Page 57 of Volunteer 4711

“What’s different from Water people,” I begin, “I have pointed ears that help me dissipate heat. This is why on the Home Planet, you were so much hotter than me.” I say, remembering how she sweat a lot at the farmhouse and how they made her smell even more delectable.

“I was hot,” she confirms.

I continue with my lesson, “I have two penises and two testicles. For much of our history, we participated in massive mating aggregations, so it was advantageous to be flexible about reaching a female’s vagina to assure your genetic material was passed on.”

“Do you use them at the same time?”

“I can,” I say. “We can talk more about that later.”

“I understand,” she replies, and I know she means, ‘I think you’re being rude.’ But I don’t let it stop my presentation.

“My teeth are sharper than yours because we only began being omnivores for fashion a few centuries ago.”

“Is that why you wouldn’t press your lips to mine?” she asks.

“No,” I reply, “I can be careful with my teeth, but my tongue,” I switch to a one-second video of a tongue showing what happens when food or anything foreign touches it, “has spikes that help digest food.”

“You can’t control that?”

“No, and if you put your tongue in my mouth, I might even accidentally poison you. It was a defensive strategy against larger prey in the past. Unlike your Water Planet, we were not the dominant species on our planet. That happened more recently in our evolution,” I explain. “If I bite something my taste buds do not recognize as food, my tongue will secrete a poison.”

“No putting my tongue in your mouth. I got it,” she says, and I can see her mind turning as we hold eye contact.

“Is there something about kissing that is essential to sex for you?” I ask.

“Is that the word in your language, ‘kissing?’”

“Yes,” I reply, realizing there is so much vocabulary around sex and being a wife I will have to teach her. I become aroused by the thought, but I remind myself we must continue with this lesson first.

“Umm,” she begins. “I’ve not thought about it before, but I think there must be a reason why Water people kiss. It feels good. We kiss to know the other person accepts us. And I think we kiss to make sure we want to mate with the male.”

“If I just kiss you, very carefully, with only my lips, would that be satisfactory?” I ask.

“I don’t want to die.”

“The other Water woman did not die, and she got a poison kick straight away.”

My wife looks stricken.

“She did not know, and the other commander did not know what she was doing until it was too late. But their doctor was able to save her. I think she lost a piece of her tongue which had to be regenerated, though.”

“Do not open your mouth then,” my wife says. “You kissed my thighs, though?”

“I did not open my mouth; I just ran my closed lips along your thighs. Didn’t you like that?”

“I did,” she admits. “And now I know why you were so good at blowing on my clit and not touching it with your mouth. But now that I know how dangerous it was…” she trails off.

“That’s the sexy part,” I say, knowing Silver females like that. Knowing if the male opens his mouth, she will be poisoned.

“I don’t know if I would call that sexy.”

“You liked it, didn’t you?” I ask again.

“I said I did, but I’m also scared of danger. I don’t want sex to be too dangerous.”

This is something that had not occurred to me. For me, it’s the fear that makes the sex exciting. That the female is allowing me to touch her so closely, knowing I might harm her. I will have to ease my wife into this part of my culture. “I would never harm you.”

“I know,” she says.

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