Mandy and the Tentacle Monster (Urf Oomons #1)
Mandy and the Tentacle Monster: Chapter 17

For the past 40 turns, since I ejected Baht from our homeship, he has been sending messages and drone-shuttles full of gifts addressed to Tiny. He writes in her Earth Speak and he sends her clothing, jewelry, and all manner of useless but dreadfully expensive adornments and decorations. And she does not know anything about it because I have intercepted all of it and hidden it away from her.

At first, it was to protect her. I still have a feeling that Baht means her harm. But I have to admit that there’s another, darker impulse involved here. She may see all these thoughtful gifts and notes and grow fond of Baht and want to visit him. She may decide she likes him even more than she likes me. It could be him that she allows to sit near her, pet her hair, and breathe in her scent. What is holding her to this ship? Nothing! Only her affection for me and my crewmates. Only her happiness keeps her here. And Baht, that sneak, is trying to woo her away. Well, I have decided not to allow it. And how is Baht tracking us anyway? How does he keep delivering all these things? And How does he know how to write in Earth speak?

And most importantly who and what is he? He always keeps himself completely covered. I do not hold that against him. if there was any way for me to conceal my species, I would definitely do so. My people are reviled and it makes trade and travel difficult. Perhaps his people are also viewed in a negative light, so negative he must hide his identity. I keep trying to solve this puzzle and I keep coming back to just one idea about who he might be, but it does not make sense.

I brought it up with Lu yesterday, I asked him, “What species do you suppose Baht is?”

“He may be from an uncontacted world in which case we wouldn’t know his species.” he pointed out.

“No, if that was the case he would not conceal his speech. He is of a people that would be recognized if he spoke his own language.” I argue.

“That is true,” he agrees.

“Might he be an Arana-Vora?”

Lu laughs, “No, he could not be an Arana-Vora. Seven, they have eight limbs and they are twice as tall as us! And the sound they make, that chittering, it is unmistakable.”

“Unless one was to speak a different language. Picture an Arana-Vora with their long, skinny limbs and their small torso. They may be tall, but they are not big. Now picture him folding up his limbs and wearing a cloak over himself. Now imagine what he may look like moving around that way,” I can see when the idea catches traction in Lu’s mind. He turns a contemplative blue and his tentacle arms slow as they move restlessly around him.

“You may be right, Seven. Because who would trade with a Arana-Vora? Nobody would want to even be in the same room with him or even look at him. They are more reviled than we are,” he speaks softly, “Remember the mural he wanted to see? That Earth animal looked exactly like an Arana-Vora. And he asked Tiny all those questions about them. What were they called again?”

“Spiders,” I supply the name and shudder.

“Yes. That’s what he is. And he was so close to our little human! Think about the danger she was in.” He’s referring to the diet of the Arana-Vora which is sentient beings consumed live. Tiny would make a tasty little treat for a predator like Baht.

Now that Lu understood the danger of this Baht situation, I apprised him of all the messages and gifts Baht had been sending Tiny. I told him that Baht is tracking us somehow and something must be done about it.

And what did the big idiot decide to do first? Tell Tiny about all of it! After I had gone through so much trouble to conceal this problem from her. This information is not going to benefit her at all, only make her angry at me and scared.

I hold her little hand where she had willing interlaced her delicate fingers with my monstrously clawed ones and I explain everything. That I have been concealing things from her. That Baht is more dangerous than we know and he is stalking her like prey.

I expect some kind of unpleasant reaction. Fear, anger, or distress. Yelling and tears, something along those lines. She counts on us, on me, to keep her safe and we have failed her completely by exposing her to this vicious predator.

At the very least, I expect her to be displeased with me for keeping things from her.

I await her reaction, wait for the feeling of her hand jerking out of mine, but it does not. She squeezes my fingers with hers again and says, “Is that all? I was worried! You guys acted like there was some terrible news.”

“This is terrible news,” I argue, “Baht is stalking you!”

She shrugs, “Not really,” she moves from one auto-drone shuttle to another, peering inside, “It seems more like fan-mail. Let me see the messages.”

With a sigh to voice my reluctance, I call up the messages to display on the wall next to Tiny. She reads one after another, not showing any emotion.

“Yeah, this isn’t threatening at all. He’s just an enthusiastic fan,” she waves off my concerns and demands, “lets look inside these shuttles.”

I open each one up for her and soon she is exclaiming over all the things. Wrapping a length of fabric around herself, rubbing a scent against her collar bone, placing a bejeweled clip in her disheveled mane. I am reminded of when she first discovered all the crates in our storage bay and would happily rifle through the contents for whole turns. I am reminded again of how adorable and precious she is.

