by Kira Blakely
“What am I supposed to do?” I wonder up to him innocently. “I love your cum. I’m just going to get pregnant again and again and again.”
“No, you’re not,” he promises me, even though he’s kissing down my throat as he says it. His cock rolls over and begins slowly coming back to life. He calls to me. What are we going to do? “We’ll figure out a way to still get cum all over each other without getting pregnant again—but we won’t have to worry about that until next year, anyway, baby. Until then…” His fingers skate up and down my folds, and he thickens quickly, hardening back into his final form in a matter of seconds. “I want you to take all my babies,” he tells me in a hard, deep voice, and my pussy grips those words and rides them over the edge. I don’t know what it is about taking his dick that gets me like this, but my entire cunt grips and shudders and tingles with a new orgasm.
I stiffen and hold my breath as it goes off between my legs like a firework, then I collapse onto my pillows and gasp. God, I feel good. I feel amazing.
“I love you,” I tell him, like it’s a deep cause for concern. And sometimes it is.
“I fucking love you,” Lucas murmurs into my ear, and my toes point like a ballerina, it brings me so much happiness.
* * *
I twirl in front of the floor-length mirror in my room, scrutinizing my dress and wondering for the twelfth time if it’s too much. It’s a deep cranberry crimson, with black accents at the hem and the neckline. It’s an old-fashioned dress with a sweetheart neckline and a fitted bodice, flared skirt. It would look adorable with a black jacket. To me, this seems festive, but to the parents of Fallaway Peak Middle, will it seem excessively sexy?
A shadow crosses my doorway and hesitates. In the reflection on the floor-length mirror, Lucas’ head pokes through the bedroom door.
“Hey, beautiful,” he calls to me, winking.
“Where are the kids?” I hiss. He can’t be calling me beautiful in front of God and everyone.
“They’re in the living room, relax,” he whispers back, returning my glare. “Beautiful.”
“Stop!”
“Better get used to it.” Lucas dips out of the room and shuts the door behind him, leaving me trying to smother my reflection’s smile in the mirror.
Panic moves through my body at the sight of the hordes of people at the middle school. Even though Lucas told me that he paid off the Platinum Priority fraud investigator and sent him back to Ohio, I still made myself the mandatory prisoner of the Gray Cabin for over a month. Going back outside feels strange and alien, almost aggressive.
The main corridor of the middle school is packed shoulder to shoulder with great-looking parents, all yammering and shuffling toward some indeterminate point. Charlie must not be the only “rich boy” here, because a lot of these people wear cashmere sweaters and watches that look serious. It’s a little intimidating, and I subconsciously nip at my lower lip as Lucas threads through the crowd with me.
His warm hand scoops around mine and our fingers thread together. “I don’t want to lose you,” he tells me, sounding like he means to keep me from being sucked away by all these other people.
“Where is the auditorium?” I ask, our voices barely audible above the din of children and parents, all squawking “hello” and “happy holidays” to each other.
“Right ahead of us.” I can barely make out some twin doors wedged open, throngs of adults shoving slowly inside. “Here, I’m going to grab us some seats, and I’ll be right back. You stand next to this restroom with Madison.”
“OK,” I say, and he transfers Madison’s hand to mine. I watch him duck and dive through the crowd, and then he’s gone, into the maelstrom of parents and faculty, off to reserve us some seats with the coats that he still has bundled on his arm.
“That’s a beautiful dress,” a female voice sniffs at my shoulder, and I turn my gaze on an older woman with a glossy cap of auburn hair. I gaze into her eyes, and I realize that she might not be older after all. She looks to be Lucas’s age. “Hello there, sweetie.” She gives a quick wave to Madison, who returns the gesture. “Who are you here to see?” she wonders brightly, turning her attention on me again.
I have the distinct feeling that she’s looking at me too closely. I’m sure I look too young to be holding this five-year-old’s hand, too young to have a son in middle school, and definitely too young to be wearing this dress. I should’ve worn something less frothy and womanly. I knew I looked like I was trying to be a Stepford wife, I just knew it!
