Page 8 of Bottoms Up
It isn’t the first time someone’s been curious, so I held my hands out for him to see the tops of my left fingertips.
“May I touch?”
I nodded, and he reached out with delicate fingers to touch the tips of my fingers, then held my left hand between his.
“So much strength,” he noted. “And talent. You are a worthy holder of what remains of…”
He went silent, and Mordecai said, “Yes. Best not to speak the name aloud and risk calling it back into being. I agree.”
Kirsten sighed. “My ankle is itching.”
It took me a moment to remember it itches when the demon wants to talk to her.
She got up, and I thought she might be leaving to talk to him, but she grabbed something from a drawer in the freezer, fastened it around her ankle, and returned to the table.
“It’s an ice pack made for ankle injuries,” she explained. “Tricks my brain into not telling me it’s itching.”
“I shall speak with him after we finish our meal,” Shifù said. He looked to Mordecai, glanced at Kirsten, and focused on his food again. “The vampire currently known as Gawain sent me gifts. I returned the favor. By the rules of old, we are now at truce.” He looked at Kirsten. “I understand this is Lauren’s doing?”
Kirsten shook her head. “She didn’t know he’d begun the process of a cease-fire with you until after he’d started. He did it on his own.”
“You are a mighty warrior. I approved of your method of torture, but I was saddened when you didn’t kill him while you held his heart in your hands.”
“I’d be dead if I’d killed him, Shifù.”
He nodded. “Yes, and this would sadden me far more.” He walked his bowl and chopsticks to the sink, washed them, and settled them beside the sink to dry. “Come, Erlkönigin. Give your old teacher a hug.”
Kirsten stood and hugged him. “My name is fine, Shifù, unless you want me to start usingyournames of old.”
“I addressed you by your title, not your name, daughter of mine. Go with peace, and give my regards to your daughter and her lovers.”
“I will. Thank you for agreeing to that peace, so my daughter doesn’t get caught in the middle of an old battle.”
I blinked and he was gone, and Kirsten sat and continued eating her meal as if nothing had happened.
“Your Silver came to some conclusions about himself in the past two days. It’s possible she needs to talk about them,” Mordecai said, and then he was gone, along with the bowl he’d been eating from, and the fork.
Kirsten stood, walked around the table, pulled her plate and glass to her, and sat facing me.
“What did Xaephan offer you?”
“He started by offering to make me normal. Either male or female. My choice. I’d have a big dick or a normal-sized vaj, and I’d be able to either bear children or father them. He could make my chest look however I wanted, too.”
She smiled. “And once you had the offer, you realized you don’t want to change?”
I nodded. “If he’d given me the offer any time before about sixteen or seventeen, maybe even nineteen, I’d have jumped on it.” I shrugged. “Which I’d have chosen would’ve depended on the exact age, since I went back and forth every couple of months back then, rather than daily or weekly.Fuck, sometimes hourly, these days.”
“And he had a second offer?” she asked.
“Yeah. No change to my outside parts, but he could make it so I could have kids. Again, my choice of whether I’d be able to get pregnant or impregnate someone, and I was damned tempted by that one.” I blew out a breath because that didn’t say enough. “Reallytempted.”
“But?”
I shrugged again. “I was absolutely certain I didn’t want to get pregnant, the hormone shifts would play havoc with my body, and I like my body the way it is.” I glanced away a second and looked back to her, breathing through my emotions. “But the idea of fathering a child? A baby? Watching it grow into an adult? That one’s harder to let go of.”
She stayed silent. No prodding. She let me figure out my own pace.
“I’ve never seriously let myself consider it. It wasn’t possible, so why go there, right?” I rubbed the side of my thumb. “But once I knew itcouldhappen, once it turned into a choice, a real thing I could get excited about, could imagine… now it feels like a loss.”
