Cyborg Merman

by Amanda Milo

  If this had been allowed to happen naturally, at my own pace…

  Well, it probably would have never happened.

  I don’t know when I would have been ready to consider another man after Baron. Maybe never—and I’m not being dramatic. I don’t want anyone else, C’vest included. But this is where we’re at. And although I could have poisoned him yesterday, C’vest is treating me with such consideration when he takes me that I’ve truly started to believe that he means me no harm.

  Baron used to say that you don’t take a man at his word—you take him at his actions.

  C’vest seems to be trying to engineer the absolute best situation he can for me, and I’m watching his actions like a mouse watches a hawk.

  With his abilities, if he were a cruel man, he could torture me. He could torture me inside and out.

  Instead, he’s gone to great lengths to… make things easier for me.

  I’m starting to think that with C’vest’s logical mind, he prepared a pro-con list, decided marriage was the best option for us both, planned out what steps to take if I enthusiastically agreed, and then he planned out steps in case I didn’t. At no time did malice enter his thoughts. He’s just fixing problems the only way he knows how: a little alien, and completely unrefined. He’s a well-meaning bull in a china shop, a slightly clueless one, just like Baron used to shake his head and laugh about.

  C’vest leaves the house with a murmured goodbye, and I uncurl from the bed and mince to the bathroom to clean myself up yet again. His out-of-this-world colored cum is extra gloopy and there’s an exceptional amount of it. I need to ask him if he knows if an interspecies child is possible. If I’m not pregnant already, we need to put some plans in place unless he wants children.

  With Baron, I was always of the mind that if we had them, we’d have them. I secretly knew I’d welcome them, but I wasn’t starved to have children, not yet, we had time.

  I got my period two weeks after he was gone. For those fourteen days before that, I desperately hoped like I’d never hoped for anything that I was carrying his baby inside of me. Some little piece of him.

  Now, with Baron’s baby not an option, I’m back to not actively hoping for pregnancy. Yesterday when C’vest first finished in me, I wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse him. Let alone order him to use some form of protection. And last night and this morning… well? I didn’t care. I just wanted to feel better for one session, and the other two were more like experiencing a surprising street show. Like a tightrope walker or someone juggling fire, or sword swallowing. His stamina is more than a bit of a surprise and if I wanted him like I think he’s starting to want me, I’d be thrilled.

  It’s noon when I hear the front door open. My heart jumpstarts itself as I peek around the living room door, a dust mop in one hand and the neck of a lamp in my other in case it’s not C’vest.

  It is though. Dressed in a red shirt today, the rest of him in his usual dark colors otherwise, he looks clean and well pressed. But his face is hard and he almost brings the door shut behind him with enough force to make it slam into its frame.

  Instantly worried, I ask, “What’s wrong?” I look at his empty hands. A pang hits me when I catch sight of his wedding band. Married. To me. Baron is gone. C’vest is here now. “Where are your clothes? Did something happen?”

  “My things are in the carriage. They’ll keep,” he says. “And this is what’s wrong.”

  He grabs the front of his trousers, where a massive erection is outlined to vivid perfection.

  CHAPTER 7

  C’VEST

  I seize Stella the moment I enter the house.

  Only after having her can I concentrate enough to retrieve my belongings. Moving them in doesn’t take long; I don’t have many things. And because I was afraid she would become sad or feel threatened to see me move into Baron’s spot, I placed my suitcases in the spare room with the intention to unpack later.

  I’m wearing one of my nicer shirts, and after I leave her on the bed, I change to a sturdier shirt before exiting. On my way out of the house, I apprise Stella of my plans. “I’m going to take a look at the barn records. If the stock hasn’t been vaccinated, I’ll start the rounds today. It’ll need to be done before they’re driven to the sale barn.”

  “Have a look under this spring’s steers too. Make sure they really are steers, would you?” Something dark crosses Stella’s face.

  “You don’t think the men have castrated them?”

  “I don’t think they’ve even dehorned them.”