I swallow and force myself to answer her, hoping that she doesn’t recognize the name. I’m only a nanny, technically, but I feel exactly the way Astrid sees me, the way all women Astrid’s age probably see me: a home-wrecking interloper in the middle of a perfectly salvageable marriage. “I’m here for Charlie Gray. How about you?”
“Melissa Tomkins,” the woman answers. “I’m Judy Tompkins, the PTA secretary?” She blinks at me expectantly, and I shrug my shoulders with an uncertain smile.
“I just moved here,” I explain. “I’m a nanny to the Gray family.”
“Ohhh,” Judy says, still measuring me with her eyes. “I thought that you looked awfully young to be here.”
Another woman, this one a black woman of approximately the same age, her hair pinned up into an elaborate bun, sidles up alongside Judy Tompkins, PTA secretary. “Hi, Judy,” she trumpets, and I shrink away, praying that they move on. I don’t feel like these women are here to be my friends. But the newcomer focuses her gaze directly onto me as well. “Hello, there,” she greets just as loudly, refusing to let me shrink away. I wish I could blend with this wall. “I’m Tilda. Tilda Loveborn. Serenity Loveborn’s mother.”
“Nice to meet you,” I tell her quietly. Please leave me alone. Please leave me alone. What if one of them recognizes me from the news story that aired when I first escaped from Agent Callahan?
“Maggie,” I lie instinctively, sticking my hand out for her to shake. I don’t want to be rude, even though I wish they would leave me alone. They’re staring at me like I’m a pork chop in a sweetheart neckline. “I’m the nanny for the Gray family.”
“Oh, you mean the GRAYTECH family,” Tilda corrects me with a knowing nod to Judy. Judy’s eyes light up.
“Oh, that Gray family,” she chimes in, smile practically dripping down her cheek. I shudder. “I bet Mrs. Gray couldn’t stand hiring you.” She nudges me conspiratorially. I hate this kind of banter happening in front of Madison.
“Mrs. Gray lives in California,” I say, hoping that she gets the hint. “But she’s a great lady. Isn’t she, Madison?” I ask. I’m here with a five-year-old girl on my arm! I want to say, Stop grilling me for your bake sale gossip!
Madison doesn’t seem to hear me, though. “Where is Daddy?” she asks, scanning the crowd with an expression of concern. “Where’s Charlie?”
“I don’t know,” I say back, and honestly, I’m starting to sweat, too. He must have saved us a group of seats by now, and these harpies smell blood. Their eyes lit up when I mentioned that Mrs. Gray was a current resident of the state of California.
“It must be hard for you, too,” Tilda suggests to me, looking me up and down like I know what she’s talking about. “That Mr. Gray is a fox, girl.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I tell her as firmly as I can. “It wouldn’t be professional of me to do so.”
“Wouldn’t be professional,” Judy laughs at my words. Tilda tugs at the sleeve of Judy’s dress, but she doesn’t seem to notice at all. All her focus is on me and she leans in closer. “If it was me,” Judy says against my ear, like a whisper but far too loudly, “I would be worried that a pregnancy would be unprofessional.”
“Excuse me?” Lucas’s voice booms out from behind me. I hadn’t realized how close he was. He must have been the one Tilda saw, and now that he’s here, she shrinks quickly away. But Judy is trapped in his crosshairs. “Did you tell her?” he hisses down at me, and I shake my head a little bit, but hi
s glaring eyes are already pinned back onto Judy. He pulls Madison to him and claps his palms down over her ears, making her temporarily deaf.
Then he sets his dark eyes—steely right now—on Judy.
“Getting pregnant might be unprofessional for a nanny, but she’s not a nanny,” he informs her hotly. “She’s going to be my wife.”
My jaw drops, and so does Judy’s. I can’t believe he said that. Does he mean it, or is he trying to rescue me from humiliation?
“But I don’t know you, and you don’t know me,” Lucas goes on. “So, I don’t see how my fiancée’s delicate condition is any concern of yours.”
