PREGNANT FOR A PRICE

by Kathryn Thomas

  “Touch yourself.”

  Suddenly, he was leaning over me, his breath hot and sweet with wine in my ear. I did as I was told, slipping my hand between my legs, as he slowly wrapped my hair around his hand and tugged lightly. I let out a moan of pleasure and pain, not sure what I wanted more of, as I began to masturbate. I could feel his cock moving in and out of me, and the sensation of it against my hand was a ridiculous turn-on. He kissed my neck, running his teeth lightly over the side of my throat, as he picked up the pace, and I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer.

  I wasn’t sure what drew the words out from me that time. Maybe it was just the intensity of the feelings coursing through my body or the fact that I was so close to a release of a different kind. But whatever it was, I said it. I turned my head, my lips brushing lightly against him, and spoke as he fucked me.

  “I know it was you.”

  When the second orgasm came, my knees practically gave out from under me. I was glad he had one hand on my ass; otherwise, I might have collapsed into a sloppy pile at his feet. My toes curled in my heels, and I let out a deep grunt, my body wracked with contractions as I tried to pull myself back together. And then, I realized what I had said.

  He didn’t speak. He stood back up, placed his hands back on my hips, and screwed me deep and hard a few more times before he found his own climax inside of me. He remained inside me for a few seconds after he finished before he slowly withdrew, rolling off the condom and disposing of it quickly. I pulled my panties up and my skirt down, and turned to peer at him as he used a lighter from his pocket to relight the candles on the table. Had I fucked things up? Because it felt as though I might have royally fucked everything up.

  Chapter Eight

  Shit. Shit. Shit. I adjusted my clothes so I was decent again; glad to have even the low flicker of the candles to light my way for me. I couldn’t even make eye contact with her, and she was staring straight at me as though she was expecting a reaction.

  “That was amazing,” she murmured, still leaning up against the table. She wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t what was on my mind right then. She was acting so nonchalant. Did she even know that she’d said it? Maybe it had slipped out as she came, maybe she never intended to say it. Maybe we could breeze right by this, and we could pretend it never happened.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, my head elsewhere. I glanced over at her - she looked incredible, her hair messy and her face lightly flushed. She looked blissful, beautiful, beyond anything I’d seen before. My cock twitched in my pants as my eyes skimmed across her legs and the way her skirt hugged her thighs, but I had to get out of there. No time for round two. At least, not yet. I wondered how much screwing her again was worth - getting caught, getting found out, getting arrested? At that second, I would have handed over anything to get close to her again.

  “Thanks for dinner.” I nodded towards the plates, pushing any thoughts of screwing out of my mind. “It was great.”

  “Thanks for everything.” She fluttered her eyelashes up at me. “You’re welcome back anytime.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” I replied, glancing away again. The effect this woman had on me, it was ridiculous, but I knew I had to leave. If she knew I was the one who had saved her… shit, she wasn’t stupid, I couldn’t exactly be taken aback by it. But if she knew, then chances were she’d told someone else, and that could put the both of us in a whole lot of trouble if we weren’t careful. I doubted that the cops knew - it was an odd way to go about getting them involved if she had. But I couldn’t risk it, I had to get out of there. I knew that if the cops made an appearance, I could be going down for a whole lot more than just dealing with those two assholes.

  “I should probably be going,” I commented, feeling awkward. It had only been moments ago that I’d been inside this woman, but right now, my entire body was practically seized up with nerves. She must have thought I was crazy. Maybe this was her way of thanking me, and she just wanted to let me know there was a reason behind her going all-out for a night like this?

  “It is late,” she agreed, standing up and running her fingers through her hair in a futile attempt to get it to sit straight again. The messy look suited her, though. I liked the way her loose hair curled around her ears and down to her neck. “You want me to call you a taxi?”

  “No, it’s fine, I’m just around the corner,” I said with a wave of my hand. I didn’t want to have to wait around for a taxi at this time of night, and potentially have to spend even longer in her company as the two of us tried to avoid what she’d said.

  “Will you be okay getting home?” I asked. It hadn’t crossed my mind until now, but considering what had happened last time… I would do it if I had to, but I didn’t want to have to save her again. It took me by surprise, that realization - I hadn’t really considered it until then, but I knew in that second I would do it all for her another time around if it meant I could keep her safe. I glanced away from her, trying not to think too hard about what that meant.

  “I’ll be fine, one of the chefs is stopping by to pick me up soon.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry.”

  “Uh, good.” I nodded. “I guess I’ll… catch you later, then?”

  “Guess so.” She smiled up at me, sashaying over to the door. She was glowing, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. If I was to just reach out and touch her hip, turn her around to face me, maybe we could…? Just one more time before I went…?

  I punched myself lightly in the leg to get myself to snap out of it, and followed her to the door. No. Get out now, while you still can. She unlocked the door, giving me a look with her striking eyes as I reached her.

