by Amy Star
Harry’s eyebrows rose, and his expression shifted just slightly, only visible to those who knew him. Considering Cheyenne did know him, she could recognize that subtle shift to mischief, though she didn’t quite have enough time to wonder what he was up to before he redoubled his efforts. He pinched and twisted and rolled the dusty nubs her nipples had rapidly perked up into between his fingers, and he kneaded her breasts in his palms.
With each motion, Cheyenne sighed, each one getting higher and breathier as his attention grew more and more insistent. She could feel his erection growing as it pressed against her leg, but he seemed to be ignoring it entirely for the time being, in favor of lavishing all the attention he could manage over her chest.
Cheyenne felt a distant thread of surprise when she felt her core tightening, until her hips jerked up off of the bed, and everything went taut and tense. She felt a thrum of heat down her spine, bright and welcoming, and it was slow to fade. As Harry slowly continued his attentions farther downwards and Cheyenne gradually relaxed again, she could feel a curious wetness between her legs.
It was something not entirely unlike embarrassment that she realized she came in her pants like she was back in high school, and all because he played with her breasts, but it was also with a certain amount of amusement. The amusement won out in the end, as she had no time to really dwell on it, as Harry still seemed rather intent. He trailed kisses down the center of her chest and belly, until he was forced to come to a halt when he encountered the waistband of her pants.
He sat up reluctantly and unbuttoned them and tugged the zipper down, and Cheyenne hitched her hips up off of the mattress to let him tug her pants and damp panties down and toss them over the side of the bed. Where they landed, she wasn’t sure, and she got the distinct impression that she was going to have to go on something of a scavenger hunt when it came time to pick her clothes back up again later.
One of his hands slid between her parted thighs, and for a moment he curled one enormous hand over her sex, pressing the heel of his hand against her. She squeezed her thighs together, dragging his hand closer and trapping it in place as she tried to get some friction, until he relented and began grinding the heel of his hand against her clit.
It seemed everything about her was more sensitive than it otherwise might have been, and for all that the steadily growing amounts of hormones raging through her system left her feeling like the world had flipped upside down at times, she supposed she could at least thank them for making that evening even more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been.
Even with just his palm pressed against her as she ground her sex against his hand, she could already feel that heat building again, coiling along her spine like it was getting ready to strike. Already wet, she was beginning to drip even more, and her hips left the bed in stutters and starts as she pressed herself to his hand.
As if Harry could sense just how close she was getting already, he pulled his hand away from her, trailing it slowly down one of her thighs, stopping once he got to her knee. Before she could help it, Cheyenne made a low, slightly pitiful noise, and she couldn’t even deny that it was a whimper, as there was no other word she could think of to describe the sound.
Harry made no comment on it, as it seemed like his thoughts were already focused on the next goal. He lowered himself down to the bed, urging Cheyenne to roll onto her side as he did, until he was spooned up against her back, one hand curled around one of her hips. His hand was there for only a moment though, before it began drifting downwards, along the back of her thigh, to the inside of her leg. His fingers tightened and he lifted her leg up and out of the way, and a moment later, Cheyenne felt his cock nudging at her entrance, and she sighed out a quiet, shuddering moan at the sensation.
Harry rocked back and forth behind her for a few moments, the head of his cock pressing at her entrance and sliding between the lips of her sex. It was as it was beginning to feel like he was simply teasing her that he finally pressed his hips forward, and the head of his cock pressed at her entrance before breaching it.
He paused then as a shudder chased itself down Cheyenne’s spine, and every muscle went tight again as she adjusted. Only for a moment, though, before she sighed out a breath she hadn’t even realized she was holding and gradually relaxed once again. Harry flexed his grip on her leg, both so her position was more comfortable and so his grip was more comfortable as well, before he finally began to thrust.
He went slowly, each thrust measured and deliberate, as if he half expected Cheyenne to shatter into pieces if he went too fast. She couldn’t even find it in herself to complain, though, as it felt as if she could feel every inch of him with each slow thrust, until it felt as if she was burning up from the inside.
Her hips shifted fitfully, awkwardly trying to meet each of his thrusts despite the way he held her leg, though she didn’t think she was capable of stopping even if she truly wanted to, and just then she couldn’t bring herself to want to stop. If she simply stayed still and let him do whatever he pleased, it felt as if she would be wasting the moment, and that would be unforgivable.
With each thrust, she moaned, getting higher and louder and more emphatic until she was reduced to panting erratically as he thrust in her, his face buried against the back of her neck as he grunted and groaned, his hand trembling slightly as he held her leg up. At some point, he had managed to finagle a hand beneath her without her even realizing it, fingers splayed across her belly.
Cheyenne was panting by then, drawing air in raggedly and sighing it out in a way that made it sound more like she was sobbing, and she could feel Harry’s breath against the back of her neck, hot and quick and uneven. That bright heat began to wrap itself around her spine again, and she got the impression it wasn’t going to be too much longer for either of them.
