OUR SURPRISE BABY

by Paula Cox

  It is an appalling, offensive request, and yet it is a request I cannot dismiss out of hand.

  He just stares at me with those eyes that make thinking of anything other than him, naked, muscles tensed, hands grabbing my breasts and my ass, sluicing through my hair—staring with eyes that make thinking of anything else impossible. He smirks, a casual smirk, an in-control smirk.

  “I am not a whore,” I say.

  Behind me, Terry mutters, “Damn right.”

  I want Terry to walk out of hearing range but I also get that she just wants the best for me. So I just go on, knowing that she can hear every word.

  “I never said you were,” Kade says casually.

  “What you’re asking me to do would sort of imply otherwise.”

  He shrugs. “Alright.”

  “Alright?” I raise an eyebrow. “That is your eloquent reply to my very understandable objection?”

  “Alright,” he repeats. “Look, I’m not one of those guys who can lay out how he feels and all that shit. All I can tell you is that I want you, want what we had that night, and I want it easy and on-demand.”

  Offensive words, all of them. Horribly offense. I should punch him in the stomach and walk away. But these are offensive words which come from my child’s father, offensive words which come from the man who gave me the best sex of my life. Dammit, this is confusing.

  “How would it work, exactly?” I ask.

  “Lana!” Terry hisses from behind.

  I turn and see that she’s standing with her arms at her sides, as though she’s ready to charge at Kade and tackle him to the ground. Usually, the idea of Terry charging at a man and tackling him would be funny. But there’s nothing funny about the way Terry’s cheeks tremble or how she clenches her fists so hard her knuckles turn white.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “We’re just talking about it.”

  “What he’s asking—”

  “—is for me to decide.”

  She huffs, folds her arms under her immense breasts.

  I turn back to Kade.

  “It’s pretty simple,” he says. “You get a room—”

  “Yeah, but what kind of room?”

  “The best room in the clubhouse. En-suite, writing desk, king-size bed.”

  “A prison for a biker’s whore,” Terry mutters bitterly.

  “I’m not a hooker, Kade,” I say. “I won’t go with you under the pretense that I’ll just put out whenever you want. If I go with you, we can say we’ll see what happens. But I’m not going if you think you can just fuck me anytime you like as though I’m some kind of toy.”

  Kade sighs. “That’s what I want, though.”

  For some reason, I feel comfortable reaching up and flicking his nose with my forefinger. “Well, Mr. Biker, we don’t always get what we want, do we?”

  “By ‘we’ll see what happens’ you mean you stay at the clubhouse exactly like I want but every now and then you pretend not to want it so you can feel like you’re not my woman? Is that it?”

  “No. Maybe sometimes I won’t want to. And I’ll want you to respect that.”

  Kade snorts. “I’m not a fuckin’ rapist, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Yeah, for all we know!” Terry strides between us, using her bulk to stand down opposite Kade. “Listen, pal, you can’t just ride down here and expect Lana to just go with you because you told her to!”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, I do not mean Lana any harm. I understand that you’re her friend and all, but you’re gettin’ angry at the wrong man. I would never hurt her.”

  “How do we know that!” Terry turns so that one shoulder is facing Kade, another facing me, blocking us from each other. “Lana, you don’t know this man. Think. You met him once, Once. And now he’s trying to make you a prisoner in his clubhouse. This is the sort of thing crime documentaries are made of.”

  “I’ve never hurt a woman,” Kade says. “I only hurt people who deserve it.”

  “What if I were to slap you across the face, would you hurt me then?” Terry snaps.

  “Terry!” I protest.

  She ignores me. “If I slapped you across the face, would you hurt me then?” she demands.

  “No,” Kade says.

  “What if I pulled a gun on you?”

  “I would take if from you.”

  “Terry.” I place my hand on her shoulder. “You’re being unreasonable now. I get that you’re angry, but this is ridiculous. Kade is a good man.”

  “How do you know!” Terry cries, throwing her hands up to the sky as if the clouds might be able to talk some sense into me.

  “Okay, fine. Look. I don’t know. But I believe and trust that he is.”

  Terry looks at me like I’ve just said the most stupid thing she’s ever heard. Maybe I have. I don’t know.

  “And I’m going with him,” I say.

  I think about the desk and the en-suite and the bed and not having to pay rent and moving to Evergreen, Seattle, where the clubhouse is. Terry is right, of course. It’s crazy. But maybe I need a little crazy. And I’ll be close to the father of my child, even if he does not know anything about it yet.

  “Listen, Terry,” I say, as her mouth falls open and she stares at me in disbelief. “I want to go with him. I want to live with him. I just want to give it a shot. And hey, if it doesn’t work out, you’ll be the first person I call.”

  I pick up my bag and begin walking toward Kade’s bike.

  “Now?” Terry says, her voice breathy. “Now, Lana? Right this second?”

