I woke up well past noon—or midday or whatever the hell they called it on this planet—with a rather pounding headache. Despite how amazingly delicious the alien liquor was, it still caused hangovers. I rolled around in bed like a slug as I tried to move my body in any kind of real, coordinated way, and when I finally came to my senses, I heard the shower running in the bathroom. So, Eve decided to have her first shower. I could probably use a shower too, but I certainly wasn’t going to mention anything until Eve was well and done with hers—didn’t want to give her ideas about showering together.

  Did that make me arrogant? Was I just assuming Eve would take every chance available to seduce me?

  I heard the shower cut off, and a few moments later Eve exited the bathroom wearing an incredible sexy, form-fitting white silk hotel bathrobe, drying her hair with the towel in a surprisingly human manner.

  “Oh damn, if I knew you’d be up now I would’ve asked if you wanted to shower with me.” Eve offered with a playful smile.

  Huh, guess I wasn’t arrogant after all.

  I grumbled a wordless response as I moved my way towards the bathroom, but Eve blocked my path. “My morning hug?” She demanded.

  “You want it now before I shower?”

  Eve nodded, “Now please.”

  I opened my arms and Eve nearly tackled me in an embrace, pushing me back a foot. She wrapped her arms around my waist as I held her around her back, and I could feel her nearly melt into my embrace as her muscles all seemed to relax.

  “Oh, this is so fucking good…” Eve nearly moaned, sounding as though she just took a hit of some powerful drug.

  “What, seriously?” I asked, and tried to pull back to look at her, but Eve had me locked in place.

  “Don’t act like you aren’t reacting to my embrace too.”

  I sighed, “It’s just a hug—it’s nice, but it’s nothing special.”

  Eve giggled to herself, “Oh yeah? Do you normally get hard from ‘just a hug’?”

  I pulled back again and this time Eve let me go, and we both looked down to see I was very clearly aroused. Eve reached forward, but I was quick enough to turn away from her grasp and head into the bathroom, “Still a little drunk from last night, don’t read into it.” I called out from behind the closed bathroom door.

  I heard Eve laugh again, “Sure sure.”

  I got undressed and found myself at full-mast over a fucking hug. Seriously, Eve had to be doing something with pheromones with the way I was reacting. I hadn’t gotten a boner from a hug since I was like 13 years old—Danni McKormak, a girl who’d developed early, causing every boy in the eighth grade to seek out her hugs. And here I was, a grown man, reacting like a middle-schooler all over again. I wondered briefly if I should try and take care of it—shoot off in the toilet or shower drain, wondering if that would help alleviate the tension. I’d gotten really bad blue balls when Eve cock-blocked me with Tillia, maybe that was what bricked me up so bad. In the end, I decided not to risk it; if Eve heard me taking care of my own needs, she would probably try to interrupt it and insist she be involved, or she would be really pissed if I succeeded, and I was sure there would be some kind of punishment involved, despite her saying she wouldn’t hurt me.

  The shower helped calm me down and wake me up, and when I was finished I grabbed my own hotel robe and found it wildly comfortable—some crazy futuristic silk that had built-in warming properties. I left the bathroom to find Eve lounging on the bed with a shit-eating grin on her face.

  I pointed at her, “Behave.” I said before she could even open her mouth.

  She just rolled her eyes, “What’s on the agenda for today?”

  I half-shrugged, “See who’s free, maybe take the monorails around the capital and see if you can pick up any trails.”

  Eve pouted, “What, again? We did that the first day we were here.”

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “You remember that from your scout-form?”

  “Duh.” Eve held her hand out, and a black flesh-bubble grew on top of her palm. It suddenly popped and out came three little scout-forms. They hopped onto the bed and danced around, their tentacles pulling at each other.

  I held my hand out and one of the little scout-forms grabbed on and I picked it up to look at its big, glowing yellow eye, “Okay, how does this work exactly?”

  Eve sighed, “It’s mostly going to go over your head you know.”

  “Try me.”

  Eve sighed again, and the two scout-forms on the bed climbed up onto her shoulders, “My main perception comes from my core, but any additional forms I create are like a peripheral sense.” She held a finger up on each hand and held them out to the sides of her face, “Like what you see out of your peripheral vision; it’s not the main focus, but you see it all the same.”

  “Is it a limited kind of focus?”

  Eve shook her head, “Not exactly, just not the main focus; I can still process all the information without losing any details.”

  “And do you directly control them, or are they sort of like their own little entities—like summoned familiars?”

  “I control them directly; they’re part of me, no separate consciousness at all.” She held up a hand and wiggled her pinky, “Like controlling a digit, just a small part of the main body, easy and barely takes any concentration.”

