The Kiss Thief

by LJ Shen

  He chucked me under the chin.

  “You finished inside.” I licked my lips.

  He yawned and stretched at the same time, not looking particularly worried, and that worried me.

  “I’m not taking another pill,” I said, shaking my head as I held my dress to my chest. “It’s not healthy.”

  “Sweetheart.” His eyes crinkled as he looked at me. “As I said before, the dates don’t add up.”

  “Screw the dates.”

  “Can I screw you instead?”

  I laughed. “Fine. I’m taking your word for it.”

  “As you should.” He chucked my chin again.

  “Stop doing that, Wolfe. I told you. It makes me feel like a kid.”

  He stood up, completely naked, and hoisted me over his shoulder, careful not to touch my ribs, then carried me to the master bedroom, planting a teasing slap on my butt cheek, before biting on it softly.

  “What are you doing?” I laughed breathlessly.

  “Some very grown-up things to you.”

  We spent the night in the same bed, going through three condoms. The morning after, we checked on Artemis again. She was happy to see us, and I took her for a quick ride, surprised with the minimal discomfort having sex four times last night had caused me. We gave her food and water and sat by her side in the barn. That morning, in the barn with Artemis as our audience, Wolfe taught me how to perform oral sex on a man. He lowered me to my knees, stood up, unzipped his dark Diesels, and took himself out. At first, he taught me how to stroke it, then how to squeeze it. When I felt comfortable enough, he asked if I wanted to put it in my mouth.

  “Yes.” I looked down at the hay, swallowing down my shame.

  “Look at me, Francesca.”

  I looked up, blinking at his gray eyes.

  “There’s nothing wrong with what you’re about to do. You know that, right?”

  I nodded, but I didn’t actually believe it. I was pretty certain every single person I went to church with, including my own parents, would have a heart attack if they knew what we were doing.

  “What if people find out?”

  He laughed. The bastard full-blown laughed.

  “Everyone you know older than eighteen has had oral sex, Francesca.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And thank fuck for that.”

  Surely, he was just telling me what I wanted to hear. Wolfe probably read the doubt on my face because he stroked the side of my cheek and sighed.

  “Do you think I’m a pervert?” he asked.

  “What?” I felt my face heating. “No, of course not.”

  “Good. Because I eat your pussy every day. Have been for weeks, now. And plan to do so for the rest of my life. You giving your husband pleasure is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “But you said oral sex is degrading.” I licked my lips, tossing his words from when we were engaged to the air between us.

  “It’s degrading to kneel, in general. It is not degrading to kneel for someone who is worth your pride.”

  I knew Wolfe was not one to talk lightly about pride. He was, after all, the Narcissus to my Nemesis. Whatever made him clutch to his pride like this had scarred him thoroughly. I wrapped my lips around his engorged head, feeling his hand guiding mine around the base of his shaft, before he put his hand over the back of my head and slowly dragged my mouth along his girth, until his crown touched the back of my throat. I wanted to gag but held back.

  “Now suck on it.” He sank his fingers into my hair and clutched my roots, hard.

  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed sucking his cock. I not only enjoyed the act and the velvety, warm skin, but also his unique, manly scent and the way he responded to it, jerking in my mouth and letting out desperate groans. My jaw and lips hurt by the time he held my hair and pulled out of me, tilting my head up and making me look deep into his eyes.

  “You know I respect you,” he said gruffly.

  “I know,” I murmured, my lips swollen and sensitive.

  “Good. Because for the next five seconds, it’s going to look like I don’t.” He squeezed his length and shot his cum all over my face and breasts.

  The warm liquid slithered down my cheek. It was thick and slimy but oddly enough, not degrading. All I could feel was more lust, and my womb clenching against nothing, begging for something that my husband had.

  I licked the cum from the corner of my lips and looked back up to him, smiling.

  He smiled back.

  “I think we’re going to get along fine, my dear wife.”

