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Arranged marriage was archaic, but it was preferable to interstellar war.
Or so Lucia kept telling herself as she waited in the embassy meeting room for the ambassador to Eos'ak to appear. The place was the pinnacle of turn-of-the-century Terran interior design, popular about two decades ago, but horribly dated now. Sleek white walls and chrome tables, with a single, lonely piece of art hanging at the far end of the room—a black and white holo of a dark vase on a light table, slightly off center. Maybe it was meant to bring personality to the room? If so, it failed.
Not that it mattered. But being judgmental about the limited view was preferable to dwelling on the circumstances that had brought her to the embassy.
She still wasn't sure exactly what crime the Terran diplomats had committed—the reports had been incomplete, the ambassador harried, and the time for fixing the mistake limited—but the Eos'aa took serious offense to it. Lucia had the vague idea the Terrans had insulted the honor of the Eos'aa royals somehow. Maybe by implying that their only interest in Terra was profit, and not scientific interest? That seemed to be the gist of the reports. Well, Lucia would be offended too, but she didn't think that was enough to threaten to blow up an entire star system. She couldn't fathom the hubris that would lead a person to think so.
At least the Eos'aa clearly valued scientific exploration. She couldn't imagine any other reason why they would have chosen a geologist to marry into their royal family, unless the mere fact that she was the only female around at the time who hadn't given grievous insult to the Eos'aa was reason enough. She supposed it could be; it wasn't like humanity knew much about the Eos'aa culture. They could be wrong about the whole marriage thing in the first place.
Now that was an intriguing thought: maybe there was a mistranslation somewhere along the way, and she didn't need to marry the princess of Eos'ak after all. Maybe they just wanted a different representative of Terra to deal with. Maybe—
"Dr. Lucia Moss?"
Lucia jumped, then gritted her teeth. So much for not dwelling on the situation. She forced a smile onto her face, and turned to face the ambassador.
Stephen Cabrera had exhaustion written all over him. Dark circles under his eyes, ashy skin, a general aura of pain and suffering. He gave her a grimace that probably matched her own smile.
"Hello," he said. "I'm Stephen Cabrera—I think we've met before."
"Yeah, at the beginning of all—this," Lucia said, with a limp wave of her hand to encompass this. "What's the verdict?"
"Why don't you take a seat?"
Lucia glanced at the steel chairs, bereft of padding, and sighed. She sat anyway. Cabrera took a seat across from her and folded his hands on the table.
"The verdict is marriage," he said, shaping the word as if it were a death sentence, which Lucia thought was a little dramatic. "The Eos'aa demanded blood in return for the insult we offered them." His tone indicated exactly how he felt about the veracity of the insult. "They said it could be given in two ways. A willing execution, in the most literal interpretation, or by exchanging bloodline for bloodline—intermarriage to seal an alliance, basically."
"Basically," Lucia repeated. Her heart pounded in her ears. "So the execution has to be a willing one. What about the marriage?"
"Well, of course," he said, baffled. "We won't push you into this against your will. Only—"
"Only?" she prompted after a minute had passed.
"The princess took a liking to you," he admitted. "She's no small fry scientist herself, apparently, and wants a wife who can keep up with her intellect. And she liked your hair."
Lucia's hand fluttered up to her mass of curls. The Eos'aa were hairless as a rule, although there were a few with frond-like facial hair that seemed not to be dictated by gender. She supposed she could see the novelty there.
"And if I don't want to do it?" she asked, deliberately testing the limits of his patience.
"I highly suggest that you do."
So they wouldn't push her into it against her will. They'd only highly suggest it. How charming.
But if the princess was a scientist, too….Well. There were worse ways to study a species than up close and personal. If they were even physically compatible. She entertained the notion of asking Cabrera that, then dismissed it.
And the princess liked her.
"I want to meet her," Lucia decided. "The princess. Before I choose what to do."