  “If you made too many would you start to lose concentration?”

  Eve shook her head again, “No. You forget, I control all the individual cells in my body the same way you control your limbs; it doesn't matter what forms I add or how I shape my cells, I still retain full control of the trillions of cells in my body.” To prove her point, the fingers on her hand slowly blackened and then lengthened into tentacles reaching up to the ceiling, branching into dozens of separate tendrils each the size of a finger, quickly spreading all over the room.

  “Alright, I get it.” I waved her off quickly as the tentacles started wrapping around me.

  Eve giggled as she retracted her tentacles and her hand returned to its normal form.

  “How exactly does all that work? You can grow and shrink whenever—gain and remove mass. And you seem to have endless energy. It honestly doesn’t make any sense, like, scientifically.”

  Eve shrugged, “And that’s why the Imperial researchers performed those countless experiments on us; even after all that time, picking us apart and putting us back together, they couldn’t discover the secrets to our bodies.”

  “Does that mean it’s a mystery to you too?”

  Eve cocked her head to the side, “I just am, there is no better explanation than that; I exist beyond the boundaries of this universe, physically and metaphysically. The things I can do come naturally to me—some are even an automatic process I can scarcely control.”

  That was a little concerning, “Does that mean you can lose control?”

  Eve shook her head, “Not in the way you might imagine—like some angry man who sees red and blacks out while he harms everything around him. No, if I lost control it would result in an instability of my cells—you might see me melt to a degree and lose some biomass, but no more than that.”

  “What could cause such a thing?”

  “When my sisters and I gathered together to unleash the biothermal chain reaction that destroyed NX-947b, none of us anticipated we’d lose nearly all our collected biomass; the energy ran away from us, and we all nearly lost everything but our cores as we escaped the planetoid.” She explained.

  Well, that was still something they did specifically; I was more worried about her getting pissed and killing everyone aboard The Radiance in some blind fury. It seemed like that wouldn’t be the case at least.

  “Alright, why don’t we get dressed, then head out to talk to our team leaders to see if we can round up an escort to take us around the city.”

  Eve’s expression turned to one of displeasure, “You still want to take the tour, even though I already saw most of the city through my scout-form?”

  I shrugged, “Things might be different with you here in person, and Gamma-17 might be in the capital now after your shriek-attack—as you said, she might be looking for you.” I offered.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Eve sighed, “Very well.”

  I grabbed up some fresh tourist clothes for the day and headed towards the bathroom.

  “Wait, darling, one thing first.” Eve called.

  I turned back to see Eve trailing a delicate black nail along her enticing cleavage, “I’ll behave, but I’ll still ask you once; wouldn’t it be nice to take the day to just tear into each other? An entire hotel room to ourselves, we could fuck for hours, enjoying each other’s flesh—pleasuring each other until we’re both dizzy…” She said almost tauntingly.

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “I dunno, that doesn’t sound like someone behaving—sounds like something someone shouldn’t get a kiss for saying.” I said mildly.

  Eve’s face quickly shifted to a cute pout, and she crossed her arms in a huff, “I’ll behave…” She grumbled like a little kid.

  I laughed at that and went to get changed in privacy. It seemed like I did have a little control over Eve now with the kiss rewards. Hopefully, it would last me through the rest of the mission.

  ***

  Eve and I went to Doctor Wit and Agent Kotlokk’s room to see who would be available for an escort for the day. Per protocol, we were always supposed to have other people in our group for security in case Gamma-17 attacked us, however since Eve was with me, I wasn’t sure if additional security was necessary. On the other hand, it was important to have an escort for Eve specifically since she could be so wildly unpredictable, and while I was sure she wouldn’t pose any threat to the locals, it would still be best to have additional eyes on her. When I told Doctor Wit our plan for the day, he was incredibly pleased I was being so proactive; he and Kotlokk had a light-duty day themselves as they readjusted to planet-side time, so they were more than happy to get us an escort.

  Agent Uinda, the pretty flora alien would be our point leader, with Argenna the lizard-woman marine as support, and Bento the ape-wolfman as our power armor soldier. Everyone was gathered up within the hour, and we headed towards the monorail station all looking like tourists as usual—except Eve, who was in her latex-princess gown. No one looked at Eve strangely—actually, she attracted a lot of attention from males checking her out—so I wasn’t worried about her blending in. Still, I thought it best to finally get her some actual clothes.

  “For our first stop, let’s head downtown; I think we should get Eve some real clothes to wear.” I told Agent Uinda.