  I WOKE UP WITH THE same, terrible craving. A sweet tooth that wouldn’t go away.

  I feel like a strawberry milkshake.

  No. I need one. Bad.

  I rolled from my side of the bed and bumped into hard abs, groaning as I cracked one eye open. Five weeks after our retreat to Lake Michigan, and I’d found out some interesting facts about my new life with Senator Wolfe Keaton. For one thing, I very much enjoyed waking my husband up with a blow job. For another, he thoroughly enjoyed my new role as his human alarm. I kissed my way down his stomach, following the happy trail of dark hair, and lowered his gray sweatpants with his college name on them. Once I had him in my mouth, he stirred awake, but unlike the other times, he flung the blankets off of us and pulled me by my hair, gentle, but firm.

  “Not gonna cut it today I’m afraid.” He threw me back on the mattress so I was on all fours, retrieving a condom from the nightstand. I still wasn’t on the pill. I was supposed to book an appointment as soon as we got back from Lake Michigan, but I was embarrassed to go by myself, knowing I’d get checked down there. I didn’t want to go with Ms. Sterling, and knew that Mama and Clara did not believe in contraception, in general. I called Andrea three times, and she said that she’d have loved to come with me, but my father would kill her if she was seen with me in public.

  “It’s not personal, Frankie. You know that, right?”

  I did. I knew that. Hell, I couldn’t even blame her. I feared my father just as much at some point.

  This left me with asking my husband to come with. When I heavily hinted at appreciating his company over dinner that week, he dismissed me and said I could go on my own.

  “What if it hurts?” I asked him. He shrugged.

  “My being there won’t take away the pain.” It was BS, and he knew it.

  The next day, he came back from work with a huge package of condoms and a receipt from Costco.

  Wolfe threw the no-sleeping together rule out the window. We still had our clothes and belongings in separate wings of the house, but we always spent the entire night together. Most nights, he came to my room, holding me close after making love to me. But sometimes, especially on days he worked very late, I entered his domain and served him in his bed. We began to attend galas and charity events together. We became that couple. The couple I always thought Angelo and I would be. People watched us with open fascination as we flirted with each other at our dinner table. Wolfe would always have his hand on mine, press a kiss to my lips, and behave like the perfect gentleman that he was—a far cry from the sarcastic, taunting bastard who dragged me to Bishop’s son’s wedding.

  I even began to lower my guard when it came to other women. In fact, Senator Keaton showed no interest in any of them even though the offers kept pouring in, including, but not limited to, panties I’d found in our mailbox (Ms. Sterling was outraged and disgusted; she waved the pair of thongs all the way to the trash bin), and endless business cards Wolfe and I found ourselves emptying from his pocket at the end of every night.

  Life with Wolfe was good.

  Between school, horseback riding with Artemis, my garden, and the piano lessons I resumed, I had very little time to sit and ponder over my father’s next chess move. Mama came over every week, and we gossiped, drank tea, and flipped through fashion magazines, something she enjoyed and I couldn’t stand, but I humored her. My husband never showed any opposition to having Mama or Clara over. In fact
, he often invited them to stay longer, and Ms. Sterling and Clara really seemed to hit it off, sharing their love for daytime soap operas and even sneakily trading romance books with each other.

  I bumped into Angelo a few times at school after Lake Michigan. He was taking classes, too, though we didn’t have any together. I was pretty sure that could never happen. Not when my husband was so acutely aware of his presence at Northwestern. I felt the need to apologize for what happened the day of my wedding, and he waved it off and told me that it wasn’t my fault. Which might’ve been true but that didn’t make me feel any less guilty. At the same time, I could understand why Wolfe didn’t want Angelo and me to maintain our friendship, seeing as I was silly in love with him when we’d first met. Angelo, however, wasn’t a fan of my husband’s opinion. Every time we met at the cafeteria or local coffee shop, he’d strike up lengthy conversations with me and fill me in on every little detail from my old neighborhood.

