There is something in this story to offend everyone. Nonconsensual sex, interspecies sex, maudlin hurt/comfort, bad science and specious logic. Nonetheless I hope at least some of you may enjoy it.

ELIZABETH MARSHALL STORIES

The Shape of Love

The planet's red sun was low on the late winter horizon when the tall, cloaked man returned to the stone dwelling.

"Look what I found at the market, Ibnuli," Robert said, shrugging off his covering and pushing his purchases into the kitchen.

"Just what we don't need," Ibnuli said sourly. He looked at the prettily patterned squid and the flaxen haired human trembling before him and sighed. "You go out for food and you come home with pets. I told you, Robert, not to go looking around the marketplace if you couldn't restrain yourself."

"Maros had them on display," Robert said dismally. "He had a strap and an electric prod. He was going to make an example of them for refusing to cooperate with his clients. He'd already beaten the human and he was using the prod on the poor squid. Ibnuli, I couldn't leave them there!"

"I should paddle you, Robert," Ibnuli said. "For doing precisely what I warned you not to. You know there's nothing you can do to prevent these abuses. Ah, you're a good boy, you have a soft heart, in other circumstances that wouldn't be considered a flaw. I won't paddle you this time, but I should, and I swear, Robert, I will if you disobey me again." He swelled and subsided. "One looks worse than the other." He glared at the human and the squid. He knew it wasn't their fault they had caught his partner's eye, but now that they were here, they were problems, and Ibnuli disliked problems. "What are your names?"

"Cybrx," whispered the squid, watching Ibnuli's tentacles nervously.

The human began to cry.

"Stop that at once," Ibnuli admonished him, but he only cried louder. "Robert, do something to calm him down, this is ridiculous, I'm sorry I let you leave the house with a cred card, it's the last time I'm letting you loose in the market on your own, for the love of Cthulhu, do something about his crying..." Ibnuli shook his mantle in frustration, loosening his knotted tentacles.

Robert took a deep breath and closed the short distance between himself and the sobbing human. "Little one, you must stop this now. Come to me. No one is going to harm you here." He extended his hand.

The human backed away. He brushed accidentally against Cybrx's tentacles and even more terrified, leaped forward again, banging himself against the smooth curved stone of the dwelling. "Ow!"

Robert turned despairing eyes to Ibnuli. "What should I do?"

Ibnuli snugged a tentacle around Robert's waist and hugged him for a moment before shoving him onto the floor cushions in the dining area. "Sit down now." He unfurled a second long tentacle and caught the soggy human by a wrist and dragged him to Robert. "You, too, sit."

Shuddering, the human sank beside Robert.

"Now come here, Cybrx," Ibnuli said quietly to the squid. "I will take you to bathe. In the meanwhile, Robert, for Cthulhu's sake, get him calmed down and cooled off. We will talk in a little while. No one's going to be fucked or fried today, I promise."

Cybrx giggled, his mantle quivering, his natural optimism reasserting itself at Ibnuli's brusque joke. Ibnuli dipped to Robert and gesturing to Cybrx to follow him, undulated out of the room.

"Please let me go. Please don't let them fuck me. Please don't let them put those things inside me," the human begged Robert.

"No one's going to put anything inside you, little one," Robert said. "Look, you must have a name, tell me what it is."

"They call me Snowy," the human said nervously. "And you don't have to say it, I know that's not a real name, but they don't name test tube fry like us, we're just given numbers, unless someone claims us specially from the work pool. I was named Snowy for my hair, they said, but I was born on this planet and I've sure as fuck never seen snow."

"I have," said Robert. "It's pretty, light and shiny like your hair. It's a good name for you." He laid a gentle hand on the human's arm. "Listen, Snowy, I know Ibnuli looks scary as hell, but he's really a good guy. He's not going to sell you back to Maros. Come on, let me show you where we can clean up a bit. Ibnuli will come up with a plan, once he gets used to the idea that we're all stuck with each other now."

This guy sounds disgustingly cheerful, Snowy thought to himself. He must belong to that slimy, tentacled monster. Snowy shuddered at the memory of the tentacle encircling his wrist, imagining it extending further over his body. He forced himself to stop imagining it.

Meanwhile Ibnuli had led Cybrx down to the cool, subterranean bathing pond. Cybrx sighed with pleasure as they sloshed through the shallows into the depth of the pool, his poor, abraded tentacles spreading around him. It had been so long since he had soaked in clean water; he had never that he remembered soaked in water as clear and fresh as this.

