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"This looks too close to one of the traditional board games," Dlique complained. She eyed the crazed pile of tokens, cards, and tiles that Zeiat had set up on the table between them. "Can't we do sex some other way? All the old ways are getting boring."
"No, this way will be better," Zeiat said, picking up an enameled feather that looked suspiciously like it had started life as a Radchaai memorial token. She popped it in her mouth, chewed with a loud, enthusiastic crunching, then swallowed. "It's my turn to choose. You really must learn to curb those impulses of yours, Dlique. And you're awfully fussy for someone who's dead."
"Yes, well, you're me. You should agree with me more often."
"No, Breq Mianaai was quite clear that I'm Zeiat. Just for that--" Zeiat ate another enameled feather, then grinned widely. A small fragment of metal had gotten stuck between two of her molars. It dissolved with an acidic hiss. "If you keep this up, I'm going to eat more and more of your pieces, and you'll be at a horrible advantage. And stop going on about how I'm you. I haven't been Dlique since the last time I was killed. Which I'm so much better about than you are."
Dlique shrugged. "Fine. Who goes first?"
"I do, of course." Zeiat picked up two large dice inscribed with intricate golden symbols, one blue, one orange, the only items of native Presger origin. The symbols had a bad tendency to wriggle and reshape themselves when one wasn't looking at them. Zeiat gave the orange die a sharp rap against the edge of the table. The symbols glowed sullenly, then subsided.
Zeiat rolled the dice. The blue one clattered onto the floor and landed beside Dlique's foot. Dlique snatched it up. "Too bad," she said cheerfully. "I'm not giving it back."
"Do you want to get sexed or not?" Zeiat demanded.
"You ate my feather tokens," Dlique pointed out.
"I needed the vitamins," Zeiat said. She frowned at the orange die. Its symbol showed a coiled tentacle. She placed a hexagonal tile, then plunked down a token of her own to mark the starting position. "Come on, Dlique." She pulled up her tunic just enough to expose a long, wriggling purple tentacle. There was nowhere near enough space to have concealed the tentacle beneath the tunic, but mere geometrical considerations had never bothered Presger Translators. "I do wish the color-coding worked better. Sex is confusing enough as it is without the add-on rules. Orange die, orange tentacle, is how it should wor--"
Dlique swallowed the blue die whole.
Zeiat's tentacle froze in the middle of reaching for Dlique's very erogenous zone, her navel. "I don't believe you just did that," Zeiat said.
Dlique's face contorted until it formed a beak. Zeiat knew from personal experience that mating-beaks were exquisitely sensitive. Also good if one wanted to get rough, but Dlique was going to be a spoilsport and insist on tame sex. Because it had been so long since she'd had tame sex that it wrapped around to being fun again.
That wasn't all. Dlique's shirt dissolved into a fine, moist translucent coating. Her nipples lengthened into clusters of lavender tentacles. And the lower half of her body puddled into fragrant quivering goo.
"Well," Zeiat said, "that escalated quickly."
"Just because you like to spend forever on foreplay--" Dlique said through her beak. She oozed over toward Zeiat, undulating obscenely.
Zeiat leaned in and tweaked Dlique's nipple-tentacles. The goo of Dlique's lower half rippled over Zeiat's toes and enveloped her legs. Then Dlique began vibrating against Zeiat's inner thighs. Zeiat sighed happily and caressed Dlique's beak with her quivering purple tentacle.
Dlique's beak parted invitingly. Zeiat's tentacle entered the opening and snaked down into Dlique's throat, where it throbbed. The tentacle blushed bright green all the way to its base.
Zeiat's eyes rolled back as pleasure overtook her. She sank to her knees. The goo closed around her, still vibrating, leaving only the smallest of slits for her to breathe through. Zeiat's tentacle thrashed wildly. Bubbles formed in the goo as Zeiat cried out.
The tentacle knocked into the table. The blue die fell to the floor and rolled into a corner of the room. It showed a new symbol.
Zeiat's tentacle shriveled in on itself. As it did, it squirted a cloud of blue ink that tinted the goo attractively. Dlique's nipple-tentacles wriggled as the pheromones in the ink took effect, and bloomed like hectic flowers. They, too, blushed blue.
Dlique clacked her beak in disappointment once Zeiat's tentacle was gone. Zeiat emerged from the goo, reached up, and grabbed the beak shut, running her thumbs along the sensitive ridges. Dlique growled in the back of her throat. Encouraged, Zeiat kissed her way along the ridges, then began licking them in earnest with a tongue that newly sported barbs. The added stimulation drove Dlique over the edge, and she shrieked in glee.
Not to be outdone, Dlique vibrated even more strongly. She focused her attention on the backs of Zeiat's knees. Zeiat's back arched, and in her thrashing her head banged against one of the table's legs. "More, more--" she panted, the words distorted because in her enthusiasm she'd accidentally unhinged her jaw.
Dlique tweaked and pinched Zeiat's skin with her goo. This did the trick. Zeiat screamed as she came, and collapsed, bubbles rising through the goo as she panted.
"Are you sure Sphene understood that you were having sex with her the whole time?" Dlique asked afterward. "I mean, she's a ship. I wouldn't have thought a ship, especially a Radchaai ship, would take to sex with such enthusiasm."
"Of course she did," Zeiat said loftily. "It was more like mutual voyeurism anyway, or maybe roleplaying. Sphene doesn't really have the refinement to change her appendages anyway, poor thing. But she did her best."
"I'm just concerned that she thought you were making some kind of philosophical statement with that game," Dlique said. "Radchaai get very odd notions sometimes."
"Nonsense. She thought it was terribly sexy, even if she was too proper to come out and tell me."
"If you say so," Dlique said, losing interest. "That was good. Shall we do it again and see if we can get the dice to help us pollinate each other?" Casually, she opened up her mouth and spat out the blue die.
"Yes, that would be excellent," Zeiat said. "I haven't been pollinated in ages."