Artwork by Dale Alden
“I am not enjoying myself,” Axerde said. “There are too many people, I don’t like festivals, I have work I need to do, and I am not enjoying myself.”
“You said that one already,” Tabill answered, completely unfazed by his cousin’s complaints. Probably he was used to it, after omme of listening to him.
“I told you I did not want to come.”
“It’s just one sopop! Honestly, I am asking you attend one sopop of the festival for my sake.”
“For your sake? I do not see how my being here helps you at all.”
But Tabill wasn’t listening to him anymore, having returned to scanning the crowd.
“What are you doing?” Axerde bumped Tabill’s shoulder to get his attention. “Who are you looking for?”
Tabill’s frill quivered stiffly with embarrassment.
“Nobody!”
“All right, well, I’m leaving. Enjoy searching for whoever it is you actually want to spend time with.”
“Okay, fine, I am looking for a human woman I am enamored with.”
“The one with the bright orange hair?”
Tabill’s frill quivered again.
“No, that was Bethany. I am looking for the human Maureen now.”
Axerde’s frill waved in amusement.
“I thought you were desperately in love with Bethany.”
Tabill waved his frill in a dismissive gesture.
“She is with Ater now. I can only thank Mosanc for never confessing my feelings to her. According to the human Amanda, Bethany fell in love with Ater at first sight. Clearly, I never had a chance with her.”
“So now you are in love with this human Maureen.”
Tabill lifted his frill in acknowledgement.
“The human Sadie is with a pashef, the human Erica is with Cirma, and the human Jessica already has three boyfriends. The human Mia didn’t like non-humans, and the human Amanda has told me she is not interested in dating anyone at all.”
Axerde could not stop his frill waving in amusement, some of his sour mood lifting.
“Tabill, you are a ridiculous raiatan. I feel sorry for this poor Maureen woman who has no idea she is, what is it, seventh choice?”
“It is not my fault,” Tabill whined. “There is something in my biology that makes me fall in love with every woman I meet. All I need is just one to return affection.”
Axerde’s frill shook with disgust.
“There is nothing in your biology that makes you like this. And why are you focusing on human women? Are raiate women not good enough for you?”
Axerde took in Tabill’s drooping frill and regretted his words. He understood what it was to be considered less attractive by raiate standards. The raiate were known throughout the universe for their brilliant jewel-toned scales, and he had grown up hoping his own muted, milky green color would turn to emerald. But, of course, it didn’t. Tabill’s scales were brilliant enough; unfortunately for him, amethyst was considered a feminine scale color. Neither man received much attention from the opposite sex.
Axerde put his hand on Tabill’s shoulder.
“You don’t need to throw yourself at every woman you see, hoping one of them keeps you. Does it not matter to you who the woman is? Do you want to end up with someone who treats you badly just because she’s willing to be with you? Have some respect for yourself.”
“Human women are not like that. Every one of them, even Mia, who does not like non-humans, is nice and friendly.”
Axerde shook his frill at his cousin’s naivete. There were good and bad people in all species. All.
“It is true!” Tabill insisted. “Even when they reject you, they are nice. The human Melanie did not attack me when I asked to court her, the way a raiatan woman would have. She said no, but that she was flattered. Flattered! Would a raiatan have tried to spare my feelings? No.”
The human Melanie? He knew of only one Melanie.
“Melanie?” he asked. “Do you mean Melanie Hayes? Doctor Melanie Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“You tried to court Dr. Hayes?”
“Yes, but she rejected me.”
Axerde was bubbling with rage. He was not an angry or violent raiatan for all that he was grumpy and could be short with people, but now he envisioned ripping Tabill’s frill from his body. He tried to court Dr. Hayes? How dare he?
Dr. Hayes had been a pebble under his scales from the moment she arrived.
Axerde had trained in human anatomy and medicine when the Ptiogrean consulate had set up the human-raiatan exchange program. But when the humans arrived, so did Dr. Hayes, and they all went to her. This didn’t bother him; it made sense that they would want to go to a human doctor. What did bother him was when Dr. Hayes began poaching his raiate patients.
