Oh, she remembers that so well.
He begins to move slowly inside her snug canal. Her passage has seemingly shrunk, out of practice, and he feels very, very large. Her walls are pushed back to the maximum so that she can feel every nuance of his flesh.
Ohhhhh.
“Justin,” she whimpers as the familiar pleasurable friction of having a penis in her vagina after so long commences.
“Am I hurting you?”
“No. It feels . . . so right.”
“I know,” he says wistfully, and he bends down to kiss her mouth.
As he pumps against her hips, he kisses her mouth over and over, like he really means it. He’s a passionate kisser – all tongue and moist lips and the merging of warm fluids. She grinds her hips upwards to meet him, and he responds by thrusting himself deeper within her. He angles himself to probe different sections of her pussy. His pubis grazes her clit, and paeans of sensation fritter delightfully from her sensitive little nub.
She doesn’t remember feeling so loved and cherished for a long time.
He rocks and rocks his hips as they gyrate to a rhythm that is part memory and part experimentation. He’s close to coming, and she gazes at his dark shadow hovering above her as he hisses, and breathes raggedly, and thrusts and rams and impales her . . . until he gives a hoarse cry and she can feel his hot spurt jettison inside her.
Her muscles clench with agonized pleasure as she gives in to her own orgasm. She can lie there forever and let his sperm – his precious, precious sperm – flood every nook and crevice of her pussy. She visualizes his wriggling little life-givers traversing the expanse of her womb, swimming up the tide and into her Fallopian Tubes, engaging with the floating ovum there.
Giving life.
Making life.
She shudders as her fingernails dig into his back.
Justin. I think I love you all over again.
She thinks he whispers “I love you” in her ear, but she can’t be sure. After all, he’s in the throes of a climax and men seldom mean what they say during an orgasm.
*
The next morning, he wakes up with a groan.
“Oh my God,” he says, “my head is splitting apart like a quashed melon.” He squints in the sunlight that filters through the gap in the curtains. “Elise?”
“Ssssh.” She fingers his bare chest. “You’ve got a hangover. Just lie back. I’ll get you some room service coffee.”
He sinks back into the pillows and looks visibly relieved. She will spare him the agony of a drawn curtain.
“Did we really do it?” he says in wonder.
“Yes.”
“Without a condom? So it wasn’t a dream?”
She strokes her lower belly.
“I still feel you inside me,” she confesses.
He smiles in the half-light. He’s so beautiful, she thinks. His amazing profile turns to gaze at her.
“I hope we made a baby,” he says softly.
“I hope so too.”
His hand reaches for hers and clasps it. He brings her fist to his chest.
“This feels right, Elise. Us together again.”
She squeezes his fingers. She doesn’t dare say anything. Her gut tells her that he’s right. The two of them are meant to be together. But her brain revolts against the very thought of being entangled with someone emotionally again.
He goes on, “I hadn’t realized how much I missed you until I saw you again.”
Likewise. She still doesn’t trust herself to say anything she can’t take back.
He goes silent for a long while. Then he says, “I hope you get what you want, Elise.”
“I hope so too.”
And there you have it. The two of them at a crossroads. Neither daring to express how they are really feeling for fear of getting hurt or hurting the other down the line. It’s sad, really, their timing. They are forever doomed to be out of sync – neither being ready emotionally for the other at any moment in their time space continuum.
He groans again. “It feels like a contingent of dwarves is hammering to get out of my head.”
She laughs.
“Ow,” he complains, “that was loud.”
His cellphone rings.
“Shall I get it?” she asks.
“No. Leave it.” He holds his heads to his head. “Owwww.”
His cellphone stops, and then starts insistently again.
“Is it Abby?” she says.
“No, the ringtone I have for her is different. This is some general line.” He curses again. “Remind me to tone the volume down for next time.”
The phone stops, but starts up immediately again. Elise hands it to him.
“I think it’s important,” she says uneasily.
He reluctantly takes the mobile from her.
“Hello?”
Pause.
“Yes, this is he. What? Where?”
Justin’s face turns ashen. Elise’s heart skips a beat.
“What is it?” she asks with dread.
16
Justin hurriedly pushes the swing doors of the Accident and Emergency department. It is crowded at this time of morning with nurses, patients being wheeled in on gurneys, accident victims from the night before, distraught relatives. Various chatter and beeping sounds from medical equipment fill the bustling area. The whole place is redolent with antiseptic, but the unmistakable metallic scent of blood permeates the upper air.
He runs to the reception.
“I’m Justin Morgan. I’m the one you called,” he says tersely.
The receptionist peers at him. “Ah yes, Mr. Morgan. We found your name and number in her wallet as a contact for emergencies.”
Justin clutches at the edge of the counter. “What happened?”
He is aware that he is in yesterday’s grimy clothes and he is unshaven and disheveled. He has not taken a shower and he reeks of sex. He wonders if the receptionist can smell it.