Finally, Harry picked up the pace. Just slightly, true, but still just enough that each thrust felt somehow deeper. She wrapped both of her hands around his hand on her stomach, her nails biting into his skin as she gripped his hand like a lifesaver, as if she expected to just fracture into pieces and go spiraling away in a thousand different directions at any moment.
When she came, it was with a punched-out groan that broke into a quiet sob at the end, and as her muscles went taut and trembling again, Harry’s rhythm faltered. For a few more moments, he kept going, until finally he grunted unevenly against her shoulder, and with a few more erratic thrusts, he emptied himself within her.
Neither of them moved at first as they caught their breath. But after a moment, Harry pulled away, just far enough to let his cock slip free and to lower Cheyenne’s leg again, before he settled down behind her once again.
For a little while after that, everything was quiet.
Unlike the last time, Cheyenne lingered in the bed, still partially curled on her side since it was one of the few ways she could get and stay comfortable for any length of time at that point. She stared at the wall, her gaze unfocused as her thoughts wandered like sheep out to pasture, listless and meandering.
She jolted back to the present with a startled jerk when an arm settled over her middle, and Harry wondered, “Penny for your thoughts?”
Cheyenne didn’t answer him immediately, taking a moment to pass the words back and forth in her head before she spat them out. Because once they were out, there would be no real way to disguise their meaning and no real way to take them back, so she had to be damn sure she really meant them.
“What if we wouldn’t eventually be horrible together?” she asked finally, her voice low and musing. “What if we actually worked out pretty well?”
It was Harry’s turn to lapse into silence after that, until eventually he suggested slowly, “We could give it a try?” He splayed his hand over her stomach as he added, “I mean, we’re sort of stuck with each other to some extent regardless. What could it hurt?”
Potentially a whole lot. Cheyenne knew that, and she wasn’t going to pretend it would all be perfectly harmless. A
nd she couldn’t even say for certain if she still loved him, after everything that had happened. But she knew she could, if she gave herself the chance to, and that seemed pretty important.
“I would like that,” she agreed quietly, rolling onto her back and then her other side so she could face him.
“Stay here tonight?” Harry asked after a moment, one arm still resting over her side.
Cheyenne paused for just a second before she agreed. “Just for tonight.”
CHAPTER NINE
Cheyenne wasn’t an idiot. She hadn’t expected that one brief talk would fix every single issue they had been having. But she had sort of hoped it would at least make some of the problems better. That maybe Harry would have learned from the last time, and he would take her a bit more seriously when she said something was getting to her.
And in a way, he did get better at hearing her out, but mostly he got better at humoring her, rather than actually doing anything helpful about the situation. And Cheyenne knew something was going to have to change, or else the entire situation would just go the exact same way as it had the first time around, and Cheyenne would be out on her own again.
(She couldn’t quite keep her thoughts from jumping to the worst conclusions. Harry was a billionaire and a very respected individual. He could pay for the best doctors, the best schools, the best of everything. If they went their separate ways and Harry decided he wanted the kids, Cheyenne knew there wasn’t a judge in the country who would decide that she was the best person to raise them. She hadn’t met her three eventual children, and yet already she couldn’t bear the idea of being separated from them if it came to that.)
In an ideal world, Harry would be the one to change, to realize that yes indeed, Lorraine’s behavior was inappropriate, and he needed to stop defending her and start actually dealing with the problem. Cheyenne, after all, had no authority over Lorraine, and Lorraine had already made it abundantly clear that she didn’t care about Cheyenne’s opinions or preferences unless Harry explicitly told her she had to.
But Cheyenne knew that outcome was unlikely. She didn’t know much about Harry’s family life or his upbringing, but she was pretty sure it had never involved anyone telling him the words “you are wrong,” so he hadn’t exactly adapted to hearing them and reacting. And in an ideal world, Cheyenne would have the patience and the energy to try and work through that little…quirk, but for the time being, that simply wasn’t the case. She was slow and tired and achy, and she knew she still had another full trimester to go.
So, she knew, unfair though it was, if she wanted everything to go smoothly then, at least for the time being, she was going to have to be the one who changed. She would just have to stop engaging with Lorraine at all. Leave the room if Lorraine entered. Stay silent if Lorraine and Harry were speaking. Act as if Lorraine didn’t exist, basically. It grated at her nerves, but she could think of a better solution later, once she was no longer perpetually tired.
(She could practically smell maternity leave on the horizon, but she would hold out for a while longer, if only so she didn’t go crazy feeling like she was being completely unproductive. She liked to stay busy.)
Briefly, she toyed with the idea of using Daphne as her advocate to try and badger Harry into cooperating on her behalf, but she discarded the idea fairly quickly. Even living in his house for weeks at that point, Harry still barely knew Daphne beyond a few games of chess, and Cheyenne knew he wouldn’t be particularly inclined to put any stock in what she had to say if he didn’t even put any stock in what Cheyenne had to say.