"Poor little one," Ibnuli murmured, watching Cybrx flex and sigh with pleasure as his tentacles unfurled around him. "You're badly dehydrated. Let yourself relax now and soak up all the moisture you need." He watched as the dried salt crusts that marred Cybrx's tender skin dissolved in the gently moving water. "Didn't Maros bathe you?"

Cybrx's mantle and tentacles paled. "Maros only hurt me," Cybrx said softly. "He told me that if I didn't learn to service the human clients, he was going to stretch me flat in the desert outside the city and leave me there until I dried up. He slashed my mantle with his knife and he shocked me with his prod. So no, he didn't bathe me."

"That human bastard," Ibnuli hissed. "He has no business keeping squid."

"What is Robert, the human who bought us, like?" Cybrx asked. "Are you his slave?"

Ibnuli laughed, a whoosh of air coming from his beaked mouth. "No, Cybrx. We are both free citizens. We are partners and lovers."

Cybrx shivered in disgust. "Lovers! You put your beautiful, soft tentacles inside those filthy cavities of his? It is like being eaten, like being consumed. I have stretched my tentacle into a human mouth and felt his rough, hot tongue rasping against me, felt his throat contract around me, trying to swallow me. How can you bear it? It is disgusting."

"It is the greatest pleasure I have ever known," Ibnuli said. "It is not like being sold to service a stranger. When I penetrate Robert, when we make love, when I feel his body yield to mine, when I feel him open himself to me, it is wonderful. That warm tongue against my suckers, exploring them, that slide of throat convulsing around the tip of my tentacle? Wonder beyond words."

Cybrx shivered. "Please, don't give me to your human to swallow. I don't want to touch one of them inside. I can't! It's disgusting. Please don't send me back. I'll do anything you want me to, only please don't make me service a human. I'm scared of humans."

"Humans can be kind or cruel, as same as those of our species," Ibnuli said. "Plenty of humans find squid as repulsive as you find them, Cybrx."

Meanwhile Robert was petting the tearful Snowy, trying to quiet him. "No one is going to do anything to you that you don't want," he promised. "I love Ibnuli and Ibnuli loves me. It doesn't matter that we're two species, we make a special, loving connection. It's entirely different than what's been done to you, poor thing."

"But he beats you!" Snowy cried. "I heard him threaten to paddle you."

"No, Snowy, you don't understand. Ibnuli punishes me sometimes, when I've done something that violates the rules he's set and I've accepted. He paddles me, yes, but he doesn't beat me and he doesn't harm me. It's very different than what Maros did to you."

"Oh." Snowy was silent.

Robert stroked Snowy's hair. "You and Cybrx are safe with us. We're going to take care of you."

Ibnuli brought Cybrx back up from the pool. "What do you think, Robert? Can we put them in together in the spare room?"

"It's only got one sleeping mat, but it's a large one," Robert said. "You should both be comfortable."

Cybrx and Snowy were equally uncomfortable lying side by side. Each kept to the furthest edge of their shared mat.

Snowy let himself relax until his legs lay barely touching Cybrx's tentacles. Both of them shivered.

"This is as small as I can make myself," Cybrx said. "Please don't take offense, but I can't get further away."

"Neither can I," Snowy said. "I suppose if we each keep to our own side, this much contact isn't so bad."

"You won't try and swallow me?" Cybrx asked, grimacing.

"You won't try and slip inside me?" Snowy asked, making a face back.

Realizing that both of them shared similar apprehensions, they both laughed.

"I guess we're safe enough from each other, huh?" Snowy said ruefully.

"I guess," Cybrx said. "Do you really think they'll let us stay here if we don't have sex with them?"

"I don't know," Snowy said. "I'd do Robert, that's for sure."

"I'd do Ibnuli," Cybrx said. "Robert scares me."

"Ibnuli scares me," Snowy said. "I can't believe Robert likes having sex with him."

"Do you suppose it really is different, when you love someone?" Cybrx asked doubtfully.

"I don't know," Snowy said. "I was so scared when Maros sent me to his clients, I couldn't let them do it to me, it didn't matter how hard and how often Maros beat me, I couldn't."

"I know what you mean," Cybrx whispered. "Even when Maros cut me and shocked me, letting someone swallow me, putting myself inside their body, I couldn't do it."