  “I had an amazing night,” she murmured, and before I could stop her, she leaned up to kiss me goodbye. It was a sweet, chaste kiss, no tongue, but somehow it was even more tempting than what we’d been getting up to before. I had to squeeze my hands into fists to distract myself from how much I wanted her. I lightly patted her waist and moved back from the kiss, my head spinning.

  “Me too,” I replied without thinking, and put my hand on the door.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” she called after me as I made my way out onto the street, and I offered her a quick smile over my shoulder as I finally hit the road again. Then I heard the door lock and the shutters come down once more, leaving me out in the cold once again. Jesus. What the hell had happened there?

  I couldn’t deny that I was attracted to her. She was beautiful, intelligent, successful, ambitious, all the things I struggled to find in most of the women I ended up dating. But… I’d be a fool to make anything more of it than we already had. If she knew, and I knew that she knew, we could be in for a lot of trouble down the line if I kept things up. Working for a guy like Leo, your personal life was always going to come up, no matter how hard you tried to keep it separate from your work. When you spend all your time around these people, it was impossible to avoid the fact that they would get to know you more intimately than you might have liked. And if Leo found out that I was dating the very woman who was in the way of the expansion of his business… well, there would be hell to pay. For both of us. And I personally wasn’t willing to put both our asses on the line for a connection that we had barely even got started yet.

  I knew this was my fault for going there at all in the first place. I was pushing my luck, curious, and undeniably attracted to her. I could pretend like I was just being a gentleman by checking up on her, but there had been something more there from the first moment she’d kissed me. Maybe I was just lonely and looking for some kind of connection; maybe it was something more. But I could hardly handle infiltrating Leo’s operations on top of keeping her on the side and expect my two worlds not to collide.

  I looked up - it was raining lightly, the drops beginning to form small puddles of the street. And suddenly, that seemed pretty appropriate because right then, I felt like I might drown under the intensity of everything that was going on. Keeping my head above water for the next few months was g
oing to be tough, and even with years of experience behind me, I wasn’t certain that I’d be able to find a way to do it.

  Chapter Nine

  Billy walked me home that evening, and I was pretty sure he could tell something was up with me. We’d worked together for years, and he knew me well enough to know when something was up. He didn’t ask- I got him off on a tangent about his brother, and let him rant to me all the way home, nodding along and pulling faces and making exclamations where they were necessary. I was listening, but half of my brain was still hung up on everything that had just happened between Anthony and I. As soon as I got into my apartment, I tossed my phone on my dresser, flopped down on my bed and let myself dedicate all my brain space to him once more.

  God, that had been some damn good sex. For me, hook-ups were often few and far between because I spent so much time getting the restaurant in hand - it was hard to find the space to find someone appropriate to fuck and then actually fuck them when I was working until the small hours of almost every morning, weeks on end. If I was being honest, I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually had sex. But that didn’t matter because Anthony had blown them all out of the water anyway. I would be coming back to our encounter over and over again, I was sure of it - the feeling of his hands gripping my hips, the weight of his body on top of mine as he leaned over to kiss my neck… I shivered as I peeled off my jacket and shoes, and wondered where he’d learned to fuck like that.

  I let out a huge yawn and managed to drag myself into a shower, even though I knew that it would wash that delicious scent of his aftershave right off me. A little bit of me wanted to luxuriate in it for the entire night; to close my eyes and pretend that he was right there next to me. But I had to be up early the next day for my next shift, and if I came in stinking of a dude, most of the staff would have some serious questions to ask me (and with cause). They were so used to my entire life revolving around the restaurant that even a hint that something interesting might be going on in my personal life would lead to endless questions. I already knew that Lily was going to corner me as soon as I got through the door and demand to know everything that happened last night. And the last thing I wanted was to be accosted by every member of staff about the same thing.

  After I had bathed, I slipped under the covers and closed my eyes. He was good. God was he good. Just the right level of rough, totally in control without being an asshole about it. Determined to make me cum without putting all that pressure on me. My pussy clenched as I remembered him inside of me, like a muscle memory, and I wondered if I would ever get to do it again.

  He had been pretty keen to get out of there once we were done. Well, as soon as I’d said what I’d said, he’d seemed to tense up, finishing and then quickly dressing and getting ready to leave. I mean, I couldn’t blame him - I had dumped a rather big piece of important information on him, right as we were screwing our brains out. Maybe he thought I was going to hand him into the cops, or something? That was the last thing on my mind if I was being honest. I had no intention of getting him arrested for what he did. Yes, I probably should have, but I had my own horse in this race, and I wasn’t going to object to couple less bastard rapists out on the streets. Not after what happened to Lia.

