Homelands Pt. 03 Ch. 09

"You don't mean that."

She threw her head back against the arm rest. "Of course I don't. It's just so frustrating. Can't you just agree with me? I'm obviously only venting."

I smiled. "You're right. It's stupid. And she's a poopy-head."

"Now you're just making fun of me."

My cousin sat up, pulled her feet back, and tucked them under her. "What's going on, Frank? You feel cold. And I don't mean your skin."

Perhaps I should have masked my Libido.

"I don't know. It's nothing."

"If there's an `it', I'd say it's something."

"Brie," I said, reaching to take one of her hands in mine.

She yanked her hand away. "Just spit it out. You don't need to butter me up first. That's just making me more anxious."

"Do you ever wonder if we're together for the wrong reasons?"

Her beautiful green eyes widened. "What exactly are the wrong reasons? Better yet, can you tell me what the right reasons would be? Cuz I'd love to know."

I got up from the couch. Started toward the kitchen. Stopped.

I didn't need a drink. I was just stalling. And that would only upset her more.

"It just feels like maybe you need someone who will let you do...certain things to them. So that you won't be tempted to channel that impulse in other directions. And I need to let you do them to me, because I'm so wracked with guilt over some of the shit I've done. Like I think I deserve to be punished or something."

"I see." She folded her arms under her breasts. "Well, I don't know what you need, but I can tell you this. I don't need to do anything to you. If some of the things we do make you uncomfortable, all you have to do is say so."

"Really?"

"Yes, Frank! What do you thi-" she cut herself off, drew a deep breath, and continued in a softer voice. "I like to experiment. There aren't many things I haven't tried. But most of them did nothing for me. Yeah, maybe I do enjoy some stuff that's a little outside the mainstream. I won't deny that. But as long as we do something to spice things up now and then, I'm good. Doesn't even have to be kinky. Just different."

I focused on her Libido. Going past superficial impressions was still hard for me, but with some effort I got a decent read. There was more darkness there than I'd ever found in my mother's Libido, but it wasn't exactly pervasive.

"I thought you liked it," Brianna continued. "Of course I noticed that you mostly refuse to talk about it, and when you do, you won't actually say the words. But I thought you were just having a hard time admitting to yourself that you're actually into some kinky stuff. If that's not the case, though, we can stop. It's not that big a deal."

"Okay."

"Okay, what? You want to stop?"

I frowned. For someone who didn't care one way or the other, you'd think that question was a bit unnecessary. "Yeah."

"Cuz it really did seem like...nevermind. Yeah, that's fine. No more kink."

I sat back down. This time, when I reached for her hand, she let me take it. "I don't know. Maybe I did. But I want to try going without for a while."

Brianna nodded. "Okay. We can do that."

I lifted her hand up and kissed the back of it. "I'm sorry for freaking out like that."

"Gave me a bit of a scare," she said.

It didn't take long from that point for us to make our way to bed.

Unfortunately, the makeup sex was a bit disappointing.

That was my fault, though. Brianna was far more reserved than usual. Maybe even say scared. It took a lot more to get her off than it usually did, and the simple fact that she was so guarded wasn't making it any easier for me to enjoy myself.

What did I expect though? I'd basically just told her that I thought she was a bit of a freak, and that she'd been forcing me to do things I didn't want to do, whether she'd realized it or not. Of course she was going to be a little reserved after that.

I almost told her to forget what I'd said, that it would be fine if she wanted to get out the handcuffs and leather hood, or if she wanted to peg me for that matter. Wanted to tell her that just knowing that she could go without that stuff, if I asked, was enough.

But I wasn't sure I'd really have meant it. And it would only make me look more neurotic than I already did.

So I kept my mouth shut.

We stopped after Brianna got off. Once. Neither of us said anything after that. We just rolled away from each other and tried our best to go to sleep.

#

Over the course of the next week, things slowly got a little better. But not much. We'd somehow fallen into a routine that left both of us frustrated, but of which neither of us seemed able or willing to do anything to break us out.

We'd stay up late each night, watching TV or playing games before making our way to bed. The shoeboxes helped spice things up a bit, but we'd tossed out half of what was in the red one, and there was invariably a look of disappointment on Brianna's face whenever one of us drew something relatively tame from it. She tried to hide that disappointment, and I tried my best not to notice it, but we both failed miserably.

