CHAPTER 11
“I’m not certain that having my skull’s contents forcefully expelled during mating should be enjoyable, but if it happens as a result of achieving pleasure with you, I believe I would like this,” I tell Becky, rubbing her feet with even more vigor and zeal.
She makes a noise in her throat. I can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a gurgle, either from pain or bliss. It sounds strangely like a mix of both.
Also strangely, it’s still an attractive sound to my ears. I decide to make conversation to distract myself so that I don’t breed my mate before I’ve fully seen to her rubbing needs. I cast about for a topic, and with my gaze on her lower limb, naturally my mind considers her here. “Earlier, you expressed that your back was paining you. When I’ve rubbed your lower half to satisfaction, I wish to offer you my back muscle rubbing services as well.”
She gurgles in an affirmative fashion.
Pleased, I make more conversation as I rub her. “Compared to other human females, you have very large ankles,” I share thoughtfully.
Becky’s dazed smile slips off her face. She stares down at me for a heartbeat. Then she bursts into tears.
Holding her foot in my palms, I move my bewildered stare between her lovely limb and her lovely face. Which is swelling before my eyes—a reaction due to the saline content in her tears, I believe. “What is the matter?” I ask in confusion.
“You—” she starts. She hiccups and covers her face with her hands.
I pet her thick ankle that I suspect is edema swollen. I want to ask her about this condition, but first I want to discern the source of her emotional distress. “Yes, Becky?”
She is still hiding her face. “You are a jackass!” she cries.
I blink. Gathering that she is trying to cause retaliatory damage to my feelings because I have damaged her (however inadvertently) emotionally, I calmly state, “Please explain what I have done in terms that I can understand.”
Her brows crash down. Her chin juts. She bursts out, “I feel fat, William. I am fat. But it hurts my feelings for you to call me fat.”
Startled, I stare up at her. “But I didn’t call you fat.”
“Yes, you did!”
I frown. “No, I did not.”
“You freaking did!” she insists hotly.
Defensive irritation is rising in me, which is ridiculous. I don’t want to be defensive with my mate. I shouldn’t have to defend myself—I wasn’t attempting to harm her. “I commented on the size of your ankles.”
“Yeah!”
“I did not label them as fat,” I assert. “I simply observed that you have very large ankles—which is precisely the words that I used. I never said fat.”
To my relief, Becky calms a little.
Hoping to soothe her completely, I add, “I only made the observation because your build is so different from the female humans I was introduced to through vids. The females portrayed had a leg to ankle ratio much smaller in circumference than yours—”
Becky’s brain lights up in the areas for disbelief, hurt, and anger.
I close my mouth.
She notes this and begins shaking her head, her tears renewed. “You just made it WORSE!” she yelps.
“I can see that I have… somehow. I am so co nfused,” I admit.
She covers her face. She cries for several more minutes.
I glumly move my ministrations to her other foot.
When I shift my weight, the rug is not enough padding to prevent the clunk that each of my knees make against the floor. Thankfully, it doesn’t hurt. Biofeedback informs me of the pressure my kneecaps are experiencing as they bear me up, but I feel no discomfort.
Becky’s tears slow. Yet her brain activity is chaotic. It stays lit in the anger and pain sectors for some time. Then moves to the thalamic paraventricular nucleus, a brain region partially responsible for regulating emotional processing.
It doesn’t seem to be doing a very effective job. The color of the area leads me to surmise that she’s experiencing a surfeit of negative emotion.
Her brain cycles through activations for despair, shame, and self-loathing, if I’m reading her properly. These thankfully wind down. Then, more confoundingly—but gladly received, at least as far as I’m concerned—the sector for humor begins to glow faintly. It’s an odd dark purple light, but activity in this area must be a good indication, surely.
“William?” she finally says.
My hands still and I look up at her. “Yes?”
“Never mind.” She waves at my hands on her lower limbs, indicating I should continue my attempts to minister to her.
“At least I can do this for you,” I say with a sigh.
She nearly weeps when I move my attention to the muscles alongside and behind her shins.
Brow furrowed with concern, I state the obvious. “The back of your leg muscles harbor many pain sources for you.”
“Calves,” Becky says through a hiss as I press into an area that makes her leg twitch. “The backs of human legs are called calves.”
“Hmm. I have heard them referred to as this, but it is a confusing label,” I admit .
The strain on her face eases, and she sighs. “Thank you. You can stop now.”
