His Pretend Baby

by Theodora Taylor

Opposites in every single way, she thought to herself as she unzipped her bag… only to discover in her hasty packing job, she’d forgotten one very important item. Pajamas.

  She silently cursed, going over her options. Jeans, a swimsuit, and a couple of t-shirts that would barely cover her bottom, if at all. Her eyes searched the blue bar above the racks. No hotel robes. In the end, she pulled out a t-shirt, thinking him seeing her bikini underwear probably didn’t matter now anyway. The mood was now deader than dead in their shared hotel room. Thanks to her.

  As arguments for getting some went, this had been a doozy, and as Sam put on the t-shirt, she wondered who else but her would have felt compelled to share the ugliest piece of herself after one of the most romantic dates she’d ever been on. She remembered how Josie had quite wisely called her after getting in an ugly fight with Beau about her staying out all night.

  “He triggered me, and I know it’s partly my fault because I haven’t told him about my past, but I can’t bring myself to tell him, because I guess some fucked up part of me would rather him think I’m sleeping with somebody else, than tell him the truth. But I don’t know how I can go on with him if I don’t tell him. It’s too unhealthy. So I need you—I need you to help me tell him. Can you do that for me, Sam?”

  Of course she’d come through for Josie, even joked about it though she’d had a few reservations about getting involved. Usually people asked her to help them leave bad relationships, not start new ones.

  Back then, she’d been a little baffled by and rather curious about Josie’s situation. But now she understood exactly where Josie had been coming from.

  Right now, she’d rather Nikolai still thought of her as a hotheaded woman dead set on rejecting his sexual advances. Not some emotionally traumatized psycho with a sad backstory. As vain as it probably was, she liked the Sam she’d crafted out of her mother’s ashes and she now wished more than anything that she’d gone on letting him believe she really had killed her stepfather in self-defense, that she really was the perfect mom in every way.

  And despite her vow to stay as far away from Nikolai as possible, to not be swayed by his romantic vacation tactic, her body burned with what might have been. How this night could have gone if she hadn’t decided she just had to confess to killing her stepfather in cold blood.

  Sam tied up her twists, grabbed an extra cover from the closet’s top shelf, and dragged it over to the couch. She’d leave the lights to Nikolai. If he was still awake, the remote to turn them all off was on his nightstand. If he was already asleep, then she didn’t mind sleeping with a few lights on. Either way, there was no way she was going to extend the awkwardness by going around the room manually turning off the lights.

  She settled across the couch, grabbing one of its throw pillows as she did. Its satiny finish made her feel a little guilty. It was so pretty, like a work of art not actually meant for anything other than decor, and definitely not meant for sleeping on. But that was too bad because she wouldn’t have been able to get in bed with Nikolai at this point anyway. The awkwardness of doing so would have been too damn excruciating.

  As soon as she laid her head down, all the lights clicked off, sending the room into darkness. So Nikolai must not have been asleep. Yet.

  Sam breathed into the foreign night, listening to the sound of waves crashing outside the window. She found no peace in either activity, and doubted she’d get much sleep tonight. The couch, with its fine finish, was slippery in a way that made her fear she’d slide off if she so much as turned over. And her thoughts—well they were racing and in full panic mode.

  Maybe tomorrow morning she could arrange for another room, or even better, her own flight back to Indiana. She had a few dollars in savings. Why not use it for a last-minute intercontinental flight? How much would that cost? If it was in the hundreds, she could swing it. But if it was in the thousands… well, she just might have to call Josie and ask for a loan, which would be another bad conversation, two months after the one about her marrying a Russian hockey player she barely knew because he’d knocked her up—the one that had ended with, “sorry, Josie, but the wedding is today and you’re not invited.”

  Sam cringed in the dark. No, maybe not Josie, especially considering her and Beau’s baby would be arriving any day now, but maybe—

  “He hurt me.”

  The three quiet words made Sam blink in the darkness, wondering if it had been Nikolai who said them, or if some other man with a thick Russian accent had come into the room.

  But then his voice sounded again in the dark. “My father never hit my mother. But sometimes he hit me. Mostly me. To punish her or… he said he was training me. But I never want to train Pavel this way. I will never train him or our baby this way.”

  She believed him and wanted to interrupt with some stories of men from abusive backgrounds who’d gone on to become perfectly good parents. But she sensed there was more he had to say, so she stayed quiet and let him continue.

  “With my mother—he never put hands on her. More abuse of… how you say abuse of mind?”

  “Emotional abuse,” she supplied.

  “Da.” His answer came back terse and thick. “He refused marry her, because of Fedya. He said she didn’t deserve marriage, even though she was mother of his child. He left her alone in apartment with us. For weeks, sometimes months. But if she tried to move on to another man…”

  He grew quiet for a few seconds before finishing with, “He made it bad. Very bad. She learned not to take other man. She learned to wait for him always—at least I thought she learned this. But she was beautiful woman. Very beautiful woman, like you are beautiful woman. Men gave her attention, and I think she was lonely.”

  Sam’s heart beat faster, sensing this story was not going to have a happy ending, but she gave him the respect of silence. Listening without comments, so he could get it all out, like he’d let her get it all out.

