Siona nodded. “My body can absorb almost anything that might be on you. It’s part of how I live. Er, if you don’t like the idea, that’s ok, we can always do it later… oh I mean-“

“No, it sounds wonderful. What do you have to do?”

Siona beamed happily at his acceptance, the crests of her cheeks flushing a dark blue in a line under her eyes. She glided around behind him and moved her blanket aside, leaving Ty feeling exposed.

“Don’t be embarrassed, silly” she scolded him, “I’m your lover now. Relax, this might feel a little strange at first.” She lifted him into a sitting position and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him tight against her.

Ty felt her breasts mash into his back and the graceful ‘Y’ of her groin cup against his bottom. Before Ty had time to fully appreciate the sensation, runners of wet, blue slime angled gracefully around his body.

When they’d made love, her movements had been frantic, grasping and hungry. Now, she was graceful, moving like liquid silk and glistening like some amazing, living jewel in the sun. She moved symmetrically, tendrils tracing a lacework across his arms and legs, then merging to encapsulate them. Ty had imagined feeling hot and stifled, but Siona was as cool as a mountain waterfall and tingled slightly against his skin.

Finally, she rushed up into his hair and across his forehead. Ty let out his breath – he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it. Siona throbbed across his skin, a living, writhing mass.

“Mmm, getting a little aroused are we?” Siona cooed into his ear. Ty turned to face her reflexively, but she wasn’t there. Siona giggled. “I don’t need a mouth to speak, dummy. I’m stimulating your eardrum directly. We’ll have fun later, but for now I have work to do.” The mass covering Ty hugged his erect penis slightly and went slack.

Ty flushed. Siona was gently squirming her way into every crevice of his body. “This is a little embarrassing. You’re touching everything.” This brought on another giggle from Siona.

“That’s why I love this so much. You humans are always so shy, so exposed. You feel so vulnerable, Ty. It doesn’t take empathy to tell that. But to me you feel so unbelievably solid… like a fantasy come true. What would you say if I told you that my mouth was the part washing your dick, Ty? Mmm! It jumped, you must have liked that a lot.”

Ty was beginning to feel violated and immensely aroused at the same time.

“Shh, lover, relax, this takes a bit of time.” Siona began to massage the muscles in Ty’s back and shoulders in a hypnotic way that made him feel sleepy. “You’re in the safest place in the world… you’re surrounded by someone who loves you.”

Her words struck Ty profoundly. He thought back on his moment of mistrust in the library and flushed with shame. She was the most dangerous single entity Ty had ever known, and here he was; covered head to toe with her, looking like some kind of horrible cross between jewelcraft and cake making, light glistening and shining off of drippy limbs.

She had given him the gift of herself, which he felt even now but didn’t fully understand, and she had practically brought him back from the dead.

Ty found that he couldn’t move from his hunched forward sitting position, but wasn’t alarmed. Instead he leaned forward onto the Siona covering his chest, like a masseuse’s table.

For a moment the only sounds in the room were the gentle, liquid lapping of Sionas body against his. When Ty spoke, his voice was low and apologetic.

“Siona, I know I don’t talk much about it, but you were right in the tunnel. I do love you. At first I thought that maybe every Ballenta was some amazing, ideal girl.”

She said nothing, but Ty thought he could hear a content feminine sigh in his ear.

“But I don’t think so anymore.” Ty took a slow, deep breath. He wanted more than anything to say these things, but they were awkward for him.

“The way you treat me, and what you’ve done for me, and who you are; it isn’t something that can you can be born with… I think if I’d lived when the Ballenta were still around, I’d still pick you out of all of them. I think you’d be an angel, even among angels.”

“Stop it.” Siona said softly.

Ty blushed and apologized without knowing why.

“No, Ty, it’s not that. You’re making me cry, and you’re making me very, very wet, and between the two it’s not easy to clean you.” Ty smiled, relieved.

“Here.” She said. “Open wide.” A long, flat tendril poked abruptly into his mouth and melted immediately. “Ooh, good thing you did find me, you had a cavity starting back here.” Siona giggled and began humming a song Ty didn’t recognize. “What part of me do you think is in your mouth? Oh, I think I’ll let you wonder.” She cooed teasingly in his ear.

The idea of Siona washing his body, brushing his teeth, feeding him, and teasing him sexually all at the same time originally unsettled Ty, but as he hung, seemingly suspended in a wash of cool fluid, as though he were laying on a beach feeling gentle waves break over him, he began to accept and even enjoy the idea.

He relaxed and let his body go slack; he stopped worrying about impositioning Siona and about performing as a man should. He started to trust another person for the first time in his life.

When she finished, Siona streamed off of him in a thousand crystalline strings that wound together and melted back into her simultaneously youthful and alluring humanoid form. Ty felt a glimmer of disappointment.

“All better?” She said, and tousled his hair.

“If people were made in assembly lines, I’d imagine this is what one would feel like the instant they rolled out of the factory.”

Siona laughed out loud, cupping her hand over her mouth, then kissed Ty on the forehead. “Come on lazy, silly human. We’re almost to the temple.” Siona crept past Ty on all fours in the direction of the cavern’s exit, but Ty grabbed her by the ankle and dragged her back into the light. “Oh no you don’t! You’re the one that always wants to make love in a sunbeam, right? Who knows when we’ll find another?”

“I don’t know if you realize what you’re getting yourself into, insatiable human!” She laughed then pounced on him, her self-synthesized hair flying wildly. She pinned him to his back and straddled his chest. Blue sunlight beamed through her face, almost as bright as the dangerously aroused smile the face wore.

She cuddled his face up into her breasts and began to rock her hips against him. Her glistening vagina left a dark blue stain on one of the lighter, milky blue of one of the jagged arms of Ty’s new scar.

Ty’s hands cupped her ass and made deep impressions on each cheek while he broke free of her grasp long enough to tongue one of her sapphire nipples into his mouth, flicking over it and sucking as hard as he could. Siona gasped, cradling his head against her, and bit her lower lip.

“You humans don’t have some kind of limit that you’re pushing, do you? I’d hate to break you.” Pleasant images of being broken in such a manner floated through Ty’s mind, but he only shook his head no.

“Mmm, good.” Her tone was infinitely mischievous.

“This time, I’m going to stay as human as I can for as long as I can. I want you to make love to me like you would any human girl. I’m jealous of them, you know – I’m jealous that they might have gotten to feel you in some way that I can’t.”

Ty only shook his head, “I don’t know what they can or can’t feel, but I know this: I’ve always held back before, I’ve always had reservations. I’ve only given everything to you.”