She glances at me over her shoulder, and her hips lift. “Come on.” She spits on her hand and pulls her nightdress up (a garment I’ve never had reason to notice or have an opinion about until I see how hers hugs her curves) until it sits bunched at the dip over her ample cheeks—and she smears her own saliva between her labia.
Did I think I was staggered before? “Am I dreaming?” My throat is scratchy and my words come out dry.
Stella laughs. “Hurry up, or what’s in the irons will burn.”
I don’t even ask if she wants pleasure. Probably with less finesse than if I were solidly conscious, I work her satisfaction centers until she’s bursting with high spirits, and for me, I replay how she touched herself to get wet as I shove into her—it was arousing—making us both grunt.
She hunkers down over the table and the silverware rattles on the plates, but the construction of the table is good. Solid and heavy as hell so that it barely moves even with the enthusiasm behind my thrusts. I have only a moment to think Stella knew of the table’s constitution firsthand—and another moment to shut the thought down that she probably gave herself to Baron this way, just this way, because I wholly believe that he woke up hungry for this affecting creature that was his wife, his vixen of a mate, this morning siren. I give in to the urge to ram into her body, plunging into her like I can breed her right to the other side of the room.
Just as the scent of something burning stings a little unpleasantly in my nose, I explode inside her, making my eyes cross, making our thighs wet when she wriggles until I lift off of her enough for her to free herself in a disconnecting fashion, spilling my fluid out of her as she spins and ducks out from under me and tries to save what’s on the stove from causing a housefire.
My body is very confused as she flits around me, filling plates and scraping and pouring things at the stove. I’m a jumble of euphoria and contentment and insensibility. And it’s too early for this sort of jumble.
A dry scoff sounds from the stove—it’s Stella again, making a sound not unlike amusement. “Sit down,” she orders.
Robotically, I do. “What time of the morning is it?”
“It’s still night.”
“Ah. Are we… is this breakfast or some sort of midnight snack?”
“I guess it’s an inbetweenie. I couldn’t sleep.”
I’m blinking down at my plate when she plops a stack of strange-celled confections onto an already burgeoning pile of strange-celled wedges.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, turning away from the stove to peer at me. “They aren’t poisoned.”
“I appreciate that,” I tell her with a nod. “And I’m simply a little flummoxed. About several things. This food is alien, and to add to my disorientation, my eyes are not feeling like they’re quite up to speed. It’s only slightly alarming me.”
“They’re black.”
I look up at her.
“Your eyes,” she says. She grows almost shy, glancing away from me. Fiddling with her hinged cooking tool. “They haven’t filled with the blue data lines except for right before we… woke you up.”
I give her a lopsided sleepy smile that seems to affect her. If my eyes were working, I might be able to see exactly what the effect is. “Thank you for the very welcome wake-up. It was a relief in many ways.”
She makes a lighthearted huff of sound and focuses on making more food.
“Are these some sort of baked honeycombs?” I ask.
She frowns over her shoulder and studies me. “They’re waffles. You’ve never seen waffles?”
I shake my head.
“Grab that dish there, that’s melted butter. Yep, that one. Pour that on your stack. Now take the berries. Syrup is in the jug to your left, and that’s the real maple kind from Earth so enjoy it like it’s precious because it is.”
“Thank you for sharing,” I tell her, touched.
She shrugs both shoulders, pressing her lips together before turning back to the stove. It seems to be a way to express that she’s not entirely comfortable.
I decide to try eating in the hopes that I’ll wake enough to more accurately read her.
The waffles are delicious. “If these are poisoned,” I groan, “it will have been worth it.”
Stella laughs. It’s short but her tiny burst of happiness is genuine—and with this sound, my abilities have powered up and I’m able to see right inside of her head.
When she sits down across from me, she finishes her first stack without looking at me once.
I don’t know what to say to her. I clear my throat and watch her tense—from her brain’s activity all the way to her arrested hands on her fork and knife.
“Thank you again for this,” I tell her. “Is it all right if we discuss business at the table?”
She relaxes, and her lips part as she inhales. Her eyes never rise to meet mine. “That’d be great. Go ahead.”
“Tell me what you want to do, operations-wise. I’d like to focus wherever you’d prefer. Did you want to try a cattle drive before the fall markets close?”
She chews her next bite quicker than her last and forces her mouthful down her throat with a swallow of milk. “Yes,” she replies, with a strip of white foam above her lip.
Distracted by it, I reach across the table almost without thinking—and brush it away with my thumb.
Stella goes very still, the glass clutched in her hand, her fork in the other. “Thank you,” she says.
I nod, and ruefully I glance down between the edge of the table and my lap. I’m still naked, and now I’m hard again.
“What?” Stella asks.
“I’m certain you don’t want to know.”
Her eyes bug. “Again? Seriously?”
“I can assure you this organ is very serious.”
Stella sets down her milk and her utensil and starts to push away from the table.
“No,” I tell her. “Finish your food. I’ll have to learn to control this.”
“Have you… not had to control it before?” she asks carefully, finally looking at me more naturally—as in, not avoiding looking at me. She’s eyeing me like I’m an alien or a cyborg (or both, imagine that, ha) as she goes back to cutting up her syrup-covered meal.
“I have not. I’ve never been interested in copulation before.”
Stella chokes on her bite of waffle a little, but recovers. “Ever?”
I shake my head in the negative, watching her mouth, struggling to keep my focus off of her chest. I never noticed the way her breasts swayed before. She’s always kept them bound around me before this, but they are free behind her nightdress now and it’s distracting.
Stella manages two more bites like it’s uncomfortable for her, and then she stands from the table. “That’s it. Let’s do this and then it’s time for you to get out of the house.”
“But, you said it’s the middle of the night--”
“If you’re still awake after this, then you’ve got more than enough energy to find something productive to do somewhere else.” She walks into the bedroom and I think I should tell her that it’s fine, but then she puts a knee up on the bed and crawls to the middle of it.