by Vivien Vale
I have my weight supported on my arms, because I don’t want to squash her belly. I don’t want to hurt her or the baby.
Now I start slowly moving in and out of her, my eyes locked on to hers. If she shows any sign of distress, I’ll pull out immediately.
The internal struggle starts up once more. The wild animal from earlier is making a cameo. In fact, he’s chomping at the fucking bit, bursting to be let out again.
For June’s sake, there is no goddamn way I’m going to let him come out again.
Fortunately, I think he’s getting the message, because—at least right now—the urge to be tender and gentle with this angel of a woman is overtaking everything.
My position shifts slightly so I can kiss her as I find a comfortable rhythm—something a little speedier than snail’s pace, but not as fast as a V-eight engine.
June seems to be doing okay.
“You let me know if it hurts.”
There’s no response. Maybe her head moved a tiny bit in a nod.
As I move in and out of her tight pussy, I feel her walls grab my cock, as if milking me.
Holy fuck.
The sensation leaves me with a burning desire.
Fire spreads through me.
The intensity increases, and soon, the blaze turns into a raging inferno.
June starts to quiver and shake beneath me. Her body tenses in a way that tells me she’s going to come soon.
The feeling is mutual—my cock is just about ready to release another massive load of cum into her. If she wasn’t pregnant already, I bet she would be after the coming deluge.
With the thought of getting her pregnant and doing this all over again and again, the release comes.
It’s like the valve on a pressure cooker bursting.
As I shoot my massive load into her, it’s like there’s a fucking volcano erupting inside of me, spewing heat and molten lava everywhere.
The eruption is overwhelming, and I have to consciously restrain myself from leaning forward and biting her neck.
Instead of letting the wild animal become a fucking vampire, I simply keep my eyes focused on hers.
When I look into those hazel eyes, I see nothing but honesty and sincerity.
She’s the real fucking deal, and there’s nothing fake about her—unlike Chantal.
Why am I even thinking about the bitch right now? What’s wrong with me?
Instead of just lying on top her, I pull June into my arms. My arms stay underneath, cradling her. June slowly wraps her arms around me, bringing me even closer to her.
We hold each other silently. Words don’t seem necessary. We’re both lost in our own thoughts—and in each other.
I can tell by the way June nuzzles into me that she’s seeking comfort and reassurance. I want to give her those things, but am I even fucking capable of that?
Those nagging doubts from earlier come back to haunt me. What if I really am just like my father?
Am I destined to have bastard children all over the world?
Those are my thoughts, but what is June thinking about right now? I wonder if she’s daydreaming about our baby, or if she’s thinking about her dad and the home she left behind.
Of course, my own thoughts are totally fucking random. There’s so much I need to figure out, it’s not fucking funny.
One thing I’m going to have to learn to deal with—in my own time, and in my own mind —is Lawrence and Chantal.
If there’s really a baby, I’ll need to deal with that, too.
It still seems highly unlikely Chantal is pregnant. The longer I think about it, the more convinced I am that they’ve concocted this story to get to me.
Looks like they succeeded, from the amount I think about it.
“Ready?” I release June out of our embrace.
“For what?”
“To start the day. You know, get ready for work and all that sort of stuff,” I reply and get to my feet.
I hold out my hands toward hers.
With one big pull, I’ve got her on her feet. She sways a little, and protectively, I wrap an arm around her waist.
“Maybe you should stay here?” I suggest.
She shakes her head.
“I’m fine,” she says, and I watch her closely as she walks to the bathroom.
A strange feeling settles in the pit of my stomach—a feeling I can’t shake.
I needed to get ready to face the day.
Chapter 28
June
My daddy always said that if you’re looking for something wrong, you’re going to find it. When you’re looking for trouble, you find trouble. If you’re digging for worms, you’ll find worms.
When I reach across the counter to grab my toothbrush, my knuckles graze Carter’s. It’s an accident, but it must have looked intentional.
My heart sinks as he flinches at my touch. I want to let the point of contact linger, but he’s quick to pull his hand away.
But it’s all in my head, I figure. It must be. What we had last night was beautiful. Incredible, even.
So why do I only want to touch him more, and he only wants to create space?
It becomes a twisted little experiment as we get ready for work. When I stretch out my legs to pull on pantyhose, does my body catch his gaze? I straighten his collar—but was that a moment of hesitation in his eyes as I do so, or was it just a trick of the light?
It’s as if all of that furiously passionate energy from last night has coalesced into a defensive cloud of coldness around Carter. A frosty haze that’s determined to keep me away from the man I thought I knew—and him away from me.
At this point, I don’t think it’s out of line for me to wonder just what is going on.
I mean, for the freaking love of Pete, I’ve been wondering that since late last night. Granted, it hasn’t all been an unpleasant ride since then, but this is already getting beyond aggravating.
And we haven’t even left the penthouse yet.
If I thought those few hours last night were bad, there’s a dark fog settling over the landscape of today, and I don’t need the Old Farmer’s Almanac to tell me that the forecast looks foreboding.
