Family from Beyond the Stars, Ch. 13 (Patreon)

CH. 13I See Light

NSFW

The frozen tunnels stretched endlessly before Kenny as he ran, stumbling, through the dark.  Behind and all around him, he heard the chittering of the creatures as they pursued him, always just a few steps behind.  His limbs felt half frozen, dragging him down.  He wasn't even sure how he was still moving, other than his overpowering fear.  Everywhere he looked, he saw their glittering eyes, heard the whispering rasp of their breath or that horrible rattling sound they made as they charged.

From the darkness, he saw the glowing, single eye of Darken, watching him struggle on futilely.  He wasn't strong anymore, not healthy, or brave.  His chest wheezed, his vision was starting to fail, and his boots had no purchase on the slippery, slender bridge he was crossing.

In front of him, he saw another horde of the things rushing toward him across the chasm.  They were behind him, all around him, above and below him.  Even as he turned to look at the ceiling, he saw it break and shatter into thousands of pieces.  Lord Darken's monstrous, titanic form reached for him.  His feet slipped off the bridge and he fell.  He screamed and it made no sound, for he was no longer in the cave.

The vacuum of space opened before him, rushing past him as if he had been jettisoned out of an air lock.  The creatures continued to clatter and hiss closer, still maintaining their impossible speed as they now rippled through space after him like demented fish.  Their stalk-mounted multitude of eyes were fixed, still intent on catching up.

A brightness bloomed into view from below and he turned to look.  An open maw, large across as a black hole, had come into being.  Double-rows of glowing, saber teeth framed a bio-luminescent tongue, leading back into a tunnel-like throat that pulsed with that ominous blue light.  He fell into that mouth even as his nightmares converged on him all at once.

Everything was dark.  Up above, he saw the last view of the stars before those rows of teeth snapped shut.  The coldness of the caves, the chill of space, was replaced by a smothering heat.  The hissing and chittering sounds were still closing in all around him, echoing in his ears.  He could see nothing for where they were coming, as all sound around him slowly faded into some kind of strange rumbling.  Arms folded in around him as they caught him at last.  He gave one last sob of terror before the end.

He jerked awake.  When he opened his eyes, it was dark, almost oppressively and the air felt stuffy but comforting at the same time.  Kenny felt warmer than he ever had in his whole life, dispelling the lingering chill of his night terrors. He briefly pondered, laying weightlessly atop something plush and heated, if this was heaven.

No angels as far as he could see, no pearly gates.  Even so, if this was the afterlife, at least he felt truly at peace as he drifted in the gloom.  Anything was better than the terrors he had been trying to outrun.  A flash of them pervaded his sight and he closed his eyes again, trying to blot them out.  Maybe not heaven after all.  That was when he registered what he was still able to hear.

That same deep thrumming was coming from all around him, echoing off the walls, punctuated by the steady beat of a drum pounding from somewhere nearby.  Each double note resounded throughout his whole body.  He was reminded of the bass of a nightclub, the ones that overpowered even the music at times.  Each was a hammer blow to the senses, pulsing from his head to his toes.  And yet, this beat was not angry.  It was gentle, lulling him to ride the waves of that rumbling humming sound that changed pitch and tone every few seconds, almost like the growl of an engine.

Something shifted beneath him.  The plush carpet or bed he lay upon actually moved and something trailed down his spine and then back up.  A rush of air made his hair ruffle slightly from overhead.  The rumble changed tone yet again, falling away to a much lighter vibrato.  Then something up above him opened.

He saw a flash of blue dimly, distorted by a double-row of sharp teeth-like protrusions.  A second later, they lit up as well, almost like glowsticks at a rave, accompanied by a double pair of vents opening below it and the flash of green light.  Warm air basted his face in a rushing gust before the various glowing openings closed.

Directly above them, two glittering orbs swirled into view.  Constellations of foreign stars swirled in inky blackness.  They fixated upon him, forming into thin, vertical lines that stared right into his soul.  A moment later, iridescent, cerulean light bloomed like an exploding star around their twinkling designs, casting their own trails of illumination like the guiding beams of a lighthouse.  Brightly colored stripes of red, orange, pink, and blue lit up all along a dark-furred bulk a second later.  The purring cut off.

Nova stared into his eyes for a long few moments.  He heard a shifting, rustling sound at his side.  A pair of shaking paws lifted, cupping his cheeks and cradling his face between them.  Even a single one could have completely enveloped his skull.  Her eyes swept back and forth across his.

Her muzzle split slowly in a smile that spread across her tigerine face, the points of her saber teeth just barely sticking out over her jawline.  Tears glistened in the corners of her luminescent orbs like diamonds.  He felt a thumb brush his stubbly cheek, her touch light and feathery soft, almost as if she expected him to break at the barest increase of pressure.

Lifting a hand, he brushed the knuckles of her paw, pressing it more firmly against his cheek and curling his fingers around her much more massive ones.  There was so much power behind that paw, and yet she was still so gentle when she wanted to be.  "Hey..." he muttered, voice rough and dry.  "Did it hurt?"  He chuckled softly at her flustered, confused expression.  "When you fell from heaven, Angel?"

Nova's brows furrowed, empathic sensor glittering at her brow.  Then, she understood.  She gave out a great sniffle even as she beamed down at him, chuckling deep in her chest along with him.  Her eyes sparkled with joy even as tears coursed down her furry cheeks, the thin, wet trails lit from underneath by her stripes so that they glowed like the Northern Lights.

Her lower pair of arms curled in around him, the weight he had felt earlier across his spine, even tighter, crushing him softly against her furry bulk.  He even felt forced to give out a grunting exhale. his world briefly becoming a smothering expanse of thick fur, rough metallic scales, and the bruising power of her exuberant embrace before it lifted.  Then his face was abruptly being basted in bursts of long, rapid licking kisses.  He turned his cheek slightly out and away from them but still, they did not relent.

'Home,' Nova crooned as she continued her barrage of licks using just the tip of her tongue.  His cheek, throat, and forehead were liberally coated.  'Kenny.  Home.'  She finally stopped licking at the waving of his hands and his flustered laughing, instead now shoving her huge forehead against his.  The impact, even as soft as it had been, still made him see stars for a second before he blinked hard.  The motor of her purr had started back up again.

The Alien mother proceeded to rub her face all over his, using forehead, soaked cheeks, jowls, even her throat.  He had to wave her away, skin feeling nearly raw from the brushes of her fur, yet he was laughing the whole time.  "Nova," he said when she finally leaned back and up from him.  "I'm fine."

Realization dawned, making him blink even as Nova looked down at him with the utmost concern and worry.

"I'm...fine..." he repeated.  He looked up at her tear-stained face above, his joy upon seeing her fading somewhat.  The events of what he had gone through flashed through his mind all over again and he abruptly began to shudder.  The horrors of the caves, being chased by Lord Darken, and the uncertainty of if she and the cubs were alive and well, fell onto him all at once.  He clung to her for several long seconds, worming his arms around her throat and burying his face in it.  He wasn't fine, and she knew that.

Nova held him in her arms, crooning softly into his ear and stroking his back and hair with a huge paw.  He shuddered there, almost as if the cold of the tunnels still lingered somehow.  He saw the bristling jaws of those insect creatures, heard the rapid clicking of their feet on the slippery lacquer, all of it slowly drowning him in helplessness, and fear.

Then, abruptly, warmth blossomed inside of him once more.  It was like a candle, its tiny flame burning away the terrors of the dark.  Reaching claws and hissing shadows evaporated to mist.  Nova had come for him, chasing away his nightmares.  He slowly ceased shuddering against her.

Lifting his face from the fluff of her neck, Kenny stared again at her glowing eyes, laying atop of her.  He saw his own reflection beneath the blue staring back at him.   His cheeks were dotted with stubble, his features were haggard, and his eyes glowed back up at him.  Glowed?  He blinked.  His eyes were blue, bright blue, just like Nova's were.

The more he focused, the more starkly vivid details about her began to jump out at him.  It wasn't just her stripes that glowed.  Faint motes of light drifted from the ends of her fur, glowed along the edges of her scales.  Her bio-lights flashed in complicated patterns that he had never seen before.

He looked around the room, fascinated, as it seemed to brighten beneath his gaze the longer he stared.  They were in Nova's bunk, the doors closed, and only the dimmest of red lights visible at the far corners.  To him, however, it seemed that there was a sourceless floodlight seemingly illuminating everything in the cramped space.  Motes of dim twinkles drifted all around them, like dust caught in a beam of sunlight.

Lifting a hand, he rubbed at his eyes, wondering if he was just overly tired from the trauma and strain of what he had gone through.  He paused, hand still raised, and gazed at it too.  Beneath his gaze, he saw the same light as that came pouring off of Nova in small, hazy waves, almost like emanations of heat, also coming from the tips of his fingers, if in much more muted tones and severity.

Even so, the more he concentrated, the more he witnessed.  In amazement, he stared at his own hand as a bright white pulsing began in the palm and at the wrist, perfectly in time with what could only be his heartbeat.  His fingers flexed and he saw how they moved, how they bent, not just feeling the strain of the muscles and tendons but also the full extent of every sensation they caused or experienced.

Waving his hand slightly produced that hazy, steam-like visual to follow the same motion.  He looked at a scar on his pinky, right on the edge of the first knuckle.  He saw, not just remembered, all at once how he had gotten it: attempting to open a can of cat food at the shelter.  The dented lid had wrenched back at the wrong angle, cutting open his flesh.  The pain made him start but even as he expected to see the heavy stream of blood ooze forth out of the injury, instead he again only saw the scar.

Soft paws touched him then, returning him to the present moment, back to Nova.

Kenny marveled at how beautiful she was, more obvious now than ever.  Her eyes crinkled at the corners as he stared, dumbstruck, at the sheer amount of staggering beauty that emanated from her.  Her light shone in a rainbow of hues, complex colors and swirls that flowed beneath her fur and synthetic skin.  His hand lifted, rubbing along the line of her jaw.  Her eyes drifted closed beneath the touch and her purring redoubled in intensity from the sheer satisfaction she was experiencing.

