Guarding Her: A Secret Baby Romance

by Lexi Whitlow

  “If you say she needs one, then she needs one.”

  “Matthias, I can pick out my own vibrator.” Just saying the word makes me want to faint, but I don’t appreciate him standing behind me, making me even more nervous. What am I doing here anyway?

  Estelle looks back at him and shoos him away. “You go look at something else. Mallory and I are going to look at these.”

  Reluctantly, Matthias moves to the other end of the store, and I feel instant relief without him watching us. There’s still the ever-present feeling that this is a step I won’t be able to take back—that with each moment I spend with him, I’m making the decision to hop into his bed.

  And maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.

  “Okay,” Estelle says, pulling me out of my reverie. “This one is for penetration…” I maintain my composure as she explains the virtues of each device, trying to listen so I can make an informed decision. An informed decision? Am I actually getting one of these now? With each explanation, I start to feel like I’m in a messy pool I can’t get out of, a stultifying pit of desire. He brought me here so I could think about sex, so I wouldn’t be able to refuse him.

  Good job, Matthias. Mission accomplished.

  I think of his hands on my skin, gripping me, pulling me close. His full lips on mine, the length of his body pressed between my legs, opening me, splitting me. The sound of his groaning as he comes.

  Sweet merciful God.

  “I said, which one do you think you might want? I know Matthias, and I don’t think he’ll let you walk out of here without choosing.”

  “The uh, Lelo. I guess. It looks really nice, but it’s expensive.”

  “Oh my dear. Lieverd, he will pay. I haven’t seen him look at a woman like he looks at you. Are you old friends? Lovers?”

  I look back at him, and he catches my eye. “New friends, I guess.”

  “Even better. Pick the Lelo, and we’ll throw this other one from Fun Factory. Local company. And I’ve got a few other goodies for you.”

  “You ready?” Matthias asks, stepping up to the counter and presenting a stack of shiny, new bills to Estelle. His arm casually drapes over my shoulders, and I can smell him—the scent of pine and something else, a musky male scent that drives home my desire, solidifies the decisions I’ll be making tonight. He might not know it, but he’s winning over this girl, changing her into something she isn’t.

  “Enjoy, my dear,” Estelle tells me with a wink. She pushes the bag across the counter, filled with more than just the two vibrators we selected.

  I reach for it, but Matthias takes it and shoves it in his bag. “A surprise for later.”

  “Not for—not for tonight,” I mumble as he walks me out of the shop. “I think I’ll wait until I leave the country. I might need a surprise then.” In that moment, I think of being alone, without anyone I know. I’ve spent months like that, but today has reminded me of what it’s like to have someone next to you. Even if he is infuriating, entitled, and a total womanizer.

  “Then I guess I’ll need to get you out of the country.”

  I roll my eyes and make a mental note to sneak the goodies out of his bag before I leave.

  I may need a memory of today.

  Chapter Five

  Matthias

  “It’s been forever since I’ve eaten this well,” Mallory says to me, stuffing a French fry into her mouth. I smile. It’s been forever since I’ve eaten with a girl during the daytime. I might take some of them out for coffee or meet one of the ones that sticks around longer than a week for a casual dinner. I keep it to coffee shops and cafes and not a tourist-laden restaurant like this one. Out in the middle of the day, we look like an American couple strolling through the city center.

  “It’s a burger,” I say laughing. I steal one of her French fries and take out another joint.

  “Usually, I just eat ramen noodles back in the apartment I’m renting. Or I make sandwiches. You Europeans have a sad, sad lack of peanut butter on this continent.” She smiles and takes a big bite of her burger, following it with a swig of the lager I ordered for her. For some reason, it pleases me to see that she’s eating. To know that she doesn’t ever eat well, and to get her something as simple and American as a burger and fries.

  “Peanut butter. Disgusting,” I say, laughing. I light the joint, knock off a bit of the burning tip and take a drag.