It wasn’t noticeable at first, but the trickle of patients no longer coming into his clinic slowly built up until he was worried he would have to move and build up his practice elsewhere.
‘Bedside manner,’ was what he’d been told, after confronting one of his long-time patients who’d abandoned him. Bedside manner. As if she was treating patients in her bed, making her sound more like a sex worker than a doctor. This wasn’t something that translated easily, but his understanding of the term was that they preferred her personality to his.
I’m supposed to be their doctor, not their friend, he’d thought.
And even worse was the fact that Dr. Hayes seemed to like to mock him. Whenever they interacted, she would laugh at him and tease him as if he were a child and not an equal and fellow professional.
He hated Dr. Hayes.
And Tabill had tried to court her.
“Traitor,” he growled.
Tabill’s frill twitched nervously.
“Trai… what?” Tabill backed away from him.
“How many times have you listened to me complain about Dr. Hayes? You know she is stealing my patients. And you thought to court her? You traitor!”
“I… she didn’t steal your patients. They sought her out. Maybe if you weren’t such a grouch, you’d still have your patients.”
He growled again. Tabill continued to back away from him, and then, looking over his shoulder, chirped cheerily, “Oh, look, there’s Maureen. Farewell!” And ran off, leaving Axerde alone.
Fine¸ he thought. There was nothing to keep him at this festival any longer.
As he started to head out, he saw her. Dr. Hayes, standing among a mixed group of raiate, humans, and whiswoo. Enjoying the festival and eating snacks. As if his conversation with Tabill had manifested her.
She saw him and waved at him with a half-grin on her face, in that mocking way she had.
He turned to walk in the opposite direction even though it was away from his home, and he’d have to go the long way around. He had no desire to even pass by her.
“Look out!” he heard from behind him.
He turned to see that a small whirlwind had formed. They were not uncommon on Ptiogrea, but rarely ever got big enough or lasted long enough to do any real damage. This one was just big enough to pick up a small bench and throw it.
Right at his head.
***
“Okay, everyone out. I’ll take it from here,” Dr. Hayes said, as several raiate fairly dragged him into her clinic, despite his protests.
A moment later and he was alone with her. He opened his mouth to again protest that he could take care of himself, but blood dripped into his mouth. He searched around for gauze to spit into and wipe his face, while keeping his compress firmly against his cut. This provided enough time for her to whip out a eushuc, a piece of whiswoo biotech that looked like a side of ruboxy meat. He threw his arm up as she approached him with it.
“I prefer raiatan technology,” he said.
“The clusar is not as informative as a eushuc,” she responded, draping the warm, meaty slab over his head.
He opened his mouth to shout at her about violating his right to choose his treatment and about respecting patient ideologies, but he was distracted by the perfect three-dimensional image of his head being projected. He watched as Dr. Hayes flipped through the layers, finishing with his brain, which he had to admit, looked quite beautiful.
“No fractures,” he said, “no swelling, no subdural hemorrhaging. A simple scalp laceration and hematoma.”
“Yep,” she said, whipping the eushuc off his head. “Easy peasy.”
He was still pondering the meaning of the word “peasy” when he saw her coming at him with an eshu, more damned whiswoo biotech.
“No,” he said firmly, “I want you to use a quisperf. What is your obsession with using whiswoo biotech? Is raiatan tech not good enough for you? Why didn’t you go work on Ferhoom instead of Ptiogrea if you prefer it so much?”
“I use a variety of tools and devices, made by all different species. But, you have to admit, the whiswoo are very advanced when it comes to medical technology.”
“I will not admit that! Do you even know anything about raiate? What do you do when you have a traditional raiatan in your office?”
She bared her teeth at him in one of those human grins.
“Well, I don’t get many of those. They wouldn’t come to a human doctor, anyway, I think. They all go to you.”
He thought of how his practice had been dwindling since her arrival and wondered whether there were any traditional raiate left.
“So, you are religious?” she asked, her mouth twisting.
“An expression of amusement,” his translator told him.