“Tiny, we need to be cautious of Baht. I do not think you grasp how dangerous and vile a Arana-Vora is. They consume sentient people, they devour them alive,” I try to convey how serious this is and that she should not view Baht with any kind of favor. But I do not think she believes me, because she turns towards me with a playful sparkle in her eyes and takes a few steps until she is standing right in front of me, looking up at me.

She puts her small hand to my chest and I immediately turn from a worried grey to a warm pink where she is touching me.

“I understand what you’re saying Seven. You’re telling me that Baht is very bad guy,” she is stroking my chest in delicate little pats, it is making it hard to focus on her words.

“Yes, bad,” I manage to answer.

“And he wants to devour me?” She puts an emphasis on the word ‘devour’ and the way she says it causes a reaction in me that I have not experienced before like my skin is too warm and too tight.

“Yes, he might,” I warn her trying to follow the thread of this conversation.

“But you can protect me from him right?” She asks, her eyes holding so much trust and affection that it squeezes my heart.

“I can.”

“I feel so safe with you, Seven,” she leans into me, and twines her arms up around my neck as far as she can reach, “You always take care of me.”

And then she does a very shocking thing. She pulls me down and stands up on her toes and then presses her mouth to mine, rubbing her plush pink lips against my firmer ones. This is not something I could have ever expected. Surely this is some strange human custom. I do not want to offend, so I stand still allowing her to mouth-press me as much as she likes. And she does. Not only is she pressing her mouth to mine, but she is pushing her body into mine as well. Her soft form is rubbing against me everywhere she can reach and it is eliciting a feeling of….something. And then she continues her shocking behavior by licking my mouth! Right across my bottom lip, she swipes me with her wet tongue.

Her strange behavior, all this tongue swiping, mouth pressing, and body rubbing makes me feel a tense urgency. I need something. I need to do something. And in a flash of insight, I know I need to reciprocate. Wrapping my upper arms around her, I squeeze her soft waist and pull her tighter against me. I swipe my tongue against her lip and she invades my very mouth with her tongue, delicately licking my fangs and stroking my tongue with her own. The intimacy and boldness of that action sparks something in me and suddenly I’m touching her everywhere. My tentacle arms twining around her ankles and up her legs, squeezing and stoking everywhere I can reach. I am ravenous for the taste and feel of her. And the smell of her! By the void, that scent will follow me into my dreams. And as my exploration moves upwards, her wrapped cloth is pushed out of the way and I am aware of the source of that delicious smell. She has kept this area hidden away since she first woke up in the med bay, but right now she is encouraging my touch with pants and gasps, pressing herself into every touch. So I touch her more. At the juncture of her legs, I replace the hot wet center of her. This seems to bring on some kind of frenzy, where my tentacle arms are gripping her thighs. She jerks in an attempt to close them, so I tighten my grip, not allowing her to hinder my explorations. She is squirming and jerking in my embrace as I touch and feel this private, hidden part of her with more firmness encouraged by her sounds and undulations. I replace a hot, slick cavern and press the very tip of one of my tentacle arms inside. I know what this is. I know what I want to do to it too.

My implantation arm is heavy and insistent, demanding attention. Right and wrong do not matter at all in this moment. The laws and taboos of Homeworld Two can go off themselves. I am going to mate this little human. She desperately needs me to, her scent tells me that much.

“Seven!” My name, the name she gave me is a breathless gasp, and she begs, “Please! More!”

That is all the permission I need. I hold her against the wall of a shuttle, all her limbs tightly restrained, I hold her open, aligning my implantation arm and spear that wet, needy part of her.

“Oh, Fuck, Seven!”

She grips my sensitive flesh, her body welcoming mine enticingly. I move as deeply inside her as I can, before running out of space. This is ecstasy, unlike anything I have known. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life, be this close and this sweetly embraced by my human. But it is not enough, she needs more and so do I, so I withdraw slowly then re-enter firmly. This is even better. Every movement building toward some precipice, climbing higher.

She jerks an arm free and reaches her little fingers down and touches herself on a spot that I had not noticed. But with each touch, she is rippling and tightening around me.

“Fuck me, Seven! Move!” She orders. It galvanizes me to hear her say that, demanding to be bred. So I do, I fuck as hard and urgently as I dare and from one moment to the next I am dying, the pleasure is that intense, so much so that I feel separate from my body, propelled into a whole other plane of existence.

When I come back to myself a moment later, I am still holding Tiny close, imbedded, still feeling this life-altering pleasure.

Her muscles are relaxing one by one under my tentacles and she takes a deep breath. I perform an experimental thrust to gauge if I am still welcome inside her.

She gives a surprised laugh and asks, “Again?”

“Again,” I growl with enthusiasm.