  I snickered when he told me who got married, who got divorced, and that Emily—“our Emily”—was seeing a Bostonian mobster from New York, Irish, no less.

  “Good Lord!” I made a scandalized face. He laughed.

  “Thought you should know, in case you were still wondering about me and her, goddess.”

  Goddess.

  My husband was stoic, powerful, and ruthless. Angelo was sweet and confident and forgiving. They were night and day. Summer and winter. And I was beginning to realize I knew where I belonged—in the storm with Wolfe.

  One conscious decision I took in order to maintain my blissful life with my husband was not to open the wooden box. Technically, I needed to do that a long time ago. Right after my wedding to Wolfe. But I only had one note left, and Wolfe turned out to be the rightful owner of my heart with both previous notes. I didn’t want to ruin his perfect strike. Not when I was so close to happiness, I could almost feel it at my fingertips.

  Now I was feeling woozy and drowsy, still craving the milkshake, but also dangling my butt in my husband’s face, wanting him to satisfy my other need. Wolfe entered me from behind, sheathed and fully erect.

  “My sweet poison, my gorgeous rival.” He kissed the back of my neck as he drove into me from behind. I purred. When he finished inside me, he took off his condom, tied it up and strolled to the bathroom, completely naked. I collapsed on his bed facedown, a heap of warm flesh and lust.

  He emerged ten minutes later, freshly shaven, showered, and already getting dressed in a full suit. By the time I rolled on my back to take a look at him, he had a tie on.

  “I want a strawberry milkshake.” I pouted.

  He frowned, flipping his tie and tying it without even looking at a mirror. “You don’t normally have a sweet tooth.”

  “I’m about to get my period.” It was, in fact, a little overdue.

  “I’ll have Smithy get you one before I go to work. You good for school? Need a ride?”

  I was due to take my driver’s test next week.

  “I don’t want Smithy to get me a milkshake. I want you to get me one,” I rose on my knees, walking on them across the bed and toward him. “He always screws my orders up.”

  “What’s to screw up in ordering a strawberry milkshake?” Wolfe returned to his bathroom to put some of the delicious-smelling product in his hair. One day, I was going to have a heart attack with how attractive he was and how tantalizing he smelled.

  “You’d be surprised,” I lied. Smithy was great. I just had an irrational need to have my husband do something nice for me. Since Artemis, he was careful not to show any signs of romantic gestures.

  “I’ll get you your milkshake,” he said in no particular tone, leaving the room.

  “Thank you!” I called out.

  A moment later, Ms. Sterling, the number-one eavesdropper in North America, popped her head into the room.

  “You two are the thickest smart people I know.” She shook her head. I was still lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, basking in my post-orgasm bliss. The sheets were wrapped around my body, but I wasn’t particularly worried about what she saw. She must’ve heard us hundreds of time by now doing what married couples did.

  “What do you mean?” I stretched lazily, stifling a yawn.

  “You’re pregnant, my sweet, foolish child!”

  No.

  It’s not happening.

  It can’t happen.

  Only it can. It must. And it makes so much sense.

  The words looped in my head when I paid for my pregnancy test at Walgreens before I went to school. I devoured the strawberry milkshake as if my life depended on it, only to feel terribly nauseous afterwards, and I had a bad feeling, even before I crouched down and peed on the stick in the restrooms of my school, that Ms. Sterling was right. I swore under my breath. I could use Andrea right now. Someone to hold me when it was time to flip that stick and check the results. But Andrea was scared of my dad, and it was time to find and make new friends, outside of The Outfit.

  Putting the cap back on the test and setting my phone to count down the minutes, I pressed my forehead against the door. I knew two things for certain:

  I didn’t want to be pregnant.

  I didn’t want to not be pregnant.

