by CD Reiss
I didn’t want to be pregnant. I didn’t want a baby now. Of the dozen reasons a woman could miss a period, I didn’t want it to be the most likely. Anything but. I wasn’t ready. We weren’t ready.
“One line. Just please, give me one line.”
I opened my legs and lifted the stick to eye level. The wet, grey wave had passed the first line in the little window and made its way to the other side in a serrated procession, passing where the second line should have been, to where it never would be, to the edge.
No happy second line appeared.
One pink line.
Not.
Pregnant.
A sob shot out of my lungs like cannon fire. I threw the stick in the trash as if I could break it. It just made a cracking noise against the plastic bag. So ineffective. Everything was ineffective. Everything I tried to do was a goddamn joke. Even the things I didn’t try failed. Even when I was handed everything in life I barely made it work and here I fuckingwasinthisfuckingbathroom—
I stood and kicked the bottom of the pail. It upended and spilled toward me, dropping a couple of cotton swabs by my socked feet and a failed pregnancy test on my foot. I kicked it off, lost my balance with my pants around my knees, and fell ass-first on the bathroom floor.
Tears came. Breaths hitched. I had a decent amount of snot happening. I let it go for a long time, but no matter how hard I cried, I couldn’t touch the bottom of the pool.
I stayed there, curled up, and cried. I pulled out all the stops. I dipped deep into the well of pain to find I was emptying the ocean with a slotted spoon.
My phone dinged. It was getting dark, and I was still on the bathroom floor. My back pocket was folded under my waistband, tucked somewhere behind my knee. I wrestled the phone out.
—Where are you?—
I was mad at him. I was mad that he’d given me a broken baby last time and hadn’t gotten me pregnant this time. I was mad that he didn’t love me enough to be a father to the non-baby. Or that he would be a fine father, but not on terms I understood. I was mad that I loved the wrong parts of him, and that I felt closer to a sadist than a kind man. I was mad that he’d opened me up and I couldn’t close the wound without him. I was mad that I could only really cry when he hurt me.
—At the loft—
I wasn’t ready to tell him why I’d run to the loft, but I felt the compulsion to explain.
—I had to get shoes—
Lies. The marriage had collapsed on an underpinning of lies, and there I was, trying to set that same foundation again.
My reasons were irrelevant. Lies were lies.
—Come here before we go
to the Intercontinental—
Dominant voice through the text. I sat up on the tiles. My eyes throbbed from crying, and the muscles around my mouth hurt from an hour in the weeping grimace.
Was it wrong that I wanted to please him? That in my misery, the idea of satisfying him was comforting? In obeying him, giving him that pleasure, I could soothe my own pain. I could stop worrying about the future for a few hours and do nothing but make him happy.
—Yes, sir—
I scrambled up and got my pants back on. I put the test and the bathroom junk back in the garbage can. I had this. I pulled my hair out of its clips and brushed it down, taking a good look at my face.
My eyes and lips were swollen and puffy. The whites of my eyes were webbed with hot red. He’d know. He’d ask. I couldn’t lie to his face. I’d tell him about the failed pregnancy test, and he’d be relieved. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.
—Bring the box—
Apparently my curiosity was about to be sated. Well, that would be a nice distraction.
If I just focused on pleasing him for one night, I might not be sad tomorrow. I could let it all go, and tomorrow I could be the adultingest adult in New York City. I could tell my husband, lover, Dom, ex, everything, and he could soothe me or not. I’d have it under control by then. I’d be able to see a way forward.
We had cold packs in the freezer. I took the softest and pressed it to one eye, then the other as I went about the house, gathering a long slate-blue dress and matching shoes. Navy lace garter. His pearl collar, just in case. I pressed the pack to my eyes the whole ride to Murray Hill.
Chapter 31
I’d gotten complacent. I let myself think I’d won him back. That our separation was over and we were about to open a new chapter in our marriage. I’d let the idea of a future with him get real when I took the pregnancy test, and he was so perfect, so comforting in his dominance, I let the hope solidify.
Because who could be so intimate and still walk away?
What kind of person played a woman’s body like a well-loved instrument without caring about the woman inside it?
I had him. He wasn’t going to say good-bye. I couldn’t imagine being without him, and in my little cocoon of self-reflection, he felt the same way.
Complacency is the prologue to calamity.
I was going to be diligent. Stay on task. This wasn’t the time to get distracted by a pregnancy test that changed nothing.
The strategy was to make sure he understood that he loved me. The tactic was to submit. To show him that even in submission, I was still the woman he loved.
Buck up, buttercup. There’s work to do.
Him: Trousers open. Shirt buttoned. Tie draped, not knotted. Socks. Watch big as a dinner plate.
Me: Wet hair. Stockings. Garter. Bra. He’d taken away my panties. I wasn’t clothed in much more than his stare.
“Where’s the box?” he asked, doing up his cuff. I’d seen him do it a hundred times, and it was never as sexy as it was that night.
“In my bag, sir.”
“Get it and present it to me.”
