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“Oh? Where does she live on Earth?” Clear asked.
“Down in Lutz—it’s a little town on the outskirts of Tampa, Florida,” she explained.
“Oh—one of the American states in the North American continent,” Clear said, snapping his fingers. “Of course! I have heard of that place—don’t you have huge carnivorous reptiles called dinosaurs that roam around in your area?”
“Close…” Melanie smothered a smile. “The dinosaurs have actually been extinct for something like eighty million years. But we do still have alligators in Florida and they can get pretty big and scary.”
“That’s too bad,” Clear said, looking disappointed. “I wanted to see some dinosaurs. Especially the Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
“Well, we could take a trip to Gator Land,” Melanie offered. “There are no T-rexes, but they do have gator wrestling.”
Clear frowned.
“I never said I wanted to wrestle with a dinosaur—just see one. There are humans who actually do that?”
“Sure.” Melanie shrugged. “People do all kinds of weird things. That’s humans for you.”
“I suppose. I’m still learning about human culture but it’s so complex…” Clear shook his head. “So are you going to spend the holiday with your mother’s sister?”
“Aunt Marge? Yeah, I am. She’s the only family I’ve got left now that—” She stopped abruptly.
“Now that what?” Clear asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Oh, since my divorce.” Melanie made a shooing gesture, as though to push the unhappy memory aside. “It’s nothing,” she added. “I don’t even think about it anymore.”
“But it is something…” Clear stepped forward and lifted her chin so that their gazes met. “I can see it in your eyes,” he murmured. “This…di-vorce hurt you, didn’t it?”
He pronounced “divorce” like it was a strange and foreign word he didn’t completely understand and his eyes searched hers curiously.
Melanie could feel her heart thudding against her ribs. The big Kindred’s touch was so soft and gentle on her chin and his eyes were so kind and concerned. She couldn’t remember the last time Steve had looked at her like that—if he ever had to begin with.
“It…was painful, yes,” she admitted breathlessly. “The worst part of it was that I found out my ex-husband had been cheating on me for years. He—” She stopped abruptly.
Way to overshare and scare the poor guy away, Melanie! whispered a little voice in her brain.
“He what?” Clear asked, still concerned.
“He was a jerk.” Melanie shrugged. “But what can you do? It’s over and I’m getting over it.”
This was another phrase her therapist had taught her and it really helped to say it out loud once in a while.
“I just don’t understand it,” Clear murmured, releasing her chin but still looking into her eyes. “I don’t understand how humans can leave their mates and go looking for someone else. Even less understandable is the idea that a male would ‘cheat’ as you put it, on a lovely female like you.”
Melanie looked away, breaking eye-contact at last.
“Men cheat all the time. Are you telling me that the Kindred are really that different?”
“Yes, of course.” Clear sounded shocked that she would even ask. “We are bonded to our mates in the most permanent way and on the most basic level. The idea of seeking sexual or emotional satisfaction from another female would be…” He shook his head, as though looking for an analogy that fit. “It would be like me cutting off my hand and trying to find another I liked better to sew in its place. Do you see?”
“I suppose…” Melanie tried to smile. “I guess we humans must seem pretty strange to you, huh? Between our weird Christmas traditions and the alligator wrestling and the cheating…”
“I have a much easier time understanding Christmas and wrestling with deadly reptiles than I do the concept of divorce and cheating,” Clear admitted.
“But, well…” Melanie started, then shook her head. “No, never mind.”
“What is it?” Clear said, frowning.
“Well, it’s just…on the subject of cheating…” Melanie took a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t opening a can of worms. “Since Twin Kindred share a mate, doesn’t it feel like…like she’s cheating on you when you, uh, see her with your brother? Your twin?”
“Well first, a Twin Kindred cannot touch a female sexually unless his twin is also touching her—not without pain,” Clear said. “And second, no, it doesn’t feel like cheating because she is bound to both twins and the bond they share is between all three of them.”
“So…if you were, uh, bonded to a woman and you saw your brother kissing her or…or touching her, it wouldn’t bother you at all?” Melanie raised an eyebrow at him. “I mean, that’s hard to believe. Maybe because human men are usually so unwilling to, er, share the way you guys do.”
Clear shrugged, his big shoulders rolling under the plain green t-shirt he was wearing.
“My brother’s pleasure is mine. And my pleasure is his. We feel it all through our link and share it as we do all things in life.”
