It was a strange thing, our kiss. Rin brought her hands up to either side of my muzzle, her fingers spreading forward to cup my face and then sliding down to curl around my shoulders. Her hips pressed between my legs, chest against my ribs. Her lips were soft. Articulate. I…I was not sure that the flesh which covered my teeth could even be called lips. They did not move as human lips did. In order to accommodate Rin’s design for my appearance, I accomplished human speech using a complex collection of hidden mechanisms at the back of my throat. There was something like lips, back there—behind all of my teeth and my tentacle tongue. Too far back. 

I was unsure of how to kiss her in return.

So I kept my face still. But I brought my hands up to tangle in her hypersilk-soft hair as two of my tentacles came forward to curl about her waist, and another two about her thighs. I pulled her closer as the rest of them twisted and writhed in the air behind me, longing to take hold of her, too. But I was terrified of overwhelming her, of frightening or disgusting her. So I held back…as best I could. 

After a moment, she pulled away slightly, laughing a bit as she sucked in a breath of air. She had not been breathing as she kissed me.

A shudder of need and anticipation rippled through my body, and Rin made a little sound of surprise as she felt this in the tentacles wrapped around her.

“I’m not sure I fully thought out this wolf-head thing,” she said, breathily. 

“I am not changing my face,” I informed her, thinking back on my previous attempts at recreating the human likeness with something like embarrassment. Besides, I had become attached to this face. Somehow, even, had come to associate it with my sense of self. 

She chuckled. 

“Good,” she said. “You’re more to me than how you look, I promise. But this…” she brought a hand back up to cradle one side of my jaw. “This is just how I know you, now, you know?” she paused, smirking a bit at herself, or perhaps at the absolute absurdity of her own native tongue. She met my eyes, expression suddenly serious. 

“When I see this face…this face…I feel safe. Do you know how rare that is for me?  I just…have to get used to some of the functional differences, is all. I’ve been with lipless species before, of course…but none of them are really interested in kissing. Actually—” she leaned back from me a bit, eyes going suddenly wide. “Oh no. I should have asked you if you’re even interested in kissing! I’m so sorry, Zyr. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just let my head get away with me and that was probably horrible for you and—”

Her fretting gave way to a muffled gasp as I pulled her in close again. Wrapped more of my tentacles and my arms around her. Humans like pressure, or at least, a great deal of them do. But not too much. And so I was careful in my application of it. Rin’s body eased in my hold, all tension going out of her. Her arms slipped around my back, clasped together and squeezed as she pressed her cheek to my chest. 

“The kiss was—” I paused, considering, trying to determine which word, exactly, was the perfect opposite of horrible. “Delightful.”

Rin giggled, leant her head back to peer up at me. 

“Delightful?” 

“Is this word choice humorous in some way?” 

She snorted. “Kinda? I dunno, I think I just…maybe I’m just nervous. It’s so different when I actually have feelings for so—” and then she dissolved into yet more laughter, butting her head against my chest, her hands clutching at my back, at the base of my tentacles. In that moment, I felt an emotion I was unable to name or describe. I was not angry, but I was…provoked. Yet that, too, is an inadequate description. Something…came over me. I do not know why, but I growled. 

In one series of simultaneous movements, I brought forward two more of my tentacles, twisting them about her wrists as I stood, turning our bodies in tandem. Pinning Rin between myself and the bar. 

She stared at me with wide-open eyes and parted lips. She had stopped breathing again, but her heartbeat raced. 

“You’re not laughing anymore,” I observed. 

“No,” she said. 

I tightened the tentacles that were curled about her thighs, pulled them apart to wedge myself between them. I was supporting all of Rin’s weight by then, and I lifted her up and angled her back so that she was quite nearly lying on the bar, her legs clasped about my hips, wrists pressed hard to the steel to either side of her head. Her rose-gold hair spread in a shining, tangled mess around the breathless beauty of her face as she stared up at me. Her chest heaved hard beneath me, pressing the soft heat of her breasts against my chest again and again as I forced myself to stillness, as I froze.

It was overwhelming, the need, the want. Not just to kiss her, which I could not even properly do—a fact which only frustrated the other wants all the more. The want to fuck her. The want to…to ravage her. 

