Exclusive: Baby Fever

Chapter One

I drummed my fingers on the table in front of me, glancing around nervously. I was still sure that this was some sort of huge mistake, that at any moment some maniac would swoop in and kidnap me as my punishment for thinking that I could reply to ads in the newspapers and get away unscathed. Or without Richie finding out about it. I reached down to check my bag was still there, gripping the handles once again, reminding myself that I was ready to get out of here at a moment’s notice.

The door jingled again and I looked up – nope, it was just a woman a little older than me, hand in hand with her boyfriend. My heart sank. Even though I knew that it was the right choice to leave Richie behind, I couldn’t help but hurt a little when I saw happy couples hanging out together. Would I ever have that again? Had I ever had it in the first place?

I looked down at my cup of coffee, my distorted reflection looking back at me. I couldn’t think like that. Just because I had walked away from Richie didn’t mean that my life was over. I couldn’t think like that – It was only going to land me in trouble, being so fatalistic. I was on my way out and that was all that mattered now. I was going to make it out of this city, out of this scene, start my life over-

“Miss?” The waitress paused next to me, and I looked up at her, jumping slightly and jiggling everything on the table in front of me.

“You want a top up?” She nodded down to my cup, and I managed to nod and hold out my cup. She topped it up, and I returned my gaze to the door. I had asked to meet at a spot way out of town, to be sure that Richie and his cronies had no chance of stumbling across me by accident, but I was still sure that I was going to see one of them walk through that door at any moment and drag me back to the life I had just escaped from. But no-one came in, and I was left there, alone with my overcaffeinated thoughts, as I waited for the guy I was meeting to arrive.

I still couldn’t quite believe that I was doing this. After so long telling myself that I wasn’t going to put up with it any more, here I was, not putting up with it anymore. Sure, it had taken me getting caught in the middle of a drug deal gone wrong to get out, but now that I had I felt this freeness that I hadn’t in a long time – like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. No more having to turn my head when I saw Richie involved with something he shouldn’t have been. No more having to duck my head down every time a cop walked by me, in case my face had been attached to whatever low-level drug shit Richie had been pulling these days. None of it, not any more.

But I knew, when I packed my things and left that morning, that Richie wasn’t going to let me get away from all of this that easily. That wasn’t the kind of guy he was. He was possessive, obsessive, and when he figured out I wasn’t coming back he would tap into his people across the city to make sure I didn’t get far. I only had a matter of time before that happened, twenty-four hours at the most. And that’s why I’d replied to that crazy advert in the newspaper. In the hopes that whoever had left it there would somehow come through for me.

The door opened again, and this time I knew at once that this had to be the guy that had placed the ad. He carried himself differently than everyone else in this place – shoulders rolled back, like he was used to walking into a room and owning it. He was wearing a suit, far removed from the rest of the casual diners in the neon-lit place I’d insisted we meet at. His hair was cropped short, dark brown like his eyes, and there was a smattering of stubble over his jaw that looked deliberate. He glanced around, narrowing his eyes for a moment, and then he must have noticed me staring at him as he made his way towards me and planted his hands on the table before me.

“Laurie?” He asked, and I nodded. He slid into the seat opposite me; the booth was so small it felt as though it could barely contain him, but that might have been my imagination.

“Good to meet you,” he extended his hand towards me in a businesslike fashion, and I took it. As our fingers connected, I felt this sharp jolt of electricity pass from his skin to mine. I wondered if he felt it too – if he did, he didn’t register it on his face.

“You too,” I murmured. I realized I didn’t know his name. “Uh, so you’re the guy who left the ad in the paper, right?”

“Yep, that’s me,” he nodded. “Cormac Miller.”

“Right, cool,” I wrapped my hands around my coffee cop, and realized that they were shaking slightly. I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what to say next. I guessed there was only one thing to ask now that I had him here in front of me.

“Is this for real?” I asked, raising my gaze and looking at him dead in the eye. He cocked an eyebrow, and the glimmer of a smile passed over his face.

“Yes, it’s real,” he nodded. “But I get why you’re asking.”

“Yeah, I mean, a million dollars, one year, outside of the city, all expenses paid,” I ticked off everything that had been in that ad in my head. “It’s pretty much-”

I almost said perfect, but I didn’t want him to know why the advertisement had appealed to me so much. I shut my mouth.

“Unbelievable, it’s pretty much unbelievable,” I burbled, trying to cover my tracks. I had a feeling I wasn’t doing a great job.

“Well, it’s kind of an important job,” he eyed me for a moment, as though trying to figure something out.

“You want to tell me what it is?” I raised my eyebrows at him pointedly. “You were pretty quiet over the phone.”

“I didn’t want to scare you off,” he admitted. “But since you’re here-”

“Since I’m here, you figure that it’s going to be hard to scare me,” I cocked my head at him. “And you’d be right. So come out with it, what’s the big deal?”

