by Sosie Frost
Lost. Confused.
Desperate.
And so I planned to make this one worth it.
I could make it all okay.
We wouldn’t need to talk about it. Wouldn’t need to worry. Wouldn’t need to have those terrifying conversations…
As long as we made a baby.
Then everything would fall into place. We wouldn’t need to confront what this was. It’d just be us. A perfect family, together by chance.
But it all depended on this taking before the rest of the world caught up to us.
Hunter gripped my hips, driving me forward and back. He groaned, his muscles tensing with every bounce.
“What the hell’s gotten into you?” He grunted.
I’d learned a lot of things about Hunter. What he liked. What he didn’t. What drove him wild. He was a dominant man, and he enjoyed taking me any way he could prove how right it was for me to submit to him.
This…was a bit aggressive for me.
And yet, I bounced against him, his cock stretching me without remorse as I punished and delighted myself upon his thickness.
“I’m getting what you promised me…” I groaned.
“What’s that?”
“I want you to put a baby in me.”
His hands gripped me tight, forcing me down to take his whole length. He held me there, his teeth bared.
“You think I haven’t already bred you?”
A shudder rolled through me.
Bred.
I didn’t understand what made this all so sensual and terrible and perfect.
These games excited me, and his voice rumbled filthy and lovely promises. Every move he made, every word he spoke, and every touch he offered twisted me into a web of confusion and desire.
And yet, I welcomed those feelings in his arms. We moved in pure bliss. No questions. No concerns. No hesitations.
At least…until our bodies were too spent and broken to take any more.
“I hope you have…” I whispered. My hips bumped. “But…just in case…”
“There’s no in cases.” Hunter’s eyes darkened, a threatening storm frozen in ice. “There’s only me and you. My cock. Your womb. And every last drop of seed that I’ve fucked into you. Don’t you dare doubt how deep it’s planted.”
Hunter had enough. He rolled over, pushing me onto my back. His strength overwhelmed me, tossing me over the bed exactly where he wanted me. His thrust drove the air from my lungs. But that was good. Couldn’t be trusted with what I might’ve confessed.
His fucking turned rabid. Hard enough to rock me against the mattress, intense enough to ensure I listened and listened good.
“If you want me to fuck you, say it.” His face contorted with raw desire and animalistic possession. “If you want me to come in you, beg for me. But don’t you dare doubt what I’ve already done to you, Déjà. Because there’s already a baby growing inside you. My baby. And I’m gonna fuck you until you realize how thoroughly I’ve already claimed you.”
Pure exhilaration rolled through me. I didn’t argue. Didn’t fight. Didn’t try to explain the fears and the pleasures and the hopes and dreams.
I surrendered to him, wrapping my legs around his waist to offer him everything.
“Take me…” They weren’t the words I wanted to say, but it was all that would tumble from my trembling lips. “Please, Hunter. Make me yours.”
“That’s the best part…” His growl would be my undoing. “You’ve always been mine. Just needed a hard cock to realize it.”
His movements turned feral. Every strike deeper, more deliberate than the last. My body ached in all the good ways, and exhaustion overwhelmed me. I didn’t know when I had last slept, when we’d taken a break, when my bruised and humming body had gasped enough breath to clear the insanity from my mind and think clearly.
I didn’t care.
An unbridled energy boiled within me. Rolling. Crashing. Beating against my every bone as it exploded from me in a cascade of body-breaking shudders.
Hunter gripped my hips and forced one final thrust.
His heat coated me from the inside.
And my own shattered undoing followed his.
Head to toes. Mind and soul. Everything cracked and crumbled, scattered to the depths of my own confusion. My breath was lost, and I clung to Hunter with a desperation that frightened me more than any truth hidden in my heart.
We said nothing.
And I hated myself for being so terrified of something which might’ve been so damned wonderful.
All I needed to do was whisper those three words.
Yet I stayed silent.