  She looked Eve up and down, then turned to me and nodded, “There’s several races in the Empire that don’t wear clothes—or have a built-in kind of covering. Still, they’re few and far between, so to blend in, it’s probably best if she dressed in clothes like the rest of us.” Uinda confirmed.

  Uinda was nice—everyone on the escort team was nicer than some of the others on the investigation team, but I also noticed they didn’t seem overly concerned with Eve—they didn’t seem fearful of her. Perhaps because they remained planet-side when everything went down they only got secondhand info, and it wasn’t as scary—or maybe because they were all hardened soldiers. Either way, it was refreshing to be around people that weren’t looking over at me with obvious distaste and fear.

  When I told Eve the plan, her eyes grew wide with excitement, “You mean it, you’re taking me shopping?”

  I shrugged, “Yeah, just for some clothes to help with our cover.”

  She beamed anyways, “It’ll be like a little shopping date.”

  It didn’t take long for the super-fast monorail to make it to the heart of downtown, and our team made its way to the nearby mall. You would think an alien civilization might have evolved beyond the need for shopping malls, what with Amazon and delivery services taking over back on earth, but with Entana being as prosperous as it was, people actually seemed to enjoy leaving their homes. Maybe that was the rubber-band effect of technological conveniences; shopping centers are born, home delivery takes over and destroys the local shop, a level of comfort returns to the world as greed is dismantled, shopping centers return as a place to relax and unwind. Maybe earth would follow that trend too once people got sick of billionaire greed and the masses overthrew the entire system. Back home I used to enjoy going to malls when I was a teenager, but then everything got so expensive, and I became a working adult and just didn’t have time to go out and shop when everything I needed was only a couple clicks away.

  You know what, maybe it would be nice to have a little shopping date with Eve after all.

  We took our time walking through the spiraling mall that didn’t seem to have any ceiling and had some floating orb-buildings as stores, with fancy moving pads all over. Eve held my hand the entire time as Agent Uinda walked beside us, with the soldiers just a few feet behind—still dressed as tourist security.

  Eve finally found a store that caught her eye, and I had to do everything I could to stop from laughing; it was absolutely an alternative style store—alien goth fashion.

  “Do you dress like a sexy goth girl because you enjoy it, or because you know I enjoy it?” I asked Eve.

  She gave me a playful smile, “Both, obviously.”

  Inside nearly everything was black or black with a couple color accents—white, red, blue or purple. Eve picked out a few simple outfits—black sundresses, a couple black bodysuits—and then she got into a few cute combinations—futuristic skirts and jackets, some zippers and form-fitting vacuum style clothes. I ended up buying Eve a dozen different outfits, and she walked out wearing the simple black sundress that only seemed a little futuristic with that alien silk.

  “Shoes…” Eve muttered to herself. Aboard The Radiance she’d been fine to walk around barefoot, but down here on Entana she’d wrapped her feet in that black flesh so it looked like she was wearing simple house shoes almost like ballerina slippers.

  Eve went to a sneaker store and got some sci-fi running shoes that zipped up on their own and sealed against the foot for maximum support. After that she went over to the high-end store and got a few black flats and some heels, including what I would call straight-up alien stripper shoes. She ended up buying more shoes than even outfits—probably the grisliest thing she’s done so far.

  I paid for everything with my Imperial credits, and aside from a few meals and drinks here and there, it was certainly the largest amount of money I’d ever spent.

  “Weren’t you going to spoil me?” I asked.

  Eve grinned, “They haven’t given me any money yet.” She shrugged, “Besides, your job and all that pay comes as being my handler, so in a way, aren’t I your employer?”

  I laughed at that, “No, not even close.”

  Eve stuck her dark tongue out at me, “Whatever. I’ll treat you next time.”

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “Have they talked about putting you on payroll?”

  Eve opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, then planted her hands on her hips in an angry huff, “No, they most certainly haven’t. What do they think, I’m here to work for free?”

  I laughed again, finding her ridiculously cute right now, “I’ll put in a request to get you established as a real employee, how about that?”

  Eve smiled, then hooked her arm around mine, “Of course, darling, thank you.”

  And with that, we resumed our tour of the city, and while they might have been our escort at first, Eve put the rest of the team to work carrying all her shopping bags.

  We made another full loop around the capital just as we had the first day, and when I asked Eve if she could sense Gamma-17 at all, her face scrunched up in a thoughtful frown.

  “There’s definitely a Predazoan nearby, but that ‘nearby’ could be a hundred miles wide.”

  “You can’t pinpoint a specific location?” Agent Uinda pressed.

  Eve shook her head, “Predazoan camouflage is so perfect, it even masks us from other Predazoans. Honestly, it’s going to take some luck to actually find her; if Gamma-17 kills and consumes someone and I can get to the scene in time, I could probably track her the old-fashioned way.”

