But I wasn’t thinking about them as I enjoyed the luxurious languor of the bath. I was only thinking of Rivven. Of the food he’d made me. Of the bed he’d given me.
Of the things he’d told me.
I didn’t want to pity him. I had a feeling, like the way he seemed so awkward about my thanks, that he would hate that. But I did feel for him. I felt for the child, cut off from the world he’d known, and then literally cut off from one of his own limbs. The child – and man – who I believed now suffered from panic attacks as a result.
I’d never had migraines before Daddy died. Before I’d given up on doctors, more than one had told me it was likely due to the stress of grief. And then there had been the financial stress of trying to survive without him, the physical stress of my job, and everything had just compounded until my head felt like nothing but bundles of nerves knotted by pain.
I supposed we both had our triggers, Rivven and me.
I was sincerely glad that he and Warden Hallum had found a way for him to avoid his. That he’d built a life that might bring him some peace.
But clearly, he must have wanted more than just that. He was participating in this program, after all. He wanted a wife. And not simply a warm body to do chores, either, based on how gobsmacked he’d been by me helping with the dishes and offering to fill my own bath.
I wondered, when he thought about a wife, what he imagined. What did he associate with the word?
Companionship? Connection?
I believed that he deserved all that and more.
Sex?
The water felt suddenly hotter.
I realized then that I didn’t have a clue how Zabrians fucked.
I reached out of the tub, grasping for my comms tablet among my discarded clothing. Once I had it, I opened the information packet that I’d been sent on Zabrians and the program, this time paying closer attention to the sections on anatomy.
Zabrian ears are extremely sensitive, the text read, both to tactile stimulation and when it comes to capturing sound. Image attached.
The image that greeted me was a photograph of a pair of round, pale purple ears poking out from silver-white hair. It looked like Tasha had taken a picture of her husband to illustrate the first point.
Differences in human and Zabrian anatomy are few, but significant. Zabrian females, for example, do not have breasts. The Zabrian Genital Situation is top of mind for all the brides here-
Um. The what now?
-many having expressed shock and confusion at the appearance of the cock tail. Without sufficient preparation, injury to the cock tail is not only possible during sexual encounters, but very likely.
What the hell was a cock tail?
Zabrian eyes glow bright white when the Zabrian in question is experiencing strong emotion. This can include, but is not limited to, pain, shock, anger, grief, affection, or arousal.
This brought me up short even more than the mysterious (and somewhat ominous) mention of the cock tail.
Rivven’s eyes were white when he looked at me.
Alot.
I didn’t think I was causing him any kind of pain, anger, or grief just by being in his vicinity. And he’d been around me for long enough by now that my appearance shouldn’t have shocked him.
So that left affection…
And arousal.
My stomach clenched. I scrolled a little further, finding another image below. This one didn’t appear to be a photograph, like that of the Zabrian ears above. This one looked like something someone had drawn by hand on their tablet. I gasped, realizing at once what it was.
It was a dick. A big, green dick. A hard, jutting, extremely erect organ with a darker green sac below and what looked like a writhing tentacle above. There were three bits of text in the diagram, each with a line pointing to a different part of the drawing.
Penis.