He could almost feel small electrical arcs coming from where his fingers touched, amplifying the sensations of how soft her fur was, the exact groove of her cheek that she most liked to have scratched.  Her crooning started up again, happier this time, as he played his fingers and knuckles along her throat, up over her brow, and then back down her jaw.

One of her paws lifted and trapped his hand against her chin, his fingertips brushing the tips of her teeth and her muzzle.  It was strange but he realized, only then, that she didn't have whiskers.  Neither did the cubs.  How odd...  She looked from his eyes, to his mouth, to his eyes again.  Without realizing he had been doing so, he was leaning down toward her.  Her eyes became hooded and her purring took on a very different note he hadn't heard from her before.

They kissed. Even though they had done so before, it still surprised him that she could kiss like this, like a Human.  Her mouth was so much bigger than his and yet her lips were so soft and dainty beneath his own.  They didn't move much, just maintaining simple proximity and pressure, the warmth of her presence doubling from just that gentle, loving exchange.  It felt simple and right, as if the very laws of nature had been rewritten solely for them, possible only for two beings that treasured each other as much as he loved Nova.  As she, in turn, loved him.

A familiar tingle rushed through him as he felt her tentacle brush his throat and he welcomed it.  Again, the world as he had always understood it fell away.  He looked, without opening his eyes, across the multi-colored void, through her similarly closed but still glowing eyes, and inward, to where she beckoned him to see her memories.

Like a film reel unrolling before him, he witnessed everything she had done since leaving him behind.  He felt her fear, uncertainty, her resentment, and anger.  Guilt gnashed its fangs at him for making her suffer as he had, no matter how he felt justified in doing what he had done.

She understood even as she despaired, all of her bitterness melting away, if only to have him back in her arms.  He watched as the cubs confirmed he was indeed alive, begging her to go back.  She had already decided to do so, bolstered into making that decision to hear someone else challenge her adoration of the Earthling who had come to mean so much to her.

Her conviction was as his own, a burning flame that could not be doused so long as there was hope.  She had to come back for him, fight for him; she would not rest until she had brought the father of their cubs, her Earthling, her Mate, home.  Him, Kenny Sissom, the unluckiest, most unwanted, most undesired person in the universe.  She saw him as something else, as everything that truly mattered, a part of a family.  Their family.

She in turn saw what he had gone through and the challenges he had been forced to overcome.  Through his eyes and ears, she saw his journey through the frozen tunnels, chased by the horde of Chitelings, his terror overpowered by his desire to return home to her, to the cubs.  She witnessed his fear, isolation, and pain, holding him tightly the whole while.  The words of her past Mate echoed again in Kenny’s mind, experiencing anew with Nova as they witnessed the fallen King share his Light with Kenny.  It had given him the courage and confidence to keep moving forward even as the last shreds of Brighten’s life went out.

She felt the guilt of taking over the love of a family that had never been allowed to know its true Father, washed away by Brighten's never-ending adoration for their bond.  Nova shared in some of that same guilt entirely on her own.

Brighten had been a paragon, a conquering hero, a standard to reach for, and a loving, warm soul that inspired all around him.  He had freed their people from the darkness of war, had freed her specifically, both from the confines of a single planet to roam as well as the way everyone else looked at her and only saw a potential enemy, loyal still to her exiled and disgraced father.

He had done even more, had once again given her wings to fly wherever she wished, given their people a Queen.  She loved him for that, for being exactly what her people had needed, what she had needed.  She respected him for his passion and drive to uplift their species and bring them back to the true way.  She loved their children, shining fragments and representations of him, most of all.

But she loved Kenny.  She loved his smile, his laugh, how he was with the cubs whether at play, at rest, or standing between them and the myriad of enemies before them all without hesitation.  She loved the way he shared with her all of his most intimate, shining emotions, even if at first she had despised him for them.  He had reminded her too much of Brighten, his loss still so fresh in her mind even months later when she had come to Earth.

She loved the way he danced and how he had shown her what music was, the way emotions could drift on the breeze and in one's ears. The way he stumbled over how much he adored her, respected her even when he had been at his most afraid of her, the shyness of his gazes when he thought she wasn't able to notice him staring.  He looked at the stars and saw what she did: light.  Brighten had seen light from within, but Kenny saw light from everything and all around him, even when he shouldn't.  The good in everything.  The good in her.

In that kiss, they shared everything, more intimate than the bond, than the link.  Their minds melded, baring every emotion, every memory as plainly as if it were written on the pages of a book.  He saw her at her darkest, as she saw him at his.  Together, they washed away those dark stains, mended wounds both old and new, and brought one another up and out of the blackness of the void both had been slowly falling into.  Neither was lonely anymore, nor would be ever again.

The world of the meld exploded into entire galaxies of stars and cosmic clouds.  He and Nova drifted through them, her arms embracing him completely while his remained on her neck, the only part of her that he could reasonably grab all the way around.  One of his hands had wormed its way into her thick hair, gripping the dense yet silky soft strands.  Space flashed by all-around their entwined forms.  The vast darkness of the cosmos was no longer black to him.  He saw colors he had never imagined filling that void.

All was light.  All was soft warmth and gentle sensation.  This was something wholly and completely their own, unique to them and their bond, as unlikely and star-crossed as it might have seemed to either of them from their very first meeting.  One of her paws lifted and rested gently against the back of his head, keeping him in place.  He did the same, one hand lifting to brush the back of her ear.  The kiss deepened for several minutes longer, which felt like it spanned the birth of whole galaxies before they finally broke apart.

Kenny's eyes fluttered open and he gasped for air, feeling her tentacle leaving the node at his throat, thus severing the connection between them.  He hadn't realized how long they had remained locked together by the lips, depriving him of air, and once disconnected he panted down at Nova.  She did not seem quite as winded as he was, but from her expression, she was just as emotionally overwhelmed as him.  Her hooded eyes glowed up at him, seemingly brighter than ever before.  She barely even seemed to register anything that was going on.

His hand trailed down her jaw, crooking into the exact spot she enjoyed most.  In response, Nova wriggled in delight and her body pushed more firmly up against his rather than crushing him down against hers.  She shoved her face against that hand, eyes closed, just like an aggressively affectionate cat might.  He indulged her as much as she wanted, overjoyed to be able to make her so happy.  He had to do very little, as Nova moved her favorite spots underneath his hand entirely on her own.  Her purring echoed around them once again.

Then, suddenly, all the world was flipping upside down.  A simple roll of her huge body and his back was being pushed down into the plush material of her bedding.  Nova loomed above him, filling his entire immediate field of view with her huge, tigerine body.  Her four arms balanced herself above him and she shuddered from head to toe for some reason.  Her eyes opened again and she gazed down at him with a look in her hazy eyes he hadn't ever seen before.

Or, more accurately, he had.  He just hadn't known what it meant then.  She looked hungry.  It just wasn't that kind of hunger.  Her jaw shuddered open slowly, baring the tips of her teeth more.  Nova's tongue slowly extended and then trailed up and across her jowls.  She was literally licking her lips down at him, the light from her eyes subtly changing hues.  Kenny felt frozen beneath the heat and weight of that gaze.

'Kenny,' came her voice.  'My Mate.'

He gulped before what she said registered.  "Me...?" he asked hesitantly, desperate to hear her confirm it.  He knew the truth already but that didn't mean he could believe that she actually wanted him to be hers.  Soley hers.

Nova nodded then blinked just once.  'Kenny and Nova.  We are Mates.  My kind, we Mate for life, share the link with another being but once.  Nova has known little kindness or joy, only loss; grown used to the pain of loneliness after Brighten and the Homeworld were taken away.  Never did Nova believe that there would ever be more than one who would walk the stars with me once again.'

He knew her kind did not lie.  Emotions could not lie, and her species spoke, lived, entirely within their emotions.  He nodded.  "Neither have I..." he whispered to her.  "When...when Phoebe, my first Mate…When she was gone, I thought that was it.  No other being in the universe would ever have wanted me the way she did.  But...n-now..."  He felt tears welling up in his eyes and his voice was beginning to shake.  "I never...dreamed that y-you would...want...someone like me.  I'm not..."

Nova cut him off, leaning down and pressing her muzzle hard against his cheek.  She rumbled against him, half growl and half purr.  She licked him once, lightly, then lifted back up.  'Kenny.  Is.  Everything.  To.  Nova.'  She deliberately enunciated each word, not just the halting conveyance of words and thoughts she once had used.  'With Brighten, Nova saw a dead world come to life.  Our cubs were the Heirs to his legacy.  Our cubs.  Our family.  They were all Nova had left of him.  But when…Nova looks at Kenny, it is not as just another Mate.  With Kenny, Nova sees...'  She seemed to struggle, eyes shuddering closed and her whole body tensing up.  Then her jaws opened and a rattling breath gusted out.  The vents on the side of her neck lit up.

"I...See...Light..."

His eyes went wide as she actually spoke.  Her voice, rough, growling, barely audible over the rushing sound of white noise and static, was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.  He realized he had been hearing it all along.  He started to feel more tears welling up but she kissed away each one.  Her touches were gentle, her motions were soft.  She never lost that hooded look in her eyes, but he was no longer afraid of what it might be.  He knew.

"You…are…my…Light," she rumbled down at him.

“As you are mine…” he whispered back to her.  “I love you, Nova.”

She shivered again and then leaned back up and away, closing her eyes and heaving a deep sigh.  He watched years of pain fall away from her, felt honored to be able to have done so much for her.  When she opened them again, she looked pleased.  She wiped at a single tear, the droplet gleaming like oil as the multi-color striations of her stripes shone through it.  Then her smile spread and she cocked her head down at him, seeming to ponder something.  He watched her, not sure what she was thinking.

Something sparkled behind her glowing eyes and she glanced at the side of their shared cubby.  He followed her gaze but he saw nothing special about it.  Just another section of wall, featureless and smooth.  Before his eyes, however, the more he concentrated upon it, just as with his hand, the more he saw.  Behind that section of wall suddenly glowed an opening, a tiny shelf that shone dimly with new light, drifting from that small space like a strange, alluring haze.  Almost like a smell.

