Read your Contracts 04.4

Emi came to the door in a bathrobe, pulled Satilli in and shut the door behind them before pinning him to the entrance hall wall and bearing down on him with a kiss that stole his breath away. Pressing her body to his, through her robe and his frills he could feel how hot she was, fresh from the shower with strands of damp hair clinging to her skin, wearing a refreshing floral fragrance. Unsatisfied with only her greeting kiss, she continued to drink in Satilli, melding their lips together until they had both calmed and stared longingly into each others' eyes.

They had planned a full day, and Satilli could feel in the woman's embrace a desire to start right there and then, to throw Satilli down next to the shoe rack and do terrible things to his body. But the woman showed restraint, slipped her fingers between Satilli's and let him off with nothing but a soft bite on the neck for the moment. She drew him along into the house and sat him down on the couch, in full view of her backyard from a glass door that let in the warm, morning sun.

"So then, Sadie, what did you want to do today?" Emi sat down with Satilli and traced a fingertip in circles on his thigh, over his skirt. Like a lioness stalking her prey, her presence overwhelmed Satilli, implied the impossibility of escape. "I was thinking of painting your nails, maybe braiding your hair~"

"But mommy, my hair is too short," Satilli said, picking at its end. The cut was adorable when he was a girl, but its usual vibrant color forbade its being a boy's cut when he was male; the contrast was part of the appeal, he thought.

Emi grinned and leaned forward to dig into a bag that had been placed on the coffee table before them, retrieved a long wig in Satilli's exact shade. "Ta daa~ That's right, mommy knows how to do it, doesn't she? You really should grow your own this long, the boys would be all over you, just the way you like." She had Satilli bow down to fit the wig on and when Satilli came up, he felt the weight of it where it ended between his shoulders. Emi sat back to witness her work with a thumb put up for artisan emphasis. "Gorgeous. My goodness, you should have been born a girl, I'd have adopted you on the spot..."

"You really think so?" Satilli bashfully looked between his knees. It wasn't as though he hadn't thought the same thing before; he just happened to be one of the few creatures who could actually do something about it.

"In a heartbeat," Emi said. "Turn that way, I'll give you a nice, long braid." The way she said it, the way she started without any extra touching, said to Satilli that this visit might not have ever turned into anything sexual from the word go. "Actually, I say that, but I probably wouldn't have... Sorry..."

Satilli sat still and said nothing.

"I told you I've always wanted a daughter, and that's true. I wanted Carl to give me one, but then he went and did all that." An edge rose in Emi's voice that she suppressed so as not to ruin the mood of the room. "It's not like there was no way we could have adopted, but by then he and I were already at each other's throats. It wasn't, isn't, fair to a child to be plopped in the middle of that, not just because I wanted to be a mommy. She would have ended up hating me, I know it, and there was no way I'd allow that. But you've made it so easy... I still think it would be better if you were a girl, I could do an adult adoption and we'd..." She stopped short of a conclusion, ashamed of herself.

"It would still be weird, wouldn't it?" Satilli gave her a hand up from the ledge of her own realization.

"They would have to be pretty messed up in another way, to accept this kind of treatment. No offense, Sadie, but I'm well aware of what I'm doing and how accommodating you've been. It's a relief, having someone like you in my life who'll go along with these superficial parts of that life. Do you know what Carl said when he saw me putting together my supplies for today?"

"No?"

"Nothing." Emi sighed. "It would be better if he'd yelled at me, or even if he'd just asked what I was doing with half of this stuff. He looked at it, I made sure of that, but he just seemed to accept it and went to bed like normal. I almost slept down here. What's the purpose of sleeping next to a lump of dead space like that? He'd only do me if I made him, and then he's barely more than a meat dildo while he's shooting blanks... I almost feel like letting you put a bun in my oven, just to teach him a lesson about..."

"It wouldn't be fair to the baby."

She sniffled where Satilli couldn't see. "Yeah..."

Time for a story, something to tug the heartstrings, and something true besides. "My mother didn't want me."

"What!?"

"As soon as I could stand by myself, she sent me off to live with my auntie. I mean, I'd call her my aunt. She was friends with my mom at some point. It's sort of a loveless world, I think, or at least I used to think that."

"What changed?"

Satilli thought back to her time in Fyelline's mansion, watching Harry from behind corners, terrified because he'd never seen a human before who wasn't chained to his task or in the midst of Hell's tortures. It had only taken a week to know from the way he was that humans weren't the kind of people that Fyelline and Memi said they were. Even Carlton, Satilli thought, would end up having more of a reason for what he was doing than was apparent at first glance. Though, since he'd begun working by himself on the surface world, he had seen his fair share of evil that mirrored what he'd seen in Hell.

"I met someone," he said instead. "Someone who really loves, without thinking of anything else. I think, if he'd had the opportunity to save me, he would have, no matter what."

"This is the boy you're in love with, then?" Emi said. "That's all well and good, but you can't trust what men are when they're in love, not right at the start. That's when they're most on edge, so they'll put so much more effort in hiding what they really are underneath: pigs. Just give it a little while, he'll start treating you the way he treats everyone else."