I padded out to my bag in my bare feet. As soon I was out of his sphere, I remembered the single pink line. What it meant. The years I’d have to wait to start a family. As soon as I was back in the bedroom with the box, those years fell off me. He didn’t make me forget, but his presence protected me from myself. Even saying nothing, he gave me permission to not worry. I needed that or I was going to cry again.
I got on my knees, looked down, and held it up to him. The corners were blunted and the tape had curled at the edges, but I hadn’t opened it. I was proud of myself.
He plucked it out of my hands. “You did good with this.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You all right, huntress?”
“Yes, sir.”
Seeing outside myself, I was saying sir more than usual. I was more compliant in attitude as well as action. If I kept this up, he would realize something was wrong before I had the empty, clear feeling I got from making his will my own. That would be a lot of wasted sirs.
He took a small knife from his pocket and slashed the paper and tape off an edge, then down at a right angle.
“You conquered your curiosity.” He handed me the slashed box. “Go on.”
I opened it to find a small velvet box with the top on a hinge. I creaked that open. The shiny chrome object inside was a four-inch-long bulb with a ring on the end. I took it out, hooking my finger in the circle.
“Is this what I think it is?” I asked.
“What do you think it is?”
“A Christmas ornament.”
He looped his finger inside the ring and took the toy from me. “Exactly right.” He put the end against my lips, running the curve of the object along them. “Lick it.” His voice was so soft and so stern at the same time.
I put out my tongue and tasted the hard metal.
“Open your mouth.” When I did, he slid it in and out along the flat of my tongue until it went all the way in without gagging me. “Close it.”
I sealed my lips around the base, leaving the ring outside my lips.
“The way it’s in your mouth is exactly the way it’s going to fit in your ass. You’ll want to lubricate it with your spit. Be generous.”
I tried to swallow
my fear, but the plug kept my throat from closing. Adam took my hand and led me to the bed, guiding me onto my back. He opened my legs and pushed my knees back, squeezing the flesh of my thighs to expose me to his eyes.
My throat hummed, but I kept my lips locked and my tongue curled around the bulb. I eased into submission, and sexual pleasure merged with a rightness that washed away pain.
Adam bent down and licked the length of my seam. He sucked and kissed me without reservation or pause. He used his fingers to move the lubrication to my ass and back again. I groaned, eighty percent of the way to orgasm.
He stood and slid his finger in the metal ring. “Open.”
I opened my mouth, and a thick line of spit tethered the plug to my tongue.
“Hands and knees.” He slapped my bottom as I complied. “I’m putting this inside your ass.”
“Then what?”
He couldn’t fuck me if there was a plug in me. Right? I didn’t know how it was supposed to fit in the first place.
“Then we’re going out.”
“With it in me?”
“Yes. Trust me.”
He slid it across my ass, back and forth. There was plenty of lubrication on it, and the twenty percent of an orgasm I had left pounded at the gate.
“I’m going to take this slow,” he said. “If there’s more than a little pain, you need to speak up. It shouldn’t hurt. Just breathe.”
“Okay.”
He slid it in my ass so slowly it felt as if it wasn’t moving at all. I pushed against it. It went in a little, stretching me.
“Breathe,” he whispered, putting his hand on my lower back and guiding me toward him. I stretched farther. “Does it hurt?”
“No. It’s definitely something. But no pain.”
“That’s the widest part,” he said, and with one last push, he got it all the way inside. My body closed around the base. “It’s in.”
I twisted around, looking at him over my shoulder. He had his cock in his hand.
“Make it hurt,” I whispered.
He drew his hand down my back, considering it.
“Later,” he said, sliding into me.
He fucked me hard from behind. I’d never felt anything like it. The weight. The stretch. The way his cock rubbed it through a membrane wall. I was completely full and fully complete, reaching orgasm with my whole body. He bent around me, his hand on my throat, gentle and firm as he came inside me.
His hoarse whisper seemed involuntary, straight from the gut, bypassing heart and brain. One word.
“You.”
I closed my eyes and let him kiss my neck and whisper in my ear. I was perfect. I was beautiful. I was so very good.
One pink line perfect.
One lonely line beautiful.
One single line good.
I didn’t feel inadequate for not being pregnant.
I felt inadequate for not creating a marriage worth being born into.
Chapter 32
The event at the Intercontinental was the same as always. Bright lights. Little bronzed nametags. Red carpets that looked good on video but, in real life, were worn and gum-spotted. None of it mattered. He was on my arm and in the core of my body was a solid weight of shiny silver metal, stretching me for him.
“How’s that thing feel?” Adam asked once we were out of range of the flashing lights.
“Not bad.” I pulled him closer.
He gazed down at me, and what should have been a long, warm look into my soul ending in a kiss was actually short and interrupted by his need to talk to someone across the room.
We’d been married business partners long enough for me to regret the loss of that warm moment at the same time as I understood it. The nametag on the end of my ribbon lanyard said McNeill-Barnes Publishing, and it meant business. I could still play company owner. I could still be a businesswoman. I was always the heiress to an iconic publishing house. Even with a butt plug inserted in my ass.
