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  She frowns at herself in the mirror. And wonders if it's worth it.

  Kyle wraps his arms around her from behind. "And, on-cycle or off, you are always beautiful. Inside and out. You shouldn't have to prove anything to anyone, either way."

  She lets him squeeze her. Enjoys the feel of his undemanding arms around her, just holding her, comforting her. She closes her eyes and lets this moment wash over her. She's surprised by how, with him, right now, it doesn't feel different. His love for her, his desire and care, feels like it always does, unaffected by her cycle. Inspired only by her—by them, together. And she wants nothing more than to just bury herself in it. To let this feeling, this moment, be her whole world.

  Checking the clock, she bites her lip. She should go to work, especially if she plans to vote afterward. Unfortunately, she's missed too many days and showed up late to work too many times to do so again. So has he, for that matter. She ought to hurry along and get on with her day, letting him do the same. She should take the early bus, full of fewer people who are usually too tired to notice her anyway. She should.

  But she doesn't. How could she when Kyle, his love and support, is everything she wants and needs right now?

  So, instead of doing what she knows she should, she turns in her boyfriend's embrace and kisses him.

  He freezes at first, surprised, before groaning and sinking into her kiss as if he's been holding himself back. "You sure?" The words are a wisp against her lips.

  She is.

  She isn't sure about anything else outside this house. This world she's lived in for most of her life that rarely feels like home. People may like her, as a person, as one individual Pixiso, but still see her people as an invasive species. She resignedly sees and deals with the shadows and dangers this world holds for someone like her, and she just doesn't know what to do about any of it.

  But him? She is sure about him.

  "You'll be late."

  She arches her eyebrow. "Then you'd better be worth it." She starts to strip off the gloves.

  "Don't."

  She looks at him curiously.

  "Leave them on."

  Her grin widens. Really? She fiddles with the glove's elastic, pulling it up her wrists, before turning them on. Okay.

  Giggling, she moves to tug at his shirt, shocking him in the tummy, his side, his arms and neck. He jumps and squeals with each electric sting, laughing as he hurries to take off his top. He shoos her away, chuckling, when she reaches for his sleep sweats, guarding his goods.

  Then he's standing before her, nude. She stares. He's beautiful. He reminds her of an Itdekh boy she used to know on Pixis, who was from the mountains halfway around her world. They both have hooded eyes and high, chiseled cheekbones. But, being Native American, Kyle's skin is the color of a wave-touched shore at sunset, instead of the pale, almost translucent skin her childhood friend had. And no one has lips like her boyfriend, full and dark rose. He's also tall, so much taller than Juli.

  She lifts her hand to touch him, the black of her glove visually striking against his shoulder. She watches him try not to flinch at her touch, his eyes fluttering shut as his spine straightens and his jaw squares at the small sting. She almost pulls her hand away, until she notices his erection and the hot flush of color slashing his cheeks.

  She looks at him. Sees the way his teeth sink into those rich lips and the way the corners of his lips lift in pained pleasure. She watches his fists clench and unclench to keep himself from touching her. Holding himself back, his feet shuffle with antsy energy.

  CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

  OF THE BEST KIND

  Kyle hadn't meant this. He was only going to offer his girlfriend coffee.

  He hears the half-truth in his own thoughts.

  He hadn't meant for this to happen but, Lord, he'd hoped.

  You sure? The question echoing in his head, he looks up at her, his brow furrowing. You sure? He wants her to be because he can't trust himself to be objective.

  Her head tilts questioningly and touches his lip where his teeth painfully dig. "Are you sure?"

  Is he? Blinking furiously, he tries to make her words make sense. He's certain that he wants her—how could he not?—but he hates that he can't be about her.

  It doesn't help that, with every breath he takes, his mind gets more muddled. That scent of hers is telling him things he wants, he hopes, he needs, to be true, but might not be. It can lie. He knows that.

  He asked her once, if he can't use her scent as a sign, how he's supposed to tell if she's turned on.

