by Simply BWWM
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what to do! I don’t want to give you up completely, Connor. I’ve already given up intimacy with you, and that’s been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever given up,” he nodded in sincere agreement with her, “but to give up seeing you at all from now on… I just don’t know if I can do it, but I’ve never disobeyed my father when he has made such a strong rule about something.
“I’d be going completely against him if I was to keep seeing you, even in class! I’ve been so broken up about it. I just don’t know what to do!” She wept and he wiped the tears from her cheeks gently.
“I don’t know if you are even going to have to worry about it. It looks like I will most likely lose my job here at the school. I’m already on suspension, so there is a stand-in teacher taking over my classes until the investigative board decides what to do with me.”
His thoughts went to the demands that Deborah Hargrove had made of him, either to marry her or be fired, and though he had not given her any kind of answer, he felt sure that he would rather let his job go than save it and have to be married to her.
“I’m so sorry about your job, Connor. This is your life, here at this school. You’re one of the best teachers here! I can’t believe they’d even consider letting you go! I feel like I caused all of this. You never would have come after me. It was me that started this when I kissed you in the hot tub at the hotel. You never wanted it to begin with!” she told him sorrowfully.
His mind went back to the night in the hot tub and visions of her in her red bikini filled his mind, and his body responded in kind; his stomach and thighs grew tight and warm, and he felt himself beginning to get hard.
“Oh, you weren’t the only one who wanted it, Catalina, I was so attracted to you, so drawn to you. I wanted you just as much as you wanted me, and I was definitely a willing participant in the hot tub, and in our bed in the hotel room,” he told her softly as he leaned near to her.
She had been aching for him so much, that to feel him near her again like he was, was too much for her to resist. “Do you still… want me?” she asked quietly, her eyes locked on his jade green eyes.
“More than anything,” he whispered, closing the space between them and kissing her softly. His mouth moved hungrily over hers as yearning for her saturated him and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him. She slid her arms around his neck and pulled him close, kissing him back as fervently as he kissed her.
He moaned softly and lifted his lips from hers for a moment, looking at her intently. “I’m never going to get enough of you.” He closed his mouth over hers again. She gave in to the dizziness and heady desire that had begun to overwhelm her and she traced her tongue along his, losing herself in the wonder of being in his arms.
“I missed this so much!” she whispered as his mouth moved over her cheek and down her neck. His hands went to her waist and he lifted her, pulling her onto his lap so that she faced him. She slid her knees up close to his hips and leaned down to kiss him deeper.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” she asked him breathlessly.
He laughed coolly at the irony. “Why not? What are they going to do to us if they find out?” he asked a little sarcastically. “They are already trying to take you away from me,” he said as he pulled her blouse from her body and slipped her bra off, revealing her breasts which were only bare long enough for him to stare at for a moment before he caressed them and kissed them passionately.
“They are taking my job away from me, they are telling you that you can’t ever see me again, hell, for all we know, this will be the last time that we are ever together again.” He breathed against her skin as his tongue and mouth moved over all of her flesh that he could get to. His hands canvassed her back, holding her to him as they kissed.
Her heart felt like it was breaking inside of her. He was right. Everyone was trying to pull them away from each other, and it seemed like all of them combined against her and Connor would only ensure a defeat for the two of them. Tears rolled down her cheeks and Connor looked up from her breasts and saw them. He shook his head and kissed each one away.
“Don’t cry, baby, please don’t cry. If this is our last time together, I want it to be beautiful. Please don’t cry.” He took her face in his hands. “Kiss me… please kiss me. Just lose yourself in me and we’ll pretend that no one exists right now but you and I,” he told her, and it sounded like the best idea in the world to her.
She kissed him more passionately than she ever had and he groaned and shifted beneath her, pulling her further up onto his groin. He was hard with desire and as his hands reached underneath the hem of her skirt, pushing it up all the way over her hips, he brought her down on top of his erection, rubbing it against her satin panties as he sucked on her nipples and began to rock himself against her.
“Make love with me!” she pleaded with him.
He leaned up and kissed her mouth fervently. “I am going to make love with you until neither one of us can move. The door is locked. No one is coming in, and no one is going to stop us from having this time together,” he promised her as he pulled her clothes from her body and did the same for himself.
Minutes later they were laying together on his sofa, their skin hot and moist, their bodies hungry for one another, and he was nestled in between her thighs, his tongue teasing her and driving her wild with pleasure and happiness as he made her come in his mouth once, and then again before he released her and moved his hips up against hers. He looked down at her as he thrust himself inside of her, staring at her face and knowing that there was no woman on the planet that he wanted or desired more than her.
