The Imperfections: A Forbidden Romance

by Sam Mariano

  I sigh, sinking back against his chest, completely comfortable despite my unabashed nakedness. “I love having sex with you,” I tell him. “I never want to stop.”

  “Clearly, I should have locked you in my basement that first night and never let you out. I could’ve come down and fucked you any time I felt like it, and you would’ve eaten it up.”

  “It’s not too late,” I tell him, almost earnestly. “You can kidnap me again, and I totally won’t tell anyone you flubbed the first time. In the note I left at home tonight, I just said I was giving a friend a ride home. I didn’t specify who, and no one would ever know it was you. Keep me here as your sex prisoner,” I say, trying to entice him more than anyone has ever tried to entice someone into doing such a thing.

  Amused, he asks, “You want to live in my basement?”

  “Well, not really. I was thinking the captivity could be more trust-based so I can roam around freely during the day. I would prefer to be kept prisoner in your bedroom, if you’re married to the locking me up aspect and can’t be talked out of it. But really, as long as I’m getting your cock every night or so, I can work with whatever living arrangements you feel necessary.”

  “You make felonies sound so appealing.”

  “They are,” I tell him, nodding earnestly. “All the cool kids are doing it. You should try it, see what all the fuss is about.”

  “I technically already have. I did kidnap you the night I met you, you’re just crazy and you started liking me anyway, so everything got all fucked up.”

  “But then you took me back home,” I tell him with a grimace. “So, you kinda failed at being a successful kidnapper. Sorry.”

  “Damn,” he says dryly. “There goes that life goal.”

  “It’s okay.” I pat the part of his arm I can reach. “I believe in you. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

  “I wonder if any other kidnappers have ever had an abductee with so many complaints about being returned home safely,” he muses.

  “Probably not, but they’re probably not as good at sex, and I bet they don’t even have cute dogs. Plus, your murder workshop is pretty impressive, and I bet they don’t even have murder workshops.”

  With mock disgust, he says, “Amateurs.”

  “I’m all in on this plan. I can’t be your girlfriend, okay, but I can totally be your hostage. If anyone ever found me out, it wouldn’t be, ‘I’m dating the girl who did that bad thing,’ it would be, ‘I abducted that girl who did that bad thing and I’m keeping her prisoner in my house.’ No one could ever fault you for that,” I assure him.

  “That is an incredibly inaccurate statement. I think a lot of people could find fault in that, just not for the same reasons.”

  “I realize kidnapping is frowned upon, but this is agreed-upon kidnapping, just between us. I’d never rat you out, anyway. If you ever get caught, I’ll tell whoever finds me whatever you want to tell them. If it’s Bri, you’ve been making my life a living hell. If it’s the law, I’m renting out that room in your basement, totally not a prisoner.”

  “You’re very loyal, for an abductee.”

  “You’re my favorite abductor,” I tell him with exaggerated fondness in my eyes as I look over at him.

  I’m playing—mostly—but there’s something bittersweet in his gaze when I look at him.

  Rolling over and curling closer, I ask, “What’s wrong?”

  “I enjoy the hell out of you. I wish these were viable plans.”

  “Why aren’t they?” I try to keep my tone light. “I’m willing to be flexible, Brant. I understand it’s complicated with us. I understand it’s hard to… be with me, and maybe you don’t want to take that chance until you’re sure it would work, but I can work with that. I’m not demanding, I’m not high-maintenance. If you need me to stay a secret for a while, I will. It won’t bother me, I promise. I don’t want the rest of the world in our relationship anyway. I like it so much because it’s just you and me.”

  “I like that, too,” he admits, reaching out and catching a lock of my hair, winding it around his fingers thoughtfully.

  Seeing I’m actually making some progress even though I didn’t expect to, I curl even closer, wrapping an arm around him and looking up at him. “So, what’s the harm in trying it out? What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “The worst that can happen is it doesn’t work out, and then I hurt you more because I kept you longer,” he says with regret on his face, like it’s an inevitability instead of just a possibility.

