We’ve been back at the estate for two weeks, and as I hold the little plastic test in my hand I can’t deny the rising tide of excitement in my belly. I was supposed to start my period four days ago, and with each passing day my excitement has grown.

I re-read the instructions again, worried that I’ll do something to mess it up. It’s why I bought three of them. No matter what I’m going to take the test at least twice, making sure of my results.

Still, as I hold the cup underneath me while I try and urinate, I can’t help but worry. I fill the plastic cup and set it aside it carefully before finishing my toileting, placing it on the counter and cleaning myself up. I uncap the first test and dip it in the cup before recapping it and taking the second test and repeating the process. I’m holding the third, a different brand, in reserve just in case I get different responses on these two tests.

Closing my eyes, I count to one hundred before looking down at the two tests. Both of them are blue… they’re positive. I scoop them up, grinning for a moment, eager to show Rick before a tremor of fear ripples through me. For the past few weeks, ever since promising to take me on vacation, Rick’s been so nice. Sleeping with him is about more than just the sex, as amazing as it’s been.

I’ve spent three weeks waking up in his arms, feeling better than I have the whole time I’ve been in America. I’ve enjoyed getting to know Rick, even to the point that sometimes he’s let me in on his research. I never thought I’d enjoy sitting around a lab as Rick does his work, but I’ve enjoyed a lot of it.

But what happens now? Rick was honest when he said he wanted to spend more time with me, and to let us relax. He wanted to help me get pregnant. He thought that by us having less stress on us, that we’d both be able to ‘perform,’ I guess you could say.

And he was apparently right. The two tests in my hand say that I’m pregnant. But what happens now? While I’m sure that Rick will take care of me physically, I’ll probably be the most well looked after expectant mother on the planet, what happens to us?

I look in the mirror, worried. I’ve come to like being here. I’ve come to like being with Rick. I don’t want to say it, but I like him. And I want to keep doing things with him, to be by his side. The past few days I’ve helped with his morning stiffness by giving him long massages with warm oil. Sure, it started off as a playful way to get in the mood for sex in the morning, but even on the days when we haven’t had sex I’ve rubbed him down. Rick swears it helps, but it might just be a placebo.

Rick’s returned the favor too. Whether it’s silly things like jumping in the water after a cheap fishing rod, or cooking dinner at the cabin, or last night enjoying key lime pie together as we watched a movie, he’s made me feel a part of his life.

What happens now? Am I going to be shunted off to the way I was the first few weeks I was in America, seen once or twice a day and ignored the rest of the time? I know that Rick has other pressing matters. I understand his issues with Harvey Stone now, and I know he wants to get as much of the work done on this solar energy project as he can. Now that I’m pregnant, am I to become a project to be put in maintenance mode?

“I can’t hide this from him,” I whisper to the scared woman looking back at me from the mirror. “If anything, he’s got to be wondering why I haven’t told him about my period. If I don’t say anything, he’s going to ask about it himself sooner or later.”

I nod to myself and put the tests in the pocket of the sweatshirt I’m wearing. It seems strange, I’ve only been in America three months… but the weather’s changed so much. When I got here, it was the hottest days of summer, and children were still on summer vacation. Now, there’s a sharp chill in the air most mornings and at night, and soon those children will be celebrating Halloween. Rick even mentioned getting some costumes and going to a local school carnival to participate and to pass out candy.

I’d still like to do that. I walk through the house, looking for Rick in his lab but not finding him. He’s been spending less time there, usually just an hour or two a day recently, as we’ve spent more time together. Still, it’s about that time of day where he gets ideas, so it was worth a trip. I move on, but before I find him I find Freida, who’s looking flustered. “Hello Freida.”

“Su Lin, have you seen Rick?” she asks, stopping when I shake my head. “What’s wrong?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing. You first.”

Freida shrugs, holding up her tablet computer. “Just some documents that corporate headquarters wants signed and back twenty minutes ago. Of course they only sent it a half hour ago. What about you?”

Instead of saying anything I pull out the two pregnancy tests, showing them to Freida, who grins and gives me a hug. “I knew you had it in you. But… you don’t look all that happy.”

