How Not to Date an Alien by Stephanie Burke

eyes.
    “Your garments? Do you intend to bathe in them? I understand that it was a custom to do so in your history…”
    “No.” She shook her head. “Uh, no. We don’t bathe in our clothes, Valan. I was —
    distracted, just a little.”
    “Yes, your arousal has spiked, Kilana. You find my partially clothed body more arousing than my naked one.”
    He nodded his head sadly, managing to somehow look up at her through long, black lashes. It was an amazing feat, especially since he was about a foot taller than she was.
    “No, that’s not it.” She felt a shaft of shame as she realized she was objectifying her alien, turning him into a big hunk of pale meat.
    And then reality slapped her in the back of the head.
    The alien was going to eat her! There was no way she was going to feel bad about possibly hurting his feelings.
    “So you do find my naked body pleasurable? Or is this one of the kinks…” He tilted his head, as if testing the word for the first time. “Yes, kinks I’ve heard about?”
    “Kinks?”
    “I am willing to try a lot sexually, Kilana. But some of your Earth practices are strange. That is why you will have a thorough bath before we get to the salad tossing.
    And I am not sure that I want to give or receive a golden shower. That just somehow feels wrong.”
    “Golden shower!” She could feel her eyes grow wider with his every word.
    “Besides, my people do not urinate. We excrete waste fluids once in what you would call a month. It is a private practice, and we convene to our own private waste receptacles to do this. It is not something we share, even with the closest of kin.”
    “I don’t care about that!” She gaped, growing pale at the thought of his waste removal process. This was one of those times when having a good imagination was a bad — really bad — thing. And then the thought of alien anatomy —
    “I am not too sure about the thing called fisting,” he went on. “But if that is one of your kinks, and seeing that it does not require you to penetrate my body with a foreign object that my internal immune system may take as an attack and seek to melt the invader, I am willing to try.” He grinned at her — hard.
    “No!” she gasped, taking a step back. If he thought he was going to spit her on his hand before the grand feast, he had another thing coming.
    “Very well. Latex and leather seem to be big kinks, too. Shall I try and procure some?”
    “No kinks!” Kilana finally screamed. “What is wrong with you?”
    “I was just trying to cater to your needs. And I notice that viewing me half-clothed spiked your arousal. I stated this before, Kilana. Please pay attention.”
    “I don’t have any kinks,” she snipped.
    “But you enjoyed being tied to the bed,” he pointed out, reaching for her tunic.
    “Well, that’s fairly vanilla.” She automatically lifted her arms so he could remove her top. “It’s so vanilla that even people who have never even heard of bondage are doing it for a thrill.”
    “So you do have kinks.”
    “Minor ones.” She rolled her eyes, looking down as he tossed the tunic aside like so much used trash and his fingers delved into the waistband of her skirt.
    “And you are much too thin, still,” he sighed.
    “All those fresh vegetables,” she snorted. “They are key to weight loss.”
    He frowned, but then nodded his head. “Human madness,” he muttered, tugging her skirt from her body.
    So she was now standing in the steamy bathroom in her underwear while a half-naked alien who planned to consume her was getting her ready for a bath.
    It was sad, and wrong on so many levels, but Kilana was beginning to have fun in spite of her imminent death.
    “I think you were joking with me,” she said finally, noting the amusement that still filled his black eyes. He impatiently ripped though the material of her bra with his talons and tossed the remains aside. She shrugged at the destruction of the Vickie’s Best bra, ignoring the