  “You can’t do that!” She reaches over to shield the smoke from rising.

  “Say something bad about peanut butter? I can and I will. Peanuts shouldn’t be made into any kind of butter. Nor should any nut. You know what should be butter?”

  “What?” She looks around like there might be a policeman from Florida trying to take away my pot or send her to jail for being seen with someone like me.

  “Butter. Made from cream. Made from cows. And that’s it. That is the only butter.” I take a drag from the joint and offer it to Mallory.

  “Seriously. No. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “There’s no one sitting outside, Mal.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Mal’ and offer me a joint.”

  “Aren’t we friends? I just bought you a high-end vibrator.” She blushes dramatically and takes a long sip of her beer. “Plus, nothing goes better with burgers and beer than a spliff. In the middle of the day. On the street. Where people can see us.” I lean in and hand the joint to her.

  She takes a surreptitious, tiny puff, leaning down to the table and coughing ever so slightly. I nod to her, and she takes another drag, longer this time, holding it and then blowing out smoke more gracefully than she did this morning. She hands the joint to me like she doesn’t want to be seen with it, but then she sits back and smiles and looks up at the tree above us. The leaves are just starting to be tinged with orange, and she drinks her beer, silently, contemplating it. I take two long drags and then stub out the spliff for later. I take out my camera and snap a picture of her looking up at the leaves. This time, she doesn’t bat an eye, doesn’t look up to tell me I shouldn’t be taking so many pictures.

  I have pictures of women on my camera, many of them. But one at a time, not the stream of pictures I’m taking, all of Mallory. I don’t contemplate what this means. Instead, I put my camera away and steal some of her French fries, thinking about the different ways I might convince her to come home with me tonight. She says she won’t try the vibrator until she’s out of the country, but perhaps I could lure her in some other way. The sun is hanging lower over the trees, and there’s plenty of time for us to drink and talk and come closer to the breaking point where she decides that she needs one good night in Amsterdam before she dedicates her time to museums. If I have anything to do with it, it may be more than one night.

  It’s not a common thing for me, wanting one woman. But there’s something about Mallory that makes the idea seem exciting, like the feeling you have when an old friend comes to visit after years and years away from home. I don’t know how to describe it another way, but it feels like I know her, even though there are things left unsaid. I take a long sip of my beer and think about the places to take her, the things we might do together. It’s odd, thinking like this. But I like it.

  “You’re looking at me,” she says.

  “I can’t help it if you’re stoned,” I say. “You only think I’m looking at you.”

  She puts her hands behind her head and stretches. I can see the outline of her bra, a hint of her smooth stomach as her shirt lifts up. I am looking at her, drinking her in.

  “I’m not stoned. Or not terribly. I don’t think. I’m not really sure. The first time I ever smoked pot was about three hours ago, with you at that coffee shop.”

  “You haven’t been terribly adventurous in your what—twenty-two, twenty-three years?”

  “Twenty-three. I guess not.” As she speaks, her eyes remain on the swaying leaves above. There’s a gentle breeze, and the street is mostly silent. “My mom raised us, and she put the fear of God in us. Li
terally, I guess. She told me and Kim—that’s my sister—or she was my sister—”

  She sighs, as if only now remembering that her one ally is gone. It must strike her many times a day, and I wonder how it was, to have someone who was so essential that you have trouble understanding that they’re gone. “She’s still your sister,” I say, knocking back the remainder of my beer.

  “Thanks. It’s hard to remember sometimes that when I go back home—if I do—she won’t be there.”

  Mallory stares off into space for perhaps a minute, and I just sit there watching her. “What did your mother say to you?”

  “Oh that,” she says, a wry smile coming to her face. “That we were cursed by God because we were women. The only way to make up for it was to ‘stay above our sinful nature.’ There weren’t parties for us, or sleepovers, or birthday parties with friends. We had each other for a long time, and then Kim was at college and law school. It wasn’t a good time for me.”

