Passions, Partisans, and Other Human Oddities
Real life is amazingly busy, and I do have half the new Gray chapter done, but I'm trying to move forward on the original fiction at a faster clip. (I'm losing steam between every publication, and I need to do better.) I do need some feedback on this opening. Does it grab you? If you do leave a comment, please (pretty please) tell me if you've read Claimings, Tails, and Other Alien Artifacts. I need to appeal to both fans of the first and people who accidentally pick up the second book first.
Ondry woke slowly, his skin still tingling from Liam’s attention the night before. Every muscle felt loose, and his palteia’s warm body was wrapped in his arms. Perfect. Early morning light slanted through the window and the faint traces of kaile still hung on the air from last night’s dinner, wrapping Ondry in a sense of rightness. Elders sometimes spoke of the joy that came from a palteia, but Ondry had not understood the depth of that joy. If he had, maybe he would have hesitated to claim his Liam because some days Ondry was ready to forgo profit in order to spend all his time with his palteia.
While that was fine in a man of six or seven hundred, Ondry was young. At one hundred and eighty nine, he had barely reached full adult size. He could not afford to spend years curled in a nest with his palteia. He would have to learn to balance his trading with his need to touch his beautiful Liam.
Right now the human in question was sound asleep with his mouth open and one chunk of dark brown hair sticking up at an odd angle that would later cause Liam to make odd noises as he tried to use water to make it lay straight. He might even insist on bathing for the benefit of his hair.
Ondry fingered the silky strands. Rownt hair was nearly invisible. The tiny fibers covering the surface of the more sensitive patches of skin intensified the sensations, but human had thick clumps, like a prey animal. It covered their head, and sometimes when Liam did not scrape the hair from his face, it grew on his chin and cheeks, changing Liam’s coloring. The millimeters long hair gave Liam’s body an unusual texture that Ondry quiet enjoyed. However, Liam had recently scraped his face, leaving his pale skin. Sometimes Ondry found himself surprised at how much he aesthetically enjoyed Liam’s face.
When Ondry had first seen humans, they had all appeared so angry. With the pale skin and bulging lips, they walked around with an expression of seeming fury on their faces. Ondry had traded with the Imshee with no trouble, but that species had skin so dark it almost appeared a dull black with white mottling down the arms and eyes that resembled glass that had been shattered-white with deep red veins traveling along it. To look at them, one had no frame of reference and so new references formed.
But humans had so many traits in common with Rownt. The general shape of the body and the size and configuration of the face were so Rownt-like that Ondry had found it difficult to divorce his expectation from the reality. Earlier traders had not made that easy. They refused to trade without calling back to base, an action no adult would take, and one did not trade with children. Furthermore, their angry appearance seem to match their attitude. They would no more than finish a trade before they would dart back to their base and hide within tall walls.
Then Liam came. He would smile, and his eyes would angle into that particular expression that meant fondness, and Ondry had tried to remind himself that human expression did not match Rownt. However, Liam always seemed genuinely grateful to see him, as if Ondry mattered to him more than the trade. More and more, Ondry had dominated the human trades, and others were happy to allow him. More so after Liam began to make trades that approached reasonable. Usually. Sometimes he would get so excited at the sight of some exotic metal that Ondry couldn’t resist taking advantage of the man. And yet, Liam came back every time just as happy to see him.
Ondry ran a hand over Liam’s arm and huffed, smelling the subtle shift that meant Liam was waking. Somewhere along the way, Liam’s expression had stopped looking angry. The bulging lips reminded Ondry of a child exaggerating his expression for effect. Reaching out, Ondry ran a finger over Liam’s mouth. One eye cracked open, followed by its companion, and Ondry looked into Liam’s light brown eyes.
“May the sun bring opportunities,” Ondry greeted him.
“Mphf. Too early.” Liam’s eyes closed again.
Ondry’s cheeks tightened. He knew one way to get his recalcitrant palteia to wake up-a very pleasant way. Ondry curled his tail around until he could slide it across the slit that led to his own penis. Relaxing those guardian muscles allowed his tail to gather some of the natural lubricant. With one hand, he flipped Liam over to his stomach and then his tail went for that vulnerable opening.
Liam woke with a yelp, his body already smelling of lust-musk as he squirmed under Ondry’s hands. “Oh god. God…” Liam gasped, his human words familiar, even if Ondry did not understand the point of invoking deities while enjoying pleasures or producing genetic material. Some issues Ondry chose to not explore. Human biology was a concept so alien that even the grandmothers had trouble understanding it in its entirely. Ondry had no hope, and he would not pretend to. He only knew that when Liam invoked his deity that meant that Ondry had done something correct.