  His Russian accent grew even thicker as he continued with his story. “One day she asked me go get pregnancy test from store. I do it and she went into bathroom to take… my mother was not weak woman. She had strong voice, strong will, even when my father tried make her submit. She never cried, but I can still remember her that day. Crying behind bathroom door.”

  Tears sprang to Sam’s own eyes in that moment, thinking about the unfairness of the situation. A woman whose boyfriend refused to be a true partner to her, but also refused to let her move on.

  “She died week later when she tried to get rid of it. She could not go to clinic, because my father—he was well connected. He would know if she went somewhere official. So she went to bad place to get rid of baby. I took her to this place. She went into back room and she didn’t make it out alive.”

  Sam could no longer hold back her words. “I’m sorry!” she whispered in the dark. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I do not tell you story so you feel sorry for me, zhena.” He answered, his voice one part stern, and another part annoyed. “I tell you so you understand. I did not protect her from my father. I should have killed him after she took test to keep her safe. She is dead because I did not do right thing.”

  “No, she’s dead because she was in an abusive relationship,” Sam told him, sitting up on one arm, even though she couldn’t really see him in the dark. She had to let him know. “It’s never the child’s fault.”

  “I was seventeen. Almost same age as you. And I was big. Larger than you are now.”

  “Still a child,” she insisted, realizing for the first time as she said it that this was true in her situation as well. “Size has nothing to do with it. Nobody that age is emotionally equipped to deal with those kinds of circumstances. And it’s not like killing your father would have made your life any easier. Trust me on that one.”

  A moment of silence… then, “I do. I do trust you, zhena.”

  Her heart stop beating. He trusted her. For a victim of domestic violence, that was huge, almost the equivalent of saying “I love you” because
it was harder for people who’d grown up like she and Nikolai had to trust. She’d been dealing with trust issues all her life. Was still dealing with them, in fact. Which was why throwing herself heart and soul into her two shelters was almost easy in comparison to having a normal, healthy relationship with someone.

  But Nikolai was telling her right here in this hotel room that he trusted her.

  She couldn’t have been more honored. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  No answer. For a very long time. So long, Sam was beginning to think maybe he’d fallen asleep when he said, “You say we have nothing in common. You say this why we can’t be together as man and wife. But maybe… maybe we have much in common. Maybe that is why I can’t stop chasing you, even when you push me away. Maybe that is why I feel like I would do anything, offer you anything, if you would agree to share this bed with me.”

  He let out a harsh, ragged breath. “Tell me what you want, zhena, and I will give it to you—”

  She was across the room before he even finished the sentence, struggling to get her leg not only over the high bed but also over his big body. But then she didn’t have to struggle because she was lifted into the air, hauled right on top of Mount Nik, his large hands grabbing on to the sides of her face as they erupted into a frenzy of kissing.

  36

  NIKOLAI didn’t attend church. Had never thought much about whether he believed in the God his mother had paid homage to most Sundays, depending on whether Sergei was in residence or not.

  But having his wife finally come to him felt like nothing less than a prayer answered. To feel her on top of him, her hips grinding on his boxers as their tongues tangled… he came back from their hour of sorrowful tales instantly. Hard as stone and wanting—no needing—very much to be inside of her.

  He flipped her over and his hands went to work, dealing with anything that got in his way. The t-shirt blocking his access to her round breasts got shoved up and the band of her bikini briefs got shoved down as he took one breast in his mouth and laid one hand over her core.

  His. She had given himself to her. Come to him willingly, and the desire to both possess and revel in her sent his mind into a tangle of conflicting needs.

  He decided to satisfy both, moving down her body and taking her with his mouth. Her taste exploded across the flat side of his tongue as he licked her slit, lapping and lapping, until she was squirming beneath him.

  “Oh, God, that feels so good. Please don’t stop!” He could feel her hands in his hair, urging his mouth deeper into her wet pussy. “Don’t stop… don’t stop… don’t…”

  He did stop. Abruptly. Ignoring her cry of protest, he braced himself on his arms, hovering over her as he asked, “Did you just now have nightmare, zhena?”

  She squinted up at him in the dark. “What? No!” she answered, her voice foggy with confusion.

  “Did I…?” he asked. “Did I just now have nightmare?”

  “No,” she answered carefully, sitting up on her forearms and looking at him with a perplexed expression. “I don’t think so.”

  “You had no nightmare and I had no nightmare?” he asked her. “You must be sure before we continue.”

  “Oh, I see,” she said, understanding dawning in her voice. “I finally gave in and now you’re rubbing it in.”

  “Not rubbing in,” he answered. “You—how do you Americans say—hurt my feelings.”

  She laughed, a light sound in the dark room.

  And he waited for her to realize he wasn’t joking.

  Eventually she did. “You’re serious?” she asked, squirming to sit up some more, as if this conversation made her uncomfortable and she wanted to get in a less vulnerable position.

  “Yes, very serious,” he answered, leaning into her, not too hard but firmly enough that she fell back off her forearms. After that, it was easy to get her back beneath him. And keep her there with a well-placed thigh. “No more rubbing in of anything. Not until you tell me you want this. Want me.”

