Page 108 of Gilded Fake

At last, he lowers himself behind me, his body curling around mine.

“Atta girl,” he says, sliding a hand around me, resting it on my swollen belly. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes to recover before I fill your mouth with cum until it pours down your chin and drowns you.”

“This doesn’t bother you?” I ask quietly, glad my face is turned away, and that darkness has fallen, so I don’t have to see him. I rest my fingers on the back of his hand, and he pulls me tighter against him.

“Does he know?” he asks.

“No.”

“Do you know—”

“No.”

“Could it be mine?”

“No,” I whisper, hating that I searched for hope in his question, that I think I heard it, if only a little.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, his hand protective as it cups my round belly. “I’ll raise it as my own. I’ll love it like it’s mine because it’s yours. Ours, if you’ll let me.”

“I can’t have a baby,” I say into the dark. “I’m a mental patient, Colt. A convict. And you’re…”

“An addict,” he finishes grimly. “Yeah, probably not the best choice of parents, are we?”

“Maybe someday,” I say, rolling over and laying a hand on his cheek. “You’d make a good dad.”

“Someday,” he echoes, staring back at me with those deep, endless-sky eyes. They’re sad suddenly, hollow somehow, as if I can see the shadow of his craving in there, hear the echo screaming to be set free like the dragon inside me did.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” I say. “You could have a normal relationship, with a normal girl.”

“Except I’m not a normal guy,” he reminds me. “Who else is going to understand the shit I’ve been through besides you? Maybe we chose different paths to survive, but we know what it was like. No one else can really say that, can they?”

“Maybe you’re right,” I whisper. “Maybe someday, when we’re both in a better place, and we’re ready, we’ll find each other again. When we’ve healed enough to give a baby a fighting chance, maybe we’ll have one. And it’ll be ours, really ours, together. You’ll be the fun dad, and I’ll be the mean mom.”

“Sounds about right.” He smiles a little, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

I move my hand from his face, resting it on the thing forming inside me. “This… I think someone else needs this one right now. Someone who will love it in a way that I don’t have it in me to do. I think…” My breath hitches unexpectedly, and my throat tightens.

“What?” he asks, stroking my cheek and drawing my chin up. “Tell me.”

I can barely meet his eyes. “I think I’m a monster, like her lawyers said in court. I don’t want this inside me, Colt. Sometimes I want to cut myself open to get it out. It feels like it’s attacking me, like it wants to kill me. I know it’s all in my head, but sometimes I think… It’s evil.”

“Because it’s…”

“Maybe not,” I say, my lips trembling, shame burning through me as I list out the other possibilities. “It could be DeShaun’s, maybe even Rylan’s. I don’t know when it happened.”

“Not Maverick’s?”

“He was always careful,” I whisper. “Same as Cotton. I don’t think two forms of birth control failed. It has to be one of those four. I try to remember it’s innocent, that it’s not at fault. But it feels like a parasite, some foreign enemy invading my body against my will, like they did.” A tear spills down my cheek, and I can’t look at him anymore. “Sometimes I hate it.”

He slides an arm around my lower back, pulling my body tight to his and pressing his lips to my forehead. “You’re carrying your rapist’s baby,” he says. “I think you’re allowed to feel anything you want to about that.”

“But it’s not the baby’s fault,” I say. “Does that make me a monster too?”

“No,” he says, cradling my head against his chest. “A monster wouldn’t want to give it a better life with someone who would love it. You recognize that you’re not what it needs, but you still want to make it happy—and some family you don’t even know too. I don’t think that makes you a monster. I think it makes you the best mother you’re capable of being right now.”

My body shakes as I cry into his shirt for a long, long time. When I’m done, he lifts my leg over his hips and pushes into me again, and things go back to the way they were. I’m eager and ready for it, to think about something else, to be someone else, not any of the labels I’ve had slapped on me in my life. I don’t want to be a queen or a whore, a monster or a pregnant teenager, a victim or a villain, a disgrace or a tragedy. I just want to be a girl that a boy wants to fuck, pure and simple and innocent is that.

And for tonight, for a few more hours, Colt lets me be just that. He sees me, and he knows what I need, and he gives it to me. He makes me crawl and beg and cry out in pain and bliss, and he makes me cum, and afterwards, he cradles me as gently as a fragile butterfly in the strong, warm cocoon of his arms.

---