One of her tentacles extended from her shoulders and pressed a series of buttons that pinged to life and luminescence beneath her touch.  He blinked as a panel opened seamlessly in the material, revealing a compartment that contained a small collection of vials mounted inside.  Their design was similar to the bio-fuel injectors that she used for first-aid or quick touch-ups to refuel herself.  These, however, were not the yellow, honey-like substance that the cubs and he floated in at 'night'.  These vials were blue.

They shone slightly, just like the yellow ones did, but these were far less luminous, less sunshine and more moonlight, soft and gentle.  She procured one with the tentacle claws and held it delicately before her eyes.  Her smile widened and then she was leaning down towards him.  The injector tip opened, revealing a series of needle-like extensions from the tube.  He flinched, having always been deeply afraid of needles.  Her paw brushed his cheek then and he looked up into her eyes.

'Trust Nova.'  She nodded down at him slowly, blinking once.  She waited for him to nod, although every attempt of his to ask what the thing was just made her grin and shake her head, looking teasing and playful.  Eventually, he just laid back flat on the bed.  Her muzzle lifted to his throat, pressing a soft, loving lick to the exposed flesh, rubbing the smooth sloped edges of her saber teeth against him immediately after.  He sighed at the pleasant, calming sensation, not at all afraid.  He didn't even feel the injection at the opposite side of his neck.

What he did feel made his eyes abruptly shoot open and he sucked in a lungful of air with a sudden gasp.  His whole body tingled and went numb for a second.  Then, everything got warm.  Really warm.  His eyes hazed over and he let out a sound on the exhale that he hadn't even intended to ever be able to make.  He clapped a hand over his mouth, thoroughly embarrassed, and looked up at Nova.  She loomed over him, looking incredibly pleased, too pleased.  The sensations were getting stronger.

His eyes started to roll up into the back of his head as he grimaced, teeth clenching and hands clenching hard at his side.  His back arched up off the bedding and he let out another, half-strangled sound. Now the tingling was starting to localize, moving from an all-over ache to specific targeted areas, causing them to tingle as if they had fallen asleep but giving him the chance to breathe.  He panted, looking up at Nova.

"W-what the h-heck..." he asked, voice straining and tight.  "I-is...that...stuff...doing to m-me?!" he demanded.  "I f-f-feel like my body is on f-fire!"

Nova arched an eyebrow up, grinning at him coquettishly.  She slowly reclined to lay down right beside him.  Her tentacle got rid of the vial in a receptacle for it before one paw slid along his belly, teasing it with the tip of a claw and making him squirm as each touch, no matter how light, sent lightning coursing through him.  Her expression looked horrendously, infuriatingly pleased with herself at whatever she had injected him with.  The hum of her purring started up again.

He started to tremble.  "N-Nova I don't...like it.  It doesn't...feel good.  Please make it stop."

Nova shook her head.  'No,' was all she would say.

He made the noise again, unable to stop himself as another throbbing wave scorched its way through him.  "W-why not?!" he asked, desperate and almost a little scared.

'Because Kenny is about to feel very..very…'  Her words trailed off and he felt her leaning down towards him.  He opened one eye, having squinched them shut at the latest surge, to notice her barely a foot away from him.  "Good..." she said out loud.

Her tongue extended and she licked his throat and cheek again.  He expected the normal reaction, that warm, loving touch that conveyed endearment and fondness.  It wasn't even different from the lick from before, exactly the same spot, length, and gentle weight pushing against his exposed skin.

It did not feel at all like last time.

Her tongue was searingly warm, soft, and dainty, and it rasped along his flesh like a hot towel.  His back arched up off the bedding again and he let out a gasp.  Suddenly, all the burning aches and tingles went away, as if his nerves had been jump started.  They settled into a dull, pleasant ache a few seconds later.  That lick felt...different, very different...  His eyes fluttered and he felt himself arching into her more.  She leaned up and away from him and he sagged, panting slightly.

"W-woah," he groaned at nobody in particular.  "Th-that felt..."  He looked up into her eyes and noticed that sultry, hungry light had come back.  Only now did he register what it meant, because he was looking up at her suddenly the exact same way.  "Good..." he trailed off.  She purred, licking her lips again, then reached back and procured a second vial.

For a split second, he was worried that she was about to dose him again, but instead, she leaned her head to the side and did so to herself.  Her reaction was immediate.  Her whole body stiffened, the same way he had.  A snarl broke from her and her fur seemed to stand on edge.  Muscles coiled and writhed, her jaw trembled, and her body arched over and over.  Then her eyes opened again and met his.  Her eyebrow raised, pupils dilated fully, and she leaned back down against him.

Kenny had, during this entire process, been unable to stop staring at her reactions to the injection.  His eyes could not help but trace and watch the way her body moved and contorted itself, admiring the roll and heave of her anatomy, or the flex and bulge of her more muscular parts.

Strangely, he even enjoyed the shimmer of her midnight pelt as it seemed to dance in the dim lighting.  Rainbow hues ran along the edges of her fur, not just her stripes, turning the ‘haze’ she emitted now under his new sight into something closer to the Northern Lights.  They did not color the air or cast rippling shadows, but they did color her, making it if she was burning from the inside out, glowing from within like the heat from a furnace.

Finally, Nova seemed to relax, still trembling every now and then as he had, and her eye caught his.  He looked down, feeling ashamed as he had the first time she caught him staring.  Even as shaken as his sudden lack of inhibitions had left him, thanks to the vial she had injected him with, he still respected her just as much as he had since their first meeting.

A second later, her paw brushed his chin, lifting it with all gentleness, and he looked back up into her eyes once more.  She wasn't angry, not at all.  At her wide-toothed, approving nod and rumbling growl, his gaze drifted slowly lower and away from her face, this time with her blessing.

She stretched deliberately in front of him, uncurling her huge body fully and letting everything be easily visible.  He couldn't even manage to feel at all shy anymore as he gazed openly and adoringly at her muscular, multi-limbed frame.  He traced the lines of her stripes as they rippled across her four arms, explored the rise and fall of her breathing and what it did to her body, and along her toned, segmented abdomen.  One of her paws intentionally slid along her body, rubbing everywhere he was looking, even giving herself a very open grope as he again returned to staring at her full breasts.

Nova leaned back down towards him then and nuzzled her face against his cheek and chest.  Even as big as she was, her touch was incredibly light, all the teasing tickles of a lover enraptured with playfully but lovingly tormenting their partner.  He wriggled and groaned as she licked him several more times.  She not only looked him up and down, but she also explored him physically, using mainly her nose and tongue but also pawing at him, testing his limbs, or stroking them.  He allowed her to do so since every single touch felt unnaturally wonderful.

It was only when her roaming muzzle reached his waist that, at long last, his shut-in shyness overpowered how amazingly erotic all of this light petting felt thus far.  He flinched and crossed his hands over his groin, startling her.  She blinked in surprise at his denying her to continue her explorations before she frowned.  A growl rumbled from her, obviously displeased.

‘Did Nova hurt Kenny?’ she queried.  Her mental voice, although it never changed inflection, seemed somehow raspier, less drawn out and more heated.

"I...I just..." Kenny stammered.  Meekness was returning and with a vengeance.  Even with his new, healthy body, he didn't dream that his 'equipment' would be nearly enough to satisfy the towering, over-sexualized Titaness glowering down at him.  The last thing he wanted right now was to see her look disappointed that, somehow, he wasn't going to measure up, even with them both very aware of the stark difference in size between them.

Nova met his eyes as evenly as he let her.  She was obviously still eager and ready, especially given that she had so far not ceased in her gentle pawing at him.  She kept looking down at him with deliberate interest.  'Why does Kenny have Nova stop?' she asked him.

There was nothing for it.  Kenny flopped his head back onto the bedding.  "I'm not...I just...I'm scared, okay Nova?"

Silence was his only response.

He looked up after a long pause to see that she looked noticeably upset.  He immediately knew he had said it wrong by how her eager expression had wilted.  "Not of you!" he quickly declared.  Her ears flicked and she went from looking sad to just confused, plaintively needing him to explain.  Why did this have to be so hard...

"I'm scared of...not being enough for you.  Right now."  He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.  "Plus it's been a...really long time for me since I actually...did the deed with someone.  Anyone.  Other than in my...imagination I mean."

Her eyebrows furrowed and the Tiger-like Alien looked his body up and down.  'Kenny.  Is.  Nova's.  Mate.'  She looked him straight in the eye as he gaped at her blunt response.  'Kenny is Nova's Mate,' She repeated, mental voice firm and insistent.  'He is perfect.'

Tears lingered in his eyes and he blinked rapidly to try and dispel them.  Surely he was mishearing her, or she didn't understand.  He opened his mouth to try and explain.

Nova cut him off with a small growl, tinged with her obviously aroused and flustered emotions riding high and possibly overruling her patience or willingness to be patient at all.  'Kenny speaks badly of himself.  Nova has listened.  Nova has waited.  Kenny is a Friend.  A Father.  Kenny is enough.  More than enough.  Kenny is Nova’s Mate.'  Her expression softened then and she leaned down toward him, pushing her forehead against his gently.  'Kenny never has need to be afraid of Nova, ever again.’

“But what if…” he started to say, before a small, rolling growl from her and a firm grip upon him quickly silenced his stammering before it could truly begin.

‘Nova’s people once had a saying, from the time before Planetfall.  The mightiest warrior was once weak before he learned to fight.  The greatest leader must first inspire hope before others will follow.  What was is not what may be.  Nova has seen what Kenny was, and now what Kenny has become.  If Kenny cannot trust that is he is enough, trust in Nova.'

“But I’m not a warrior…not a leader.  I’m just a garbageman from Earth, someone that nobody wanted.”

Glowing pools of starlight met his sullen gaze, drawing him in.  He almost felt like he was floating within those gleaming, bioluminescent orbs, adrift in a sea of darkness from which underneath, light shone through.  The warmth of her presence surrounded him as she curled like a cat around his body.  She spoke two words that resonated through him, for if there was ever a being who would never lie, it would be her.

“Nova…does…”

He shuddered against her and his hands lifted slowly to rub along the lines of her furry jaw and across the patterns of hardened scales there as well.  Her purring was soft and gentle as she loomed over him.  "Okay…I trust you..." he breathed out eventually.  She rumbled against him, sounding pleased.  "I trust you more than I've ever trusted anyone before.  If...you want me to, I'll...try."  Her eyes blinked solemnly at him before she backed up again.