The ambassador's knuckles grew white as he clenched his hands together.
"I'm afraid we're on a tight schedule," he said, voice gone extra-calm. "The Eos'aa want a response by tomorrow evening."
"So we'll have a lunch date," Lucia said. "It's simple. I deserve to meet the person I could be marrying, don't I?"
She didn't know why this was such an absurd request, but apparently it was. Cabrera said through gritted teeth, "I'll arrange it with the Eos'aa embassy."
"Thank you," Lucia said, and waited for the ambassador to sweep out of the room, as politicians seemed to enjoy doing, before leaving the embassy and making her way to her ship. She had notes to look over.
A lunch date with the princess was not exactly as simple as Lucia had hoped.
Apparently, the Eos'aa didn't really have casual gatherings, especially not when the royals were involved. Lucia supposed she should have expected that. She didn't find it an excuse for the outfit the diplomatic consultant had chosen for her, however.
"This entire thing is made of rocks," she said, staring in disbelief at the dress that hung on a clothing rack before her, awaiting its wearer.
"It's not just diamond and ruby," the couturier said cheerfully, and parted the strands of gems to reveal a silky fabric of such a deep gold it looked like molten metal. "See? There'll be a barrier between you and the stones at all times."
"Rocks," Lucia said again, still skeptical. "And a little too feminine for me."
Lucia paid little attention to the clothes she wore, besides making sure they were well-made, but when she had to attend fancy parties, she usually wore suits. Still, she had to admit the dress was beautiful: hundreds of brilliant diamonds and deep crimson rubies sewn in hypnotic spirals along a close-fitting column of gold silk. The fabric was strapless and low-cut, with strings of gems looped around the neckline, presumably to hold the thing up. Still, Lucia couldn't quite imagine herself in it.
"The Eos'aa don't gender clothing like we do," the couturier said with a shrug. "And I was told to dress you like one. We can remove the fabric, if you want — that'd be closer to their customs anyway."
"No, no, that's fine," Lucia said hastily. She couldn't imagine how uncomfortable all those stones would be on bare skin. "I'll wear the dress."
Her voice was still tinged with dislike, though she tried not to be pouty. It wasn't the couturier's fault that her client was picky.
"Hmm," the couturier said contemplatively, picking up on her disapproval, and circled Lucia like a lion around a gazelle. "I have an idea. It's a little untraditional, but—yes, that'll work. That'll work."
"Huh?" Lucia asked eloquently.
That was how she found herself seated at a table in an Eos'aa restaurant, off the space station for the first time in days, wearing tight silken pants and a matching shirt—more like a bra, really. She was draped in jewels like a maharaja, and running over all the rules of etiquette she and the diplomatic team had discussed in her head.
"As the lower-ranking person at this meal, you're going to have to do all the physical labor. That includes serving food and water, pulling out her chair, and feeding her from your own cutlery," the aide had said, swiping through files on her tablet as they bounced in the low-g of Eos'ak. "And don't forget the ritual greeting! That is very important. The Eos'aa are terribly offended if you mess it up."
She'd paused outside the restaurant and gave Lucia a dubious look.
"Good luck," she said, and left her to it.
Lucia didn't have to wait long; in a handful of minutes, the princess entered the restaurant, bounding gracefully in the manner of one accustomed to low-g—although Lucia supposed it wasn't low-g for a native of Eos'ak. If she planned on being the princess' wife, she would have to readjust her thinking. She couldn't be as Terran as she was used to.
Keeping that in mind, Lucia stood as the princess approached the table. The alien was dressed much like Lucia was, clad in metal and gemstones, but without the layer of fabric underneath; her violet skin with its blue markings gleamed under the gold and emerald strands. Humanoid, though not mammalian, she was taller than Lucia by about a meter, lanky and long-limbed—another byproduct of living in low-g—with large black eyes, oddly human except for their lack of discernible pupil or iris, and a wide mouth that Lucia knew hid fangs. A prickle ran down Lucia's spine; she wasn't sure if it was good or bad.
