The smell of coffee pulled Lira from a dreamless sleep. The bed was still a mess, clothes strewn across the covers, the space where Julian should be empty and cold.
'Julian?' she called out.
A moment later, his handsome face appeared around the corner, and she was delighted to see that he was still naked, dressed in nothing but his slippers. She gave him an appreciative look over, before realising that he had two cups of coffee in his hands.
'One of those for me?' she asked as he walked over, a slight hitch in his step.
'Absolutely. Two sweeteners,' he said, as Lira sat up in the bed. The room was warm, but her nipples were erect and she felt a flush go through her - she was already aroused, despite the evening before, and the job from the day before that, wearing her out.
He passed her the coffee, and she sipped at it. Too hot.
'So,' Julian said, perching on the edge of the bed. Lira's hand stroked between his shoulder blades, making him shiver. He shifted, getting a little closer to her, to let her give him something between a tickle and a massage. 'The job.'
'Job?' she asked.
'From U.N.E.D. My meeting, from yesterday?'
Lira nodded, remembering. 'Right. Sorry. I was a little fuzzy when we were talking last night.'
'Oh, really? Why's that?' Julian chipped. She smacked his shoulder lightly, before going back to stroking him. 'The meeting was... interesting. Very serious. And it's not nothing, what they've approached us with.'
'If it's the government, I assumed it would be, you know. Big.'
'Big it is, love.'
As much as this was an intimate moment already, the topic of conversation meant she was slightly unprepared for the pet name, which made her heart melt ever so slightly. She sipped her coffee. Still a tad too hot.
'So, hit me with it,' she said.
'They're creatures called Verbriniates. Big, scorpion-spider things with exoskeletons and stingers and things. They're a hugely aggressive species who have arrived just outside the Earth's orbit asking for allyship. The government was able to tell me little more than the fact that our... contribution would be a large step in the direction of keeping these big beastly things on-side. We want to make friends with them, basically.'
'What's the favour?'
'They need... hm.' He paused for a moment, looking away, down at his feet. 'I don't like the language they used, but they effectively said they need vessels.'
'Vessels?'
'For their eggs.'
'Oh,' Lira said, surprised.
'Yeah. Like living incubation pods. Their population is apparently really low. Like, double-figures low. They aren't able to breed with creatures unless they are willing, and when that was brought to the negotiation table, someone brought up our content. They want to discuss with us a volunteer programme, finding like-minded women who might be willing to, well... be vessels.'
'And they want me to try it out first,' Lira said, her stomach in knots.
'Correct. Apparently, they said that your pleasure would be a large part of their consideration - they want their allies to be happy, and for providing such a valuable service, they would ensure your, ahem, 'comfort'.'
It was clear to Lira that Julian was repeating phrases they had used in this meeting, and from his tone that he was slightly shameful of the whole thing - maybe of talking about her in terms of a trade, as though she was a good to be bought and sold, made him uncomfortable, or perhaps it was the idea of her body being used by some creature as a baby-maker that was causing this.
He needn't worry.
Whatever had happened to Lira in the last few weeks, months - everything she had been through, it had been of her own volition. Sure, she was down on her luck and willing to do anything to start with, but that wasn't the case anymore. No, she was in love with this job. She loved Julian, too - not that she had said it to him yet - but the things she was able to do, experimenting with these aliens in the ways she did... she had never felt so free.
In her mind, if there was a way to do that which also, for one, was helping a species from the brink of extinction, and for two would bring a payday as large as Julian suggested, there was no problem in her mind.
'What's wrong, baby?' Lira asked, as Julian was still hanging his head. 'Don't you think I want to do this?' He looked at her, and the look in his eyes could have broken her heart in two. She took his hand, and pulled herself up to slip his fingers down her stomach, leading his digits through the folds of her sex. They were wet, slick from her wandering mind of how it would feel to be filled with eggs... such strange,
alien
ideas had stopped scaring her long ago.
Lira leant forwards, as Julian moved his fingers nimbly about her sex, his fingertips dipping into her, nudging small moans from her as they teased each other.
'It sounds so fucking hot,' she whispered in his ear, before putting the coffee on the bedside table. Just in time, too, as he kissed her hard enough to push her back into their bed - not his, theirs - and start kissing his way down her lithe body.
Lira giggled, which turned to moans as Julian went to work on her.
Sex, for Lira and Julian, had become a sort of odd thing; she imagined that pornstars must experience a similar phenomenon, where they fuck for a living in the most grotesque, ridiculous scenarios, and then they'd go home to their
actual
partner. For a while, it had been a little blurred where their 'job' and the personal sex life separated, and the sex they did have was often accompanied by their slimy little friend, the tiny Oozelich that had been left with Lira as a 'gift'. They tried to think of it as a sex toy - a living, thinking sex toy, but a sex toy nonetheless - but there had come a point a week or so ago when Lira had asked Julian just to be with
her -
no aliens, no weirdness. Just them.
Since then, the two of them had tried to have more time just for them, as opposed to having the Oozleich involved all the time.
That, of course, was not to say that they didn't both enjoy a little
assistance
. And all the talk of
alien eggs