"You didn't want it any more than I did," Snowy said. "I didn't know that, Cybrx."

"You were scared too," Cybrx said. "I didn't know that, either." He extended his tentacle, touching Snowy's hand gently and sympathetically.

Snowy stroked Cybrx's cool, slick tentacle tentatively and then hooked his finger around the tip of it. "Thanks," he said softly. "You're different than the squid Maros sold me to. You aren't like them, Cybrx, not at all."

"You're not like the humans Maros sent me to, either," Cybrx said. "I wonder how Robert and Ibnuli got together, you know? It seems unlikely for one of you and one of us to form a real partnership."

"Yeah," Snowy said. "I've never seen a couple like them before. I wonder how it started?"

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Robert had been a space jockey, working on a transport freighter. The aging craft had been waylaid by pirates, its goods stolen, its workers sold in the nearest slave market. Robert had been attractive, but without any domestic skills, and so had ended up sold as a sex slave to Maros, the owner of the local whorehouse.

What Maros specialized in selling was interspecies sex.

Robert had no experience with the sentient squid and he was terrified of them. "Fuck you," Robert spat at Maros. "You can beat me to death, you fat whoremongering bastard, and I'll never, ever stop fighting. I'll die before I'll let one of them inside me willingly."

"Beating you to death would be a pleasure," Maros said. "I think I'll auction you off to the highest bidder, though. Watching you scream as you're forced to take their tentacles up your ass, down your throat, watching you writhe as they go so deep inside they meet in the middle, that'll be even more fun than whipping you until you bleed to death."

"Fuck you. Let them try it," Robert said, his bravado disguising the raw terror he felt.

Maros snapped his fingers, summoning his squid overseer. "Have him for a night or two," he said, gesturing at Robert. "Use him hard."

"I will," said the overseer with a shake of his tentacles. "You'll see, he'll be a lot more cooperative by the time I'm done with him." He slapped Robert across the face, his suckered tentacle leaving red welts.

Beating a human with his naked tentacles became less exciting as the overseer's tentacles began to sting from the impact. He switched to using a wooden paddle in one tentacle, a doubled strap in another. Holding Robert against him, he methodically beat him until Robert was writhing and then, finally, crying in pain.

After he finished making his point, that he could beat Robert with impunity and Robert had no choice but to submit, the squid tugged his legs apart and began to insinuate a slick tentacle into his clenching ass. Struggle as he might, Robert couldn't prevent the invasion. The humiliation of being penetrated outweighed the pain, which due to the tentacle's slime was slight. Once one tentacle was inserted, the squid inserted a second and then a third.

"Please stop," Robert begged. "Please, I won't be bad any more, I promise, only please don't make me take any more, I'm so full, it hurts a lot. Please, I'll be good from now on, if only you'll stop."

"Is it really so bad, Robert, being filled like this? You like it better than the beating I gave you earlier, don't you?"

"I don't like it at all," Robert cried. "Please, no more, don't go deeper, please, I can't take any more of you, it feels so strange."

"I am going deeper, so deep you can't imagine I can go further, but I can." The squid shoved his longest tentacle forward, producing a deep groan from Robert. Then he thrust another tentacle into Robert's mouth.

Robert bit down, hard, his teeth cutting through the rubbery tentacle. The overseer's tentacles unfurled and he thrashed about, but Robert didn't let go, intent on inflicting damage. Finally, as his head was bashed against the hard floor for the umpteenth time, Robert slipped into blessed unconsciousness and the overseer was free. He was missing the tip of his tentacle.

When Robert came to, he was manacled to a post in the marketplace. Maros stood before him, holding a length of knotted rope. He brought it down across Robert's back and Robert shrieked in pain. A crowd gathered, but no one intervened.

The beating was interminable. Robert wavered in and out of consciousness, knowing he was going to die there.

A voice from a squid newly arrived at the edge of the crowd interrupted the flogging. "Maros, are you an idiot?" Ibnuli called out. "It's bad business, killing off your stock like that. Sell him to me."

Greed outweighed lust for revenge. Ibnuli handed Maros his cred card and the battered human was his.

"Poor human," Ibnuli said softly. "Let me bathe you, you're hot and exhausted. You'll feel better once you're clean and cool." He supported Robert against him, touching his lips gently with his suckers, tracing his tentacle over Robert's spilling tears. "You're safe now."

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"Wake up, Robert, you're dreaming!" Ibnuli gripped Robert in his tentacles and shook him until his eyes opened.

