---Vol’s perspective---
---2704 Terran Calendar/9 years BF---
“Ooooh Stepbrother…!” calls the only other current occupant of my guardians’ langhús, interrupting my quiet reading time.
I sigh, slam shut the book I was reading and get up, resignedly.
I go to Ástríðr’s room.
“I’m coming in.” I say, pushing open the door.
I’m greeted by the sight of Ástríðr’s posterior, protruding out from under her bed and being wiggled, invitingly, back and forward.
“Please, Stepbrother(!) Help me(!) I’m stu-YAAAH!” she shrieks as, having cleared the distance from the door to the bed, I brace myself against it with my top left hand, squash her back flat to the floor with my top right (to prevent it from scraping along the underside) and yank her out by her ankles, with my lower hands.
She rolls over and pouts up at me.
I stare down at her, unimpressed “There… Now you’re not stuck…”
“That’s not how you’re supposed to play the game, VoVo! You’re supposed to rip my trousers open and ravish me while I’m unable to do anything to stop you!”
“I don’t have time for games, Ástríðr. I’m studying. I leave for university in less than a month.” I state.
“Which means you have less than a month to finally make your move, VoVo!”
I cock an eyebrow “You mean assaulting you while we’re alone in the house? That’s the kind of ‘move’ you’re talking about?”
She rolls her eyes “It’s not an ‘assault’ if I want it!”
“Fairly sure it’s still an assault if I don’t know you want it.”
“I’m telling you now! I want it! I want you!!!” she declares, with anger in her voice.
My heart aches as the beautiful girl looks up at me, desperately.
I look away “I’m… sorry Ástríðr… it wouldn’t be right…”
“You can just tell me you don’t feel the same, arsehole!” she says, getting up and running from the room, her voice cracking.
I want to call out to her… but the words die in my throat.
I’m left standing in her bedroom… alone…
---Ástríðr’s perspective---
---2709 Terran Calendar/4 years BF---
I sit at my mum’s side.
Our hall is full of life as her congregation talk, drink, socialise, sing, wrestle…
This Summer is my first back from uni and Tuun’s last before she goes.
I look around as if I might have missed the one face I really want to see but don’t.
I allow myself a modicum of self-pity.
8 years we lived together and the man can’t even be bothered to show up for what may be one of the last opportunities we have to…
*SLAM*
The doors at the far end of the hall are thrown open.
There stands a dashing, 2.8m Prince, appearance enhanced by black, tattooed lines across his face and hands, his long, sleek, white hair gathered into a bun at the top-back of his head, his eyes glowing brightly enough as to be clearly visible, even from here!
His ears are held upward in what is either confidence or a show of confidence.
With a regal, dignified bearing, the man strides between tables of, now, mostly silent men and women.
All eyes follow him as the clack of his boots, against the floorboards, echoes through the hall.
He approaches my mum and says to her “Katrín, I challenge you to Uluanvo’al Tan.” his voice exactly the unflappable, level monotone that I remember, but raised to let the whole hall hear.
There’s a chorus of murmuring from all present.
Leaning forward my mother says “Vol… if you think I’m going to allow you to keep Tunie from receiving an education, out of respect for DonAu…!”
“I’m not challenging you for my sister. She’s your daughter, both legally and actually, and I have no desire to force her to live a lifestyle she does not wish to.” he answers in his perfectly flat voice with his face still unreadable.
“Then…?” says my mum, confused.
“I seek to make Ástríðr my wife… My people’s custom requires me to challenge the head of her household… you…”
His tone is so matter of fact that it actually takes me several seconds to parse the meaning being conveyed. When I do, my jaw hits the floor!
The murmuring has become a dull roar as people react to the bombshell he just dropped!
He doesn’t look at me, instead focusing on my mother.
She looks back at him, appraisingly, for some moments before turning to me and asking “What do you want me to do?” under her breath.
I look from her to the man I’ve pined for for as long as I can remember.
The single, whispered word that comes out of my mouth is the greatest request I’ve ever made of anyone “Lose…”
She nods as if I haven’t just asked her to humiliate herself in front of her entire congregation, stands and says “I accept your challenge, Vol… Let us fight now!”
“DonAu entitles you to a preparation period of…”
“An entitlement… I am waiving, Vol!… We fight now!”
“Very well.” he says, courteously.