  “I’m willing to take that risk,” I tell him. “I will bend however you need me to—just give us a chance.”

  “You shouldn’t have to bend that much for someone, Alyssa.”

  “That’s my call, not yours. How far I’m willing to bend and compromise…it’s not your job to set that limit for me, Brant. That’s my territory.”

  “I don’t want to damage you,” he says seriously, pushing his fingers through my hair and cradling my head.

  I scoot up so my breasts are smashed against his chest and I’m half on top of him. “You won’t. I promise. In case you haven’t noticed, I tend to be pretty resilient. I’m like a cat with nine lives—I always land on my feet, even when jerky people try to drown me. Give me a fraction of the trust I have in you and let me make this decision for myself.”

  His head sinks into the pillow and he looks up at the ceiling for a few beats. “You deserve better than to be with a man who keeps you a secret, Alyssa. It worries me that you’re willing to go from one relationship like that right into another.”

  “You’re not married, though,” I point out. “It’s not the same.”

  “It’s not the same, but it’s not that different, either,” he says, clearly uncomfortable with the realization. “You deserve to be with a man who can show everyone how proud he is to have you, not someone who treats you like a dirty little secret.”

  “And I know you would, if things were different.” I miss a beat, then tell him, “It’s not like you’re marrying me, Brant. You’re not stuck with me. If it doesn’t work out and you don’t feel enough for me after a while, then… at least we tried.”

  Pointing at me, he says, “See, right there—you’re hoping for a promotion I can’t give you. Even in the best-case scenario, say you are perfect for me and you feel the same way, nothing changes about your situation. You’re still pregnant with my brother-in-law’s baby. It’s not like I can introduce you to my family and bring you into my life. The problem isn’t that I don’t think I’d like being with you. The problem is—you know what the problem is,” he finishes irritably, not wanting to rub my face in it again.

  Frustration builds up inside me. “The problem is you’re not even willing to try.”

  “Because it can’t go anywhere,” he says, his eyes widening like he can’t believe I refuse to accept this.

  “Because I’m pregnant,” I say, staring at him. “Is that what it is? It’s not that I slept with Theo, it’s…that. It’s my baby that’s the problem.”

  His expression softens, and he reaches for me, turning me into his side so he can reach over and touch my belly. “No. Your baby isn’t a problem. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, if you weren’t pregnant, it would be a little different. There’d be no proof you slept with Theo. Even if the accusation eventually came out somehow, we could deny it for all we’re worth and try to revise that particular reality. A baby changes things. A baby means living, breathing DNA evidence of the affair, and a baby isn’t something there’s just a risk of Bri finding out about, it’s a certainty. Since she knew you before and at the time you got pregnant, how would you explain that? She probably knows you don’t have a boyfriend, and if she knows there’s no other prospective father, especially if Theo starts acting squirrelly when I bring you around…” He shakes his head, meeting my gaze. “She’s not an idiot, Alyssa. She’ll put two and two together, and then we’ll both be fucked.”

  I know how crazy
I’ll probably sound, I know it’s more me wishing my own desires into reality than any kind of viable plan, but I drop my gaze to his chiseled chest so I don’t have to watch his face, ‘cause crazy or not, I’m gonna say it anyway.

  “If you introduced me as yours, there would be a prospective father. Bri would think you’re the one who got me pregnant.”

  He’s dead silent, and it scares me to death. Maybe that was too crazy, even from the girl who jokes about murder workshops, who volunteers to be a sex slave and a dirty secret if it means a shot at a relationship with her would-be kidnapper/murderer.

  Even though my stomach sinks with dread, I force my gaze to his and find him staring at me. He doesn’t look like he’s about to throw me out of his house for being some kind of crazy clinger with designs on finding a new baby daddy since the first one didn’t work out, but that’s what I feel like he’s gonna think now that I’ve said it.

  “Not that I think—not that I’d ask that of you,” I amend, worrying as he continues to look at me without saying anything.