Amusement? Was she trying to say that he was not scientifically minded? That he rejected empirical evidence because of religious beliefs? This outraged and offended him.
“Of course not!”
“Well,” she said, “According to raiatan law, exceptions can be made – can be made, not must be made – in medical treatment to accommodate religious beliefs. But you’re not religious, so I think you will get the treatment I deem best.”
Sly woman.
“Best? Ha!”
“There is less scarring with an eshu than with a quisperf,” she said.
“Well, perhaps you don’t keep up with the medical literature, but there is also more chance of infection. I will take a scar over an infection.”
“I do read the medical literature, and if you had read some of the literature I have, then you would know that the increased risk of infection occurs when an eshu is used without the accompanying fiess. When used in tandem, the risk of infection is no greater than with a quisperf and leaves the skin less scarred.”
“Maybe I want a scar. Makes me look more masculine, eh?”
She laughed.
“Oh, come on, stop giving me a hard time and let me take care of that cut.”
“Look, I am not some raiatan off the street. I am a doctor as well, and a good one, and I want you to use a quisperf.”
She crossed her arms.
“So, if another doctor came into your office for treatment, you’d let them dictate diagnosis and treatment to you?”
“I… would listen to what they had to say, and respect their knowledge and experience, and take their comments into consideration.”
He would not, but she didn’t need to know that.
“And if you disagreed with them, you would do what they wanted instead of what you thought was best?”
He paused, not quite able to lie about that one.
“Of course you wouldn’t. Look, when I’m in your clinic, you can do whatever you want to me, but for now, just hold still.”
He felt the warm jelly of the fiess spreading across his scalp, tingling pleasantly. There was no pain as the eshu knit his flesh back together, just the feeling of the slimy, wriggling worm-like biotech moving across his wound.
“There you go,” she said, feeling around the edges of the seal to make sure none of it was peeling up. “You’ll be as handsome as ever in no time.”
As handsome as ever? He was suddenly aware of how close she was to him; how she was leaning over him to see his wound with her chest near his face. He could feel the heat coming off her body and smell her scent, masked though it was beneath soap and other products. She didn’t mean anything by it, he told himself. It’s part of that ‘bedside manner’ you heard about. She wasn’t flirting with you.
She pulled away from him and started cleaning up, discarding used packaging and depositing tools in the sterilizer.
He felt foolish that all a woman had to do was call him handsome one time and he was ready to invite her into his bed. And she probably hadn’t even meant it.
What would she want with you anyway?
He wasn’t someone who was blind to his faults. He was old and grumpy. He didn’t like others, and they didn’t like him. She was his opposite. Young, or at least younger than him, friendly, and well-liked by others. His embarrassment at his reaction to her just made him feel even more prickly.
“Can I leave yet?” he asked gruffly.
“Can’t wait to get away from me, eh?” she said with a grin. “Go on, get out of here.” She waved her hands as if he was an insect she was shooing away. “And leave that on your head. If I see you’ve removed it, I’ll make you regret it.”
Her stern tone made his frill flick open for a second. He hoped her translator hadn’t picked up on it and told her he was aroused. He would have to cut his own throat with his claws if she knew what he was feeling.
He rushed out of the room as fast as he could.
***
Five sopops went by without Axerde seeing Dr. Hayes and he managed to put his unfortunate reaction to her behind him. He wore a simple bandage on his head to hide the eshu seal from others. Hypocrite, he thought. If he was going to wear the thing on his head, he might as well own it.
There was a knock at his office door, and his receptionist, Volita, stuck her head in.
“I’m about to leave,” she said.
“Fine, I will see you tomorrow.”
“There is someone waiting for you.”
“What do you mean? We’re closed.”
“It’s not a patient. It’s that human doctor, Melanie Hayes.” He felt a moment of panic; he did not want to see her. He did not even try to clamp his frill down to hide his irritation from Volita. “She said she wants to check on your head,” she said, her frill shimmying apologetically.
He groaned.
“Tell her it is not necessary.”
He went back to his work until a throat clearing told him Volita hadn’t left.