“I’m just worried,” I admit. “I… I like the amount of time I’ve spent with Rick. I don’t want to lose that.”

Freida gives me a small smile, and another hug. “I don’t think that’ll happen. Call it woman’s intuition, call it wishful thinking, but I think you’ll be surprised.”

I hug Freida back, letting go when I hear familiar footsteps in the hallway and I turn to see Rick approaching, his tank top soaked through with sweat. “Hello ladies.”

“Well, I guess we know where you’ve been,” Freida quips as she holds out her tablet. “Here. Nothing important, I already sent in your reply on the questions, but they wanted your signature at the bottom.”

Rick reads the text quickly and scribbles his signature at the bottom with a stylus before handing it back. “Thanks. How’re you doing, Su Lin?”

“I’m… I’m pregnant,” I stammer, holding out the tests. Rick doesn’t even look at them, but looks in my eyes, a broad grin spreading on his face. He steps closer and picks me up, hugging me tightly and kissing me passionately. I’m laughing, giggling as his kisses go from my lips to ticklish points along my neck and he spins me around.

“Well, that answers that question,” Freida says, giving me a knowing wink. “Okay, I’ll go send this in to corporate.”

Freida leaves as Rick sets me down, still grinning. “You’re sure?”

I hand him the two tests, Rick looking at the windows in awe for a moment before placing his right hand on my belly. “Rick… I know that this might change things, but-”

Rick pushes me gently against the wall, kissing me and running his hand lower, cupping me between my legs through my jeans. I whimper, stunned at his reaction as his tongue swirls around mine. I wrap my arms around his neck as he lifts me, the hard pressing of his cock against my moistening mound already making me tremble. “Come on… let’s go celebrate.”

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” I ask as I look at myself in the mirror. I feel both ridiculous and powerful dressed like this, a long nearly skin-tight dress with wine red trim at the waist, a cleavage enhancing padded bra that makes me look almost two cup sizes bigger, and platform heels that make almost six feet tall.

“You look amazing,” Rick reassures me as he adjusts his jacket. He’s got grayish-green face paint all over his face and a shoulder-padded jacket. “I’m the one who looks like a monster.”

“You wanted to look like Frankenstein,” I reply as I put on my makeup. Black eyeliner, deep blackish red lipstick, and a set of blood red ruby earrings. “Who am I supposed to be?”

“Oh, some people will think we’re going for a whole Munsters vibe,” Rick says as he attaches the bolts to his neck and checks his fake scars, “but I just thought you’d look so sexy as a vampire, and I’ve always wanted to be Frankenstein. I didn’t even make the connection until Freida brought it up.”

I attach the fake teeth to my canines, grinning at myself. These aren’t cheap toy store plastic teeth, Rick put out good money to make sure our costumes are Hollywood quality, including porcelain temporary caps for my mouth. They don’t slide around at all, and while the long fangs make my bottom lips bulge a little, they don’t hurt and I think I’ll be able to talk relatively normally. I turn to Rick, cocking my hip. “How do I look?”

Rick looks over at me, his eyes widening. “Like I want to skip the party.”

I smile seductively and sashay over to him, we’re nearly the same height in my heels, and give him a light kiss on the cheek. “Be careful, later on I might want to suck your… blood.”

Rick laughs, running a hand through my hair. “Or something else?”

I smile, cupping his crotch and massaging until he’s hard and throbbing in his pants. “Maybe. But I’ll take the fangs out first.”

We leave our bedroom, and I feel happy as we walk downstairs, because it has become our bedroom. While I still have my walk-in closet with all my clothes in it in my old room, for the two weeks since I told Rick about my pregnancy, we’ve grown even closer. He’s showered me with a hundred little kindnesses on an almost daily basis, from getting me pickles at two in the morning simply because I wanted them to driving me personally to my first pre-natal appointments.

I feel closer to Rick, and he hasn’t shunned me at all since I became pregnant. If anything, we’ve become more affectionate, and sex has become… well, even more amazing. The things the man can do with his tongue should be legendary tales that are passed down to all young men in a solemn ceremony upon entering puberty so that they know what a woman really wants.

