Tease Me Bad Boy

by Claire St. Rose

  Was she unhappy that we were finally going home? Was she dreading going back? I thought about the things she had said to me. The dishes, staying home all day while I was at work. Was it really that bad? The last couple weeks between us had been amazing. She had been so sweet, and we had had sex more times during the two-week hotel stay than we had had since we got married. She had been, dare I say, happier than she seemed to be when we were at home. Shit. Maybe she really didn’t want to be back at the house. As we neared the house I decided to ask her something.

  “Isa, are you okay?” I asked.

  She looked over at me. Her glasses obscured her eyes, but her face otherwise looked completely calm.

  “Mm-hmm,” she said shortly. I raised my eyebrows. I knew I had underestimated her in the beginning, thinking she was powerless to protect herself but what was she? Completely desensitized to everything already? How? She had only known about this part of her life, our life, since a couple days before the wedding.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I just want to get back to the house, sleep in my own bed...have a home-cooked meal.” She looked over at me. “The hotels were great, but you can understand wanting to be somewhere where they aren’t charging you by the night, can’t you?”

  I smiled. So she was looking forward to going back home.

  “I’m sorry again about this whole mess. I am going to have security posted around the house all hours of the day. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

  “Okay,” she said shortly, looking down at her hands.

  I was stumped. Was she really this unbothered about the whole thing? There was no way. We got to the house, and we took the bag inside. She went directly to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge, drinking it. I tossed the bag in the laundry room and went back through into the kitchen where I saw her rifling through the cabinets for pots and pans.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “I want to cook dinner,” she said. Opening the fridge and frowning at its contents. She started pulling vegetables and fruits out, they were probably toxic to eat for as long as we had been gone. She started chucking them in the garbage, doing the same for the leftovers that happened to be in there, too. Carlotta hadn’t been by the house over the entire two-week period.

  “There isn’t much that’s edible in here anymore,” she remarked.

  “Don’t cook. Just relax. I can order something in. What do you feel like having?”

  She bit her lip thinking.

  “I wouldn’t mind beef and broccoli,” she suggested. I didn’t mind that either. I made the call and turned to find she had been looking at me. Really looking at me...as if she was trying to take an x-ray. I couldn’t deal with this. What the fuck was going on?

  “Isa, if something’s the matter, I want you to tell me,” I said, firmly.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” she lied. I didn’t call her on it. I sighed. What sort of relationship was built on lies? Maybe our relationship was a little unorthodox, but I at least wanted her to tell me when something was up with her. Was she just moody? Was this a mood swing? Christ, was it that time of the month? I had never shared a home with a woman besides my mother, and she didn’t count because I had to live with her. For most of my life, I had had no choice. I had never lived with a girlfriend because I didn’t keep women as girlfriends. Isa was not my girlfriend; she was my wife, and the hidden world of women’s issues was suddenly front and center. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  Our food came, and she picked at hers, managing to order the food into three neat piles of rice, beef, and broccoli on her plate. Perfect. Now she wasn’t eating. I caught her looking at me again—as if she was trying to blow my head up with her mind. I volunteered to clean up. I didn’t know what was wrong with her, but I didn’t want to make it worse by making her move and what not. She hardly looked present. She looked spaced out and tired at the same time. Was she sick? She stood and waited for me to come back from the kitchen, which she never did. We never went up to the room at the same time. Was it because she was scared? Had the whole experience spooked her? I tried again.

  “Isa?”

  She looked at me. Her face was completely flat. Inscrutable. I looked down into her eyes and cupped her face.

  “I’m sorry about what happened. Nothing like this will ever take place again,” I said to her, making a promise I really could not keep. I could only ask my guys to make sure there was a twenty-four-hour patrol on the house. That didn’t mean there would be. I couldn’t assure her that they would do their job to the level I expected it to be done. I couldn’t tell her with absolute certainty that nobody was ever going to try something like this again. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. It would have been a lie. A bold-faced lie. She would never be safe again, not the way she had been before we had gotten married.

  That was the truth of the Montorini name. The name I had given her. I wished she would say something. Anything. Even if she just wanted to tell me how much she regretted becoming my wife.

  She inhaled deeply.

  “You don’t have to apologize, Lorenzo. It isn’t your fault.”

  I leaned in and kissed her. Her lips were soft and yielding when I met them. I took hold of one of her hands.

  “Come,” I said quietly. She followed me up the stairs. We went up to our bedroom. I told her to wait on the bed while I ran the tub for her. That calmed people down, didn’t it? Released your knots or whatever? Helped you relax? She must have stood and followed me into the bathroom because I heard her voice from behind me.

  “Lorenzo... really, you don’t have to do all this. Nothing happened.”

  “And nothing will ever happen. I want you to know that, Isa. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Her face was still flat and unreadable. I kissed her on the forehead and made for the door so she could have a bath.

  “Lorenzo, wait,” she said. I turned.

  “Could you sit with me?” she asked carefully, like she wasn’t sure that was something she thought she could ask for.

  “Where? Here?”

  “In the tub?”

