"I suppose Bhatar told you that." His voice was angry.
"Yes." I grabbed the base of the tentacle where it melded into his body. I pulled gently but
firmly down the length of it. It wrapped around my hand, holding it, moving it away from him.
"Don't," he said.
"It felt good didn't it?" I asked.
He looked at me, so angry, so scared. "How do you know what feels good to a nightflyer?"
"I asked."
He looked startled then, and I was able to pull my hand free of him.
I touched one of the groupings of thinner tentacles. They retracted like sea fans when a diver brushes them below a coral sea. "Bhatar could do the most intricate needlework with his fingers."
I moved my hand lower, not quite touching the last visible line of tentacles. "These are very sensitive-they can be used for the finest tactile work, but they're actually a secondary sexual organ."
He looked startled. "We do not usually share that bit of information with outsiders."
"I know." I smiled. "Bhatar used to caress visiting ladies with them. They were often afraid to tell him to go away for fear of offending him, and offending my father. I noticed when I finally went back to court that the Host often caressed nonsluagh with the lower tentacles. It's a sort of in-joke that you all have on us. You touch us with what amounts to a breast, and we're none the wiser."
"But you know," he said.
"I like a good in-joke when I'm not the butt of it." I ran my hand in a long movement over that last line of organs.
His breath went out in a sigh. His eyes stayed defiant, protective. I didn't even blame him for it. I had enough mixed genetics in my own ancestors that there but for the grace of Deity go I.
I touched them gently, and they began to weave around my fingers. The ends were slightly prehensile, not nearly as much so as the upper ones, but there was a slight depression on one side of each of the tentacles. I stroked a finger into one of the depressions; it made him shudder.
"I take it that has a specific job if you're with a female nightflyer?"
He nodded, wordlessly.
"What can they do for me?" I asked the question for several reasons. First, I was curious. Second, I had to know if I could stand for him to touch me intimately with them. I was touching him in almost a detached scientific way. You do x, and y happens. Detachment might allow me to touch him, but it wouldn't get me through sex.
He reached down with his hands, but that put the thicker tentacles in a mass against my face. It made me jerk back. Sholto instantly straightened. Maybe he would have stepped away again, but I grabbed a handful of the lower tentacles. It froze him in place, and his breath caught in his throat. The reaction reminded me of what happens when you touch a man's penis when he's not expecting it.
He reached down with his hands and jerked my shirt out of my pants. The movement put the thick muscular limbs against my face. This time I didn't pull away, but it was an effort.
He pulled the shirt over my head, and let it drop to the floor. The defiance was tinged with something else, something darker and more real. He used two of the muscular tentacles to gently move my hands away from the lower organs. Then the long thin tentacles grew, stretching longer and thinner, like muscular clay. The tips caressed the mounds of my br**sts in quick teasing movements. It made me both startle and gasp.
The tips plunged inside my bra, and it was like a snake crawling against my skin. I was about to tell him, no, I couldn't do it, when those reddened tips found my ni**les and I discovered what the depressions on the underside were for. They had suction, and the touch was expert. My ni**les hardened under the sucking, squeezing sensation.
A second organ played low on my belly, tickling along the top of my pants. He asked without asking. I pushed him gently away. "Enough, please."
He pulled away from me, but this time he wasn't hurt. The look on his face was almost, not quite, but almost triumphant. "The look on your face just now, that alone is worth much to
me. "
I took a shaking breath and tried to think. "Glad to hear it, but there's one more thing I have to check before I know for sure. "
He looked at me.
"Lose the belt, please," I said.
I didn't have to ask twice. He took the belt out, but left the pants buttoned. I liked that he had done exactly what I asked, no more, no less.
I undid the pants, exposing the line of his briefs. The bulge in them was straight and firm, and looked very... human. But after what I'd just seen, I had to be sure. I pulled the underwear carefully over that bulge, and saw him nude for the first time.
He was as straight and perfect as his face had promised, like a carved alabaster sculpture. I wrapped my hand around him, and he cried out.
I wasn't teasing, I was looking for something. Bhatar had had a spine inside his penis nearly as long as my hand. Something no human woman would survive. Only the royals of their kind had it, and it meant they were fertile males-without the spine the females didn't ovulate during sex.
Sholto watched me, eyes eager. "A man's control is only so good. "
"That's why my pants are staying on. " He was like thick muscled velvet in my hands, but there was nothing there but flesh, no nasty surprises. "Your father wasn't royal?"
"You're looking for the spine. " His voice was low, hoarse.
"Yes."
"My father was not one of the royal drones." He whispered those reasonable words in a voice that was growing less reasonable after every touch.
"Then how did you get to be king?" My voice was calm. I hadn't stayed excited once the tentacles stopped touching me. It hadn't lasted, because I wasn't aroused by the sight of him. Lord and Lady forgive me, but I saw the extras as a deformity.