“A man found her car crashed into a tree somewhere out in Acton. She was passed out at the wheel but she had no external injuries. He called an ambulance. Oh wait, here’s the doctor.”
A harried-looking, copper-haired woman in green scrubs exits a cubicle. A stethoscope is slung around her shoulders.
“Dr. Killeney?” the receptionist says. “This is Mr. Morgan, the emergency contact for Abigail Morton.”
“Ah yes.” Dr. Killeney turns to Justin. He can see blood stains on her scrubs.
“Is she all right?”
“She wasn’t hurt in the accident, but she took an overdose of sleeping pills.”
Justin is stunned.
Shit, shit, shit, shit keeps running in his head like a mantra. But why is he surprised? He should have seen it coming.
“What’s your relationship to her?”
He swallows. “I’m her . . . ex-boyfriend. We, uh, broke up last night.”
The doctor’s eyes glaze over with some unfathomable emotion.
“I see,” she says without inflection. “A psychologist has been dispatched to speak to her. Do you want to see her, Mr. Morgan?”
Justin pauses. Does he want to see her? Will his presence render her hysterical and make things worse than they already are?
“Yes, I do,” he says. “Will she be all right?”
“We pumped her stomach out and nullified everything we can. She hadn’t taken enough sleeping pills to do herself permanent damage. We consider this case a parasuicide. It means the patient has no intention of killing herself. You can consider it more a cry for help.”
Justin feels the dread settle into the marrow of his bones.
This is my fault. I did this to her.
An overwhelming sense of helplessness suddenly washes through him. He’s in over his head and he knows it.
I never should have gotten involved with her.
No, don’t ever say that, you coward. This is your mess and you clean it up.
I should have read the signs when she became too poss
essive. I should have known something like this would have happened.
You couldn’t have known. Shut up. This is not about you. Abby’s life is hanging by a thread and you should focus only on that.
Dr. Killeney hesitates, and then continues.
“She is in a very fragile state right now, Mr. Morgan. We will be waiting outside. If you think you’ll run into any trouble or if she starts getting emotional and you think you can’t deal with it, I want you to call us.”
A lump bolts up Justin’s throat. He makes no attempt to chase it away.
“All right,” he says. “Have you called anyone else? Her father?”
“No. You were listed as her emergency contact. No one else.” Dr. Killeney pauses. “I’ll leave it to you to inform her family.”
They lead him up to the medical ward. Along the way, they pass nurses and doctors and interns and medical attendants, all going about their business. Some of them glance at the handsome but untidy-looking man as they stream by.
They know, he thinks dully. They know I’m responsible for this.
He pauses outside a single room, his pulse all aflutter. He’s scared. No, he’s more than scared. He’s terrified.
“Go on,” the nurse urges him. “And remember, we’re outside.”
Justin raps once on the door and nervously wrenches the handle.
Abby lies on the hospital bed. She is pale and wan and barely awake. Her eyes flutter open weakly at his entrance.
“Abby?” He slowly takes a chair and seats himself by her bedside. His heart is hammering in his chest.
The back of her hand is marred by an intravenous drip, whose branula is taped down by white surgical plaster. She raises it and moves her fingers in a semblance of a grip. Justin takes her hand gently and squeezes her fingers.
“I thought you would never come back,” she whispers.
“I’m here.”
Abby’s eyes are bloodshot and the areas beneath them wear dark circles.
“Say you’ll never leave me again.” Her voice is tinny and strangled. “Please, Justin. I would die without you.”
He sits there desperately, letting her hold on to the lifeline of his hand.
*
Justin makes sure Abby is stable before he leaves the hospital. He has spent the whole day with her, and with her permission, called her parents. He knows her father will blame him.
And he was right.
Thaddeus Morton glares at him as he whisks past Justin to go into Abby’s room with her mother. Justin watches through the small window carved into the door. Abby’s mother is crying, and her father is not far from tears himself. Justin forces himself to move away. He’s painfully hungry. It’s already eleven and he hasn’t eaten anything since last night.
As he walks towards the cafeteria, he rings Elise.
She picks up immediately. “Justin, is everything all right?”
Grimly, he tells her what happened. She listens without interrupting.
“I see,” she says in the end.
“Elise, what happened between us was special and real . . . but I can’t leave her like this right now.”
“I understand.” She pauses. “So what about the . . . contract? The baby?”
His conscience is weighted down by anchors.
He says, “I hope that whatever we did last night was enough to get you . . . ”
“Pregnant,” she finishes for him. “Yes, your Christmas gift to me. Thank you very much.” Her tone comes off bitter.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”
“I know.”
“It’s just that she’s really vulnerable right now and I can’t leave her like this.”
“I totally understand. Say no more, Justin.”
A long silence hangs between them.
“I want to see you again one last time,” he says simply.
She sighs. “It’s best that you don’t. You’ve made your choice, Justin.”
“It isn’t my choice.”
“Then when would it stop?”
“Elise – ”
“No, you listen to me. When is she going to stop holding you to emotional blackmail? Every time you don’t do what she wants, she holds you at gunpoint and threatens to kill herself.”