Liam clutched a pillow and arched his back so hard that all the muscles hardened under his skin. Pressing his tail into Liam’s hole, Ondry watched as Liam lost control over his limbs. His body heat rose and he started rhythmically thrusting down. Ondry had learned how quickly Liam could reach climax that way.
Withdrawing his tail, Ondry flipped Liam over onto his back and pinned him. Then he slipped his tail back into Liam’s hole. “Many prosperous trades to you this day, palteia of mine.”
Liam opened his mouth, but he could only make a small mewling sound as Ondry slowly moved his tail in and out. Flexing the tail muscles, Ondry thickened the appendage, and Liam struggled wildly. Human strength could not win against an adult Rownt, though. Ondry easily held Liam down and scented the unique spice that seemed to rise from Liam during the height of his pleasure. His penis was hard and laying on his belly and Ondry brought his weight down and undulated gently. The friction caused an immediate reaction as Liam began to cry for his deity again.
Leaning in, Ondry licked the salt spice from Liam’s neck, and Liam grabbed his shoulders. Liam held so tightly it was as if he would never let go. That loyalty of his knew no boundaries, and Ondry scented deeply as Liam turned his body over to his chilta. With eyes closed, Liam surrendered to Ondry’s touch. He clung to Ondry, his body twitching with each thrust of Ondry’s tail or slow rub of Ondry’s body against Liam’s penis, but he had finally reached that place where he tried to do nothing. He lay in Ondry’s arms and accepted whatever Ondry did.
Ondry loved the smell of Liam when he was lost in this place of pleasure. He loved the sight of his palteia wallowing in his own pleasure. He loved the small sounds Liam would make, needy grunts. One day Ondry would have no trading, and he would keep Liam in this place for hours. He would let him reach his climax and feed him by hand and then he would use Liam’s lust to drive him right back into this moment where he smelled so perfectly happy. Ondry licked at Liam’s neck, and the small groans grew louder.
His breathing grew ragged, and Ondry trust his tail faster, watching as his actions translated directly into Liam’s reaction. Every emotion, every need, every bit of Liam was on display for Ondry. Liam was open, giving everything to his chilta, and Ondry felt a flush of warmth.
When Ondry would lie in bed at night and Liam would stroke his neck until his skin tingled and his muscles were so loose that he doubted he could get up for a toal attack, Ondry knew contentment enough to replace the joy of a trade. However, Ondry still preferred this utter surrender. The thrill of knowing a creature trusted him so much that he would hide nothing and put every vulnerability on display affected Ondry in a way he had never thought possible. It was like a drug.
However, as much as he would like to indulge in such pleasure all day, he had to earn money to keep them in spiced food. Well, to keep him in spiced food and Liam in the sweet fruits he preferred. Ondry pressed his weight down and gave several strong thrusts with his tail, and Liam came as if on command. He threw his arms wide and cried out as his sperm and the lubrication that came with it spilled between their bodies.
Ondry lay on top of him, supporting his own body weight with hands on either side of Liam’s face and watched as Liam slowly fought his way back to reality. His eyes blinked frighteningly fast as first, and then they slowed as the gaze finally settled on Ondry, and finally a human smile graced his face, angling his eyes up into that Rownt expression of fondness. Ondry slowly pulled his tail out. At this rate, he was going to have the strongest tail tip of any Rownt living, but it was all worth it.
“Good morning to you too,” Liam said, humor in his voice. Liam had once tried to explain how that translated into something humorous, but Ondry had to admit that the explanation had escaped him. Much human humor was amazingly logical while some made no sense. “We’re supposed to be an old married couple by this time, not still honeymooning with the wild morning sex.”
Ondry could tell Liam’s complaints were not serious, but the idea of humans living old enough to ever call themselves old sounded like the final line of a joke that Ondry did not find funny. He tried hard to avoid all thought to Liam’s short life. “How should we act?”
“We’re supposed to have gotten bored with each other. After a few months of living together, we’re supposed to sleep in the same bed and get around to sex once a week.”
“That will not happen,” Ondry said firmly. If that was normal human behavior, he was very happy to be the chilta in this relationship. Since bringing Liam into his life, Ondry had never gone to sleep without Liam’s stroking soothing away all the worries of the day, and making every nerve ending in his body sing in pleasure. Every morning and many evenings ended with Liam squirming in need and yielding his body to Ondry. “I like having pleasure-based intercourse with you. You smell good,” Ondry answered with another lick at Liam’s neck. Liam obliged by arching his neck to give Ondry more access.
“Only you think so. I need a shower.”
“Because of your hair?”