My mum stands, rounds the table and squares up against the blue skinned man who makes her look like a regular sized woman by forced perspective!
“Ássi, would you count us in?” asks my mum.
Flustered, I stand, raise my hand and shout “F-four!… Three!… Two!… One!… B-begin!”
Vol throws a lightning fast punch at my mum’s stomach.
He may have bruiser strength (for a Don) but she barely reacts!
Nonetheless, her right hand instantly flies above her head.
“I yield! Victory is yours!”
Taken aback, my fiancé has his hand grasped by my mother and raised above her head as she turns to the hall and proclaims “Welcome my future son-in-law, everyone!”
A cheer erupts, as he remains baffled looking.
---2714 Terran Calendar/11 months AF---
I look out of the window in my husband and I’s home.
I see him stood in our garden, head turned up, standing stock still, just beyond the twilight field barrier.
I don’t have to guess where he’s looking.
I begin walking to him, stopping to give our daughter (currently looking like a prop from a mad scientist’s lab(!)) a pat to the top of the artificial womb we rented to grow her in, as I do.
I step through the doorway.
My footsteps crunch through the refrozen crust on the snow, as I walk.
“Let me guess…” I smirk, wryly, coming up behind him, my eyes level with the small of his back “…you’re piloting a starfighter, alone… You warp into the system, you’re immediately confronted by an overwhelming system defence force who ask you to identify yourself. You respond ‘It’s not me you need to worry about… It’s what’s coming with me…’” doing my best Vol impression, with a deep voice and no emotion, as if I’m simply too cool to care “…They worriedly ask ‘What’s coming with you?’ and you smirk ‘Hell!’ as the combined forces of 531 Terran planets warp into system, at your back, and begin handily taking apart the, now totally outmatched, local defence! In a matter of hours, the Clans have all transmitted their surrender and you get to set foot on DonOlu, for the first time in decades, not as a banished Prince, not as a criminal, but as DonOlu’s first Emperor! Vol, Emperor of the Don!… Am I right?… Is that what you’re imagining, right now?”
He allows himself a slightly hard nasal exhale (the closest he typically gets to laughing) and replies “Sure… something like that.” cryptically.
“And… I suppose, the fact that, even if you were a perfect Ruler, you’d still be resented by half of the People, that, with your foreign accent, foreign wife, foreign child, foreign education and foreign upbringing you’d be seen as a puppet and a traitor, that your descendants could then have having their family delivered to rulership held over their heads forever, thus, effectively turning DonOlu into a UTC vassal, the fact that it would set a precedent that any disaffected royal can come to the UTC to ask to be restored to their thrones and most of the galaxy’s ousted Rulers will not be anywhere near the honourable man that you are… I’d guess these facts don’t feature?”
“You would guess correctly.” he says, flatly.
“You know… a girl could get jealous(!)… Come to believe that her man loves that little red dot more than her(!) Come to believe that, after he becomes an Emperor she might just end up one of his vast harem(!) That these lines wouldn’t mark me as your woman anymore, instead just one of your women…(!)” I say, gesturing to the tattoos I got the day we married.
He turns to me, the subtlest of anguished expressions painting his face “Ástríðr… You know I would never…”
“Relax, grumpy! I was only teasing!”
A tiny smile touches the edges of his mouth.
“I’m aware… that it isn’t healthy to obsess like this… that the chances of me taking back my bloodright (let alone changing the culture of 3 billion Don) are so low that it would be healthier to just forget about it… but… It’s right there! With an FTL capable ship, I could be there in less than an hour…”
“You could… and you’d be shot down, immediately, making an orphan of your daughter and a widow of your wife… Or they’d let you land… then arrest you… maybe you’d be executed… maybe they’d keep you as a political prisoner. In no circumstance are you allowed to return here and they will never, in a million years, allow you to address the public to try to convince them that DonOlu should be reopened, because they have no interest in it being reopened!”
“Yes… all true… that’s why I’m standing here and not in the process of procuring a ship, right now.”
Wrapping my arms around his waste and poking my head between his hands and side, I suggest “Maybe we should move? Another planet? One far enough away that you wouldn’t be able to see your birth system? Maybe we could try moving to Earth?”
“And what would I tell my people? That I’m sorry, I know that they’ve all spent two decades putting down roots on this planet, built homes, struck agreements, joined communities etc. but now we all need to upsticks and move to a world thousands of lightyears away because looking at our home is making me sad? They would laugh at me. My credibility as their Ruler would be destroyed.”
