Monday, March 27, 2017

Trailer for Monmusu Quest: Paradox 2

Oh hello, what's this:

A trailer for Monmusu Quest: Paradox 2

(I would have liked to have embed it here, but it wouldn't work and googlefu failed me).

Looks like Torotoro Resistance has been progressing with the second part of Monmusu Quest: Paradox.  I don't know when it's scheduled to come out, but I'm eager to play it.

I did an extended walkthrough/let's play of the first one (which starts here).  I'm not sure whether I'll do the same for the second as this year I'm trying to concentrate on getting full novels written (which is also the reason why the H-space Monster Girl Bestiary updates have been highly erratic of late).  We'll see.  Either way I'll probably be playing the hell out of it.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

H-space MGB Story: Polypomp

PFC Stewart Peter Bate walked around the side of the hill, slowly angling upwards.  He carried a long red and white banded pole on his shoulder.  Their assignment was to escort a team of surveyors while they made some preliminary maps of the terrain around the entry point.

Covenant, their surveyor, had stumbled and twisted his ankle.  Stephens was watching over him while Bate walked the short distance to the top of the hill.  Bate didn't like splitting the squad, but this area had already been cleared by Special Forces.  All he had to do anyway was plant the pole on the top of the hill while the other teams took readings from their vantage points.

Right by the entry point were the ruins of a building, little more than a skeleton in the loose brown dirt.  Looking back Bate was struck by how similar the ruins looked to their base back home.  That was a mystery for the scientists.  There were plenty of those.

Bate just had to hold up a pole on the top of a hill.

The side of the hill was covered in something similar to grass, except it was deep red in colour rather than green.  The blades swayed in the breeze.  Sometimes they seemed to sway in the opposite direction.  Bate decided it must be his eyes playing tricks on him.

Dotted on the ground at regular intervals were large green oval shapes.  They came in all sizes, ranging from some only as big as a pumpkin right up to some that were several feet across.  Bate wasn't sure if they were alive or just rocks.  He wasn't about to prod them to check either.

So far, other than the occasional black speck in the sky too fast for his binoculars, Bate hadn't come across anything resembling an animal.  Which was why, when he first saw the girl, it took a few moments to register.

Bate thought he must be hallucinating to start with.  What was a girl—a completely naked girl at that—doing lying on a bed out here?

No, it wasn't a girl, he realised, not a human one anyway.  There were slight differences in the build of her body and her ears were long and pointed.  Her eyes were larger than a human's and slanted a little like a cat's.  Her irises were a bright, iridescent green.  She looked like an elf from mythology, Bate thought.

She wasn't lying on a bed either.  One of the green pods had opened up to reveal a nearly flat surface of soft, pinkish-white tissue.  The girl was lying on the cushioned surface as if it was a large round bed.

Fuck, so what happened now?

Instinctively Bate dropped the pole and put both hands on his M16.

The girl gasped in fear, her big eyes wide, and backed away from him.

What the fuck are you doing, Bate thought?  It's just a girl.  Aside from slight anatomical differences, she looked just like the college co-eds back home.  Not that he got many opportunities to see them naked.

This was First Contact.  This wasn't just how the rest of the world saw him as a representative of the United States; this was how a completely alien species saw him as a representative of the human race.  That prospect terrified him as much as he was sure his appearance terrified the girl.

Bate looked at his gun, looked at the terrified girl.  This was an alien, possibly intelligent, race.  Did he really want her first impression of the human race to be of gun-carrying bringers of violence?

Slowly Bate lowered his gun to the floor and stood up with his hands outstretched.

"It's okay miss.  I mean you no harm," Bate said.

"I'm Utricula," the girl said.  Now that he'd put the gun down she'd lost her fear and instead watched him with bright curiosity.

As he looked at her Bate was slightly embarrassed to realise her naked form aroused him.  She had a similarly proportioned body to the cheerleaders Bate was always too shy to approach back in college.  Her breasts were large in comparison to the slim lines of her athletic body.  She didn't seem to feel the same embarrassment over her nakedness a human would.  Between her legs Bate could clearly see the narrow slit of her vagina.  Utricula didn't seem bothered in the slightest.

"The polypomp pods only open once a year for their breeding season," Utricula said, laying her hand flat on the soft tissue next to her.  "They're really comfortable to lie on, like the softest bed.  I like to come up here to lie back and watch the sky.  It's so peaceful."