Mustering up every ounce of his will, he slowly reached up to his wrist and shakily touched the dial on his wrist.  Just like before, it determined how much of his body was covered by the suit.  He wasn't sure he was doing it right, twice folding his head-covering over his face and then back down before Nova's tentacle brushed his wrist, forestalling him.  He sagged back beneath her, allowing her to do it for him.  Maybe that was for the best.

At her will and rapid pressing of his wrist display, the suit began to retract, pulling up off his limbs and torso, revealing more and more by the second.  Within moments, the whole of his body was revealed, left bare beneath Nova's gaze.  All that remained of the livesuit was the dial at his wrist and a band around his throat.

Somehow, this was so much worse than last time.  Back then, he had only been embarrassed but without any expectations other than the norm for how people treated him when he had his old, sickly body.  Now...he was hoping that she didn't reject him completely, even with his new healthy one.  He lay completely naked on the bed in front of her, more terrified, and more hopeful, than he had ever been in his life.

He chanced a look down, the first time he had been fully out of the livesuit since donning it.  His healthy, toned body made him feel at least a little better about himself.  He wasn't even as hairy anymore.  His spire stood proud and firm, obviously not being left wanting for confidence.  Nova still had not responded since the process began at her behest.  She hadn't even moved, seemingly at all.  Steeling himself, he looked up at her.

Nova had stared down at him during the whole process.  Her gaze had been curious and interested, for the most part, to see him once again without any form of covering, even beyond her obvious carnal reasons currently.  He saw her eyes fixate, at the last, on that most prominent of details, standing up and away from the rest of his body, rigidly at attention.  He tried hard not to flinch as her nose quivered, her ears flicked forward and back, and then she was slowly leaning down toward him.

Her hot breath gusted past and across his member, making it sway as if trying to assert its presence even more.  She sniffed at it, pushed her muzzle against the side of his hip, studying his male appendage with all the attentiveness as a predator sizing up a meal.  She blinked several times, cocking her head from side to side as she inspected it from every angle she could.  At the very least, maybe it was at least interesting to see another race's anatomy to her?

He hid his face as another surge of the chemicals and hormones she had reintroduced into his body made his skin become hypersensitive, muscles tightening and his breathing growing ragged for a second.  Trusting her not to judge him for it was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do.  Most women who had ever seen it had laughed, not that many ever had.  Only Phoebe had ever reacted well, the times they had ever had made love being few and far between since she wasn't a sexual person. To him, it had meant more that anyone had wanted him at all, making him love her all the more.

When several long, torturous moments had passed, he dared to try and meet her eyes.  She still had said nothing, merely gazing at him with an animal-like curiosity, rather than any amount of lewdness.  Her eyes were almost innocent really.  She sniffed at him again, hot breath feeling like his skin was being worked over by a hairdryer.

“I…know it’s…probably…weird looking,” he grated out, unable to take the silence anymore.  Nova gave a rumble, eyes flicking up and down his body over and over.  “This is…probably where you comment on how ‘inefficient’ my species’ body is, right?”  He attempted a small grin but it wilted from his lack of confidence.

She eyed him curiously.  ‘Kenny is what Kenny is,’ came her reply.  ‘Nothing about Nova’s Mate is inefficient.’

All of his shakily constructed confidence floundered and he shyly looked away.  “Y-yeah well…you’re…pretty much perfect,” he relented, smiling to himself at finally not feeling guilty for saying it.

A soft rustle came at his side and when he looked, he was mortified to see Nova once again had his phone which she had recovered from somewhere.  It hung suspended in her tentacle, one eye glowing with a white ring around the pupil.  His screen unlocked without her needing to touch it and slid over to the picture library, where a certain locked folder opened and displayed its content in numerous colored panels, like a portrait gallery of shame.  He looked down, blushing even more madly than before, as Nova continued to peruse the embarrassing pictures.  He took it back; this was worse than the shower incident.

‘These are images from Kenny’s homeworld, Earth?’ she inquired.  He nodded glumly.  ‘These are…depictions of Mating.’  She waited again for him to reply but seemed to understand from his silence that this was true without needing him to verbally confirm.  ‘These are Earth females?’

“N-not quite…” he coughed, rolling slightly onto his side away from her to spare himself at least some shame.  “Those are just…pictures.  Of…that kind of stuff.  Not really meant for…showing other people.  Fantasy stuff, not real.  Earth women aren’t…typically like that, and certainly none of them if they even did exist would go for someone like me.”

She rumbled behind him, warm fur pushing up against him more as she cuddled closer.  At least that felt completely and utterly justifiable for how good it felt.  ‘Kenny is ashamed?’  He covered his face with a hand and nodded.  ‘Why would Kenny be ashamed?  They deprive themselves of a true Mate.’  Her paw wrapped around his naked body, pulling him back against her.  The increased sensitivity of his skin made him feel like he was being enveloped in a furry shag carpet that conformed to and wrapped around him perfectly without overheating him.

“Y-yeah well…those pictures…came from before I knew the cubs,” he gradually built up the courage to explain.  He stroked her paw tentatively, then deepened the touches at her appreciative rumble against him.  “Back when I was…sick Kenny.  I’d look at them when I felt… lonely.”

‘So they provide Kenny with comfort,’ she ventured and he hid his face in his hand again.  She sounded so incredibly innocent.  ‘Aesthetically pleasing, for some of them.’  He glanced up to see her swiveling the phone to the side to view a specific picture at a different angle.  ‘Proportions for biology seem doubtful, however.  Angles are extreme.  Some would be physically compromising for one of Kenny’s size should Nova replicate them.’

“That’s why they’re just fantasy pictures,” he grumbled, red-faced.  “Everyone on Earth has their own version of what they consider the most attractive detail for a…Mating partner.  But we don’t typically share that kind of stuff with others.  Those that do aren’t…looked at fondly.”  He glanced up at her meaningfully and she seemed to take his hint as her implant flashed.

She lowered the phone but her eyes gleamed slightly down at him.  ‘Kenny is embarrassed,’ she noted and he groaned softly at how smug she looked just then.  ‘Kenny’s species does not appreciate Mating?’

“It’s not that we don’t appreciate it!” he replied, words rushing out of him.  “It’s just…private.  Meant for…being alone.”

Nova gleamed, ears perking up and her smile doubling.  ‘Nova understands now.’  She purred more, rubbing her warm nose against him.  ‘Nova will taunt Kenny no longer.’  He sighed in relief, only a tiny bit annoyed by her confession of her intent had truly been with all of this rather than innocent naivety, before he glanced up at her, seeing a contemplative expression as she continued to scroll.  ‘Earth mating seems very involved,’ she commented.  ‘Messy.’

His face heated again but he actually managed a chuckle.  By all accounts, he understood that kind of confusion.  “I…suppose to an Alien, it really would, even when not in fantasy mode.”  She rumbled, inspecting yet another picture, this one featuring some kind of tiger-like woman but still very Human in appearance.  Kenny knew that a lot of Cosplays were done with the popular Sci-fi character depicted in suggestive clothing and position.

A nagging question he had long wanted to ask but never dared to rose, thanks mostly in part to his current state of…confidence.  Clearing his throat to get her attention, he saw Nova finally turn her head away, neck absurdly stretched and swiveled to an extreme angle, like an owl’s, to look back down at him curiously.

“Can I ask…how…your Species…?” he started to utter then cut himself off.  “It’s stupid, nevermind.”

But it was too late.  Nova’s eyes sparkled and she grinned even wider, more feral, and even hungrier down at him.  Every prey instinct inside of him warned Kenny to start running, even though he was effectively trapped in her warm embrace and the sealed compartment.

‘Kenny wants to know how Nova’s species mates…’ she drawled out in his head, her purring so intense that it set the walls nearly to rumbling too.  He nodded mutely, for there really was no other way out of this than to be honest.  And she deserved that much.  She motioned with her tentacle at the phone then placed it back wherever she stored it when not in use.  ‘Not like Earthlings,’ she explained.  ‘But no less pleasant, Nova knows.’

Her paws tightened around him and Nova was very abruptly beginning to rise above him, paws lifting his small frame from the bed and placing him ever more firmly in her embrace as she reclined back into a new position.  He lay beside her, nuzzled in skin to fur, his entire sight filled with the vision that was her glowing, striped visage of primal, alien loveliness.

‘Nova can show Kenny,’ she stated, and it took him more than a second to figure out she meant it as an invitation.  ‘Stimulant will go to waste, otherwise.  Nova simply wanted Kenny to feel good.  It plays a part after all.’

He blinked, feeling another thrilling rush of sensations course through him.  “The…blue stuff?” he asked, and she blinked.  “The yellow bio-fuel…it sustains your kind, mine too apparently, but the blue?  What is it?  Pure, concentrated horniness or something?”

Nova rumbled in a heavy chuckle and one of her tentacles stroked his cheek.  ‘Kenny makes such jokes.  It is…instinct; mating hormones.  Dulled and removed by the biofuel to conserve concentration, energy, and efficiency.  Nova’s species once very…prolific.  Overpopulation was an issue on our homeworld before its discovery.  When we evolved past bodies of flesh, it was harnessed for efficiency.  Now it is used for recreational or mating practices.’

His eyes brightened.  “So that’s why I haven’t…” he met her teasing expression and wilted a bit from embarrassment of that train of thought.  “Nevermind me.  Please continue?”  His hopeful tone was anything but subtle.

‘Why should Nova explain…when Nova can show?’  She suddenly shifted again, sliding her bulk up and around him slightly more, and again licked his cheek and throat.  As before, that hot, enveloping sensation washed over him and he groaned softly, leaning into the touch as she continued it again, this time across his collarbone.  It all felt so very wonderful and it allowed him to relax fully into her arms, unafraid and trusting her completely.

He nearly shot up off the bedding material at what Nova did next.  In no world had he at all been expecting it, but he knew he probably should have been from context.  Nova licked him.  Her hot tongue slid across his most sensitive part as gently as she could manage while still maintaining firm contact.

