting at any moment, but they just stand there, chatting with each other. It's as if they can't see us.

"They can't see us," the archmagus says, following my gaze. "Or hear us or detect us in any way. In the strictest sense, we are not really here. Or rather, we're not really here now ."

We follow the orange alien as he walks right past the waiting goons and continues down the hallway. We turn a corner and continue, and I let out my breath. This feels weird — I can't hear any sound or sense any smell except Arelion and myself. It feels like we're inside a bubble that drifts along with us through the corridors.

We pass more aliens going about their business, and we walk straight through the main commercial hall without anyone giving us a second glance. But now it's dead silent, although I can see that it's just as busy as ever. It's as if someone muted the volume of the places we pass through, and it's pretty unsettling.

The hangar is very tightly guarded, but again we just walk past the crowd of armed aliens. At one point I'm sure I'm walking straight through one of them, but he doesn't react at all. Yep, this is starting to make my skin crawl.

We walk past several spaceships, berthed by the walkway.

My ears pop as the sound is suddenly back again. Now everything sounds far too loud, from the struggling ventilation system and the constantly creaking and pinging material of the station, to the metallic clanks from the walkway and the alien shouts and conversations from all over the place. The sudden influx of smells nearly makes me retch.

I put a hand to my nose, trying to breathe through the sleeve of my jumpsuit. "Where are we going?"

Arelion gives me a glance, his face also tight from the sudden cacophony and stench we normally wouldn't notice. "Just getting this far is more than we could expect. We will make it work."

The tall alien stops and turns with a flourish of his robes. "This is as far as I can be bothered to take you. You are back to the right here, right now. Arelion, I understand you want my approval. If you were to travel to Sprenk and help those who toil there, I would find it much harder to hold back that approval."

"Sprenk?" Arelion asks, frowning. "What is that?"

"Perhaps you should find out," the archmagus says. "It should be easy to find. Maeve, whatever happens to you, I can only offer my sympathies."

I draw breath to ask him what exactly he means by that ominous statement, but he's not there anymore. "That's weird."

"'Weird' doesn't begin to cover it," Arelion growls. "I was hoping he was less so. Come along." He takes my hand and leads me fast along the walkway, passing spaceships that are getting smaller and smaller and less and less well kept. I can only assume these are the cheap docking berths, far from the entrance into the station.

Arelion studies the various spaceships we pass. Some of them he gives a closer look, but they don't seem to fit his requirements.

I don't know much about these ships, but the Resistance assured me it wouldn't be important. They told me how to fly a simple one, but apparently all alien species develop different types of controls, and I'll be lucky to find one that's made by humanoids or has some kind of universal control system.

Arelion turns and looks back the way we came. "It's getting urgent to find a ship."

A group of aliens is walking out towards us. They don't seem to be in a hurry, so there's a chance they aren't going to be hostile. On the other hand, I'm sure our descriptions have been circulated on the station, so they may report having seen us.

We don't have a lot of options. The metal walkway continues for another hundred yards, but then it stops in mid-space and there's nowhere to go but back. There's eight ships left to choose from.

"The problem is getting into one," I sum up my knowledge about these things. "Nobody leaves their ship unlocked."

Arelion stops briefly to look at another ship, then walks on. "And we don't have a furry robot, the way you did when you broke into my ship."

"Bari could have been useful now," I agree. "But none of these ships look as nice as yours did. It was the best looking ship we could see."

"It's a simple military gunship," he says and looks longingly over at the other end of the hangar, which is where it must be. "But I had some affection for it."

I have a sudden idea. "Arelion, you have wings. Can't you just fly over there and get it?"

"There are two reasons why I won't try that," he sighs. "First, because those who want to capture us will have placed guards around and inside my ship. And second, because wings need air to work. And while it looks like there's only air between us and other parts of the hangar, the air only extends to the walkways, held in place by simple force fields. And so this hangar is mostly vacuum."

"Oh." I can't help feeling a little silly.

We reach the end of the walkway. Arelion looks at the last ship, snorts, and spins on his heel. "Let's try that one." He points to the spaceship three berths down. "If it's unlocked, it might be good enough."

"Are we that picky right now?" I ask. "Seems like any ship would be good enough if it gets us off this station."

He runs his hand across the front of a ship, showing me how dusty it is. "Any ship that actually works . These have been abandoned by their owners for some reason, almost certainly because they have something badly wrong with them. That one doesn't look too dirty, so it hasn't been here long and may be still in working order."

The group of aliens we spotted have reached their own ship and are standing outside it chatting, clearly preparing to enter. Except one of them, who's walking fast back where they come from.

"I think he might be on his way to rat us out," I say tightly.

"I think so, too," Arelion growls. "That makes our options easier. Keep up with me." He sets off at a run back the way we came, towards the group and their ship.

I have no problem grasping what he has in mind. Those aliens have a ship with the hatch open. And we are getting desperate here.

As we approach, the aliens sense the danger. They start hurrying to get inside. Arelion runs towards them, unfolds his wings, and then takes off. He flies right at them, a giant, electric blue bird of prey that looks scary even from the back.

The death grip he always has on my attention almost makes me miss the little pink fur ball that comes trotting at the edge of the walkway.

"Maeve! Come on!"

I frown. "Bari?! Where have you been?"

"Finding a ship for you! Come on, forget that one! We have one that's better!"

"Arelion!" I yell. "We have another ship!"