My lips are sore from stretching to fit his cock in my mouth and my jaw is cramping, but I barely feel it. When he turned the lights off, it was permission to be someone else for a few hours.To pretend I’m not pregnant and that he isn’t likely to toss me aside when he finds out, or that I’m not doing something disgraceful by letting him use me like this one last time, even though I fear he wouldn’t if he knew the truth.

I’m on my knees still with no idea where he is, exactly, but he’s still gripping my hair so that my head is tilted back. I’m completely as his mercy. By now, I couldn’t even find the door in this absolute darkness if I tried, and there’s no way I’d be able to free myself from the iron grip he has on my hair.

Instead of frightening me, the lack of control is making my skin buzz with a constant hum of excitement. Combined with the way he made me feel when he dragged that feather across my skin, it really does feel like my sense of touch has transcended what should be possible. I feel everything, down to the the way each tiny hair on my arm reacts to the soft breeze from the air conditioner.

Most of all, my pussy throbs with a kind of need I’ve never felt, not even the times I was with Jayce before. Having him in my mouth only made it worse, until I would willingly do anything just to have him inside me, filling me in that perfect way he does, until it seems like I couldn’t possibly take any more of him and he couldn’t possibly have any more to give, but he does. He’ll shift his hips and my legs and another inch will drive into me. I want it so badly.

“Please, sir,” I say quietly. To speak louder than a whisper in this darkness feels unnecessary, as if the lack of sight is a constant reminder of how loud every sound actually is if you only listen.

“Please what?” he asks.

He wants me to beg. I pointlessly close my eyes, as if to hide from my own guilt. I don’t feel guilt for my desperation, but I for my weakness, that I’ve come this far without telling him the single most important thing I came here to tell him. After all, what am I even doing if I don’t think there’s a future for us? Using him.

I shake my head as I wrestle with my own thoughts. No. I’m not just using him. I’m trying to explore the possibility that this could work, that maybe if he had more time with me he’d see I could be a woman he’d want to raise a family with. Or maybe I’m hoping when he learns I’m pregnant, he’ll embrace the idea and want to raise the baby with me. He might even want more.

As much as I try, it all sounds thin, and my attempts to assuage my guilt are fruitless. Despite the almost mind-numbing want I feel to have him down to my core, I stand up awkwardly. I try to walk toward the wall where I hope I can find a light. I have to tell him or get away. I have to do something, but I can’t just keep going like nothing is wrong.

“What are you doing?” he asks sharply.

“I need to go,” I say.

Somehow he finds me immediately in the dark, gripping my arm tightly. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Let me go,” I say, tugging away.

I expect him to let me go free, but instead I feel the weight of his body push into me. We both fall backwards, and for a split second, I’m terrified of the impact I’ll feel with the ground. Instead, we crash into the soft comforter of the large bed I was kneeling in front of when I came into the room. My legs are bent over the edge of the bed and Jayce’s body is pressed to mine, keeping me in place. “I’m not going to let you go again, princess.”

The safe words are on the tip of my tongue. Yellow. Red. One word and I’m almost certain he would let me go. Yet, I can’t bring myself to say them. Instead, I just uselessly struggle against him, pushing at his strong body with no effect.

“You don’t want me to let you go,” he whispers into my ear, sucking my neck between his lips and running his tongue to my earlobe, where he bites hard enough to send a small tinge of pain through me. “I don’t know why you think you need to run. I’ll care later, but right now, all I know is there’s only one way I’m not going to make you cum all over my cock--and that’s if you say the safe word.”

There it is. He couldn’t make it any more clear, but I still can’t bring myself to say the words. Deep down I know it’s because he’s right. I feel guilty. I feel wrong. But I want this too badly to summon that last bit of willpower to tell him to stop.

In my frustration--more with myself than him--I lash out, pushing and swatting at him. One of my wild movements in the dark catches his face. He pauses for a fraction of a second as if stunned that I’d be so bold. He grips my hips and heaves me farther onto the bed so my head lands on the pillows. I feel the bed sink as he climbs on after me with an almost frantic pace and flips me over so my stomach is pressed down into the comforter. With one rough motion, he yanks my legs open and lowers his body over me.