The cyan-blue, incredibly textured tip had flipped and curled wonderfully around his shape, almost forming a perfect sleeve for a moment before sliding off and back into her maw.  Her reaction was immediate.  Her eyes dilated wide and she let out a rumbling growl, thus releasing another gust of hot air across his nethers.  She leaned down toward him again.

On sheer reflex from the rush of such intensity, emotions, and nervousness, he flinched and turned his body to the side, away from her.  The aftershocks still raced through him from just that single touch.  He felt ashamed at how much he had enjoyed that, at first.  Then sudden doubt wormed its way into his head, and for once not to his detriment.  She had said she wanted him.  Why was he fighting this?  He wanted her, she wanted him.  He looked slowly, warily, up at Nova.

Her expression made his entire body go tense, frozen as if in ice despite the almost oppressive heat that surrounded them.  His Mate was smiling.  Her eyes had gone from those sharp, blade-like slits beneath the glowing blue to perfectly round, dilated orbs.  Her teeth showed as she beamed down at him with a hungry, pleased, eager expression on her muzzle, eyelids sultrily hooded.  Euphoria.  No one had ever looked at him like that before.

'Mine,' she growled inside of his head.  'Good.  Nova liked that.'

He blinked up at her.  "Y-you did?" he asked.  She blinked.  "B-but I thought…your Species didn’t…not like how…"

She wordlessly gestured with her head down at him, meaning for him to flip back to how he had been laying.  He hesitated and she growled again, insistent, demanding.  He did as she commanded, trying to cover himself from sheer awkwardness but she merely brushed his hands away with a tentacle, reexposing the part of him that she was so interested in currently.  He had always liked dominant women but this was something else.

‘Nova has always been one for exploration and experimentation,’ she explained, tone almost matter-of-fact despite how her eyes twinkled with desire.  ‘Kenny and Nova have much time before the cubs’ wake-cycle will commence.  First, Nova will experiment the way Kenny knows.  Then…comes the way Nova knows.  Trust Nova.’

“I…I t-trust you,” he stammered out, heart pounding, blood surging, entire body trembling as he surrendered to her completely.  He even managed a small, nervous smile, trying to deescalate the situation with humor, as was his instinct to do.  "Do I have much of a choice?"

'Nova will continue.' Again her matter of fact tone coupled somehow so ferociously and alluringly with her wide, reflective orbs.  She looked nothing short of ecstatic to return to what she had just done before he had interrupted her.

She leaned down toward him then, now nose to nose, trapping him in front of her huge, massive body.  He felt like a toy in front of her, so easily breakable and somehow that was overwhelmingly hot all of a sudden.  Sure, this was like a fantasy literally come to life, but even so, this was incredibly unnerving to have his literal fetish in the flesh acting out scenes from his subconscious.  She was his space-alien warrior-queen.  And he was her Earthling.  It was all so much that his eyes felt tight and hot, and he half expected somehow to wake and this all to be a dream.

Then she said the word that just reinforced all of it as real, convincing him with utmost surety that here and now was all that mattered.  'Mine’.  She would never hurt him, never give him reason to fear, make up for all those years of depressive solitude and isolation.  She nuzzled his face and chest with her muzzle, rubbed both cheeks against his belly.  It reminded him of the way a cat would mark its property and also show its owner affection.

Her mouth opened again, showing that brief flash of her neon-glowing double rows of teeth.  Her tongue extended once more and she gave him another, longer, more thorough licking across his bare chest.  He responded well to that, such a warm and seductive sensation.  She repeated it, this time lower, across his abdomen.  He bit his lip as she moved ever southward.  She did it for a third time, right across his pelvis, furry chin all but rubbing right on him, tickling.  It nearly drove him crazy.  Then she moved once again.

Her next lick, right where she obviously intended to fixate, had him make that same incredibly demeaning and embarrassing noise from before again, just from how good that felt.  It was hot, not just sexually but temperature-wise as well.  On reflex, he tried to reach down, whether to stop or just to touch her.  He wasn't entirely sure what he intended, as she continued to breathe on and gently lick at his sensitive, pulsing, and eagerly responsive flesh.  Her tentacle shot out as if possessing a mind of its own and immobilized both of his wrists above his head.

'Do not.  Move,' Nova commanded, her tone firm despite that she sounded distracted.  The words were less flowing now, broken up as they once had been.  It was so hot to know that it came from, not the lack of communication, but just how fixated she was on what she was doing.  Namely…him.  'Mine.'

She didn't even look up at his face as she grinned, exposing more of her teeth before she rolled her tongue agilely in mid-air.. The bioluminescent limb contorted itself like a living being all on its own before it lowered once again and began to resume its movement but now directly in contact with his flesh.

It rolled and unrolled, furled and unfurled, writhing to and fro, back and forth, with a demonically teasing light in her eyes as she tormentingly, lovingly, evilly, and adoringly, played with her captured Earthling.  At any other time, he might have died, mortified, to hear the sounds he made while she played with him like that.  Right now, however, it wasn't possible for him to care.

Nova took to her task with delight, not just keeping to the same maneuvers but occasionally switching it up.  This seemed as much fun for her as it was for him, somehow.  At times, she would switch from the rapid tongue lashing, exerting perfect control while doing so, to those long, amorous licks that employed the entirety of her muscular limb to lovingly explore every textured inch of his sexual organ.  At others, she would use just the tip, teasingly dancing it across and around him.  Kenny was trapped in what amounted to carnal purgatory; not quite pure pleasure nor torturous teasing but somewhere in the middle.

If this wasn’t how her species actually Mated, then Nova was nothing if not a quick study.  Either that, or she literally embodied the term: tease.

Not only was this the strangest and most erotic thing he had ever experienced, heightened by the serum, but the sensations were also intensified by over a hundred percent over due to how long it had been since another living person willingly attended to him like this.  This was an absolute first for someone so passionately to want to do this kind of thing for him.

It also helped that the injection, upon returning his sex drive, had also caused an upswing of sensitivity, meaning that he felt and remembered every single touch.  None blurred into the next, every one incredibly distinct no matter how similar.  He had no control over how much he spasmed at each and every lick, nor was he able to stop her even if he had the will to do so.   That just made it even hotter somehow.

The worst, and best, part was the way Nova looked at him throughout it all.  It wasn't with teasing or self-superiority or even hunger as if he were just fulfilling a need, but instead with endearing fascination and fixation on the task she had undertaken.  She looked like she really was enjoying herself and with how she was making him feel, even seemed to take vindictive satisfaction in his writhing and wriggling beneath her. It was almost as if she enjoyed him being so powerless while at the same time she tended to him like it was her ultimate goal in life to make him feel as good as possible.

Perhaps it was partly revenge for him leaving her behind, thinking him gone forever, and also part relief and joy to have him back safe and sound.  All of that power, now showing vulnerability only to him.  Because she loved him.  He tried to tell himself it wasn't just wishful thinking.  Maybe he had been overthinking this?

Another loving draw of her tongue made him dismiss the entire topic of conversation for another time.  Still, there was something wholly amazing in how fascinated and fixated she was with him right then.  It was as if she had never seen something so beautiful and wanted to worship it the same way that he had, admittedly, wanted to do with her body for months.

The most blessedly worst part was seeing how happy she seemed while doing this to him.  Joy radiated from her somehow to be making Kenny so obviously, deliciously happy, even if she wasn’t entirely sure how or why.  It didn’t stop her from experimenting, changing things up and having fun with it, seemingly.  The lack of consistency had kept him from rising above a steady throbbing but it all felt so good that he never minded when she did this, as maddeningly infuriating as it was.  He was shocked he had lasted this long.

Seeing her so fulfilled by tending to him however, it proved to be too much for Kenny at last.  He let out a rattling groan, louder than any before it, teeth clenching but unable to restrain it.  Just as Nova paused in her play, he surged up against the tentacle and part of a paw still binding him as the desire to go off spasmed through his organ.  These caused an abrupt series of pulsing surges that had him riding the excruciating high, making him desperate to achieve completion.

Nova blinked down at him in shock, curious as to his reaction, and leaned in close to him once more, seemingly to watch.  That was almost the worst, especially knowing that there was nothing he could do to attend to the matter himself unless she let him.  She sniffed at him more, retracting her tongue into her maw and then cast a look at him, half concerned.

‘Nova is not hurting Kenny doing this?’ she asked.

"No…no you’re not!" he moaned, desperate for this constant building-up of pressure to finally be given a release.  She eyed him curiously at first.  Then a smug light came to her eyes and she purred even more than she had been during her playing earlier.  She rubbed her muzzle against his thigh, one eye casually watching the twitching next to her.  There was something absolutely evil in her idle observation.  She had to know how badly he needed her to let him finish.

‘So Nova should…continue?’ she asked, playing it off as demonically cruel innocence.

"Please!" he begged her.

Her expression softened a bit and she finally relented.  Her maw opened above his tip and she lowered her muzzle back in contact with his flesh.  The heat of her breath, the soft touch of her tongue, and then the complete and total envelopment of him into her muzzle, proved to be his undoing and the final tipping point.

His toes curled, his back arched, and his entire body surged with heat and shuddering quakes, more intense than he had ever experienced in his life.  It shook him from head to toe as if his entire body had been put on vibrate.  His hands strained at the bindings upon him futilely but, with impossible strength, actually almost managing to free himself.

The shock of this, and what exploded out of him and across her tongue, took Nova so aback that she jerked her mouth off of him too soon.  As a result, while she had already received the majority of his climax, some of it still managed to shoot up and land on his belly.  As the last of the dregs finally leaked out before her stunned eyes, Kenny collapsed back onto the bed, panting raggedly.  His chest heaved up and down as the heat of the induced sexual episode finally began to recede with the spending of his proud soldier.  His throat felt ragged.

Only once his racing heart had ceased to try and hammer its way out of his chest did he look up at his beautiful Mate.  The sight made him freeze in place, marveling.

Nova's eyes glowed more brightly than before and she let out a snarl that rattled the entirety of the bunk, indeed echoing down the hall and all around the ship's interior at his reaction.  Her tongue slackened off in its tending to his shaft and her teeth flashed, claws on either side of him flexing, extending and retracting slightly every few seconds.  The stripes on her body blazed with more light than ever before, almost as if the air itself were catching fire around her.

