Chapter 11

Blake

“How could you not tell me?” I whisper…

I hear her voice moving through the mansion, but I don’t call back. I maintain my posture, my balance, and the rhythm of my breath. I remain in this stance, with both thighs cocked and engaged at opposite angles, one leg extended, both arms high and palms fanned. I’ve held this stance for twenty minutes now, and my chest gleams with sweat. I learned this posture in a secret school during my time studying under Master Feng on Mount Kita. It’s called the root.

They say it grants its students perfect situational awareness. It’s almost, but not quite, a psychic sense.

No one knows this Blake.

Not even Roxanne.

I heard her advance up the walk. I could almost feel her body when she entered the mansion, as if she was a disembodied part of me.

I found out that Roxanne was pregnant from a goddamn celebrity gossip television station. I found out that my girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend, or fuck buddy, or soulmate, whatever—was pregnant from an anchor named Ellie K.K., a British girl with silver hair on half of her head and a tattoo on the other.

I found out that I was going to be a father after most of the Western population already knew.

Isn’t that just a magical moment? When the entire room is spinning around you and some pipsqueak with two million Twitter followers is broadcasting your future son or daughter to the world before you can?

Isn’t that a magical moment?

I thought I was going to be sick.

My jaw clenches at the memory, and I forcefully exhale my anger, inhaling serenity. Inhaling goddamn serenity.

I’m just so goddamn sick of the outside world infiltrating my private life. They swamped my life as soon as I grew into a man, and I’ve never been able to shirk them. I never asked to be a Berringer. It just happened. I was born with this face, which women seem to like. I tried to shake the interest of the world by doing nothing at all, by partying and saying oafish things, but nobody cared. They only wanted me more. I tried to do something good with my fortune, and they clamored for more. No one cared what I did, as long as they got a piece of me.

Now, before I even knew it, they stole the announcement of my first child from me.

Stole the words right out of Roxanne’s mouth and splashed them onto the front page.

Cretins. No respect for the lives of celebrities as if we’re not real fucking people. I’m still Blake. I’m real.

But right now I feel like my life is a funhouse mirror, a sick joke belonging more to the tabloids than to me.

Meditation is the only way I can get my bearings back.

Breathe. In. Out.

“Blake?” Her voice grows closer. Her footsteps ascend the stairs.

Her shadow clouds the hallway light, and I swallow.

The door slowly opens, and when I see her, it’s pleasure and pain in the same punch. Her bloodshot eyes zing straight to my core.

“Hello,” I say, still holding the root. My thighs tremble, and my body pours sweat. My voice betrays what a difficult day this has been, though my voice is still nothing compared to those eyes of hers.

“Blake,” Roxanne says. She sounds like a cartoon mouse. There’s a hesitation, and then she launches right into it. “Do you know?”

I close my eyes and swallow.

“Do I know?” I repeat to her. Unable to maintain, I fold out of the root and come to a stand, shaking and stretching my muscles loose again. I’m shirtless in a pair of flexible royal blue shorts. “The entire world knows.” The anger in my tone is as clear and flat as ice.

Breathe in. Out.

“How far along are you?”

“We only had sex once, last month,” Roxanne answers with a defensive half-chuckle. “So, obviously—”

My efforts at tranquility burst into flame. “It’s not funny, Roxanne!” I tell her. “I was left out of the most important moment of my life!”

Roxanne splutters. “Are you serious?”

I throw my hands up. “Are you?!”

“I thought you said kids were fat, crying sacks of fat, or something like that,” Roxanne recounts, pulling that quote out of God knows where.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“You don’t?” Roxanne raises her eyebrows at me. “You don’t realize who you’ve been for your entire life?”

“You don’t realize who I am right now.” I meet her eyes flatly. I still want her, but goddamn she has pissed me off. Still, those pajamas are kind of thin, and I know she never wears a bra. If I could slide my hands into her leather coat, my thumbs might skim her little peaked nipples. We could make out. We could make up. This is salvageable, isn’t it?

You don’t realize who you’ve been for your entire life?

I push the thought of Roxanne’s pebbled, chilly little nipples away from my mind’s eye.

Roxanne sold her pregnancy to the thing I hate most: the media. I can’t let her just walk in here with her lips so juicy and vulnerable and forgive everything. She can’t be totally right about me and also win.

“Why don’t you tell me who you think I am?” I suggest.

Roxanne’s teeth sink into her lower lip and my resolve weakens. I swallow.

She takes a step closer, her hands tucked into the pockets of her jacket, holding it tightly shut. “I think you’re wild,” she answers finally. “You’ve always been wild. Nocturnal. A victim of wanderlust. How many debutantes have you dated, you know? How many starlets?”

