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Chapter 11 :

Something Better

Megan woke up from a deep sleep sometime around one in the morning to the sound of a truck coming up the road. Traffic this far out into the country was rare enough during the day. This late there was usually no sound at all but the wind and the crickets, so she couldn't help but open her eyes and listen.

Her hair was loose and splayed wildly in thick locks all about her head, like a blonde Medusa currently trying to consume the pillow she was resting upon. She always slept in pajama bottoms and usually the top as well, but the heat just didn't seem to burn off at night around these parts and she had shed it in favor of a sleeveless white shirt instead. At one point she remembered being under a sheet, but now it seemed to be hooked on one of her feet and mostly on the floor.

The truck slowed as it approached the farm, which started to worry her. She sat up out of bed as it stopped out by the road, the wheels clearly moving from pavement to dirt when it pulled into the farm. She immediately got up to move to the open window to look.

It was Duke.

She recognized the truck well enough what with as big and shiny as it was even in the dim light of the moon. It opened and he dropped out of it with a heavy thud as his boots hit the ground, shutting the door behind him as he slowly started taking a few steps away. He looked as though he was waiting for someone to greet him.

Soon enough Megan saw why as Clairibelle came into view.

She'd been having a lot of trouble figuring Clairibelle out, despite the fact that the pair had become close friends ever since the night they had talked on the porch. She never seemed to do much by way of work outside of the barn the way the other girls did. She slept most of the day. She wandered around most of the night. It was very unlike what she was used to from someone living on a farm like this, but no one else seemed to mind it in the least.

"Good evening, CB." Duke said, in a much more polite manner than Megan had seen from him the last time he was here.

"Evening." She said, rather indifferently, "What are you doing here?"

"I don't know, I..." He replied, looking down from her to the ground between them, "I just wanted to see you, I guess. Things didn't go so well last time."

"You called me a slut and pushed me into the dirt." She said calmly, folding her arms as she looked him over, "Jesus, Duke... Are you sober right now? How did that happen?"

"Yeah, it's been a couple..." He paused, putting his hand on his neck, "It's all gone, CB. They got all of it."

It took her a second to figure out what he meant, "Wait, you're broke? How is that possible? All the millions you've made, just gone?"

"Turns out I never had as much as I thought." He said, looking back up at her, "The people I trusted just made sure I thought I did so I wouldn't notice they were taking it all for themselves. It's all gone."

"Well now, they can't have taken everything." Clairibelle said, giving him a little shrug, "All you need to make money is a hard-on and a mason jar. Want me to spot you a loan for the jar?"

"It's not going to be that easy this time. I signed a contract, but I never read those things." He got quieter, embarrassed by what he had to admit, "They control all the seed we already stored up. I can still sell mine, but I have to charge fifty percent more than what they do until it's all used up or expires."

Clairibelle raised her eyebrows at that. She'd been with him a dozen or so times over the years and he never wasted a drop anywhere inside or out of her body. She could only imagine how much there really was, "How long does it take for spunk to go bad in the freezer?"

"About ten or twelve years, I'm told." He said with a sigh.

"Right, well... No doubt about it, then. You got fucked." She said, shaking her head, "I'm still not sure what you want me to do about that. Why are you here, Duke?"

"Well, it got me thinking." He was looking her over now like he'd just seen her for the first time, "You were the only one that never cared about my money. You never let me buy you things. You never wanted anything fancy. Maybe all this is making me realize I didn't appreciate that as much as I should have."

She watched him for a long moment, her expression still impossible to read as she gathered her thoughts. She then turned and started to walk away. At first he started to withdraw in on himself, thinking he'd just been rejected.

"Follow me." She didn't bother turning back to look at him, "There is something you need to see."

Minutes later they had made their way into the heart of the property to the bunkhouses, well out of range of Megan's eavesdropping. The left side of the building was where all the women lived together, complete with a kitchen and living area. The right...

She opened door slowly, putting a finger over her lips to keep him silent before motioning for him to follow her inside. It took him a few seconds to take stock of the room, poorly lit by a few randomly placed nightlights. Lines of little beds were all around the walls, each containing a little girl sleeping peacefully.

Suddenly it caught in his throat what he was looking at, and he leaned into whisper nervously, "How... How many are mine?"

"All of them." She said, smiling softly as she looked around the room, "Every last one of them, Duke."