It did look comfortable, Bate thought.

"Why don't you join me?" she asked, her iridescent eyes shining brightly.

A breeze brushed through Bate's hair, bringing with it a sweet aroma that tickled his nostrils.  It brought to mind the lazy spring days he used to spend as a child in the woods around his home.  Those were carefree days, before the complications of the real world had inserted themselves into his life.

His hill was smaller than the others.  It would still be a while before the other teams reached their peaks.  And this was First Contact for fuck's sake.  Giving the right impression here was way more important than sticking some stupid pole in the ground.

Bate shrugged off his kit bag and belt and walked towards her.  He put a hand on the soft surface of the pod and was about to jump up to join her when she suddenly reared up with her arms outstretched to block him, a concerned expression on her face.

"No," she said.  "You need to remove your clothes first.  They'll irritate the polypomp otherwise."

Close up to the polypomp Bate became aware of a sickly sweet smell, like perfume, but so strong as to be nearly overpowering.  He wondered if it was having an effect on him as inhaling it sent a warm glow through his body that settled in his groin.

Or it could be Utricula.  If you ignored the elfin ears and cat-like eyes her body was really hot.
The things you do for Uncle Sam, Bate thought.  He stripped off his shirt and pants and moved onto his underwear.  He told himself he was doing it to further better relations with an alien species.  It was freaking First Contact after all.

Bate was slim compared to most of the other soldiers, but kept his body in very good shape, enough for the muscles of his chest and abdomen to be clearly delineated.  Utricula liked what she saw.  Her iridescent eyes looked up and down his body—paying special attention to his cock—with what looked a little like hunger.

Bate climbed onto the polypomp's surface.  It was soft, but not soft enough for him to sink all the way in.  A beanbag made out of soft flesh was the closest comparison Bate could think of.  Utricula had settled in a natural hollow at the polypomp's center, the soft tissue billowing out on either side of her like a solidified cloud.  She moved over to make room for him, but not enough that he couldn't lie down without lying partly on her as well.  She didn't seem to mind.

The sickly scented perfume was much stronger here.  Bate lay back on the luxurious softness with Utricula's arms around him and stared up into the sky.  The roiling mass of browns and reds boiling in the atmosphere was a complete contrast to the tranquillity he felt lying down here in Utricula's arms.

"This is my favorite season," Utricula said.  "It marks the beginning of new life.  Look."

She gently lifted Bate's head and pointed out one of the green oval pods sitting further up the hill.  Normally they were so still as to be like rocks.  This one was trembling and shaking like a boulder in a mild earthquake.  The motion was localised to only that pod.  The others around it were as still and motionless as before.  Bate watched as it rocked and vibrated on the spot.  Then it stopped and suddenly expanded as if taking a breath.  It contracted and Bate watched in awe as a fountain of brilliant green motes shot up into the air like a geyser.  The spores swooped and swirled in a dazzling fireworks display of glittering green sparks before being carried away on the breeze.

"Everything's going to change isn't it?" Utricula said.  There was sadness in her bright green eyes as she looked at him.

"It won't all be bad," Bate said.  He wasn't so convinced.  The words rang hollow to him and he could see Utricula saw it in his face.

"Then we should enjoy every precious moment now," she whispered in his ear, before leaning over to kiss him fully on the lips.  Her lips carried the taste of freshly picked berries, sweet but with a subtle tang.

From first contact to first base and then to…?

Utricula slid further under his body until he lay cradled in her lap.  The back of his head rested against the soft pillows of her breasts.  Her hands gently kneaded his shoulders before sliding down his chest to caress his nipples.  Her thighs came up around him and gently rubbed the outside of his legs.

Could he?  Were they compatible?

Bate lay with Utricula's arms and legs wrapped around him.  He let his hands sink into the soft flesh of the polypomp on either side of their hollow.  It really was the softest, most comfortable bed he'd ever experienced.  He felt like he could lie here with Utricula forever.

She folded her legs over his, letting her toes play with his erection before running her feet gently down the inside of his legs.

"Don't be frightened," she murmured in his ear.

Frightened, Bate thought with a smile.  What was there to be frightened—

A large, fleshy organ rose up between Bate's legs.  At the back it looked like a large, almost translucent, balloon.  At the front were two fleshy lips arranged vertically like a grotesque parody of a vagina.  The puffed up lips slowly gaped open and a second, smaller set of swollen lips emerged, bobbing at the end of a worm-like appendage.