He thrusts his cock inside me without hesitation. I gasp, trying to reach back to press on his hips and slow him down, but he takes both my wrists in one hand and pins them down over my head and against the pillows, using his other hand to hold himself up as he starts working his cock into me with a pace that has my hands clenching around the pillows.

I’m powerless. Utterly out of control and completely at his mercy. I know I should feel something like fear or panic or maybe even anger, but I feel none of it. I’m overcome by a single, earth-shatteringly powerful emotion: need. It’s as if every time I struggled in vein to resist a man and failed flashes before my eyes--all the times I was hurt and made to feel silly and stupid and ashamed. With Jayce, it’s different. I struggled and fought, but with every movement of his body and thrust of his cock into me, pleasure floods my body, washing me over with what feels like pure, white ecstasy. He didn’t wrestle control from me to hurt me like all the others before him. He took it from me to show me how wonderful I could feel if I let him own me.

Thrust by thrust, I feel the force bleed out of him until he’s not fucking me like a disobedient submissive, but he’s working himself into me with the passionate pace of a lover. His slides both hands up my wrists and threads his fingers through mine while his lips fall to my ear.

“I love you, Miley,” he whispers. “Don’t ever forget that.”

My heart clenches, skin tingling all over even as my body jolts forward with each thrust of his hips. “I love you too,” I say in a surprised voice. I’m surprised because I mean it. I didn’t realize it until this precise moment, not completely. But now that the words have left my lips, I can feel how true they are. I love him. I love the way he came into my life and stood between me and all the things that would hurt me. I love how selflessly he protects me. I love the way I feel when he looks at me, when he touches me, and when he commands me to give myself to him.

I love being with him.

I open my eyes wide, and even though I can’t see anything but the darkness, it feels like I’m seeing it all clearly for the first time. Maybe the first time ever.

The feelings mingle within me, swirling together with the pleasure, the sense of confinement, of surrender, and of being in his absolute control until it feels like it’s building toward a crescendo that will leave me trembling and gasping for breath.

I squeeze his hands so hard I know it has to hurt, but he only holds on tighter, driving his length into me, rocking his hips until every last movement is pure euphoria.

I gasp out his name, not caring anymore if he’ll punish me for calling him something other than Sir while he’s taking me as my dom. I arch my ass up into him, begging for more of his cock even as my walls tighten around him. At the last second, he slides out of me and guides his cock up the crease of my ass until he tenses, releasing hot cum on my back.

I figured he put a condom on in the dark at some point, and the fact that he pulled out hits me like a brutal reminder of the space that still stands between us. I can love him all I want and he can be the most perfect man in the world for me, but there’s nothing except a miracle that could bridge one of the most important gaps between us. I want kids. He doesn’t.

I’m pregnant, and he has no idea.

I let my head sink into the comforter, fighting back tears of confusion and frustration. Just tell him. Get it over with. Tell him the truth and stop being a coward.

“Jayce…” I say.

He sighs, rolling over and laying beside me on the bed. “What is it, princess?” He punctuates his question with a tender kiss on my shoulder. The simple gesture holds so much love my heart practically bursts, even as it feels like it’s about to break from telling him the truth.

“I’m pregnant,” I say.

It feels like forever before he finally speaks. “You’re sure?” he asks finally. There’s no hint of emotion in his voice--only a calm, measured tone that betrays nothing.

“I’m pretty sure, yes,” I say. “But even if I wasn’t… I wanted to tell you since the party and I just didn’t have the courage. I’ve always wanted kids.”

He claps his hands twice, making me jump with surprise and then squint my eyes against the sudden flood of light.

“Wait a second,” I say, shielding my eyes with my hand. “Your BDSM dark room had a freaking clap light?”