"Momma?" A soft voice came from one of the beds nearby, placed closest to the door for a reason. Clairibelle was up most of the night, and she didn't want to disturb the others when she wanted to see her daughter.

"I didn't mean to wake you, Mimi." She moved over to kneel next to the bed and start tucking the little girl back in carefully, "Go back to sleep."

Duke just stood there in shock as he watched the pair. The little girl's eyes drifted back closed, a little smile on her lips as her mother kissed her on the forehead. He'd never seen this part of her before. He'd never seen the results of his profession before either, and part of him wanted to turn and run from it. The other part him also wanted to turn and run, but at least that part had enough decency to hate himself for it.

Clairibelle stood back up and shooed him out of the building, waiting until the door was closed before turning to face him.

"I don't know what kind of hopes you had coming to see me tonight." She said, folding her arms across her chest, "But that right there is why you can't keep coming here."

"I'm no father." He said, near panic in his eyes, "I mean... I just supply the white stuff. Raising kids... It wasn't part of the deal."

"No, it wasn't." She said, taking his arm in hers and beginning to lead him back out to his truck, "You provide the seed. We raise the children. No one expects you to do anything more than you've already done for them."

He nodded, allowing himself to be led easily back up the road. His mind was spinning though, "Yeah... Yeah, I..."

Clairibelle only let him stammer for a moment before cutting him off, "But if you know a way to explain to eleven little girls that they're growing up without a father because it wasn't part of the deal... I'd love to hear it. Because I've got nothing."

They walked on in silence the rest of the way back to his truck, arm in arm as she let him think. He started to calm about half of the way, and by the time they had arrived he just looked and felt beaten.

"You must really think I'm pathetic." He said as she let him go.

"I think you're a man that got too rich too fast, Duke." She said, "It made you think things about yourself that no man has a right to."

She was right, of course. He was a late change. Many of the dairy farms had already started back up again by then, and his sperm was in high demand. He was already wealthy by the time he learned to read. Already a millionaire before he knew the word for being one.

He moved to his truck, reaching up but falling short of the door handle. His hand just rest against the metal as the conflict raged through him, "Maybe I could... Do something. For them, I mean..."

"You aren't ready for that." She smiled though. It was progress, "But until then you can't keep coming back here. You don't get to disrupt their lives like that. Not unless you know you mean it."

He nodded quietly, staying like that for a long moment before reaching up to open the door of his truck.

"One more thing, Duke."

He turned to find her moving toward him, a look on her face that he had seen before. The one that said play time was over and she was ready to get down to business. As she got close, he leaned in a bit expecting she would kiss him the way she had so many times before. He wanted that right now, and his eyes closed in anticipation.

Clairibelle hauled off and slapped him right across the jaw instead, the loud smack of it echoing through the quiet night air.

"That was for calling me a slut." She said, throwing a naughty grin over her shoulder as she walked away, "You never said you were sorry."

"Shit..." He said, rubbing his face tenderly, "Sorry, CB, I..."

"I'm over it now." She called, waving a hand back at him, "See you around, Duke."

He watched her go. Eventually his shock turned into a little smile, and he realized something he thought he already knew when he came here. He didn't appreciate her as much as he should have. Not years ago, not the last time he was here, and not even minutes before she was walking away form him now. Coming here tonight wasn't a mistake he thought, but neither was leaving. He understood that now.

Duke climbed back in his truck and drove away.

Megan meanwhile had made her way to the back door of the house. There was no porch on this side like there was in the front, just three steps and a single handrail that led down to a small path by the corner of the old pasture. She looked out of the window in the door to find Clairibelle there, leaning over the roadside fence looking back at her. Waiting for her.

Megan stepped out of the house slowly, making her way towards the road to join her, "I didn't mean to listen in."

"It's alright." Clairibelle gave her a smile that was welcoming and kind, "I'm kind of glad you did. Duke's tale is not an entirely unsympathetic one. I wouldn't want you to think otherwise."

Megan leaned on a post a few feet away and took a moment to gather her thoughts. Clairibelle let her have the time, looking out over the pasture her kind had once called home.

"This is what you do, isn't it?" Megan finally said, regarding her friend curiously, "The late nights, and all. You're the one trying to keep us all safe when we can't watch out for ourselves."