"You'll find the milking process to be very pleasant," Utricula whispered.

Bate didn't intend being around to find out.  He didn't like how the worm-like appendage was swaying to match the motions of his cock.  He tried to get up, but Utricula had both legs hooked over his thighs and her arms wrapped around his chest.  He was trapped in her embrace.

The soft lips sprang forward and wrapped around the head of his cock.  The elastic flesh gripped the end of his manhood and swallowed it down with a rhythmic peristaltic motion.  The appendage retracted until the larger outer lips engulfed his cock totally.  The balloon-like organ started to slowly expand and contract.

Then the suction started.

Oh fuck, it was like receiving the world's best blow job, Bate though.  Thick, soft flesh clenched around his cock and undulated back and forth up the shaft.  It was softer and tighter than any pussy Bate had ever experienced and in seconds his body was trembling from the pleasure of the sensation.

"I won't hurt you," Utricula said, gently caressing his nipples as she lay beneath him.  "I only want your seed."

The semi-transparent bladder rose up and down like the throat of a chorusing frog.  The fleshy organ vibrated as hundreds of muscles sucked on his cock in perfect, exquisite harmony.  Bate felt a gentle probing presence around the rim of his anus.

He tried to thrash free, but he couldn't find any purchase for his limbs to push against.  Utricula was serenely calm as she held him in place.

"Why?" he asked, his eyes wide.

"Like all living organisms, I must reproduce," she replied.

The bladder inflated and deflated with greater urgency.  As it expanded Bate felt a strong suction gripping his cock, hard enough to be felt all the way down in his balls.  His body trembled like a wire.  His hands sank into the fleshy tissue on either side of his body and it gave beneath his grip like warm play-doh.  His legs vibrated, unable to move too far as Utricula held him in place.

The bladder expanded and Bate grunted as a powerful orgasm crashed through his muscles.  He ejaculated a great bolt of semen into the orifice and saw his creamy seed splash up against the inside of the translucent bladder.

Bate relaxed.  Her pseudopod gently pushed against and then entered his anus.  It wasn't painful.  If anything its gentle vibrations sent pleasurable stimulation through his ass.  The pseudopod pushed further up until it located the little bump of his prostate gland.  It pressed against it and began to vibrate in a motion that sent waves of ecstasy flowing through Bate's body.

Bate opened his mouth in a soundless croak.  The polypomp—or Utricula, he wasn't sure they were separate organisms—had him completely.  Her orifice sucking on his cock and her pseudopod gently vibrating in his ass became his entire world.  The sensations crowded out all other thought within his brain.  Bate lay back in open-mouthed bliss and stared at the sky.

"I will take your seed and make new life," Utricula said.

Bate's hips jerked up and down in involuntary motion as more of his creamy semen splashed the inside of her bladder.  She milked him, her sucking orifice and vibrating probe eliciting ejaculation after ejaculation from his willing body.

She gently rubbed a hand through his hair.

"I will take your body and give you new life," she said.

The soft walls slowly folded up around them as the polypomp enveloped them in a warm womb.  It closed up until it was once more a featureless green oval on the side of a hill.

Monday, March 13, 2017

More Succubus Summoning Artwork - Nÿte by ArbuzBudesh




More thanks to Jude Duval for commissioning this piece of Nÿte from ArbuzBudesh.  It was actually done a couple of months ago, but I have been a little AWOL recently as you might have noticed... :)

ArbuzBudesh creates a regular webcomic, Price For Freedom, which you can check out here.  The Lady Wolf character that shows up later in that serial might be of interest to people that like their demon femdom on the more extreme side.

There are other variants in Jude Duval's DeviantArt gallery.  An interesting byproduct of these art commissions is it's made me aware of areas where I haven't been as precise in character description as I could be.




Once again, thanks to Jude Duval for turning the wheels required to have these pieces created.

(Temptation to do something similar with the H-space Monster Girl Bestiary rising... ;) )


Monday, March 06, 2017

H-space MGB Profile: Hunting Arachne

Name:  Hunting Arachne
Type:  Arachne
Habitat: Rocky terrain.  Mountains.  Caves.

