Chapter 7

Tom had become quite used to seeing extraordinary and impossible things. He had just come from a touring zoological exhibition featuring a rare alien bird who engendered a low-level telepathy in any creature within thirty feet. He had looked across the floor at a curvy redhaired girl and suddenly received an incredibly vivid image of what she wanted to do to him, which he had felt immediately shameful about. All the past weeks, the travel away from Earth and his immersion in the knowledge of the universe, had left him totally bewildered at the physical possibilities of the world around him. But somehow finding another woman in Kayleigh's bed was more impossible than any of this.

There were a lot of shocks to process. The shock of Kayleigh with a girl, the shock of that girl being his friendly neighbour Caroline, and the mixture of lust and mortification that he had never experienced before. But most of all, Kayleigh was cheating on him. Kayleigh, the girl he knew for a fact he was going to marry, the girl he had unknowingly waited all his life for. This was something that didn't, could not happen.

Kayleigh looked at him, her alarmed eyes as wide as dinner plates. Caroline still had her head buried in his girlfriend's lap. Kayleigh was fumbling around for a sheet, as if that would disguise anything. He had seen Kayleigh crying out her release, enraptured in pleasure, making the same noises and screams that she had when thrusting up around his cock. He had seen Caroline's blonde hair scattered around Kayleigh's thighs, girlcum sticking the glimmering strands to skin. He had heard, above Kayleigh's pornographic moans, the eager slurping and smacking of Caroline's lips pressed against that sacred part of Kayleigh that Tom thought belonged only to him.

There were a lot of emotions a man was expected to feel in this situation. Rage, for sure. Sadness, probably. But Tom was long out of practice with these feelings, and the sting of betrayal was completely knew to him. He had lived a charmed life, all things considered, making the agony all the deeper for its freshness. So the same bewildered wonder he had been experiencing ever since that night with the UFO took over Tom.

"Kayleigh. Why are you ... why are you doing this?" It was an honest question, asked in the spirit of scientific enquiry.

Caroline turned over, with a grin on her face – that same playful grin he had once found so endearing but now seemed an instrument of torture. "Oh hey Tom. You want to join in?" That was it for her – no sense of shame, just animal lust. Maybe she wasn't really human anymore. How could she be, with the way she went along with that monster?

"Why are you doing this to me?" Tom found himself saying.

Kayleigh was crying, another oddity. He should be the one crying. "Tom, I ... I fucked up. I fucked up a lot."

"But why?" Tom said, still more curious than demanding. "How?"

Kayleigh let out a sigh that seemed to go on forever. "Tom, go downstairs. I'll get dressed and come down and explain things to me."

It was the domestic tone of command that he had become accustomed to – but all of a sudden, its authority was absent. "No," Tom said. "Talk to me now. Right away."

Caroline frowned like she had just tasted something sour. "Tommy, why do you have to be a spoilsport? We were just having fun. Believe me, nobody got hurt."

It had to be her fault. And then came the anger, late to the party but coming in force. Tom grabbed Caroline by her naked shoulder and whirled her around until her face was inches from his. "Leave, you-- you slut!" The word was unfamiliar and uncomfortable on his tongue. Caroline recoiled, clutching her shoulder. She darted into the thin gap between Tom and the doorway and hurried down the stairs. She left her clothing behind, bright stains on the hardwood floor. Tom imagined Caroline running through the square nude, and thought that it was only appropriate for the whole floor to see her and know her shame.

Kayleigh stood in front of him now, mustering a little bit of fury. "Tom – I've never seen you like this. You shouldn't have said that to Caroline. She was only trying to--"

"To what? Fuck you? Or was she just looking for a quarter you lost in your cunt?"

Kayleigh flinched. "I'm sorry. But at least she..."

"She wasn't the first, was she Kayleigh? How many women have you fucked?"

Kayleigh tore away. She was beginning to cry, and some small time-lagged part of Todd felt a burning need to comfort her. "She was the first woman, but ... there were men. Before that. Richard, I ... back on Earth, we just started doing it at a conference. It just felt so easy. No one was getting hurt. And the guy on that spaceship..."

"Jesus Christ, Kayleigh." Tom should have known. All those late nights, working at the lab with Richard, Richard, always Richard. He was the consummate cuckold, sitting at home watching TV, thinking about his girlfriend's genius and her immense future while meanwhile she was riding some sleazy professor's cock. How many months had that gone on? How many years?

Kayleigh's eyes were bubbling up with tears, and her red chest was heaving as she struggled to take breaths. She was gulping oxygen like someone who had just been saved from drowning. Tom had never thought her naked body could look so unerotic, but there it was, a shrivelled and pathetic thing stewed in the juices of its own sin.