  “Uh.... Sure,” I said, not fully understanding what it was that she wanted. She turned around so I could help her unzip her dress. It fell and pooled at her feet. I unhooked her bra and it fell, joining her dress on the floor. She turned and pulled my sweater up my body. I helped her, removing it completely along with the t-shirt I wore underneath. Her hair fell down over her breasts, obscuring them in a way that was even more erotic than seeing them on full display. I finished disrobing and turned the faucets off. She removed her panties, being the last item of clothing she had on, and climbed into the tub. She looked at me expectantly, her knees pulled to her chest.

  For the first time in my life I didn’t know what to do. Did I just go in? Did she want me to do anything specific? Did she want me touching her at all? The bathtub was huge. More than big enough for two. I saw her cast her gaze down into the water.

  “You don’t have to join me if you don’t want to,” she said quietly.

  I climbed in after her and let her settle between my legs, with her back to me and her head resting on my chest, where she seemed to be at her most comfortable. Steam rose slowly from the bath water as I sat, naked in the tub with my wife. This was likely the first time I had been naked with a woman and not tried to make a move. Not that I didn’t want to. All she had to do was say the word and I would be ready to go. She curled into my chest, pulling her legs into her body, making herself small.

  Was this intimacy? Was this feeling what people referred to when they talked about that? I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close. She seemed to loosen up as I held her. No other woman I had been with had just wanted to sit in a tub with me. Many wanted me to fuck them in the tub, but this was new. It was new, and it was nice. I rested my chin on top of her head. I could smell her hair. Like jasmine and tropical fruit.

  I wondered whether she would tell m
e. Something was bothering her, and she didn’t seem to want to tell me what it was. She had been acting strangely since dinner. Trying to interrogate her about it was definitely not the way to go. Especially not just then. It would just ruin the moment.

  Chapter 3

  Isa

  If I told Lorenzo that I was pregnant, would he stop making me hand wash the dishes?

  I rolled the thought around my mind, absently as I lay in bed. Lorenzo had left for the day, and I hadn’t gotten up yet. I was awake, but I felt fatigued to my bones. I didn’t want to move. He hadn’t even tried to get me out of bed, surprisingly. Carlotta was coming, so she would be able to help him with breakfast, but he didn’t even try to wake me up so I could do it. I was readying myself to—at the very least—be scolded...but nothing. He had woken up and kissed me.

  Kissed me. On my forehead...he kissed me before he went to the bathroom.

  I didn’t know what had gotten into him, but I hoped it lasted. Especially because of my condition.

  The fatigue I was feeling was likely due to the pregnancy. It was strange, though, how I didn’t start feeling any pregnancy symptoms until I learned that I actually was pregnant. I couldn’t wait for the morning sickness. That should be starting any day now. And then I won’t have to tell Lorenzo that I’m pregnant because he’ll hear me heaving into the toilet at six in the morning one day and connect the dots himself.

  I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face in the soft, cotton sheets. How would Lorenzo react? It wasn’t as if I could hide it from him. After a while, pregnancy was a secret that would just tell itself. We slept in the same bed. We lived in the same house. It wasn’t as if I could take up in a different room or move out because that was as dead a giveaway as anything was. I didn’t want to wait until he happened to stumble across my pre-natal vitamins or notice a pregnancy and childbirth website on my computer by accident. The longer I waited, the worse it would be. He would have questions about why I had waited so long, why I wouldn’t tell him as soon as I found out. It was his baby, after all. There was a level of assholery to keeping the news of a man’s first child from him.

  God, was I even the first girl that he had gotten pregnant? Was I jumping the gun thinking I was giving him this great gift? We hadn’t said a single word about children, and we hadn’t—up to this point—really discussed our exes. Why would we? The only ex I knew that he had was Elissa, and she got on my nerves, and none of my exes were in my life anymore. They were non-issues. With the way that Elissa touched him and looked at him, it wouldn’t be surprising to think that maybe, just maybe, I was the mother of his second child and not his first. The thought was depressing, but at least it gave me a good reason as to why Elissa and Lorenzo needed to see each other so much.

  I needed to stop stressing about that woman. Jealousy was pathetic. I had the ring. Me. I had the baby, too. The baby who wasn’t even here yet but was succeeding at driving me crazy. I was already such a disappointment to Lorenzo at this point. This news would be the perfect catalyst for him to get rid of me. The sudden thought that he would ask me to get rid of the child made me sick to my stomach. He had all the money in the world, even if I said no and didn’t want to, he probably had ways to make me do it. I hadn’t been to Mass in years, but there was no way I wasn’t giving birth to the child. No way. It wasn’t even an option. I wasn’t going to pretend that I knew the exact point at which the baby started being alive. The point was, whether it was two weeks old or twenty weeks old, after nine months, it was going to be born as a human child. My human child—and that was enough. Lorenzo wouldn’t ask that of me, would he? It shamed me a little to realize that I truly didn’t know.

  How were we supposed to raise a child together when we didn’t even know each other? What the hell kind of parents would we be? We hadn’t even had the discussion of whether and when we wanted to have kids. Of course, that didn’t matter now because the decision was made for us, but Lorenzo was still in the dark.