  “Why not?”

  Kade walks beside me, his leather brushing my arm. I look up and smile at him, and he smiles down at me.

  I look across the road and see Terry walking to her car, shaking her head, muttering loudly about how stupid this is.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Kade asks.

  “I hope so. I’ll call her later and we’ll patch it up.”

  Kade hands me a bike helmet.

  “I’m glad you agreed, Lana,” he says.

  I take the helmet.

  “So what happened to your friend?” I ask.

  Kade clenches his jaw, seems about to ignore me, but then unclenches his jaw and sighs. “He was killed in a gun deal,” he says. “I knew him since I was three. He co-founded the club with me.”

  “Oh, Kade.” I make to put my hand on his shoulder.

  He pushes it gently away. “Don’t worry about me. Let’s get goin’.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lana

  Spring turns to summer and Kade and I don’t have sex again. Intercourse, anyway. More than once he wakes me up late at night and roams his hands all over me, down between my legs and then up to my breasts, giving me a mind-blowing orgasm (and sometimes orgasms; the Internet says pregnancy can make that a thing, and I am definitely not complaining), then slumping next to me and passing out from exhaustion. Word around town is that the Tidal Knights and the Italians are at each other’s throat, which keeps Kade busy from early morning to late at night. I often wake up to an empty bed. Those orgasms, though—they are like nothing I have ever felt. And sometimes, when his fingers are playing with my clit, I say to myself in my mind, over and over: “This is the father of my child, this is the father of my child.” It drives me crazy. And then he passes out and I climb into the nook between his armpit and his chest and snuggle up, savoring the feeling.

  By day, I write and I explore Evergreen. Evergreen is a nice town, the sort of town I can hardly believe exists a mere ferry-and-bike ride from my home in Bremerton. There’s a bakery and a well-maintained park and an antiquated corner store and a town hall with pillars and a triangular roof which overlooks a statue of some old Civil War veteran. I walk through the park as the grass turns deep green and the flowers open their petals to catch the rays of the sun. Sometimes I take my notebook with me and sit on the bench for hours just writing. I write short stories and the beginnings of books which I will never finish. I write vig
nettes about Kade’s shirtless body. I write erotic scenes about his nightly visits.

  It’s strange. When he came to me weeks ago and told me what he wanted, I replied that if I didn’t want it, I’d have the right to say no. But now that I’m here, I don’t want to say no. I want to fuck him. I want him to come in one night crazed with lust and tear my underwear off and ram me, hard, like the night we met. I want him to fuck me before the baby starts to show, before things get complicated fast. I write: I want to be drilled by Kade, she thought, and she was aware of how silly that sounded but it was what she wanted. I intend it as the first line of a short story but it goes nowhere. I don’t want to write about it. I want it to happen.

  I go back to the clubhouse and sit at the desk and write until my eyes are tired and then I lie on the bed with my eyes closed, just thinking. Mostly I think about Kade, hoping that soon he’ll come through that door and begin tearing at my clothes. I think about what it would be like if he just marched in here and bent me over and just fucked me, hard. I think about what it would be like if he handled me roughly, flipped me over with his strong hands, yanked down my underwear, and pounded me from behind. My pussy gets impossibly hot at the thought. I close my legs tightly to fight the urge to masturbate. I can’t masturbate here, I reason. Though I’ve been here for a few weeks, it still doesn’t feel like home, not completely.

  I called Mom soon after I arrived, and the conversation went a little like this:

  “Hello.”

  “Mom, it’s me.”

  “Okay. Hello.”

  “I’m moving out. Somebody’s coming by for my clothes later.”

  “You’re not paying rent anymore?”

  “Your check covers that. We both know it does.”

  “How am I supposed to do my shows?”

  By ‘do my shows’, she meant: How am I supposed to spend absurd amounts of money on pointless crap from shopping channels?

  “Money management. You did fine when I was at college. I’m sure you’ll manage now.”

  “Fine. When are they coming?”

  “Around six.”

  “Fine. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Fine.”

  “Bye, Mom.”

  “Fine.”

  And she hung up.

  I didn’t expect more from her. All my life, she has been not-really-there, a shadow. The same as Dad, who spends his time out of prison striving to get back in.

  Really, it’s a wonder I’ve turned out so well-adjusted and capable, into a person who makes such mature decisions.

  I snigger to myself and roll over in bed.

  Mature. Capable.

  Maybe one day these will be words I can use to describe myself, but right now there are others which are more appropriate. Longing. Hungry. Restless. Horny.

  I close my eyes and I see Kade, imagine him kicking the door open and marching to the bed and demanding, “Get naked, now. Right now.”

  I told him I didn’t want to be a whore and yet now all I can think about is being treated like one by him. I guess my body wants things my reason does not. It reminds me of the Twin Peaks, when I liked yet resented the attentions of the customers. I seem to specialize in mixed feelings.