The feel of her body hot and tight around his erection made him gasp and shut his eyes, and he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her hungrily as he moved in her, burying himself all the way in her and making her cry out softly with the intensity of the pleasure coursing through her.
She rocked her hips hard against his, and they made love together for a long while, clinging together as they moved from one end of the couch to the other, wrestling in their lovemaking, sharing everything that was on fire within them, until neither one of them could hold back any longer.
They came together, crying out and holding each other fast as he filled her with his orgasm, flooding her, and she sighed in release, her lips touching his gently at long last, before she rested her head on his shoulder and tried to catch her breath.
They laid together on the sofa for a long while, holding and touching each other, savoring every moment together, and as the light outside of the window began to grow faint, he moved in between her legs and made love with her again, more sweetly and lovingly than their wild and passionate encounter earlier.
They held each other tightly as the last of their orgasms spelled out the end of their affair. They wiped tears from each other’s eyes, and slowly disentangled themselves from one another, quietly pulling their clothes back on and kissing each other over and over as she made her way slowly to the door.
They were careful not to touch or kiss once the door was opened, and with a long last look, they whispered goodbye, and she turned and left him, and he closed the door behind her, unable to watch her walk away from him.
When the door was shut, he leaned against it and slid down the length of it until he was sitting on the floor, and there he stayed with his head in his hands and tears on his cheeks, wondering how in the world he was ever going to talk himself into believing that letting her walk out was the right thing to do.
Chapter9
Days passed slowly, one after the next, each one seeming to last forever as Catalina forced herself to go on with her life. She made herself get up out of bed every morning. She readied herself for school, and she went to all of the same classes that she had been going to, but Connor was no longer at the front of the class, looking back at her with those jade green eyes, gazing at her longingly.
There were new teachers that taught his
classes, and rumors flew around the campus as to where he had gone and why. She wouldn’t listen to the rumors. She wouldn’t talk about him, though a few of the students had asked her if she knew anything about what was going on. She would only shake her head and walk away. She stayed as far away from his office as she could, fairly certain that he was no longer there, but unwilling to take the chance to find out.
She didn’t want to add to the rumors, and she didn’t want to see him and have to turn away from him. She knew she wouldn’t be able to. Walking away from his office the last time they had seen each other was one of the most difficult things that she had ever done in her life.
She had fought so hard inside of her mind and heart not to turn around and go running back to him, not to rush to him and beg him to just run away with her, because she knew that they both had a life that they were going to be expected to live without each other.
Reggie tried to talk with her a few times, but she wouldn’t look at him or speak to him. It was because of his betrayal of their friendship that everything in her life and everything in Connor’s life had been upended and destroyed. There was almost no happiness in her life following her last night with Connor.
Her father tried to cheer her up a few times, but she was not interested in anything that he tried to do to make her happy. There was nothing he could say that would bring a smile to her face, and they grew quiet around one another.
It was two weeks since her last night with Connor when she woke up one morning and crawled out of bed, forcing herself to go to the bathroom to get ready for school. She ran out of deodorant that morning and tossed the old container in the trash bin, and then opened the cabinet door beneath the sink to pull out a fresh container of deodorant and as she closed the cabinet door, everything in her stopped.
She leaned back down and opened the cabinet door again and looked inside, and the thing that had caught her eye sat there in the dim light of the cabinet, staring back at her like a ghost.
It was her box of tampons. She had been so wrapped up in her heartbreak over all the weeks since their trip to Springfield, that she had not realized that the box of tampons she was looking at had never been opened, and it should have been. It stood there in the corner of the cabinet, brand new, untouched, and panic struck her heart as she lost her breath and sank to the floor in utter fear. She had not had a single period since she had been in Springfield with Connor.
Her mind raced backward over the days and weeks behind her, over all of the times that she and Connor had made love, and he had come deep in her every single time, and every single time he had never worn a condom. They had never talked about birth control, and since she hadn’t had any lovers during her time in college, unlike most of her girlfriends, she hadn’t been on the pill in so long that she hadn’t even thought about it.
For her, sex was purely pleasure. She hadn’t even considered that it might be something much bigger than that. She closed her eyes and dropped her face into her palms as she began to cry softly, muffling the sound so that her father wouldn’t hear her.
It couldn’t be, she thought. There was just no way that she could be pregnant, she promised herself, but there was that box, standing there before her like an omen of truth, and she felt more fear in her than she ever had in her life. She found herself suddenly wishing for the umpteenth time that her mother was still alive, and that she could go to her for help and advice. She was alone. There was no way she could go to her father with this, even in her uncertainty.
