Page 38 of Secretly Abducted
My dwelling feels different tonight.
The same curved walls embrace the space. The same bioluminescent panels cast their soft glow across familiar surfaces. Everything is exactly as I left it this morning, yet nothing feels the same.
I feel different.
My lips still tingle from Alex's kiss. My hand still remembers the warmth of his fingers laced through mine. My whole body hums with an energy I haven't felt in... I can't even remember how long. An awakening that's equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
I move through my evening routine, trying to ground myself in the familiar. Remove my work clothes, hanging the mineral-stiffened fabric to dry. Rinse the day's labor from my skin in the pool. Prepare a simple meal of steamed vegetables.
But my mind keeps drifting back to the dock. To synthesized cheese and mysterious bubbling drinks. To Alex's bare chest golden in the sunset, the way water droplets caught in the hair on his legs, how his shorts clung to his thighs when wet.
The nachos—he'd called them nachos—sit strangely in my stomach. Not unpleasant, just foreign. Intense. Like everything about humans seems to be. They don't do anything halfway, even their food is excessive. Cheese that bright orange can't be natural, yet the richness of it, the way it coated my tongue, the salt and spice and fat all mixed together—it was overwhelming and delicious at once.
Like Alex's kiss.
I sink into my pool, letting the warm water embrace me. My bioluminescence immediately betrays my state of mind—deep purple swirling with gold, patterns of desire I haven't displayed in so long I'd almost forgotten what they meant.
He'd been so careful with me. So restrained. Even when I could see the obvious evidence of his arousal straining against those thin shorts, even when his whole body trembled with want, he'd pulled back. Groaned like it physically hurt him to stop, but he did it anyway.
For me. Because I'd said it was too fast this morning.
I'm going to need to wash Tevra's sheets again tonight.
I hadn't understood at first. Now, floating in my pool with my body pulsing with unspent desire, I understand perfectly. He's probably in that guest dwelling right now, taking care of the need I sparked in him. Touching himself while thinking of our kiss, of my mouth on his, my tongue learning the taste of him.
The thought sends a wave of heat through me so intense my bioluminescence flares bright enough to light the entire room.
When was the last time I touched myself while thinking of someone specific? Not just addressing a physical need with clinical efficiency, but actually imagining another person, wanting them, fantasizing about what we might do together?
I've had partners over the years. Brief encounters, mostly. Physical release without emotional connection, always careful to keep things surface-level. But I've never let myself want someone like this. Never allowed myself to imagine and desire and crave a specific person.
My hand drifts down my chest without conscious thought, following the patterns of bioluminescence that trace my arousal. My skin is hypersensitive, each touch sending sparks through my nervous system. I think about Alex's hands—so much warmer than mine, slightly rough, careful but eager when he touched my face.
What would those hands feel like on my body?
I let myself imagine it. Alex in my pool with me, the water steaming from his human heat. His hands mapping my skin the way his lips mapped my mouth—thorough, passionate, devoted. He'd probably talk during intimacy too, the way humans seem to talk through everything. Tell me how beautiful my bioluminescence is, how long he's wanted this, how good I feel.
"A few hours,"he'd said when I asked about his shortest time. The casual confidence in his voice, the slight embarrassment mixed with a kind of pride. He knows what he wants, knows how to get it, knows what to do with it.
That experience would show, wouldn't it? In the way he touches, the way he moves, the way he knows exactly where and how to create pleasure.
My fingers wrap around myself, and I have to bite back a sound. It's been so long since I've been this aroused, this desperate for something more than mechanical release. My body remembers what my mind tried to forget—how good it can feel to want someone specific, to imagine their hands instead of my own.
I think about what he showed me on the dock. How humans express connection through touch, through kissing, through the careful worship of hands on skin. He'd kissed my knuckles like it was sacred, like just that small touch meant everything.
What else would he worship?
In my mind, Alex pushes me against the edge of the pool, his mouth hot on my throat. Nereidans don't kiss there—our gills make it impractical—but I've seen humans do it in their media, seen the way they gasp and arch when their partners find that spot where neck meets shoulder.
My free hand finds my gills, tracing the sensitive slits carefully. The sensation is intense, almost too much, but I imagine it's Alex exploring what makes me different, learning my alien anatomy with the same focused intensity he brought to learning our language.
With all that experience, all that confidence, he'd catalog every response, every color that races across my skin. He'd notice things about my body that I don't even know myself, find sensitive spots I've never explored.
My strokes quicken as the fantasy builds. Alex would be so eager but controlled, using all that experience to take me apart slowly, thoroughly. He'd know exactly how to build the pleasure, when to speed up, when to slow down, when to add that twist of his wrist that—
I gasp, my own hand following the fantasy's direction, and have to brace myself against the pool's edge.
He'd watch my bioluminescence for cues, grinning when he finds something that makes me flare gold, pursuing the touches that bring out the deep purple of desire.