She leaned back and away from him, body shuddering in similar throes as he was just then coming down off of.  Her growl reverberated all around them and her expression was nothing short of absolute bliss, almost as if she were sharing in the joy of what he was experiencing.  Her implant was a technicolor blur of shades and hues, cycling through color after color so rapidly it resembled a rave.

He looked at Nova who was still looming over him.  Her darkly furred muzzle was creased in a dazed smile.  Her eyes seemed unfocused as if she were still processing it all.  Then, at last, they seemed to blink themselves back to working order and she looked slowly up his naked lower body, across his heaving, slender but athletic chest, to his flushed and sweaty face.  She cocked her head to the side slightly.  Her pupils were severe black lines, fixated solely upon him.

His face went completely red.  "Nova..." he started to say hurriedly.  "I'm...really sorry I didn't think to warn you what..."  He trailed off, the expression on her face melting his trepidation and turning it into awe-struck rapture.

She looked down at him and an incredibly pleased expression flitted across her tigerine face.  Reaffirming her hold on his wrists to make sure he didn't move, she leaned down and planted her tongue against his pelvis.  He jolted, almost as if she had punched him in the gut.  He watched as she gave him one last, long lick, sliding that broad muscle up his belly to his pectorals.  She did not leave even a single drop behind.

The warmth and pleasurable sensations that caused were no longer the torturous blazes that they had been.  Once more, it was a calming and soothing motion, although the visual and knowledge of what she had just done left him babbling quietly.  His face had never been redder as she looked down at her little Mate's thoroughly licked clean chest, seemingly pleased with herself.  Only then did she  finally release her tentacle's hold on his wrists.  His fingers tingled as they had started to go slightly numb.

As her eyes met his once again, twinkling with both mischief and fondness, Kenny's restraint and nervousness finally broke.  He curled up and onto his side, arms shaking as they lifted him tremulously up, and then he rose to his knees.  Nova watched him, ears quivering, eager to see what he would do.

He tottered a little bit at first, blood rushing to his head and making his vision go dark for a second before he tightened his core and the sensation ceased.  Once he was sure he had it back to normal, he scooted forward along the bed and wrapped his arms as tightly as they could around his Mate.  There was nothing to be afraid of anymore.

Her reaction was immediate.  Folding her upper arms in around him, Nova's purr rattled through him like a full body massage.  He felt his legs leave the bed and he hung there in her grasp as she lifted him up.  She couldn't rise up to anywhere near her full height, so instead she rolled herself onto her side and cuddled her huge frame in and around him completely.  Her head nuzzled down against his, forehead to forehead.  A shaking sigh tore through him and, for the first time ever, Kenny finally felt completely at peace.

Years of insecurities, fears, and self-doubt all fell away.  He held his Mate against him as tightly as he could, drifting in the warmth, comfort, and security she provided.  She might as well have been his size for how close to her as he felt right then, closer to her than he had ever been to another living soul in his life.  A soft lick at his cheek made him smile, eyes closed.  She licked him again.

Kenny blinked his eyes open.  Had he fallen asleep somehow?  His body still buzzed pleasantly.  Being naked didn't even startle him anymore.  He looked up at Nova who loomed over him, casting him in her comforting shadow.  One of her paws drifted up and brushed his cheek with a padded fingertip, warm, rough, and silk-like against his skin.

On instinct he leaned into it, sighing heavily.  A weight had fallen off of him and he finally allowed himself to revel completely in the loving touch of another.  Finally confident that someone loved him as much as he loved her.  He had felt for so long that he would never feel this again.

Something clinked above him.  His eyes opened again and he glanced up to the side.  His expression, lazy, relaxed, and joyous, transformed in an instant.  Two more dully-glowing blue vials were held in her tentacle claw's grasp.  They clinked against each other as she wiggled them meaningfully down at him.  He looked up, incredulously into her playful expression.  Her ears quivered rapidly, much like a particularly lascivious Human might have wiggled their eyebrows when asking much the same question.

"Again?" he asked, voice cracking a bit and slightly hoarse.  He stared at Nova incredulously.

Her smile spread wider, baring more of her fangs.  Then she blinked, long and slow, making his heart melt.  She wasn't just wanting to continue playing.  He realized that, just like a deeply hidden part of himself, she didn't want this to end just yet.  That, and one other glaringly evident fact, was incredibly obvious to even one as dense as him.

"You're a total nympho, aren't you?" he teased her.

Nova furrowed her expression, her empathic scanner flashing on and off to try and discern the meaning of the word.  A second later, she got it.  Her ears folded down slightly and she glanced to the side.  She actually looked a touch embarrassed.  The vials lowered a bit and she fidgeted shyly in front of him.

To her utter shock and his absolute, joyful satisfaction, he reached up and snagged one of the vials from her.  Reaching up, he brushed some of her hair to the side, exposing the port on her neck.  He pushed the injector flush with the opening and heard the hiss as the blue fluid rushed out and into her.  Nova's eyes rolled up into the back of her head, eyelids fluttering, before she let out another rumbling growl.  They lazily refocused back down onto his face.  Her lips parted and her fangs glinted for a second.

He repeated the motion she had done for him, leaning his neck to the side and baring his skin to her to do the same.  He closed his eyes, unable to watch as she gently performed the procedure as before.  Again he felt no pain, instead now able to expect and even appreciate as his whole body zinged with electricity and heat before it settled back into that now familiar tingling rush to his extremities.

Nova leaned down and kissed him hard, to which he responded with equal passion and ardor to match hers.  Her purring rumbled around him.  The world seemed to fall away once again, literally, as he felt her rolling them slowly over to lay on her back again with him atop her.

He leaned back from the kiss, head spinning and her soft fur rubbing against his naked form.  He wormed his hands into it, stroking and petting to his heart's content.  This did exactly what he hoped, both stimulating his Mate as well as comforting and relaxing her.  It made his greedy fascination to explore a bit easier to deal with, knowing she was enjoying it too.  Once she had settled back fully, arms laying at her side and her legs flat as well, he indulged in a private passion he was no longer able to rein in.

He slid a hand up from her ribcage and belly toward her chest.  The fabric covering them was tight and strained at the slightest movement of her upper body.  The swells of flesh felt even hotter now, smelled even better.  He lost himself in groping and massaging the mountainous orbs, bigger than seemed physically possible, plush, firm, and wonderfully textured.  How did her spine not ache all the time?

Much as she so often did to him, he rubbed his face, cat-like, against them, hand greedily delving inside of the fabric and touching them completely skin-to-fur everywhere.  Nova's responses to his fondling were encouraging, to say the least.  Her purring had alternated tones, less loud but twice as intense.  Her body writhed beneath him, muscles flexing and shifting underneath her fur like waves on the ocean.  Every so often, he would squeeze a bit harder and she would let out a bubbling little growl.  She even nipped down at his fingers once, teeth clicking but her expression full of joy at his fervent exploration of her.

He played along.  "Hey, no biting," he admonished her.  He rubbed her furrowing nose, deliberately tracing the line of her quivering lips and even thumbing the exposed tips of her saber teeth on one side.  "Be a good girl."

She seemed to melt at that.  Her ears folded back and she immediately curled her upper pair of paws up alongside him as he lay atop her chest.  The fabric of her top rustled and suddenly shifted positions as it retracted back into a band at her throat, just like his had done.  The compression of her chest just made them stand out all the more prominently and allowed him to grope and rub them even more firmly.  'Yes.  My Mate,' she replied, growling and purring in equal measure.

Acting so demure and submissive wasn't really befitting who she was, especially not with their drastic differences in height, bulk, or body types.  All the same, Kenny liked it.  Sure, he was mostly a submissive-minded person, but it was fun to switch things around like this.  Any good partner should be able to do so, after all.

He rubbed his face in the fluff of her cleavage one more time before he finally rose up, face tingling and warm.  He had thus far been straddling her belly as he played.  Hands still pressed deeply into the shag carpet like fur, he pondered something.

She cocked her head to the side, ears flicking cutely and her expression teasingly playful.  Her paws folded around him, one lifting to cup his back and shoulders in a gentle grasp.  Her claws flexed every few seconds but he had no fear of her actually using them on him.

"So..." he asked eventually, drawing the word out.  "All those nights when I wasn't in the tube."  He raised an eyebrow down at his huge Alien Mate.

She immediately recognized what he was talking about.  Her ears folded down and she again looked off to the side, expression almost mortified.  Her purr died off to barely a whispering rumble and her hair fell over her face a bit, obscuring most of it.  He combed it back as much as he could, hips briefly pushing flush with her chest.  The warmth and soft textures there sent shockwaves throughout his body.  He had to concentrate hard to keep up his train of thought.  It wasn't often he could ever have actually teased her like this.

"See, I thought at first that you were angry, or fighting, or possibly even eating something.  Or someone."  He kept his voice conversational and unconcerned.  She gave an unhappy yowl up at him, which just made him smile wider.  "Suppose this is what you've been up to for all those nights."

Nova seemed to steel herself and finally met his eyes again, shoulders rolling before they set themselves in a firm line.  She even drew herself up a bit haughtily, despite the naked Human straddling her chest.  'Nova was lonely,' she stated, seemingly no longer embarrassed.

He nodded.  "Very lonely.  No one could judge you."

'Survival would be unlikely if they had.'  Her eyes flashed up at him, regaining some of that mischievous twinkle from before that he was so used to.

For his part, Kenny just leaned on his crossed arms atop her breasts, leaning down toward her more.  "Well, I certainly wouldn't make that mistake," he chuckled.  Nova smiled wider.  "Although, if this recent surge of confidence doesn’t get me into too much trouble…I might dare say you may be a bit of an addict, my Mate."

Her eyes softened for just a second as he breathed out those last two words before they firmed once more with heat and equally teasing energy.  She shrugged, obviously done with being embarrassed.  Her paw tightened around his naked spine and she licked her lips up at him.  'Kenny is an addict too.’

"I am not!" he objected.  "I haven't attended to that kind of urge once.  I probably wouldn't have, even if you'd told me about having the ability to."  He finally lost his self-confident smugness, looking away from her as his shyness seemed to return in strength.  "Not that...I haven't...considered it."  Nova hummed beneath him.  "And I'm only a porn addict," he shot back down at her, trying to regain his bluster.  "You're the sex fiend."