That wouldn't be much of a bad thing, actually. Those false accusations that she was trying to screw with his dreams... Didn't that just mean that he was dreaming of her? And then, he wasn't being that rude when he accused her... So why did she take it so hard?

She'd nearly killed someone the last time she'd messed with dreams... and Harry had been there to see it... Of course he would be wary of it...

Satilli laid her head back on Emi's breast and said, "He's not gay, and he knows that I love him. He said that he'd give me a chance anyway..." He set aside the fact that Harry only gave him the chance while he was female; the whole story would only confuse Emi. "Even if it doesn't work out between us, I have to think that he loves me a little, to make that kind of compromise with himself."

Emi pushed him gently off her chest so she could get her fingers into his wig and start braiding. "I thought Carlton was that same kind of guy way back when, but I was the one making compromises the whole time, ones I didn't know I was making. I supported him through business school, I really did, because I saw something special in him and his ability that it didn't seem the world would give him a chance to display. He's brilliant, and I have to say that, no matter how much of a rat-bastard he is, because I'd be lying. It was a few years after he graduated, he'd come into a lot of investor money for his company and he was making profits in the millions within a few more years. We went from eating beans and rice to eating whatever the hell we wanted. Haha, I ate so much filet mignon in the first weeks that I couldn't look at one again...

"I was happy, but I had been happy for a while before that. The world was finally seeing in him what I'd known was there all along, that kind of capability that people only appreciate when it makes them money. I don't tell him, I don't know how I could after all the work he put into it, that I'd still be happy if we were still eating beans and rice, so long as we were still sitting at the same table. Don't I sound like an idiot?"

"No..." Satilli wondered what culinary abominations Memi was serving to his/her boyfriend every night while he/she was gone in his/her fit of pique. She was getting better, Satilli didn't mind sitting at the same table as a former mistress' daughter if it meant sitting at the table with friends.

"That's why. I don't think I would have minded it too much if he told me he was clipped, back then, if I hadn't found out by myself. I used to think about my little girl in the high chair, wiping spilled food off her chin... Don't worry, I won't ask you to do that kind of play; I'm not that far gone, not yet. But if you'd told me that my life would be like this, back then, I think there's not much I wouldn't do to change it. I'd rather have a husband who comes home smelling of motor oil and a daughter who runs up into his tired arms at the end of the day because she's too used to the smell to care, then I'd give him a smooch and tell him to get cleaned up before dinner, because there had been a sale on nearly-expired meat that day..." Emi's voice started to break near the end, Satilli could tell the woman was near crying, too proud to do it while Satilli was there in front of her. She sniffled and said, "Don't you think that sounds nice? I know you couldn't have a baby with the man you love, but doesn't that sound like a wonderful kind of life?"

Emi was right, if not in the way she thought she was.

"I think," Satilli said, "I'm alright with my life the way it is now. I'd be alright if some things fell out." That was a lie. "I think if you had your daughter, she wouldn't end up being a showpiece like you think. Like, sure, you're thinking of only the little moments, but you're not thinking about the times she'll puke in bed and you'll have to tend to her the rest of the night, the times she'll come home with a note from school telling you just how she's messed up that day. You're not thinking of the day she'll come home with a boy who you can't trust with your little girl, because you didn't notice her becoming a woman. I wish you'd had the chance to see that you weren't as selfish as you thought..."

There was a sniffle behind Satilli's head, Emi's fingers had stopped in the middle of a braid. "Thank you..."

"That said, I have something for you." Satilli reached into his little bag and pulled out a cringy-looking glass phial in the shape of a heart, filled with a liquid the color of Valentine's day sweets. "Give this to him, somehow he can't tell, then drag his ass to bed and wring him dry."

Satilli turned, the wig sliding from his head as he wiggled his way into Emi's lap, pressed the phial into her hands as he nibbled her neck.

"What is it?..." Emi said, then moaned as Satilli's teeth pinched her skin. "I-I can't drug him. It's not, I mean, that's too far, isn't it?"

"Don't worry about it~" Satilli whispered in her ear, proceeding to nibble up the curve of her earlobe. "It's not a drug, it's medicine. He'll feel like twice the man he is, and I can promise that you'll be happy with the results."

"It's not just liquid Viagra or something, right? Not that..." Not that it would matter now if it were. Gears were already set turning that couldn't easily be stopped by her or anyone else. A long-held grudge against the man who'd failed in his duties as a husband was coming to a head, there wasn't much she couldn't be persuaded to do, given long enough to stew.

As it was, this was the kinder option.

Satilli left after lunch, citing a small crisis that had just come up, and all that was left was waiting for things in that house to boil over. Getting into that room had never been actually necessary for the hellions, Emi would be doing it for them.

-o-

From their watch across the way in a dubiously-aquired home, Fyelline and the other two had a front seat to the show through binoculars. Two days after Satilli's last visit, Emi left; she got in her car and screeched away while wiping away tears. Not minutes later, Fyelline and Satilli knocked on on the front door.

No answer, so they incessantly knocked until Carlton, disheveled and sporting a brand new shiner over his right eye, answered in a frothing rage. His anger lasted a few seconds in the smiling face of Fyelline.