  If I were pregnant, I’d have a huge problem on my hands. My husband did not want kids. He told me so himself. Quite a few times, actually. He even went so far as suggesting I’d live in a different place and get a sperm donor if I cared so much for children. Bringing an unwanted baby into the world was immoral, if not completely deranged, considering our circumstances.

  But then, oddly, not being with child was also going to leave me disappointed. Because there was excitement and anticipation in finding out that I was carrying Wolfe’s baby. My mind took me to insane places. Places I had no business visiting. What eye color would our child have? They would have dark hair. Slim build, like both of us. But—gray or blue? Tall or short? And would they have his wit and my talent with the piano? Would they be ivory and snow, like my pale skin? Or would they have his rather tan complexion? I wanted to know everything. I resisted the urge to drag my palm over my stomach, imagining it getting swollen and round and perfect, carrying the fruit of our love.

  The fruit of my love.

  No one ever said that he loved me. No one even suggested that. Not even Ms. Sterling.

  My phone beeped, and I jumped, my heart stuttering in my chest. No matter the result, I wanted to get it over with. I flipped the pregnancy test over and blinked back.

  Two lines. Blue. Sharp. Prominent. Strong.

  I was pregnant.

  I broke into tears.

  I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. Wolfe asked—no, he strictly stated—he didn’t want any children, and now, not even six months after our wedding, when we finally hit our stride, I was going to tell him that I was with child. A part of me pointed out, quite reasonably, that this wasn’t entirely my fault. He was to blame, too. In fact, he was the one who tried to coax me into having unprotected sex in the first place, with the nonsense about pulling out (great job with that one), and calculating the dates and telling me I wasn’t ovulating.

  Only both of us didn’t take into consideration the fact that my period had changed the minute I took the Plan B pill.

  Then again, I was the one who drew him close when he came inside me, preventing him—albeit by accident—from pulling out. I knew that there was no other occasion in which this might have happened. Save for the weekend at the cabin, we always used condoms.

  Shoulders sagging, I got out of the bathroom, dragging myself down the corridor, out of the college, and into the unassuming autumn day. I needed to confide in Ms. Sterling. She’d know what to do.

  I was heading toward Smithy’s car when Angelo tackled me to the grass out of nowhere. I yelped. The first thing I thought about was the baby. I pushed him off, watching as he laughed breathlessly, trying to tickle me.

  “Angelo…” Hysteria bubbled in my chest. Wasn’t the first trimester th
e most crucial one? I couldn’t afford to roll on the ground. “Get off!”

  He scrambled to his feet, rubbing his dark blond hair and staring me down. Where was it coming from? Angelo was always reserved and respectful. He was always nice to me, true, but he never touched me like this in the weeks after I got married.

  “Jesus, goddess, sorry.” He offered me his hand, and I took it. I hated that he still called me goddess, but I guessed there were no laws against idle flirtation. Even though maybe there ought to be. That way women wouldn’t be able to proposition my husband every time he left the house.

  That way you’d also live in an oppressive country.

  I stood up and looked around, not really sure what I was looking for. I cleaned my dress and cardigan free of grass blades.

  “It looked like you were having a bad day. I just wanted to make you laugh,” Angelo explained. How could I tell my sweet friend that he was absolutely right? I was having both the worst and the best day combined. I brushed a blade of grass from his shoulder, smiling.

  “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry I was snippy. I was just surprised.”

  “Your driver is waiting for you on the other side of the lot. So are your executive protection agents, who, by the way, are doing a crappy job, seeing as they’re not with you right now.” Angelo wiggled his brows, digging his finger into my shoulder muscles in a soothing massage. Wolfe insisted I have bodyguards with me after the car chase. It was only this week that I had finally managed to convince him to break protocol and have the bodyguards stay in the car and leave me alone on school grounds. We hadn’t heard from my father or Mike Bandini in a while. Apparently, they were busy trying to keep The Outfit afloat and from Wolfe’s iron fist. And if I ever wanted to make friends at school, I couldn’t have two men the size of elephants shadowing my every step.