I had to bite my lips to keep from laughing. We were talking to Giulio Fenestro, who was a shoo-in for a Pulitzer. Not the time to giggle about walking around pretty-as-you-please with a hunk of precious metal in my rectum.
Do. Not. Laugh.
Adam yanked me to the silent auction tables.
“What’s so funny?” he whispered.
“Nothing.” I snapped up a clipboard.
“Am I going to punish you for lies of omission?”
I wrote my name and a number on the sheet. I didn’t even know what I was bidding on.
“Put my address. You’ll be there for the duration.”
“So sure, are you?”
I put down the clipboard. He took me by the chin and looked deeply in my eyes. I tried to hide the pain of the pregnancy test. First, with defiance, then submission as I looked away. I couldn’t bear to look away for long. When our eyes met again, he wasn’t looking at something that pleased him.
“Talk to me.”
“I’m nervous about later, I guess.”
He let my chin go and broke eye contact.
“Well, well,” he said. “Look who’s here.”
I followed his gaze to Stefan, who was talking to Thalia Jonson from Breakneck Books.
“Krovite published his catalogs, right?” I asked. “That must be why he’s here.”
Adam didn’t wait to answer but approached the pair with his usual confidence and grace. He didn’t take my hand or give me his arm. His fingers didn’t brush my neck as they often did when we were at a party together. He just went, and I dragged my butt plug behind.
Five minutes before, I would have had to stifle a laugh, but now I felt small and infantile with the sophisticated humor of a twelve-year-old boy.
I shook Thalia’s hand and did a double-air kiss with Stefan. We talked about the future of plated art books versus art textbooks for a few minutes before Thalia excused herself.
“Just like old times,” Stefan said then turned to me.
“Are you moving to Breakneck?” I asked quietly. “They just bought Havershim’s old plant in Norfolk.”
We engaged in a light, gossipy business discussion about Breakneck’s color plating abilities, during which Adam didn’t touch me or look at me. I could hold the conversation, but the weight of his inattention kept me from breathing right. Kept me from thinking clearly.
“Can you excuse us?” Adam said, offering me his arm.
“Of course.”
He pulled me away from the crowd in the ballroom and up a set of beige marble stairs. My stockings felt saggy and my shoes bit the soft parts of my ankles, but I continued. I needed to focus on pleasing him.
We slipped past a velvet rope, into a narrow hallway lined with paintings of beautiful Victorian women and a deep blue carpet. He wasn’t looking at me. Just walking fast and looking ahead. The avoidance hurt more than my shoes.
“Stop,” I said. “What’s the problem? Wait—” I interrupted myself, looking at the floor and putting my hands up to fend off his voice and his face. I’d melt for either. “You’re going to ask me what I’m talking about, so let’s just skip that part.” I stood straight and took a deep breath, balling my fists and girding myself against his brutal charms. “If I thought you were taking me to fuck me, I’d follow. No problem. But I’m getting the sense there’s no sex at the end of this walk.”
My voice sounded shrill and desperate, and everything about him was simply rock solid and right with the world. Even in his confusion, as all the things he could say flashed across his face, he was perfect and I was a little girl who wanted to rip a piece of metal out of her ass.
“Just say it, Adam. Whatever it is.”
“Your eyes.”
“What about them?”
“They’re swollen. Just a little. You probably put ice on them before you came, and now they’re swollen again. You were crying. Don’t deny it. I want to know why, and you haven’t told me. So that means one of three things. Either it’s something you don’t want me to know, it
’s someone you don’t want me to kill, or it’s me.”
My eyes swelled up again. My palms became as wet as my mouth. I was going to explode in a cyclone of spit and tears, so I clamped my lips shut.
“And I know it’s me,” he said. “It’s what I said. It’s what I didn’t say. I don’t know which. I can’t get this right. I mean, at the Sheepshead house, when I made love to you, I felt it again. I thought…” He closed his eyes slowly and opened them again, looking more composed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. It matters.”
“It makes me crazy when you cry.”
“Why?”
“I want to hurt whoever hurt you. Then I realize I might have to hurt myself. And I would. I will. Why were you crying?”
My feet hurt and my shoulders were suddenly stiff. Remembering the bathroom floor, I felt like a brittle statue in a fancy dress. I was made of shell and soft tissue. No lie I told would change that.
“I thought I was pregnant.”
His eyebrows went up, and his face took on an urgency I’d never seen before. Part confusion and part smothered joy. “You—”
“I’m not.”
“Ah.”
“But it made me think. This baby. It doesn’t exist, but it had parents. And I don’t know if his parents have a future, so those babies won’t ever exist. I feel like I killed children.”
“What does that mean?” He brushed a hair from my cheek. The gesture was tender and sweet, somehow protective, existing in a land between Manhattan and Montauk.
“I didn’t want it,” I said fiercely. That was the only way. “I told myself to hope I wasn’t. I know hoping one way or the other didn’t affect the results, but the hope told me something. I don’t want to be pregnant. But when I wasn’t, I was disappointed. And that told me something too.”
“You wanted to be pregnant,” he said. “But not with me.”
“I want children with you, but not in this situation. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”