I wasn’t afraid of how much things would change.
I feared that he’d reveal exactly what I longed to hear…
That he loved me as much as I loved him.
9
Hunter
Déjà was two days late.
But, according to her, anything could cause that.
Stress. Junk food. A change in routine.
Fuck. We’d changed a shit ton about our routines these past three weeks.
Déjà returned from the pharmacy, bundled up in every form of protective gear she could find. A plastic bag over her hair. Full length sleeves. Long pants. She’d even mittened her hands in balloons.
No.
Not balloons.
“Why the hell do you have condoms on your hands?” I asked.
She peeled them off with a grunt. “They’re supposed to protect against viruses. Besides…we weren’t using them.”
The rubber snapped. I ducked as it sling-shotted across the room, nearly pelting me in the eye.
“Think spermicide kills the virus?” She made a beeline for the sink. “This stuff is very…drying to the hands.”
Oh Christ. The woman dumped a quarter of the bottle of Dawn over her hands. She hadn’t unwrapped her scarf yet.
A scarf that covered her mouth, her nose…
The entirety of her head.
“The hell were you doing?” I peeled away the scarf like I stripped a mummy of its wrappings. “Were you shopping…or did you try to burglarize the store?”
She patted her hands dry as I untangled her from the material. “Be reasonable. No way I could hold-up the drugs store with condoms on my hands.”
“Believe me…condoms don’t make for a quick getaway…or a quick anything.”
Déjà began to strip, dropping her clothes in the kitchen before picking them up with a pair of grilling tongs. She tossed them down the basement stairs, into a waiting pile of sterilization—otherwise known as the laundry.
Too bad she’d used the term for my socks before the pandemic.
“I didn’t want anyone to recognize me,” she said. “The only thing that’ll pass quicker than a virus through this town is gossip. No sense giving Butterpond anything to talk about.”
“Oh sure. They’ll have nothing to say about a girl sheathing condoms over her hands.”
“Believe me, with all the babies being born around this town?” She snorted. “No one knows what a condom is anymore. I grabbed the last…test on the shelf.”
For the first time, we stared at each other in awkward silence.
Then again, it was the first time we’d had a conversation while wearing pants for three weeks.
And this conversation got more real than any whispered promises we’d made while naked.
I dropped the towel from around my neck, running a hand through my hair, wet after a shower. And here I figured the silent neighborhood would be the weirdest thing to happen to me today while I repaired Raymond Adamski’s roof.
Sure, a couple people walked in the streets. Kids played in their backyards. A wayward alpaca escaped from the local farm. Again.
Pandemic or not, it still felt like Butterpond outside of the bedroom. That had reassured me. At least the town hadn’t changed.
But other things had.
Like me.
Like Déjà.
&n
bsp; Like us.
And as soon as she took that test, who the fuck knew what else would change.
Maybe the rest of our lives.
Maybe her mind.
I didn’t know what she wanted, and I was fucking tired of it.
Tired of not knowing what would happen. Tired of hiding the truth. Tired of fearing what could go wrong if I didn’t summon the fucking courage and take control of the one thing I wanted most in life.
It wasn’t fair to this woman that I’d take her in my arms, kiss her, fuck her day in and day out, and not confess the truth.
She deserved it.
I deserved it.
And, sure as shit, our baby would deserve it.
I returned to the kitchen sink, ignoring the patter of the leaky faucet. My toolbox rested on the counter, the wrench already laid out, ready to get to work.
But I had other things to fix first.
I no longer cared what it said on the test anymore.
Maybe it’d be positive. Maybe negative. Maybe she’d piss on it and it’d turn into a magic eight ball. Try again later…
I didn’t need pink lines on a stick to tell me how I should’ve felt about my own damned future. The only woman I relied on was Déjà. The only person I could count on was myself.
And I meant to find out what the fuck she wanted from me before she took that test.