“Would that… be such a bad thing?”
His body stiffens “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I take a deep breath “…remember those times I came to visit you at uni? Remember the enormous smile you had on your face when you were explaining the intricacies of the Terran Unification Agreement to me? The Stateser Independence War? The Trial of King Charles I? The Fall of the Roman Republic?”
He nods “I remember.”
“I’ve never seen you smile like that when being in King mode… not once… not ever.”
“And?” he asks, curiously.
“Perhaps… you’d be more content as a professor of politics? Perhaps, you could step away from leadership and try something that might make you happier? You could go back to school and do a postgrad? I’m fairly sure that any university in Terran Space would jump at the chance to snap up a political theory lecturer who is, himself, xeno royalty! Even the ones without a humanities department would find that such an attractive prospect that they’d create one, just for you(!)” I say, already knowing what his answer will be.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“I can’t do that, Ástríðr. I can’t just abdicate from who I am… from my duty. My people would never forgive me. I would never forgive myself.” he answers without hesitation.
I sigh “I know, VoVo… I know. I just… I wish you could get to be the happy person you are with me, all the time, you know?”
He nods “I know you do… I wish for that too. I’m sorry things can’t be that way.”
I remember the boy he was before his parents left and never came back… I remember the expressive face he used to have before he had the weight of the world thrust onto his shoulders, I remember his loud voice, I remember, when I was 8 and he was 9, climbing the tallest tree in the forest with him, while our parents negotiated treaties together, I remember, while we sat at the top of that tree, him boldly asserting that, when we grew up, he would take me back to his planet and make me his wife, I remember giving up hope that either part of that promise would ever be fulfilled… and I remember our wedding night… I remember realising that that brash, emotional, little boy hadn’t died with his parents’ death… that he was still in there and that I’m the only one he’s willing to come out for and show himself to!
---Vol’s perspective---
My wife steps out from under my left arms and turns her body, bringing her face up to look into mine.
She holds her hands upward, to me.
By the Father, she warms my heart.
I hug her platinum-dense, little, deathworld body close and, heaving with an effort I try not to show, lift her the metre or so that separates her face from mine.
I feel the heat of her foggy breath as it hits my face.
She smiles at me. I do my best to return it… to show her the joy she makes me feel.
We press our lips together, she brings her arms around the back of my neck, my lower two arms wrap around her lower back, my upper right across her shoulderblades and my upper left hand at the back of her head as her feet dangle beside my thighs.
More than anyone else in the Father’s Dominion, this woman makes me feel like myself.
She’s right that if I forsook rulership, ran off to be an academic, on a planet far, far away and never thought about my birthworld ever again, I would almost certainly have a much more fulfilling life… if I were able to do that, that is.
She’s right that, if I were to have rulership of my Clan proper, on DonOlu, that would be more than ×50,000 the responsibility of ruling over the 259 of them on Fennoscandia (plus the 67 refugees from other Clans that found their way here).
If I were to, as she suggested, make myself Emperor of the entire planet, it would be nearly ×10,000,000 the responsibility.
Advocating for 326 of my people, representing them, guiding them, protecting them… It’s a job I do out of duty, not desire.
I’m certain that making myself an Emperor would make me the most miserable man in the galaxy, even if it were everything I hoped for.
A Ruler must be selfless, a Ruler must be wise, a Ruler must be patient.
Ruling as many as I do already makes me feel that my patience and wisdom are in short supply… that I don’t have enough of myself to be giving away… imagine if I ruled so many that I didn’t have time to have an open door ‘any time you want to chat’ policy.
This woman… she makes me feel that it’s OK to be selfish… she replenishes me… without her, I would never be able to keep going.
She makes me feel that she loves me… wholly and completely.
There were girls at school, girls at university, who were clearly interested (I realise I’m not bad looking by either Human or Don standards) but none of them made me feel like they were interested in me; they were interested in the fact that I am a nonTerran, the fact that I was a ‘Prince’, my four arms (which Humans find strangely exciting), my height, my looks… None of them made me feel that they would have been interested in me if I were a plain looking, 188cm, Terran boy with two arms and an unremarkable bloodline.
Of course… none of them were her… which may have had a little more to do with why I never accepted any of their advances.
I’ve known that I didn’t want anyone but her since I was a child.