Rick stops as we come down the steps to the foyer, and I look to see a beautiful woman in a sexy suit and skirt looking up at us. “Well now, that isn’t what I expected.”

“What are you doing here?” Rick asks, coming down the stairs ahead of me. There’s more than a hint of anger in his voice, but he keeps himself mostly under control. “You don’t come out to this part of the country often.”

“No, but I had an old sorority sister who’s getting married up in Minneapolis of all places, and Daddy wanted me to check on a few of his investments while I’m out here,” the woman says, reaching out and running her hand over Rick’s jacket. “I gotta tell you Rick, not too many guys can pull that off without a ton of padding in their costumes. You though… you could probably give the real Frankenstein a run for his money.”

“Again, what brings you here?” Rick asks. I make it the rest of the way down the stairs, but both Rick and the woman ignore me as she looks at him like she wants to rip his costume off and fuck him right there in the hallway.

“Can’t I just check on an old… friend?” she asks, cutting laughing, sarcastic eyes my way. “Since seeing you in New York, I realized it’s been a while since I saw where you lived.”

“I don’t think so,” Rick says. “Now, if you don’t mind….”

“I’ve got papers Daddy wants you to look at,” the woman says quickly. “It’s… it’s for his charity, Rick. I told him there’s no way in hell you’d want to give money to anything connected to me, but he insisted.”

Rick sighs, and the woman smiles again. “What for?”

“The charity? It’s kids,” the woman says. “Healthcare, education, all that sort of stuff. I have the paperwork, and if you could take a few minutes. I promise just a few.”

Rick looks at his watch, then nods, sighing. “Fine. Su Lin, if you could have Freida drive you to the school, I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

They leave without me even having a chance to get a word in edgewise, and I feel the fear creep into me again as the woman looks over her shoulder at me, giving me another laughing, evil glare. She tosses me a sarcastic lick of her lips, and I know exactly what she’s thinking about.

A moment later Freida comes out of the same door Rick and the woman went through, dressed in her own costume, a fairy princess. “Rick said you needed a ride to the school?”

I nod, not saying anything as Freida leads me towards the door and out into Halloween afternoon sunshine. “You know, we should look at getting you a driver’s license, if you want,” Freida says as we climb into her car, a regular Toyota of all things. “Not that I don’t mind driving you around.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmur, looking out the window back at the house. “Freida… who was that woman?”

Freida glances over at me and sighs. “That was Amanda Rhett. Why?”

“She was looking at Rick like he was a piece of meat. And he didn’t introduce me, he just sort of ignored me-”

“Stop,” Freida says, not harshly but with firmness. “Rick didn’t say anything because Amanda, more than anything else, pisses him off now. As for her looking at him, ever since they broke up she’s been wanting to get back in Rick’s bed. She thinks she can fuck her way to being a billionaire.”

“So Rick wouldn’t… you know?”

Freida shakes her head. “Su Lin, I can’t say anything a hundred percent. I can say that Rick would never, ever stray on you with some low class slut like Amanda Rhett. He probably went with her because he wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. He writes her a check for a hundred grand or something, and she goes away. That’s all there is to it.”

I think, then nod. “Sort of like how I’d feel if my mother or stepfather came to visit.”

Freida nods. “Have they communicated with you at all?”

I shake my head, looking back out the window. “No. All my family is now in America, as well as my future. If they do reach out to me… well, we’ll see, but I doubt it would be a pleasant visit. I would need Rick’s strength… or yours.”

“I’ll be there if you need me,” Freida says. “Come on, let’s go have some fun and give candy to children. Remember, Halloween is about pretend frights, not about real ones.”

I nod, forcing a smile. Real frights? Freida’s right about those. Because, while I can’t admit it verbally… I’m starting to have feelings for Rick. My anger at Amanda’s presence wasn’t just about my petty fears, or petty jealousy. It was because I don’t want to share my man with anyone else, and I certainly don’t like the way she was looking at him.

It’s more than just physical now, and that worries me. How am I supposed to have feelings for a man who’s dying?