"Oh thank Cthulhu, what a dream. I was back with Maros," Robert sniffled. "He gave me to a client to fuck and I was begging him to stop and he wouldn't. He beat me and then he pushed inside me, three tentacles at once, really, really deep, and I couldn't get away."

"It's been a long time since you've had that nightmare," Ibnuli commented. "I think what you saw today at the market, Maros and his new victims, upset you deeply and brought back some very painful memories. I don't want you going back there alone, Robert. I know you mean well and that you want to prevent these sorts of abuses, but I don't want you taking this on alone. If you feel that you have to go again, tell me and I'll accompany you. I do not want you this badly upset. If you disobey me in this manner again, I will paddle you. I am not making an idle threat, Robert. I will paddle you no matter how sympathetic I am to your reasons. Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes, Ibnuli," Robert whispered.

"I don't mean to be harsh," Ibnuli said, feeling the sadness radiating off Robert. "Come, let's go downstairs for a bit, it will do us both good." Ibnuli eased Robert down the slippery steps to their underground pool. He held Robert in a gentle embrace as he lowered both of them into the cool, clear water.

"So good," Robert said, lying back in Ibnuli's lithe arms, letting the tentacles support him. "I love you, Ibnuli. I won't defy you again, I promise. Please don't send Cybrx and Snowy back to Maros. I know I shouldn't have bought them, but they were so scared and he is such a detestable creature. Please don't let him have them."

"Of course not," Ibnuli said. "If I had my way, that bastard would be dead by now. I'm certainly not turning little Cybrx and Snowy over to him."

"Thank you, Ibnuli," Robert said gratefully. "I was only with Maros for a few short days, but even in that space of time..." His voice trailed off.

"I would like to kill him for what he did to you," Ibnuli hissed. "But for the fact that we must uphold the rule of law on this planet for the greater good of both our species, I would do it."

"I know you would." Robert teased his fingers over Ibnuli's suckers.

Ibnuli nudged Robert out of the pool and shepherded him upstairs to their sleeping room. "Lie back, Robert, and prepare to accept me inside you," Ibnuli crooned, as Robert stretched out on their soft mattress. He circled Robert's ankles with his tentacles and widened his legs.

A third tentacle spiraled forward, circling the base of cock and balls, pressing them upward so that the small opening between Robert's buttocks lay achingly exposed.

 A fourth tentacle stroked gently over the quivering opening, insinuating itself inside. The very tip of the tentacle opened the tender anus, its natural cool slickness making penetration easy and gentle. Ibnuli pressed past the tight sphincter until he felt the warm, silken channel inside gripping his tentacle. The slight bulge of each sucker as he went deeper stimulated Robert's internal passage, making him buck and writhe at the sensation.

Ibnuli placed the tip of a fifth tentacle on Robert's little opening and pressed inward, relishing Robert's groans as his sphincter was widened and the two tentacles stretched him. Feeling carefully with the second tentacle, Ibnuli positioned one sucker directly on Robert's prostate and began to knead it rhythmically. Robert thrashed against the bed and Ibnuli wrapped a thick tentacle around his waist and held him still, making him accept the stimulation.

"So good, oh Cthulhu please don't, please don't stop," Robert gabbled, as his cock hardened. "Let me come, please, Ibnuli, I'll do anything, anything, let me come!"

Ibnuli stroked Robert's lips gently and then pressed his tentacle into Robert's mouth, its tip twining with Robert's tongue. Ibnuli released his grip on Robert's cock and balls and began to spiral around them, adding to the stimulation. With a muffled cry, Robert came, hard, erupting. Ibnuli twirled a tentacle in the warm pool of cum that settled on Robert's belly, letting the weight of his tentacle lie on Robert's belly, even as he eased the two tentacles inserted in Robert deeper into him. "Relax, take me all the way inside you," he said softly, pressing deeper, relishing the hot grip of Robert's intestine. "Open your mouth," he instructed, pressing into Robert's throat, careful to avoid stimulating his gag reflex. "That's it, mine, all mine."

The feeling of being penetrated orally and anally at the same time was indescribable. Inbnuli's tentacles wrapped tightly around Robert's hips, pressing him together, holding his abdomen so tightly that Robert could feel the inserted tentacles pressed against his internal organs as the external tentacles pressed into him from outside. He felt helpless and fully invaded and fully, completely, intimately held and loved. His eyes rolled back as he came again, a hard, full body orgasm, his moans shuddering against Ibnuli's tentacle in his mouth.