Nova let out a rumbling laugh up at him.  Her eyes crinkled at the edges and her purring resumed fully.  'Kenny is right,' she admitted.  She glanced to the side slightly.  'Nova was lonely, hurting, in pain.  Easier in the moment to forget, to hide.'

He reached down, barely able to but managing to rub across her muzzle.  She leaned into it happily.  "I would never actually be able to judge you, Nova," he promised her.  "I'm no saint either.  I spent a lot of evenings back at home on Earth, doing...much the same thing.  I was lonely, like you.  I never thought I'd find another person, in any reality, that would want me for me ever again.  But now...I have you."

She purred even stronger.  The vibrations nearly made him quiver atop of her.

"S-so..." he added, trying to muster up the confidence again to take advantage of their heightened and reawakened true selves for as long as the injections would last.  "Where do we go from here?  Last time was pretty much your call entirely, not that I minded.  I mean..."  He stammered to a halt and fidgeted.  "You’ve...seen…my secret side.  I’d like to say I’ve seen yours."

Nova rumbled even more beneath him, her eyes taking on a satisfied, predatory gleam.  She quivered one ear and even seemed to raise a furry eyebrow at him, as if trying to encourage him teasingly and get him to say what he was desperately trying to.  Her paw against his back trailed a finger up and down his spine, coaxing him on.

"B-but," he rattled out, trying to muster up all his courage.  "S-say that I wanted to...try…other stuff? You d-did that all of that for-for me."  He was repeating words again.  Why was it so hard to say that he wanted to do more than they already had?  Was it selfish to ask that?

For her part, Nova nodded at his query concerning his hidden folders of shame.  She gave a soft yowling sound at him and slowly shifted up, dislodging him from her chest and rising up just slightly off her back to lean on the elbows of the upper pair of her quartet of arms.  He had slid back down to straddle her abdomen.  It was firm and incredibly dense underneath him but just as warm and fluffy.

'What would Kenny like to do next?' she asked, rumbling chuckles echoing in his ears.  She licked her jowls meaningfully as if asking if he wanted a similar experience as before.

"H-how do...your kind...?" he forced himself to ask.  She blinked in surprise and actually seemed to lose a bit of her succubus bluster.  "A-actually...?"

'Mate,' she finished for him.  He nodded gratefully.  She arched her head to the side curiously, then seemed to ponder it for a moment.  'Pictures on Kenny’s device are not accurate, as Nova has said.'

He wilted slightly.  He was starting to lose his confidence, beginning to doubt this was even possible.  "Sorry I just...That makes sense.  No one can deny that, what with our...differences and all..."  He trailed off, knowing she would understand.  "I shouldn’t have asked..."

She furrowed her brows, blinking again, then seemed to ponder something for a while.  His train of thought was probably along the same lines.  Something about pencils and hallways…  Okay maybe not the same lines.  He hid his face a little in his thick hair, quickly beginning to lose all confidence that this was going to work at all.

Then she spoke again.  'Kenny is Nova's Mate.  ' she stated abruptly  Her eyes were set and firm, twinkling once again.  She let out a rolling chuckle.  'Nova knows a way.'

His gaze flashed up towards her, hopeful, desperate, hungry yearning evident in his brightly glowing orbs.  “R-really?!” he squeaked, then bit his lip hard at how pleased she looked at his reaction.  “How…how…?”

‘Kenny and Nova…are different,’ she began.  He waited with baited breath as she seemed to deliberate almost exceedingly long, drawing it out playfully.  Then her paw tightened again upon him and moved him more firmly into her grasp, holding him tight as her words echoed in his mind.  ‘But our minds are similar in construction.  Mates join among Nova’s kind, not with bodies, but with thoughts, emotions, and experiences.  Such has already succeeded between us before.’

"But what about..." he started to ask again, but then one of her furry fingers planted itself against his lips, cutting him off.  He stared up into her eyes.  Then what she meant sank in, a fraction of a second before one of her tentacles teasingly slid up his bare spine and nested against him where her paw had just uncovered.  His throat tingled as its tip hovered over the sensor there.

Oh.

He glanced down at her tentacle then up at her again.  “The…link?” he asked, voice hushed.  She blinked.  “That’s like…mating for you?”  She blinked again.  Heat rushed to his cheeks and he abruptly planted his face fully down into her fur, hiding from the sudden surge of shyness.  “You might have mentioned that before!” he muttered up from the faceful of fluff he was hiding in.

Her rumbling chuckle again echoed around them.  ‘Kenny…’ she purred inside his brain.  He refused to look up at her, even as her tentacle teased the tip of one of his ears.  ‘There are many forms of the meld.  We use it to exchange memories and sensations, but reserve its more private uses for only those we trust most deeply.  Mating is but one of these more complex functions.  Meshing emotions of adoration, intimacy, and fondness.’

Hearing her break down the science of it did help alleviate his fluttering immature thoughts.  As did the stroking of his bare spine and hips by one of her strong paws.  It made too much sense, really, although he did question how a mostly non-physical exchange could result in offspring.  Maybe that was a question for another time.

‘And there is no one Nova would ever want to feel the deep-meld with again more than my Kenny,’ came her voice again, softer and more gentle inside his mind than he had ever heard it.  He relaxed slowly as she spoke, tears brimming his eyes now from emotion rather than from being flustered.  ‘We do not need to, Nova only wished to tell Kenny how much you mean to me.’

“You…mean everything to me…too,” he half-whispered, knowing that volume would not take away from her being able to understand what he meant.  It was like they were already intrinsically linked, her lingering inside of his head as if part of her had been implanted there.  He did not need to physically see to watch how her eyes twinkled at him as she spoke, how her tail flicked back and forth when she teased or played with him, how her whole body shone that much brighter when they were together.

Juiced as he was, he still already knew that no one two souls could ever have been closer to one another than they were.  He was more to her than just her cross-species coparent.  He was her Mate.  She and the cubs were his Family.

Love bloomed within him and his arms wrapped around her tighter than ever, almost so much that he worried for one second that maybe it might be too much.  The physical impossibility of him to be able to hurt her only made his grip that much stronger.  Instead, he simply held her as tight as he could, nestling deep into her fur.

Something soft brushed his hair and he finally lifted his eyes from the wonderfully scented fluff of her chest to again gaze up at her beautiful alien features.  Her paw cradled his small body against her, gentle as possible but firm and strong.  He belonged to her, and she to him.  There was nothing to be afraid of.

‘Link with me,’ she purred softly at him.  ‘Share with me how it is supposed to feel.  Together, we find new ways to love when we thought those stars hidden from us forever.  Nova and Kenny.  We will find new Light, our Light, together.’

“Our Light…” he murmured softly in response.  He nodded, laying his head back down but turned his head to the side and thus baring his neck.  Her arms securely gripped him against her, keeping him close as her tentacle trailed up his back, across his shoulder, and finally brushed the sensor at his throat.  Together they fell, blood and hearts pounding as one, into the meld.

As before, Kenny floated in a galaxy of colors, sounds, and sensations that he had never believed possible before all of this.  Foreign constellations and celestial bodies danced around them in beautiful, coordinated spirals and shapes that moved to a music unheard but felt instead, deep in his core.  It was different this time, the colors more muted and somehow also more vibrant.

Nova was there, floating before him in all her inhuman perfected glory.  Her hair drifted around her face as if she were immersed in water, four arms fanning slowly every so often on either side of her muscular form.  Her eyes shone brighter than they ever had as she beckoned him to come to her.  Again they joined and he felt the core of her opening up to welcome him, as if she were a blooming flower unfolding its petals before his eyes.

He sank into what seemed a world of entirely new sensations and warmth as they held one another.  Size did not matter as he touched her, stroking her back, her arms, shoulders, chest, hips, legs, and throat as much as he wanted to.  It almost felt as if they had become the same height for how easily he could reach out and brush his hand across any part of her that he desired.  She returned his amorous, ardent touches with her own, equaling his passion and hunger stride for stride.

Did it really matter?  She wasn't turning him down.  In fact, she was seemingly getting more and more excited, from the way her purring had changed octaves yet again.  She wanted it too.  Together, they would find a way.  He knew that, even if it didn't end up working, she would still love him the same as she did right now.

She blinked again as she saw he now understood.  Her muzzle creased widely, teeth flashing and her stripes pulsing in the dark, casting beautiful shadows and ripples of color all across the walls.  The finger on his lips slid away to stroke along his jawline, huge paw then cupping his cheek.  She leaned down toward him once again.  Their foreheads met, a soft brushing of fur and the solidity of her skull beneath it.

'Nova has a request,' she announced then.  Kenny watched as she leaned back, now chewing on her bottom lip, and pulling an absolutely adorable expression of earnest need.

"Anything!" he exclaimed automatically, perhaps a bit too exuberant but he didn't care.  He would never be able to get over how beautiful she was, an endlessly complicated puzzle.  “You can ask me anything.”

‘It is not so much what Nova can ask.  But what Nova wishes to see.’

Kenny managed a chuckle, feeling it somehow resonate and bounce around inside his chest as if it were a hollow cavity and his laughter as echoes in a cave.  “I’m pretty naked here already and you were pretty thorough earlier.  There some inch of me you haven’t studied sufficiently to your liking?”

To be able to tease a creature, a Goddess like her, was beyond satisfying.  She took it in stride, thrumming the air around him with her own quiet laughter.  ‘Nova has seen…pictures of how Kenny’s species performs their Mating ritual.  Biology is too different between us to mate like Nova’s kind.  But here, in the meld, we are shared.  All Nova needs…is to see within Kenny.’

He took a second or two to process this.  The already existing link between them helped speed up even his brain, slow on the uptake as it ever was.  “You…wanna look inside my mind,” he stated slowly.  “At my…memories.”

‘Specific.  Memories,’ Nova rumbled.  ‘To understand beyond pictures.’

Kenny’s face might as well have become a new sun in that galaxy they floated inside of for how his cheeks burned.  “It’s…not like I have a massive amount of experience,” he tried to warn her.  “I’ve only ever been with…one…person.”  His words died away to distant, twinkling echoes in the void as memories rushed to the forefront of his mind.

