Chapter 10
Don Greco slumped into his favourite armchair and gave a great sigh. In his hand he held a tumbler of whisky. It was his third one that evening.
They wouldn't be expecting him at the power plant the next day. They never did, the day after the anniversary. He'd come home from an honest day's work and went straight for the bottle.
He rested his forehead in his hand and shut his eyes. Thoughts and images he normally repressed, he would allow himself to have on that one day of the year: the wedding anniversary of he and his wife, Alessia's mother.
Nine years he and Nadia had spent together, happily married, and then one more with a growing distance forming between them. Then, on the day of their tenth anniversary, it all finally came apart.
At least he had his sweet Alessia. He saw so much of Nadia in her, especially now that she was a young woman. She, like her mother, was a twice. Oh, how fortunate Don was to have snagged a twice, even if he wasn't able to keep her for good. Things could have been very different, and he so much happier, if his beautiful, highly coveted wife hadn't been taken from him.
***
"Alright sweetie, have a good day at school."
"I will, daddy."
"Okay. Off you go." Don gave his little Alessia a pat on the shoulder and she zipped off toward her elementary school. He smiled at the adorable sight of her running on her tiny legs, her bushy brown curls trailing behind her and bouncing off her pink backpack.
He rose off his knees and turned toward his vehicle. He had a big day planned. As he walked over to it the proximity sensor detected him and opened the plasti-glass bubble over the passenger area. He clambered inside and buckled himself in.
On the passenger seat: A bouquet of alien flowers, a rare and beautiful genus that he'd picked out on the fringe. Their type only bloomed once a year, and he'd kept them in cryo in anticipation of that day. There was a note tied to them:
Dear Nadia, meet me at The Devonsleigh, 8 pm. Reservation for two.
It was the finest restaurant in town, and he'd been pinching pennies for a month so they could afford that dinner. Alessia would stay at her aunt's that night. He started up his vehicle and lifted away.
His Nadia had been very busy as of late, with her always so occupied being the liaison between Mu's little government and the goddesses of the technologically inclined southern continent, Eva Australis. Diplomacy between them and the human colony had once been rare, for the people of Mu had formed their colony under the mandate that they be removed from the influence of immortals. Nevertheless their recent trade dealings had been very beneficial for Mu, for the goddesses had made several technological advancements since their people had parted.
The trade dealings between the two nations had made her a very important person, though with the cost of her rarely being around for her husband and daughter. For the past year she'd been rising at dawn to make preparations, only to return home just in time for dinner and bed. It must have taken a toll on her mind, for even when she was around Don she seemed distant and distracted. Even, at times toward him, slightly cold.
It was barely the marriage they used to enjoy, and he missed her so. He hoped dinner that night could be a taste of how things once were for them, when their love was young and they had time to just be together.
He was soon nearing the government building, where she'd already been at work for nearly two hours. He set his vehicle down in the guest parking lot and made his way inside the unassuming little brown brick structure. Someday Mu would have to upgrade to something grander -- it must have looked pitiful to their immortal visitors, who were more used to the astounding technological and architectural wonders of their nation. Life in the fledgling colony of Mu was comparatively simple, to the point of nearing 21st century standards of primitivity.
As he walked into the lobby he felt himself shudder. There were surely goddesses nearby. He'd never seen one in the flesh but he'd heard enough about them to know that he didn't like them. The receptionist, whose very job was yet another 21st century throwback, was busy with a network call. After a moment she paused the call and looked up to him:
"Hello Mr. Greco, are you looking for your wife?"
"Yes, ah, if you could just have these brought to her," he said holding out the bouquet.
"Awh," the receptionist said, though her nose seemed to wrinkle as she recognized the odd choice of flowers -- alien blossoms? How dirty, how eccentric! She seemed to recoil slightly. "You could actually do that yourself. You're ah, more than welcome to... you know where her office is."
"Of course I do. I'll do just that."
She gave him a deliberate smile and returned to her call.
As he neared her office he heard her voice coming from the conference room just ahead of it. He'd wanted someone else to bring the flowers to her office because he'd meant it to be a surprise. Not wanting to ruin it he stopped and took a step back, putting himself out of view. From what he could hear it was his wife and another woman in there.
"You're late to our meeting, Miss Dennis," his wife said, though her tone wasn't at all impatient. She sounded quite humoured, in fact.
"Yeah, sorry about that Miss... Greco, was it?"
"Please, call me Nadia."
"Okay. Since we're on a first name basis you can call me Alene."
The door to the conference room was carelessly pushed by one of them, shutting itself to just a little more than a crack. After making sure the coast was clear, Don peered through it.
"So you have a demand for lab equipment here in Mu, you say."
"Yes. I understand you personally specialize in bio engineering, so I reached out to you. If we could just have a sample of your equipment, we could reverse engineer it and make our own."
The woman Nadia spoke to was every bit as beautiful as she, perhaps even more so. "Shit," Don breathed to himself as he looked her over. She was of European ancestry and had dark hair, held in a ponytail, and though she was dressed conservatively as he looked at her in profile view he could see that she had a killer figure beneath. She looked to be no older than her early twenties. She was far too perfect to be human.
