They resume their duties swiftly, with more concentration than I’d wager they’ve shown in weeks. After all, the temptation for snatching the means to a better station is gone.
At least it is so long as I’m alive.
My life has just become precarious. I make a note to myself to begin setting aside emergency funds in Stella’s name starting immediately. Should I die, I’ll have an exit package she can escape with, enough to return to her native home planet or anywhere in the galaxy she’d like to flee, if she must. This time, should she become a widow twice, she won’t have to cash in cattle or bonds or stocks or sell land in order to have the physical credits to leave. She’ll have it in hand.
If I’m dead, I want her safely away from here. We both know she won’t be safe alone. Upon being presented viable exit opportunities, I suppose she could take advantage of the option to flee me at any time once enough funds are available. I’m strangely reluctant to consider the thought. If Stella leaves, I would… pine for her. Perhaps because she was so dear to Baron, there’s something in me that feels connected to her.
Now that we’ve literally made a connection, I sense our ties everywhere. Bonding emotions are threading through my consciousness. Intimate relationship chemicals are zipping through my system, binding to receptors, altering my feelings.
As I stare through the house’s wall at Stella’s bioframework, I can see these same changes moving inside her mind too. I also see a welling block in the area of her brain where the signals for intense anger sit.
I’m reluctant to enter the house. But I use my key and am met with a glare so intense I nearly excuse myself and step back outside. I don’t because as the man of the manor, my presence deters predators. (Predators other than me.)
I busy myself in Baron’s office until dinner, sifting through paperwork and contracts, most of which I already reviewed. Now I’m familiarizing myself with his organization. I’m establishing an idea of what steps I’ll take next. It will be a matter of calling associates to the house to show them that I have Stella behind what defenses I can offer. A Yonderin is not popular in these parts, but perhaps providentially, my kind is somewhat feared.
I can give her protection best if I’m alive, but when I sit down across from her at the table for supper, that hindbrain of hers is buzzing with angry yellow-green, especially when she sets my plate of food in front of me. Thus, I commit the unthinkable and decide I’ll waste the food rather than risk being poisoned. Just in case she’s that level of mad.
When she stabs her steak knife straight down into a T-bone until it strikes into the china plate, I decide she’s that mad.
I lick my lips and flick my gaze from her buried knifepoint to her furious face. “If I excuse myself, will it make your meal more pleasant? Or should I stay and provide you with silent company?”
“You can go fuck yourself,” I hear her mutter through gritted teeth. But I only hear her because my senses are excellent. The average human would only be keen enough to pick out the decibels of her growling.
I decide to stay still for now. It seems safest. I brush my thumb over the condensation on my glass, hypnotized like usual by the feel of water. I don’t miss my ocean home but I do miss swimming. My prosthetics can be submerged, which allows me the ability to swim some. They can also detach, although I no longer have the tail fins I was born with. That loss never fails to make me a little melancholy. But I’ve gained a lot since I began walking on the terra firma. I don’t regret my upgrades.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Stella asks, with acid pooling just under every syllable.
“I’ve grave concerns that you’ve poisoned my portions, but I thank you for the offer.”
To my surprise, Stella barks a “Ha!”
Just one startled shout, not a laugh. The areas for dark amusement are on low-level light in her head though. Which is better than rage, but I can’t help but notice there was no denial, thus I’m steadfast in my refusal to consume this meal.
When Stella is done and excuses herself from the table, I thank her for serving me and begin to pick up my plate. She halts me with a, “Leave it,” and I murmur thank you before slipping out of the room, exiting the house, and taking up a spot on the porch.
I don’t take the swing. I’ve never sat in the porch swing and have no interest in doing it now. That was Baron and Stella’s spot. I take the rocking chair that faces the river, one I’ve sat in many times.
To my surprise, some time later, I glance over to find Stella somewhat beside me. She’s in the swing, also staring out at the river. She’s so subdued, I never sensed her approach.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
She keeps staring at the water. “You did something to me. When you were… I felt you in my head. Manipulating my emotions.”
I swallow. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was hoping it would help—”
“Can you make me feel that way again?” Her eyes meet mine, the anger at me and her helplessness gone, replaced with a weary, bone-deep emptiness. It’s the hollow left behind when a crater obliterates your everything.
Then her regard turns razor sharp. “Not sex. Just cover everything that hurts inside me. Like a blanket to cover a stained sofa.”
That she would mention a sofa makes me wonder if she’s thinking of the couch I took her on. Maybe we left stains on it, but more likely she thinks of what I did with her as the stain. My senses taste a flattening sadness coming from Stella, and I loosely fist my hands. “All right. I can make you feel some of the same here, now, if you want?”
“Please,” she whispers.
I try to recreate the pleasant whirlwind in her mind. This time, she’s not fighting me. Eventually, I manipulate her to the point that her lips twitch up in a smile. But it’s not natural. It looks reflexive. It looks wrong. Like she’s my puppet. I have to turn away and pretend to be staring out over the oxyokes of land as I stimulate a patch of sectors in the midst of her wounded psyche.
Dusk falls. I get up to pace the porch and end up on the lawn. Treading a path back and forth. When I take one step too far, my tether to her breaks and I lose the picture of her mind. She loses my tampering.
Her chest rises and falls, her breaths coming a little faster as she comes back online for herself. It’s several minutes of silence between us wherein I wonder if I should ask her if she wants more, but I hold myself back, wondering how much interference is too much, when she croaks, “Will you hold me after?”
Throwing her a nonplussed look, I frown. “After what? More of—”
“After we have sex again. Will you…” She looks like she’s trying to stomach eating her own tongue. “Please hold me. I think I want to be held.”
“Oh.” I’ve come to a complete stop at the foot of the porch stairs.
I consider telling her that I’ll hold her irrespective of sexual acts performed, but just the option of sex in the future has me realizing that I may not be able to hold her close without wanting more. I didn’t know what I was missing in regards to the act of copulation, and now that I do, I find I want to experience it again. Very much. “Is now a good time?”
Her eyes dart to me.
I spread my hands. “I’m not certain how this works.”