Laying in a bed of literal fire, arms hooked behind his head, while a woman of magma and ash stroked his chest, was...honestly, not even in the top ten weirdest things that had happened to Captain John Tangent in his career - and he was only relatively new to his role. He grinned, wryly, at Cinder as she breathed out a sigh rich with the scent of charcoal and brimstone. Floating beside him, her elbows resting on nothing and her chin upon her knuckles, Pixie kicked her legs up and sighed.
"Ah, young love," she said. "Anyway, you have approximately an hour and a half before I run out of psychic energy and you stop being thermokinetically shielded from this room. Which is, like..." She looked around herself. "Approximately thirteen...hundred to twenty two hundred degrees."
John snapped his gaze around to her, eyes widening.
"Oh, sorry, I was using your archaic form of units, pulled on the wrong part of the brain," Pixie said, flitting around and waving her palms in apology. "Closer to eight hundred to twelve hundred."
"Ah," John said.
"Mmmm?" Cinder murmured, hooking one ashy thigh along his, nuzzling against his neck with her cute little button nose. John slid his arm around the small of her back and tried to not think of his skin baking and peeling. Instead, he focused on what truly mattered in times like this: Cementing a successful first contact.
"
Ladies
," Pixie said, wiggling her eyebrows.
John did his best to ignore his invisible, intangible psychic assistant.
"So, Cinder..." John said. "I think usually at this part of a first date, we do get to talk about ourselves."
"I thought first dates came
before...
" She giggled. "...before trying to
quench
me, my gorgeous water-based life form." Her finger traced his faintly glowing chest - hissing faintly where his sweat beaded through the thermokinetic shield and flash-fried into puffs of steam. John let out a quiet chuckle, then shifted in bed, rolling onto his side as he looked into those brilliant ruby prisms that the Vornash apparently used for eyes.
"First contact between starship captains is never so conventional," he said, grinning at her.
"True..." She sighed, a bit sadly. "Sometimes, I wish life could be a little less interesting - though, as a patrol captain, I do tend to avoid most of the weirdness."
John nodded. It was a well understood facet of interstellar travel that people who had dull jobs tended to keep away from the most esoteric forms of anomaly produced by the Space Opera Field. Right up until they didn't.
"How did your people become Battle Thralls?" He asked, his hand caressing her thigh.
"The same as many, I'm afraid," she said, sighing and rolling away from him to sprawl upon her back. Her chest rose and fell - coals flickering beneath ash-plating as her inner fires were stoked by her breath. The effect it had on her physiology was...quite arresting. The kind of thing that made John wish Pixie's psychic powers could last just a bit longer. "Our people were merely innocent coredwellers in our homeworld. We didn't even know that there was life beyond the great coldness that surrounded our home. The pressures were so intense, the heat so warm...an entire ecosystem had evolved there, you know?" She smiled. "We believe it was because our world was stricken by so many repeated mass extinction events that we ended up with extremophiles, going further and further into the world - seeking after warmth and heat to feed themselves..." She shook her head. "I'm sure our one celled ancestors would wish that we had stayed down there, in the warm core."
"What happened?" John asked, sitting up. This view was even more arresting, something that Cinder noticed, her lips quirking up.
"Are you sure it is a geohistory lesson you want?" Her hand cupped one of her hefty breasts, playing with the ruby gemstone of her nipple.
"Mmmmm, maybe we can multitask?" John said at the same time Pixie said. "I think the Captain can multitask."
John shot her a glance.
"Jinx!" Pixie said.
John ignored her.
"Who it is that you keep glancing too?" Cinder asked, grinning wryly.
"Oh a useful psychic fungus," John said.
"Mew!" Pixie squeaked.
"Her name is Pixie, she is quite sweet," he added seamlessly, sliding around so that he was settled between the thick, deliciously curved thighs of his hostess. His palm caressed along said thighs, brushing aside ash to reveal flickering, glowing flames that spilled through his fingers, tickling against them with the delicious eagerness of a cat's fur.
"Awww!" Pixie crooned.
John delved down. His mouth found the pert lips of Cinder's eager cunt and his tongue thrust into her, slowly sliding up, then down - leaving a tingling, hissing spread of steam that misted around his eyes and caused her hips to buck. She bit her knuckle, gasping. "Oh my
Captain
! Ah! It feels so...exotic!" She laughed. "A-Anyway, as...as I was saying...our civilization grew in...in technological capability and...interest and-" she squeaked and bucked her hips as he found a place deep inside of her that was clearly as sensitive as a human woman's G-spot. His fingers rubbed within, two pressing together as her hips jerked in time with his finger-fucking. "And we theorized t-that there was life beyond the cold barrier,
mmmm
, Captain!"
John nodded, his tongue adding to his finger's work.
"Then came the...Shattering..." She whispered, biting her knuckles. Despite the warmth in her words, a coldness crept into her tone, forcing John to work even harder to continue to wring pleasure from Cinder's curvacious form. His tongue delved into her, his fingers thrust, and his ears perked up as he took detailed note of every word she said. "It was a kinetic weapon. An imapactor. Thrusting deep into our world by a-an alliance of powers fighting against the Zemturga, five thousand of your, ah, oh by the core!" She quivered and bucked as her glowing, lava-bright juices dripped along John's tongue. "It shattered our world apart."
John drew away, licking his lips. "Five thousand years...there were other alliances than the one we humans joined?"
Cinder, panting heavily, the ash sliding off her body as her flames flickered and flared to normal brightness, nodded slowly. "Yes. My ancestors would have died - but the Zemturga came. They conquered us, easy as it was, and forced us to choose our form of service. Our technology to control fire and heat made us clear Battle Thralls - and so, we were pressed into their service. In exchange, we were given worlds of molten heat and intense pressures..."
"Such as Venus?" John asked, licking his fingers clean.
"What is Venus?" she asked, cocking her head.