"You stupid whore," Tom said. They were someone else's words for someone else's situation. His wrists trembled. He shouldn't slap her. He shouldn't give her the satisfaction of being the victim.

Kayleigh looked up at him. There was a kind of sad contempt in her eyes, but it might have just been Tom's reflection. "I think I should leave," Kayleigh mumbled."

"Then do it," Tom said. "And never come back."

Kayleigh's appointed house, nearly identical to Tom's, was virtually untouched. She had spent most of her night's at Tom's, and most of her days at Caroline's. The air was stale, the furniture in undisturbed showroom condition. She felt like smashing all of it, but she doubted she had the strength.

She was furious, but not at anyone – it was more of a roiling, directionless fury slowly burning up her insides. She guessed she was mad at herself, for succumbing to temptation over and over again, until the point where she was reckless enough to cheat on Tom in his own bed. But even this seemed to be an evasion – she had not succumbed to anything. She had acted, cheating on Tom, betraying the one man who had ever loved her with all his heart.

But maybe she was mad at Tom a little bit too. He had been like a dog, always staring at her with those lost, lovesick eyes. Easy to love, with his uncomplicated devotion, but also impossible to respect. And hadn't he checked out of the relationship long before she had, with his sci-fi tapes and XP system? If he wasn't such a loser, he probably would have done the same things she had. What cause did he have to be so self-righteous?

For a brief moment Kayleigh considered going back to Tom's house and telling him these things, but she knew that her sentiments would dissolve on her tongue and she would just stand there doe-eyed as he berated her once again. How could he talk to her like that and use such vile slurs? No, it was best to stay away from Tom, at least for now. Maybe forever. The abduction had made them dependent on each other, their only social links within a couple dozen light-years, but strangely it had also given them the tools to drift further apart than ever.

So she wasn't going to see Tom. Now what?

Without Tom, without Caroline and without the endless grind of lab work and graduate study, Kayleigh really had no idea what to do with herself. She wasn't like Tom, who had a lot of hobbies and interests and an indelible curiosity that fuelled them. She just did what was put in front of her, with all the focus of a power drill. And ever since that fateful night, there had been nothing in front of her.

Kayleigh decided to go outside. The sun was shining, as it always did in Madrid's perpetually perfect spring day. The grass was the kind of verdant green you only saw in lawn-care commercials. But it all seemed equally miserable to Kayleigh.

She went over to Richard's house, but of course he wasn't there. Kayleigh felt bad for her earlier conversation with him. Who was she to try and visit shame on someone for not resisting their inner vices? She hoped that Richard wouldn't avoid her. She didn't really want a relationship with him, but at least now they would be free to fuck.

There she went again. Such a whore.

No, not a whore. A whore got paid. She was nothing more than a common gutter slut.

So Kayleigh went back to her stoop. She couldn't face the world, especially not the strange alien world that awaited her outside of this enclave of artificial normality. There were days when she enjoyed going out and having her mind boggled by the strangeness, but today she couldn't take it.

And then there was Caroline, her blonde hair still shining with an apparently supernatural radiance. She didn't seem to be at all diminished by Tom's words, let alone feeling lost and unmoored like Kayleigh was. Maybe she was just repressing it, or maybe she was actually one of those emotionally invincible people that were so amazing and so irritating. She had put on another set of clothes, a blue blouse and a peasant skirt, and didn't seem at all perturbed that the entire floor could have seen her walking naked from one home to the next.

Caroline sat down next to Kayleigh on the stoop. "How are you feeling?"

Kayleigh looked up and flicked a strand of chestnut hair out of her face. "Honestly? Like a piece of shit."

Caroline gave Kayleigh a pat on the back. "You're not a piece of shit, Kay. You're just ... a little more advanced than Tom is right now."

"Advanced? In what, cheating?"

"I know you have that kind of monogamous morality on Earth," said Caroline. "But once you get out here, you start learning about how different things are around the galaxy. There are species that live in triads or quads or who have completely detached sex from social bonding. There are asexual creatures that look down on all of us as totally disgusting. Christ on a cracker, there's a species from Kethali-7 that has eight genders, and they're all involved in the mating process somehow. When you start hearing about stuff like that – well, one man and one woman just seems a bit arbitrary. At least, that's what I think. But you know, I might just be an idiot."

Despite what had just happened, Caroline looked awfully serene. Kayleigh wondered how it was possible for her to be so unabashed about her promiscuity, even when caught in the act. Every time Kayleigh had cheated, it had felt like an additional weight tying her down to some evil identity at her core. But Caroline seemed to almost be floating.