I let my hands go still, my fingers still gently holding her calves. I raise my eyes to hers. “I want to please you. I want to help your hurts. I vow to rub your body any time you have need of me to do so. Please tell me. You have only to tell me what you need, Becky. And I will try my best to give it to you.”
Her lips wobble before she presses them together. “Okay. Thank you.” She’s quiet for a moment as I return her feet to the floor. Then she looks at me, searching my face. “What can I…” Her eyes slide to the bed she’s sitting on before she finishes, “do for you?”
Rising, I take her hand and encourage her to follow me out of our mating and sleeping space to the kitchen table (a neutral space), to a chair, which I draw out for her.
I take the chair across from Becky. Staring intently into her eyes, I fold my hands between my widely set mechanical knees. “I appreciate that you’ve asked. I require your help.”
“Okay,” she says warily.
“You often point out what I’ve done wrong. It’s been some weeks of being your husband, and I routinely hear your criticisms. But I have yet to hear you give me praise. And,” I wave to indicate her ankles, “you tend to assume the worst of me in every interaction.”
She gapes at me. “I don’t—”
I cut a look at her. “You called me a jackass when I was attempting to share my observation about the differences I’ve observed between female bodies. While I can now see how I managed to trample your feelings after you took the time to explain it to me, I would ask that in the future, rather than attack me, please inform me respectfully that my observation is rude to make. That way I know not to make it in the future. I would also like for you to explain why it is rude, so that I understand what hurts you. Then I can take greater care going forward.” I implore her with my gaze. “I’m not like you, Becky. I don’t automatically know these things. I don’t even know what I don’t know,” I say tiredly.
“Oh,” she says, with no force whatsoever to her voice.
I give her a narrow-eyed look. “I would also like to ask that you not resort to calling me names you believe will inflict emotional damage for perceived slights. Continuing this behavior will be destructive to our relationship.”
Her mouth works. “I’m… sorry,” she says. Her brain is activating in the areas for shock, and somewhere near guilt. “I’m sorry I called you a name instead of just telling you that you hurt my feelings and pointing out it was rude.”
“Thank you.”
For several moments, there is silence between us. A thoughtful quiet.
My mental processes drift over the last few days, and I absently begin picking cactus thorns from my denim pant legs. I deposit the thorns on the table, beginning to accumulate a small pile of them within a short amount of time. “In light of this concern and along with this request, I have another. I’d like to ask that you also begin to incorporate praise.”
“Incorporate praise?”
I meet her eyes. “Yes. I’d like it very much if you start to tell me when I do things right.”
Becky shifts on her seat. “I do that. I tell you,” she claims.
Canting my head, I consider our interactions. “I cannot think of an instance where you have.” I begin to share with her a series of interactions when she’s taken me to task for mistakes, only informing me of what the right thing to do is after she criticizes a clueless alien to her ways. I end the summary with, “Correct me if I am remembering wrong, but I have not heard you praise me for my efforts even when I thought that I managed to do something sufficiently, properly, or above expectations. It leaves me feeling as if I do nothing right.” I give her a stricken look. “Have I done anything right?”
Her lips have parted, her mouth slackening as I’ve shared what’s on my mind. “William… I’m sorry. Of course you do a lot right.”
I close my eyes, relieved. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Her voice is hesitant. “Anything… else?”
Opening my eyes again, searching her face, I nod. “Don’t assume the worst of me, please.”
Mouth twisting, her hands petting anxiously over her belly, she readily agrees. “I will try to give you the benefit of the doubt from now on. I’m sorry.”
Swallowing hard, I jerk my chin down. “Thank you.”
Tentatively, Becky reaches a hand out and places it on my knee. “You’re… you’re correct—I could have done a lot better at telling you when you’re doing good. I should have been telling you. You do good things a lot, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” I tell her seriously.
She retracts her hand and her arms cross over herself. “I’m sorry.”
I retrieve her hand and bring it back to my leg. “I accept your apology,” I say with a nod. “And I forgive you.”
Jerkily, she nods. Her skull is throbbing with hurt. Confusion. And fear.
“There is nothing to be afraid of, Becky,” I assure her. “We will keep working on ways to successfully communicate the level of care we have for one another.”
Silently she nods.
I pat her hand, then return it to her person so that I may rise and sweep the pile of cactus thorns into my palm and discard them in the trash bin.
Brushing my palms over the bin, I ask, “What is the next task that needs completion for this day? ”
“This day is done,” Becky says. “Animals are taken care of. The dishes are washed. The house is clean. You took care of the Oryx you brought back so that I wouldn’t have to choke down anymore fish. Thank you,” she adds, voice thick.