Déjà never liked silence. She owned a bookstore and kept it as quiet as a tomb built inside a library that housed a dozen sleeping newborns. But when I stopped talking?
That made her real nervous.
She wasn’t the only one.
“I’ve never taken one of these…” She chattered as she turned the box over in her hands. “Well…I mean…of course I haven’t. Be weird if I had, with, you know, never having…sex…” Her voice trailed off and she clawed the box open. “Should I read the directions? I mean, I think I know how to do it, but I guess I should. I don’t want to mess this up. Certainly don’t want to go back to the store. The condoms cut off my circulation. Good thing you never had to wear one…”
“Déjà.”
“Then again, this is going to take all afternoon. You know me. I’m a nervous peer. I can’t go before any test, let alone one like this. Remember back in high school? I gave myself a UTI before the SATs. Got a good score, but it was so uncomfortable after that test.”
I sighed. “Déjà.”
“Of course, you never took the SATs. That was smart. You didn’t need them. Remember what you did that day? You went out with Tidus Payne and Remington Marshall and rearranged the street signs down on Main. First became Second, Second became Fourth, Fifth was now Elm. You thought it’d be a perfect senior prank, but Sheriff Samson didn’t even notice until two weeks later.”
“Déjà.”
I could offer her nothing that’d ease her fears. All I had was the truth.
And that would probably fuck us both.
But if I really loved her, I needed to take responsibility for her. For us.
For the baby.
If I wanted to be a good father, I had to start by becoming a good man. Man enough for her. A protector and provider. Someone she could rely on. Someone who could be more than a friend. More than a temporary warmth in her bed.
Someone right for her.
A man who would do right by her.
“We need to talk before you take the test,” I said.
Déjà fluttered around the kitchen. “Absolutely. You’re absolutely right. And I know you love hearing me say it, so I’ll say it again. You are most definitely right.”
Much as I loved hearing it, I preferred to be right when she wasn’t speaking whatever words popped into her head to fill the silence.
She ignored the seat I pulled for her at the dining room table. Instead, she investigated the refrigerator to peek inside. Before I could speak, she hauled out a two liter bottle of pop that had gone flat a week ago.
“Aha!” She announced. Her eyes focused on the coffee maker, silent and unused on her counter. “Do you know what I’m thinking?”
“Christ, I wish I had a clue.”
“Look at all this caffeine!” She shook a bag of premium coffee that she’d ground herself. “Can you believe this? All I see in this house is caffeine! Everywhere!”
And it was about time I’d cut her off from it. “So what?”
“We can’t be having caffeine!”
Like hell. “Why the fuck not?”
“Because it might impact our fertility.”
Little late to worry about that. “Why? How many babies did you want from me during this quarantine?”
“No, Hunter…” Her glance towards me was brave, but she didn’t have the courage to hold my stare. “In case…in case it didn’t take. If it didn’t work this time, there're more things we can do. We don’t have to give up.”
“I told you. You’re pregnant. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“Well…just in case I’m not.”
I wouldn’t tolerate that sort of talk. “You are.”
She ignored me as she organized, cluttered, then reorganized all the items on her kitchen counter, including finding a handy spot for my toolbox between a cookie jar shaped like an cat and a clear plastic tub holding her sugar.
“If we’re not…” She breathlessly shambled around the kitchen, her nerves practically snapping as I watched. “We’ll probably be stuck inside for another month or so. That’s a lot of uninterrupted time that we can really focus on…us. We’ll cut out everything bad from our diet. Carbs, sugars, caffeine. And I’ll make sure we get plenty of rest. Oh! I should go to the store now. Get some protein—and looser fitting boxers for you.”
“Ain’t no one gonna let you into a store wearing condoms for gloves.”
“We should exercise too.”
That made me laugh. “Christ, do you know how hard I’ve been working on you? I’m losing weight with all this exercise.”