But I forget the ridiculousness of it in a moment when I see the look on his face. It’s not what I expected. He’s not angry, but he’s not happy. There’s an almost sad curl to his lips and angle of his eyebrows that takes me by surprise.

“Jayce?” I ask. “Can you please say something?”

“I’m sorry I did that to you,” he says. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

I roll to my side so I can properly give him a full-dose of what the hell did you just say? The cum on my back gets on his comforter as I do, but that’s the least of my worries right now. “You’re sorry?” I ask.

He closes his eyes, breathing out a long, slow breath. He’s wrestling with something internally, clearly searching for the right way to say what he’s feeling.

“My mom died a few months after she had me. There was some complication with the pregnancy, so they had to perform a C-section. A few weeks later--I don’t know exactly when because Leo only talked about it once, and even then he was sparse on details--some kind of infection set in from the surgery. She barely had enough to get by without our dad in the picture, so she didn’t think she could afford to get treated for it I guess. But it cost her her life.”

“I’m so sorry, Jayce,” I say. My stomach twists as I start to piece together how that must have shaped him and changed his views on having children even before he tells me the rest. It starts to make sense, but only little by little, like pieces of a puzzle sliding together.

“I know it wasn’t my choice. I know that,” he says again more quietly, as if to himself. “But I’ve never been able to shake the sense of guilt, like it was my fault somehow. So any time I ever thought about what it’d be like to find the woman I love, I’ve always told myself I’d never get her pregnant. The risk is too great. It feels like such a selfish thing… wanting kids and forcing the woman I love to take that risk for me.”

“Wait,” I say, heart pounding. “So you do want kids?”

“God, yes,” he says, lips flickering into a smile for an instant. “Yeah, I just always thought I’d end up adopting. Maybe. But yeah, as much as I know adoption is right and there are kids who need it, part of me still wanted this,” he says, pressing a hand to my stomach so gently it makes my skin tingle. “I wanted to know the woman I’d spend the rest of my life with was carrying my child, that I’d marked her so permanently nothing on the Earth could ever fucking change it. She’d be mine, and so would her baby. But I could never make that decision knowingly. When I took you in the club that first night, I wasn’t even thinking. I was so damn hungry to have you right then and there it was like my brain just shut off.”

“I’m not going to get an abortion,” I say firmly. He hasn’t asked me, but it seems like he’s dancing around the topic. On one hand, he says he wants this, but on the other he still seems to think the risk is too much. “I can’t do that.”

“I’d never ask you to,” he says.

“Then why do you look so grim?” I ask, barely holding back tears. It feels like he’s moments away from telling me he can’t bear to be around it, or that this isn’t a commitment he really wants.

He touches my cheek softly, staring into my eyes. “Sorry,” he says. A grin splits his face. “I was just saying a silent prayer that it’d be a boy.”

I put my hands to my face, smiling and laughing even though some confused part of me still feels like crying. “Seriously?” I ask, burying my face in his chest. “I thought you were going to break up with me and you were just trying to bargain with God for it to be a boy?”

“Break up with you?” he asks, kissing the top of my head. “So we are dating, then?”

I sigh, glaring up at him, but I can’t even glare without smiling right now. The relief hasn’t hit me completely, and I know it’s going to come in waves. Even when I can tell the good news hasn’t sunken in completely yet, I already feel so relieved and happy that I could jump up and down with excitement--if I wouldn’t be mortified to do that while completely naked in front of Jayce, that is.

“We had better be,” I say, biting my lip.

“As long as you promise Darla never comes on a date with us again,” he says.

I laugh. “She wasn’t that bad. Come on.”

“It was like having the grim reaper along, or maybe just our own personal black rain cloud.”

“You had better stop teasing her. I’ll call her and tell her what you’re saying. I swear I will.”

“Not when I’m done with you. You’ll be too exhausted to even dial her number.”

I raise an eyebrow.