The fog I can nearly see—even walking into the office—is not like the aloof, icy cloud I noticed encircling this morning. The feeling is coming from Carter, but I can sense it souring everything today—at least for me.
Carter Abraham didn’t become Carter Abraham solely based on familial luck. This is a man with many rare gifts. While I’ve become very familiar with some of these gifts, there are others which I’m still learning about.
Some of them catch me off guard. For heck’s sake, I bet some of Carter’s powers would catch him off guard if he were to see them from another perspective.
Like my perspective. Like this morning, when his mysterious sour mood just infiltrates the atmosphere of the whole office.
As I’ve been learning in varied and often surprising lessons, Carter Abraham is a true force of nature. Even in this city, I bet that’s rare.
Force of nature or not, I am not appreciating Carter’s cold, prickly way of being this morning. Like almost running away from me to go straight into his office before closing the door.
The truth of Carter’s life hasn’t changed at all since last night—but he’s acting as if the act of telling me was the same as finally telling himself.
What’s stranger is that I’m fine, and he’s taking it so absurdly hard.
Maybe I’m being insensitive, but it doesn’t make a cowlick of horse sense. I’m trying to make heads or tails of it, but this whole experience is starting to feel as bumpy and nauseating as a makeshift thrill ride at the fairgrounds in Wahoo.
In case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not thinking like a city gal at the moment—and I have some Sandhills-sized doubts, it would make the tiniest bit of difference if I were.
But I get to work, the same as I’ve been doing every other day. There’s going to be plenty of—I guess I’ll call
it fertilizer—to deal with no matter where I go. Some places have their own unique brands of fertilizer, but most fertilizers are the same whether you’re in Nebraska, New York, or New Orleans.
There’s no point in running around the country, around the world, trying to find some place that’s fertilizer-free every time you get frustrated—because it really is everywhere. I haven’t been to too many places, but I’m already convinced of that.
Plus there’s a chance I’ll figure out—or just find out—what’s going on with Carter soon enough.
Plus, I’m pregnant and have the contract. Maybe this will all end up coming full circle to the original plan—a business arrangement.
And nothing more.
Yeah, that would be some fertilizer if it were to happen. But leaping to conclusions is not going to do anything but encourage more anxiety—and the whole anxiety thing was the least fun part of last night.
I could do without going down that road again. This morning was another little experience I don’t care to repeat.
That doesn’t mean the rest of today has to be sh—
Well, fertilizer-y.
“What is it now, June?” All it takes is me walking into his office for Carter to start hissing at me like some brutish jerk of a boss at his secretary.
To be just, I am a secretary, but…
No, I don’t like where this is going, any part of it.
“I just wanted to see if you needed anything, Carter!”
It feels kind of nice to throw his attitude right back in his face like that—and that feeling lasts a nice, solid three second or so until the senseless reality of it all sets in.
Carter pretends to ignore me, looking at some papers on his desk that I don’t think he’s even pretended to look at before. If I’m to believe my own eyes and my own memory—assets which have always worked just dandy for me—those papers have been sitting in the same spot, gathering dust for the last three days.
Shortly after that little yelling session, it feels like I’m in the middle of some weird, awful play that I just had the script for but lost it after yelling that one line. Carter’s still in character, projecting surliness and looking through his desk drawers for nothing, while I’m silent, confused, and falling out of whatever role I barely realized I was playing.
You know what? Forget this stuff.
Forget all of it.
Last night, we had some interesting times indeed. While I don’t regret it for a jiffy, you’d think with all that dark intensity, he would’ve exorcised some of this…whatever it is.
Or, all of it, ideally.
But as the father of my child refuses to step out from under the dark cloud he’s projecting everywhere, I remember that I’ve got my own priorities.
“As I hope you’ll recall, Mr. Abraham, I need to leave work early today. I have a medical appointment, you see. An ultrasound, to be specific, the first of my pregnancy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go home and get ready.”
Carter’s head is still down by the freaking desk drawer. It’s like he’s not even listening.
Because he’s not.
Is he?
My immediate impulse is to stand silently and watch closely, trying to decode every dark, broody movement for any sign that he is listening and that he does care.
That his feelings for me are still there, and that they didn’t just evaporate in the cloud or the fog or whatever metaphor my brain tries to throw out next to make sense of this craziness.
Forget that impulse. It’s doing me no good.
Is that a city gal impulse, or is that just ole Junebug?
Neither, it’s nothing.
And I’m neither. I’m just June, and it’s time for me to go to one of the most important appointments of my life.
Striding out the door and away from Carter’s office, there’s another impulse I need to fight—the impulse to stamp my pumps against the hard Abraham Fertility floor with each step. If I did that, it would create a series of satisfying, angry clicks ricocheting throughout the entire floor of the building.
But why would I do that? I’m just an expectant mother on her way to an ultrasound.
What could I possibly have to be angry about?