“I told her you’d say that, but she was very insistent. She says she will not leave until she sees you.”
He snorted, “I wonder what she would think if I were to call law enforcement on her for trespassing.” Volita’s frill stiffened in alarm. “Relax, I would not actually do such a thing. Tell her she has to wait until I finish all my records for the day. And let her know that it will be quite some time. So long, in fact, she probably does not want to wait.”
“I’ll tell her.”
It did actually take him a long time to finish his records. Longer than it should have, distracted as he was by the woman possibly waiting outside. As he headed to see if she was still there, he couldn’t tell whether he preferred her to be gone or still present.
She was not in the waiting room.
He felt a momentary pang.
Good, he thought, I don’t need her messing about with my head.
He was about to lock up and leave when he noticed a light on in one of the exam rooms.
That’s her, he thought, never acknowledging the possibility that someone could have simply forgotten to turn the light off. And he was right. There she was, wandering around his exam room like she owned the place, touching everything.
“You are lucky I noticed the light on in here or you would have been locked inside. I do not think you would enjoy having the alarms go off and being trapped in the security field until law enforcement arrived.”
She smiled. Nobody smiled at him.
“You knew I was here and waiting for you.”
“You were waiting a long time; most people would have left.”
“You may be a difficult patient, but it’s time for that seal to be removed and I can’t ignore my responsibility as your doctor.”
“You are not my doctor,” he said, crossing his arms.
“I am for this specific injury. Sit down please.”
“I can remove the seal myself.”
“I want to check it for infection and scarring.”
“I can do that myself.”
“Sit down!” she ordered, giving him a tiny push that would not have moved a youngling, let alone a full-grown raiatan. But he sat. She pulled off his bandage and reached into her bag of tools.
“I’m surprised you covered it with a bandage rather than just removing it.”
“As I recall, you threatened violence if I did that.”
“You do not seem the sort of man to let that stop you. In fact, you seem the sort of man who likes me to be a bit rough.”
Her words shocked him as they seemed flirtatious. He was about to ask her what she meant by that, but she chose that moment to pull the seal off. It took a few scales away with it and he cried out with the pain.
“Aren’t you supposed to numb the area before you do that?!” he asked.
“Usually I would, but you were acting like you were about to run out of the room, so I thought I’d better be quick. Besides, you’re such a big, tough guy I didn’t figure a little bit of pain would be that bad.”
He glared at her, angry that she’d used flirtation as a distraction method.
“What do you think you’ll accomplish with your mockery?” he asked.
“I don’t know… a laugh?”
“From me? Good luck.”
“I love a challenge.”
Is that what he was to her? A challenge. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like her. He grabbed her wrist as she was lifting it, holding another Mosanc-damned whiswoo tool.
“I told you I prefer raiate tools.”
“And I told you that you’ll accept the care you get.”
“As I recall, you said that when we were in my own clinic, I could dictate medical treatment.”
“No, I said that when we were in your clinic, you could do whatever you wanted to me.”
She smiled at him again and blinked only one eye.
“An expression of flirtation,” his translator said.
She was flirting with him, damn it, and using it as a way to get him to do what she wanted. He wanted to confront her about it but decided against it. He wouldn’t acknowledge what she was doing. Just let her finish and get out of here.
He sat still and quiet. She’d already done everything else using whiswoo biotech, so it was kind of pointless to continue to protest.
“All done,” she said, closing her bag. “There’s minimal scarring and in a few weeks, once the scales have grown back in, you’ll never know anything was ever there.”
“Fine. I’ll walk you out.”
He started to rise, but she placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Wait, aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“Your treatment is over. I’m no longer your doctor. Now we can get to the part where you get to do whatever you want to me.”
His heart started to pound, and he was slightly concerned that he was about to have a heart attack. He’d not thought she was serious. She couldn’t be serious.
“Was that too forward?” she asked, her voice quiet, seeming unsure of herself for the first time since he’d met her. “Am I too direct?”
He snorted.
“No, actually I wish you’d been more direct.”
“Really? I feel like I laid it on pretty thick.”