  “I’m not Theo, Alyssa,” he says carefully, holding my gaze. “I would never be so irresponsible as to create a situation like he did.”

  Heat creeps up my neck and suffuses my cheeks. “I know that, but accidents happen. Maybe a condom broke or something. It’s not like—”

  “That is not what I meant.” Grabbing my chin and forcing my gaze to his since it’s nervously darting around now, he looks me dead in the eye and tells me, “Accident or not, strangers or not, if I got you pregnant with my baby, I’d marry you. There’s no one in my family who doesn’t know that with a fucking certainty.”

  I swallow, tempted to look away from the intensity of his stare, but he won’t let me. “I… I’m 18,” I manage, not even sure what my argument is, or what I’m arguing against. “I’m a little young to get married. We could just tell them that for why we’re not… getting married,” I finish awkwardly.

  Brant shakes his head, apparently disagreeing with the validity of my proposed excuse. “If you’re not too young to impregnate, you’re not too young to marry. Me claiming that baby as mine wouldn’t be something we could half-ass and back out of later if it didn’t work the way you thought it would. I would also be the one taking on every bit of the risk, because if you ever did want to get out, you’d be able to weaponize the truth and ruin my fucking life.”

  “I would never do that to you,” I tell him, frowning.

  “Aw, never say never, baby girl. You think it’s fun being stuck with me right now, but you might not always feel that way, and make no mistake, if you were carrying my baby, you’d be stuck with me. There’d be no getting away from me, even if you wanted to.”

  Even though I can’t foresee a future where I’d ever be so desperate to get away from him, I point out, “I wouldn’t really be carrying your baby, though.”

  “Oh, yes you would. We tell a lie that big, we’re married to it. I’m not getting any younger, either,” he says, looking me over, his gaze lingering on my breasts. “You better believe the next baby sucking on these pretty little tits would be mine.”

  His words excite something primitive that must be buried deep inside me but wrapped all around me, too, because the presumed ownership in his words sends a spike of arousal straight to my pussy.

  My body responds like if I can make him fuck me again right now, maybe he could put his baby in me, but my body is wrong. That space is occupied, and I’ve never been more aware of the costs of that decision.

  Swallowing, I ask him, “Do you… do you think you could really love my baby, though? I know you hate Theo, and I know we’re not talking about this seriously, don’t freak out or anything, but… if we actually… I mean…”

  Not making me complete the thought, he says, “Of course I could. I love Scout, and he didn’t spring from my seed, did he?”

  I laugh a little, but I’m overwhelmed by this conversation. “That’s not the same thing. I mean, especially in this far-fetched scenario where you would get me pregnant down the road and I’d actually have your baby. You don’t think you’d feel like one is more yours than the other?”

  He caresses my face, his gaze searching for something, but I’m not sure what. “Of course not. Like I said, if we took things that far, it wouldn’t be like that. It couldn’t. We’d both have to accept the new reality that I am the one you’re having a baby with, and we’d both have to see it through and accept the consequences, too.”

  “The consequences being…”

  “Marriage. Babies. We’d be family, irreversibly, whether we’re ready for that or not.”

  “Is it wrong that I think that reality sounds so much better than the one we’re living in right now?” I ask him. “I know I haven’t known you for long, but I recognized you as a higher quality man almost immediately. I have wished you would’ve been the one to get me pregnant before, I just… well, I never thought I’d tell you that.”

  He presses his lips together, not appearing wholly convinced. “I’m not sure you entirely understand. I take my commitments very seriously, and I’d expect the same of you. This wouldn’t be a trial arrangement, Alyssa. It would be a commitment that would last forever. I wouldn’t be your boyfriend you could break up with and go on without if you weren’t as happy as you expected to be. I’d be your husband, for better or worse, ‘til death do us part. If you’re not happy, you don’t leave, you fix it. Only reason I’d consider leaving a marriage would be broken vows, and I promise you, if you ever cheated on me, a divorce would be the very least of your problems.”