He rolls me over, pinning me down and planting his strong arms on either side of my head. “You thought you could just tell me you’re pregnant and get away with getting fucked once? Princess,” he says, voice growing slow and raspy. “I can cum inside that beautiful little pussy of yours again, and I’m not going to be satisfied until I do.”

“I think that’s the last box,” I say to Darla, who is sweating profusely--probably because she opted to wear a thick, black ankle-length dress and long sleeves when she knew she was coming to help me move.

“Remind me again why Mr. Perfect couldn’t help with this? Or your stupid brother?”

I give her a wry smile. “Because it was only like four boxes and I didn’t want to make Jayce miss work for that. And Kyle’s upstate until the weekend visiting his new girlfriend’s family.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “Jayce works?”

I sigh. “Yes, Darla. He… I don’t know. He buys things, I guess. But he makes more money when he sells them later, or something like that.”

She grins. “You don’t even know what he does.”

“He does business,” I snap. She has a way of getting under my skin so quickly sometimes, but I’m always struggling not to smile even as I’m yelling back and forth with her. “He probably invests. You know, business kinda stuff.”

“Right,” she says dryly. “What you’re saying is you’ve been too busy humping him like a rabbit to know what he does.”

“I have not--” I start, except I guess for a guy I haven’t known that long, we have had a lot of sex. But it’s not like we don’t talk, too. I already know him better than anyone I dated for months and months. I’m carrying his baby, too, if that counts for anything. “Just forget it. I don’t need to know the details of his job. I know he’s good to me and he takes care of me. That’s enough.”

Darla makes a gagging sound and rolls her eyes. “So is your friend, who took off work to come help you move four fucking boxes because you’re Miss Pregnant Princess who can’t lift a feather.” She gives me the faintest hint of a smirk to take the bite out of her words before she walks the box out into the hallway.

I shake my head, smiling after her. It has been two weeks since I told Jayce I’m pregnant, and I think the freedom of having the truth out is finally starting to set in. He’s already having me move in with him. We’re together practically every single day, and instead of getting sick of him, it’s like I keep getting more desperate to see him by the hour.

And right when I am starting to think things have taken a turn for the better, I look up to the doorway and see Cade. His arms are crossed and his eyes are boring into me. He looks sober, too, which for some reason scares me more than if he were drunk.

“Going somewhere?” he asks.

My old instincts scream for me to cower, to back into a corner of the room and just let him do what he’s going to do--whether it’s hit me or yell at me or call me names. Then when it’s all over, I can just try to bury it along with the rest of the bad memories. But for the first time in my life, something else stirs in me. I don’t know where it comes from, but I feel a strong sense of Hell no that comes roaring up.

Hell no he’s not going to abuse me again.

Hell no I’m not going to just let him get away with this.

Hell. No.

I discreetly pull my phone from my pocket, turning my back to him like I’m shooting off a text, but instead I dial 911. I put the phone on speaker in hopes that it’ll pick up our voices, but mute the speaker on my end so Cade won’t hear. “What do you want, Cade?” I ask, trying to sound bored.

“I want you. That’s what I’ve always wanted,” he says.

I act like I’m setting my phone down carelessly, but I make sure the receiver is aimed outward where it will have a better chance of picking up our voices. “I broke up with you,” I say firmly. For once my voice doesn’t shake. I don’t feel like a cowering child beneath the huge shadow of my father. “It’s over. It has been over, Cade. You need to leave.”

He steps inside my apartment, eyes never leaving my face. “Leave? It sounds like I need to slap you around a little, maybe. You never were very good at listening until I fucked up that pretty face of yours with a bruise or two.”

I take a step back from him, trying not to move too far from the phone as I struggle to think of a way to say my address without tipping him off that an emergency operator is listening in.

“That would be a bad idea, considering Jayce is just in the other room taking a nap.”

I wait, hoping Cade will check the room and take the bait so I can quickly speak to the operator.

My stomach turns to ice when Cade pulls out a switchblade and clicks it open. “Good. Then I don’t even have to wait to fuck him up, too. I’d tell you not to go anywhere, but I already know you’re too fucking scared and weak to run away. Why don’t you just wait here and cry while I go carve up your boyfriend?”