Judy blinks at him, bone white, and nods rapidly. “Excuse me,” she pipes. “I just remembered… I… I have to find my daughter.”
Lucas takes his hands off Madison’s ears, and now I can’t say anything at all, but he can read the look on my face for sure. He knows what a huge bomb he just dropped.
He told that woman I was his fiancée.
We can’t act like that didn’t happen.
Chapter 32
Lucas
As we traipse toward the seats I reserved for us, Sofia asks me under her breath, “What the hell was that?” All around us, the auditorium gets dark, and a little cheer goes up. Parents scurry to find their seats, and a hundred feet are shuffling. I think this might be the safest time to discuss exactly “what the hell” happened back there, but I’m glad that Madison provides a foolproof excuse for me to dodge that bullet.
“We don’t need to talk about that right now,” I tell her loudly, forcing a smile and flicking my eyes down to Madison.
We settle into our seats, Sofia shooting gray daggers at me, her mouth tucked down into a furious pout. She doesn’t like that I’ve gotten the better of her here, but I do. She’s trapped watching this Christmas play, and we’re going to pretend like nothing happened, the way proper married folk would.
We watch as the young actor playing Rudolph—a red-headed boy in a headband with fake antlers protruding from it, wearing a red light bulb somehow powered through an otherwise basic-looking snout mask—learns that his nose is a deformity and is shunned from reindeer culture. After abandoning his village, he stumbles upon the Isle of Misfit Toys, and that ushers Charlie forth to say his two lines. He almost forgets them, but a ragdoll classmate pokes him in the side, and he jolts to life.
“I’m a soldier with a bent gun!” he cries, voice wobbling with trace amounts of stage fright. “No one will ever want me!”
The rest of the play passes in a blur that somehow takes an agonizing two and a half hours to complete. I think they needed to make sure every kid in the entire school got at least one line, and preferably their own subplot. If I remember correctly, the original Claymation was only about half an hour, but the school has several songs, and the choir and the band also perform at intervals. It’s mind-numbing, but now every parent has a little moment to be proud of, just like I do.
The tension simmers on my right side, where Sofia sits. It’s distracting.
I’m sure she’s thinking about what I said to that unbearable woman, the one who somehow knew that she was pregnant.
Somewhere in the second act, Madison finally falls asleep on my shoulder, and I’m free to speak with Sofia without fear of being overheard. Still, I cradle Madison’s head against my shoulder, capping her ear with my free hand, just in case.
“Look,” I hiss down toward Sofia’s ear. “I thought that lady was harassing you. I was trying to come to your defense.”
Mostly true. To be totally honest, I barely thought before I spoke. But that scares the shit out of me. This feels so right, but we’re moving too fast. I wish I could put my arm around her right now.
“I didn’t say anything,” Sofia says.
“Marriage would be insane right now,” I go on, heatedly arguing with myself at the lowest audible volume. “It would be Astrid-level crazy. We barely know each other. And yes, you’re mind-numbingly beautiful. Everything is raw and natural with you, pure energy. But it’s so sudden. I can’t do that to the whole family. It would send shockwaves.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Sofia whispers back, gazing at the people seated around us. “I didn’t say anything.” Her smile looks fake, though, and she doesn’t say anything else throughout the show.
My heart pounds out of control without my consent, and I wish I could say more, but I shouldn’t. She’s right. Everyone is listening.
The truth is that I barely thought at all before I snapped at that woman. The words that came out of my mouth weren’t true, but they were reflexive.
She doesn’t smile more than twice throughout the entire show, even though she seems like she does love kids. She loves mine, at least. The two times that she smiles are during Charlie’s lines and at the end of the play, when all the children come out with linked hands and bow as their names are called. She springs to her feet and whoops for Charles Gray. I clap heartily while Madison continues to be dead asleep in my arms. I glance at Sofia, occasionally.
The light in her face is so pure.
But I school myself back into a more professional countenance when Charlie joins us for the drive home, and Madison finally regains a foggy state of consciousness in the backseat. Sofia is even better at this game.