  I stare at her.

  She raises her hands, irritation clear in the set of her shoulders. “I put it on the schedule, but I haven’t heard or smelled burning happening, which makes me think we might have horns on little bull calves out there. I’ve gone out to make sure the troughs had water and I can see bovine specks grazing in the distance but I haven’t caught the spring calves coming up for a drink, so I don’t know what they’re walking around with.”

  Jaw tight, I nod. “Do you want to find out together?”

  She empties her dustpan and straightens. Her chin kicks up a notch, and her gaze turns sharp. “You know? That’d be nice. I’d like to get some straight answers.”

  ***

  Only half of this spring’s steers are bona fide steers. The rest are fully intact bulls, and not one of them has been dehorned.

  We fire the foreman. It unsettles everybody else, and they listen real well to Stella after that. They also treat Stella with respect while I stand beside her, and she glares them all down fiercely as she firmly takes the reins of her operation.

  In deference to the age of the bull calves, she’s discussing the use of lidocaine and meloxicam—pain inhibitors—in order to get them dehorned and cut humanely.

  Some of the older hands voice disagreement with her on its necessity.

  But as Stella points out, the older an animal is, the more stressful the procedures are on their body. And they’ve waited too long to risk giving them blades and hot irons without being prepared to give the stock aftercare.

  She’s absolutely correct with her points. Yet some of the men persist in arguing.

  “If you’re tired of talking, they can start walking,” I murmur to her.

  Steel in her spine, Stella crosses her arms and smiles at the men. “If you don’t want to do it, say the word. You can collect your last check and clean your things out of the bunkhouse.”

  There are no disagreements with her after that.

  But as she stands with her back so straight, essentially toe to toe with the cowboys, she looks fearless and unspeakably appealing, and she carries herself with an authority that lights up lust sectors in several of the ranch hands’ brains.

  I’m not thrilled. It’s hard to fault them when I agree with them, but I’m really not thrilled. I can’t decide if they should be punished for involuntary attraction though.

  However, as I monitor their brain activity, one ranch hand is not responding to her quite like the others. In his skull, there’s also activation in the area for an unsettling aggression. And he’s staring straight at her.

  I cut my gaze in his direction. “You’re done here. You get twenty microts to pack up and then you’re gone.”

  I inhale his scent, tasting it, silently locking it into my receptors. I’ll be following him tonight, making sure he doesn’t double back here for retribution. Make sure he never gets the chance to mete out that abnormal aggression on any woman.

  For one whole heartbeat he looks surprised, then incensed. Inside of his head, guilt flares up. And fear. Not that he knows what I have planned.

  And not that he’s not alone. Most of the hands shift nervously, studiously not looking at me. As a Yonderin, they’re wary enough of me anyway, with rumors ‘a mile long’ (as the humans I know like to say) on the kinds of supernatural abilities I have.

  Some of the rumors have merit.

  From all I’ve overheard though, they don’t know the half of what
a Yonderin like me is capable of.

  The ranch hand I’ve marked for later keeps his ire to himself, and his eyes show only a little of a predator animal’s disquiet as he turns on his heel and marches for his bunk.

  “Dawley and Rawlins, you can get out of here too,” Stella adds, her jaw tight and her gaze flinty. I part my lips, inhaling their scents too. No sense letting them get together at the saloon for drinks, where they could hatch ideas about the woman who fired them. The woman they must have threatened if Stella is sending them packing. “Fuzzy is the new foreman,” she announces. “You got any recommendations on who we can hire to replace these three?”

  Fuzzy, a man with a smooth-skinned face (ah, the irony peculiar to cowboys), nods levelly. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Let’s get to work.”

  And with that, she opens the calf chute’s gate, gets out her box of needles, and I peel the cap off of the first inoculation vial.

  CHAPTER 8

  C’VEST

  We’re utterly drained when we get back to the house. We’re barely over the threshold when Stella announces, “If you can still get hard, you’re going to have to use your hand and imagination. I’m too exhausted to promise you that I can even stay awake enough to watch.”