Tenderly Ibnuli withdrew, first from Robert's mouth so that he could breathe freely, then releasing his tight grip on his body and cradling him against his cool slickness, and finally, slowly, he slipped his two twined tentacles from Robert's body, gently stroking the distended opening with a cool tip as he cuddled Robert to him.

"That was incredible," Robert murmured.

"For me, too," Ibnuli said. "You open so beautifully to me, Robert, you allow me to take you so deeply. I love you, my darling."

"It's as if every part of me belongs to you," Robert said softly. "I can feel you in my mouth, down my throat, up my ass, deep into me, deeper than being fisted, deeper than anything I've ever felt. It's as if you're a part of me."

"That's how I feel, too," Ibnuli said. "I can feel you surround me, embrace me, take me into yourself. I feel as if I'm part of your body."

Cybrx and Snowy were beginning to learn the household routines. It was Robert who taught them the basics, who explained that they took their meals together, who supervised their bathing and grooming, who gently sponged the crusts from Cybrx's mantle where Maros had cut him and who combed the knots from Snowy's mop of white blond hair.

It was Ibnuli who procured teaching programs and insisted they sit and work on them, Ibnuli who questioned them kindly but persistently until he learned the circumstances of their delivery to Maros, Ibnuli whose tentacles wrapped around Robert and Cybrx when they needed comfort. He was careful not to handle Snowy any more than absolutely necessary, aware of how frightened Snowy was of his tentacles and his strength.

Snowy had been struggling with his learning program all morning. He gave sidelong glances toward Cybrx, whose tentacles seemed to fly over the entry pad. Cybrx looked back, his beak open in what Snowy could only see as a smug grin. Infuriated, Snowy launched himself at Cybrx.

Cybrx easily shoved Snowy away, his eight tentacles giving him an advantage over Snowy's four limbs. The sounds of conflict drew Ibnuli.

"Cease at once!" Ibnuli hissed. Cybrx froze at the command, but Snowy continued to throw himself at Cybrx, arms flailing, feet kicking in a full fledged tantrum.

Ibnuli circled Snowy's wrists and ankles and held him firmly so that he couldn't strike out. Kindly but firmly, he drew Snowy against him despite his increasing hysteria. "Calm down, Snowy," Ibnuli repeated over and over. "No one's going to harm you, I promise. I have you now."

"Let me go!" Snowy screamed. "Don't hurt me! Let me go!"

Ibnuli shook his mantle. "If you were mine, like Robert is, I'd paddle you for attacking Cybrx. As it is, I'm just going to hold you until you quiet down. You have to try and think, Snowy, who is the enemy here? It's not Cybrx, it's not me."

"Don't make me, you slimy fucking bastard, don't make me, don't make me!" Snowy repeated, his voice getting thinner and higher until he began to cry.

Ibnuli held Snowy without moving his tentacles. "I'm not hurting you, Snowy. I'm not making you do anything but hold still and calm down. I'll release you as soon as you're in control again and I'm sure you won't hurt yourself or anyone else. Shh, Snowy, shh. Try and bear with me for a little while. I'm not your enemy, Snowy."

Finally Snowy was quiet. "Ibnuli?" he asked, "would you let me go now? Please?"

Ibnuli released his hold.

"I'm sorry," Snowy said contritely. "I didn't mean to go off like that. You haven't done anything but be good to me. If you want..." His voice trailed off. "I mean, if you want me, I'll be good for you. I've been good for guys who scared me and hurt me before, I can be good for you."

"By 'good' you mean, you'll have sex with me?" Ibnuli asked.

Snowy looked down. "Yes," he said in a very small voice. "If you'll let me stay."

"Snowy, you don't have to trade sex for safety." Ibnuli used the tip of one tentacle to gently stroke Snowy's hair back from his eyes. "I know that when you're one of the test tube fry, you fully expect to be used, but Robert and I don't want to use you. We don't believe you're less fully human because you were grown in an artificial womb. We know you're a person, with feelings and preferences. We're not going to hurt you. I'm not going to use you sexually. You may not believe me, but you're a smart creature, you'll figure it out eventually."

A subdued Snowy apologized to Cybrx and Cybrx shrugged his mantle and forgave him. They stretched out together on their sleeping mat, talking quietly.

"What happened then?" Cybrx asked. "What did Ibnuli do?"