  “I can imagine.” I don’t share then that I know plenty about overbearing mothers. Something tells me that I don’t know about this type of mother, the distinctly American kind who leans on God and all that hellfire and brimstone business that people from that side of the world seem to love so much.

  “She filed for custody after that.”

  “It was that bad?”

  “Yeah, it was that bad.” Mallory looks down at her plate and eats a few of the fries, now grown cold. I don’t say anything, and she doesn’t either for a little while. As she polishes off the last French fry and pushes her plate away, she looks at me with her distant, blue-gray gaze. “Kim got sick when she was thirty-one. I was in college, and I didn’t know for a long time. The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong for months, and she didn’t tell me until a year later, months before she died.”

  “What was it?” It’s hard for melancholy to descend on such a perfect day. The breeze and sunshine seem at once too light and too happy, but there’s silence and stillness on the street around us.

  “It was multiple sclerosis. Not the kind that takes decades to kill you. It was the rare kind, the one that gets you in a matter of months. Kim said she was kind of lucky in that way, that she didn’t have years and years of hospital beds and valium, wondering if her eyes were going bad or if it was the MS.” Mallory shrugs, as if to indicate she still disagrees with Kim’s assessment. “She was a corporate lawyer, so she had money saved. I have it all now, and she bought me this trip and thousands of dollars in traveler’s checks. The rest is for school. She wants me to be a fashion designer, like I always wanted. But I don’t even know now—”

  “Wait—you have a fat wad of traveler’s checks, and you’re staying in hovels and eating ramen noodles every night.” I sit back and laugh. “I shouldn’t have bought you anything. You need to recklessly spend some cash. Believe me. It’ll do you some good.”

  To my surprise, Mallory looks at me and smiles. “You sound like Kim. She told me I needed to come to Europe, stay in hotels, eat expensive food and—” She stops and blushes.

  “And what?”

  “Have sex. With, uh, guys, I guess.” She gulps and then looks down, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

  “And have you?”

  She looks up at me, startled. “No, definitely not. That’s not me. I don’t think.”

  “What is you? Have you had sex in the past three years? Since your sister got sick?”

  “No—not really. There was one time. And a couple times before she told me. It hasn’t been an important factor in my life.”

  “Not an important factor?” I grin. “If you’re going to be a fashion designer in Paris or Roma—or wherever it is that you’re going to be—you need to know sex. Haven’t you heard? It’s what sells. That element of naughtiness, of decadence, that’s what will get you noticed.” I watch her face intently as I speak, watching the pink blush on her cheeks rise. This girl—she hasn’t had sex in years. And I’d expect what she did have wasn’t any good.

  “I’m not sure I agree with you.” She taps her nails against the table, as if lost in thought. “Couldn’t I be the designer who brings modesty back to the runway?”

  “Not when everyone will be looking at you, not your models.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She looks at me pointedly.

  “It means you’ve got a look about you. When you make it big, everyone will wonder who you’re sleeping with, what you’re doing behind closed doors. You need to cultivate that air of mystery.”

  She sighs hard and her breasts heave. I think about what they might look like beneath her clothing, and I almost can’t bear watching her. I’d like to launch her over my shoulder and haul her back to my apartment, but as it stands, I don’t think she’d like that very much.

  “So you say. You don’t think my designs can stand on their own merit?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I’m sure they can. But to launch to the top of the game—you need something else.”

  “And you’re the one who could give that to me?” She raises an eyebrow and smirks at me. I can read the incredulity in her expression, but there’s a flush rising over her chest. I’ve put the thought in her brain, sealed it there, no matter what she thinks. I want her, and I get what I want.

