Page 61 of Border Control

“I’ll see you later.” Shaking me off, Ellen strides out, tossing her plait over her shoulder.

Well, that went well.

‘I’m so sorry.’I can feel as well as hear the slam as Dom falls to his knees.

I wince. “Your poor knees!”

‘They don’t matter. All that matters is I’ve broken my word to you.’A twisting snake of shame constricts around Dom’s chest. This is deadly serious to him, and I know if I asked him to pull out his heart, he’d probably do it.

‘At once–’

“No!” I practically scream.

‘I have two hearts, you can have one–’

“No, Dom. Don't hurt yourself.” Shit. I have so much power over him, he'd literally rip out a heart for me.

I can't mess this up, either. If he gets hurt, or mentally unbalanced because of me… it'd be worse than anything.

My uterus kicks me for good measure, but the pain recedes and I can finally breathe.

‘Good,’Dom says, as if he felt that too. ‘If I may… Your wave brother will return victorious. I know, because you would prepare him well.’

“How can you be certain of that?” Was he snooping, rifling through memories?

‘I don’t need to ‘snoop.’ I’ve seen from your actions, how even when you were exhausted last cycle, you ensured I had comfort too. You have no doubt done the same for your wave brother.’

Dom’s right, in a way. I made sure John was prepped, locked and loaded. I wrote strategies for every conceivable situation, created contingencies upon contingencies.

He’ll be fine.

‘Yes. And… I have an idea on how to address this mind sync. When can we see one another tonight?’

“As soon as Ellen and Ilia go to bed, or even earlier if I’ve pissed Ellen off enough.” New fuck up to add to the tally. I’ll have to apologize, but I can’t explain why I was talking to myself apart from the blanket excuse of stressed off my tits.

‘Stressed off your…?’

I tip my head back, staring at the ceiling. The sooner I deal with the mental chorus in my head, the better. “Nevermind. I’ll meet you in the shed as soon as I can after dinner.”

Ellen wasa bit short with me at dinner but I apologized profusely and blamed the stress of the inquiry. It’s shitty that Ellen thought I’d lashed out at her, a bitter taste in my mouth at the lie because it implied I’d hurt someone else just because I was having a bad day. I’d never, ever do that, but now my character carries a horrible smudge I’ll never be able to polish away.

But at the same time, I can’t tell her the truth, because then everything else will come out: “Oh, yeah, I took Dom home last night, but I didn’t have like normal vanilla sex with him, we’re exploring this kind of kink situation which is getting wildly out of hand, but don’t worry, I’m not exploiting him.” I’ve kept my relationships separate for so long, opening up now feels… too vulnerable.

‘You do not have to disclose anything you do not want to,’Dom chips in while I’m chewing on the greens to go with Ellen’s cheese and leek pie.‘I will keep your secrets beyond my last breath.’

He isn’t listening in, he’s just perceptive. I swallow with dignity. I wish I knew how to talk back to him in my head. “We’ll talk more later,” I mutter as I wipe my mouth with a napkin.

‘To speak to me, imagine pushing the words toward me in the lean-to outside.’

I picture waving my hands around my chest, then thrusting them out like karate kid doing a move.‘Does that work?’

‘Yes, but no need to push so hard.’An image of Dom collapsing under a barrage of sound waves pops into my head.

I chuckle, stifling it in a napkin, and the image gets more exaggerated. He tries to stand up underneath, struggling to get to his feet, and then shoots me a small smile. Dom doesn’t smile very much, but when he does, it makes him very handsome indeed.

The visual splinters.‘Handsome?’

‘Yeah. Don’t let it go to your head.’Hopefully I didn’t flatten him when I sent that.