Then we'd sleep late. Usually so late that we didn't get to spend much of any time together before Brianna had to start her patrol.

While she was gone, I'd spend the afternoon visiting my other family members. But I made a point of mostly only seeing the women of which my cousin was least jealous.

That meant I still hadn't been back to see my mother, and had only visited Natalie once and my daughter twice. Most days, I went over to Todd and Holly's place. And if either Mel and Troy or Sean and Rose were around, I tried to keep the visit social. One time, an orgy broke out, and Mel got more of my attention that Brianna would have been happy to know that she had. But for the most part, those visits meant either no sex, or only with Holly.

One pleasant side to that routine was that Todd and I were starting to get pretty close again. We had been while growing up, then we'd drifted apart after discovering the Homelands. I hadn't realized how much I missed goofing around with my kid brother. Who was now in fact my older brother. A fact he never missed an opportunity to remind me of.

I was also genuinely glad to see that he and Holly were getting along again. Better than, really. They seemed like the closest thing to a perfect, happily married couple that you could find among our kind. And though I couldn't say that there wasn't a tiny little part of me that was jealous of them for that, overall, seeing the giddy smiles that they didn't realize everyone noticed was a highlight of those visits.

Sadly, the patrol shifts didn't get any less tedious.

We'd each of us finally started to find eyewitnesses, for all the good it did us. The suspect was indeed male. Average height and build, at least by the standards of the Homelands. Dark hair. No distinguishing features. At least, not that anyone saw.

Man, did that narrow it down.

Watching Safe Haven grow by the day was something of a fringe benefit, I guess. The Third Autumnal Court didn't have any proper cities. Not even small ones. The first one I'd ever seen in the Homelands was in the Shadowed Glade. It was both weird and somehow comforting to see one developing here. It made me feel that maybe the first immortals weren't so very different from us after all.

When I got home, Brianna and I would tell each other about our day. When we did, we'd devote no more time to detailing our sexual exploits than to briefing one another on the lack of progress in our Serial Devourer investigation.

Then the whole cycle would start over again.

After a week of that, I proposed something that might help get us out of our rut.

"What do you say we take a vacation?" I asked.

"And let the hopeless case of our Serial Devourer go unsolved?"

"To the mortal world," I said. "The new one. Your shift doesn't start for twelve hours. That's five days there."

My cousin sank her impossibly white teeth into her lower lip. Her deep green eyes widened a bit. "I have been curious to see if it's any different than the old one," she said, in a tone that made it sound like there was another half to the sentence. If so, it never showed up.

It was bound to be at least a little different, not least because it was currently the 1990s there. But also because any time you made a copy of a copy, you got something just a little further away from the original. And none of us had ever been to the real mortal world. When Natalie and Iva and whoever else made the world, they'd been working off of memories of the echo we'd all grown up in.

"Me too," I said, though that was hardly the primary reason I'd suggested it.

"Okay, let's do it," Brianna said, bouncing on her heels.

"Great. Just let me grab something to eat first. I'm starved."

"Wait, you mean now?" she asked, laughing.

"When were you thinking?"

She slapped my arm playfully. I felt her Libido swell the way it used to all the time, at the slightest little thing. That had become all too rare an occurrence recently. "Now's good. I just didn't know you could be so impulsive."

"Thought you had a monopoly on that, did you?"

My cousin gave my ass a slap as I walked away from her and towards the kitchen.

Most nights, I made myself dinner the hard way. For the same reason that I usually went through the morning ritual when I woke up, even though I could have just as easily used my powers to care of grooming and hygiene. In the back of my mind, it seemed like my relationship with Brianna was just a little more real, a little more intimate, if I allowed myself to experience every moment.

But tonight, I didn't bother. Instead, I conjured up a platter of marinated steak, spicy sausage, and waffle fries. And a pint of the hoppiest of hoppy IPAs to wash it all down.

Brianna sat on the kitchen counter and watched me eat, stealing the occasion fry or five. The energy radiating from her Libido almost made me decide to skip my dinner altogether.