  "You could just ask me."

  It was such a simple answer, but it didn't feel that simple. That sure. Clenching his fists, he holds impossibly still. God, he really wishes it was.

  Take a breath, he tells himself, and look at her.

  Desire doesn't look the same on her. Kyle can't use the wordless signs that he's used to with other women. Her skin, the color of a dream, doesn't flush with color. She does get hot to the touch as arousal flows through her, but he doesn't trust himself to touch her. Rather, he doesn't trust himself to be able to stop.

  He looks into her eyes. Endlessly black, like the cosmos she came from, he can never really read them.

  Well, almost.

  He's been with her for three and a half years now. Touched and looked at and worshipped her body for that long. He watches as she blinks. When she's turned on, her inner eyelids—her palpebra tertia—blink a beat too slow, covering those space-shaded eyes with a thin silvery skin he only sees, for just a second, when she's just waking up or very aroused. He holds his breath and looks.

  You sure?

  Seeing that slide of silver, he sighs, certain.

  With a nod, he feels his body tighten at her inviting moan. Feels himself get lost in her excitement. He lets go as desire rushes him, letting it fill him, fuel him. He feels his muscles relax and, giving in, he breathes.

  *~*~*

  The passion in Kyle's eyes gives Juli a thrill even as he stands frozen in front of her. Sliding her hand past his shoulder, her wrist touches his skin. Flesh to flesh, she looks at the contrast between them. The way hers, a swirl of colors like an oil slick, looks against his. The feel of her skin, thicker but smoother, against his more delicate flesh, covered in hair—some thick and coarse, others barely there like fine down—and bumps and scars.

  While he likes to trace the color patterns of her skin, painting her with his fingers, learning the art of her, she likes to read his past in every mark on his body. The scar he has on his left thigh from climbing a tree as a child. The echo of a dog bite he has near his right thumb, from an ex-girlfriend's untrained pet. Even the way his skin sometimes flares in harsh, red rashes when he's overly stressed along the steady shelf of his shoulders and down his long spine. His body is a story she never wants to finish.

  Running both wrists over his shoulders, she lingers over their strength. She touches his arms, feeling the muscles there flex. Smirking, she teases her fingertips over his shoulder blades, feeling him arch away from their sting and into her. She torments him, up and down his back, over his sides and hips, and along the curve of his ass. She loves the way he wriggles and writhes under her attention, his squirming body swaying to her songless rhythm.

  He gives a grumbling chuckle and grabs the loose hem of her shirt dress, pulling it over her head to trap her arms like soft, gray manacles. "That's enough from you, miss."

  She giggles as he backs her up against the bed frame, making her fall onto the mattress. She lands on her back, her legs wrapped around his waist. Pulling him close, she revels in his hardness against her heat. She lays her bound wrists above her head, making her back arch and her breasts thrust up.

  She sees him inhale deeply and his gaze glaze over with desire. In sweet anticipation, she stretches. Until she notices his hands clenched in front of him. Waiting.

  Her pointedly swiveling hips make his eyes widen. "Don't forget the condom and to text Dona that you're going to be late to work.
"

  "You sure?" His gaze searches hers.

  She nods to the bedside table. "Uh-huh."

  Kyle fumbles, firing off a text that his phone likely knows by heart by now. When he reaches into the drawer, she feels her nipples tighten and her pussy clench in anticipation. Watching him roll on his condom feels rebelliously sexy. There aren't many Pixisos here. After the Great Migration, the original just-under-six-thousand Pixiso refugees who traveled here spread all over the planet, living wherever would welcome the unknown aliens in pockets all over the world.

  Despite being cleared by the quarantine, most countries were still wary of exposing their population to the Pixisos, for fear of exotic diseases or sleeper-cell invasions or just the most outside of outsiders humanity has ever known. While others bickered over the opportunity to have a technologically more advanced population within their borders, not realizing that most of the population that had come over in the Migration aren't scientists and that taking more Pixisos in doesn't give them more rights, under the UN agreement, to the spaceship still stationed around Earth's orbit. At any rate, most of the refugees went to the US, to then be broken up and spread across the country, with the next largest groups going to Europe, Canada, and Australia.