"Stupid me," Caroline said. "I don't mean to press anything on you. I mean, a lot of humans that get abducted stick to the whole monogamous marriage routine, and it seems to work for them. But I don't think I could ever do that."

"What about Esh?" Kayleigh said. "Is he okay with you sleeping around?"

"Esh's species has four females to every male," said Caroline. "The harem is to them what marriage is to humans. Honestly, I think he has more problems adjusting to living with only one woman than he does to me seeing other people. But hey, enough about my personal problems."

At that moment, Caroline struck Kayleigh as not a friend or even a lover but a teacher, gently guiding Kayleigh into a world that she had been too afraid to explore on her own. How far away she was from the bubbly airhead that Kayleigh had initially taken her to be. Kayleigh didn't want to let her go.

"What if I was number two?"

"What?" Caroline said.

"In Esh's harem. I mean, if he expects to mate with multiple women ... I mean, I wouldn't mind being one of those women. If you'll have me."

Caroline took a moment to process it, and then beamed ear to ear. "Oh my god, that would be amazing. You're so cool, Kayleigh!"

Kayleigh felt the same flutter of joy she had whenever a teacher or professor had recognized her. The rational voice in the back of her mind was telling her that she had just committed to something without really giving it enough thought, but the idea of staying with Caroline and Esh made Kayleigh so happy she managed to shut out the rational side of her brain, which was already rusty and weakened from all of these thoroughly illogical events.

"Do you think Esh would be okay with it?"

"To be honest, I think he still finds it weird to only have one female around here." Caroline giggled. "And he certainly loved it when you, well, gave him a hand the other day. But hey – I just got an idea! If you really want to sell him on the idea, well..."

The two girls soon were wrapped up in a giggling web of planning and anticipation, and the earlier trauma was forgotten. Well, not forgotten – it was still eating away at the fringes of Kayleigh's consciousness. Maybe Caroline's too, but who could tell under that industrial-strength smile? But for a moment, her guilt and sorrow was dispelled, and that was all that mattered.

Kayleigh was laying on Caroline's bed in her bra and panties, staring up at its impossible ceiling. Despite seeming no taller than any of the other houses from the inside, Caroline's bedroom stretched up thirty or forty feet into a cave-like aviary. Small birds flitted around up high, but the main occupant was absent. A human-sized metal bar hung from the roof, obviously Esh's perch.

"Three words," Kayleigh had said when she first came in. "How. The. Hell?"

"It's bigger on the inside," Caroline said, with a secretive wag of her finger. "I don't quite understand the technology myself – just one of the wonderful things the Erusmi gave us. Esh needs some space to fly, and even Madrid has a pretty low-hanging ceiling. Plus, it's really pretty!"

The plan was to greet Esh in their underwear and seduce him into a wild afternoon. The problem was, they had shed their clothes and Esh still hadn't returned home from whatever he had been doing. Now Caroline was bent over a mirror, applying makeup. Kayleigh hadn't owned lipstick since high school, let alone any of the powders and creams that Caroline was applying. Probably some of them were alien in origin, but they looked just like – blush? Blush was a thing, right?

Caroline had also stripped down and changed into a very sexy pair of silver lingerie. Kayleigh felt a little frumpy in comparison, with her hair hanging in clumps and her plain sports bra doing nothing to enhance her naked body. The bubbly blonde, idly humming as she applied eyeshadow, was the image of seduction – and she had that girl-next-door air which could briefly convince you that she didn't even know how sexy she was.

Kayleigh crawled across the king-sized bed. "Caroline, you look beautiful already. I don't think any of that crap is going to make a difference."

"It's not crap!" Caroline said, briefly offended. But she was sunny soon enough. "You should give it a try. Not because you're ugly, or anything – I mean, wow, you're drop dead gorgeous no matter what you wear. But I like to put in a little extra effort for Esh. And for myself. Nothing like looking your best to perk up a girl's mood."

Maybe this was the secret to Caroline's overflowing happiness. Kayleigh got off the bed and cautiously inched closer to the mirror. She really did look plain in comparison. She wondered if Esh would tire of her, the same way Tom had. And just like that, the misery was starting to seep in.

Caroline seemed to sense this, and pulled Kayleigh in for a big hug. "Don't feel bad, sweetie. Are we going too fast?"

"No, no ... it's fine." Kayleigh was pretty sure that if she stopped to think about what was happening, she would never recover. "Can you ... put some of that on me?"

Caroline beamed. "Of course. Just sit down and stare into the mirror."