“What?” Liam’s hands went to his head. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
Ondry pushed himself to the side so that he lay next to Liam with his leg over his palteia’s body, trapping him. “Nothing. I find human hair very pleasing to touch.” Ondry followed that up by stroking the side of Liam’s face.
Liam studied him with a narrowed gaze that Ondry had come to associate with confusion.
“It is soft,” Ondry explained.
“It’s sticking up all over, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Liam sighed. “That’s what I thought. I swear, I never had this problem when I slept on a flat bed instead of in a bowl-shaped nest. However, I originally said that I needed a shower because I’m starting to smell.”
“All creatures emit scent.”
“Yeah, but I prefer to not wake up to my own stink.”
Ondry tilted his head to the side. Their nest smelled of both of them, a combined scent Ondry was quite fond of, so this definitely made no sense. “Is there something wrong with your scent?” he asked. After two months of living together, he still found himself surprised at the alien oddities that sometimes rattled around in Liam’s head, and he needed to determine if this was some human quirk, like his inexplicable dislike of fewr music or some issue that indicated that Liam was somehow distressed.
“Other than there’s too much of it, no. I just need a shower so I can wash some of it off.”
“Do all humans wash off their scent or only the lower ranking ones?” Ondry had not met many humans. Colonel Thackeray had been the only high-ranked officer he’d met, and that man had an incredibly strong scent, although Ondry had been hard-pressed to identify which human gland could have produced something which smelled almost like a foodstuff. Most of the Rownt at the temple ceremony had stayed clear of the man for that reason. The fact that he was an eggless dalit also made avoiding him far more pleasurable than interacting with him.
“No, all humans prefer to not stink. Although,” Liam hesitated, which generally meant he was reconsidering his answer, searching for a truth more nuanced than his original statement. Liam had a way of finding the one description that could bridge the cultural gap between them, and Ondry waited as his palteia sorted through his thoughts. “Some cultures have stronger taboos against smell than others. It’s almost like you’re invading someone else’s space with the body odor, and that’s rude. And it definitely makes people try to avoid you.”
“Like Colonel Thackeray?”
“What?”
“He had a strong odor. Was he attempting to invade the personal space of others?”
“I…” Liam let his voice trail off before he started softly laughing to himself. “He had on cologne. It’s a scented liquid that a person puts on the body to hide odor.”
Ondry tightened his lips.
“If Rownt in general don’t like the scent of cologne, we could tell Craig. The human base would make avoiding cologne one of the standard protocols.”
“Why would we tell them?” Ondry asked.
An awkward silence fell as Liam opened and closed his mouth before finally gathering the right words to continue. “If you don’t like the smell, then avoiding cologne would make the trading easier.”
“But if I am annoyed, I am less likely to allow any positive feeling intrude on my desire for profit.”
Liam pushed himself up on one elbow, and Ondry waited for his response. “That’s actually logical, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
At that, Liam flopped onto his back. “Part of me gets it, but part of me wants to make the two parts of my life fit together better. And all of me pretty much wants to go hit Craig with a stupid stick.”
Ondry widened his eyes as he tried to decipher the meaning of “stupid stick.” By definition a stick had no intelligence, which should have precluded an discussion of stupidity. However, the longer Liam lived with him, the more illogical phrases did tend to bleed into his conversation. Liam said it was the process of becoming more comfortable, so Ondry chose to not make his palteia uncomfortable by pointing out the illogic of such a statement.
“He’s screwing up,” Liam said quietly.
“The traders are most pleased you are no longer speaking for humans,” Ondry agreed. “Is this not a positive development.”
Liam gave Ondry a long look before answering, and Ondry could feel his stomach knot in discomfort. Until Liam stopped having these moments of mixed loyalty, Ondry would continue to use the nictel, but perhaps Liam’s love of being restrained was causing him to make statements that put his loyalty into question. And perhaps Ondry did not understand human thought that well.
“You are the palteia of a Rownt trader. Do you not want the humans to trade poorly?”
Liam made a face as he moved his hand and managed to get his genetic material on his hand. With a sigh. “A normal palteia would stop caring about their old people, wouldn’t they?”
“You are normal,” Ondry insisted without answering the question. Liam gave him an amused look that suggested the obfuscation had not been lost on him.
“My mom turned me out because she didn’t have enough food.”
Ondry contained a growl. For a guardian to turn a child out due to some failure on the part of the adult or some adult failing was unthinkable. Had Ondry been entrusted with a child he could not support, he would have worked any job, sold any possession, and in the end, prostrated himself in front of the temple to ensure his child’s safety.
“Part of me really hates her. If she hadn’t done that, if I hadn’t started… whoring for Mort…” Liam’s voice trailed off as the pain rose to the surface. It made Ondry’s chest physically ache to think of his Liam hurt by others.
