by Loki Renard
My dress is white lace, a long skirt and train billowing in the rough sea winds. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t matter. There is no photographer. We will never look back on this moment in fond memory. This is a false transaction with a dead god, and nothing more.
I can barely hear the priest, but it doesn’t matter either.
“I do.” The words leave my mouth at the appointed time. They are swept away on the ocean breeze.
Darko slips a ring on my finger and it is done. I am a married woman. Mrs. Darko Lijander.
Darko’s kiss crushes my mouth, his tongue plundering me there on the rocky shore. He sweeps me off my feet and carries me back up to his stronghold, that foreboding dark place of hard concrete panels and cool glass windows.
He takes me to the bedroom with the cage, the one where my captivity truly began and sets me down on my feet. Before I can open my mouth to say a word, he puts both hands on the neckline of my dress and literally tears it from me, ripping satin and lace to expose my bridal body.
“Holy...” My words are cut off in his kiss, passionate, demanding, and somehow cruel.
This is fucked up, but it is hot as hell. I hate him, but that hatred does not stop my desire. If anything it makes me wetter and hotter and less inhibited than ever before. What do I give a fuck what he thinks now? There is nothing left between us but pure sex.
His hands are roaming my body, his lips on my breasts, his teeth grazing my nipples. He is raw and untamed, stripping the suit from his body. God. As much as I think I hate him, I love that body. The tattoos, the scars, the rough muscles that give him all that power over me.
I want him. As much as I hate this, I need him. His touch brings me back to life, and the coolness between us has hurt me. I wonder if it has hurt him. I wonder if we will ever be good again. I wonder if anything will be good again.
Darko pulls away from me for a second and grabs something out of the bedside drawer. It’s a condom. He pulls it from the foil and slips it on his cock, his eyes fixed on me with mocking intent. “Wouldn’t want to impregnate you, would I?”
“Fuck you,” I hiss.
“No. Fuck you.”
He storms across the room, tosses me down on the bed, and lays a dozen hard slaps to my ass. I haven’t done anything wrong, but I know why he is doing this. It’s the same reason he has done everything since I told him no.
“You can’t punish me for not wanting to have your baby, Darko!”
“I can punish you for whatever I want,” he growls, his hand fisting my hair, his teeth raking over my neck. He is rougher than he was before. “You don’t want to be a mother. You just want to be a fuck toy. I can do that, Chloe. I can make you my little whore. I can use you in every way.”
I feel his cock brush against my pussy. This is my wedding night. This is the night where the man who is supposed to love me more than anyone in the world shows me with his body just how much he cares. But Darko’s cock skims past my cunt and finds my bottom. Cool lube is squirted on that tight little hole and his fingers plunge in, twisting and spreading me for the hard rod I know he intends to plunge inside me.
“Is this what you want, my hot little wife? Do you need your husband’s cock right here in this dirty hole?”
He’s going to make me say it. He’s going to make me ask him to fuck my ass, on my wedding night. His cock isn’t going to go anywhere near my pussy, condom or not.
Pinned on my stomach, I give in to him. This sex is all we have now, and I want it. I want it deep and I want it hard, and yes I want it in my ass. He doesn’t deserve my pussy.
“Fuck me wherever you want.”
“Oh, I will. I fucking will.”
With that, his dick slams inside my ass. I scream out in a mixture of fury and arousal. I fucking hate him right now, but my cunt is dripping with desire that I can’t stop no matter how much I want to. His hate and mine are volcanic in their intensity. He fucks me and I fuck back, letting him have the dirty hole he wants. He slaps my ass and drives in harder, pounding me as I jolt and writhe.
It’s a quick and dirty fuck. Darko slams inside me, his dick throbbing deep in the tightest part of me. It is punishing. It is rough. It is what we both need. I curl my fingers in the sheets and I lift my hips and I take it. I take every stroke until his hand reaches around and finds my clit, his fingers stroking the wet little nub.
“You’re soaked, Chloe. You’re always so wet when I fuck you. When are you going to admit that you want this, and me? When are you going to give in to the inevitable?”
“Shut up and fuck me,” I gasp.
He obliges, pounding strokes going so deep I scream and writhe. He’s going to come. I’m going to come. Orgasm is swirling between the pair of us, a force drawing us together in spite of the darkness keeping us apart.
I scream and cry out, I yell my fear, my desire. I shout to the world and to him as my wedding climax is ripped from my soft flesh, my ass pulsing and gripping his cock so tight that even he cannot resist the imperative to come.
The condom didn’t survive our rough tryst. As Darko comes, his seed shoots inside me, his body pressed hard against mine, his cock swelling inside me as his cum bathes the inside of my ass. This is perverse, fucked up, filthy. This is as far from the romance of a wedding as is possible.
He grunts as he pulls out, dropping down next to me on the bed on his back and we both lie there, spent from an intense round of sexual loathing.
As orgasm fades, I look over at him. “How long is this going to go on, Darko? How long are you going to fuck a wife you hate? How long are you going to keep me locked up here?”
He turns his head to look back at me. “I don’t hate you, Chloe. I never have.”