Description:
A type of spider-girl.  At a distance she looks like a naked human woman riding a giant spider.  Closer inspection reveals both are parts of the same organism, with the head and torso of the woman replacing the head of the spider.  The woman appears to have truncated vestigial legs that taper to points after about a third of thigh.  These house and hide venom-filled fangs.

Her upper body is dark-skinned with silver hair and looks fully human aside from three sets of additional jet-black eyes located on her head.  Unless seen close up, it is easy to mistake these additional eyes for jewellery.

The lower body is brown and resembles the agelenid spiders found on Earth, albeit on a considerable larger scale.

Attack Strategy:
This type of arachne is an active hunter.  They produce webbing, but use it as ropes to cast at and entangle prey rather than building webs.  Once they catch a man (It is always a man.  Unlike other HSIOs, hunting arachnes show no interest in women) the arachne will wrap them up in a cocoon.  This silk is coated in a mild aphrodisiac.  Venom glands within the false legs contain a much stronger aphrodisiac and the arachne injects it into her prey to place them into a state of sexual hyper-arousal before beginning to feed.

Outwardly, feeding resembles copulation.  The arachne will get her prey aroused and then insert their erection into her false vagina.  This orifice is her true mouth and connected to a series of powerful sucking stomachs in her abdomen.  She stimulates her prey to ejaculation and then slowly pumps out all their fluids while they are in a helpless state of sensual bliss.

Countermeasures:
This type of arachne is fast, agile, and especially dangerous in broken terrain where they can attack from a multitude of angles.

Their resistances are comparable to similar HSIOs.  The cuticle is resistant to small arms and they have some limited regenerative capabilities.  Chainsaws and/or flamethrowers are recommended for fighting this type.  It is also advised to engage them in open areas rather than seeking cover.

Threat Level:
Moderate.

Fast, agile, and extremely difficult to handle at close quarters.

Sunday, March 05, 2017

H-space MGB Story: Hunting Arachne

PFC Stewart Peter Bate had thought the spiders would be okay so long as you weren't stupid enough to fall into their webs.  He'd been in H-space long enough to hear about and even see firsthand some real crazy shit.  Giant spider-women.  Sure, whatevs.

What they hadn't told him about—and Bate was supremely pissed about this—was the spiders that chased after you and threw ropes of sticky silk like they were cowboys lassoing rogue steers.  They also hadn't told him about how quick they were.  Or how accurate they were at throwing their sticky ropes of silk.

Or how damn sneaky they were.

Bate stood with his back to a crumbling wall.  Finding the ruins had been a surprise.  No one knew who'd built them or what they were doing here.  H-space was weird like that.  Explo teams had reported coming across strange structures left in the middle of nowhere as if they'd been transplanted here from another world.  These ruins were old.  Whoever built them was no longer around and hadn't been for a long time.  Maybe the spider-women had eaten them.

He knew she was out there, stalking him.

He strained to hear any sounds—the telltale tic of a chitinous spider leg on stone, or maybe the little rattle of displaced gravel.  Nothing.  How could something so big move so silently?  It wasn't right.

She was the last one.  He was the last of the squad.  The other spiders had got the rest.  Poor bastards.

Bate paused behind the rock wall to get his breath back and wonder how the fuck he was going to get out of this.  To his right was an open square floored with stone blocks.  On the other side of the square was a broken arch standing out on its own.

Bate was fast.  Back in college he'd been county champion at the 100m sprint.

The spiders were faster.  She'd run him down long before he reached the broken arch.

To his left was a maze of rubble and crumbling stone walls.  The spiders could climb walls just as well as their tiny cousins back on Earth.  What was an obstacle course for him would be a racetrack for her.

It was still his best choice.  The derelict walls would provide some form of cover.  If he could sneak through without her seeing him...

A shadow fell over him.

Bate looked up into the smiling face of the spider-girl.

"There you are," she said.

If you didn't know any better, the spider-girls kinda looked hot.  Her skin was a rich coffee-brown color and looked flawlessly smooth.  Her exposed breasts were full and round and topped with perky dark-brown nipples.  She had silver-white hair that was cut short in a bob that extended to just below her pointed elf-like ears.  The only blemishes to her otherwise beautiful face were shiny black orbs attached to her forehead and temples.  It was easy to mistake them for jewelry... until they blinked.

And now Bate didn't have a choice.