He stalks off toward the bedroom. I lean down and whisper my address into the phone as quickly as I can. “Please, I’m alone. Send help as soon as you can. I’m going to run outside but he’ll come for me.”

I grab my phone and head toward the door just as Cade swears and comes stomping back out after me. I’m already in the hallway and about to go down the stairs when he bursts out of the apartment and yells for me.

“Get the fuck back here, bitch!”

Not this time, asshole.

I tear down the stairs, nearly knocking Darla over as she is heading back up and mopping her brow with her sleeve. She raises her eyebrows. “Oh you can run like a lunatic but you can’t carry a--”

She spots Cade coming for me, and I glance over my shoulder just in time to see her actually body check him to the side when he tries to push past her. She’s probably a hundred pounds lighter than Cade, but he was moving fast enough that the shove makes him lose his balance and tumble down a few steps, dropping his knife before he gets his feet again.

“Help,” I say quickly to a guy in his twenties who’s coming in the main entrance of the apartment complex on his phone. He looks up and fails to take the situation in before I’ve already blown past him and Cade has shoved him to the side.

I swing the door open and run to the right, but instead of going anywhere, I tuck myself between the door and the building, holding onto the handle so the only way Cade will see me is if he turns around and presses his head to the wall once he’s outside.

I hear his heavy footsteps come thumping out of the building and then falter a few steps after he has started in the direction he thinks I went. He’s probably wondering how I could already be out of his view. The streets are always crowded though, and he must figure I’m hiding in the crowd, because I hear him push forward again.

As much as I want to stay hiding, I know the chances of anything happening to him are slim to none if he’s not still after me when the police show up. It goes against every instinct I have, but I step out from behind the door and yell after him. “Hey, asshole!” I shout.

To my amusement, Cade turns around immediately, as if his identity as an asshole is so internalized that he reflexively answers to the name.

Some people in the crowd seem to notice, but no one actually does anything. Everyone is too busy trying to get to work or to class or wherever they’re going, and now it probably looks like I’m the one who was antagonizing him.

I start running from him as fast as I can while having to shove through the packed street. I can’t do it as fast as Cade though, who has the strength to physically shove everyone out of his way much more easily than me. A glance over my shoulder tells me he’s almost caught up with me, but Darla is also rushing out of the apartment now, too, heading toward him.

Cade’s hand grips my shoulder from behind and yanks me backwards.

“You should’ve stayed hidden, bitch.”

“Hey,” says a guy in an indignant voice, as if he’s offended to hear Cade talk to me that way. But the guy doesn’t even stop walking, like his angry glare and word were enough to assuage his guilt over doing nothing.

“The police are coming,” I say to Cade as he drags me toward an alley between the apartment building and the highrise beside it. “They’ll be here any second.”

“Right,” says Cade. “You never called the cops before. Why would you now?”

The sound of sirens makes him stop mid-step. He tilts his head, as if trying to make sure he’s not hearing things.

“You’re hearing what you think you are,” I say triumphantly. “That’s the sound of you being fucked.”

“I’ll just come back for you another time,” says Cade, who shoves off me and starts trying to run.

Darla shows up behind him at just the right moment, pushing against his chest and trying to slow him down. “Not so fast,” she grunts through gritted teeth as she tries to hold him from moving.

I run up behind him and pull on the back of his shirt.

He becomes more desperate, swinging at Darla and I in his haste to try to get away. People nearby finally start to notice something is wrong, and an athletic guy about Cade’s height even steps in and pins Cade’s arms to his side.

“The fuck you doing, man?” asks the guy.

Two officers come jogging toward us, which causes almost everyone on the street to stop now and watch the spectacle as red and blue lights wash over everything.

“You the one who called?” asks one of the officers, who glances toward my apartment building.

“Yes,” I breathe.