“That’s a fucking lie,” I hiss. “You hated me ever since I called you evil. You thought you could take me and fuck me and fuck my mind, and turn me into something so twisted I was able to kill and...”
“That is not on me,” he growls. “You did that of your own accord. You could have surrendered. You chose to kill before you did. What you did is no different than anything a hundred murderers have done before you. It was revenge killing. And your father would be proud.”
“No, he wouldn’t. He would hate me too. You’ve made me...”
“I’ve made you nothing,” he thunders, making my heart race. “I saved your life when I took you the first time, and again when I took you the second. For months I have done nothing but protect you, train you, try to break through that shell you wear like armor, but I’m starting to think you’re shell all the way to your core, Chloe. There’s no soft heart inside you.”
“No,” I agree, my voice shaking with rage. “My heart died with my father. There’s nothing for you to have, Darko. Nothing for you to claim.”
He reaches for me. I brace for pain. But he’s not going to hurt me again, he’s not going to give me that satisfaction. He pulls me from the bed and throws me into more familiar quarters.
I spend my wedding night in the cage, his cum dripping from my ass.
Chapter Sixteen
Chloe
I have a problem.
A bigger problem than the monster of a husband who holds me captive on this island. A bigger problem than the loss of all my assets, which have now been rolled into his holdings. I have a problem that is going to tear me apart. A problem I can’t hide much longer.
It has been at least two months, and I have not bled. Every day I pray for my period to start, but it never comes and in the end even I have to admit what I have been in denial about for a long time. Darko has noticed too. It was he who dragged me back to this medical bed where he first fucked me raw, where this mistake was made.
He brings a doctor in to take an ultrasound, but I don’t need to see the picture on the screen to know what has happened. I am pregnant. I have been so since before he asked me if I wanted to be. That one encounter before I started the birth control must have taken, and the pill he gave me failed to work.
“You’re
three months along,” the doctor says. “Baby looks healthy.”
He looks at me as if he expects me to be happy about that. I can’t even begin to think about the abstract concept of a baby, which still feels so remote. I am in shock. Complete and utter denial. I cannot be pregnant. I took the pill. I took the fucking pill.
“Ma’am? Your baby is...”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
The doctor is an older man. He’s probably nice. He looks utterly shocked at my response. I sit up and point to the door. “Get the fuck out now!”
“Settle down, Chloe...” Darko tries to intervene, but even he can’t stop this. Not now. Some part of him is alive inside me. Something is growing. Someone is coming. And I have no choice in it.
“Hormones,” Darko says, escorting the doctor out, apologizing and thanking him at the same time. I thoroughly expect a lecture and a punishment when he gets back, but I don’t care. I stare at that blurry picture the doctor printed out and I feel my eyes begin to water.
That poor little life inside me. It’s entirely innocent. It has no concept of what it is going to be born into. And there is nothing I can do ultimately to keep it safe, just as in the end, my father could not keep me safe.
* * *
Darko
My suspicions have been confirmed. I think I knew she was pregnant the moment I came inside her, but I could not come to terms with it. I gave her a pill to end it and still that soul persisted. I feel a strange sense of pride at that fact. The life inside my wife has been battling from the beginning. I know, male or female, it will be strong. The news fills me with happiness, but I know Chloe does not feel the same way.
As I return to her, she looks at me with hatred, her gaze bitter. “Congratulations,” she hisses. “You’re going to be a father.”
“And you, a mother.”
“Fuck you.” She crosses her arms over her stomach and looks away from me. I see her lashes batting quickly as she fights tears.
This is not how most pregnancy revelations go. The joy is absent, just as it was from our wedding. I see bitterness on her face, a misery that goes to her core and suddenly I am struck by the fact that this is my fault. One hundred percent, completely my fault. The news of new life jolts me out of the bubble of my self-righteous certainty and makes me see things anew.
Chloe is small, vulnerable, and weak in the way nature makes all women. Her ability to bring forth new life makes her so exposed to dangers, so much more aware of their impact. I have blamed her for so much. I accused her of putting the blame on me for things that were not mine to take responsibility for. But I am the one who took her and tore what remained of her world apart. I am the one who has forced her every step of the way and now she is carrying my child.
At that moment, I make a vow to myself. I will not engage in any more fights with Chloe. I will not allow this baby to be born in bitterness, hatred, and grief.
Sitting on the bed next to her, I take her by the hand, and I begin to talk.
“I was a teenager when the Yugoslav war was being fought. My father was a rebel. I worshipped him. My people have been rebels for centuries. Generations. We have been fighting since the twelfth century, fathers and sons taking up arms against the oppressors which swept in and out of our lands. I was twelve the first time I took a man’s life.”
She is stiff next to me, but I hear a soft sound from her as I share that piece of information.
“The scar. The one you see on my chest. The one you first asked about. That is where a bullet was taken out next to my heart. A fraction of an inch either way and I would have been dead, but I survived. I was sent away from the war after that. My people committed atrocities, and had atrocities committed against them. In the end, I was left with a great deal of blood money and no family. They were all gone. When I returned to my village after the war, it was rubble. I know what it is to lose those one loves, Chloe. I became a man when I took my first life, and perhaps you became a woman when you did the same.”