When my people tried to push me into marrying one of the local Don women, the moment I crossed the Fennoscandian marriage age, was the one and only time in my rulership that my answer has ever been a flat ‘No’ as opposed to an ‘I’ll consider it’ or ‘I’ll take it under advisement’.
I made very clear that if they made me choose between the woman I love and the job I hate my answer would not be one that they liked (though my phrasing was a little subtler).
I don’t know what I would have done if, when I marched into her mothers’ hall and challenged Katrín, she had said ‘I’m sorry Vol, I got bored of waiting for you and moved on!’
Well, that was why I challenged her mother Katrín and not her mother Heidi or her brother Magnús.
Katrín is the only one of the three who would have been capable of defeating me in a fight. I would not have won that had she not let me win… I knew she wouldn’t have decided for her daughter, therefore, challenging her was the only way to both satisfy my people’s customs and give Ástríðr a polite way of saying ‘no’… all she would have had to do was tell her mother to defeat me resoundingly.
I didn’t expect her to let me win quite the way that she did, though… I thought she’d at least put on a bit of a show, but still… at least it let me know that Ástríðr never stopped wanting me… I hate to think of the bitter man I would have likely become, had that not been the case.
Of course the existence of Magnús Heidiarson is what meant that challenging the family to Uluanvo’al Tan was necessary at all! Had she not had a brother then Ástríðr Katrínardóttir would have been considered to be part of an ‘undefended’ household… I would have been free to approach making her my wife in whatever way I pleased! A calm discussion, getting down on one knee, throwing her over my shoulder and carrying her to a temple (though that latter would only have been acceptable by Don custom… I’m fairly certain that the Fennoscandian authorities would not have considered such a marriage to be valid(!))
A lot of my community voiced the thought that an Uluanvo’al Tan fought against a woman was not legitimate. My elder sister shut them up by inviting them to challenge Katrín themselves if they thought it would be so easy(!)
Of course, Magnús nonchalantly let it be known that, if I had challenged him, he would have yielded without allowing me to strike him (something a Don man would have never admitted to) since he knows a) how I feel about his sister b) how his sister feels about me and c) how likely he would be to be able to beat me in a fight.
I’m glad of that boy.
I’m glad of Katrín.
I’m glad of Heidi.
They so easily could have refused to take me and my sisters in.
They so easily could have made growing up a miserable experience, for us.
They so easily might have insisted that I refer to them as my ‘Mothers and Brother’ the way that Tunie does. They didn’t… they made very clear that I was welcome as family, no debts were incurred, no payment expected nor wanted and that whatever I was comfortable with calling them, that’s what I was to call them.
I’m even glad of little Helga, though she was so young when Baasa, Tunie and I became part of the family that getting her to think of us as anything but her brother and sisters was a losing proposition.
She was always a little bundle of joyful acceptance.
The one I’m most glad of, most grateful for, however… is the woman in my arms. The childhood friend who never gave up on me, no matter how much I pushed her away in the years after I became an orphan.
After how much cause I gave her, it’s a miracle that she never ceased to be my friend!
The love of my life breaks from our kiss and beams “Alright, VoVo… How about we go inside and you get a bit spoiled?”
--- Ástríðr’s perspective---
He doesn’t put me down, instead carrying me like a babe, as he strides back to our home.
I hug his upper body, tightly, and watch the slope recede away over his shoulder.
The door seals behind him and I feel the change in momentum from him hitting the bottom of the stairs and beginning to climb.
We pass the room with our daughter’s tube in, as he makes his way to our bedroom.
We enter the master-bedroom which takes up the entirety of the top floor of the palace that my Prince inherited from his parents.
A 360° panorama of windows surrounds us on all sides.
Fortunately, I know, the glass is only transparent looking out, and is completely opaque, looking in. Fortunate as, if that weren’t the case, all the Don in DonKhoru could look up and see the man they recognise as their Ruler slam his wife against the window while kissing her passionately!
All of the greediness, neediness, selfishness, that he doesn’t get to express as ‘Vol, son of Vuun, son of Tuls, rightful Ruler of Clan Oria’ he expresses with me and me alone… and I love it!
I love the greedy, little monster who sees something he wants… and simply takes it!
Making sublime use of his hexapodality, the man raises my arms over my head, pinning them there with his upper arms, while his lower two reach to my shirt and rip it open!