“Okay,” He nodded, as though trying to get himself ready for what was going to come out of his mouth. “Okay, so, I’m looking for someone to have my baby.”

I stared back at him for a moment, my mouth hanging open slightly. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard.

“Like…carry it?” I clarified, and he nodded.

“I live outside of the city and I want someone to come up and stay with me a while so I can take care of them while they’re pregnant – make sure I’m there every step of the way,” he explained. “I know it sounds crazy-”

“Yeah, a little,” I muttered. I refused to believe that a guy like him could possibly have a hard time getting women into bed with him. I mean, look at him – he was a stone-cold hottie, and I couldn’t help but wonder why he was putting ads in papers to find women to mother his children. I would have done it in a heartbeat, for free. Which I guess was lucky, given the circumstances.

“A lot has happened in my life and I’m ready to settle down,” he continued, his voice firm and commanding. Something about it pushed all the snarky comments from my head and forced me to pay attention to him, and only him.

“I don’t want a romantic commitment, to be clear,” he went on, watching me carefully to read my reactions. “I want someone to carry and birth my child, and that’s it. One year. A million dollars. You come live with me in my place outside the city. It’s big, and it’s got plenty of room for you to lead your own life there outside of me if you want to.”

“Holy shit,” I muttered, trying to take all of it in. Part of me was telling that this was so obviously a really dumb idea, that I would have been crazy to give in to what he was suggesting. But the other part of me, louder, was reminding me that if I stayed in this city long enough then Richie was going to catch up with me and I would be in a hell of a lot of trouble here. Stay and get caught for sure, or go with this guy and take him up on his insane offer. I eyed him for a long moment. A baby. I could manage that. Couldn’t I? If I had a million bucks at the end of it and the promise of his protection until then…

“Just how far away is this place of yours?” I asked. “And when will I get the money?”

“Half upfront, half when the year is up,” he replied at once. “And it’s in the forest, in the foothills of one of the mountains of the Castor range. You know where it is?”

“Yeah, I know where it is,” I nodded. That was a good few hours outside the city, and remote, too – not exactly the kind of place that Richie would come looking for me. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with this urge to get out of this diner, out of this city, out of this place that I’d called home for so long. I was done with all of it. I felt this surge of certainty, even though I knew what he was offering was insane and that I was likely putting myself in a hell of a lot of danger agreeing to just walk out of this place with this man. But for a million, my safety, and getting far away from the city for a while? I would do it.

“Okay,” I nodded, and his eyes widened, as though he had never really expected me to agree to this.

“Okay to what?”

“To all of it,” I replied, feeling that familiar buzz in my chest, the one that came to life when I wasn’t sure whether I was making a good choice or a bad one. “You’ve got the cash to look after me, right? No-one will be able to find us up in that place?”

“No-one,” he promised me firmly. “I can say that for sure.”

“So, what, you turkey-baster me and then I just hang out until-”

“Natural conception,” he cut me off, lowering his voice slightly. My heart stuttered for a moment in my chest.

“That’s part of the deal?” I asked, and he nodded.

“That’s part of the deal,” he replied. “But if that’s too much for you-”

“No, it’s not too much,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I didn’t know why I was so certain about that all of a sudden; maybe I was just determined not to lose out of this deal this late into the game. Or maybe, just maybe, after all that time holding back with Richie, I was finally ready to just get it over and done with already. Though, eyeing Cormac across the table, I wouldn’t have minded one little bit if this man wanted to take his time with me.

“Good,” Cormac nodded. “I can get the contracts drawn up and we can meet again to discuss-”

“No, I want to go right now,” I cut him off urgently. I knew it was going to look suspicious to him, but I could always fill him in on the details later. As of right now, I just needed to get out of here. I didn’t have time to look over contracts. I would just have to keep my fingers crossed that he wasn’t a serial killer and get the hell out of this place once and for all.

“Really?” He looked shocked. “You don’t want time to say goodbye to your family and friends and all that?”

“I don’t really have any family,” I replied. That was the truth, at least – my parents had both died when I was a kid and I didn’t have any siblings that I knew about. No-one would miss me when I went. Which was both a terrifying and relieving thought. “I just want to get started on this. I think it would make sense to go now, sooner rather than later, huh?”

“If that’s what you want,” he didn’t take his eyes off me, and I could tell that he was trying to figure out what my game was. I didn’t blame him. I was acting crazy, by any normal standards, and I would have had the same doubts if I was him. I stared back at him, biting my lip, hoping that he was desperate enough that he would step up to the plate and take what I was offering. Standing in as his pseudo-wife for a year. I could manage that.

“So when do we leave?” I asked, downing the last of my coffee. I wouldn’t be drinking a lot of that if I was going to be getting pregnant; the realization came down on me like a ton of bricks, and the world fuzzed-out around the edges slightly. I ignore the fear. I had to get out of here. Unless I could come up with a better option that this one in the next twelve hours, I needed to leave with him while the offer was still on the table.