I had never understood it before, the human entanglement of the concepts of desire and hunger, of sex and destruction. I understood it then, what I had done. What I had made of myself. Human wants, human nature…in a form without human limits. I was a mistake that I knew I could not bring myself to undo. 

And as I stared down at her, horrified by my revelation, she moaned. Bucked her hips against me. 

“Is this—” I squeezed my tentacles tighter about her wrists, and then relaxed them somewhat. “Is it alright? Do you want me to stop?”

“Zyr,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.” 

I had been about to. As excruciating as it would have been, I’d meant to pull away. To leave. Nearly undone by the fear that if I let my human inclusions overcome me, I might lose control. Might even injure Rin, or worse. 

But as another overwhelming wave of want surged over me, my fears dissolved. No matter what changes I might make, what genetic material I might incorporate, I was, and always would be, Lyrian.

I would never be so weak that I could not master myself. 

Rin wore a black t-shirt made of some thin, soft material. I did not wish to release her wrists, so instead I simply pulled the fabric up to reveal her bra (a sort of soft armor for breasts). It was lacy and vividly pink, pleasing in its contrast to the smoothness of her newly exposed skin. Pleasing in the way it cupped and pressed at the plush curves of her chest. 

Bringing forward another pair of tentacles, I cupped and pressed at all of the softest parts of her. Breasts, ass, thighs, arms…so warm. I revelled in the scent and the sight and the feel of her. So yielding. So fragile. So delicio—no, better to suppress that particular reaction. She writhed and gasped through it all. Squirmed beneath me as I slipped my tentacle-tips under the fabric of her bra to pluck at her nipples—a stupid word, that one, for such nice and small and delightfully nerve-filled little things. 

She cried out, but softly—pressing her hips upward again, attempting to grind herself against the rigid thing between my legs. All of the words for that are stupid as well, unfortunately. But it was filled with nerve endings too, and I was finding that much of my awareness was centered there, a wild, pulsing intensity building from that point and emanating all throughout my being. I wanted to rip off Rin’s pants, tear away my own false garments. Drive myself into her and fill her and make her scream out, too delirious with ecstasy to quiet herself. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I had to work up to it first. I had to—

The door beeped and slid open.

At its other side stood Grayman and Allico, arm-in-arm. 

“Oi!” called the latter. “Get a room!” 

I turned my head to look at them. 

“This is a room,” I snarled, freeing a tentacle to drag the door shut, and then another two to shove a large shelf of battered books—the crew’s “little library”—in front of it before it could slide automatically open again. 

“Zyr!” gasped Rin, sounding affronted and thrilled at once. I turned back to her. My tentacles twisted where they gripped around her body, and she strived and thrust against my hold as I they explored her. Rin seemed to delight in restraint, and for half a second I considered my hypersilk. But no. If any of the crew were to come banging on the shelf-door, we would need to make a hasty exit. No, I would have to save that particular idea for later. 

Freeing one of my tentacles from where it curled around her calf, I snaked it down the front of Rin’s soft, tight pants to caress the bare skin beneath them. Pressed it down over the slick hot cleft between her legs, applying pressure to the nerve-bundle at its peak, and plunging the end of the tentacle into the opening hidden within. Rin gasped, gripping around the appendage, squirming and moaning as I made it vibrate against her, inside of her. 

“Oh god!” She bucked against me so hard that her shin nearly drove into my groin. “Oh fuck, no! Not yet!”

“No?” 

I halted all endeavors at once. Began to withdraw my tentacles. 

“Don’t stop touching me,” she objected, though when she brought her newly-freed hands up to touch me, to slip them under my approximation of a shirt, I chose to leave her wrists free, tightening my grip everywhere else as I withdrew the offending tentacle from between her legs. I was standing back now, Rin sitting up on the bar, spreading her fingers across the planes of my stomach, my chest, my back. Kneading at my muscles, gripping the base of my tentacles. And then she began to tug at my shirt. 

I believe I was smiling as I released the network of seams which held my upper garment in place. It fell to the floor. Rin exhaled appreciatively, eyes darting down to stare at the parts of me that had been hidden. But it was not enough for her. Her eyes and hands traveled lower, to the front of my pants. I released those seams too, with more than a little relief. Freeing my…my…what is the least objectionable word? My cock. 

