Page 22 of Alien Peacock
She appears to need some reassurance about it.
“You have many. It would take too long to list them all, so I’ll simply tell you my favorites: Your hair, your nose, and your behind. I glance down at my crotch. “And for what it’s worth,itseems I find you alluring. I’ve never known it to be insincere.”
Her gaze runs down my body, snagging at the twitching bulge there. “That’s worth a lot, I think. Thanks.” She gives me a pale smile.
“Any time. I think that’s a door over there.” I nod towards the wall.
I walk over and press the door release. The door gives off a scraping sound as it slides to the side. Warm, humid air washes over me, full of organic smells. For a moment I’m just standing there, looking into the next room. “Another experiment, perhaps.”
Maeve looks past me. “It’s very green. Is there another way out of here than through that?”
I shrug. “Not as far as I can see. But we should look.”
Our search comes up empty. Except for the cylinder hole and the broken hall of mirrors below, there’s only one exit from this room.
“All right,” Maeve says heavily. “I guess it doesn’t look too bad. Just a giant greenhouse.”
It’s not a bad description. I’ve never seen any place as fertile as this. There are plants everywhere, hanging down in cascades and growing seemingly straight out of the floor. It’s immensely dense, like some kind of giant, indoor jungle gone crazy.
It vanishes into the mist in the distance, despite the bright sunlight that fills the whole room without having any obvious source. Myriads of flowers bloom everywhere I look in a mind-boggling display of colors and contrasts.
I take a step into the room, and my feet sink into the soft ground. “Get your stick ready. We don’t know what’s hiding in here.”
Maeve follows my advice and extends her stick. I stride straight ahead into the greenery, having to push away many hanging branches heavy with fruits and flowers. My boots swish through grass and leaves, and my wings are getting heavy with the moisture they soak up from the plants. The room is an explosion of verdant life, an absolute chaos of vegetation.
There’s a hum from millions of little flying creatures all over the place, totally ignoring me but very interested in the flowers. That explains the scents — the flowers are using those things to procreate, carrying pollen and nectar and such between them.
“This could have smelled nice,” Maeve says from behind me, “but even good smells can be too strong.”
I only grunt in agreement. My mind is swimming with all these scents, struggling to separate them and classify them. Sweet, heavy, musky, spicy, light, sweet, sour — the nuances are too many and so varied I have to concentrate to keep my balance. Being attacked by thousands of hard laser beams in every color would be less stressful for my eyes than this is for my sensitive predator nose. Each scent is a distinct entity, each one trying to dominate, but at the same time a piece of a mosaic so complicated and ever-changing that it overwhelms me. Some scents are familiar, some remind me of my home planet, some remind me of people I knew, some remind me of experiences, and some are completely new and alien…
“Are you all right, Arelion?” Someone grabs my wrist.
I regain some control and look around. I’m leaning on a thick, green stalk, trying to stay upright in the insane attack of so many intense smells. Maeve is looking up at me with a worried look on her sweet face.
“There are so many smells,” I rasp, still dizzy. “So strong…”
“It almost makes me sick, too,” she sympathizes. “I think you sense them more intensely than I do. Can you go on?”
I draw in breath through my mouth, but still millions of smells fight for dominance. It’s all about procreation, each flower competing intensely for the attention of the insects.
I have to latch onto one of the smells that’s not from a flower.
Leaning in, I put my face close to Maeve’s hair and let her scent seep through, ignoring the other ones.
Ah, yes. There it is. The clean scent of alien female, her skin, her hair. Her anxiousness and her relief, her exertion in the hall of mirrors, and her anger at the force fields.
And her sex.
There’s no mistaking it. The strongest element of her scent is undeniably pure female. It’s fresh, too. She’s aroused right now.
I can’t blame her. My crotch swells, and I gasp for air. I’m astonishingly excited, myself. Strange, intense images pass in front of my eyes, all involving Maeve.
“This place,” I growl. “The scents… it’s a runaway fertility experiment.”
“I think so, too,” Maeve groans. “Those insects are absolutely frantic. And I feel… strange.” She stares at my crotch, where the swelling is painfully hard and the fabric is straining to control it. Then she looks up at me with glassy eyes. “Maybe we can sit down. Or lie down…”
Oh, how I long to lie down among the flowers, to pull Maeve down to me, to flay that garment off her, and to feast on all that it conceals…