She doesn’t say a word, except to congratulate Charlie on his performance. Charlie buzzes with adrenaline, and I tell him I’m proud that he overcame his nerves, but my mind keeps turning back to the woman in the passenger seat here. She stares out the window and seems a million miles away now. I wonder if part of her is running right back to Ohio now that she’s free.
After all, I paid off Agent Callahan. Sofia is no longer the caged bird she once was. She can fly free if she wants to, and no one will be looking for her outside of Platinum Priority. She could even see her sister again. She would want to fly under the radar, but she can be free from me—if she wants to be.
And that look on her face says that she does.
She haunts me late into the night, coming to me in her filmy, frothy negligees, wiggling her diamond-clad finger at me. I romanticize about how it would feel to curl up against her body every night. I think about how it would feel to watch her grow even stronger, into an even fuller woman than she is right now. I will see her become pregnant and give birth. I’ll see her as a mother.
Maybe it’s really starting to hit me.
I know what I have to do.
I nod my head and dutifully unlace my tie, ripping it from around my neck. I flick open each button and send the shirt flying across the room. And I shove open the door to our bathroom. I’m invading her territory.
I twist her knob and it gives for me. If she left her side unlocked, that means she wants to see me. If she doesn’t, she definitely knows better, because this has already happened a million times before.
I slip into the darkness of her bedroom. Her shape is curled up on the bed, outlined by her milky fleece blanket. I tug it up and slide into the warmth of her bed, curling against her heart-shaped bottom. Her cheeks are so high and round, I could rub myself against them all night. My mouth goes to the curve of her throat, pressing a trail of kisses there. She smells smoky and tropical, like coconut and vanilla.
“Sofia,” I whisper against her ear, nuzzling her curls out of the way.
She murmurs and shifts against me. I know she’s listening. Her body hums with our shared energy, and my hand flattens at the crux of her thighs. She’s mine. Her body stops subtly grinding and holds itself still and hard against my shaft. Her ass feels amazing, and I want to slam into it like an animal, but I restrain myself. Through lust-fogged eyes, I run my fingertips through her hair and whisper, “I do want to marry you someday, baby. I do want to marry you someday.”
Chapter 33
Sofia
I slip out of Lucas’s embrace when I hear his breathing slip down into a slow and steady rhythm. He always falls asleep quickly when he’s snuggled up against me li
ke this. The air is chilly, and my hands come up around my arms, rubbing them up and down. I pull out a piece of notebook paper and settle at my vanity with a pen, ready to write another letter to Maggie. I feel like it’s been a couple of weeks again, and god, do I have news.
Dear Maggie,
Things might be OK after all.
I glance around the room and try to conjure the words to say all the ways my life has changed in the past few weeks. I guess the best way to say it is simply, and my eyes fall across Lucas’s reflection in the window, fast asleep in the darkness. The image of his face is like a balm, and I smile, finding the words to say it.
I think I’m in love with my boss, Lucas. I know you used to say that no good could come of a work relationship, but—
I cross it out and try again for something more clear and mature. I don’t want to start a fight with Maggie in a letter she can’t even return, even though this news will blow her mind. I would never get pregnant with a man’s baby—unless I wanted to.
The man who has been employing me as his nanny has gotten me pregnant, and that probably sounds terrible to hear at first, I write instead. Blunt and sweet. But it doesn’t feel terrible to say. I’m so excited to have this baby, and he’s very supportive. We’re all over each other all the time. I’ve never felt this way before. He said he wants to marry me tonight—I mean, not tonight, but he wants to marry me someday, and he said that tonight. I didn’t say anything back. It’s all so surreal. He told me that after he told me that he didn’t want to marry me, which he said after he said that he DID want to marry me. So, I can see how you might be confused.
Remember when we used to dress up and pretend it was our wedding day?
Are you seeing anyone?
I wish I could see you. Maybe someday.
I look over my shoulder at the window, the broad night sky beyond. Maggie is somewhere out there, and my heart pangs for her. Being a separated twin is like having a phantom limb. She’s out there, and I want her back so badly.