  My eyes widen involuntarily. I’d never cheat on him, but I need details. “What do you mean? Like, you’d hurt me?”

  Slowly, he shakes his head. “No. My vows would be to protect you, not to hurt you. I wouldn’t break mine, even if you were misguided enough to break yours. Him, though—I’d fucking kill him. I’d make you watch. I’d make you help me clean up the bloody pieces of the son of a bitch, then I’d haul your traumatized ass to our marriage bed and fuck out all my anger into you.”

  I bite down on my bottom lip, that primal part of me stirred again. “God, you say the sexiest things.”

  A flash of surprise skates across his handsome features, followed by amusement. “Which part was sexy?”

  “All of it—the murder, the threats, the fierce possessiveness. You oughta stop saying things like that before I find my panties and fling them at you.”

  “You need a therapist,” he informs me. “That was meant to scare you, not turn you on.”

  I shrug, grinning at him. “Maybe I’m just the right kind of crazy for you.”

  He looks at me a little differently, like maybe he’s considering the possibility that I’m right. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Alyssa,” he says seriously.

  “So keep me for a while.” I wrap my arm around him tightly, starting to gain confidence in all my crazy ideas. “Keep me here and let’s try each other out. If it doesn’t work, I’ll accept that, because I’ll know it didn’t work for the right reasons. I can’t stand Theo being the reason I can’t have you, but if it just doesn’t work because you don’t like me enough, I can accept that. We’ll both move on, and that will be that. But… if we do really like each other, if we maybe even started to more than like each other… there is a way we could be together. It would just be a big, crazy one. But, I mean, you broke into my house, held me down while you watched a video of me masturbating, and then kidnapped me with intent to kill me, so it doesn’t seem like you’re afraid of big, crazy gestures if you think it’s the right course of action.”

  “That is true,” he murmurs, not even trying to deny it.

  “So, what do you say?” I ask, getting a little excited at the possibility that maybe we’ve finally found a way this can work.

  Looking back at me, he’s quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Let’s do it.”

  11

  Brant

  When I wake up the next morning, it’s
later than I meant to sleep, and my bed is a lot less empty than the one I intended to go home to before I started drinking all that whiskey.

  Alyssa is curled up beside me with one hand thrown across my chest, her long blonde hair draped over my arm, and her face snuggled against my side. She’s flushed and warm from sleeping on me all night, and as I look down to peek at her pretty little tits, I see she’s wrapped in a bath towel.

  I frown, then a string of jagged memories from last night start to come back to me.

  I had a whole hell of a lot of whiskey. I remember drinking from the time Theo left until the last employee walked out the door, then drinking a little more once I had the place to myself. My mouth is dry as hell and my head aches like someone took a baseball bat to my skull, but Alyssa lying naked in my bed might just be the worst part of what I did last night.

  “Fuck,” I mutter, staring at the towel she must have rolled out of while we slept; now it’s just draped across her bare hip.

  I’d like to let her sleep, but I need to wake her up. I’ll have to feed her and have a talk with her before I take her home, apologize for whatever I did last night and come up with a more effective way to keep myself away from her, I guess.

  I can’t believe I have to send her away again. This is just mean. No more fucking whiskey for me, not until I’m well past this girl and I can trust myself to have lowered inhibitions again.

  Since there’s little point stalling, I move my arm and gently shake her awake. Her big, blue-green eyes open up, a little bleary at first, then they brighten at the sight of me and she curls even closer.

  “Good morning, handsome.”

  Aw, shit. I stifle a sigh and offer a slight smile. “Morning.”

  Tilting her head back to look up at me as she absently rubs her soft hand across the tight muscles of my abdomen, she asks, “How’d you sleep?”

  “Like a log, it would seem.” Nodding at the bath towel, I ask her, “Why’s that there?”

  She turns her head to look and then laughs a little. “Oh, I guess I fell asleep in my towel after our shower.”