"Nothing," Snowy admitted. "Ibnuli just talked to me. I offered myself to him, but he wouldn't take me. He didn't want to use me."

"He and Robert don't use each other, not the way Maros's clients used us," Cybrx said wonderingly. "They have sex together, I know they do, but they don't seem to force each other, do they? They want to be together. I don't know why."

"Robert and Ibnuli keep saying it's not about squids and humans, it's about being sex slaves as opposed to being free," Snowy said. "You think they're right?"

"I don't know," Cybrx said.

"Robert says he loves Ibnuli," Snowy said. "That he trusts Ibnuli to penetrate him, that he enjoys opening himself to him."

"Ibnuli says he loves joining with Robert. That he loves touching him inside, that it's an intimate and rewarding experience," Cybrx said.

"It never felt that way to me," Snowy said. "I was scared. They held me down and they opened me and they scared and hurt me. Their tentacles choked me, they squeezed my cock and my balls, they reamed out my ass with their suckers. It hurt and I hated it."

"You hated it!" Cybrx exclaimed. "I hated what the humans made me do. They wanted me to place my delicate tentacles in their filthy orifices. They swallowed me alive, Snowy, and I had to let them. They wanted me to slide into their asses and massage them inside, they wanted me to coil my tentacles around their cocks until they shot their hot cum over me, they wanted me to do all three things to them at once and they treated me as if I was a dumb beast without a feeling or a thought."

"That's exactly how the squid treated me," Snowy said.

Cybrx looked at Snowy. Snowy looked back at him. They began to laugh and their laughter became hysteria and then tears. They clung to each other, crying, until they were breathless.

"Wow." Cybrx traced his tentacle over Snowy's tear stained cheeks.

Snowy stroked Cybrx's mantle gently. "Wow. Your skin is so cool and so soft."

"You are warm," Cybrx mused. "And when you cry, your skin is moist like mine."

"Do you think Ibnuli would mind if we went down to the pool and swam awhile?" Snowy asked. Already he knew that Robert wouldn't object to anything they did and that Ibnuli's opinion was the one to be concerned about.

"I don't think so," Cybrx said. "I thought you didn't like the pool, Snowy."

"I like it, I just get nervous around Ibnuli sometimes," Snowy confessed. "But I'd like to swim with you, if you'd like."

They slipped into the cool, clear water, Cybrx's tentacles streaming into the current.

Snowy slipped on the slick stones and Cybrx caught him, coiling around his waist. "Careful," Cybrx said.

"I'm good," Snowy said, but he made no attempt to pull free of the tentacles. "Do me, Cybrx, please? I want, I need, to know what it's like when it's good. I'm clean, I won't bite you, do me, please?"

His growing curiosity overcoming his distaste for the whole idea, Cybrx extended one tentacle toward Snowy's face. Snowy closed his eyes and Cybrx trailed his cool, sleek tentacle over his closed lids. With the very tip of his tentacle, Cybrx explored Snowy's ears, one by one, and then with a touch so delicate it was almost imperceptible, ghosted over Snowy's nostrils. He trailed his tentacle lower, over Snowy's lips.

Snowy's lips parted at the feather light caress and Cybrx slipped the tiniest bit further into his mouth, stroking with wondering, growing pleasure over the warm, moist gums within. "You feel wonderful," Cybrx said. "So smooth, so slick, so warm."

"Please," Snowy whispered, opening his mouth. He panted as Cybrx slowly extended his tentacle deeper into his mouth. Snowy tentatively touched the tentacle with his tongue and then, when Cybrx returned the pressure, his suckers stimulating the rough surface of Snowy's tongue, Snowy dropped his head back, opening his throat, wordlessly encouraging Cybrx to proceed.

Cybrx extended his tentacle deeper into the receptive cavity. He could feel the warm breath from Snow's lungs streaming along the side of his tentacle and he was careful not to obstruct the passageway.

Snowy swallowed, the convulsions in his throat squeezing Cybrx's tentacle rhythmically. He lay back in Cybrx's tentacles, his eyes closed. He shivered, his nipples growing stiffer and more prominent.

Cybrx's tentacles trailed over Snowy's chest. Cybrx positioned his suckers carefully, one over each small prominence, and began to knead carefully. Snowy gasped and stiffened and Cybrx realized with pleased delight that he was bringing his friend pleasure. Bringing his other tentacles out of the pool of water and over Snowy's thighs, Cybrx widened them and pressed one wet, slick tentacle into the small opening between them. Rather than the disgust he had felt in the past at the idea of such penetration, Cybrx felt a tender desire to pleasure his friend.