I give a sensual gasp in response.
By Oði-by the Father, this man is perfect!
Tall, handsome, strong, refined, polite, well mannered, handsome, intelligent, oh and the things having an extra set of arms allows… and did I mention how handsome he is? Because, fuck is he handsome!
And yet… when we’re alone, he’s able to be the greedy child he hasn’t got to be since he was 10 years old! Treating my body like a toy to be played with!
Fuck it turns me on!!!
He brings his mouth level with my eyes and gives a sinister grin, baring his fangs.
“I want your mouth, Ássi!” he states with gleeful greed.
“My mouth, along with the rest of me, is already yours, VoVo. Take it.” I smile.
He stands back up and unfastens his britches, exposing the most perfect cock in the Father’s Dominion!
I mean… not that I have a wealth of experience but… I don’t need to have ever slept with another man to know that the cock I’m currently opening my mouth for is the best… All other cocks are inferior to this one, by dint of not being attached to the perfect man!
That was something that all the men who ever sent me unsolicited dick-pics failed to realise: There’s never going to be anything so special about your dick that it will make a woman want you! There could, however, be something special enough about you to make a woman want your dick!
As I fellate my Prince, standing straight up, sandwiched between him and the window, he slides a hand behind the back of my head and begins fucking my oesophagus, his hand cushioning my skull from knocking against the glass.
I choke and moan as the perfect cock is pushed repeatedly down my throat, making squelching noises that, in any other context, would sound disgusting rather than exciting!
Without warning, he ceases using my mouth and lifts me back into the air.
He carries me from the window to the bed. I can guess that he didn’t want to waste his orgasm on my mouth and, so, is giving himself some time to cool off.
He yanks off my boots and tosses them away to clatter to the floor.
My britches are the next to go.
He takes a moment to look down on my, now mostly nude, body.
The only parts of my outfit that are Terran style (as opposed to Don style) are my bra and panties. Don underwear is neither simple to put on nor comfortable to wear, in my experience.
He tells me that he finds Terran underwear much sexier, anyway.
The only reason I dress in Don style clothes, is for appearances’ sake… that… and Don outerwear is rather stylish!
My beautiful childhood friend-cum-stepbrother-cum-husband-cum-King sheds his top layer, revealing his muscular chest and tattoos of rulership.
It was extremely weird to see Tunie’s man shirtless, earlier!
I’ve seen so few real life shirtless Human men in my life (and precisely none with muscles like that) that I kind of forgot that our muscles don’t sit the same way as Dons' do!
Being so familiar with what VoVo looks like, shirtless, Victor’s chest looked, kind of… weird… Not ugly, exactly, just offputtingly unfamiliar… which is a strange thing to have to say about your own species’ physiology!
His lowers come completely off and there stands the most wonderful 282cm of midnight blue adonis that exist!
I love his sexy body, I love his handsome face, I love his selfless, noble mind… I love him… every part of him!
---Vol’s perspective---
As my lower hands pass between my uppers, sliding off her Terran panties and grasping her ankles respectively, I admire the pale skinned woman, black lines tattooed across her body, marking her as my wife.
She is the only one in all Dominion for me!
No matter how much social pressure is placed on me I will never take a second!
She reaches underneath herself to release the catch on her bra which she throws off, leaving both of us entirely nude.
I lean over her and, with my upper hands, I grasp her wrists, pulling her arms out at 45° angles to her sides. I place my lower hands at the insides of her thighs and push her legs apart.
I bring my face close enough to her womanhood that she will feel my breath on it and look up to see her nervous face, on the far side of her heaving chest.
I bare my teeth and let my tongue loll from my mouth.
She takes a frightened, shuddering breath and I feel her pulse soar.
That’s right Ássi… both of our species are omnivores… but where yours is descended from frugivores… mine came to omnivory after a, 40 million year long, stint as obligate carnivores!
You are married to a predatory beast(!)… A beast who has identified his next prey(!)
I plunge my long tongue into the woman I’m restraining with my hands, pressing my lips against hers and using them to make her moan, pant, squeak and gasp.
Many of the older generation of my Clan (if they found the stomach to speak of it at all) would say it was ‘unmanly’ to pleasure your woman this way.
That to service her, without being directly served yourself, was an act of subordination!
Those old fogies can get fucked!
Ássi once asked me ‘What’s the one correct answer to the question; how much pussy does a King eat?’ before answering for me ‘As much as he wants!’