  I shake my head. “Curiously, performing scrotal castrations killed all of my desire. I didn’t even become hard when you bent over to check hooves.”

  Stella’s amusement center is lit up warmly.

  We shuffle into the kitchen. “Hungry?” I ask her.

  “Nope,” she declines tiredly. “I don’t know if I even want to bother showering.”

  We look at each other and grimace.

  “A quick one,” she sighs, and trudges for the bathroom.

  We both get naked and bathe simultaneously. It isn’t a sexual experience in the least, although my eyes do follow her more avidly than I expected I had energy for.

  Once dried off, she slides a cotton nightdress over her head. I stay naked. We fall into bed together, groaning.

  “I hurt everywhere,” she moans.

  “I ache in muscles I didn’t know I had,” I admit.

  She has her arm thrown over her face. “We’re going to hurt so bad in the morning.”

  “It’s likely.”

  “Can you reach the lamp?”

  Grunting with effort, I sit up and stretch until I can flick off the switch, plunging us into darkness.

  To my surprise, my weary eyes watch hesitation play in the threads of Stella’s mind. Hesitation and yearning. Then resolve.

  And then she rolls onto her side with a pained groan, and slides herself into my arms.

  Sleepily, I close them around her, sighing. “This is nice,” I tell her.

  “Yeah,” she agrees quietly. “It is.”

  I wait for her to fall asleep, and I give in to the urge to silently roar as I rise from the bed—because all of my body is protesting. My vow to dispose of the men as humanely as possible is going to be tested sorely, because not only am I fighting pain, I’m having to leave the warm and soft form of Stella as she sleeps, unaware of my activities to ensure her safety.

  Thankfully, she never stirs, not even when I shower a second time, getting rid of the evidence of my hunt. And when I join her again in the bed, she sleepily merges her chest against mine, giving me the curious experience of feeling a human heart in a way completely different from when I gripped the ones in her enemies’ chest cavities.

  Her organ’s gentle rhythm lulls me into the feather-soft realm of sleep.

  ***

  I don’t know what time it is, but it’s still dark when I wake to a sweet-smelling woman with her face tucked into my throat, her arm threaded under my own, her leg thrown over mine—and her tears wetting my neck.

  “Stella?” I mumble, concerned. Groggily, I try to scan her brain, but my senses are powered down. “Are your feelings aching?”

  A broken sound exits her throat. “Did you kill him?”

  All three of them, for you. Because they frightened you. “Did I—” I blink in the darkness, my mind sharpening in increments as I shake off sleep. My eyes begin to work, and my mind catches up enough for me to know that she’s not asking about her former employees. I blink again, and I can see the framework of her mind, the signals being transmitted back and forth, her pain turning several areas the same shade of red as the popular Earthen drink known as sangria.

  I pet her back. “I didn’t, Stella. I mean it: Baron was my friend. I would never have done that—” ripping their hearts from their chests and burying them and their belongings under a rubble slide in the bottom of a canyon “—to him.” And I know Baron would have done the same if he’d been alive and knew what was in those men’s minds. I find Stella’s chin, taking gentle hold of it in the dark, the precision a feat that poses no trouble with eyesight like mine. “I would never have taken him away from you, either.” I dare to place a kiss on her forehead, and I exhale in relief when she doesn’t flinch away. “I know what you meant to each other. Stella, I’m sorry he’s gone.” For her. And for myself: I never experienced a brotherly bond with anyone—until Baron befriended me.

  Despair flares in her, despite the reassertion that I did not kill her husband to take his place. Humans are complicated creatures, especially my new human. I never had to worry about Baron like this. I gather Stella closer and let her weep.

  When her tears slow, I place my forehead to hers and rest my palm along the side of her finely boned face. “Do you want me to make you feel better?” I tap her temple softly.

  She sighs raggedly. “I feel horrible, but I just… I want to be old-fashioned comforted. I want you to make me feel better like this.” She reaches down and takes hold of my flaccid organ.