  “I think I could.” In fact, I know it. But I let it drop there, and we chat about other things until our remaining food has grown cold and the last drops of beer in our glasses are totally flat. I keep thinking of her as she is, young and nearly virginal, on her own, traveling over a continent she doesn’t know. My phone buzzes from time to time, and I know it’s my mother and father trying to contact me about their latest idea for getting me to fulfill my royal duties. I ignore it—and instead, I focus on Mallory’s luscious curves and pouty lips. I don’t think beyond this evening, but as we talk and bits of our past slip out over a second beer and then a third, I can see that she’s mine. I’ll be taking her up to my bed, breaking her, making her do things she hasn’t yet dreamed of. And if my mother thinks I’ll give this up—finding girls like Mallory to ever so slightly corrupt—she’s insane.

  After the cafe closes in the late afternoon, I reach out and touch Mallory’s hand. She doesn’t brush it away this time. Instead, she lets it linger and looks at me, cocking her head to the side.

  “What now?” she asks.

  “I think we need to spend some of your money.”

  “Come on—we don’t. I’m saving it for—” She stops. “I guess I’m not saving it for anything, am I?”

  “No. If you have plenty set aside for school, then no. You don’t have any reason to hold onto the checks.” I lace my fingers through hers. “What’s something you want, more than anything? Something frivolous.”

  “I—I don’t really know.” She bites down on her lip, and it turns blood red. I can only think of taking her, making her mine. The thought is dizzying. I haven’t wanted someone quite like this before, but Mallory is different. I can’t explain why. But she is. “Maybe a painting. Or—I don’t know.”

  I throw a few euros down on the table and take her hand, lifting her from her seat. We’re both still reeling from the pot and the beer, and all the food we inhaled. It’s a perfect time to have her do exactly what she wants, wake her up from the deep sleep she’s been in for so long. “I know a place.”

  “Did you even pay?”

  She looks back at the table as we walk away, and I shrug. “I put down a hundred euros. I think they’ll enjoy the extra cash. They’ll probably think it’s a mistake but—”

  Mallory laughs, and the sound is sweet. “Okay, moneybags. That seems like a little bit of a waste. But I guess you know what you’re doing. Maybe.”

  The sun is low in the sky, and I walk on with her, putting my arm around her. My predator’s instinct is alight in a way it hasn’t been before. I want her, I’ll take her, and she’ll be mine until I say otherwise. She just doesn’t believe it yet.

  We walk on, approaching the part of town
famous for its art galleries and museums. I pull her into a bar and buy her a fruity drink before we walk to one of the galleries I know well. The owner and I—well, we might have had a fling a long time ago. Mallory laughs—and can’t stop laughing—at the tiny paintings with scenes of the city, finally picking one that has a picture of a blue bicycle.

  It costs two hundred euros, and it can’t be more than ten centimeters high. She buys it, like I told her to, setting the package in her bag gently, as if it were a breakable thing.

  The sky is dark when we leave, and I put my hand to her waist. It’s a fine waist, with a slight curve to it. I think of what it would feel like to rip away her shirt, to pull her skirt up and dive between her legs.

  It’s an inevitability.

  And by the time we approach my building, she knows it too. Her body clings to mine, even though her gaze is distant and concerned, like this is something she shouldn’t be doing. I lead her to the walkway in front of my door, and she looks around like she doesn’t quite know where she is, or what we’re up to.

  The look she gives me is mixed, like she’s trying to decide if what her body wants is in any way acceptable. “Matthias, I’d better go back to the rental.”

  “Your things are here.”

  “I should get them and go—”

  “Why? Give me one good reason.”

  She’s silent, and I take her in my arms, guiding my lips to hers. “I want to take you upstairs. I want you to let me,” I say.

  When she breathes in, she shudders a little bit in my arms, like she can’t quite get herself together to think about what I’m saying. I’ve had women respond to me like that before. It’s a natural response to desire, and it’s something I’m familiar with at this point. But with Mallory, even after one day, it feels different. Almost totally new and unfamiliar. Perhaps that’s because it’s clear that she’s not the girl who’s been walking around Europe looking for men. In fact, I don’t think she’s ever been looking.