“I’m not sure what you laid on thick. The translation conjures images of spreading things on bread.”
She laughed.
“My flirting. I’ve been flirting with you a lot.”
“And I’ve been torturing myself wondering what you meant by it. I am not a subtle man. I need to be told straight what’s going on. You want me? Truly?”
She stepped into him, so that he had to look up at her from his chair, close enough where her breasts brushed against his chin.
“Yes, I want you. Do you want me?”
He did. But was it a good idea? What did such a thing mean to a human? What did it mean to him? Would it even be enjoyable for him? For her?
He hadn’t realized how long he was taking to respond until she started to pull away from him. He gripped her hips, pulling her back into him.
“Don’t leave,” he begged, laying his forehead on her chest. He felt her hand glide down the back of his head, sending a shiver down his spine.
He lifted his head as she lowered herself so that she was sitting on his lap, straddling him. He was terrified; he didn’t know how to please a human woman.
Next thing he knew, she had pressed her mouth against his.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Kissing you. I take it that’s not something raiate do?”
“No,” he lifted her off him, and stood, walking across the room from her. “I don’t see how this is going to work. We obviously have different expectations and wants.”
“Well then, we communicate, right? Tell me what you want me to do. What would a raiatan woman do?”
“Raiate women are bigger than the men.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed.”
“They’re very… aggressive in bed. It’s almost like an attack, a fight. They use their teeth and their claws, and they’ll pin you down. That sort of thing. Obviously, I don’t expect you to…”
He was surprised by how much force she used when she slammed into him. She was so much smaller than a raiatan woman, even a raiatan man. If he’d been prepared, there was no way she could have knocked him over. As it was, he ended up staggering back, tripping over a chair, and landing haphazardly onto it.
She was on top of him a moment later, her teeth sinking into his trapezius muscle, near his shoulder. They were blunt little things, incapable of breaking through, nothing like the sharp teeth of a raiatan woman. She scraped her fingers down his back. Once again, her fingernails could not compare to claws, and they couldn’t even tear through the fabric of his clothing, let alone his scales. But it was enough. The violence of her passion, the little growl that escaped her, and the rocking of her pelvis against his own triggered his lust.
His frill extended fully, showing crimson against his jade-colored scales. His cock stiffened as she rubbed up and down its length.
“Ohhh,” she moaned. “Can I touch your frill?”
“Yes,” he groaned, gripping her hips as he added his own thrusts to hers. “Just be gentle. It’s more fragile than the rest of me.”
Her touch was lighter than it needed to be, a feather-soft tickle along the sensitive frill. He groaned again, burying his face in her fragrant neck. When he threw his head back, she gripped his robe at the base of his neck and pulled. Her fingernails may not be able to tear through fabrics, but her hands were more than capable of ripping it as he found his chest suddenly bared. It was somehow sexier having a human do these things than a raiatan.
He could not stop himself from tearing her own clothing with his claws, shredding it to the point he knew he would have to loan her something to wear back home. Anyone who saw her in a raiatan man’s robes would understand what had happened, and he was pleased by the thought.
He caught one of her bouncing breasts in his hand, squeezing it gently and licking the pink nipple at the tip. Raiate did not have breasts or nipples. Although they gave birth, they were not mammals, did not feed their babies with milk, and had no need for them. But he liked them; they were soft and pleasant to the touch and made her moan so delightfully that he knew they were an erogenous zone.
“I told you what a raiatan woman would do,” he said, “What would a human man do?”
“I want you to do what you’re doing, not what a human man would do,” she said, biting him again along one of his ear nodules.
Although he kept his claws trimmed and ground down, he still needed to be careful so he didn’t bloody her. He would be clawing a raiatan woman’s back by now, but he couldn’t do that with her. Her skin was so delicate.
He stood, letting his robe drop to the floor. He fumbled with the fastener on her bottoms before simply ripping it open. She gasped and shimmied her hips so they slid down.
She pushed him back onto the chair and straddled him again, rubbing that delightfully wet cunt against his cock. He rocked back and forth, loving how her wetness spread along his length.