“We can get out of here right now, if you want,” he replied. He still looked a little confused, like he couldn’t believe how well this was going. Well, if he had any idea what I was running away from, it would make perfect sense to him. I should tell him soon, but not before we had gotten out of the city and that contract was signed. If he didn’t ask what I was running from, then I wouldn’t tell him.

“Do you have a car?” I asked. I had my own one, but I had had to leave it behind when I had left Richie. I already felt a pang for it, the crappy little beaten-down Mini that I had saved up all my money for as soon as I was done with high school. But I had to let it go. Not just the car, but all of it – the friends I had made, the comfort I had found in a life that I knew how to navigate. The ground felt like it was shifting from underneath me as I looked at this man, at this man who had offered me a way out of this place.

“Yes, it’s parked outside,” he waved his hand towards the window, and I glanced outside to see a sleek, dark blue Porsche sitting a few feet away from the diner. It looked out of place on the run-down street. Wow. Okay. So this guy had some serious money – but I don’t know why I had thought that he hadn’t, even for a moment. He was offering me a million bucks to carry his child. Of course he was well off. Where had he made that cash from? I would have to get that out of me, one day. We’d have a whole year together to get to know each other, I supposed.

“So can we get out of here right now?” I asked, leaning forward, knocking my coffee and sending the cup jiggling on the table. His hand flashed out and caught it, holding it still. He moved so fast I had hardly had time to register it.

“Yeah, we can,” He agreed. He didn’t seem to want to question my enthusiasm any more than I did. I was ready. So was he. So let’s do it already.

I got to my feet and he did the same thing, letting go of the coffee cup I didn’t realize he’d still been hanging on to. I grabbed my back and clutched it to my chest, protectively. He waved the waitress over, and pulled a crisp ten dollars from his wallet and handed it to her.

“To cover the drink,” he nodded towards my coffee, and held out his hand for me.

“You sure about this?” He asked one more time, a small furrow appearing in his brow. I tucked my hand into his, feeling a whirr of adventure somewhere deep in my guts, despite everything, despite myself.

“Sure as I’ll ever be,” I responded at last, and he grinned. That seemed to be good enough for him. With that, he turned to the door, pulling me along behind him, and I hurried to keep up.

Chapter Two

I couldn’t for the fucking life of me figure out why she’d agreed to do it.

I’d expected to be looking for weeks to find someone suitable; she had agreed to come up so quickly, barely two minutes after we’d first laid eyes on each other. She slept on the back seat of my car as I’d driven her up to the cabin, soundly, like she hadn’t caught a moment’s rest for days. I watched her in the rearview mirror, stealing glances at her every now and then, committing her to memory. She looked so vulnerable like that. I wanted to keep driving all night, let her get the rest she so clearly needed, but the drive was only a few hours. It had seemed endless of the way there, but on the way back, with her asleep just a few feet away from me, it seemed to speed by.

I had to admit she was cute. I hadn’t given much thought to the natural conception part of the deal apart from the fact that was what I wanted, but now that she was there in front of me, I was looking forward to it. I tried not to let my brain stray in that direction as I drove up to the cabin, but it was difficult; there was something so sweet and vulnerable about seeing her like that, about seeing the way her mouth slightly parted as she breathed in and out slowly. I wondered how someone like her didn’t have a boyfriend already. Maybe she did – maybe that was the reason she was leaving so hastily.

When we arrived, she lifted her head and blinked blearily.

“Are we here?” She asked, voice a little throaty from sleeping so long. I nodded.

“You want me to take you room? You can get some more sleep,” I suggested. I had been watching her so long that I felt as though I needed to take a break. Like I might get addicted if I stared at her much longer.

“Yeah, that sounds great,” she sat up and yawned, raking her fingers through her hair. Her thick, blonde hair fell over one shoulder. The motion sensor-activated lights flicked on in the cabin, and in the light I could see her blue eyes shining. Her make-up was slightly smudged beneath her lashline, and I wondered how many people had had the chance to see her like this, just woken up. It felt oddly intimate.

I got out of the car and pulled the door open for her, and she climbed out; I lowered my gaze so she wouldn’t catch me staring at her, even though I was having a hard time keeping my eyes off of her. She wasn’t dressed in anything fancy, just jeans and a t-shirt, but the way it hugged her figure, showing off the curve of her hips and the inward slide of her waist, made it look as though she had been made to fit in my arms. I offered her my hand and she took it, and for a moment I felt that same zing of pressure that passed from her fingers to mine that I had felt back in the diner.

“You okay?” I asked, and she nodded.

“Just tired,” she replied, letting out another yawn. “Can you show me where I’m sleeping?”

I took her to her room, not bothering to switch on the lights in the cabin, and she made her way to the bedroom. I lingered there for a moment longer, wondering whether I should offer her something to eat or talk about what we had both just agreed to, but I figured we could handle all that later.