"Greetings to you as we stand under the twin suns," she said politely, with the exact intonation the etiquette team had insisted upon, and bowed.
"May their light guide you," the princess responded. Her English was oddly accented, with hissing sibilants and over-emphasized vowels, but still perfectly intelligible. Lucia was glad for that; the Eos'aa language was nearly impossible for humans to pronounce, and conversations held through the translator droid usually had so much lag there was no point in talking at all.
The princess was hovering at the table, looking at Lucia calmly. Belatedly, Lucia remembered she was meant to pull out her chair. She scrambled to the other side—as gracefully than could be expected, really—and yanked out the chair.
"My apologies," she said formally. "I—I'm a geologist, so I haven't had the chance to study your culture as in-depth as I probably should have."
To her surprise, the princess seemed to relax minutely. The blue patterns on her violet skin shifted, dripping from a stern band around her forehead to a splash of color around her throat like raindrops on glass.
"It is quite fine," she said. "I appreciate it. The formalities do get so tedious, do they not?"
Lucia felt tension in her jaw she hadn't even realized was there dissipate. Maybe they would be friends after all.
"They really do," she said. "I'm Lucia."
"Aeli," the princess said. "And yes, you may call me that." A flash of a fanged smile. "I do not stand on ceremony with my future wife."
Lucia, who had been raising a goblet of Eos'aa wine to her lips, jerked in surprise and nearly sloshed it out of her cup.
"Um," she said coherently. "I thought we were getting to know each other before any decisions were made."
"I have already made my decision," the princess—Aeli— said. Her voice seemed to have very little fluctuation in tone. Lucia, who was only average when it came to interpreting human speech, despaired.
"Have you?" Lucia asked, and hoped Aeli would interpret that as a question. She clearly had a better grasp of English than Lucia did of the Eos'aa language, because she replied,
"I have." A pause as she took a sip of her own wine. "I like the way you smell. It means we will be well-matched."
She laughed at the expression on Lucia's face. "I understand your species does not have pheromones like the Eos'aa do, so you do not yet understand. But you will."
"Huh. So these pheromones affect humans?" Lucia asked, resorting to scientific curiosity to hide how off-balance she felt. "I wouldn't have thought our species were similar enough for that."
Lucia was treated to a slow, fanged smile. She had a brief, vivid flash of what those teeth could do to her body if applied gently, and shivered.
"You will not be the first human to mate with an Eos'aa," Aeli said. "Only the first to marry one." She gestured at Lucia, encompassing her entire body in the motion. "You see? You are already affected. You understand what it is to be— "
A pause as Aeli struggled to translate the word.
"The one who receives," she said finally. "I am the one who gives. Do you understand?"
Lucia was already imagining exactly what this giving and receiving consisted of in extreme detail.
"I understand," she said, mouth dry. "These pheromones—how much are they going to alter my perception of reality?"
Am I going to make decisions I wouldn't make otherwise? is what she really meant, and Aeli seemed to understand that.
"They won't," she said kindly, and leaned toward Lucia. The strands of jewels draped around her figure chimed when she moved; apparently it wasn't as simple an outfit as it appeared. "You have to accept them before they can sweep you away."
Lucia considered this for a moment, but truthfully, she had made her decision the moment Aeli had walked into the restaurant.
"I accept," she said softly, and Aeli brightened, the blue markings swirling in happy spirals on her skin.
"Wonderful," she said. "Shall we go to the mating chamber?"
"Wait, what—I— isn't there some ceremony to complete?" Lucia asked, stumbling over her words. "Some, I don't know, ritual? With friends, family, that sort of thing?"
"The forms will be processed later," Aeli said tranquilly. "There will be a party, of course, held a week after the wedding night. But what matters to the Eos'aa is not the ceremony."