Snowy moaned as he was opened and Cybrx's tentacles slipped deeper into his throat and past the tight ring of muscle between his legs. His cock grew as Cybrx spiraled around it, and he pushed against the muscular tentacles that held him.

For long moments, Cybrx continued to stimulate Snowy, until Snowy went rigid in his embrace and came hard, his back arching, his buttocks clenching, his cum spurting from his cock.

Ever so slowly, Cybrx withdrew. He swished his tentacles through the water, cleansing them, and then trailed Snowy through the clear, refreshing water.

"Enough," Snowy gasped, giggling and squirming as the cool water coursed over him. "No more, please, I can't take it."

"You took it beautifully," Cybrx said. "You took me beautifully. Your responses are fascinating. I would like to take you again, Snowy. I would like to open you deeper with my tentacles, to explore inside you, to spread you further. Will you let me do that?"

"Yes," Snowy said. "If you hold me still, you can open me as widely as you like. I want you to, Cybrx. I want to feel you open me and explore me inside, but I need you to hold me still or else I won't be able to take it.

"I can hold you still," Cybrx said, "no fear. I would like to explore you inside. You feel soft, moist, exciting. I would like to spread your inner walls apart, feel your muscles pulsing against my tentacles. I find handling you so intimately very exciting. Will you be good and relax for me, will you let me press deeper without resisting me? I can hold you still, but you will need to open yourself to me in order for this to be pleasant for both of us. I do not want to hurt you, only to touch you deeply."

"Yes," Snowy gasped. "Oh Cthulhu, yes, please, make me take you, I want to, but I'm scared, Cybrx, I'm still so scared–"

"Shh, Snowy," Cybrx crooned. "I love you, I'm going to take good care of you, there's nothing to be scared of." He shifted Snowy in his tentacles until he was flat on his back and then slipped one tentacle into his mouth, twining around his tongue, slipping deeper into his throat, until Snowy gasped, head back, taking him fully. Cybrx grasped Snowy's thighs, pressing them apart, and slipped a tentacle into the tight little opening.

Snowy panicked and tried to twist free, but Cybrx moved with him, holding him, not resisting, but not letting go, until Snowy went limp again. Then Cybrx began again, pressing his tentacle through the tight ring of muscle, positioning his sucker against Snowy's prostate and manipulating it as Snowy writhed, his cries silenced by Cybrx's tentacle pressed deep in his throat. Snowy came reflexively and in the moments after his orgasm, Cybrx pressed an additional tentacle through his sphincter, widening him and increasing the maddening sensations. Again Snowy came and again Cybrx inserted another tentacle. Now his three tentacles curled inside Snowy while Snowy's eyes rolled back at the intensity of the sensation. Another tentacle teased Snowy's cock back to hardness and began to caress the shaft as Cybrx played inside him.

Finally Snowy went entirely liquid in Cybrx's tentacles. He had come so hard and so often that he was completely without defenses. Carefully, slowly, Cybrx withdrew, first from Snowy's throat and then even more carefully, from his ass. He gathered Snowy to him, all his tentacles wrapped snugly around his body.

"I love you, Snowy," Cybrx whispered. "Thank you. I have never known such trust in all my life."

"Don't let me go. I'm all yours now, please, please keep me. Please tell me you're not disgusted by me," Snowy said.

"You're perfect. I love you," Cybrx said. With one gentle tentacle, he tenderly stroked Snowy's face. "I am going to hold you until you sleep." He was good to his word and Snowy closed his eyes tiredly. "Then when you waken, I'm going to touch you again."

Snowy smiled without speaking, mouthing Cybrx's trailing tentacle gently.

Robert and Ibnuli exchanged significant glances as they watched Snowy and Cybrx settle in the dining area. Snowy leaned into Cybrx's mantle and Cybrx's tentacles draped casually over Snowy's legs.

Ibnuli uncovered the kettle of food and delicately dipped into it, serving the other three. They bowed in a moment's silent homage to Cthulhu, the tentacled entity first evoked by the human H.P.Lovecraft in the twentieth century, and known in myths throughout the cosmos centuries before that. Life was hard, had always been hard, for the majority of the universe's creatures. It was only love that redeemed it.

***FIN***