“Goodnight,” I nodded, pulling the door shut behind me, as she sat down on the edge of the bed and stretched. The bottom of her shit rode up a little as she moved, and I wondered, for a brief moment, if I should offer to start on that natural conception business sooner rather than later. But we hadn’t even signed the contracts yet, and I didn’t want to lay a finger on her until I had her written consent to do so.

“Goodnight, Cormac,” she called back as the door clicked shut, and I closed my eyes and savoured the sound of my name on her lips. It sounded right. Something about it just…fit.

I headed through to my room, linking my fingers behind my head and wondering what the hell I had just gotten myself into. I couldn’t believe this was really happening; all that time planning, carefully wording the advert, and I had found someone on my first try, someone who seemed to be willing to just go straight through with this. I knew I should have been happy to find someone so willing to carry my child for me, to step in as my pseudo-wife, but there was a churning in my stomach that told me something else entirely was really going on.

But I had promised myself it wouldn’t be like that. If I had wanted to settle down and start a family with someone, I would have gone out and actually started dating again. No. Not after what happened with Julia. I wasn’t going to let myself do it again. I couldn’t risk it. Enough of my life had been spent trying to get over that betrayal, and there was no way I was going to put myself right into the line of fire all over again for a woman I barely knew, the kind of woman who would drop everything when she was offered a million bucks for the craziest job on the planet.

Still. As I climbed in to a shower to wash the worst of the day’s travel off of me, I was having trouble shaking the image of her from my mind. There was just something so…so tempting about her. I would lay the contracts out tomorrow, make sure that we could get started on this conception thing already, because I was having a hard enough time not sliding into bed with her right here and now. It would have been so easy, just heading over to the bedroom, waking her up, reminding her just how keen she had been to take this job and agree to my terms…

The mother of my child. That was what she was going to be. I focused on that as the water poured over me and tried to not to think about what it would be like to fuck her, to take her, to make her mine. It had been a long time since I had felt this kind of desire for someone, and I felt a little drunk on it.

I ran my hands across my face, trying to cool myself off, but it was too late – I was already hard, my cock swelling at the thought of having her. She was only a few rooms away from me, and it was as though I could feel her presence pulsing through the house, like the world was out to remind me how near she was and that I couldn’t have her, not yet, not quite. I slid my hand down and took my cock into my fist, stroking it a few times, finding some relief. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually jerked off to the thought of someone in my real life, but that girl, she brought out something in me. Her willingness, that tinge of mystery to her. The fact that I knew we would soon be sharing one of the most important things in my entire life. It was all just so much to take in, especially when all I wanted to do was take her.

What would she be into in bed, I wondered? Would she want to make it businesslike, a transaction, or was she actually into me? The way she had started when I’d walked into that diner suggested the latter. I clenched my teeth and tipped my head back, and suddenly the image of her beneath me, hands bound to the bedframe above her, mouth slightly open as she let out a long cry of pleasure, burned itself into my brain. I moved with more purpose, knowing I had to come to get this shit out of my brain. I needed to think straight, not get caught up in whatever chemistry there was between us…

I wondered what she would taste like. Would she let me go down on her? I had no idea what “natural conception” meant to her, if it just meant the literal act of sex or if she would be amenable to everything else, as well. I sincerely hoped that she would be. I didn’t realize it until I laid eyes on her, but I had seriously missed eating a woman out, making her squirm with my tongue as I went slow until she was begging for me to let her come. And something about that smart mouth told me that I would enjoy making her plead with me so damn much. My cock twitched in my hand and I realized that I was already getting close, my body tensing and my jaw clenching as I thought about moving into her, about taking her deep, about watching the way her face would contort with pleasure as I fucked her deep and came inside her-

I let out a grunt as I came, and immediately worried that I had woken her. But the water was running loudly enough that even if she had been awake, there was no way she would have heard me. The pleasure coursed through my system and then subsided and with my head clear, I felt a little embarrassed. No-one made me lose control like that, but there was something about her that did. Maybe it was specifically about knowing that I could have her soon, but that I had to wait for the time being. Or maybe it was the way I had felt when I had taken her hand getting out of the car. She was so small compared to me, so delicate, and the thought of her sprawled out in the enormous double guest bed all by herself made me want to crawl into it with her just to keep her company.

But I didn’t. Instead, I finished my shower, scrubbing my hair with the shower gel hard enough that I felt as though I was trying to scrub her out of my memory too. I would get the contracts all sorted for her to sign tomorrow, and then we could get down to it. And frankly, I was already excited.

Chapter Three

“Half a million? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” he agreed, tapping a few more keys on his computer and then looking back up at me, as though he hadn’t just moved more money than I’d made in my entire life in a few strokes of his keyboard. My eyes were wide and my mouth was hanging slightly open.

“You want to check?” He turned the computer towards me, and I reached for it. Even though I trusted him, I wanted to check it for myself. It just couldn’t be that easy. I headed over to my bank, entering my details, and checked my balance. Right enough, there it was.