She paused and glanced at Lucia out of the corner of her dark eye. "Do you know what it is?"
"I'm guessing the sex," Lucia said. Her heart was pounding wildly. She had known this was coming from the instant she'd agreed to the marriage; the ambassador hadn't spoken of it in such blunt terms, but his implications were clear enough. And she was a scientist, capable of looking at matters of reproduction—or lack of it, given their species and sex, she supposed—with an unmoved heart.
And yet, she couldn't stop looking at Aeli's long fingers, six on each hand, or thinking about the way her violet skin would feel under Lucia's lips and calloused fingers. She already knew that the Eos'aa were not as delicate as humans. Would it be rough like a shark's hide, or smooth and taut like fine leather? Slippery like a fish? And what vocalizations would Aeli make when Lucia touched her? Would she moan like humans did, or chirp and click, following the musical rhythms of her native language? And when Lucia wanted to pleasure her—what was she shaped like? What would she taste like? Would she find Lucia as beautifully fascinating as Lucia found her?
All these questions in the name of scientific interest, of course.
"Yes," Aeli said in reply, and she trilled the sibilant in a way humans couldn't imitate. "The consummation." Her nictitating membranes slid over her eyes and back in a slow blink and her lips curled, as if basking in a sensual memory. "The—" Here was an Eos'aa word neither of them could quite translate; they turned to the universal translator, which ended up with something like, "—the coming of the seasons. The marking."
"Marking?" Lucia asked, then shook her head. "I'm sorry if I'm being rude—we have so little information on your species' reproductive habits, I'm not sure what you mean."
"I believe you'll learn." And Aeli trailed a slender finger along Lucia's sensitive palm. Her voice was thick with either amusement or irritation; Lucia couldn't tell which. "You'll enjoy it, I promise you."
Lucia glanced down at her hand, imagined those fingers wrapped around her wrists. She gave the princess a weak smile, sick with nerves and arousal. "I can't wait."
"Then we shan't."
Lucia blinked in surprise as Aeli stood, graceful and long-legged. She extended a hand to Lucia.
"I understand you are nervous," she said softly. "You humans are infants on a cosmic scale, and you have barely begun to step outside your solar system." Her smile was fanged, but still somehow gentle. "You have no experience with the reproductive habits of other species." Her voice as she quoted Lucia was gently mocking, though not enough for it to truly sting.
"I, however, do," she concluded. "I will guide you, Lucia. Do not fear."
Lucia took her hand.
Later, Lucia would investigate the biology behind what she experienced in the mating chamber. In the moment, she was too absorbed in Aeli, Aeli and the way she'd started to look at Lucia as if she were a juicy peach waiting to be bitten.
"It smells—strange in here," Lucia said, and it did, redolent of musk and fresh-cut flowers. "Is that the pheromones you were talking about earlier?"
Aeli's huge dark eyes seemed to glow in the light of the twin suns filtering in from above. The mating chamber was high-ceilinged but small, draped in tapestries of deep blue and black embroidery in patterns unfamiliar to Lucia, the floor cushioned and silken. Aeli's violet skin shone against the dark walls.
"Yes," she whispered, hissing the sibilant, and began to circle Lucia. Almost predatory. Lucia—Lucia liked it. "Do you enjoy it?"
Lucia closed her eyes and breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, letting the musk saturate her lungs. A shiver ran through her body, prickling her hair, her nipples growing taut under the silky gold fabric of her shirt. The more she breathed, the more aware she become—aware of the faint shift of air in the room brushing across her skin, her blood pulsing in her throat and her fingertips and between her legs, the way her eyes darted under their lids as she unconsciously tracked Aeli around the room, as if Lucia had become hyper-tuned to her movements. And why not? Aeli was important; Aeli was—would be—her wife. Her mate.
Lucia moaned quietly as the thought flitted through her mind and opened her eyes. Aeli was standing before her, one hand outstretched; she was the most exquisite thing Lucia had seen in her life.