She wept a while longer, and then when she felt she had enough strength, she pushed herself back up off of the bathroom floor and looked in the mirror. She looked more tired than she ever had, and it disgusted her. Catalina got into the shower and turned it on full and hot, hoping to cover the sound of her weeping, and somehow to wash all of her sorrows and troubles away down the drain.
The troubles and sorrows were more evident than ever when she got out of the shower and looked at her abdomen in the mirror. There was no sign of change. She could see no roundness or indication of what might be a clue to her state as she examined it closely. It felt a little harder than usual, but that was all, and that was no sign that she could reasonably rely on.
She dressed herself and did her hair and makeup, trying to make herself look as normal as possible. She answered her father as he told her good morning when she walked out of her bathroom, saying good morning back to him, and that was all she said to him. She skipped the breakfast that he made for her and left the house early to go to the drugstore on the way to school.
Catalina went out of her way to go to a drugstore that was nowhere near her home or her school, and she bought three pregnancy tests, each one a different brand, just in case one of them might be wrong. Best two out of three, she told herself. Then she went to the school and headed for the handicap enabled bathroom in the library. Hardly anyone ever used that bathroom, and it was a single person bathroom, so there was no chance of anyone walking in on her.
She peed on all three sticks and then set them up along the counter, watching them as the seconds slowly ticked by. She tried to breathe evenly because she was afraid that she might pass out if she hyperventilated or held her breath, and that was all she needed; to be found passed out in the bathroom with three pregnancy tests lined up on the sink. She’d never live it down.
About a century later, two minutes had finally passed and she looked at all three tests. All three of them were positive. There was no getting around it. She was not alone in the bathroom. There was a baby inside of her belly. Connor’s baby was inside of her belly, and she was alone and he was gone.
Tears stung at her eyes and her chest tightened as the fears in her were realized and she lost all control of herself, crumbling to the floor and sobbing so hard that she threw up. She cleaned up her face and hands, threw all evidence of the tests away, and tried to steady herself as she walked out of the bathroom, hoping to keep from making eye contact with anyone.
She walked blindly around the campus for most of the morning, wondering who she could talk to and what she was going to do. She did not go to her classes that morning and by lunchtime she was tired and felt sick to her stomach with worry and grief, and, she guessed, pregnancy, and she went home. Her father was at work so she had the house to herself for the afternoon. She went into her room and closed the door, taking a photograph of her mother off of her shelf and staring at it.
People who knew her mother told her that the older she got, the more she looked like her mom, and it was a compliment she was always glad to get. It made her feel connected to the precious woman she had lost from her life, and as she laid there in bed touching the glass over the old photograph of the woman smiling back at her, she sniffled and cried quietly.
“Mama, I wish you were here. I need you so much. What am I going to tell daddy?” She cried a little more until she fell asleep, and she didn’t wake up until she heard the front door close, and then she opened her eyes and looked around.
The light was faint in the early evening sky and her mother’s picture frame was still in her hands where she had fallen asleep with it. She sighed and got out of bed, setting the photograph back on the shelf carefully, and then she told herself that she had to do it eventually, so she might as well do it right then.
She opened the door of her bedroom and walked out to see her father sitting in his chair by the kitchen table, pulling his boots off of his tired feet. He looked up at her and frowned.
“Where were you just now? I didn’t hear you come in,” he told her, looking around and sighing. “I can’t be that tired.”
She shook her head. “You’re not that tired. I stayed home from school this afternoon.”
He looked up at her and frowned. “Why is that? You feeling okay?” he asked, a look of concern in his eyes.
She took a deep breath and sat in the chair beside him. Catalina looked at her father seriously and told herself to say the words. Just say them, she thought.
“Daddy,” she began hesitantly, and then there was only one thing to do, “I’m pregnant,” she told him in a soft voice.
He froze where he was, his fingers tugging at his boot laces, his body bent over as he was taking his boots off. He stayed that way for a long moment and then the shoelaces fell from his fingers and he slowly rose back up in his seat and turned his head to look at her.
“What did you say?” he asked solemnly, looking at her like he expected her to say it again with different words that had a completely different meaning, because he must certainly have heard her wrong.
She had already said it once, and saying it the second time was no easier, but it was no more difficult either. “I’m pregnant, Daddy. I’m going to have a baby.” She said the words a second time, her eyes on his. His eyes were dark; they were the deep brown of mahogany wood. She had gotten her mother’s eyes when she was born, and her mother had gotten them from some distant European ancestor; blue gray eyes.
Eyes that searched her father’s dark brown ones for some kind of sympathy, for some kind of help or direction or guidance or advice… or something, anything, that could make her feel like she wasn’t completely alone in the world with her life change.