“Don’t you have to get a special permit to move that kind of money around?” I asked, and he shrugged.

“I made sure I had it ready to go when I left the advert,” he explained. “You might get a call from your bank, though, to make sure you’re not funding some terrorist group or something.”

“As long as you raise this baby right, I think I should be safe from that,” I grinned in his direction, my head still spinning as I tried to make sense of the number I had just seen in front of me. It was so much money. So much. I couldn’t even imagine what I would do with that amount of cash, and that was still only half of what he owed me for all of this. In a year’s time, I would be walking out of here with double that. And he had given it to me like it was pennies.

“How the hell do you afford this?” I cocked my head at him. “Not just the money, I mean. All this, too?”

I gestured around the cabin, where I had woken up early this morning. I was still a little nervous about being here, but he hadn’t taken the opportunity to murder me in the night so I figured I was alright. It had taken me a moment to remember where I was when I came to – I hadn’t had much of a chance to check the place out, it had been so dark when we arrived, but I had wandered around my room that morning trying to take the place in in a daze. It looked like the kind of place that a fancy lawyer might have owned on a TV show, all crisp, minimalist design and expensive details. The rest of the place was the same – lots of high windows allowing the light to stream beautifully through, and light wood buffed to a shine. My room had an ensuite, and it was one of two bedrooms, his being the other. I had peeped around the door when I had been looking for him that morning and wondered if I would ever get to sleep in here with him. The thought was more exciting than I would have cared to admit.

“That’s not important,” he shook his head, and my stomach dropped. Had I just walked out of one criminal’s life into another? I had done my fair share of lying and covering-up for Richie, and I didn’t want to have to do it for Cormac, even if we weren’t going to be involved romantically.

“It’s legal, right?” I demanded at once, glancing down at the contracts on the table opposite us. We were sitting in the living room, where he had gotten a fire burning in the modern, marble-clad fireplace, and he had arranged all the contracts for me to look over. I hadn’t signed anything yet, though, and I knew that I could still get out of all of this yet.

“Yeah, it’s legal,” he grinned, raising his eyebrows at me. “What, you think I’m some gangster come to hide up in the woods with all my spoils?”

“Hey, I have no idea what kind of guy you are,” I pointed out in protest. “You could be a high-level criminal, for all I know.”

“Not much good being a criminal living all the way out here,” he pointed out. “Difficult to have meetings with my gang if they can’t find me.”

“Fair point,” I conceded. “You want to get those contracts over? I think I’m ready to sign.”

“Sure thing,” he got to his feet and went to grab the papers, and I watched him as he moved across the room. He looked even better this morning than he had the night before, when I had been lost in a haze of panic and hurry to get out of the city. He had been working out when I’d gotten up, in a small gym room that was attached to his bedroom, and I had walked in on him all shirtless and sweaty with messy hair, looking like an ad for something I would totally buy. He was dressed now, freshly showered and smelling sweet, but I couldn’t shake the image of the way he’d looked in that room out of my head. He was more muscular than I’d imagined, the muscles in his arms moving as he walked across the room and stretched slightly. He was hot. Seriously hot. The kind of refined, expensive hot that I had never come across before, at least not in person.

I had read through the contracts that morning while he was in the shower, making sure that there was nothing in there that we hadn’t already covered. And really, if I was being honest, I was checking to see that that natural conception thing was for sure in there. I knew we wouldn’t be hooking up that much, if I managed to get pregnant quickly enough to make the year a viable timeframe, but I had to admit I was already excited at the thought of going to bed with him. Nervous, yes, because there was no way a guy like this didn’t have a bunch of experience when it came to the bedroom, but excited. I wondered if I should tell him the truth, that I had never been with anyone the way the two of us were going to be together, but I figured that for the time being it wasn’t relevant. He didn’t need to know. It might put him off if he knew that he would be taking my virginity, and I had already set my heart on losing it to him. Maybe this was the way it was always meant to be, without too much emotional attachment so it didn’t end up getting all wound up around my feelings for him too.

As I read the contract again, my mind strayed over the fact that I was still a virgin. I was surprised I’d made it to twenty-three without losing it to someone; Richie had tried often enough, running out of patience with me about two years ago and getting pretty fucking tired of waiting. He had pushed and pushed for me to give it up to him, so much so that I was worried that he was just going to dump me as soon as it happened, so I clung on to my virginity tight in the hopes that it would keep him around. I was pretty certain he had been hooking up with other girls on the side, and I tried not to let it bother me, but it made me even less inclined to give myself to him the way he always wanted me to. I wasn’t a romantic in many ways – I didn’t have time to be – but when it came to my virginity, I guess I wanted to lose it with someone I at least trusted and liked. And, as I snuck another look up at Cormac as he tended the fire, I guessed attraction really helped matters along too.

