October.

Autumn had arrived with a vengeance.

The days were shorter and the nights longer and the temperature had begun to plummet. I lay in bed with Siobhan sleeping soundly next to me. I was restless. I'd drifted in and out of sleep a few times but hadn't been able to properly lose consciousness. It was one of those endless dark nights where everything and nothing ran round and around my mind constantly. Without thinking of anything much in particular I had managed to keep myself awake until just after three o'clock. The cool night air was icy cold. I shuffled closer to Siobhan and wrapped my arms carefully around her. It was hard to believe that the aliens had been among us for the best part of three months now. It was even harder to believe that Mum and Dad had been gone for almost half a year.

If I was perfectly honest with myself and put aside my own personal feelings and misgivings, then it felt as if the aliens had been with us for much, much longer. They had become such an accepted and integrated part of society that it was difficult now to try and remember what things had been like before they'd arrived.

Although they seemed to have passed by in a matter of moments (certainly much quicker than the dark dragging hours had tonight) our first months together had been more than long enough for the first tangible benefits of our mutual existence to become evident. It didn't matter what I thought of the aliens (and, to be honest, I still didn't think much of them) there was no denying that we as a race had benefited greatly from their experience and expertise. The truth of the matter had been brought home to me a week or so earlier when I'd found myself watching live television coverage of man's first landing on Mars. Okay, so the distance to the red planet was nothing compared to the vast distances the aliens had travelled, but no human had ever been further away from home. It was a monumentally important new beginning for mankind. Years ahead of previous schedules and predictions, the trip had been made in a vessel which had once been an ordinary, run-of-the-mill space shuttle. By the time our alien advisors and human technicians had finished redesigning, cannibalising and rebuilding the machine it was able to take off, fly and land completely unassisted like a conventional plane. Once white and bulky but now smooth, sleek and black, the ship could cruise effortlessly at incredible speeds which, just weeks earlier, we had only ever dreamed of.

This year the summer had been particularly harsh and dry. Elsewhere in the world the landscape and whole populations had been all but destroyed by high temperatures and virtually non-existent rainfall. Now, with the help of alien technology, previously lifeless fields had begun to flower and to flourish again. I'd heard reports that in one of the driest parts of Africa, a water manufacturing plant had just been opened and a vast man-made lake had already been filled. In the short time that the aliens had been with us, they seemed to have changed the face of the planet more than we had done in the last hundred years.

I rolled onto my back and stretched. Siobhan stirred next to me. She mumbled something and then reached across and ran her outstretched hand over my chest. She stroked me tenderly for a few seconds before moving her hand further down and gently grabbing hold of my balls. I was erect in seconds, and completely awake in microseconds.

'You are the sexiest woman alive,' I groaned as she took me in her mouth and began to suck and lick.

'I know!' she tried to say with her mouth full of me.

We fucked for almost an hour. Ravaging each other like animals, scratching and biting each other's naked flesh, sliding into position after position until we were too exhausted to carry on.

When we'd finished Siobhan silently rolled over and, still sweating and panting like a dog, I wrapped my arms around her and pressed my face against hers. Within seconds I was asleep. Completely satisfied and blissfully happy.