His clothing came apart, and she peeled a layer of thick, expensive material away from his belly and chest. She ran her left hand down the curve of his stomach and found his cache; with a deft, tender motion she pulled out the small penis, wrapped it in her fingers and squeezed it gently. It swelled rapidly, pushing at her palm like a small animal. He'd opened her coverall now, and she shrugged out of it, kicking her legs impatiently out of the clinging material and letting the garment drift away into the Air. She felt Hork's hand slide, dry and hot, up her thigh and between her legs; she opened her thighs softly and he ran his fingers over her cleft, as clumsily and eagerly as an adolescent. There was a coolness inside her, and she knew that she was ready, that membranes inside her were already sighing lubricating Air into her. Now she took Hork's penis — it was pulsing, rhythmically — and pushed it deep inside her; it entered her easily. He sighed, and buried his face in her shoulder; she turned her head, resting her cheek on his hair. His penis was like a warm, beating heart inside her. His legs, still clothed, were warm and rough against hers as she began to scissor her thighs, back and forth, letting the pattern of her movements stimulate the muscle walls inside her.

At last she felt herself clench at him, hard; she shuddered, and she heard him gasp, his bulk heavy against hers as they drifted in the Air. Her muscles pulsed around him, and for a few seconds she felt flutters, beats, as the rhythms of their bodies strove to merge. But soon they coalesced, and she felt a surge of triumph as the walls of her vagina throbbed in unison with Hork.

He came quickly, and she only heartbeats later. They cried out and shuddered against each other; she felt the muscles of his back move under her fingers.

Hork slumped against her. She held him against her body, curling her fingers in his hair, unwilling to release his warmth and mass. She felt his penis still inside her, small and hot. The moment of closeness stretched on, and she thought of how strange this liaison would have seemed to her — deep in the lethal depths of the Star with the ruler of an astonishing City — if she could have imagined it, in the days before she left the upflux. For some reason she thought of Deni Maxx, the brisk doctor from Muub's Hospital. But your coupling would have seemed much stranger to a watching Ur-human, Dura imagined her saying. We believe their sexual mechanism was based — not on compression, like ours — but on frictional forces. That's obviously impossible for us, embedded in superfluid as we are, so when they designed us...