  After a little over thirty years of living here, the Pixisos still only make up roughly around eight thousand in a world full of eight billion humans. Little Pixis, where Juli's parents live, only has sixty-odd families living there. And, after more than two decades of intergalactic travel spent in stasis and three decades on their new planet complete with new environments, diets, and lifestyles, some of the original immigrants are feeling their mortality, facing age- and acclimation-related health challenges like cardiovascular or gastrointestinal disease. With already low birth rates, her people need new blood. Though mixed relationships are frowned upon, children are needed for their species to survive.

  But she and Kyle both decided that, while they want children someday, they're not ready yet, no matter what her parents or community might say about it. Since the human medical community can't or won't make birth control for Pixisos, especially against the wishes of the Pixiso scientists and elders who want to grow their communities and numbers, condoms are their best option.

  The sight of latex covering his cock probably shouldn't make her hot—from what she could tell, it certainly doesn't do so for human women—but it does. It makes her feel transgressive, having sex for the sole sake of pleasure instead of procreation.

  She moans, wanting to feel his dick slide deep inside her. With her pants still on, she can't. She squirms. Tries to use her weight, her struggle, the friction against the sheets, to force the offending clothes off.

  He laughs, the sound gruff and a little breathless. Reaching down to stroke the delicate shell of her pointed ears, he makes her shiver into his touch. "Do you want me?"

  Oh God. Her body twisting into his touch, she bites her lip and nods.

  "How much?"

  So much, it feels like need.

  "Tell me."

  Do it, she tells herself. Let him hear—feel—the words.

  When she does, he leans in to taste them against her lips and tongue, swallowing them while he strips off her pants and panties. He reaches between her thighs and touches her. "You're so wet." The phrase whispered worship, reverent and ravenous, against her mouth.

  She licks his lips and lifts her hips to his touch, encouraging him. Eagerly, he strokes her clit, making her body heat and beg for more.

  He gives it to her, sliding long fingers deep inside before curling them and thrusting, his hand a piston between her legs. Her fingers fist in her shirt, still trapping her hands, while her body is taken by his steady strokes. She moans and surrenders, letting him make her mindless with sensation. The sounds that drip from her tongue aren't words. Made low in her throat, they speak in half-tongues, a strange mix of almost-words from two different worlds.

  His greedy mouth takes in one taut nipple, kissing the tight peak. It's so good. The tug of his teeth at the sensitive tip forces a helpless sound from her throat. He takes his time, savoring the taste and feel of her, before doing the same with the other breast, leaving her skin slick with his kisses. She gasps.

  Her climax builds, a burning in her belly that spreads through every nerve. Locking her legs around his back, she gives him the words he's waiting for. Asking—demanding—for more.

  Asking for the full of him.

  When he takes his fingers from her, she feels empty and bereft until his cock, hard and insistent, presses against her sex. He rubs himself against her wet flesh, coating himself in her, before plunging inside.

  She cries out, the sensation of him almost too full and perfect. As he begins to pump, she thrusts with him, creating a perfect rhythm. Their moans mix into a timeless, universal melody, known and understood across the stars.

  Her climax breaks and her eyes widen. Crying out, her body stretches and tenses against his. Her hands pull at the shirt binding them, and she hears its strings snap.

  Even as pleasure courses through her, overwhelming her, she feels him moving over and within her. She can hear his breathing deepen into labored pants before he grabs her hips tightly for leverage. She feels it the moment his control, like those strings, gives and he loses himself in the effects of the cycle.

  In her.

  His sharp features contort in ecstatic pain the moment his orgasm hits. His back arches and his neck is thrown back. The groan that slips from his throat as sweat drips from his brow sounds thick and melodic.