He feels like he has been slammed in the face. “It’s not every time. She hasn’t done this before. But that’s because I haven’t broken up with her before.”
“It’s the truth.”
“What about you? You never did tell me about your ex-husband. Every time a man does wrong by you, you give up on men completely? You don’t want a husband, you say. You want a child. You don’t want me in the picture. I leave Abby, she kills herself, and you don’t want me anyway. So what do you expect me to do?”
“I didn’t say that,” she says softly.
Justin closes his eyes and leans against a doorway. People passing him eye him strangely.
“What did your ex do to you? Beat you up?”
“No. But he did . . . other things,” she says.
He can sense her shrinking away on the other side.
“And you’re telling me I’ll do those other things to you too? That’s why you don’t want me? Because of what I might do?”
Her voice is filled with pain. “No, never.”
He feels torn apart, like the fabric of a curtain that is ripped right in the middle. He feels quartered and drawn, pulled in all limbs by invisible horses.
“Look, I’ll get out of this hospital in a couple of hours. Give me time to shower, change and eat. Then let’s meet and talk. What about tonight?”
She hesitates before saying, “All right.”
“I’ll pick you up at your inn at seven thirty.”
He hopes Abby and her over-possessive parents will let him get away for an hour or so.
16
When Justin pulls up at the inn, he goes to the reception. The Indian guy from yesterday night recognizes him.
“Hello,” he says brightly, “I hope you are feeling much better, sir.”
“I am. Thank you.” Justin strides to the stairway.
“Um, if you are looking for Ms. Ratner, she has checked out, sir.”
Justin stops in his tracks. “What? When?”
“Seven hours ago. She asked me to call a taxi for the airport.”
Justin groans inwardly. He whips out his cellphone and dials Elise’s number, but it goes straight to voicemail.
17
At Heathrow airport, Elise finds herself looking over her shoulder now and again as she lines up for her departure boarding pass. She has discarded her London prepaid SIM card because it ran out of credits.
I’m being a drama queen, she thinks.
But what she feels for Justin is so complex that she can’t even begin to outline it. She loves him. She has no doubt about that now. But he is in a very difficult position right now. On one hand, she would like to believe that he feels something for her. Maybe not yet love, but his words seem to intimate that he thinks he would like to explore something further.
If only it weren’t for Abigail Morton.
And yet . . . does she really want to be with another man for keeps?
She remembers what Leonard, her ex-husband, did to her in the brief time they were together. She had married him out of a lark – out of loneliness. For the sake of having someone to share things with. He was funny and successful and rich and handsome. In the first couple of months, he had been tender and gentle. Then his sexual demands escalated. He practically wanted sex with her every night, even when she was sore.
Soon, he progressed to wanting anal sex, and he had forced himself upon her when she didn’t capitulate to his demands. One night, he tied her up and sodomized her.
That was when, weeping, she fled to the police station and reported him for rape.
No, she would never want to go through that again.
But Justin wasn’t Leonard. He’s the opposite of Leonard. He never was, and he never wi
ll be.
“There you go, Miss,” says the guy at the counter. He hands her the boarding pass. “28C.”
“Thank you.”
She picks up her overnight bag and looks around again. Who is she kidding? If she is expecting Justin to run after her in a crowded airport like romantic heroes do in the movies, she has got to be deluding herself.
She slowly makes her way to the departure gates. No one calls out her name. There is no commotion, no parting crowd to let someone through.
As she enters customs, she surveys the throngs once again, and resigns herself to the fact that Justin belongs to someone else.
17
Christmas morning dawns bright and cheery, for once. Because of Abby’s illness, they have decided to celebrate Christmas morning by opening their presents at her family’s home.
The Mortons live in a gorgeous rambling house in Hampstead. A fire crackles in the heath, and the entire living room is bedecked with stockings and mistletoe and Christmas paraphernalia. A huge Christmas tree groaning with a hundred glittering decorations sits in one corner, and the gaily wrapped presents beneath it extend several feet out upon the plush white carpet.
Outside, it is snowing.
Justin stares out of the window, wondering what Elise is doing back in Arizona. Would she be celebrating Christmas with her parents? He pictures her gruff, chain-smoking father and her apple-cheeked mother (who is apple-cheeked not from natural rosiness but a skin condition called rosacea, unfortunately), who have both been extremely kind to him.
Is Elise knocked up by now?
He debates whether or not to call her, and then decides – hell, let’s not revisit something that is going to open up a whole bunch of painful memories. Elise has decided to close the door upon him by leaving, and he will respect that.
Abby is seated cross-legged upon the floor by the tree. She is in a purple turtleneck sweater and tartan slacks. Her skin is still pale from lack of sun, but she is laughing as she carefully undoes the wrapper to one of her presents. Thaddeus and Emily Morton are chatting lovingly to each other upon the couch while two of their college-aged children enthusiastically test out their new Kindle Fires.
A Xmas Gift: The Sperm Donor Page 7