“There,” I announced as I took the pen he had attached to the top of the contracts and signed my name with a flourish where I needed to. There I was – here for a year, to try for, carry, and birth his baby. I felt a thrill of panic and excitement wash over me. I had no idea if this was the worst decision I’d ever made or the best one, but either way it was made now. He straightened up and smiled at me, reaching out to take the papers from me.

“Great,” He glanced down at where I’d signed my name, and I noted the same expression pass over his face as had just passed over mine – that mixture of fear and enthusiasm, like he couldn’t quite believe this was happening either.

I got to my feet again, trailing my hand over the back of the couch; it was soft under my fingertips, sweet and soft and deep red. The light of the fire flickering over the fabric looked so homey.

“How long have you lived out here?” I asked, glancing up at him; he was shuffling the papers and glanced up at me, looking surprised. Had he really expected me not to ask? For a guy this insanely and obviously rich, the choice to live in the middle of nowhere was a profoundly strange one.

“A year or so,” he replied abruptly, getting to his feet. I watched as he moved across the room; the way he walked, all confidence, ignited something deep in my stomach that I wasn’t sure that I’d ever felt before.

“And where did you live before?” I pressed. I wanted to know everything about him; if I was going to be living here for the next year, then I would find it all out at some point, anyway. Was he hiding as much as I was? Surely he knew that I would uncover all his secrets.

“The city,” he replied, short again, like he didn’t want to have to answer me.

“And why did you move?” I went on, leaning on the back of the couch. The fire was lighting him from behind, casting shadows on his face, bringing out the sharpness of his jaw. I wanted to run my fingers over it and my heart looped in my chest knowing that soon I would be able to touch him the way I wanted to.

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied, and his voice was almost a little sharp; I raised my eyebrows, taken aback, and he let out a long sigh.

“Sorry,” he murmured, turning back to face me. His eyes were soft and I could see that his apology was sincere. “I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Not used to having people in here, huh?” I remarked, and he shook his head.

“Not really, no,” He replied. “Is it that obvious?”

“Pretty obvious, yeah,” I teased lightly. But I decided it was best to lay off the questioning for now; it wasn’t much getting me anywhere anyway. Once we knew each other a little better, maybe then I would find out the truth about why he lived all the way out here.

“I’m going to file this paperwork,” he held up the papers, as though they were some business contract and not an agreement for us to conceive and raise a child together. I almost giggled at how professional he was being; it was clear that at some point in his life he had worked in business, because he was treating this like it was nothing more than a transaction.

“Okay,” I nodded, and stood there awkwardly for a moment more. I still didn’t feel quite at home in this place, as though my obvious discomfort was coming off me in waves.

“Feel free to make yourself at home,” he nodded towards the open-plan kitchen a few feet away. “There’s food in the fridge. Help yourself.”

“I will, thank you,” I replied, and he made his way out of the room and towards what I assumed was his study; he closed the door behind him with a click, leaving me with nothing but the sound of the crackling fire for company.

I made my way slowly around the room, taking it all in. I knew I could have done this in front of him, but I still felt like somewhat of an intruder in this place, and I was going to have to get over that if I was going to be living here for the next year. Fuck. A year was a long time to commit to anything, especially when I’d just come out of a relationship that felt as though it had eaten up most of my life to date.

There was a carpet on the polished wood floor, and I wriggled my toes in the white shag and closed my eyes. This was the kind of luxury that I never in my entire life thought I would have access to. Would I be able to afford a place like this of my own, when this was all done? This cabin had to cost more than a million – hell, this room alone was probably twice that. But there was something appealing about living in the middle of nowhere, so far from society, even if he didn’t seem to know how to deal with people anymore. I had come here to get away from people. Maybe I would get a taste for it.

I went to the kitchen, which was all gleaming metal and discreetly branded products that I’d only seen in the windows of luxury department stores before this moment, and grabbed some fruit from the fridge. Despite the fact that I had slept for a long time in the car, but I had been up late unpacking the scant clothes and toiletries that I had managed to pack the day before. Had that really only been a day ago? It didn’t feel possible; only twenty-four hours ago, I had been terrified, fleeing a life that I had never really wanted in the first place. And now I was here. It was so peaceful and quiet, so different from the city.

I ate the fruit, mangos and some pineapple, straight out of the small plastic container they were in as I headed back to my room. The flavours were sharp and enticing on my tongue; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had fresh fruit like this. I wondered how he managed to get it up to his place, considering he was all the way out here, but I supposed that was what money could get you in you wanted it enough.

Money. That was where all of this had started. Not the money he was giving me for this – no, I was pretty sure that I would have run away with him even if he was offering me twenty dollars. But it was money that had started this all the way back in the city, started this mess that I had to flee from, and the thought of it now was enough to make my stomach clench with fear.