So, she would just…hold out and be patient. Maybe not the best course of action, but it was the simplest, and it was about all she had the energy for at that point.
*
Granted, holding out, being patient, and pretending Lorraine didn’t exist in the same plane of reality as Cheyenne would have been easier if Harry was not something of an idiot. Doctor’s appointments were nothing out of the ordinary at that point, and typically they weren’t anything too exciting. And yet, Harry insisted on Cheyenne having someone with her when she went, in case the news was unfortunate. Typically, Daphne went with her. On a few occasions, it was Harry.
On that day, however, Daphne and Harry both had to work when her appointment was scheduled. And no matter how Cheyenne insisted that she could handle one appointment on her own—nothing had been out of the ordinary yet, aside from the fact that her pregnancy was a three-for-one special, so she really doubted something was going to go catastrophically wrong out of nowhere—Harry still insisted that she should have someone with her, until at last Cheyenne gave up on protesting.
It seemed to be a favored tactic of his. Just keep arguing and pushing until he wore his opponent out. They were going to need to have a talk about that at some point, considering Cheyenne didn’t imagine her patience with that particular quirk would last for very long.
Regardless, that was how Cheyenne found herself sitting in the passenger seat of Harry’s car as Lorraine drove towards the clinic. Cheyenne stared fixedly out the window, pretending with all of her might that the car was simply driving itself and that she didn’t have company.
On the whole, it worked well enough. Cheyenne was fairly sure Lorraine didn’t want to be there any more than Cheyenne wanted her there. It was, at last, something they had in common, but it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing people bonded over, so Cheyenne was content to just let things remain awkward.
Just as expected, her appointment was nothing exciting, other than receiving a list of gentle exercises she could do to help ease the aches and pains. It wasn’t until they were back in the car and pulling away from the curb that Lorraine finally spoke.
“Aren’t you supposed to call Mr. Carmichael and let him know how the appointment went?”
Cheyenne rolled her eyes and pulled her cellphone out of her pocket. It wasn’t as if she had forgotten; she just needed slightly more than half a minute to actually do so.
Even with her annoyance at Harry, talking to him on the phone was still a bright point that afternoon, and for a moment she managed to forget that she wasn’t alone in the car. He always got so enthusiastic and excited to hear any news about his ‘three little bears.’ Cheyenne was almost convinced that one of them was going to wind up named Goldilocks, regardless of the fact that it was unlikely that any of them would be blond.
He asked all of his usual questions, and Cheyenne gave all of her usual answers, and then he gushed for a few more moments with an almost boyish level of excitement, so by the time Cheyenne hung up, there was a smile on her face that she hadn’t even noticed at first.
The car was stopped at a red light, and Cheyenne glanced over at Lorraine just in time to catch her staring. For a split second, she looked sad, until she realized she had been spotted, and it shifted to irritation for a heartbeat, before her expression smoothed over, back to her standard gentle neutrality.
Cheyenne wasn’t sure what that look meant. She was fairly sure, though, that it was nothing good, and it was certainly food for thought.
CHAPTER TEN
Had anyone thought to ask Cheyenne about it, she would perhaps not say it out loud, but the fact remained that she generally expected something bad to happen more often than not. After all, living arrangements aside, she lived a reasonably comfortable life, and on the whole, she had been fairly content with what was given to her. So, she just assumed that of course the world would need to balance things out a little bit.
(Not that it always worked, just based on how many people lived on the street and had nothing and no one.)
She tended not to begrudge the world its balancing act, since she had never been afflicted with anything she couldn’t bounce back from, but the fact remained that she expected bad things to happen every so often just as a fact of life, in much the same way it was supposed to rain periodically, and the seasons gradually shifted.
Being bitter about it—not about the events themselves, but that bad things happen
ed at all—would be like being bitter at a baby for crying when they had no other ways of communicating.
Cheyenne had never considered marketing her instincts about the world and when bad things might happen. Maybe she should have. It could very well be a marketable skill to share.
*
It seemed too quiet that evening, as if the house was holding its breath. Cheyenne knew that Harry was home, though she hadn’t seen him yet, but she heard hardly a peep out of anyone, to the point that it was almost a little unnerving.
Finally, she had enough of the oppressive silence and went in search of someone. The worst-case scenario was that Harry was doing some work in his office and would tell her to check in for a chat later.
That was what she thought to herself as she made her way down the stairs, but that was not what she found when she opened the door to the office. Harry was in there, true enough, sitting in the chair behind his desk, but he wasn’t alone. Lorraine was standing over him, one knee on his seat as if she was trying to crawl into his lap, and one hand curled around the back of the chair. Harry had one hand clenched on one of the arms of the chair, and his other hand was pushing Lorraine back by her shoulder.
