Ninovan (Hypernaturals 10)

Not Disengaging

I can only stand a crowd for so long. Having hyper-sensitive ears is bad, but it's the olfactory that really overloads. I told Morgan I was stepping outside, tapped the side of my nose like Santa going up a chimney. She understood.

"I will join out there in a moment. I am having the same issue." She said.

Out on the steps to the porch, I sat down, and I looked down the two rows of houses I could easily see from here and considered what we would do. I pictured Jessica with a sledgehammer in the last house on the left, working out her internal rage at herself. It would be good for her to be able to do that, I thought.

My thoughts were interrupted when Alexander followed me out, and walked down the steps to the ground and turned to face me. "Can I have a word with you?" and it was more of a demand than an ask.

Morgan came out, went to the porch rail, at least twenty feet away, and leaned out as if she is here to look at the sky.

Alexander was irritated, but since she appeared to be paying us no attention went on. "Look. I need your help. I can't seem to get Jessica to give me another chance."

I think most anyone who had a person walk up to them and ask how to get your own spouse BACK into their bed after they did not want to be there in the first place would have the same inner reaction I am, and I had to stifle an immediate 'You have got to be kidding me' and also quash a look over at Morgan to see what reaction she is having to that.

Alexander looked past me, at the window to the hall. "She is magnificent. All the confidence and power. The way she ran that meeting."

I said mildly, "Vera always calls her the Amazon. Angel says she is Gaia."

"Both of those are right, but neither really covers it, does it?" Alexander said.

"Morgan sings that she is the sweet Goddess of Love and beer. It's a Popa Chubby song, but it works."

"She is that too." Alexander said. "Look. You are a lucky man, and you did not seem to mind when Jessica and I got together. I was kinda thinking you would, but hell. Why should you? It's Ninovan! No one cares about stuff like that here. You have to help me. How do I get back with her?"

"Did you ask her about that, when you were talking to her a while ago?" I asked. I admired my calm. I am control incarnate these days. I controlled my breathing.

"Yes. She mentioned the freebie list thing again, like on the first day. I was not paying much attention then, because we got together so fast, and she said she was going native and all that. She said I have to be on her list, and that you and your other spouses control that. She said she is angry at herself for breaking that rule. She did not say what it takes for you or her..." A head tilt Morgan's way. "...to add me."

"Well, one way would be for her to ask us to add you, but that is not a hard and fast rule. Helen and Jessica added Morgan to my Freebie list years before she married us."

"Ok, so how do I get in her list? I ask you, you talk to them?"

"Alexander, when I first met Jessica, I had just broken up with Vera. Jessica was hunting, and we were at the nude beach. She made my brain freeze up so hard. She thought that was cute, and that I would do for her snack of the month. I was in love with Jessica at first sight. We spent the entire night making love on her boat, and she was drinking from me all night in little sips and between lovemaking sessions. It inspired me to exceed anything I have ever done, but I had to have her."

"I know, right? Exactly." Alexander enthused.

"A lot of things happened after that I won't bore you with. I turned, for one thing. She was going to come to find me, and she was going to break the Vampire unwritten rule about long-term relationships with a human, because try as hard as she liked, she could not stop thinking about me any more than I could about her. She was in love with a human, but I had the decency to turn. We got married as you know. That is not the thing I am trying to tell you here. Now, take Morgan. I met her before I met Jessica, and while I was interested in her, and she in me, we did nothing about it. Our lives re-intersected, and over time I realized I was in love with her, too. She felt the same, but by then I was married to two women, and Morgan had to decide if she could deal with that. Helen is a whole other kind of love story, in that she and Jessica were lovers for decades before me, and Jessica wanted her to be with us. Helen and I fought like cats and dogs for a long time, and ultimately time passed and we learned to love each other. Every woman in my life entered it a different way, but they all have a thing in common. I like them. I love them."