"Something like that." She replied with a smile, "I'm sure you've noticed by now that we're all a little paranoid around here, and for good reason. Someone had to take on that role, and no one else is cut out for it."

Megan nodded and returned the smile, but it was a sadder one than Clairibelle's. They'd spoken about loneliness before, but she hadn't really understood how much that was true for her as well. She hadn't realized how much the time she spent apart from the others really was a sacrifice for the good of the farm.

Clairibelle was willing. Willing to be alone and lonely. She was willing to protect her friends.

"I also do hair." She added, cutting the silence with a wink, "Someone has to make these old cows look good."

Megan blinked back at her a couple of times, then couldn't help but laugh. She reached up to flip her own hair a bit somehow making it even more unruly in the process, "Maybe I should see what you can do with this mess then. I certainly never could do a damn thing with it."

"Are you kidding? This beautiful disaster you've got going on?" Clairibelle leaned back from the rail, taking a slow step over to slip her finger under a couple of the shorter woman's frizzy golden locks and lift them up, "I love this hair. I wouldn't change a thing."

Megan's smile quickly turned to a blush. Not from the comment, but from the way Clairibelle gently clamped her fingers around the last strands of hair before the could slip away. She gave them a little twirl, a more than friendly gesture to say the least as she played with it in her hand.

"CB..." Megan felt the butterflies forming in her stomach, "What are you..."

"I'm flirting." Clairibelle was as nonchalant as could be about it. She reached her hand closer now to stroke across Megan's bottom lip, the finger separated from the skin by that silky lock now wrapped around it, "Surely you know what flirting looks like."

Megan did indeed, and she couldn't help but admit she was good at it too, "Duke would have been with you, you know. You could have..."

"I know." She said, finally letting the strands of hair fall from her fingers and drawing the hand back. They met each other's gaze, "But I've found something better."

Megan's heart about lept out of her throat. She still couldn't understand this attraction she was feeling. She wasn't into women, or at least she hadn't been her entire life up until moving to the farm. She still caught herself staring at Henry from time to time and wondering what it would be like to be with him, and when she was alone the thought of being with Clairibelle seemed like a foolish bit of hedonism to her.

But like this... She never felt more wanted by anyone in her life, and it made her feel good. It made her feel loved and appreciated in a way that no one else here had. She couldn't deny that there was something between them. There was something that certainly seemed as real as she was sure it couldn't be.

"I don't know if I'm ready." Megan said, trying to force herself into reality, "I think... I think I want this, but I'm just not there yet."

Clairibelle's expression didn't change. No disappointment. No sadness. Only affection.

"Good things are worth waiting for." She said as she turned and started to walk off again, "And you should be in bed anyway. You have to be up in a few hours."

Megan watched her go, feeling almost as shocked as Duke had been when she walked away from him, and she had much the same realization as he did in the process. She hadn't appreciated Clairibelle nearly as much as she should have. That was going to change.

"Goodnight, Megan. Though if you do stay up..." Clairibelle spun around while walking, waving her hand in front of her hips a little with a wink, "Give it a little flick for me, would you?"

"Clairibelle..." Megan shook her head, as if expecting the magic moment that had just passed would be gone with that one crass gesture. Strangely she found that it was still in place, along with a little tingle up her spine at the thought of it.

"Good night, CB." Megan finally said, watching her disappear into the darkness.

She returned to her room then, flopping down hard on her back on the mattress as she thought about all she'd seen and heard that night. She could hardly believe this was her life now, and it seemed like every few days some new madness seemed normal to her.

Take this glove and fist a giant woman? Sure, why not.

Your human boss is in love with a changed cow? Well, love does conquer all.

Your daughter is having sex with a bull ten times her size? He seems nice enough.

Oh, and by the way... You're having romantic feelings for another woman, who also has horns and a tail.

"Really?" She said to herself out loud, "Is this really happening?"

It was, and she wanted it despite herself.

Her hand reached down, timidly reaching under the waistband of her pajamas and through the wild blonde curls that covered her mound. She gently started to rub her finger up and down her lips the ways she always used to start on herself back when she did this more frequently. It was the way she'd been starting on Sophie each time she now helped the big woman achieve pleasure in the barn. She pressed in a bit against the crease, letting the tip part it and slip inside enough to feel her already swollen nub waiting and ready.

Maybe just a little flick, she thought...

For Clairibelle.