“You are very welcome!” I tell her, feeling suffused with warmth and pleasure. “Is it time for bed then?”
Face beginning to take on a look of quiet determination, Becky nods.
***
When we’re lying in bed, me in my boxers, her in her night dress, Becky draws me close to her and takes my face in her hands. For a moment her thumbs stroke along the sides of my face, petting over my beard in a way that feels appreciative or admiring. Pulling in a shaky breath, she leans up and fits her lips to mine.
Bonding us.
Her lips are soft and feel—incredible. She tilts her head, and her exhales warm my cheek. Her fingers spear into my hair, holding me in place.
I feel a reaction detonate in my midsection. Of their own volition, my hands rise and cup her neck. Our mouths pressing against one another make sounds that enflame me even more.
Becky tenses and pulls back from me. Her pupils are very large and make her eyes startlingly dark. “Do you want to… have sex?”
“I want to hold you in my arms,” I confess.
“Oh.” She blinks at me. “Well… what if I want sex?”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
I stroke down her back again, considering her. “How would you like to be serviced? ”
She covers her face with one of her hands. She splays the other over my chest, a halting motion or an intensifier for my attention. “We have to call it something else. Humans call it making love.”
“I would love to make love with you, Becky.” My hands slide along her sides, then stop. “Do you need to mourn first?”
She lowers her hand from her face. “What?”
“For Joel,” I say. “From the scent trail, I know you visit his grave often. Every morning, I believe. But many evenings as well, if my receptors are correct. You grieve there, don’t you?” I study each of her eyes, feeling something twist in my chest as her pupils shrink and her eyes begin to glisten.
“Yes,” she replies, her voice cracking.
I pet her shoulder comfortingly, staring into her face. “I know that you grieve in other ways too. Nightly. The ducts in your eyes leak their saline solution every night once the lights are turned out.” Even if I couldn’t see in the dark, I could smell the saltiness of her tears. Could aurally detect the hitch in her breath as she silently muffles the occasional sob. Feel the shaking of her body when she isn’t successful. “Is there something I can do to comfort you while you grieve?”
“H-hold me,” she rasps, her voice thick with tears.
My own throat tightening with emotion, I draw her into my arms.
My urge to mate with her cools, but only somewhat. I shift uncomfortably, gripping her tighter, her stomach a hard melon between us.
“I've been keeping you at a distance,” she admits, speaking into my chest. “Trying to distance myself from feeling anything for you.”
“Loyalty to your dead mate,” I murmur, rubbing her back.
She pulls back from me, and sucks in a watery breath that makes her nose bubble. It's unsightly, and I'm surprised that I don't feel disgust, but I don’t. Rather, I feel… compassion. Feelings of affection and concern. I want to bear her burdens. And I feel a measure of pain that she feels pain .
She squeezes her eyes shut, and nods.
She startles when I carefully dab the edge of her pillowcase to her upper lip and swipe it under her nose.
Embarrassment colors her brain and she lowers her eyes, but she doesn’t hide for more than a moment. She clears her throat and pushes her pillow aside. “I’m sorry I wasn't friendly to you or even very nice to you. It was like… if I let myself like you, I was dishonoring Joel.”
Hearing her admit that she hasn’t been very nice to me and hasn’t wanted to let herself like me… It feels as if I've brushed against a bed of stinging coral—then rolled in it. I clear my throat. “And... how do you feel about me now?”
With a silent sob that shakes her whole frame, she speaks as if she’s admitting a terrible secret. “You’re good! You’re really weird, but you’re really good too. More than once I’ve caught myself thinking that if—if I’d never met Joel, I would be so happy with you! As it is, now that Joel is—now that he’s gone, I’ve got to move on.” Agitated, she draws her discarded pillow back toward herself and strips it of its outer casing. “Somehow. And you’re here, and you try so hard…” She shakes her head, her skull contents deeply troubled. “Want to hear something awful?”
Before I can reply, she shares, “In some ways, you’re better to me than Joel was. And you do things that make me want to like you. And it hurts so much. What do I do with that?” she asks brokenly.
I pull her back into my arms, sideways this time, and hold her securely. “You are mine now. Both of you.” I pet her belly.
She leaks more saline.
Eventually she grows calmer.
“I’m due any day,” she says, apropos of nothing.
“Due where?”
“To—to have this baby,” she says, bringing her hand atop mine over her stomach.