Soft paws cradled him as melancholy welled up deep inside, trembling and warbling like sad orchestral music.  Images and flashes danced in his eyes as if watching a roll of film: Phoebe’s face, her smile, the way she used to play her fingers through his hair.  A second later, those sensations returned to him as well, deep kneading strokes of his scalp through his curly locks.

They washed away his stress completely, as they always had.  No matter how bad a day he had, he knew that this would always make him feel better.  Phoebe’s touch was soft, divine, and seemed to sense exactly where it would feel best.  Unbidden, a specific memory came to him even as he basked in it.

Soft covers touched his back as he reclined on the bed, head laying on a pair of long legs tucked underneath them.  Gentle humming filled the room they shared, clean and small but theirs.  Her thumb traced over the scars on his forehead but he didn’t mind as long as it was her.  His eyes drifted open, gazing up at the lovely, red-headed woman who had shown him his first glimpse of actual joy.

Phoebe Tills beamed down at him, her long curtain of copper hair hanging down around her adorable face.  She had the most wonderful dimples, crinkling her expression and casting her twinkling eyes in deep folds.  She leaned down, combing some of her hair out of her way, to press a kiss to his nose.

“You’re cute,” she whispered.  “Even when you look so terrible.”

He grinned sleepily up at his girlfriend.  “No, terrible just looks like me,” he shot back.  He flinched as she raised a hand as if to chop him but it never fell.  Instead, when he risked glancing up at her again, she still hadn’t moved.  “What is it, Pheebs?” he asked.

Phoebe seemed to ponder something for a while before she abruptly slipped her knees out from underneath him.  He watched her slide away from him a bit, then, to his shock, she worked her fingers into her sleep shorts and tugged them down her long, pale legs.  Kenny tried to sit up but she shook her head and, leaving her shirt on over her modest breasts, opened her arms invitingly to him.  It was a simple, open request, her eyes shining.

“Phoebe…” he murmured, sliding up off the bed and carefully maneuvering himself up above her.  Her legs, deceptively strong, wrapped tight around his waist, nimble toes tugging down his boxers.  Her hands slid across his waist and hips, diving between his gangly legs to grasp him and work him up before she tugged meaningfully forward.  He followed her direction, entering her with a soft gasp from both of them.  “What’s…the occasion…?” he panted, already feeling amazing.

“Do I need one to have sex with my boyfriend?” she responded curtly, wrapping her arms around his thin shoulders and settling back against the flimsy sheets.  Her fingers worked up into his hair again, tugging just a bit insistently and he took the queue to begin moving.  Immediately they shuddered together, her giving soft sighs and breaths that were the sexiest thing in the world to him.  “You’re always…so harsh on yourself…” she breathed into his ear.  “I hate it.”

“S-sorry…” he responded, burying his face in her collarbone as he tried to keep his pace consistent.  “I love you…so much…I sometimes can’t believe you’re real.  That you really want me…”

Her nails dug into his back through his shirt and she held him crushingly tight against her tall, slender frame.  “I’ll want you, beyond the stars and back,” she whispered.  His chest rattled and he tried to get his breathing back.  No, not now.  Why did…

Suddenly she was flipping them, rolling him onto his back again and straddling him once more.  She realigned him with ease and slid back to the base, leaning her body above and over him as she took over.

“Just relax, Kenny,” she breathed, perhaps a bit heavier this time.  “Focus on feeling.  People love you.  And if they don’t, I do.  I always will.  I always want you to be happy.”

“Phoebe…” he groaned, trying to reach up and touch her but she pinned his hands down, making him whine in joy.  “Why…?”

“No whys,” she breathed, leaning down and nibbling on his throat as she rode him faster, the curl of her hips almost like a dance.  “Just the now.  You think too much.”  She released his wrists and rose up, dragging her shirt up off of herself and throwing it to the side.  She had such a beautiful body, lightyears above his league.  And she had chosen him.  “I love you, Kenny.  To beyond the stars and back.”  Her eyes glowed down at him.

Glowed.

Up above him, the dim ceiling of the crappy apartment faded away, disappeared into a dark void of colors and shining points of light.  Phoebe did not so much melt away as she shifted, changing.  Long, pale limbs became muscular and rippled with strength.  Modest swells of breast expanded to vast proportions, mountains compared to hills.  Skin became fur and scales, red hair turning midnight black and striped through with a rainbow of alternating shades and dancing rivers of light.

He could still feel the bed beneath him but not physically, more a solid place where he remained flat on his back.  He was surrounded by powerful, graceful limbs, two massive arms planted on either side of him, six-fingered paws splayed out with claws flashing.  Another pair braced themselves yet higher above him, and yet higher still, the beautiful face of Nova reappeared to him.  Her eyes were shining joyously, teeth bared in a smile he had never seen.

Down her massive body his eyes roved, barely able to believe the view.  She remained straddling him, somehow not crushing his flimsy hips beneath her bulk even as she continued to move just as Phoebe had.  At their conjoined waists, he expected to see the connection necessary for Human mating but instead only saw…light.  It poured out from where they touched, pulsing waves of radiance that alternated in intensity along with the continuing waves of ecstasy and pleasure.  It wasn’t…real.  But it was.

Kenny threw back his head as Nova continued, the entirety of her massive body filling his whole field of vision.  There was nowhere he could look that she wasn’t, beaming down at him, panting, the bright blue of her fangs and mouth flashing, eyes shining brighter than he had ever seen.  Her hair waved about her as if immersed underwater, flowing and dancing to the motions of her body as she mirrored what she had been watching.

‘Kenny…’ she growled out down at him.  His fingers worked themselves into what he could reach of the fur on her thighs and hips as she kept moving, each crashing thrust enough to make him worry his bones were all about to break before he reminded himself that this was the link.  A shared consciousness.  A fantasy, yet one made real.

He and Nova were together.

His eyes watered, his chest drew tight, and without knowing it was even possible, he surged up toward her as if propelled by a rocket underneath him.  Nova went with the motion, her shining laughter filling the void of the deep-meld as she rolled, landing flat on her titanic, multi-limbed back.  He lay across her now, weightless but perfectly in control as he resumed from where they had left off.  It felt exactly like it had, even if it was entirely different.

“Nova…” he groaned, a surge of confidence he’d never known rising inside of him and he clung to her all the more.  Then she was bending beneath him, somehow angling her inhumanly flexible body up and pressing her muzzle tight against his in a searing kiss.  He went with it, body feeling lighter than air.

It was as if he were tuned into the very core of her, as if from where they were connected that they had ceased to be singular entities and were now one and the same.  Every motion, brought on by his real world experiences in how to make love, only made Nova writhe and growl beneath him all the more joyously.  Her paws slid up and down his tiny-seeming frame, squeezing him in ways she never could have outside of the link without fear of breaking him.  He enjoyed every single compression, every tight shuddering touch that made him feel as if he were about to burst apart into stars to join the galaxy of swirling emotion around them.

Waves of shared, empathic bliss washed over and through him, and thus through her.  Or perhaps they came from her and washed into him.  It didn’t really matter, for they were together.  All around them, stars and comets whizzed by, colors brightening as if the universe itself was sharing in their euphoria.  They spun, weightlessly in space and witnessed the birth of countless systems as they crossed the final eclipse together.

It came like a supernova, building inside of him unlike anything he’d ever felt before.  Panting somehow for breath despite that he had no need to breathe here, he looked down and saw, to his shock, brilliant light shining from where his heart would have been.  Nova’s chest shone much the same way, both glows growing brighter and brighter as they continued.  Fiery heat suffused him from head to toe, building with every movement until he felt like he was going to explode.

Assuaging his fears, Nova wrapped herself all the more tightly around him, both dwarfing him in her titanic bulk and also perfectly fitting herself to him.  She kissed him, voice resounding through his brain like song.  ‘Kenny…my Kenny…I love…you…’

“I love you…Nova…” he gasped out.  Their chests pushed flush together at the last, arms tightening around one another as light filled them to the brim and spilled out.  He felt her muscles compress beneath his grasp as if he were just as strong and powerful as her, felt her shudder as shockwaves emanated throughout their joined bodies.  They made new colors all on their own, new light that drifted from them even as the tremors and soft shuddering touches slowed.

There, in the link, they drifted for a time until, like emerging from water,  they surfaced at the same time.  The real world rushed back into view, feeling, and sound.  The air was thick, stuffy, and heavy.  His face was pushed flush into Nova’s chest, her arms tight around him.  His bones creaked and he gasped out her name, finally signaling her to release the pressure.  They sagged against one another, both panting for breath.

Glowing alien eyes met glowing Human ones.  There was a pause, a soft, gentle silence that suffused the room they shared.  Then, at the same time, they smiled.  Nova again wrapped him in her huge arms, pinning him, more gently this time, against her furry bulk and immersing him once more in a soft bed of snuggles.  Never before had he felt more secure, comforted, loved, in his life.  A soft touch to his head, warm, stroking fingers working through his thick, curly hair, made him shudder.

It was like a signal, a sign of her blessing that he could finally move on, here with a woman that truly loved him as much as Phoebe ever had.  He would forever be thankful to her for saving him from the darkness of his days on Earth, for showing him that he was worthy of being loved, and even though she was taken from him, it was almost as if she were returned to him in shining radiance in the form of his space tiger alien queen.

And he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Nova felt the same way.  Brighten’s words washed over him, making him sniff softly.  He glanced to the side and thought, for a second, he saw two faces glowing there in the floating motes of light that drifted across his enhanced perception of reality.  Two glowing smiles, happy to see the ones they loved having found new happiness again.

Kenny looked up to Nova and saw she too had been staring, seemingly at the exact same place even as the spirits, memories, or whatever they were, faded into dust and drifting shards of serenity.  Their eyes met and his Mate began to purr once again, tears shining for both of them.  Their arms tightened just a bit more and they lay there, together, as the last dregs of the injections left their tired, emotionally exhausted bodies, to be replaced with the soft, gentle hum of completion.

Human and Nova cuddled together in that ball of naked limbs, furry and not.  No words were needed.  Through the drifting seas of the cosmos, across the void of galaxies, they had found one another.  Old hurts melted away at last.  They had found a family.  In themselves, in each other, in their children, they had found a family.