  She strokes me to hardness, and for the first time, I enter her while looking into her eyes. In the dark of the room, she can’t see me, but I see everything. Every expression that crosses her face—anguish, fortitude, relief.

  I move slowly, gripping her tightly, enjoying the feel of her cotton-covered breasts pressing against my chest. Her cotton-covered stomach brushing and rubbing against mine. It’s so… intimate.

  She shows me the speed and motion she wants from me. When she pushes away to roll to her back, I enjoy the feeling of moving on top of her even more.

  Bracing my weight on my forearms, I rock into her with all the wonder I feel. My muscles, strained from the hours-earlier exertion, forget that they hurt. I can’t care that they hurt. I just want this. Stella is beautiful. Tear tracks and lingering sadness and all. She’s strong and beautiful as ever.

  And she’s mine.

  “I’m yours,” I whisper to her, so low I almost hope she doesn’t hear the words. It would kill something inside of me if she’s raw enough to reject them.

  Instead, she shudders and gulps—and nods. “C’vest…”

  I don’t make her admit anything she’s not ready to. I nuzzle her cheek and brush my face against hers, butting her head gently to the side, and find that my chin fits perfectly in the hollow of her ranch work-toned shoulder. Almost like this silky soft place on her was made to fit a man, just like this.

  Everything about her feels good to me. Our skin sticks, and her nightdress is pleasant everywhere it rubs.

  She surprises me by jerking it from between our bodies, pulling it up to bare her breasts.

  “Touch them,” she instructs me.

  I raise myself up enough to take a handful, carefully beginning to massage her and learn them. Later, I’ll explore and play with these. I’ll enjoy them in all the ways she’ll let me. For now, I don’t want to do anything to disrupt this closeness. I want it. It feels like she needs it.

  I think we both do.

  “What should I do?” I ask, wondering if she’ll tell me to touch more of her body or her brain.

  “Grind your pubic bone on my—like that,” she moans when I drag myself over her sensitive area.

  Rhythmic activity sends her soaring, and I
hungrily take in her wide-eyed expression. I murmur to her, “You’re magnificent when you’re stimulated to culmination.”

  She’s caught in a sexual trancelike state for perhaps thirty breaths, and then she’s blinking and sparing me a fleeting grin. “Thank you.”

  My motions intensify until I reach my own culmination, taking her to an apogee a second time. During the sensory absorption of her climax, her mind isn’t flaring with pain.

  And she didn’t ask me to manipulate her emotions. I was able to give her comfort just like this.

  We cling to each other, the flood of excited chemicals in our brain receding, giving each other a startlingly natural sort of solace.

  EPILOGUE

  STELLA

  Three and a half Years Later…

  I smile at my toddler, loving his grin as he splashes in the river’s gently moving water, his chest supported by my hand.

  C’vest is on our baby’s other side, hand under his belly, looking at the pair of us with the sort of pride that makes my heart melt a little. More than a little. “There you go, Kaspian. Kick your legs. Kick,” he instructs.

  I don’t need the ability to see inside of C’vest’s head to read the joy and delight he’s feeling. It’s written plainly all over him. As his gaze connects with mine over our son, I feel warm excitement stir inside me, making me think that once Kaspian goes down for his nap, we’re going to enjoy a little time for ourselves.

  Kaspian Baron Ithor was born with human legs, care of my genes. He inherited fine little scales from his father though, tiny teal ones, that cover him from hips to his adorable little webbed toes. He’s cute as a button.

  And he’s his daddy’s little man. Kaspian goes everywhere with his father, even riding in front of C’vest when he’s in the saddle.

  For C’vest, even though there’s no part of Baron in him, Kaspian fills the hole that Baron left when he died.

  C’vest does that for me. And Kaspian is the frosting on my cake. The sparkle to my days.

  My men make me happy. I love to watch the pair of them together. And I told C’vest that we might need to make another merged copy of ourselves. I’d like a little girl this time, and I told C’vest so.