Her, looking up at me with tears in her eyes, real pain shining there in a moment of vulnerability.
She finally gave me the truth, and I should be feeling satisfied about it. I should be feeling triumphant that I managed to force it from her. Certainly when she went down on her knees, pleasure was all I could think about. And how I liked seeing her kneeling. How much I wanted her to take me in her mouth.
Then she did and she wasn’t cold or calm, or serene. No, she looked up at me, her cheeks flushed, as if she couldn’t bear to look away, and I didn’t want her to. I wanted her to see the pleasure she was giving me.
But it was in the aftermath, when she put her cheek against my thigh, that I found my fingers idly caressing the soft silk of her hair, simply enjoying the feel of it against my skin. Enjoying, too, the trusting way she leaned against me, and it…did something to me. Hollowed me out in a way I wasn’t expecting, and couldn’t articulate.
In that moment I needed to see the expression on her face, so I caught her beneath the chin, and tilted her head up. Only to find her blue eyes liquid with unshed tears.
It shocked me, those tears, and even now as I think about them, I’m still shocked.
Why shocked? She’s pregnant with your child and you’ve been nothing but awful to her.
That conscience of mine keeps on nagging me, and I don’t like it. I’ve never been bothered by it before, so I don’t know why now it keeps sliding the knife in.
I shove myself out of my chair, and pace to the bookshelves, staring sightlessly at the spines, my body full of a strange restless energy. As if I want to physically outrun the whispers in my head. The whispers that keep telling me that I’ve behaved appallingly to a woman who did nothing wrong exceptnotchoose me. That no matter how many logical arguments I give myself, I’m letting my own sexual jealousy get to me.
You made her cry.
I put my hands on the bookshelves and lean on them, looking down at the carpet, as a thread of cold shame winds through me. I had no idea I could be so affected by a woman’s tears. Byanyone’stears, for that matter. My mother used to cry frequently—still does—and her tears used to hurt when I was a boy. I hated that she was in pain, and after my father threw us out I’d do anything I could to make her stop crying. But that was before she made it clear that there was nothing I could do to make her feel better. Nothing I could do to heal her pain. I was the reason she was hurt, the reason we were thrown out of our home, and she didn’t want anything at all from me, most especially not being told to stop drinking.
That she didn’t want anything from me was, of course, a lie. She wanted the money I earned for her and the attention I gave her, and she took it all, even as she made sure that I never forgot why she drank and why she had so many difficulties with depression. It was my fault. Everything was my fault.
But I refused to feel guilt for that, just as I hardened my heart against her tears, made sure they didn’t affect me.
That should include the tears of pretty Beatrix. Yet I can’t stop seeing the gleam of them in her eyes as she knelt at my feet. Can’t stop hearing the catch in her voice when she told me that if I didn’t want to hurt her, I shouldn’t be such a prick to her.
She’s a passionate woman, this I know. Both her anger and her desire burn hot, no matter how cold she appears, so it stands to reason that she should also feel hurt just as powerfully. She’s more vulnerable than she appears, especially now, pregnant with my child.
You let your anger control you when it comes to her.
My jaw tightens as the unpleasant truth hits home. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I do let it control me.I’msupposed to be the cool one, the logical one, yet she makes me feel anything but cool and logical, and I can’t stand it. It makes me want to needle her, ruffle her, disturb her the way she disturbs me.
That’s a poor reason to be cruel to someone.
It is. Not to mention selfish, and I pride myself on not being selfish.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I push myself away from the bookcase, pulling it out and looking down at the screen. It’s the lab. The results are back. There’s an email in my inbox, with an attachment, and the test results are clear: I’m the father of the child with a ninety-nine per cent accuracy.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since that’s exactly what I’m expecting, yet I’m also aware of that powerful feeling coursing through me once again, all primitive, possessive satisfaction and an almost heady triumph.
I loathe it. It’s ridiculous to feel this way simply because I’ve done what nearly the entire population of the globe has done, which is to perpetuate the species. It’s not different. It’s not special. It’s what I was biologically engineered to do. Yet for some reason, I want to shout my accomplishment from the rooftops as if no one in human history has ever done this before.
With some difficulty I force the feeling away, and grip tight to my logic. Now I have all the facts, I need to be measured about this, because I have some decisions to make. The child is mine, and, while I’ve never wanted children, I will have one all the same and I need to decide how to manage that.
Naturally, I’ll be nothing like my own father, putting himself and what he wanted above everything, even his own child. I will never throw him or her away as if they were garbage lying around that has to be got rid of. They will live with me. And as for Beatrix, well, that is something we’ll need to discuss.
I put my phone back in my pocket, and stride out of the office to find my housekeeper. Helene tells me that she put Beatrix on the terrace in the garden with some tea and pastries, since ‘the poor woman looked dead on her feet’.
Once again a feeling of shame grips me, and none of the defensive arguments I made to myself about how I did offer her something to eat make any difference. I dragged her here, made her give a blood sample, forced the issue of our chemistry, then I put her on her knees to give me pleasure, only then to make her cry. Those are not the actions of an unselfish man.
Perhaps you’re more like your father than you thought.
I grit my teeth, and shove the snide whisper away as I find my way to the stone terrace outside at the back of the house.
It’s one of my mother’s favourite places to sit, since it’s very peaceful, with the flowers and lawn, and pond with a fountain that fills the air with the musical sound of running water.
Beatrix is sitting on one of the cushioned chairs at the delicate wrought-iron outdoor table. She’s holding a cup of steaming tea between her hands, looking down into the cup as if she’s trying to divine her future. The sun has gone down, the last rays lighting the sky above her and outlining the soft curve of her cheek in gold, her loose hair a wavy silken waterfall.