As soon as I finished, she hopped down off the counter and, without a word, offered me her hand. I kissed the top of her head and teleported us to the Fourth Autumnal Court's very own echo of the mortal world.

We appeared in the lobby of a luxury hotel in downtown Manhattan.

That first night, we didn't leave our room. And the sex was about as good as we'd had since I'd told my cousin that I wasn't into kink anymore. Brianna was still a little reserved, but definitely not like she had been.

After that, we settled into a routine. Which, on some level, seemed like it defeated the whole purpose. Except we both liked this routine.

We'd sleep late, same as in the Homelands. But when we woke up, we'd be in no hurry to get out of bed. That was already a nice change. By the time we finally left the room, it would be mid-afternoon. We'd spend a few hours sight-seeing. Or shopping for things that Brie could have summoned out of thin air if she'd really wanted them so bad. Then we'd go out to a nice dinner, and afterwards see a Broadway show or a concert or a Yankee game. That would be followed by a few hours of drinks in some dive bar or dance club before we'd go back to the room to fuck until the sun came up.

One night, before going to the bar, we agreed to arrive separately, disguised as ordinary mortals. Then we were each of us to take as many partners into the bathroom for quickies as we could, and see whether we wound up fucking each other any of those times.

When we got back to the room, I asked Brianna, "So. How many guys' lives did you forever change tonight?"

She grinned and gave my cock a good squeeze through my jeans. "I like the way you put that." A quick kiss on the lips, then she added, "Eleven. And you?"

"Eleven?" I laughed. "I figured you'd have me beat. It's easier find guys who'll say yes than it is women. But damn."

"Are you sure about that?" she asked, between nibbles at my earlobe.

"Um, I'm guessing the right answer is no?"

"Well, I haven't done any surveys or anything, and I only spent a year at college, but in just that one year, I knew a lot of girls who hooked up with random guys. Most of them were the type you'd have thought would never do something like that. A lot of them had boyfriends too. I think most guys just don't have any game, so they think it's impossible to pick a girl up at a bar."

"If you say so," I said.

I wanted to tell her that I doubted very much that her friends were representative of most women. But, then, the kinds of women who hung out at the kinds of bars and clubs we'd been frequenting probably weren't either. So maybe she had a point.

"Anyway," I sad. "Just three for me."

"Three? You were trying, weren't you?"

"Yes, dear, I was trying," I said with a chuckle.

"Just checking." She leaned up and kissed my cheek then pulled away and went over to the table by the window. "What are we drinking tonight?" she asked.

With some effort, I forced my eyes to drift away from her ass. The black mini-skirt she had on made it hard to do so, however. The sheer black thigh highs weren't helping either.

"Wine?" I guessed.

"Good answer," she said. A moment later, a bottle and two glasses were on the table, and she busied herself with opening it.

I went and took a seat at the table, waiting patiently for her to pour out two glasses.

"At first, I thought you might be the blonde with the thick-rimmed glasses," I said. "But you were obviously the brunette with the silver tank-top."

"I was," she confirmed.

It was hard to tell just by talking to a woman. There was so much sexual desire in the place, reading Libidos was like having fifteen radios playing different songs and trying to make out the lyrics to one of them. But the brunette was the obvious choice. Particularly since Brianna had given her black hair, ultra pale skin, and an extreme hourglass figure. Everything she knew I tended to go for.

And once we got inside a bathroom stall, there was no question.

Brianna handed me my glass and raised hers. We clinked them together then took our first sips. Sweeter than I'd have thought she liked, but not bad.

"So. How many of those other guys did you actually think might be me?"

"Two," she said. "Well, one, right up until he dropped his pants. When I saw that pathetic little thing he called a penis, I knew it couldn't be you. There was also another that I thought might be you, when we first started talking, but, well, he was actually funny."

"Ha ha," I said. "Very clever." I took another sip of wine. "So. Did you enjoy yourself?"

Brianna shrugged. "I'm glad you suggested it. But mortal guys are so disappointing that once is enough for that little game." She kicked off her shoes. "Not to be a complete size queen, but even the guys who I'm pretty sure I was supposed to think were well-hung were unimpressive," she said. "And, what's worse, they didn't really know what they were doing either. I mean, size isn't everything. But if the motion of the ocean isn't there either?"

