“You have been on dates with us both.”
“Please, never take me to the opera again.”
He laughed, but again it was that careful laugh, delightful to hear, but it was still camouflage.
“Asher does like what is now called highbrow culture more than you do.”
“The complete Tchaikovsky Sleeping Beauty made me want to hurt myself, and I thought I liked ballet.”
“Most people like selections of the well-known ballets but have no idea how much has been cut for time.”
I might have had to admit I was totally uncultured, but a knock at the door saved me. I started to ask who it was, but just thinking about asking, I could feel Nicky on the other side of the door, and . . . Cynric.
“Why is Sin with him?” I asked out loud.
“I do not know,” Jean-Claude said, and called, “Come in, Nicholas.”
The door opened and Nicky’s broad shoulders filled it as he walked through, but there were a few inches of dark hair over his head, because Sin was the taller of the two.
“I’ve told you before, Jean-Claude, it’s just Nicky. It’s not short for anything.”
“I am sorry, Nicky, but it seems too little a name for the man you have become.”
He shrugged as much as his shoulder muscles would allow. “My maternal grandfather’s name was Nicholas, the bitch who called herself my mother was named Nicole after him, and I was named Nicky after both of them. Let me just say while we’re on the topic that I know that Nathaniel wants to name a boy Nicholas, after his dead brother, but I’d rather not.”
“What boy are we naming?” I asked.
“Now you’ve done it,” Cynric said.
“Sin, it is always lovely to see you, but we have personal matters to discuss with Nicky,” Jean-Claude said.
“Are you saying that Nathaniel is picking out baby names?” I asked.
“You know he has baby fever,” Nicky said.
“Picking out names is a little more than baby fever,” I said.
“Nathaniel wants a family, Anita—you know that,” Sin said.
“Yeah, and if he could get pregnant we could talk about it, but since I’m the only womb in the relationship it’s not happening.”
“You aren’t the only girl anymore,” Sin said.
I looked at him, ready to be mad at Nathaniel for picking out names for a baby I hadn’t agreed to have, but any target would do. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that when Nathaniel talked about wanting a baby, Fortune was there last time and said she might be willing.”
“To have Nathaniel’s baby?” I asked.
“It didn’t get that far, but she’s never had a baby, and if she and Echo feel safe enough she might consider it, that’s all.” Sin held his hands out in a little push-away gesture.
“I guess I’ll talk to her on the plane about babies,” I said, and I was really angry and some other emotion was in there. I realized that the thought of Nathaniel having a baby with another woman bothered me, a lot. Damn it, I was not breeding!
“I didn’t mean to start a fight, Anita. You made it sound like your objection to babies is getting pregnant. I thought knowing that one of the other women in our poly group was willing to get pregnant would solve things, not make you mad,” Sin said.
“Well, it didn’t solve things,” I said, and I sounded pissed. Damn it.
“Ma petite, we do not have time for an argument if you are to feed before you get on the plane.”
“Besides, the kid is right,” Nicky said. “If your only objection was needing someone else to get pregnant, it would solve the problem.” He was watching me, and something about the way he was doing it let me know that he was feeling exactly what I was feeling. I couldn’t feel his emotions the way I could if I dropped my psychic shielding with Jean-Claude, or even Cynric, but I also couldn’t keep Nicky from sensing my emotions the way I could the others. As my Bride, Nicky was compelled to keep me happy. It literally seemed to cause him discomfort if not pain to feel me unhappy. He never seemed to share what he sensed from me with any of the other people in our lives, but the look in his eyes said that he, of all of them, knew exactly why I was upset.
“It’s really hard to get in the mood sometimes when this kind of topic comes up,” I said, and my voice still held an edge of anger, but mostly I sounded peevish and whiny, and I hated hearing that in my own voice. I could do better than this. I had told Nathaniel that if he could get pregnant we could talk about babies more seriously. It had been my way of dropping the topic, but one thing I hadn’t considered when we added other women to our poly group was that I wasn’t the only one who could get pregnant now. I also hadn’t expected how bad it made me feel to think of someone else carrying Nathaniel’s child. I still didn’t want to be pregnant, but I didn’t want him to do it with anyone else, which made no sense at all. But one thing I’d learned in therapy was that just because a feeling made no sense didn’t make you stop feeling it.
“I didn’t mean to make things harder, or weirder,” Cynric said.
Nicky gave him a look that said he doubted that last part. He didn’t give Cynric looks like that much, so something was up. “Go ahead, kid. Tell them what you want that doesn’t make things harder, or weirder.”
“You make it sound like I’m wrong.”
“I didn’t say you were wrong. I just didn’t say you were right.”