xxii.

ROSS CAME BY after work again. It was all easier and more comfortable this time, and everyone was less nervous. But this meant that there was less foreplay, and that she didn't end up having an orgasm before Hollis penetrated her.

He wanted to make it happen; she felt guilty about taking over Ross's body and her thoughts about the separation between sexy thoughts and spiritual connection thoughts spurred her to think it wouldn't matter.

So, then she was likely less wet and accommodating when he was in there (even with lube), and he did last longer, and it…

Well, at first, when he was first inside her, it was that same amazing feeling again, the surrender and the joining and this pit-of-her-stomach feeling of rightness.

But then, that faded and she got bored.

Hollis could tell. "You're… this isn't…?"

"If you can come, go ahead," she said, shrugging with her eyes closed. She didn't want to see Ross's face right then.

"Okay, I'm just horrible at this," said Hollis, who was vaguely out of breath because he'd been working at pistoning between her thighs.

She reached out blindly to rub him, comfort him. "No, no, you're not. It's me. It's just me. I'm just asexual. Kiss me, kiss me."

"Are you sure you want—"

She yanked him down and cut off his words with her mouth on his. The feeling of connection flared and it was very nice again. She sighed into him.

She could tell he needed that, and that let him relax enough to finish inside her.

Ross was cheery afterward, lounging in the doorway to talk to her while she had blankets pulled up to her chin. "This is the weirdest, most strange arrangement I've ever heard of. We're not normal, you know? I like us, though. I like not being normal."

"Fuck the normies," she agreed, giggling at him.

Later, Hollis curled around her in bed, and there was a tension in him she could sense, and she felt bad about that.

"It's not you," she said. "It's me. We both knew it was going to be like this for me."

"You said you liked it the first time, and you didn't this time."

"No, I did," she said. "I did."

"I knew you should have let me make you come. I'm not listening to you again if you tell me to skip it. That's fucked up, and it made it only about me, and I didn't like it either."

"Maybe," she said. "I may have discounted the flood of oxytocin in my body making me feel connected to you." She laughed. "That's, like, the purpose of oxytocin, huh?" She thought too hard about that. If she felt connection because of chemicals in her brain, then how could a feeling of connection be separate from her body? Didn't she need her body to feel it? "Hollis, I just don't think I feel my body in the same way other people feel theirs."

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm really surprised at how, uh, fragile I am about this. I didn't think I'd be like that. Honestly, it wasn't very fun for me this time, though. I was just too worried about getting it right and performing, and that made it kind of mechanical."

"You're not fragile," she said. "It just… sex makes you vulnerable."

"How vulnerable can I be in some other man's skin?"

"Maybe that's worrisome too," she said. "Maybe you don't want me to want him somehow on the other side of it. Which I don't, by the way."

"No, I'm not worried about that." He paused. "Maybe I was."

She hugged him.

"If my mortal body wants sex, Fifer, what are we going to do about that?"

They'd both been worried about that, then, and neither of them had mentioned it. She pressed her cheek against his hoodie. "Then, we'll compromise. And sometimes, we'll do it, for you, and sometimes, you'll have to not get it, for me."

"That sounds horrible," he said. "It sounds like sometimes, you're letting me rape you."

"No," she said. "I don't hate it, Hollis. And if I say no, and I mean it, that's—"

"There's coercion baked into that whole scenario," he whispered.

"No," she said firmly. "No, only if we let it be that, and we love each other, and so we won't. We'll talk about it if it starts feeling that way, and we'll work it out. This isn't some stupid fling between you and me. This is a profound love. You're going to die for me."

"Fifer…"

"I mean, aren't you? Isn't that the sacrifice you've made?" She sat up to look down at him.

"I don't see it like a sacrifice at all. I see it, like, gaining something. I'm going to die for me . I'm going to love you for me . I'm… in a way, it's very selfish. But I can't deny that being with you isn't a very wonderful benefit to the whole thing and that I want to do what I can to be with you. So… I don't know. Sort of."

"Well, having sex with you will not be a sacrifice for me either," she said. "Asexual people choose to do it. Asexuality does not equate to celibacy. This can work, and it will work. It'll work because we decide together that we're going to make it work. And anything that gets in our way, we work around or solve."

His grip tightened on her. "You're right," he said. "You're right, of course. I love you."

"I love you, too."

THE REMAINING TWO instances of intercourse didn't shatter her reality, but they were pleasant. She felt a strengthening, intertwining bond between them. She liked the feeling of their being connected, and she wasn't sure if that was in an idealistic, cerebral way or if it was just a product of physical reality.

Maybe she didn't feel things differently than other people in her body. Maybe she processed it differently in her brain, that was all. Maybe allosexual people didn't need to process it? Maybe they just experienced it.