  I quirked up an eyebrow, “Like a bloodhound?”

  Eve fixed me with a flat glare, “Maybe a little more sophisticated than a dog, but I suppose that’s a reasonable comparison to make.”

  We decided to grab dinner on the way back to the hotel, and I had a brief moment of panic when Eve got her scan for what would be safe for her to eat; I was sure it would say unknown source or something equally suspicious, but it flagged her as basic-mammalian same as me. Eve flashed me a smug little grin in response.

  After dinner we returned to the hotel just a little after dark, and while we didn’t have much to show for our progress, I felt like we’d been weirdly productive. The team was working well alongside Eve, she was listening to my orders, she had some clothes to help her blend in, and then she even confirmed the Predazoan was nearby—though again, that nearby was relative to a Predazoan’s measurement.

  Eve and I got ready for bed, both of us in a better mood than we’d been in quite a long time it seemed. Set in my alien pajamas, I crawled into bed and turned on the TV, ready to unwind for the day.

  Eve, however, stood over my bed, her arms crossed, a pouty frown on her face.

  I sighed, “Please, not another proposition today…” Everything had been going so well.

  Eve shook her head, “I behaved today.” She said simply.

  Oh, right.

  I took in a deep breath and let it out twice as slow, but I didn’t say anything—I would wait for her to ask for it.

  Eve nodded, “I deserve my goodnight kiss.”

  I nodded too, “Alright.” I got up to stand before her, taller than her by a foot. Eve was wearing a simple black nighty, that same futuristic silk. It was form-fitting and showed a fair amount of perfect white cleavage, and it rode up enough to show off her plump thighs. I knew it was just a kiss, but I started to feel a little nervous over the whole thing. Looking down at Eve, I could see she was breathing heavy—excitement and fear dancing in her eyes.

  I smirked, “You’re nervous.”

  Eve glowered in a cute pout, “It’s our first kiss, it’s a big deal!”

  I chuckled and shook my head, “You sure you want our first kiss to happen now? You said you wanted the human experience; waiting for the right moment is pretty human.”

  She crossed her arms in a huff, “You’re not weaseling your way out of this; I want my kiss.” She demanded.

  I nodded, then put my hands on her waist, and she flinched a little as her breath stuttered. She took in a deep breath and put her arms around my neck, staring up at me.

  “I don’t get why I’m so nervous…” She said in a small voice.

  I shrugged, “A first kiss is a big deal.” I said, trying to sound nonchalant despite my stomach being knotted up in nerves—a 30-year-old man should not be feeling so nervous over a simple kiss.

  Eve swallowed hard, “Can I…can I have 5 seconds for my first kiss?” She asked in such a small voice it nearly made me melt.

  I nodded dumbly, “Sure.” I was glad that was all she asked of me.

  We spent a little time looking in each other’s eyes, until finally Eve leaned up, parted her succulent, pouty black lips, and she kissed me.

  Time stood still when Eve kissed me; it was like nothing I’d ever felt before. A simple kiss shouldn’t make my toes tingle, but it did. A simple kiss shouldn’t make me dizzy, but it did. A simple kiss shouldn’t make me feel like I was finally home and loved and safe, but it absolutely did. Eve’s lips were full and sweet, she tasted delicious. She smelled like the combination of every wonderful smell I could imagine—sweet and sexy, calming and enticing altogether. She was so soft and feminine, so powerful and yet so delicate. In that moment I wondered if soulmates were real—had I met my soulmate?

  I felt Eve’s tongue flick into my mouth, and I was finally able to recall myself as I pulled away, “I said no tongue…” I said breathlessly.

  I had no idea how long we actually kissed, but it was definitely more than five seconds.

  Eve smiled guiltily, a pale pink blush on her white cheeks, “Sorry darling, I got excited.” She looked down, “So did you…” She said coyly.

  I didn’t even need to look, I could feel how aroused I was.

  Actually…

  I pulled Eve’s nightie up a little, revealing her cute little lacey black panties, and sure enough I could see a clear liquid dripping down her thighs—her own arousal as obvious as mine.

  For all her bravado and attempts at seduction, Eve’s cheeks flared bright red as she tugged her nightie out of my grip to properly cover herself. Without saying anything else, Eve just about dove towards her bed and wrapped herself in her bundle of blankets so I couldn’t see even a hint if her.

  “G-g-goodnight…” She said in a high-pitched, strained, impossibly innocent voice.

  I smiled, feeling proud and triumphant. And even though I felt like I was going to burst out of my pants, with the way Eve had reacted, I definitely felt I had more control over the entire situation after all.