Creature in the Crater : 12

On the same evening that Lucalle started work in Holding Tank 4, Ketha and Klane were locked in the assessment chamber so that the creature's studies into human mating might continue. "Don't worry," the youth said at once, feeling awkward and embarrassed in the proximity of this pretty girl. "I'm not going to take advantage of you. Lucalle explained everything last night; that you have both agreed not to engage in any kind of competition for me at the behest of the creature. We can't let it have what it wants."
Ketha was sprawling on the bed and now she looked at him in a curiously frank and speculative way that made him blush unaccountably.
"Never mind the creature," she said. "And never mind Lucalle. What do you want?"
Klane struggled for an answer to that one, and Ketha finally broke the silence with a soft sigh.
"Let me tell you something about Lucalle," she said. "She is my friend as well as my liege lady and her spirit is a fiery one and full of fervour to do right, but she is still a princess for all that. When she says 'we have agreed' something, she often just means that she has decided on her opinion. Then she assumes I agree; sometimes with only a little discussion or sometimes with none and in her own mind I have agreed. But on this occasion I have not. Now come here so we can talk properly!"
"Now answer me honestly," Ketha said when a nervous Klane was sitting beside her on the bed. "Do you find me attractive?"
"Y... yes. Of course," he blurted. That much was undeniable. Ketha was lithe, sensual and disconcertingly direct. She smiled at him, a weapon of such disarming spontaneity, warmth and power that it left him defenceless.
"And as you find me, so I find you," she said simply. "What could be more straightforward? Let us forget the creature and the world for tonight and live for one another. Please?"
She seemed oddly tentative for a moment as she bent to kiss him, and in that moment her conquest was complete.
So it was that Klane was initiated into the great mysteries of adulthood. The night was long and the rituals of the mysteries delighted them both. Yet even as he gave his body to pleasure and service his mind must have been working for a different freedom, for when he woke, drowsy and sated in the still of the morning he suddenly knew how the thraldom of the creature in the crater could be broken...