She pushed her way inside with no attempt made to stop her, ignoring the threshold since this place technically belonged to her as much as the man, trailing Satilli who had finally been allowed to dress as a man after more than a week. It was as if a whirlwind had come through the place, broken glass and otherwise in heaps at the feet of the walls they'd been thrown against. At the center of it all, a simple stick with two red lines on the coffee table...

Fyelline took an imperious seat on the couch and bade Carlton closer. He was too smart to approach her.

"How many years has it been, mister Burque? Twenty-five and seventy-two days on top, if you did not recall, and yet in my grace I had not extracted any late fees on your payment." Fyelline yawned, expressing how entirely safe she was in the disheveled space. "You may thank me at any time, sir. Do not worry, I can wait a further eighteen years and nine months on the dot before our account is paid in full. Do you think it will be a male or a female? Which one were you hoping for?"

He was shaking in fury and terror in equal and opposing amounts, kept steady by the tension between them. "It's not mine, you can't take it!"

Fyelline's lips split in a wide, mocking smile, fangs just beginning to show as she discarded the subtle human facade she'd been wearing. "But it is~ That woman has been with no virile males since her previous period, I know it for a matter of fact." She drew Satilli onto her leg and fussed with his hair, transitioning already back to pink since the natural color was no longer needed. "This one cannot breed, not in the traditional way that men and beasts do. Ah, yes, yes! That's the face I was hoping for~ Never seen one of your woman's lovers in the flesh? This skinny, girlish thing had her moaning in ways you never have." A bit of an overstatement, but the effect on his demeanor was immediate. Were he not so terrified, he might have tried to throttle Satilli. "Did you think that you could enjoy the benefits of a Hellish contract, your business and your standard of living, without ever paying the piper? I was to be given your first-born, and to your moral credit, you did not go and impregnate the first hussy you saw walking the street, as I expected." She laughed. "I'd planned on exposing that little affair, but I did not expect you to sterilize yourself! Haha! Isn't that rich?"

"You promised, you took a vow that you wouldn't hurt me after I signed!"

"I have kept my vows, even to a lesser being such as yourself, because I knew my payment was forthcoming. A human could not possibly understand the damage that would befall my reputation among my peers should I go back on my word in the smallest way." Fyelline kissed Satilli's cheek. "You should have gone for chemical castration. It would not have stopped my victory, but it would have taken longer. As it was, I always had the option of having someone remove those dangling things and extracting the relevant fluids by hand. But, as you said: I could not do you any harm."

He grabbed the pregnancy test which had gone undisturbed until then as if acknowledging it would give it credence. "This is fake! You slipped it into our bathroom or something to trick me!" He chucked it across the room and the plastic clattered off a wall. "You can take the rest of it back, but you'll never have my son!"

"Or daughter," Fyelline said lazily, rolling her eyes. "If it were fake, there would be no cause for concern. You don't believe I'd pull that kind of bluff; you know me better than that. As an aside, did you know that one potent reagent in the production of health potions is the bodily fluids of succubi? Did you read the note your doctor gave you, that specifically did not guarantee effective sterility? Boy, it was all rigged right from the start."

Carlton slumped to his knees, shaking, hardly able to lift his gaze and look upon the two demons in his living room. His life was shattered, one way or another, and the shards lay all around him. But that left the question now filtering into his mind: why was Fyelline even there when she could have just waited for her plan to come to fruition?

"What do you want, instead of my kid?" he asked.

Fyelline reached into her pocket and slid a new contract in front of him. "Sign this, when you have had time to read and understand it." She came up to her feet and began walking away. "Satilli, are you coming? We're done here."

He found himself staring at Carlton on the floor, already poring over the new contract to see how entirely he'd be screwed. Satilli said, "I'd like to stay a little longer, if that's alright?"

"Go on, then. I will not require you for a few weeks at least. Do not feel the need to stop at home on your way back to him." Fyelline smiled and closed the front door behind her.

Carlton was too interested in the new contract to pay much attention to Satilli sitting down across from him on the couch. The man was starting to feel more steady, his mood lifting by the line, tensions releasing. It wasn't Fyelline's style to buy people, she preferred that her human slaves be damned by their own actions. But as leverage... that was another story. It wasn't half an hour later when Carlton pricked his finger with a penknife and signed the page; it disappeared like flash paper and the goal of the last week was achieved with nearly zero repercussions to anyone involved.

"What did you say, that made her run away like that?" Satilli asked when Carlton had at last calmed down.

Darkness flashed through his expression. "Say... the unborn... they go to one of the best places in Hell, don't they? Outside her control?"

Satilli sighed. "Another attempt to game the system, eh? You'll want to apologize before Emi has a lot longer to think about things. After all, you love her, and she loves you, so a small thing like this shouldn't be allowed to come between you."

He sprang to his feet as though just now the reality of the situation had gotten to him, and he rushed to find a phone.

Yeah, they'd be alright, Satilli thought. He said, as he went out the back door and saw the pool where this had all begun, "And stop letting her fuck a bunch of random strangers, she's a mother now!" And she only ever wanted you in the first place.