  He had been so quick with them. I couldn’t shake that. I had blacked out for a matter of seconds, and when I came to, he had practically dealt with them. Well, killed them - there was no point beating around the bush about it. I shivered a little at the thought of it. When we had been having dinner, he had been so careful to evade all the questions that I had for him about his job, his past, and where he got his skills. I had gone over and over it in my head. Was he an ex-cop, a personal trainer, an MMA fighter? But if it was any of those things, why wouldn’t he have told me? None of it was illegal, and none of it necessarily implicated him in the murders either. Another thought crossed my head, one that had been playing on the back of my mind since we finished dinner.

  Maybe… maybe he did that kind of stuff for a living? I dismissed the thought as quickly as it popped into my head. I was being ridiculous. What, was he some kind of assassin, stalking the street at night and taking people out for cash? Guys like that weren’t exactly known for their compassion and dedication to saving random women they bumped into on the street now, were they? Or perhaps he was a vigilante. Maybe he’d decided to Batman it up and clean up the streets. I wasn’t sure which concept was more outrageous.

  Still, it was something to think on. He’d clearly done it before - I mean, he had the mask and everything. Was he taking justice into his own hands to make the city better? I scoffed to myself - yeah. Because guys like that existed outside of comics. I didn’t really want to linger on why he was so good at what he had done, but it explained why he had been out of there so quickly after we hooked up. No doubt he thought I was going to hand him over and he’d be screwed - well, not just in the sexy way. I let out a sigh. Had I scared him off? Fuck it, even if half of what I had come up with tonight had been true, then it was probably for the best that I didn’t see him again.

  I mean, I had always been attracted to bad boys. That was a total thing, wasn’t it? Women finding themselves “into” men who probably weren’t the most wholesome guys in the world? It wasn’t that I didn’t like gentlemen, just that they weren’t a pre-requisite for people who wanted to get in my pants. I didn’t want to fix them or turn them into some docile little house-husband. I guess I liked them more because they expected less of a commitment from me and I didn’t have to turn myself into somebody’s girlfriend. I hadn’t been a romantic partner to anyone in a long time, and I had no intention of becoming one. All I knew was that when I thought of Anthony, I wanted more. He was bad news, there was no arguing with that, but I wasn’t sure what kind of bad news he was, and whether or not I wanted to have him printed all over my pages.

  I smiled to myself. Way to labor the metaphor. Despite the fact my brain was overflowing, I found myself drifting off to sleep… until I was suddenly roused by the buzzing of my phone on the dresser. Who could be texting me at this time of night? One of the chefs looking for time off in anticipation of a hangover he was going to have? I blearily reached across the bed and grabbed my cell, holding it at arm’s length so the light didn’t sear my eyes.

  The text was from an unknown number, one I didn’t recognize. I cocked my eyebrow - that wasn’t good. The only people who had my number were the people I gave it to. It had to be some kind of marketing scam, or one of the guys from the restaurant getting a new phone and not bothering to tell me. I clicked to open the message, and my heart dropped to my stomach when I saw what it said.

  “It’s going to happen again. And this time, there won’t be anyone around to save you.”

  I threw my phone across the room and pulled the covers over my head. My blood pulsed through my veins as the words carved themselves onto my brain, and it felt as though I would never be able to focus on anything but them ever again.

  Chapter Ten

  As soon as I walked up the steps to the nondescript building, I felt a wash of panic come over me. This wasn’t how I wanted things to go. I had promised myself I would never come back here, and yet here I was. But why? What did I have to gain by being here?

  Well, I could protect Sabrina. That was what I was doing here. If I was being honest, that was what this was about. I wasn’t interested in cleaning up the streets and turning the city into a place we could all be proud of as a community. I wanted to keep her safe, and that was pretty much it. Selfish? Yes. But at least I wasn’t just back here because I had to be.

  I had always told myself that if I needed cash again, I would get a legitimate job. Yeah, my skills weren’t much, and I couldn’t exactly use my old employer as a job reference, but I was smart and well-spoken, and I would have no trouble finding something if I wanted to. Yes, the thought of getting a real job - something I’d never had to consider getting before - was a little rattling, but I told myself I would do it if I had to. Who
cared if I knew somewhere at the back of my brain that I would probably just wind up backsliding into what I knew best? As long as I wasn’t actually working for Leo, I could tell myself that I was a changed man.

  I buzzed myself in using the code that Leo had given me before I came down. It changed every day, had done for years, and it was always a pain making sure that I was in on that shit before I schlepped all the way across town to get to the office. Inside, I found Dean waiting outside Leo’s office.

  Dean was a bodyguard of Leo’s I’d worked with for a while - he was a bit of dim guy, but he had the strength to make up for it. When we’d worked together, he’d been the big, scary, untrained fucker who needed someone to take him in hand, like a dog off a leash. He must have gotten a promotion since last time I came by, as his suit was cut a little closer and his haircut was a little more expensive. Not to mention the fact that he was now protecting Leo directly. I nodded at him in greeting, and he did a visible double take when he figured out who I was.