"I don't think you'll be able to reverse engineer our equipment, not unless we gave you the factory that makes it as well. The scale of the components is far too small, you see," said the goddess.
"Oh. Maybe we could just purchase a couple units from you then? Anything would help. We have people here that want to do the work, but no facilities."
"I suppose that might be arranged... with your negotiating skills, that is. I've heard you're exceptionally good at that."
Nadia nodded. "That I am. There's a reason they've chosen me for this job. I have a way of showing your kind that, at times, they're very welcome here."
The goddess chuckled. "Oh? Why... why don't you show me, then."
With a demure giggle Nadia stepped back, placing herself more plainly in the goddess' view. She undid her hair, letting her dirty blonde locks spill free, then shrugged out of her jacket and began to unbutton her blouse. Don's jaw dropped. What was his wife, the love of his life, doing?!
Beneath she'd worn her favourite lingerie, lingerie he'd bought her years before. He was pretty sure their Alessia had been conceived while she'd worn them. They'd always looked amazing on her, accentuating her slender waist, her fulsome chest. It was his good taste that had known how well they suited her, and now she was using that lingerie to seduce a goddess!
She stepped out of her skirt, leaving herself in just sheer leggings gartered to a thong that disappeared into her sleek rear. Her chest was abounce within the springy straps of her lacy bra. He was seeing that she filled the cups even more than the last time he'd seen her wear it, and yet the womanly sag she'd gained after their daughter's nursing was gone. With time she'd never become any less beautiful to his eyes, but now she was tight and trim from head to toe and looking more astonishing than ever before.
That was not the body of a thirty-nine year old. He could see the changes. The goddesses had already began to transform her. They'd been using her for a while.
"Ooh, I like what I see," said Alene in more hushed tones. "If you'll excuse my lack of professionalism, I think I..." her voice trailed off as she began to fidget with her slacks.
Nadia's eyes were already set on the point of Alene's discomfort, and she soon dropped to her knees in front of her to quickly undo her slacks. As they fell to her ankles the goddess moaned a sigh of relief and began to unbotton her top, her member having erupted out from its captivity to sway partially aroused before Nadia.
It was very big. Don's wife gave a deep moan of desire, and in an instant wrapped both her hands around it while setting the end of it in her mouth. The goddess soon had herself stripped bare and was standing in nude perfection before Nadia, watching with her hands on her hips and a confident smile as she grew hard.
Now it was huge. Monstrous. The tales of goddesses, Don saw, were no exaggeration. His wife was moaning in lust, apparently deeply infatuated with what the goddess wielded. She was running her lips along the side of her shaft, to and away from where it began, traversing a length that, should the goddess have raised her leg, would have easily approached her knee. Eventually she reached the tip and took it as deep into her mouth as she could, and the goddess set her hand in her sandy hair to hold her in place as she began to buck her hips.
The gagging sounds Nadia made almost had him retching in horror. He was flabbergasted, barely able to process what he was seeing. He was beginning to step away from the door.
"Hey, what are you doing over there? You can't be here! Security!" A frumpy looking desk worker had noticed him. "Security, remove that man!"
***
The red-hot rage he'd been in when he left the government building was so intense that he only remembered fragments of his trip home: glimpses of himself yelling, crying out in futility and smashing his fists on the dashboard until it cracked. He was glad his Alessia was still at school, and that her aunt would be picking her up after. He didn't want to be seen by her while he was in that state.
His beautiful wife, his daughter's mother. Diplomacy between Mu and the goddesses had devolved into workplace prostitution. How long had it taken for things to degrade to that point? Months? Days? It all made so much sense that he felt foolish for not having suspected it sooner. His beloved Nadia, a twice of such allure that the goddesses would desire her, had become so distant to he and his daughter because she'd been under their spell for who knew how long. She'd been whored off to the goddesses in exchange for knowledge and goods.
The immortals truly were vile, evil beings, and his government was little better. They'd wrecked his home.
***
Don pinched the skin between his eyebrows and gave a weary sigh. He took another draw of his whisky and savoured the sweet burn's numbing caress.
After that day they'd never seen Nadia again. One of her staffers must have explained to her that they'd found her husband spying on her while she was at work... and so ended her family life. It would have been only a matter of months after then that she ceased to be human, anyway. Nadia was dead to Don.
The hardest part had been explaining to Alessia that her mother had left. The little girl, then only eight, could barely comprehend the thought of life without her mother. Don still hadn't told her the truth of what she'd become.
The door to their home opened and in strode Don and Nadia's daughter, all grown up ten years to the day since the times her father was so ruefully reminiscing upon. "Alessia," Don said, his voice husky from the hours of silent drinking.
She saw him sitting in his chair, a glass in his hand and sad memories creasing his aging face. She knew what day it was. "Oh, daddy." She bent to give a comforting daughterly hug.
"Alessia, my baby. I love you so much." He held her tight and deeply inhaled the smell of her hair. "You're everything to me, my world."