“The events brought you to my home.”
Liam gave him a wide smile that made the sides of his eyes crinkle. “Yes, they did. But my point is that I still love my mom. I mean, I hope she’s doing okay and she doesn’t have to struggle as much now that her kids are all older. I don’t belong there anymore, but I still have all these memories of the good things she did do.” Moisture appeared in the corners of Liam’s eyes. He cleared his throat. “I’m ruining a perfectly good morning here, not that every morning isn’t perfect, but still. It’s rude.”
“I am curious about your thoughts,” Ondry disagreed. Ondry valued any day that he could get Liam to share information about his life.
“My thoughts are that humans are insanely able to love people who are utterly wrong for them, even after they’ve figured out the wrong.”
“Love?” Ondry pounced on the new word. The texts humans shared with Rownt were all technical. The species had an impressive number of texts on the eye structures of bugs or the mating habits of sea creatures, but they never allowed Rownt access to the stories that defined them as a people. Eventually someone would penetrate human space and acquire such stories through less direct means, but none of the ship-based Rownt had yet bothered. Humans simply didn’t provide enough trade for the effort to pay for the investment of resources.
“An emotion that makes people want to stay together and do nice things for each other.” From the sadness in Liam’s voice, the word had far more linguistic complexity than that, but Liam suddenly sat up, and Ondry knew when he’d pulled as much information out as he was likely to get.
“I am a sticky mess. If I didn’t need a shower before, I definitely need one now.”
“I like the smell of your genetic material,” Ondry disagree, but he did get up and get the control for the magnetic shackle on Liam’s ankle.
“Kinky,” Liam teased. Ondry tightened his face. If their form of enjoying each other’s time qualified as unconventional in human terms, Ondry had no shame in embracing the adjective ‘kinky.’ “And stinky and hair sticking up, so I am definitely headed for a shower.”
Ondry unlocked Liam’s ankle cuff and watched as Liam scrambled out of the bowl-shaped nest, sending an avalanche of pillows to the bottom as he went. “It will be your last for some time, so enjoy,” Ondry warned.
Liam stopped at the door to the bathing room and looked back. “The last? Why?”
“We have business in Deidell.”
“Which is where?”
“Far.”
Liam turned to face Ondry. “Far enough to justify using mechanized transport?”
“Were I taking trade goods, yes,” Ondry agreed. “However, the planetary defense station where I keep my interests are curious as to a human reaction to our defense network. They hope to see our preparations through your eyes in order to evaluate the relative strength compared to your expectations based on human norms.”
Liam blinked at him, a gesture which sometimes preceded great emotion, and Ondry waited. “So, you just want to see if I’m shocked or think it’s pretty much normal?”
“Yes.”
More blinking.
“This surprises you. Why?”
Liam came back and stepped down into the nest before sitting on the floor at the edge. “Humans assume that people always have some loyalty to the group they left, so a human would never trust a new member of the group to see something as important as a defense plan.”
“I am less than impressed with human logic,” Ondry pointed out. “You are mine, and I have no doubts. And on any day when you do have doubt, I shall use a heavier shackle.” Reaching out, Ondry rested his hand against Liam’s knee. “You are the only one to ever express doubt as to your loyalty. I am not concerned about keeping any secret from you.”
“I’m not doubting my loyalty.” Liam was very quick to say that. “I am just expressing surprise at the lack of doubt from anyone. I can understand you trusting me because we’ve known each other for five years, but everyone else-”
“Knows you are a palteia,” Ondry said firmly. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of the discussion, but the human equivalent-submissive-contained a root word implying inferiority, so he did not doubt that humans had consistently underestimated Liam. Rownt would not.
It was said that only a palteia could defy the laws of the gods with impunity because even the gods would not intervene between a palteia and a chilta. Ondry did not believe in the old gods, but knowing Liam, he believed the old gods would not have stood a chance of stopping him from returning to Ondry’s side. In two months, every pain, every joy, every fear and every hope had been brought to Ondry and laid out for him with the perfect trust of a palteia. Liam would not take the information anywhere else.
After patting Liam’s knee, Ondry gave him a shove. “Get into your shower, or you’ll be travelling with that smell you dislike. By the time Ondry stood, Liam had already darted back toward the bathing room. Clearly the man wished to wash.
Ondry considered his supplies as he wondered how he might offer his palteia some way to wash during their travels. He disliked the idea of Liam unhappy. He also disliked the idea of wasting trading credits in order to provide for unnecessary bathing, but clearly that was the lesser of two evils because he was already planning ways to get Gilla to part with some jugs for cleaning sands and water before they left.