And this ‘King’ likes eating pussy!
I like the way she tastes, I like her smell filling my nostrils, I like the way she feels against my lips and tongue, I like the way her body tenses and relaxes, involuntarily, as I pleasure her, I love the noises she makes as my long tongue coils and uncoils inside her!
Most of all though, I love knowing that she is in pleasure and I put her there!
With how much I enjoy giving her oral, it still counts as me ‘getting spoiled’.
Her body seizes and she makes an unmistakeable *hnnggh* noise.
I pull my tongue from her with a wet sound.
I stand up and grasp the edge of the blanket, rolling her off of it onto the mattress, causing a little yelp.
Swinging the blanket over my head to drape it, cape like, around my shoulders, I mount the bed and bear down on my wife.
As I do, she scoots herself up the bed until her head rests at the pillows and her feet halfway down its length.
I drape the cover over both of us and look down at the erotically smiling woman.
I plant my upper hands above her shoulders, bearing my weight with them, and lean down to kiss her, passionately, allowing each of us to taste ourselves on the other’s mouth as my lower hands stroke up, from her outer thighs, along the sides of her trunk, to massage her breasts.
Her two, pentadactyl hands, in turn, reach up to run along my sides, her fingers tickling pleasantly as she traces them across my ribs.
I pull my lips from hers and we lock eyes.
I reach down with my lower left hand and grasp my shaft.
I use the back of my knuckles, against the inside of her leg, to guide myself towards her opening.
She’s so much smaller than me that my head has to pass well above hers in order for me to feel my tip against her lips. I need to curl my spine in order to avoid hitting my head against the headboard.
I look down into her upturned face and enjoy her mouth opening, her eyes widening and her breath hitching in a shuddering gasp as I slide myself in.
I start thrusting in and out of her, slowly at first but steadily picking up speed.
She bites her lip as I fuck her and makes delightful little *mmm**mmm**mmm* noises.
I grip her shoulders with my upper hands and bring my lowers to the sides of her face.
“I LOVE you!” I say with fierceness I only feel able to express in this room.
“I…*huh*… love…*huh*… you…*huh*… too…*huh*… VoVo!” she pants.
“You’re the only woman for me!”
“You’re…*huh*… the…*huh*… only…*huh*… man…*huh*… for…*huh*… me!…*huh*… None…*huh*… before…*huh*… none…*huh*… after…*huh*… definitely…*huh*… none…*huh*… during!”
“I Love you!”
“I…*huh*… love…*huh*… you!”
“I Love you!”
“I love…*huh*… you!”
“I Love you!”
“I…*huh*… love you!”
“I Love you!”
“I…*huh*… love…*huh*… you!”
“I love YOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU!” I proclaim, climaxing inside the perfect woman.
My orgasm appears to make her cum as well.
--- Ástríðr’s perspective---
We’ve cleaned ourselves up and now are simply lying in bed, cuddling.
VoVo clings me to his chest the way a scared child might cling to a stuffed bear.
“Sooo… has DonOlu been spared being burnt down so you can finally feel it’s warmth for another day(?)” I tease.
Eyes closed, he puffs through his nose and smiles “They’d probably create a festival in your honour if they knew that the only thing keeping me from convincing the UTC to let me pull a Commodore Perry on their arses was your magic pussy(!)”
I giggle at that.
This is the real Vol, with me in this bedroom, now.
This is the man that grew up from that boy I used to climb trees with.
The po-faced, monotone man that never has an opinionated word to say about anyone or anything, lest someone take offence, is a mask that this man doesn’t feel safe to be seen without, by anyone… except me.
The result of not feeling allowed to be himself, since he was 10.
Of course, my mums tried to give him everything he would have had from his parents but it was clear he didn’t feel able to be a child, from that day to our wedding night.
Four years since we touched like this for the first time. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.
I hope this is how Tunie’s man makes her feel.
I can’t wait for Liv’s tube to tell us she’s ready to be born.
I can’t wait for us to have a baby to whom to give the childhood that Vol had cut short.
The shift in my husband’s breathing and the slackening of his grip, around me, let me know he’s drifted off.
I pat his muscular back and whisper “Sleep well, my King, my Husband, my VoVo… Your wife will still be here, in your arms, when you wake up… then you and she will go downstairs… and she'll cook you pancakes.”