  What if I had the child and he took the baby away from me? The whole mob thing was a family-style business. If it was an heir that he needed, he’d only need to wait about nine months and he would have one. If he didn’t want it, he could just give it up for adoption, on my behalf. He could make sure I delivered by caesarean, and while I was still under, he could ship the kid away to some couple who actually wanted a child and then bring me back home to resume our lives of misery.

  If I continued like this, I would lose my mind. Lorenzo would come home and find me in the attic eating my own hair and mumbling incoherently. I needed to get a grip. It was not that bad. It was serious, but it was not a fucking movie. We were dealing with real life, not fantasy. Quentin Tarantino didn’t write this. I wasn’t going to have my baby snatched from me, and I wasn’t going to be forced into terminating the pregnancy. At the very worst, Lorenzo would be upset, but then we would have to work it out. Even if this spelled the end of my marriage, I wasn’t going to lose sleep over this. I couldn’t. I had to buck up and handle it. I would feel better after I told someone.

  Looking through my phone, I felt cheated. Who the hell could I tell? Where was my big, happy pregnancy announcement? This was not the way I thought I would feel when I became pregnant with my first child. I didn’t really want kids, but in the event that I did become pregnant, I didn’t think I would feel this horrible about it. I should at least be happy about the cute parts of pregnancy. I wanted to post the pregnancy life event on Facebook. I wanted to pose for a cheesy maternity photoshoot. Instead, I was anticipating telling the father of the child that we were expecting like it was the end of the world.

  I sighed thinking of the options I had. Mom was out. Dad was definitely out. Lorenzo’s parents were more out than Lorenzo himself. I tried Marina’s number, wondering whether she would ever get tired of these phone calls from me and just stop picking up.

  “Marina?” I said when I heard the ringing stop.

  “Hi, are you guys home yet? I’ve been waiting to hear from you.” I glanced at the clock. It was still morning, fairly early. I hadn’t caught her on the way to work, but there was a chance that I had gotten her when she was asleep, or going into the shower.

  “Are you okay to talk right now? Sorry, I didn’t check the time before I called you.”

  “Oh no, I wasn’t doing anything. Where are you calling from? Home?”

  “We got home a couple days ago. I’m sorry for not calling earlier. How are you?”

  “Better now that I know you’re okay. Is everything okay? What happened with the... you know.”

  I had ended up telling Marina the whole truth about why we were at the different hotels and not our home. She had not taken it well, but ultimately, there was nothing she could have done differently from what we had been doing, sitting and waiting for news. I wondered for a minute whether Lorenzo would care that Marina basically had the scoop on every single thing that happened between us. I cringed a little hating the way that sounded, even to me. Maybe I did have to be careful not to overshare with her. We were best friends, but I was married. There had to be a limit. Fortunately or unfortunately for my husband, the limit was not here.

  “Lorenzo never told me about it, but we are back in the house, so I suppose whatever the problem was, it’s gone now.”

  “Lorenzo doesn’t seem to tell you much of anything, Isa.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked defensively.

  “I mean the man leaves the house every day to go someplace you don’t know. Besides the general idea of what it is that he does, you don’t know much else. This whole thing that had you hopping from hotel to hotel around the city is still shrouded in mystery.”

  “He’s trying to protect me,” I said.

  “From what?”

  Everything. Nothing. The truth. Himself. All the above.

  “I don’t bother him about it. I don’t want to be part of that world; I just want this marriage to work.”

  “Mm-hmm,” said Marina. She didn’t buy i
t. “Sounds like an equal exchange to me.”

  “We just got hitched. And not only that. We just met. We’ve only been able to stand each other for the last few weeks. We’ll get there. Besides, it isn’t as if he knows everything about me. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh yeah? What?”

  I took a deep breath. If I just blurted it out, I could give the impression that it wasn’t a big deal. She wouldn’t freak out, and she would calm me down about it. There. Perfect. I began.

  “I have some news. Marina, I’m pregnant.”

  The silence that came down the line made me think for a second that she had hung up.

  “Hello? Marina?”

  “Pregnant? With what?”

  “Don’t be silly, Marina. I’m going to have a baby.”

  “With your husband? Is it his?”

  “Of course, it is his. Who the hell else could be the father?”

  “Isa. This is terrible. This is awful. Now you’re trapped.”

  Funny. Those were my exact sentiments when I found out too, but it took a dramatic retelling from Marina for me to realize that, actually, I didn’t have to have a nervous breakdown. I could just relax and talk through it like a normal person. When did I become so irrational? I blamed the pregnancy hormones.

  “Marina, would you please relax? It’s a baby we’re talking about. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “Isa—”

  She cut herself off and went silent again. I could imagine her in her apartment, standing and pacing as she talked to me. Part of me felt wrong about telling my female best friend about the baby before the man whom I was having it with, but I couldn’t go to Lorenzo. Not just yet. I wanted comfort. He wasn’t going to give me that. Marina was hardly a neutral third party, but she was the closest thing to one that I had. Who knew, it might even have to be her couch that I crashed on when Lorenzo kicked me out finally. I wasn’t going to start going to therapy. The therapist would likely recommend that I take Lorenzo with me. I wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t unpredictable.