I exhale hard between my lips, trying to fathom the number. I get it. She has a point. My twenties and even early-thirties were a blur of late-night conversations about bulimia and trying to get blowjobs in elaborate, sometimes royal gardens.

“Yes,” I agree. “But then I went to Japan.”

“And that completely rewired your dick?” Roxanne wonders frankly.

“Eh.” I grin at her, unable to help myself. “It rewired my desires. I could no longer stand all the spas. I was the recipient of so many grand gestures worth thousands of dollars but which required no investment of time or effort. No sense of adventure, of wilderness. Nothing… authentic.” I look at her, so different and yet the same. Strong and proud and powerful. Exhausted and tearful and pregnant. “I want more, Roxanne. I want you.” I take another step toward her. “I want you like this.”

I’m close enough to touch her, and god, I want to. Fuck, I want to.

I stretch out a hand, and Roxanne sighs, letting her neck go loose. Her eyelashes come together, and her cheek pools in my palm. I love her real face, the raw skin beneath that perfect mask of creams and shadows. My thumb, with a mind of its own, rolls across her naked lower lip. I love that thing. It’s so fleshy. My dick stirs, whispering that I should forget my girly emotions and just put my tongue all over her body. I should slide my palms over her torso and push her arms apart, force her jacket open. Scoop my hands over her breasts. Listen to the sounds she makes as I pull her apart.

I close my eyes and throb for her, but I know that I can’t yet. Not until I know if this is love that I feel—or just very sexual disappointment and despair.

“How could you not tell me?” I whisper.

Roxanne’s eyes flutter open. “My roommate sold the test,” she answered. “It wasn’t me.”

My brow furrows. “I mean,” I say, my already deep voice darkening, “why didn’t you tell me when I saw you the other night? You didn’t try to tell me that you were pregnant. You just tried to give me back the damn key.”

She’s still not wearing it around her neck, and I find that mildly offensive, but I don’t mention it. This isn’t the right time.

“You might not have been able to control the media getting that story; believe me, I understand that,” I say. “But you could have controlled where I first heard that I was going to be a dad. Because I wouldn’t have wanted it to be from some trashy three-minute news recap show on MTV. I would have wanted it to be from you.”

Roxanne nods up at me, and I hold myself suspended over her deep gray eyes. I refuse to fall in. “I guess I thought you wouldn’t care,” she said. “Maybe you would even be upset.”

My hands travel down Roxanne’s arms tenderly. “Roxanne, Roxanne, Roxanne,” I soothe her, sidling closer and swaying against her body in a rhythm. I swallow as my hardness brushes against her, and I know she feels it. I sense the mood of our embrace shift, even though neither of us says a thing. Neither of us move to advance. “I’m not the man you think I am,” I whisper against her ear. I see the gooseflesh prickle along the curve of her neck, and I thicken responsively. I know she’s getting wet. My eyes roll back slightly in my head. I want to be buried in her warm, sweet body. I want to hold her fragile frame together and give her more babies. All my babies. “I’m not the men you’ve had before.”

“Oh, Blake,” she breathes, her neck loosening and falling open, highlighting the tops of her plump breasts. I push my hands up into the sleeves of her jacket and peel it off from the inside, my mouth taking hers. My disciplinary structure crumbles down around my head. Her skin is damp and clammy, tasting of the rain, and I love to feel warm against her. I relish the knowledge that I’m warming her now as the jacket puddles behind her, and one of my hands automatically scoops around and finds her breast. Even though the stress has made her lose a little weight, the pregnancy plumped her breasts up, and I’m as hard as iron in a matter of seconds.

“Fuck yeah,” I groan, tearing her pajama top down and exposing her bare breasts. I’m shaking with the need to ravage her, to plant my oozing cock deep inside her, and I bow down on my knees in front of her.

Her pale torso is immaculate. Her nipples are bright pink and hard, completely ready.

I cover one of her nipples with my hot, wet mouth and tongue her vigorously. My other hand cups the other breast and moves over the nipple’s puckered ridges.

Her hips buck forward, and my hand forgets her nipple, drifting down and shoving her pajamas completely to the floor, ripped and all. Now she stands almost totally naked before me, and I stay on her nipple, sliding over her slick sex with my fingers. I love her wetness against my dryness. The friction is perfect. I saw against her button with my rough index finger, and she shudders against my hand, knees buckling. Her fingers shovel into my hair and grip for balance.

I’m going to get her naked and coming before we even get over to the bed. God, I love this. We’re animals.

I stoop and gnaw on her pussy, relishing the sweet, salty musk between her lips. It’s like salted fucking caramel.

The tip of my tongue scoops against her clitoris again and again, and I spread her thighs up against my face. I hoist her into the air with my hands and eat her like she’s a juicy slice of watermelon.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve both completely forgotten about all the cameras and microphones hidden around the room by this point.