  The Tidal Knights guys are respectful but distant with me, probably because they know I’m their boss’s ‘woman.’ But one of them takes the time to talk to me now and then. His name is Scud and he’s a tall, sharp-featured man. He looks too skinny to be a Tidal Knights member. I try and see him going up against somebody like Kade and the image makes me laugh. Still, he’s a friendly enough guy. Sometimes, when I’m writing in my bedroom—which is in a separate wing of the clubhouse, opposite the bar—he’ll knock on the door and bring me in a sandwich and a Coke.

  “Writing can be thirsty work, I’ve heard,” he’ll say, with a smile on his face.

  “Yeah, can be.” I place my pen next to the notepad and start on the sandwich. Scud takes the spare seat, an armchair in the corner, and we sit together whilst I eat.

  “How are you finding the clubhouse, then?” he says.

  “Fine,” I answer. “I love Evergreen. It’s beautiful.” It would be a lot more beautiful if Kade would make good on his promise to treat me like his whore, I reflect. And if that’s the exact opposite of what I told Kade when he made the offer, I don’t care. I may not be far along, but I think it’s about time I started using this pregnancy thing to explain my irrational behavior. Oh, the joys of womanhood . . .

  “Pardon?” I say, realizing that as I’ve let my thoughts fly Scud’s been talking.

  “I said, what are you writing about?”

  Scud reminds me of a middle-class dad at a barbeque, asking the kids what they’re up to these days. He must be in his mid-thirties, or he’s a late-twenty-year-old who’s led a very hard life. He has a slightly haggard look to him which doesn’t take away from his kindness in the least. A harmless man—if I ever put him in a story, I think that’s how I’ll describe him.

  “It’s a short story,” I say. “Or maybe it will one day mutate into a short story. Right now it’s more of a string of sentences which have very little connection to a narrative.”

  “What is it about?”

  I blush, munching on my chicken salad sandwich, and then wash it down with a sip of Coke. “Uh, it’s about a woman who moves away from her hometown to join a biker gang.”

  Scud grins. “Oh, right.”

  Why am I talking to this man? I mean, he’s nice enough. But it should be Kade in here taking an interest, Kade in here asking what the story is about, Kade in here smiling at me. I want him. Bad. Goddamn it. I’ve never wanted anybody this badly in my life. I’m slightly ashamed of myself for how badly I want him; it’s like I have no control over my desire.

  “Is Kade in?” I ask, hoping my voice sounds casual.

  “In his office,” Scud says.

  I nod and quickly finish the sandwich. I expect him to get up and leave when the conversation peters out, but he just sits there and watches me eat. He’s a bit odd. A slightly odd man. Maybe I’ll describe him like this: He was a harmless, if slightly odd man. When I finish my lunch, he takes the plates and the empty glass of Coke and leaves me.

  I write for a while longer, but all the time I’m thinking of Kade, thinking what it would be like to feel his lips on mine again. I mean, don’t get me wrong, having a hunky biker visit you at night to give you strings-free orgasms isn’t such a bad thing. But I want more. I want him. I want him completely.

  As I write, I realize I’m writing about myself through a thinly-veiled character named Layla. Layla desperately wants to fuck the lead biker but she’s not getting anywhere so in the end she decides that she has to tease him a little. She’s never played the tease, but she decides that she has to change that, to reel him in, to give him a preview of what he’s missing. So Layla marches into his office—and then I stop writing and lay the pen aside.

  That’s what I need to do, I reflect. I need to make him realize that, though these night-time orgasms are appreciated, there’s so much more we could be doing. I need to make him realize that we could be so much closer than we currently are. I know he’s busy, I know he’s reeling over Duster’s death, but still . . .

  Like Layla, I have never been the teasing type of girl. But maybe it’s time that changed.

  I push back in the chair and stand up before I have time to second-guess myself. Then I march out of the bedroom, past the other bedrooms, into the reception area and then into the bar. The bar is empty apart from a couple of pledges, who stare at the ground just in case they’re misconstrued as staring at the boss’s woman. I walk across the bar, heart pounding with excitement and nerves.

  When I push his door open, Kade smiles at me but doesn’t hang up the phone.

  “That isn’t fuckin’ good enough,” he says. “That isn’t even close to being fuckin’ good enough.”

  I see his eyes go to my legs, bare in my summer dress, as I skip across
the office and around to his side to the desk. His grin gets wider. Maybe he’s thinking that I’ll wait for the call to be over. But I don’t. Instead, I lean down and press my lips firmly into his, kissing him with all the pent-up passion of these past weeks. Our tongues clashing, brushing. Our teeth gnashing together. Warmth and a thousand tingling nerves coursing between us. I moan, a sweet moan which is meant to make him think of all the dirty things we could be doing, and then, when he’s really getting into it, I pull away.