She tried to talk to Ross about it, but he said he'd rather not talk about it too much. She pushed a little. She felt like the entire experience had the potential to have been damaging to him in some way, his body being used for sex when he wasn't even present. He assured her he was fine. He said the days when it had happened had been oddly relaxing for him, that the experience of having sex seemed to have lifted his mood and given him a feeling of well-being, all the while having not experienced any of the other things he tended to associate with sex.

She wondered if Ross's brain was like hers, not able to process all of the feelings either, and that he'd enjoyed the separation in some way, if it had been freeing for him.

When she broached the topic with him a little, he was in ready agreement, however.

"Oh, totally, that love feeling? It's not the same feeling as the sex feeling," he said. "When I feel the love feeling for a person, it's like it chokes out the sex feeling."

"You can't feel them at the same time?" she said.

"I don't know," he said. "Honestly, it never occurred to me that they were supposed to go together. Do you think they are? You think that's what allosexuals do? Mingle them?"

"Maybe," she said with a shrug. "Or… they switch back and forth and the switches go smoothly for them? Or… I don't even think this is the same for all asexuals. If you're demisexual, maybe you can only feel the sex feeling once the love feeling gets activated."

"Right," he said. "And if you're a classic asexual, you're just missing the sex-feeling entirely."

"And if you're asexual and aromantic, you're missing both?" she said. "I don't know. It's just a half-baked theory at this point."

They had to wait two weeks to see if her period would come, but she discovered early-response pregnancy tests, which could show the result as soon as six days before her missed period. So, she tested after a week and a couple days.

Negative.

Ugh. She was so discouraged. But there was a possibility that she was pregnant and the test just hadn't been able to detect the hormone yet.

So, she tested the next day, and the day after that.

On the fourth test, she got the positive result. It was faint but there it was, two lines, one thick and strong, one weak and ghostly.

She showed it to Hollis and they were giddy and started making plans about when the next Wild Hunt would be—the full moon—and she lay in bed with her hand on her belly, feeling the enormity of it and feeling luminous and excited and nervous.

And then the next morning, she tested again.

Just to be sure.

Still pregnant.

But she was nervous. Because sometimes pregnancies didn't take for various reasons, and lots of people had very early miscarriages, and she worried that she'd lose it.

Also, she and Hollis had a few worried conversations that the technicalities of the magic wouldn't be met because the child in her belly was biologically not Hollis's. If that was the case, they'd have done all this for nothing.

"You wouldn't leave me, right?" she breathed up at him in the darkness of his bedroom. "You wouldn't leave us."

"Never," he said reverently. "No, I'd find another way to be mortal, and we'd stay together."

"You promise?"

"You know," he said softly. "It occurs to me that I never explained to you why I was exiled from Faerie."

"You did so. You said you killed a guy and he deserved it."

"And that's enough for you?"

"Sure," she said. "But if there's something you want to confess so that I can reassure you that I don't care about whatever happened thousands of years ago, go for it."

He considered. "He was the Unseelie Queen's half-mortal son. He had been careless with a mortal, a mortal that I indirectly cared about. Well, I cared about a mortal who cared about that mortal—"

"Hollis, it's fine. I don't blame you for this."

He sighed. "Right."

"No, finish if you want to talk about it." She waited, blinking at him.

"If you don't care, and it doesn't seem as if you do, then…" He shrugged. "I supposed there's no point in reliving it."

"It was ages ago," she said. "And I'm only worried because you left me recently . You could do that again. If there wasn't another way to make you mortal…"

"No, there's a way," he said, sure of this. "I will find it if this doesn't work. And I will never leave you. I only left you before because I thought you wanted me to." He thought about it. "Well, maybe because I thought it was the right thing to do."

"Leaving is never the right thing to do, okay?" She was terrified, clutching his hoodie as if she could hold him against her. "Hollis, you cannot leave me when I'm pregnant with your child."

"No, Fifer, I'm not going anywhere." He crushed her against him. "I am spending the rest of my life with you."

But… but… what if he couldn't?

She was very nervous.

THE FULL MOON loomed, only days after her period should have come. She was happy they didn't have long to wait.

The days leading up to it were filled with somber conversations of what would happen. They would go to a spot where the veil between the realms was thin. This meant traveling to Europe, to a spot in on one of the northern islands off the coast of Scotland. Hollis had a plane. They would fly there.

Then, at the appropriate time, he'd leave to surrender himself to the Hunt. She'd wait.

He'd come by riding a white steed. He might not look like himself at that point, but she'd know it was him because he'd be the only one on a white horse.

She had to get him off the horse—while it was running—and hold onto him.

Could she even do this?

Then, he was going to change into things—things with teeth and claws and fangs, he said. And no matter what happened, she couldn't let go.

Getting her pregnant had really been the easy part of this.

What if it didn't work because she couldn't hold on?

You'll be pregnant for nine months, Fifer, and that's nine full moons—maybe more. We'll have more chances. He was sure of it, confident.

She was nervous.