Hot Kofe

Miller nodded his head, feigning interest as she rambled.

"Wish I could get my hands on some oil containers, it's not uncommon for people to carry their favorite condiments around with them back home. I used to really like refined fish oil, there was this species that lived in the frozen lakes of the Polar territory that produced this amazing oil..."

Miller finished off his meal as she babbled, just glad that she was talking about something besides lurid sex acts. Fortunately, her appreciation for food was as great as her apparent love of carnality. It was like white noise, and he took a moment to look out across the torus as he ate the last of his fries. There were so many people, like a sea of jumpsuits with the odd civilian standing out due to their lack of a uniform.

It was somewhat ironic to live on one of the most crowded space stations that existed, and yet to be so alone. That was one thing that he hadn't lied about, he really didn't have enough time for dating. What little free time he tended to get was usually interrupted by a call out for urgent repairs of some kind. He had racked up a huge amount of money, having no time to enjoy his wages and having nothing to spend them on. No time for hobbies, no time for girls. Maybe he should take a vacation soon, somewhere off-station where he couldn't be called in even if the Pinwheel was falling apart.

Kofe reached over and nudged him with her fist, getting his attention and snapping him out of his thought.

"Were you daydreaming? I asked you about how you got involved with bad people back on your homeworld."

"The gambling stuff?"

She nodded vigorously.

"Right, well..." He had to think of something fast, something believable. She was an alien after all, what did she know about human culture and customs?

"I bet a lot of money on a card game, and I lost big time. Turns out the casino owner was involved in organized crime, and he wasn't too happy about my debts. He sent some enforcers after me, told them to bring back the money or my head. But I managed to get off-world, and I ended up here."

Kofe leaned closer to him again, pressing him up against the glass with her bulk.

"How exciting! What kind of card game?"

"Uh...poker."

"I love poker!" she exclaimed, loudly enough that it drew the attention of several disgruntled customers who were trying to enjoy their meals. "Give me all the details. How much did you bet? What was your hand, and what beat it?"

Shit, he didn't know the first thing about poker, he had never played a game in his life. The only card game he was even remotely familiar with was solitaire, and only because he played it on his phone during downtime on the job. Could he bullshit his way through this? Come on Miller, think, you must have watched a movie or read a book at some point that had a poker game in it.

"Well, I had a really good hand, and so I went all-in. But the guy who beat me had four Aces. Once in a lifetime thing, couldn't have planned for it. Needless to say, he beat everyone at the table. I bet way more money than I actually had, because I had such a good hand, the odds of losing were insignificant."

"Aces were high, I assume? Jokers wild?"

"Oh yeah, very high, very wild."

"What was your hand?"

Miller hesitated for a moment, trying to remember the different rankings of the cards. It was a little like chess, right? Yeah, that sounded right. Kings, Queens, Bishops. What was below an Ace? Probably a King. Wait, Royal Flush, that was a term that he had heard somewhere before.

"It was a Royal Flush," he replied confidently, "I thought it was unbeatable, but I guess they proved me wrong. It seemed like a surefire thing, I mean, what are the odds of being beaten with a hand like that?"

"So you're an avid poker player?" Kofe asked, seemingly convinced by his fictitious story. Miller breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing a little as she drew back.

"Oh yeah, I can't get enough of it. That's mostly what we play down at the underground gambling place, a whole lot of poker."

Kofe grinned at him, exposing her pointed teeth.

"Oh yeah, that's some bad luck. Which Ace did you have?"

"Which one?"

"Yeah, which suit? A Royal Flush includes an Ace when they're high, as I'm sure you know."

Miller had to think for a moment, and then the lyrics of a song came to mind.

"The Ace of spades, that was the one."

"And to think that your opponent had all four of the others, those are some very unlikely odds. Impossible to predict, one might say."

"What can I say, I'm just unlucky," he replied with an exaggerated shrug. Kofe narrowed her blue eyes at him for a moment and then broke into a hearty laugh.

"I would expect someone who had played poker before to know that a Royal Flush includes an Ace. How did your opponent have four Aces if you had a Royal Flush? There are only four aces in a deck. A Royal Flush also beats four Aces and a wild card, which means that the scenario you just described is completely impossible."