"Come to me," Aeli said, and Lucia went.
The Eos'aa, as it turned out, kissed much like humans, lips and tongue and teeth together, though Aeli was gentler than Lucia was accustomed to, keeping Lucia's tender human lips away from her fangs.
"They will cut you," she explained when Lucia whined about it.
"I wouldn't mind," Lucia protested, and Aeli laughed and curled her hand around the nape of Lucia's neck. Lucia shivered hard and nearly went limp in Aeli's arms.
"I know," Aeli said, running her nails down Lucia's back. The strands of gemstones rattled. "Let us get this off you."
Lucia shed the outfit gladly, diamonds and silk falling in a pool at her feet, and felt no self-consciousness or embarrassment standing naked in front of Aeli, who surveyed her body as if she were more precious than the stones of her costume.
"Fascinating," Aeli whispered. Lucia remembered, belatedly, that Aeli was a scientist, too. She touched Lucia with both reverence and scientific curiosity, fingers brushing lightly across her skin. She trailed them down Lucia's face and along her neck, traced the curve of her clavicle, cupped her breasts gently in her hands as if testing their weight and squeezed lightly.
"Look at you," she marveled. "A mammal. I've never mated with a mammal before. You are beautiful, Lucia, did you know?"
"Um," Lucia said intelligently, then, as Aeli rubbed her thumbs across her nipples, "Oh."
"I see," said Aeli, and eased Lucia to the floor before straddling her and taking her nipple in her mouth, lapping and sucking at it, her teeth oh-so-lightly pricking the tender flesh. Lucia squirmed under her, gasping. The pulse between her legs was growing unbearable; she was wetter than she'd been in her life, wet enough to drip down her thighs, and she ached, craved something to fill her up—and now she was thinking about what Aeli might be able to do to fill her up, what exactly she had meant by "the one who gives."
"Lean back," Aeli ordered. Drunk on her scent and dizzy with lust, Lucia obeyed. Aeli knelt between her legs and parted them, baring Lucia to the air.
"Like a flower," she murmured. "We are not so different after all."
And she put her head between Lucia's thighs and licked, lapping up her wetness, exploring each delicate fold with her tongue, dancing circles around her clit. She hummed with pleasure and Lucia shuddered at the vibrations, back arching, a moan slipping between her lips.
"Like that," she gasped, "if you—please just keep going like that, I—"
Aeli made a noise of assent and did precisely what Lucia had asked, licking and sucking and nuzzling against the bud of her clit, all while tension and heat built steadily in Lucia's stomach. Then, right before Lucia came—
Aeli pulled away.
Lucia made a garbled, distressed sound and reached for her. Aeli laughed, a little hoarsely.
"It is tradition to wait until the marking for the climax," she said, rather primly, considering the situation. "We will reach it together."
"Then take off your clothes and fucking mark me," Lucia snarled. But once Aeli had shed her strings of jewels and reclined on the floor next to her, Lucia found herself quite distracted.
Aeli's skin, Lucia discovered, was like neither shark's hide nor leather; it was an indescribable texture, soft as flower petals to the touch but tough and ribbed underneath that initial layer of petal skin. Lucia explored it with the gentle pads of her fingers and the delicate touch of her lips, tracing circles and sine waves on Aeli's body until she writhed and sighed.
"Can I?" Lucia asked, sliding her hands up Aeli's thighs. She felt slightly ridiculous asking, but—the Eos'aa were so concerned with tradition—
"Please," Aeli gasped, and opened her legs.
She was rather like a flower, Lucia supposed, though the dozens of small, waving blue tendrils blooming between her thighs put her more in mind of a sea anemone than anything. Lucia brushed her fingers gently across the fronds—they were covered with a sticky fluid that clung to her fingers, and tasted sweet when she licked it off—and Aeli made a hoarse clicking noise, speaking her native tongue. Lucia didn't need the translator to know what to do. She glided her fingers over the tendrils again, slower this time, letting them wrap around her fingers like little hooks, and rubbed them lightly. Aeli twitched hard and a rush of fluid came from somewhere within the tendrils. Lucia had to know, had to taste it again. Bowing her head, she parted the tendrils with her tongue and lapped at the center, where a swollen nub awaited her.