How peculiar. “You could give birth any day?” I ask. “What day will you choose? ”
“I don’t choose. It will happen when it happens. It could start now or it could be a couple more weeks yet. God only knows when it will happen. But I’m ready.”
“What shall I do to prepare?”
Idly, she pets along my arm. “There’s nothing you can do yet, as far as the birth. Or if there is, I don’t know it. I don’t know a lot about childbirth. I figure when the contractions start, I’ll head to the hospital and they’ll walk me through it.”
“Is there anything I can do to make you comfortable until you give birth?” I ask.
She meets my gaze, her lashes wet with tears but her eyes full of determination. “I want you. Right now.” And she takes the hem of her night dress in her hands and pulls it up over her head.
My eyes lock onto her body—all the luscious curves she’s bared to me. Practically begging for my attention is her front. Her mammary tissue forms a pleasantly rounded eminence on either side of her chest. Without thought, my hands greedily reach for her globes and I instinctively begin to knead them.
Earlier, she described herself in a negative-sounding fashion. But Becky is beautiful. She must not see herself like I see her.
“You expressed unhappiness with your form,” I manage to growl through a haze of wanting. “But I’m overcome with desire for you. You, with your allegedly uncomely aspects, arouse me to the point of distraction,” I say to her nipples. With supreme effort, I manage to drag my eyes away from them so that I may search her face. “You are the only one who has ever stirred a mating urge in me.”
Eyes shining, Becky catches me by the hair again and our mouths meet, and she licks her tongue over my lips.
Titillated, I must gasp because suddenly she has access to the inside of my mouth and she darts her tongue between my lips.
Groaning, I catch her by the hair and do the same to her—but with more force. More hunger.
Folding her arms around my neck, she teaches me how to stroke our tongues, lets me chase her mouth and conquer her until our breathing grows erratic and our movements become somewhat frantic.
Kissing me more shallowly than I’d like, she manages to speak. “I need the fan on!” she pants between my lip presses.
“The fan?” I wheeze. I could eat her.
“I’m hot. I need air…” she escapes my hold. My eyes narrow as I watch her body wiggle while she fiddles with a contraption on the dresser beside the bed. I begin to stalk her.
The thing she’s fiddling with suddenly begins forcing airflow on us.
Eyes slitted against the gale, I’m not deterred. Seeing her bare posterior has me attempting to mount her.
Laughing breathlessly, Becky pushes me off her and begins pulling pillows into a formation of some sort. She has an abundance of them, and I reflect that if it is the male’s job to hunt meat and the female’s job to build a nest—then my mate has proven her prowess.
I try to help her, but it’s obvious I don’t know what I’m doing and am too far gone in the throes of sexual desire to be of much assistance. I’m too focused on touching her rather than building the breeding nest.
“Here,” Becky says, taking up a position on her hands and knees, maneuvering herself so that her chest (and belly, and pelvis) is supported by a veritable mountain of pillows—and positioned so that her face receives the unencumbered airflow of the fan.
As I take her in, I can understand why all the blood in my body has routed to my pelvic region, heating my pissing organ and my breeding sac, tightening both to an uncomfortable degree. I have to mate with her. It’s become an imperative.
My hands clamp around her ample rear cheeks, making Becky’s breath catch.
Lowering myself over her, I nose her hair, sniffing hard behind her ear before I lick along her throat.
My pissing organ nudges the juncture of her silken thighs, making her back arch.
I press forward. The penetration is unexpectedly wet, even wetter than our first coupling. Rearing back from her creates the addictively delicious friction that I have hardly been able to stop thinking about.
As I pull my organ free of her, her channel emits an explicit sucking sound that excites me.
I fill her again, sliding deep and withdrawing. I speed up as my hand slides under her to find that area between her legs that makes her react. When I find it, my fingers stroke her until she’s bucking under me.
The sound of our damp skin slapping and sticking to one another as I pound into her silky tight grip makes for an obscene harmony. Tension coils in me, tighter and tighter—until my seed shoots out, feeling hotter than fire as it erupts from my breeding sac.
Becky cries out again, her insides milking me just as hungrily as the first time.
And I catapult after her, spurred into another emission, sharing with her a few last vigorous thrusts.
When I finally withdraw my pissing organ, blue seed drools out of her swollen, thoroughly used channel.
My ancient Yonderin instincts are intensely pleased to see this visible testament that I’ve claimed her.
I help her to the siphon room so that she can void, then I insist on helping her clean up her seed-oozing channel. Then I guide her back into our breeding nest where I help her mound her pillows under herself until she’s comfortable, and I hold her in my arms all night long.