"Alright, you got me," he admitted as she smirked triumphantly at him. "I was lying, I'm a terrible person, and I'm sure that you want nothing more to do with me." He tried to conceal his hopeful tone, but somehow she didn't seem deterred. In Miller's experience, women hated being lied to, but Kofe was looking at him with a strange and ominous glint in her eye.

"W-What's the matter?" he stammered, "aren't you mad?"

"You had me going there for a minute," she said as her tone turned sly, leaning close to him again and boxing him into the booth. She was like a wall of snowy fur, Miller doing his best to keep his eyes off her boundless cleavage. She was looking at him like he was a juicy steak, practically licking her chops.

"In Polar culture, Machiavellian intelligence is considered a desirable trait. Social and political maneuvering is an important part of our society, it's how we gain and lose standing in the pack. We smooth-talk, and we manipulate. We make deals, and we mislead in order to move up the ladder. Our whole social system is a kind of poker game, and your bluff wasn't half bad."

Typical, his attempt to make himself as undesirable as possible had completely backfired. Now she seemed more interested in him than ever, she was leering at him in a way that made him very uncomfortable.

"You're cute when you're angry," she giggled, covering her mouth with a giant hand. "You done eating? Why don't you take me back to your place, show me around? I'd like to see how humans live."

While the prospect of escaping the angry glares of the patrons was an attractive one, he didn't really want Kofe to know where he lived, that was if she hadn't already discovered that piece of information along with his full name when she had gone snooping through his personnel files.

"You know, I have to work tomorrow, I really should be getting home so that I can get some sleep."

"It's still early," Kofe whined, "and you can sleep at my apartment if you want to. I have plenty of room for you. You're scarcely bigger than a little kitten."

She dragged him out of his chair at that, apparently overcome by his cuteness, wrapping her furry arms around him and pulling him against her bust. She squeezed the air out of his lungs, she was as strong as a lion, he couldn't so much as wriggle as she squashed him against her pudgy body. He felt her hand on the back of his head, her claws pricking his scalp as she pressed his face into the downy fur just above her cleavage. It was as soft and as luxurious as an expensive mink coat, so deep that he could almost bury his entire head in it. He felt her warm breath on his head as she cooed happily, the delicate strands tickling his cheeks.

She was so warm, her insulating coat and her considerable blubber trapped so much heat that it was like hugging a boiler that had been wrapped in a carpet. No wonder she was always complaining about the heat on the station, and she dressed so sparsely. She was designed for an arctic climate, like a polar bear.

He had expected her to smell like an animal, musky, unpleasant. But instead, his nose was filled with the scent of perfume. She smelled like cherries and strawberries, fruity and inviting. She had clearly gone to some lengths to treat her fur with shampoos and conditioners. It must be quite an ordeal to wash this much fur so carefully, but the result was a wonderful scent and a texture that was as soft as silk.

Her pendulant breasts were compressing against his chest like a pair of damned space hoppers, her copious sweater meat spreading and deforming beneath her thin t-shirt like fresh cookie dough. His arms were pinned against his sides by her powerful grip, he could feel her bicep even beneath the layers of fat and fur. She was surprisingly strong, there was the physique of a bodybuilder buried under there somewhere, no doubt a product of the high gravity found on her home planet. Just moving this much mass around would be like weight training.

He was starting to become drowsy, and not just because he couldn't breathe. She was so warm and soft that it was hypnotic, like she was tricking his senses into thinking that it was time to sleep. He couldn't have imagined a more inviting bed, she was like a warm cloud.

She released him after a moment, and he snapped out of his stupor, collapsing back into the booth as she smiled down at him. He shook his head, trying to clear it of her scent. It was like some kind of witchcraft.

"Come on Jeff, let's pay our bill and get out of here."

"Y-Yeah, alright."

He opened his wallet, forgetting for a moment his claims of being hard-up, and deposited a handful of credit chips on the table. There was an ear-splitting screeching as Kofe pushed her table along the floor, returning it to where she had found it, the other restaurant goers and the man who was staffing the counter glaring at her disdainfully.