“No,” she whispers softly. “I became a monster.”
“A human is a monster. A proper human, anyway. The people you see on the streets, most of them are not fully human. Most of them are parts of the hive, little pieces in the system. They do their jobs, they fulfill their purpose, but they never have the full expression of their instincts. They never act on their sexual desires, or fully express their hatred and loathing. They subjugate themselves to the will of the collective so they can live in peace. You and I have foregone that peace, and those rules. But we have more freedom, more power, and a greater world to live in because of it.”
* * *
Chloe
As Darko speaks, I feel him unfold next to me. The cold silence that has characterized the first weeks of our marriage is shattered by the words that resonate with truth. This is the first time he has ever shared anything of any real substance with me before.
“Why did you never speak to me like this before? Why didn’t you share this?” My eyes are wet with tears. Tears for him. Tears for our baby. Tears for myself.
“You’re desperate now,” he says. “You fear for yourself and your baby. You don’t trust that I will be a father to it, or that you will be a mother. But I’m telling you, we will do what is necessary to raise this child. I was sent away while my people committed atrocities and in the end I was left with the blood money my father’s efforts garnered our family. I have never been a good man, Chloe. My blood runs dark in my veins. You cannot expect kindness or mercy from me. But you can expect me to exercise my power in the manner which grows our family stronger.”
“Just what every infant needs,” I say, trying hard to hide the bitterness, but failing.
“I can be a good father, Chloe. And I can be a good husband.”
“Are you going to put a crib in the cage with me?”
He shakes his head, a hint of a smile appearing on his lips. “Some things will have to change. For starters, we are returning home.”
“What home?”
“Yours.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “So that’s it? Baby makes everything better? We have been fighting for weeks, Darko. We’ve barely spoken, except to fuck, and now this little scan changes everything? Are we seriously going to pretend that’s how this is going to go?”
“Marriage is like that sometimes,” he says. “And you know, you’ve probably been hormonal.”
“Me! This has not all been on me!”
“Maybe some of it was my fault,” he admits graciously.
“Maybe all of it was. Maybe everything up to and including this stowaway in my stomach.”
“Maybe,” he admits.
A smile is starting to emerge from me and I don’t understand it. I have been so deeply angry, so completely miserable, so fiery and so aggressive, and suddenly it as if everything is all okay just because I’m pregnant. It cannot be that simple.
“We’re fucked up, Darko.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “So is everyone else.”
Chapter Seventeen
Chloe
I never thought I would set foot in my old home again. I thought that chapter of my life was closed. I thought I would live the rest of my life in some far-flung location, being roughly fucked and thoroughly punished, but this pregnancy has changed everything. It has changed Darko, and it has changed me.
Now I waddle up and down the stairs I used to run up and down as a teenager, and slide down as a kid. The bedroom I grew up in has been transformed into a nursery. The home my father died in, and I was taken in, has become the staging ground for a new life for all of us.
“M’lady, please.” Miles sounds desperately frustrated. “Use the elevator.”
“I don’t like the elevator.”
“Use the elevator.” A deep, commanding voice comes from behind me, warm lips on the back of my neck. Darko picks me up and carries me the rest of the way down the stairs, into the kitchen where I was heading for a snack.
I have to g
ive him credit, he is playing domesticated well. As am I. I’m wearing a maternity dress with big yellow flowers on it. Darko is wearing slacks and a woolen Dad sweater. We both look stupid as far as I’m concerned, but we’re playing the roles anyway, what else can we do?
“Just a few more days and you can do what you want with that body,” Darko smiles as I descend on pickles and ice cream. “Until then, be careful.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I haven’t been able to do what I want with my body since I met you. I think you mean a few more days and you can do what you want with it, except you won’t be able to because it’s six weeks of healing and then...”
He shakes his head. “I have my ways of using you no matter what...”
“I know you... owww?”
A sudden curious pain low in my belly interrupts our bickering. It’s not like any I’ve felt before. It’s not like the kicking that has been threatening to pulverize my internal organs for weeks. It’s like everything got very tight all of a sudden and very intense.
Water runs down my thighs, warm and wet and oh, my god, I’m peeing myself... oh, wait...
“I’m having it! I’m having the baby.”
“You won’t be,” Darko says from the interior of the fridge where he is smelling cheese. “It’s your first baby. Labor takes a long time. We read in the books, remember?”
“Darko!” I shriek his name and he whips around. There is real panic in my voice. The baby is coming, and nobody has told it that it is supposed to be slow. I have been feeling things all day, but I didn’t think it was labor. It didn’t hurt enough, and maybe my pain calibration is way off, maybe I don’t know what pain even is anymore.
The contractions are intense. I can barely stand. I cannot speak. I clutch at the kitchen sink on one side and Darko on the other. He wants me to walk, he keeps telling me to come with him, but I can’t move. Because it’s coming. It’s coming!
“Catch the baby!”
He crouches down just in time to stop our slippery infant from hitting expensive tile. There is blood and water everywhere, the fluids of life, and there is a little human in Darko’s big hands.