"The women weren't any better," I said. "Besides the blonde, that is."

"Watch it, mister."

"Oh, you know blondes aren't even my type."

She frowned. "Trust me, I know plenty well what your type is."

Whoops.

"Baby, lately, you're-"

One of her hands shot up. "Don't." It fell back into her lap. "A, we both know that's bullshit, and B, even you have enough shame not to say something that cheesy."

"Fine. I'm just saying that even though, as a general rule, I tend to go for certain things, it's not like I can't be attracted to a woman who doesn't fit that mold."

She sighed. "I know. I know." Half of her wine disappeared in one gulp. "Forget it. I probably should have made myself a blonde anyway."

I rose from my chair, growing an extra foot in height as I did. Brianna wasn't as obsessed with height as my mother was, but I was pretty sure she had a fascination with the moonlit folk, even though she'd never actually said anything to that effect. Completing the transformation, I turned my skin midnight blue, my hair purple, and covered myself from head to toe in silver tattoos.

"Well, hello there, tall, dark and handsome," Brianna said, eyeing me up and down.

The wine sat abandoned on the table a minute later.

She soon turned into a moonlit version of herself too. One with more than a few tattoos of her own. A star over one eye, another over one nipple, and one on each hip. A comet on the back of one hand, and a crescent moon on her lower back.

I was pretty sure their tattoos were more complex than stars and moons and so forth. They were some elaborate means of marking status, I thought. Which was why Lily had had none. But I liked the way they looked on her all the same.

After a few intense orgasms each, I cuffed myself to the bed, summoned a leather hood, and told Brianna my safe word.

She looked at me, incredulous, for just a moment. But the question she wanted to ask remained unspoken. A leather whip appeared in one hand and a steel device whose use I could only guess in the other.

It did indeed do what I feared it would.

But the reaction in my cousin's Libido was worth it. And, anyway, it wasn't that hard to numb myself to the pain even while pretending to be suffering every bit as much as she'd want to believe that I was.

Strangely enough, it wasn't my decision to offer to let her go there that made things awkward. It was later, when I turned into Dom.

"I thought we talked about this," she said. "I don't want you to do that."

"Don't want me to, or don't want me to think you want me to?" I asked.

"If it was the second one, would I tell you that?" she asked.

Good point.

"What I'm trying to say then is that I don't care if that would turn you on," I said. "Really, I don't. I can't blame you for missing him. Hell, sometimes I miss him, though obviously in a somewhat different way."

"You say that now. Imagine how you would feel if I turned into my mother again, though. Remember how you reacted the one time I did?" She shook her head. "Better yet, what if I suggested turning into your mother? Wouldn't it hurt to think I thought you needed that? That you'd made me think I wasn't good enough for you?"

I drew a deep breath. "It's not about need. You know that."

"So you'd be fine if I turned into her?"

I hesitated. "Would you be comfortable with it if I said that would be okay? I mean, she's still alive. Little bit different."

It took her a while to respond, but she eventually said, "Maybe. If it's only once in a while. I could probably deal with it."

"Are you sure?"

"I don't know," she admitted.

I waved my hand at the corner of the room, and a hot tub appeared. I climbed in and gestured for my cousin to join me.

She hesitated a moment before doing so. Unlike me, she slipped in gracefully, as if she wasn't even cognizant of the sharp change in temperature.

Just like she'd done that one time when we'd shared a hot tub with Todd, Dom and my mother. The very people we were now discussing. That had been back when I'd first realized who and what we were. Back before she'd taken the throne.

"It is different with actual people," she said.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. "That's the point, though, isn't it? If we can make pain fun, why can't jealousy be the same? It's just another kind of pain, isn't it?"

Brianna's eyes twinkled.

"Look, I won't deny that if things ended between us, really ended, so that I knew I couldn't get you back, I'd probably try to make things work with my mother again. But as long as you're around, that's not going to happen."

She stared at me silently, face expressionless.

"I understand why you're concerned. I don't want to be the guy who says you're being silly for getting jealous. Even if your concerns seemed misplaced to me, and I'm not even saying that they do, I want you to know that I will always want to do my best to understand where you're coming from. I'll never delegitimize-"