He rose to his feet, following behind her as she made for the door, tasked once again with navigating the human-sized opening.

"After you," Miller said sarcastically, gesturing to the glass panels as she sized them up. Kofe crouched down to a more suitable height, pulling both of the doors open. On her way in, the glass doors had been angled away from her, but now she had to keep them held open as she struggled through the narrow space. Her wide hips caught on the doors and she stopped fast, grumbling to herself. She looked like a dog that was trying to fit down a rabbit hole in pursuit of its quarry.

"A little help?" she asked, Miller rolling his eyes and sidling up behind her. Her butt was enormous, as wide as three or four men standing shoulder to shoulder. Her tight shorts were riding up to expose the beginnings of her furry cheeks as she struggled, her puffy tail waving in his face.

"What do you want, a push?"

"I'm almost through, just give me a shove while I try to hold the doors open."

He shrugged and reached out his arms, planting his hands in her silky fur. They immediately sank almost up to the wrist in her yielding fat, it was like pushing his fingers into wet clay. He gave her a push, and she wriggled, her long tail batting him in the face. The whole restaurant and most of the people walking nearby on the torus were watching the strange scene unfold at this point, gawking at the struggling Polar. Miller took a couple of steps back and then drove his shoulder into her rump, sending her toppling onto the deck outside.

She brushed herself off and straightened her shorts, making a futile attempt to pull them down where they were riding up her meaty thighs. Miller followed behind her, the giant alien seemingly undeterred. She lunged for him, and he tried to dance out of her range, but too late. She succeeded in catching his arm in hers, and she tugged him closer, setting off towards the residential quarter and dragging her reluctant companion along beside her.

CHAPTER 3: COLD FEET

The great sunlamps that were embedded in the painted ceiling were already beginning to dim when they arrived at her front door. It was a fairly standard apartment as far as Miller could see, built into the white hull of the station like all of the residences to its left and right, sporting a few decorative planters here and there to add to the illusion that they weren't on a giant space station. The major difference between this apartment and his own was the size of the door, eight-feet tall and twice as wide as a man. This was one of the Borealan residences that had been constructed for the massive influx of tourists and diplomats that the UNN had expected to arrive shortly following the species' induction into the Coalition, but which had never materialized. Now these supersized apartments were left mostly vacant, the few Borealan denizens of the station who were not housed in the barracks were able to rent them for far cheaper than the crowded and sought after human equivalents.

She swiped her ID card at the door, and it opened with a whoosh, the wooden paneling only decorative as the metal covering slid into the wall. Kofe ducked inside, and he followed after her, the interior lights turning on automatically to illuminate a gigantic space.

Miller was a little jealous, it was a huge studio apartment, open-plan with only the bathroom and bedroom hidden behind their own dividing walls as far as he could see. It was large enough to fit his own apartment inside it twice over, as well as having a tall enough ceiling that even Kofe's massive stature didn't cause her to bump her head. It was lavishly furnished too, with seating and counters that were appropriately scaled up for Borealan use. The couch that sat in front of a large television that was embedded in the wall was so big that it could have easily served as a queen-sized bed.

"Nice place," he commented, turning his head to look around as he followed her into the expansive room. As soon as he spoke, he noticed that his breath was visible, condensating due to the extreme cold that hit him like a wall. It was frigid in here, was there some kind of malfunction with her thermostat? It was like standing inside a meat locker. Kofe seemed to immediately relax, however, more at ease now that she was in an environment that more closely approximated that of her home.

"Can I get you something to drink?" she asked, making her way over to the fridge. Miller noted that even though this apartment was built for Borealans, there was scarcely an inch of room to either side of her wide hips as she passed between the table and the kitchen counter.

"Oh, sure," he replied. His teeth were already starting to chatter, and he had subconsciously crossed his arms in an attempt to ward off the cold.

"I have raises the hair, soda, fruit juice."

"What's raises the hair?" Miller asked.

"A Borealan drink, you want to try some? It's low alcohol, kind of like human wine."

"Yeah, sure."