I mean, I knew what Richie was doing. I knew that he was dealing drugs. There was no way a guy like him, a high-school dropout with no ambition to his name, could support himself and live the like he felt as though he was entitled to without dealing drugs. And I saw the people he thought he was so cunningly sneaking in and out of his apartment. But he himself was clean, and I just decided that it would be easier to ignore everything about that side of his life. What was I going to do, confront him about it and get him to stop? Yeah, that was a good one. I knew he was always going to be involved with that life one way or another, and I just figured it was safer for me to play ignorant. That was certainly the way he liked to have it. I pretended that I didn’t see the little bags on the table in the living room when I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom in his apartment, and he pretend to me that his life was going somewhere. I’m not sure how long I would have allowed that to go on had it not been for what happened the week before.

I had dropped by his apartment unannounced; that was my bad, I guessed, but I had done it plenty of times before and nothing had come of it so I had supposed that it was safe this time to. He didn’t answer his buzzer but one of the neighbours had let me up, so I headed to his apartment and found that the door was unlocked. That should have been my first warning.

When I walked in, I knew at once that something was wrong. The smell of stale cigarette smoke was hanging in the air, and Richie didn’t smoke. Not around me, at least. Someone else was there, someone who didn’t give a shit about his rule about not smoking in the apartment. I made my way through to the living room, clutching hold of my bag, as though that would make any difference.

“Look, it’s not what you think,” Richie’s voice came drifting through the door and I froze. He sounded scared. He didn’t often sound scared.

“We gave you the product, now you give me the money,” A man’s voice replied. It would have sounded like a reasonable request had his tone not been laced with menace. I didn’t move a muscle, wondering if I should just walk away now, but worried that the neighbour might tell Richie that he had let me in and that he would figure out what I had heard. So I stayed.

“You just need to give me a few more days,” Richie begged him. He sounded pathetic – more pathetic than usual, that was. I realized that my hands were trembling.

“We’ve already given you more than enough time,” the voice went on, completely in-control, completely calm. I knew the voices of most of Richie’s associates and clients; they would come by the big, grubby parties he would throw, the ones where he would hold me close to him all night as though he was showing me off. But that voice didn’t belong to one of them, I knew that for sure.

“Look, I don’t have it,” Richie snapped back. “What the fuck are you doing to do? I’ll have it to you as soon as I can, but until then-”

Suddenly, there came the sound of the click of a gun. It was unmistakable. I had had a friend in high school, when I first fell in with the bad crowd, who liked to wave around his dad’s gun whenever he got the chance and I would have recognised that blood-curdling sound anywhere in the world.

“Woah, what the fuck is that?” Richie demanded at once. His voice was shaking a little, and that just scared me more. For all his big talk, I knew that he had entirely lost control of this situation. He was small-time, nothing special, but that gun had just kicked things into a gear higher than either of us were used to.

“I’m telling you that you need to have the money right now,” The voice went on, angrier now, less controlled. I held my breath, knowing that if I went for the door again now that they would know at once that I was there. I needed to stay where I was and hope they didn’t-

My foot slipped behind me, and the floor creaked loudly beneath me.

“What the fuck was that?” The voice demanded. “Did you call the cops?”

“No, no, of course not,” Richie assured him quickly. “I just-”

“Go out there and tell me who it is,” The man ordered him. I took a deep breath and walked to the door; I knew I had to show myself. It wouldn’t be long till I was exposed, either way. I made my way into the living room, and when I saw the scene laid out in front of me, I swear my heart stopped in my chest.

Cocaine. That was what this was about. A bunch of it, sitting on the table, in bricks. Richie, he was just weed and maybe a few party drugs here and there. This was bigger in amount and intensity, more than I’d ever seen him with before. The man with him in the room, standing a stocky six foot, was holding the gun by his side. The tension between the three of us crackled intensely and I fought the urge to pass out; my vision was blurring around the edges, threatening to take me down.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Richie snarled, marching over to be and grabbing me by the wrist. I had no idea what he was planning to do with me, but he got like this sometimes, when he felt as though someone else was in control and was trying to reclaim it for himself – pushing and grabbing me, as though that would establish that he was the one in charge.

“I just wanted to come by and see you,” I burbled, looking between the gun and the drugs and Richie and back again, eyes feeling as though they were going to roll straight out of my head.

“Who’s she?” The man rounded on me. “What does she know?”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Richie snapped back. “And nothing-”

“Well, she knows something now,” the man remarked, almost casually, and turned to me slowly. He looked me up and down and my stomach curdled with fear.

“I’m going,” I snatched my arm away from Richie. “I’m leaving, now.”

“No, you’re not,” The man replied, and looked to the door as though planning to slam it shut behind me. What was he trying to say? I wasn’t going to hang around to find out.

“You don’t need to-”

“Yes, I do,” I cut him off and backed out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I left quickly, hurrying back to my tiny, shitty apartment that I had barely been able to afford with the last of the wages I had from that holiday waitressing job I’d picked up. My heart was pounding, my mouth was dry, and the look on that man’s face when he had turned to me was forged on to my memory. I would never forget it. I needed to leave, right now, and that’s when I turned to my laptop to find something to get me out of here. That’s when I found Cormac.

