He turned his face away, unwilling to look the creature in the eye.
“Good grief, have you no manners man-beast?” it demanded.
“I, I – I’ve just never met anyone like you before.”
Jelly-like tentacles writhed with pleasure, winding around themselves.
“Kiss me, then, again.”
Lawrence gulped, the first kiss had been when they were both very much in the dark, him especially.
“My first kiss was in the pubescent cave, we swapped mucous for hours.”
“Now, maybe we’re getting into this a bit quickly.”
“Oh pshaw,” the creature made a noise like ‘pshaw’ only with more grinding of things like molars, “on our planet it is common to dive into the mating pit and enjoy the juices of countless partners.”
“Perhaps we’re just a little more reserved,” Lawrence countered, his fingers searching for the edge of the door.
“Quelch me.”
Ridges of dust had built up under Lawrence’s nails as he ran his fingers up and down the groove where the door had slid smoothly into the wall. Somehow the door could be opened again, he was sure of it. The tentacled maybe lady alien unspooled herself towards him, her lower appendages coiled over his knees and she repeated herself in a seductive crunching of consonants. Underneath her frilled skirt of translucent flesh mysterious organs pulsed and throbbed. Violet light filled the chamber as she began to sing.
“What a wonderful voice you have,” Lawrence murmured as her skirt brushed against his hips.
“Xenogamy is used by your people to describe the act of love between flowers; I think you are a precious pistil all of your own.”
And with that touching endearment the alien enveloped Lawrence. Breathing was surprisingly easy – she gave off oxygen as a form of musky perfume and he found himself inhaling huge lungfuls. Contrary to his own beliefs about his desires, now that he was wrapped in a highly oxygenated sensual blanket of gelatinous palps he felt rather more agreeable.
“Don’t you need to take these off?” asked the alien, its feelers perplexed by the extraneous epidermises Lawrence wore.
“Everyone wears them where I come from, but they do come off.”
Freed from his supposed propriety Lawrence gave in to her caresses and allowed himself to be undressed by her dextrous claws and tentacles.
“God no!” he cried too late as she stripped him of his skin and rubbed her ovipositor pads into the fibrous muscle beneath.