  Her body clenches while she watches. At the squeeze, his body shudders and snaps, collapsing onto her, burying her beneath his weight.

  She kisses the sweat from his shoulders and collarbones. Nuzzling his chest, she feels his heart pound against her skin. His arms wrap around her, holding her close.

  Breathing deep, surrounded by the scent of them together, she feels completely safe and thoroughly loved.

  *~*~*

  After saying goodbye to Betsy, Dona checks her phone and laughs as she looks at the message from Kyle. B late 2 work. Go on w/o me. She knows what that text means. God knows, she's sent that text out more than a few times too.

  She smiles and tucks her phone back into her back pocket. Good for them. Cycle sex is the best—a wild tangle of hormones and bodies. It's need personified, reaching deep into the heart of you and pulling out your deepest desires. It dims your inhibition, your sense of shame and insecurity, and heightens everything else.

  She knows that Juli has some issues with it. Is often too afraid of it to really enjoy it, even with Kyle.

  Dona gets it. Especially given the size and strength difference between male humans and female Pixisos, the cycle could quickly go from thrilling to annoying to downright terrifying very quickly with the wrong person. Dona experiences and understands that kind of fear with strangers and acquaintances and even friends every cycle, but she can't imagine that ever happening in her own relationships, even while caught up in the throes of the cycle's heat. Which, she supposes, is easier to do when you only date women.

  Well, it sounds like they're having a good time of it now. After mentally wishing them the best, Dona heads to work.

  She wonders if it's weird that the idea of her girlfriend with her boyfriend makes Dona happy. But it honestly does. Juli and Kyle are great together, so considerate and caring with each other, always so concerned with the other's happiness. But that in no way makes Dona and Juli any less great. While the idea of Kyle and Juli having sex doesn't exactly make Dona hot or anything, it makes her happy knowing that they're happy.

  Which is weird, isn't it?

  Everything she's ever learned about love and sex, from either human or Pixiso culture, tells her that that's weird.

  But, pulling into the parking lot of her office, she knows it doesn't feel weird. It feels fine. Right. Maybe it's just further proof that she's the weird one. The oddity. Not human enough for Earth. But not Pixiso enough for her peo
ple either.

  Dona grabs her office keys and shoulder bag and gets out of her car.

  "Hey, girl, what's going on?"

  Raising an eyebrow, Dona turns around at the loud shout. A man steps away from two other guys, who slap him on the back encouragingly. He walks up to a woman who quickly picks up speed.

  "Hey, what's the rush?"

  Dona squints. Is that Miranda? From marketing? She can't tell from behind. It looks like her. Her red hair. Her tall, curvy build. But Dona isn't sure.

  The man grabs for her, tugging her close. "Hey, c'mon, come talk to me."

  The woman, definitely Miranda, tries to tug her arm away. "I have to get to work."

  He leans in. "Let me walk you in, then."

  "I. Have. To. Go."

  "You know, you should smile. You'd be real pretty, if you—"

  "Miranda!" The sound springs from Dona's throat before she can think better of it, before she can question if she's putting herself—both of them—at risk. "Hey, is the meeting for nine or ten o'clock?" She jogs up to Miranda, who manages to slip out of the man's hold, as he looks Dona up and down. She smiles and shrugs innocently. "‘Cause if it's nine, we're already five minutes late."

  Miranda rushes to stand behind her. For all that helps. Standing several inches shorter than the human woman, Dona doubts she's particularly intimidating. Yet she feels the other woman's hands rest on her shoulders, seeking strength, as the man's friends close ranks around him.

  With a cocky smirk, the man juts his chin toward Dona, his gaze touching every inch of her body. He licks his lips. "I've never tasted space before."

  Dona's smile widens even as her gaze hardens. "Like she said, we've got to go. Excuse us."

  The man holds out his arms in a sweeping mockery of gallantry. "If you say so. But you ladies know where to find us, if you change your minds."

  Grabbing Miranda's hand, Dona turns and resists the urge to sprint across the pavement.