I listened to him breathe, my head rising and falling, until the gaps between each breath was longer, and each breath fell deeper, and he was asleep. I tried to sleep myself, but couldn’t. My mind raced away. I wondered at the seed that even now still seeped from inside of me.
I had spent all day, ever since our first encounter, excited by the idea of being pregnant. However, at this post-coital moment, without the hot roar of pleasure, I was terrified. What if I did get pregnant? What if I really did have James’s little baby already growing inside of me?
What then?
And as I wondered, I realized something else. I had never really told him what I wanted to say. In his office he cut me short, and when he got home he had grabbed hold of me so fiercely I could barely say hello. And then afterward I had been so drunk on his beauty and his body and his cum that I had forgotten everything else.
I had never told him that I wanted anything more than sex.
It felt like hours passed as my daydreams turned to long lists of worries and doubts. But finally my exhaustion was too much to fight, and my eyes closed, heavy with certain sleep. I would talk to him in the morning. I would put it all clear in the morning. I slept.
Chapter Sixteen
The light was too bright. I opened my eyes, blinking at the ceiling that glowed above me. I hadn’t realized in the darkness, but the walls didn’t go all the way up, and the light from the huge and bare windows glared into the apartment above me. I pulled the pillow over my head, wanting to block out the light and sleep for just a little bit longer.
I reached for James, and when I didn’t feel him, I pulled my head from the pillow and listened. The house was quiet. I could hear the low drone of cars on the street below, an errant car horn or barking dog, so softened by the thick windows as to be almost imperceptible.
I slid my legs from the bed and put my feet on the floor, and as I sat up I felt every part of my body cry out in protest. I felt tight and sore everywhere, but especially between my legs. It was a sweet ache, but a painful one. I wondered if it was his size that had done it, or maybe the multiple orgasms. It was the first time I ever came on a man while he was inside of me.
I went to the bathroom and when I finished, rinsed my face. I glanced at myself in the mirror. I looked like absolute hell. Not even worth trying to fix until after a hot shower. But first I wanted to see James.
I let the bedroom naked, immediately hearing his voice as I walked through the threshold. He was yelling at someone over the phone. I saw him sitting at the table, punching keys at a laptop as he spoke on the phone. I stood in the door frame and watched as he did his magic.
“I told you I needed that on my desk today, not next Monday.” He listened. “No, no, we can't afford to get rid of him yet, but I'm sick of this amateur bullshit.” Again, he listened. “I know that he's saved us in the past, but he has got to learn that a deadline is a deadline. Listen, I don't care what you have to do, but-” He finally noticed me standing there, looking at him while naked. His eyes grew wide for a moment as he did a once-over on me, and it made me blush. “Look, I have to let you go, but I trust that you'll have this taken care of by the time I get into the office.” He hung up his phone and put it on the table.
“That sounded important,” I said.
He laughed. “Nothing I haven't dealt with a hundred times before. It's so hard to get good help these days.” He gave me another once-over, then gestured to the stove. “There's coffee on the burner, good stuff from Columbia. Please help yourself.”
I smiled and walked over there. “If you have to put out a fire at work today, I'll be fine.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Of course I'm going into work today. What did you think, that I'd sit here and play guitar for you all day? And besides, you probably have to be getting back to school, don't you?”
My jaw dropped a little bit. His tone was callous. “Well, yeah, some time, but I thought I'd stay here a little longer.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “What do you mean, Allie? You can't stay around here. The tabloids would eat me alive if they knew I was fucking my stepsister.”
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Not “dating my stepsister”, not “going out with my stepsister”, not “becoming the father of my stepsister's children”. No, he looked at this as nothing more than fucking.
“But, I thought...” I trailed off.
For a moment, I saw a look genuine concern in his eyes, but then the usual cockiness came right back. “Look, Allie. I'm glad you came, I really am. This was something that we both needed to get out of our systems. I definitely enjoyed it, but I consider that IOU paid with interest.”
The IOU. I had forgotten all about it. The text popped up in my head, practically mocking me.
TO ALLIE
FROM JAMES
Merry Christmas!
IOU one present
“Merry Christmas. Four years late, but I guarantee I'll never miss giving you a present again,” he said.
I was practically shell shocked. “We need to talk about this,” I said in the smallest voice I ever heard myself use.