As usual, Kayleigh found it difficult to face herself in the mirror for a sustained amount of time. She had always hated haircuts for this exact reason. With nothing else to look out, she began picking out every flaw in her face, and then her body. But this time Caroline's hands were wrapped around her neck, brushing Kayleigh's long brown hair out of her face and appreciatively running a hand along her cheekbone.

Caroline picked out a purplish lipstick colour, a little darker than the one she wore herself. She stood behind Kayleigh and began to apply it. It was strangely intimate, perhaps more so than the sapphic caresses they had shared earlier. Kayleigh practically shivered when the moist makeup touched her lips, causing the stick to jerk a bit. "Try to stay still," Caroline said.

It was a very simple process, in theory, but Caroline took an artist's care. As she finished rimming Kayleigh's mouth, the blonde leaned down and kissed her friend on her bare shoulder. Kayleigh trembled as she felt Caroline's juicy lips leaving their mark on her skin. How was she supposed to not move when Caroline did things like that?

A shadow fell across the two women. Kayleigh looked up to find Esh filling the doorway. She couldn't take in his huge, silent presence all at once, and restricted herself to glimpses of his folded wings or his inscrutable face. Would he even fit through the door? How had she not heard him come in?

"Honey, Kayleigh is going to stay here for a little while," Caroline said. "Is that okay with you?"

Esh's big frame shuffled, and then nodded.

"She's going to share our bed too," Caroline said. It was a statement of fact, quiet but forceful.

And then Esh had moved quickly, and he was standing right next to Kayleigh. She felt her mouth going dry. What was his reaction? Was he going to respond violently? A pulse of adrenaline and fear ran through Kayleigh as Esh grabbed her with one of his skinny arms and pulled her up to her feet. And then he leaned down and kissed her.

It was obviously not a natural gesture for Esh's species. He had a beak lacking tongue or teeth, and the feeling of that hard orifice prying open her mouth was more awkward than sensual. But there was love in the gesture, and a kind of overflowing clumsy desire to make her feel welcome.

Caroline put a hand on Kayleigh's shoulder, and another on Esh's. "Come on, you two. Let's go to bed."

Kayleigh crawled into bed alongside Caroline. She made sure to push her ass, struggling with a taut pair of black lace panties, into the air – a sight that no man had thus far been able to resist. Esh was a different species than the men Kayleigh was used to, but he appeared to have the same lusts. Kayleigh felt his short fingers taking hold of her asscheeks and Esh's immense presence behind her. His toga-like clothing was already heavily tented, and that clothed hardness was right against the back of her thigh.

And then there was Caroline, expertly slithering underneath Kayleigh's body. Before Kayleigh knew what was happening she was locked in a French kiss with the other woman. Caroline writhed against her as their tongues darted against each other. Esh was there too, against Kayleigh's back, cock between her slick thighs. The three of them were already lost in a kind of blissful, unhurried grinding. It felt so strange, being almost crushed between two different textures – the soft girlish skin of Caroline and the harsh feathers of Esh.

Straps and bindings were no match for their ardour, and clothes soon started slipping off of their own accord. Kayleigh's panties slipped off her ass, perhaps with a helping hand somewhere in there. Caroline's cherry red bra had come undone, and Kayleigh whisked it aside with one strong motion. She stopped to wonder how Caroline had acquired the absolute perfect tits, and then could not resist taking one of those marvels into her mouth. Kayleigh attacked the breast fanatically with tongue, lips, and just a little bit of teeth. Caroline moaned softly, and then let out a surprised yelp of intense pleasure.

Kayleigh slipped two fingers down past the waistband of Caroline's underwear and began rubbing them vigorously up and down the length of the blonde's slit. Caroline mewed and writhed under the pressure, and Kayleigh felt vindicated. If there was one thing she knew, it was how to get someone off – and with another woman, she could apply the same touches and techniques she had discovered in her own bed in the hushed midnight hours so long ago.

Abruptly Caroline stopped and, with an almost judo-like move, put Kayleigh on her back. "That feels great, honey, but this isn't about me. Tonight is about you. And maybe Esh a little. Although there's nothing little about him, wouldn't you say?" Esh had lost his bindings somewhere, and his big inhuman cock stood proud. Once again Kayleigh responded to the huge instrument with a mix of awe, lust, and fear. How could that thing possibly fit inside of her?

Her bra had vanished at some point, and now both Caroline and Esh were all over Kayleigh's naked body. Kayleigh kicked and giggled as she felt their kisses, licks, and touches. Esh's feathers were especially ticklish. But soon enough the laughs turned to moans, and a luxuriant pleasure overtook her.