He turned tail, put his head down and sprinted across the open square as if his life depended on it.  Which it did.  Abstractly he reckoned he'd probably just smashed his PB.  Not that it did him any good.  The broken arch was still in the distance when he felt something wet and sticky strike him in the center of his back.  He carried on running but now it felt like he'd been attached to a bungee cord.  His forward momentum slowed to the point it was like trying to charge through thick mud.  He hit the limit of his tether's elasticity and came to a halt.  He reached out despairingly for the arch that was out of reach of his imploring fingers, then he was yanked backwards.

The spider-girl caught him.  Bate had resolved to not go quietly if one of these bastards ever caught him.  He thrashed and lashed out.  It was like fighting a hurricane of scissoring limbs and drifting strands of sticky silk.  Bate's clothes and kit were neatly sliced away and then his naked body was spun around while she wrapped him up in sheets of sticky wet silk.  All of him was cocooned aside from his face.

Because she wanted him to see, Bate realized.  Sadistic bitch.

She smiled at him as she squatted down on top of his cocooned body.  Bate saw her mix of human and arachnid from up close.  It was far worse than had she been completely alien.  It looked like a giant spider had no head and instead a buxom brown-skinned female amputee was sitting in its place as if she was riding some kind of exotic wheelchair or chariot.  That was Bate's brain trying to make sense of the incomprehensible.  Spider and woman blurred together at the join.  Chitin plates extended from the body of the arachnid and up the sides of the woman.  Her leg stumps were like one of those trick rabbit-duck pictures.  One moment they resembled the leg stumps of a double amputee, tapering to a point.  The other they looked like the mouth parts of an enormous spider.

Rider and spider were one.

Rider and spider had always been one.

What the fuck was wrong with this fucked up dimension?

"How's that?" she asked.  "All wrapped up and comfortable?"

Bate briefly flexed against his bonds before realizing it was hopeless.  She'd wrapped him up as tight as a hapless fly caught in a spider's web.

"Fuck you," he said to her.

The spider-girl laughed.

"Patience," she said.  "We'll do plenty of that later."

She ran a hand over Bate's silk-wrapped form.

"Oh, but our little game of hide'n'seek has got my juices going."

Curved fangs popped out of the leg stumps that were not leg stumps.  A droplet of pink fluid formed at the tip of each.

Bate's eyes widened.  Forget her human appearance.  She was a spider.  She was going to inject him with her venom and suck out his insides.  And there was nothing he could do about it.

"Fuck you," he re-iterated.

Bate was determined not to go out a pussy.  It was all he had left.  He wouldn't beg.

"Ah, so eager," the spider-girl laughed.

Her poison fangs sank into Bate's sides.  There was a brief prick of pain and then...

ooh

Warmth bloomed up inside him in expanding clouds.  It was like she'd injected him with opiates... and something else.  All his tension and fear melted right away.  He relaxed and then a different kind of tension gripped him.  He felt strange and antsy.  Hot.  Horny.

"Normally I'd wait for the aphrodisiac soaked in my silk to take effect," she said.  "But you've made me all wet.  I can't wait."

Blood surged down to Bate's cock.  The spider-woman must have spared that part of his body when wrapping him up.  His erection started to rise without hindrance.  She wrapped her hands around his manhood.  In contrast to her alien, arachnid appearance her hands were warm and soft.  She spat on his cock and used it as lubrication as she pumped him harder and harder.

Bate watched on in a confused stupor.  He'd thought she meant to eat him.  This he didn't mind.  She knew tricks with her fingers that had Bate moaning in pleasure.  No, he didn't mind this at all.  Even being wrapped up in the silk cocoon felt okay—kinky, but comfortable kinky.

If he'd known she was going to do this he wouldn't have run away.

The girl smiled at him as she pumped his dick.

"Much better," she said.  "Now we can fuck."

The plates of chitin guarding her crotch slid aside to expose the hairless folds of her pussy.  Her labia were plump and red with engorged blood.  They parted to reveal a red tunnel slathered with her juices.

Bate trembled with anticipation.  Even though he could clearly see it wasn't a typical human pussy he didn't care.  He felt so hot and horny he needed to cool off.  And the only way to cool off was to douse his boiling-hot cock in her wet sex.