  He laid the ultimatum down between them like a stick of dynamite. Potentially explosive in ways both good and bad.

  She licked her lips and tried to sidestep it.

  “You know I do,” she said, tilting her hips toward him. “You can feel how much I do.”

  As a tactic, it was a very good one, Nikolai thought. Feeling how wet she was through the thin cloth barrier of his briefs, his cock punched out to get to her. But he didn’t give in. Instead he worked to keep the strain out of his voice as he told her quite seriously, “This is what you must say: ‘Yes, I want you, muzehnek.’ Give me words, zhena. Give me words or we won’t continue.”

  He could sense her studying him in the dark, imagined her eyes narrowing as she tried to figure out if he was serious about not continuing if she didn’t tell him exactly what he wanted to hear.

  He was and she must have read the answer in his still body because she tilted up again, pressing her slit against his erection as she said. “Yes.”

  She was a clever minx, he thought. Hedging in such a way that made it that much more difficult to insist on her total acquiescence. But she was his wife, and now that he finally had her in his bed, he would allow no more misunderstandings between them. No more room for misinterpretations.

  “’Yes, I want you, muzehnek’—give me full sentence.”

  She let her head fall back with a frustrated huff. “I’m not even sure I can pronounce that last word.”

  He pressed himself into her, letting her feel his fullness against her naked, wet core. “I believe you can, zhena.”

  She moaned. “Fine—yes, I want you, muzehnek.”

  She said the words in a rush, but her pronunciation was near perfect and he found himself smiling as he asked her, “How?”

  “What?”

  “How do you want me, zhena? My mouth, my fingers, my…?” He rocked against her again and gave her a slang Russian term for penis, more than certain she wouldn’t need a translation.

  She sounded skeptical when she answered, “You’d seriously be okay if I said your mouth or your fingers at this point? Like if I got mine and didn’t let you get yours afterwards?”

  “If you don’t want me other way, I will be… disappointed, zhena, but it doesn’t change question.”

  She wiggled underneath him as if she was actually giving his question some careful consideration, and for a moment he wondered if he hadn’t misplayed his hand. His wife was compassionate, one of the most compassionate women he’d ever known. Nonetheless, she could be a she-devil, especially when it came to him.

  But eventually she said into the narrow strip of dark between them. “I want you.” Her voice was slightly above a whisper. “No more games, please. I really, truly want you right now. However you want me, I want you.”

  Of all the things she could have said. Of all the ways she could have begged, this was the one that made him lose his iron grip on the situation.

  His briefs came off and then he was inside her, penetrating her so deep, he could feel her stretched wide around every inch of him.

  Feel her and hear her soft mewls in his ears as he took her without any further debate. Took her hard, took her fast, his hips pumping wildly as she received him with greedy undulations.

  Neither of them lasted long after it started. His zhena came with a sharp gasp, her nails biting into his ass, pulling him further into her as she spasmed around him. Then he felt himself spilling into her with a great yell, his ejaculation more powerful than any he’d ever experienced before.

  So powerful, he couldn’t find words as it flowed over him. Actually he did find words, one word, over and over again, “Zhena… zhena… zhena,” until he was fully done, until he had nothing left to give and collapsed beside her.

  But even then, he didn’t stop saying the word. In fact, he was fairly sure he was still saying it as he pulled her into his now sweaty embrace and fell into a deep sleep with his wife in his arms.

  With his wife in his bed.

&nb
sp; * * *

  Sam had no idea what time it was when she woke up, but she knew it had to be way past her usual 6:30 AM morning stretch and get out of bed time, because the sun was shining brightly through the hotel room’s picture window. Also because there was a huge Russian in bed with her, the top of his thick thigh pressed against the back of hers, his chin resting on top of her head, his arm heavy across her waist. It immediately became obvious why she’d overslept and what had happened. Again.

  And as Sam took in the view beyond the window, an impossibly blue sky overlooking a deep azure ocean with the outline of islands off in the distance, she waited for the usual doubt and self-recrimination to set in. But it didn’t.

  In fact, there was only one question in her mind now, asking itself loud and clear. What the hell does zhena mean? And she carefully attempted to extract herself from the bed so she could go find the answer.

  As soon as she moved, the heavy arm on top of her went into lockdown mode, pulling her back to her husband’s hard chest like an industrial magnet.

  “Where are you going?” he asked behind her.

  So apparently Nikolai was awake. She felt him swell against the curve of her back.

  Very awake.

  “Funny, you should ask,” she said, squirming.

  “Are you uncomfortable, zhena?” he asked, low and husky behind her.

  “You’re sort of poking into my back,” she said, moving the lower half of her body forward a little.

  He readjusted himself to make her more comfortable. At least she thought that was what he was doing. When they resettled, the new “more comfortable” position had his hard length resting against the bottom of her soft womanhood, the tip in just the right position to…

  “Did you have nightmare, zhena?” he asked quickly.

  “No,” she answered just as quickly. Then she gasped when he pushed into her with embarrassing ease, because she was still wet from what he’d done to her the night before and, okay, maybe because she was more than a little turned on.