“It’s just…” She tugged on her curls, her voice straining with stress. “There’s so many things we should be doing to give it the best shot. Just in case this turned out to be a test run. We can do it. I know I can make a baby for you, Hunter.” Her eyes widened, staring at me like a doe about to make a very bad decision before leaping onto the highway. “Are you okay if this takes more time?”
She’d gone from flighty to full blown panic.
I hated it.
I kicked out the nearest chair and pointed her to it. “Sit your ass down before you hyperventilate.”
“I’m not…” She gasped. “Hyper…” Another breath. “Ventilating.”
She had no reason to be this upset. The woman stared at me, wide-eyed, like she’d just hammered her thumb instead of a nail.
And for what?
Because she was afraid she wasn’t pregnant?
…Or did she worry that she was?
Was she upset that we’d have to fuck every hour on the hour for the next month?
…Or did she fear we’d never have to do it again?
I had no idea what problems rattled around my best friend’s head.
But it was time I found out.
I had nothing to offer this woman. No rings. No promises. No fancy cars or lifestyles. Nothing to my name except my truck, my business, and whatever home I could make for her out of a stockpile of oak planks.
But if there was a chance I could make her happy?
Fuck it.
I spun, searching the cabinets until I found an old loaf of bread wrapped in plastic. I ripped the wire twist-tie from the bag and wound it into a circle, curling the ends to make a bow.
It was ugly as shit, but hopefully she’d look past the idiocy of this moment and realize I meant to offer her something far greater.
I turned to face her, prepared to get on one knee.
I didn’t reach the ground.
Déjà popped out of the chair, shifting from hyperventilation to full-blown panic attack. She covered her eyes and starte
d to sob.
“Stop.” She blubbered through tears. “I know exactly what you’re going to say.”
Not the best start to a proposal. “…You do?”
“This is crazy. It’s wrong for us.”
Well, fuck.
Maybe the piece of shit twisty-tie could be molded into a shiv and pierced into my heart.
Déjà pinched her eyes shut. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“That I’d like a bottle of Jack to drink before you crack it over my head?”
“You think the sex is going to ruin our friendship.”
“Well, fuck, I hoped it would.”
She bit her lip. “You think I’m crazy for wanting a baby. That I’ve forced you into something you’re not comfortable doing. That everything we had has now been destroyed because of my own damned selfishness.” Tears rolled down her cheek. “I’m so sorry, Hunter. I never meant to hurt you this way.”
What the fuck was she talking about?
Hurt me? Unless her pussy had wrenched my cock off at the seams, nothing she did would ever hurt me.
But nothing mattered anymore.
My woman cried.
And it was my fault.
I yanked her out of the chair and pulled her into my arms, silencing her sniffles with a kiss.
She stiffened in shock but eagerly reached for me.
Good enough opening as any.
I grabbed her hand and shoved the twisty-tie ring on her finger.
“Déjà, I want you to marry me.”
She suddenly choked on her tears—caused by ten years of my own repressed bullshit and cowardice.
Maybe it wasn’t the best way to begin a proposal, but I’d leapt headfirst into this pile of shit now. I wasn’t about to stop until she understood just how much she meant to me, even if I’d fucked everything up until now.
“I’m in love with you.” The words suckerpunched me on the way out. “Real love. Not a friendship. Not just because we’ve been together since we were kids. But kick-me-in-the-balls, spit-on-my-face, knock-me-on-my-ass I in love with you.”
Déjà blinked, silently repeating my declaration as she blinked in confusion. “Knock you on your ass…is…is that a good thing?”
“Fuck if I know anymore.” The frustration poisoned the sweet words. I’d expected candlelight and roses when I told her the truth. Instead I got stale breadcrumbs and a pharmacy receipt three feet long for the purchase of one item that would forever change our future. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since fucking prom, when I saw you all dolled up in that beautiful dress. That night, you cuddled up against me at the pond. You spent the night staring at the stars. I spent the night staring at you.”