Which he couldn't do because his body was tightly cocooned in silk.  The woman knew it and teased him with her sex.  She moved over him and pressed down enough for the plush lips of her sex to encircle the swollen head of Bate's cock, but not enough for him to penetrate her.

Bate felt so hot and horny it overwhelmed everything else.  He moaned in frustration at not being able to thrust up inside her.

The woman laughed.  "Don't worry.  Arachnes are accustomed to their lovers being bound.  My pussy will bring you to ecstasy and you won't have to do a thing."

An organ expanded within her and the resulting suction it generated through her vagina drew Bate's cock up into her with enough force to lift his hips up off the floor.  The position was uncomfortable, but Bate wasn't held in it for long.  The spider-woman had proved her point and lowered her body so Bate was resting on the floor with her lying on top of him.

Her sex was tight and muscular.  Muscular enough that it might have been uncomfortable, even painful, had her walls not also been thick, padded and soft.  It felt like his cock had been wrapped in and squeezed by a big plush cushion.  The arachne didn't move up and down on top of him.  She let the internal motions of her vagina do all the work—squeezing, tugging, sucking.

Oh fuck, that felt incredible, Bate thought.

He let out a surprised gasp.  Again something had expanded within her and Bate's member was gripped by a rippling suction that drove his senses wild.

"It feels like you've got a mouth down there," he said.

What was this sensation?  It was amazing.

The woman gave him a knowing smile.  "I'm a spider.  Our lovers can't move when we've wrapped them all up, so we... hnh..."

She flexed something within her.  The thick fleshy walls of her sex contracted around Bate's cock.  He felt that same powerful suction, but this time it was focused on his cock... down inside his cock... inside him.

"...suck the cum right out of them."

Bate was trembling all over.  His cock throbbed inside her.  Her pussy squeezed back making him throb even harder.  He hadn't so much as twitched his hips and yet he was already bursting to shoot his load.  He'd been with a hooker that had a similar technique, but what this H-space woman was doing to him was far beyond that.

"Just like... hnh... this," she said.

It was like she was taking a deep breath and that breath was Bate's cock.  And then it was his cum.  Bate felt a tingling, trembling sensation all over his body that concentrated down into his loins until he could hold it back no longer.

"Yes, let it out," the woman hissed as Bate groaned and erupted inside her.

She lay on top of him and wrapped her arms around his cocooned body in a tight hug.  Her segmented legs formed a cage around his lower back, buttocks and legs.  She pressed her lips against his in a sloppy kiss.  Her taste was strange... bitter.

Bate's orgasm was long and powerful.  One, two, three, four, five strong throbbing pulses as he unloaded his balls.  Her sex tightened around his throbbing member and formed a fleshy cuff.  As her mouth worked against his he felt other workings deep inside her sex.

What was happening down there?  Bate's semen was pulled from him faster than he could spurt it into her pulsing sex.  It felt like... gulping?

It was hella intense, like nothing he'd ever experienced.  A few more throbs and Bate finally felt like his tap was running dry.  It left him a jangling, exhausted, but happy wreck.

The spider woman sank her fangs into his sides and held them there.  Bate shuddered and gasped into her moist lips as she poured her aphrodisiac venom into him.

"You were right.  I do have a mouth down there," she whispered in his ear.

Her muscular sex contracted and tugged him rhythmically.  The sucking organ deep within her spider abdomen throbbed with the same rhythm as she sucked a second powerful ejaculation out of him.

This would be the longest orgasm of Bate's life.  It would also be his last.

"I'm a spider," she whispered.  "I suck all the juices out of my lovers... my prey."

The sucking organ in her abdomen pulsed as she drew Bate's juices out of him.  Thanks to her venom it was his precious bodily fluids he was ejaculating, not semen, but the pleasure was the same.

"But I am a kind spider.  My prey feel only bliss as I suck their fluids out of them."

Bate barely heard her.  He let out a little ah of ecstasy with each pulse.  The arachne could have dragged it out longer, but they were out in the open and exposed.  She sucked him dry with great lusty gulps until his eyes clouded over and he let out a final rattling sigh.  Finished, the arachne murmured contently as she stroked her now full abdomen.

"Did you enjoy that as much as I did?  I think you did," she said to Bate's wizened face.

She kissed him on his cracked lips before carrying his cocooned and dried-up husk back with her to her lair.  It wouldn't do to leave it out in the open where it might frighten future lovers away.