She retrieved a bottle of pink liquid from the fridge and collected two glasses from a shelf above the counter. It was so strange to Miller, like he was standing on the set of a forced perspective movie, everything was blown up in size. It was messing with his perception, his brain seemingly unable to decide whether the room was too large, or if he had shrunken down to the size of a toddler.

Kofe walked back over to him, gesturing that he should sit on the massive couch, and he hopped up onto it like a child trying to climb into a booster seat. She set the bottle and the two cups down on the glass coffee table, itself as high as the average office desk. Miller sat on the edge of the sofa, feeling foolish as his legs dangled in the air.

His fluffy host sat down beside him, the cushions sagging beneath her and pulling him towards her, like a representation of a black hole on a two-dimensional grid. His face planted into her shoulder before he had a chance to right himself, her fur tickling his nose. As he tried to climb free, she curled her arm around him, trapping him in a one-armed hug. Miller slowly ceased his struggling as he realized that her body heat was staving off the oppressive cold.

"Well aren't you eager?" Kofe chuckled, peering down at him with a salacious look in her eye. "I've barely had time to get comfortable, and you're already throwing yourself at me. At least you took me out to dinner first, I'll give you that."

"I didn't do either of those things," Miller complained, his voice muffled as she pressed his head into the side of her bosom with her bicep and headlocked him. "I just fell into you."

"Uhuh, and you can beat a Royal Flush with four Aces, right?"

She released him, chuckling heartily as he straightened his hair, then she leaned forward and began to pour the pink liquid from the bottle into the two glasses. They could scarcely be described as such, they were the size of beer steins. He examined the label on the bottle, but it was all Borealan script, what looked like claw marks arranged in patterns. She filled one of the giant glasses with the beverage, handing it to Miller who gave it an experimental sniff.

"Smells like fruit punch," he said, lifting it to his lips and taking a sip. It tasted pretty good. It didn't pack much of a punch due to the low alcohol content, and it had a flavor that reminded him of red berries. He took another, longer draw from the glass as Kofe watched him with a smile on her face.

"I forgot that you humans drink alcohol like it's going out of style."

"Don't Borealans?" Miller asked, struggling with the heavy glass as he took another drink from it.

"No, we can't handle much alcohol. The quantities that you little guys consume it in are poisonous to us. One of your shots would send us to the hospital."

"So what's in this?"

"Raises the hair is made from fermented berries, it's only two or three percent alcohol. That's enough to get us quite drunk if we consume enough of it in one sitting."

"Do you have to import it from your home planet?"

"Oh yes," she replied, pausing to take a drink before continuing. "We experimented with making our own in Siberia, but we were advised not to introduce alien plant life into the local ecosystem. The native berries don't quite ferment in the same way. It's a shame, I think the berries would grow well in the Taiga, it's very temperate."

"The Taiga is temperate?" Miller laughed. "Maybe for you. It's almost uninhabitable for humans."

"I know," she replied, "that's why we colonized it. We have a whole city now, and the population is exploding due to the favorable conditions. The environment that we lived in back on Borealis was more similar to your Arctic territories, Siberia is fertile and hospitable in comparison."

"And how does a human apartment compare to your housing back in Russia?"

"It lacks the rustic charm of a hut erected with one's own hands," she said as she glanced about the room. "But the Pinwheel is very accommodating. It's a shame to see so many of these apartments sit empty. The Equatorials are only interested in fighting. I doubt you'll see many tourists from Elysia or Rask showing up to learn about the galaxy and to broaden their minds, but when the new generation of Polars begins to mature, I'm sure that many of these dwellings will become occupied."

"Sounds like you don't think much of Equatorials," Miller laughed, leaning forward and setting his glass down on the oversized coffee table. The drink was quite tasty, but there was far too much for him to consume in a single sitting.

"You try sharing a planet with them for a few thousand years," she chided, "then we'll see what you think of them."

Miller shivered conspicuously, wrapping his arms around himself as he exhaled a plume of mist. His yellow overalls were woefully insufficient for keeping him warm. He didn't even think he owned any cold weather clothes anymore, the station was climate controlled. The only time that he ever encountered temperatures below what was comfortable was when he was marching along the outside of the hull in a space suit.