[I beseech you, humanity. Do better.]

Rin’s pupils grew suddenly larger and her hands went to it at once, gripping around the base and sending a thrill up my spine that didn’t stop until it reached the tip of every one of my tentacles. I growled again and reached for her shirt, and she released me briefly and raised her arms as I stripped it off of her. The bra went immediately after, her pink-tipped breasts bouncing freely for a moment before she took hold of me again and her upper arms pressed them together. 

As Rin’s hands worked me ever closer to frenzy, I hooked two tentacles over the waist of her pants, prepared to yank them down. But it occurred to me then that the bar top was perhaps not the most sanitary of surfaces. Would that bother her? I feared that if I attempted to speak, nothing but garbled, perhaps frightening sounds would come out of me. So instead I stepped back from the bar, lifting her from it easily and entirely as I pulled off her pants and shoes. She lost her grip on me then, but it did not matter. 

I was done with that. 

Rin panted in my grasp, heart racing, skin hot to the touch. I held her poised, her hands resting on my shoulders, legs curled at either side of my hips, a hair’s breadth above the tip of my cock. 

“Do you want this?” I asked her with no little difficulty, meeting her green eyes with their expanded pupils.

“Yes,” she said. “Only…no sperm or, er…eggs or harvesting or anything, alright? No offspring, just sex.” 

“Just sex,” I assured her, though the words came out gravely, beastial. 

And then I brought her down on top of me, speared myself into her until our bodies ground against one another, and I could go no further. She screamed.

For half of one of her heartbeats, I panicked, even as a pleasure beyond my comprehension threatened to consume what was left of my sanity. It had sounded like pain, and perhaps it was. But only for an instant. And then she was moaning and gasping, the already tight wetness of her gripping tighter still and releasing again in an increasingly frantic rhythm. For a moment, though, I held her where she was. Savoring her frustration, the desperation of her desire for me, the feeling of filling her entirely.

And then, somewhat slowly at first, but building rapidly in speed, I began to slide her up and down the length of me. Her moans deepened, and she panted harder. By the time I began to work at her clit with a vibrating tentacle-tip, she was screaming again.

“Please,” she gasped. “Do the thing. Now.” 

I froze in place, held her still where I was, half inside her. 

“Do what, exactly?” I queried. I had an idea of what she was requesting, and yet, for some reason…I wished to make her say it. But she whispered her response, just one word. It was enough. 

The base of my cock bulged outward, forming a thick knot. Lodging inside of her, stretching her. From the feeling of it, nearly beyond her limits. My name burst from her lips. Her nails dug into my flesh. Her legs squeezed around me, began to shake, until her whole body was quivering in wave after wave of  ecstatic release.  And that shuddering, that pressure, the slickness gripping around me, the sound of my name on her lips, even the pain of her nails biting into my t̸̟̀̊r̸̬̙͐̑y̶͍̹͌͘p̴̼̪͊͝t̸̡̾͝ḧ̴̢́͜ỳ̸͎r̸͕̿a̷̺̾x̷̛̹̮̏ sent me over the edge with her. My being collapsed in that moment into one bright, burning mote of pleasure—ephemeral and all-encompassing. Finite and infinite. 

At some point, my eyes had squeezed shut, and I pulled Rin close again, her arms clinging around me, my arms and tentacles both wrapped about her. She breathed hard. I did not need to, but I did it regardless. It was another way for our bodies to dance together. 

“Z—Zyr?” 

With some effort, I dragged my eyes open.

“Yes?” 

“Could you…um…nix the knot now? It’s getting kind of uncomfortable.” 

“Yes,” I replied, contracting the appendage and withdrawing from her body entirely. Still cradling her, I lowered Rin enough for her feet to touch the ground. Yet I continued to support her weight until she steadied herself, which took some time. We gathered our clothes then and dragged them back on before returning the “little library” to its original position. As we walked back to the retrofitted residential wing, Rin took hold of my hand. I curled some of my tentacles about her shoulder, happy for the excuse to touch her again. 

We stopped outside the door to her quarters. 

“Tursa’s staying in her own room tonight,” she said. “Can we cuddle?”

I squeezed her hand. 

“Of course.”