And of course, I realize none of this is any good for the growing baby inside of me. I have read babies are able to pick up on how their mothers feel. If that’s true, my poor little one must already be a nervous wreck.
Time to bull up my boot straps.
Time to stop this nonsense, I tell myself and focus on this tiny life growing inside of me.
Thanks to my decision to walk calmly towards the exit, it’s quiet enough to hear a voice coming from somewhere far behind me.
Just some voice, from some person, trying to project, or maybe yell, but lacking even the proper freaking commitment for that.
“June, wait…do you need me to…”
Or something like that. I’m long gone before I can hear anything else.
Chapter 29
Carter
By the time June’s pretty little feet carry her through the doorway, I already have my coat and fucking keys in hand.
I shouldn’t have snapped at her. It was a shitty thing to do. It must have hurt her—I know that, and I feel like less of a man for it.
A real man doesn’t lash out at a woman. A real man holds his emotions together, stuffs them down, and does what needs to be done.
That’s how I was raised.
Repressed.
Swallow that shit and never let anyone know that you’re hurting, that you’re struggling, and that you might need help.
A real man would drive his wife—or whatever the fuck June wants me to call her—he would drive her to her ultrasound, hold her hand, watch with bated breath as the life he created with her appears on the screen.
I might have hurt June—but I’m sure as fuck not letting the only consistently good thing in my life storm out the door and walk away.
But just then, before I could chase her down, my phone rings.
It was at this very moment that things start to unravel.
I should have listened to the feeling of foreboding in the pit of my stomach, but heck, I didn’t.
What was I thinking? What was I even fucking thinking?
What could have been just a fat fucking hangover, with a little bit of my occasional IMO brooding thrown in, with the additional emotional baggage brought by June, is now turning into an actual fucking nightmare.
You know, one of those nasty fucking dreams where there’s nothing obvious like a monster chasing you. And no, you’re not even back in school or some shit—a dream where you’re just trying to get somewhere and you can’t get there because you keep getting stopped.
Either you just can’t move your fucking foot, or there’s some kind of invisible magnetic field in front of you, keeping you from moving even an inch forward…
Or, and I think we can all agree that this is the best one, the fucking phone starts ringing, and for some reason, you have no choice but to answer that motherfucker. It’s not that you want to, but you just know that something even worse will happen if you just let it ring.
I pick up the phone, because unfortunately, this isn’t some bad dream.
It’s just me in my goddamn business, where I’m always dealing with some kind of shit.
To be fair, the shit I’m dealing with really fucking sucks today, but that doesn’t stop me from answering the phone.
“Fuck,” I grumble to myself as I hit the button to receive the call, “she was happy—all I had to do was be happy, despite all the fucking shit.”
“This is Carter,” I mutter, only slightly louder this time, into the phone as I hover by the exit.
“Is that how you answer your phone these days?”
Yes, it’s a fucking nightmare all right—except this one is of the waking variety.
“Only when I’m hoping it’s a bad dream, Chantal.”
“How’d you know it was me?” S
he has her usual sarcastic yet slightly short tone to her voice, but she’s whispering for some reason.
I’m already starting to wobble, not even watching where I’m going.
Fuck it.
This might feel like a nightmare, but it’s not really. I could just hang up the phone.
I start taking the phone down away from my ear, but I hear her hissy voice whispering.
“Carter, Carter...come on.”
It’s like she can tell that I’m taking the phone away from my ear. Fuck if it doesn’t startle the life out of me for some ungodly reason.
I bring the phone right back up to my fucking ear. Maybe I’m just on edge today. Maybe Chantal is just fucking lying.
When it comes to Chantal, it usually pays to bet on the lie.
Usually.
But I notice myself that I’m not taking my phone away from my ear anymore.
And, to be honest, that shit scares me more than any fucking else today or yesterday.
“Carter...Carter, please, I need you to help me. This is serious.”
How serious could it be? For fuck’s sake, she was just whispering one of her classic fucking jokes.
“Carter,” she sniffles.
Fuck, that sniffle…she’s crying, and her voice is laced with fear.
This doesn’t sound good.
“Carter...” she sniffles again. The phone translates the sound to a horrible electronic squall.
Yeah, this does not sound fucking good at all.
Now, I think you might be able to bet on Chantal lying. Yet I couldn’t deny the intense, nagging dread audible in her whimpered pleas.
If Chantal is telling the truth, it’s not just my ex-girlfriend who’s in peril.
I’m still not ready to go all in on this quite yet.
“Chantal, just tell me what’s going on.”
I’m doing my best—I sound about as earnest as fucking possible given the circumstances.
“Carter...just, Carter, oh god, Carter, please...”
Holy shit. Her voice is getting lower, transforming into a soft, terrified ghost of a whisper.
I’m still not completely sold.
“Seems like you were making fun of me just a minute ago.”
“I…I don’t…please…first I ran in here, and now it sounds like he has…I’m afraid to…he could come in here at any moment!”