I realized, as I snapped back to reality in the cabin, that I had been standing there in the middle of the kitchen with my hand frozen in front of my face for a good minute. My fingers were damp from the mango. I dropped it back into the plastic tray, my appetite long forgotten. No. I couldn’t linger on that. There was no way anyone would find me out here. I couldn’t think about it, any of it – I was scared to, as though it might manifest it into reality. As though they might appear out of thin air in front of me if I thought about them for too long.

I headed through to the bedroom, closing the door tight behind me, and flopped down on my bed. I was still tired from the day before – it had been the craziest couple of days of my life, and that was seriously saying something. I placed the food down on the bedside table next to me, and sprawled out on the enormous bed; the bedding was fresh, maybe even new, and smelt lightly of lily, my favourite flower. As though, somehow, he had known that I would be the one who ended up here.

My bedroom was beautiful, far nicer than the place I had had back home; no, that wasn’t my home anymore. But the place I had used to live, that terrible studio apartment with the damp spreading out across the walls, was nothing compared to this place. An enormous window above the bed let the thin, watery light of the morning pour in over the bed, and a neat, modern dresser sat in the corner, with a small mirror on it around which I had scattered what little make-up I had brought with me. An ensuite bathroom that I hadn’t really checked out yet was connected to the room by a frosted-glass door. I knew I needed a shower, but I felt a little weird about getting naked there, even though I knew I was going to be doing a lot more than that soon enough.

I sighed and closed my eyes, and thought about that part of the deal. I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head since he’d mentioned it, and now that I had signed the contract it was for sure going to happen. Would it be in his bed or mine? I could imagine the weight of him now, pressing now next to me, on top of me, his hands strong on my body…

I rolled out of bed and reached into my bag and pulled of the one thing that I had thought to take from my apartment – my vibrator. I had more been embarrassed about leaving it behind and having my landlady find it when she realized that I had run away, not thinking about my future masturbatory needs, but I was glad now that I had brought it with me. It was a small white bullet, nothing fancy, but it did the job where my boyfriend had never managed to.

But I had the feeling that with Cormac, it would be different. Maybe it was just the way he carried himself, but there was something just impossibly confident and in-control about him, as though there was no situation where he wouldn’t be utterly sure of his abilities. I clicked on my vibrator, checked the door was closed, and slid it into my panties and let my mind wander.

I had never really wanted someone like that before. Maybe it was just because I knew it was going to happen, but I was already excited about fucking him for the first time. I had been attracted to people, sure, wanted people, but never looked at someone and almost been able to imagine what it would be like for him to take me.

I pressed the vibrator against my clit, rocking it back and forth. He was so close by. I could just walk into the room and ask him if we could start right here and right now. But I was too nervous yet. I didn’t know what seduction looked like, not the kind of seduction I knew that I would need to use to get someone like him to really want me. How many women had he been with? Just looking at him, watching him, I would have to guess dozens, maybe more.

How would he touch me? Would he go soft to start off? Maybe if I told him that I was a virgin, he would take me slowly, inching his fingers over my body, undressing me like I was the best gift he’d ever received. Maybe if I didn’t tell him that it was my first time, he’d be rougher. The thought of it sent a zing of excitement through my body, and I rolled with that.

I could imagine it now. He’d push me on to the bed, undress himself slowly, all the time looking me dead in the eye. He’d climb on top of me, running his hands all over my naked body, maybe sliding a hand between my legs to cup my pussy – I’d already be wet, soaked, at the thought of everything he was going to do to me. He’d brush his lips so softly against mine, teasing me, taunting me, reminding me of the power he had over me. That contract, maybe it had a clause I hadn’t seen – a clause that would let him do anything he wanted to me anytime he wanted.

He would stroke my clit softly before he pushed two fingers into me, and watch as my body responded to his touch. How could it not? I had never wanted to be touched like that before, only going through with it because someone else wanted to, but I craved his touch, needed it like I was an addict holding out for my fix from him. He would push his tongue into my mouth at last, grasping the back of my head, gripping my hair and sending a shudder of pain and pleasure through my body, and then I would need to feel him inside me, and I would lean up to his ear an whisper it, whisper the words that I knew he had needed to hear from me-

“Fuck,” I groaned to myself through gritted teeth as the orgasm hit me, whipping me back into the real world with a start. The pleasure rocked across my body, pulsating out from my pussy and making my body clench and release with relief. I had needed that more than I needed. I switched my vibrator off and lay there, in the sudden silence, the only sound in the room that off my breathing as it returned to normal. That was intense. It had been a while since I’d gotten off that hard by myself, and I had a feeling that if that was how it was when it was just me, it was going to off the charts when I actually got to fulfil my fantasies with him.