“I have a fash,” she said.
A fash was a whiswoo contraceptive device, not that their species were capable of producing offspring together without help, but it also protected against most cross-species sexually transmitted infections.
“You… and your damned… whiswoo… biotech…” he muttered with each thrust against her.
She laughed.
With her next rock forward, he lifted her so that she came down on his cock, spearing her. She moaned, pressing her face into his stiffened frill. He held still for a moment, just feeling her around him. It had been so long since he’d been with a woman. But when she started to rock against him again, squeezing his cock, he began to thrust again.
He gripped her hips, increasing the force and range of motion of their movements by lifting her up as he retreated and slamming her down as he drove upward into her.
“Harder!” she cried.
“Damn it… I can’t… go… any… harder!”
“Fine!”
She halted her movements and leaned back.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked, holding tight to her hips, terrified she was about to leave him there like that. Instead, she just smiled and started a slow, shallow roll of her hips. She was leaned as far back as she could from him, one hand on his shoulder to keep from falling off backwards. The position gave him a perfect view of her breasts as she rocked, squeezing his cock with her cunt. She pulled one of his hands off her hip and guided it to a little nub of flesh just in front of where they were joined. She moved his fingers in little circles over it, gasping with pleasure and clenching his cock.
His mind vaguely reminded itself of something from his human anatomy lessons. This was the clitoris, or clit for short, which developed from the same embryonic tissue as the male human penis and was the primary source of sexual pleasure for human females.
As he took over rubbing her clit, she moved her hand away and held on to both his shoulders. She was rocking with a lot more force now, her amazing breasts bouncing up and down until he had to pull her in and bury his face in them. He needed to come, desperately, but couldn’t bear to do so before she did. He would rather not get to come at all than be the only one to do so, and he was frantically rubbing her.
“Not so hard,” she gasped.
“Harder… not so hard… make up your mind,” he grumbled, but eased the pressure on her clit. She suddenly ceased her rocking, to give one long push against him, her cunt squeezing him so tight he had no choice but to come, spurting with each rhythmic pulse of her orgasm, until they both collapsed.
They sat in the chair like that for a while, her legs hanging limply on either side of him and her head on his shoulder. When she finally raised her head to look at him, he pulled her in for a kiss, feeling like a fool and knowing he was not doing it very well, but wanting to give her that human gesture.
As they separated, Dr. Hayes, though he supposed he should call her Melanie now, held up her shredded clothing.
“You destroyed my clothes,” she said.
He shrugged his frill up and down.
“You didn’t stop me. Besides, you also destroyed my clothing.” He held up his torn robe, eliciting a grin from her.
“Fine. But I need something to wear home.”
“I have several robes here. I can loan you one.”
It was laughably oversized on her. She rolled the sleeves several times to allow her hands to poke out. And she needed to lift the hem when she walked, so she did not trip.
“Everyone’s going to know I’m sleeping with a raiatan if they see me,” she said.
“Indeed,” he said. “Not only that, but these are doctor’s robes. As I am the only raiatan doctor around, they will know it’s me.”
“You sound quite pleased about that.”
“Of course.”
“You’re not going to get all possessive on me, are you?”
“Is wanting everyone to know we are together being possessive? I do not know human culture, but among the raiate, we are monogamous. If you expect to be with others, then this will be our only time together. If you want to be with me, then I expect you to only be with me.”
She did that kissing thing again, pressing her soft, soft lips against his.
“And I expect you to only be with me,” she said.
“I have not been with anyone for an omman; that will be no problem for me.”
“Do you want to go to the last night of the festival together?”
“I do not.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“An expression of surprise,” his translator said.
“I thought I had made it clear to you that I did not enjoy the festival and was there under duress. And Mosanc made sure I knew what a mistake I’d made by knocking me over the head.”
She laughed.
“Hey, that knock on your head brought you into my clinic.”
“Hmmm… Still, I do not enjoy crowds. If that is the sort of man you want, you should run away now. Otherwise, we can spend the last night of the festival at my home. Together.”
She smiled.
“I’d like that.”