Then it moved.
Aeli growled when Lucia instinctively jerked away and dug her fingers into her scalp, holding her between Aeli's legs. With a slick, wet noise, a long, thick tentacle unsheathed itself from the nest of tendrils and writhed along Lucia's cheek, leaving streaks of clear fluid on her face. Lucia's mouth flooded with saliva; she parted her lips and leaned forward, taking it in her mouth.
Aeli uttered a startled oath when the tentacle slid past Lucia's lips, and wrapped her fingers in Lucia's hair. In Lucia's mouth, the tentacle spasmed and curled, coated in more of that hot, sweet liquid Lucia so craved. She suckled on it, worked her tongue around it, made Aeli cry out again in that hissing, clicking language Lucia was already starting to love.
"Enough," Aeli rasped finally, and shoved Lucia onto her back, swiftly moving between her legs. "I can wait no longer—"
This close, the musk-and-flowers scent of her was overpowering; Lucia's eyes rolled back in her head as she inhaled and dropped further into the strange headspace empty of everything but lust and need that Aeli's pheromones ignited within her. Between her legs, Lucia felt the tentacle wriggle against her sex, the tendrils fluttering teasingly at her clit.
"Please, I need—" Lucia whimpered, arching her hips against Aeli's, and Aeli hissed and the tentacle slid inside Lucia, right where she needed it most—
God, it was so different from anything else she'd felt, hotter to the touch, stickier, squirming inside her, and the tendrils—the tendrils writhed and looped around her clit, rubbing against her lips and even further down, spreading that fluid everywhere and setting her aflame—but she couldn't think about that with the tentacle inside her, so thick, pulsing in quick pace with Aeli's heartbeat, pressing down right where she needed it most, filling her—
Lucia became aware that she was keening softly, clinging to Aeli, scratching at her shoulders and back as she arched and bucked underneath her. Aeli was panting, nails digging like claws into Lucia's hips.
"It is time," she said, then something inaudible in her native language. "Lucia—the marking—"
She lunged forward, the light weight of her body pressing Lucia to the floor, nuzzled against Lucia's neck, and bit, just as the tentacle throbbed deep within her and the tendrils flickered faster—
Lucia let out a sob, clutched Aeli closer, and exploded.
In the bathroom of Aeli's private quarters, Lucia examined the bite mark Aeli had left on her neck. She had injected some kind of blue dye with her fangs, leaving a cerulean blossom where the fangs had punctured the skin; it was already mostly healed, apparently due to some inherent quality in Eos'aa saliva during the coming of the seasons. It marked her not just as Aeli's wife, but as the one who received. Lucia found she liked being marked that way.
"Congratulations," she said. "It looks like we averted an interstellar crisis."
Aeli, who was reclining on the lounge, slowly slid open her eyelids and gazed up at Lucia with a faint smile.
"So we did," she agreed. "A crisis that should not have been in the first place."
She sat up suddenly, taking an imperious pose. "When I am queen, we will do away with laws that dictate such an absurd overreaction to an ignorant insult."
"Well, it's not all bad," Lucia reflected. "After all, without the crisis, I would never have met you."
Aeli smiled at her, and in that smile was a promise; the sweet musk of her pheromones suddenly made itself known. "And we could not have that."
She pounced, pinning Lucia against the bathroom counter—though Lucia was stronger, she was the one who received, and Aeli the one who gave—and mouthed at the mark she'd left earlier. The scent of pheromones deepened; Lucia shut her eyes and let her head loll back, giving into the lust.
"Of course not," she murmured. "My wife."