The next few minutes play out like I’m watching from far away. I see them cuff Cade and the way he struggles and tries to headbutt the officers like some wild animal. I see them throw him in the back of their cruiser and drive off as an ambulance arrives for me. I try to tell them I’m fine, but the EMTs still insist on sitting me down and checking Darla and I over for injuries.

“Any pain here?” asks the woman examining me while I sit on the back of the ambulance.

“None,” I say distantly.

Beside me, Darla is blushing furiously as a male EMT with dyed black hair, tattoos, and about fifty black wristbands is looking her over.

I can’t stop thinking about how I actually did it. The old me would’ve become a victim to whatever Cade was planning. If I made it through, my brother or Jayce probably would’ve ended up taking their anger out on him in an attempt to protect me, but like always, the damage would’ve already been done. I would’ve had the same, lingering self-loathing that always comes after the abuse.

The oddest part is that even though Jayce wasn’t here, I know he’s the one who saved me. I’m the one who finally stood up for myself, but Jayce was the one who helped empower me. Strangely enough, it was surrendering to him that taught me how strong I really could be. I’ve been surrendering by instinct my whole life, and it was only when I learned to do it on purpose that I saw how to stand up.

Jayce

All Miley’s things are in my house now, and they barely take up a quarter of a room. I lean against the wall and look at the boxes and sparse bits of furniture that she has spent a lifetime accumulating. My little princess… I can’t fucking wait to start spoiling you. She deserves so much more, and I’ll make sure she has it.

She’s in the kitchen now sipping on a hot chocolate. She tried to turn down the drink, but I thought she could use something comforting. Thinking of what she went through earlier today still makes me want to punch a hole through the wall. That, and I want to lock her up in my house where I can swallow her up in my arms, keeping her safe from all the shit out there. But then I guess I don’t need to.

When she told me how she handled herself, I was so proud of her I could barely hold it in. I think back to the broken little bird I saw when she came to tell me about Cade that first night I met her. I knew she was strong and beautiful beneath the broken woman I saw, but I don’t know if I ever even imagined she could pull off something so incredible. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she spent her whole life carrying the scars of her past, but she’s better than that. She overcame it all.

“Sorry,” she says, sliding up beside me and threading her arm around mine to nuzzle against me. “I know it’s a mess right now, but I’ll get it all sorted out soon.”

“No,” I say. “You’ll relax and enjoy yourself, because you don’t need to be doing all that work.” I put my hand on her still-flat stomach and grin. “We don’t want to go shaking things up for our little boy and scaring him off.”

She laughs. “You had better stop assuming it’s a boy. I don’t want you to find out it’s a girl and be disappointed.”

“I won’t be. I’d love her just as much. Besides, it would mean we could keep trying for more.”

She raises an eyebrow and turns to look at me sharply. “You’d be willing to have more? But I thought…”

“I know,” I say. “What you did today though… You stopped letting your past control your present and I want to do the same. Besides, if I had known you were such a tough son of a bitch, I wouldn’t have been worried about you making it through a pregnancy in good health.”

She gives me a crooked smile. “What, so you thought I was a weak son of a bitch?”

I chuckle. “No. I thought you were delicate.” I kiss her forehead. “You may be able to fight your own battles, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be pampered and spoiled from time to time--or all the time, if you let me.”

She bites her lip and cuddles herself back into my arm. “I wouldn’t complain about a little pampering.”

“Good,” I say abruptly. I lower my voice, which is a not-so-subtle way to remind her this request is coming from her dom. “Then go upstairs to the dark room. Get on your knees like before. You can leave your clothes on.”

“Clothes on, sir?” she asks with a playful pout. “Are you sure?”

I grip her cheeks with one hand, letting the faintest shadow of my amusement show through. “You wouldn’t question your dom, would you?”

“No, sir,” she says.

“Then go.”

She hurries upstairs, glancing back at me with an excited smile before she disappears up the stairs.

I had planned to wait a few more days, especially when I heard what happened today. But I can’t wait any longer. When it comes to my princess, I have the patience of a child.