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Dylan and I are expecting our first child. We were married the previous spring and life couldn’t be better. If anyone had told me a year ago that my happily ever after would include the leader of an outlaw biker gang, I’d have told them they were nuts. But here I was. Dylan was my world and I was his. I finally had my fairy tale ending.
The End
Mystique
Chapter One
Marie Stevens was a good woman in a bad situation. That was always her story. She’d grown up in a small Southern town, and had a certain charm about her. Men fell for her left and right but she’d always been the type of girl who believed in “the one”.
She lived on a small farm with her parents in the mountains of Tennessee. The farm was never meant to be a source of income but she loved taking care of the animals. Marie had a special place in her heart for animals. She almost liked them better than she liked people.
Marie was always a quiet, studious girl who was dedicated to her schooling. She wanted to leave the small town and become a veterinarian. She’d always dreamed of spending her life helping animals.
Her dreams were big and she knew that she could achieve them if she put her mind to it. She could move mountains if she believed she could. People told her that she was meant for great things and she believed them.
While all the girls in her school were busy with boys and prom, she was studying and keeping her GPA near perfect. People made fun of her and the boys she turned down would accuse her of being a lesbian or some other claim that made the blow to their manhood more palatable. It was a ridiculous game, in her opinion, and so she refused to play.
The boys were drawn to her ethereal beauty. All the boys wanted her and the girls wanted to be her, even if Marie didn’t know it. She had long, curly blonde hair that glistened in the light and always seemed to lay across her shoulders perfectly without any effort. Her eyes were as big and blue as the ocean and when she smiled they shined brighter than stars. Her pale skin was never marred with blemishes and her round face gave her an innocent charm that drew people in.
Despite her beauty, Marie’s focus was never pulled away from school. She stayed the course and managed to ignore the advances of potential boyfriends and the pressure to go to parties. Her parents couldn’t have been more proud of her, but that was all going to change her senior year.
Robert had been so damn charming when they first met. His eyes were almost a golden amber color. The closest thing she could compare them to was honey. They were deep and rich and seemed to look right into her soul. She fell for him the moment they met.
Marie enjoyed fairy tales growing up and so she’d bought into the idea of love at first sight. It was how she’d wanted to meet the love of her life. She wanted the storybook romance that she’d read about for so many years.
She was inherently feminine and had denied herself the things that girls looked forward to for her entire life. Marie never went to school dances and she never put herself into the dating pool. She’d focused on more practical things, and as a result she was hungry for the very things she’d avoided.
Robert paid attention to every one of those desires. He made Marie feel like a princess and it was intoxicating to her. It was enough to drag her away from her books and away from her goals. He promised that he would take care of her for the rest of her life. She’d never have to work a day in her life. She’d just stay at home and take care of their babies.
The first time he’d told her that, she’d questioned if it was what she really wanted. She’d had her heart set on being a veterinarian for so long that she couldn’t imagine anything else. Robert convinced her that it wasn’t something worth pursuing. He convinced her that the only way they could build a life together was if she depended on him completely.
Those red flags should have been enough to wake her up. Marie should have run away from that fate as fast as she could, but she was too caught up in her own fairy tale to listen to reason. She jumped right off the cliff, expecting Robert to catch her. She would realize later in her life just how stupid of a decision that was.
Marie gave Robert something that she’d been told was precious. Her virginity. It was another thing she would look back on and scoff at. Her virginity meant nothing. It was something that society had put on a pedestal to keep girls from exploring their own sexualities.
At the time, however, it was a big deal. The first time they laid together she was expecting something wonderful. She expected her world to be changed forever, but it was much duller than that. A few sloppy thrusts and grunts and he came, leaving her unsatisfied and confused. She wasn’t even sure if it felt good, to be honest. It had happened so fast.
All of their encounters following that were pretty much the same. She wouldn’t have her first orgasm until a friend bought her a vibrator as a joke. She had been embarrassed at first, but it became a staple in her and Robert’s relationship. She kept it by the bed for all of those disappointing sexual exploits.
Their intercourse wasn’t completely unproductive. Right after graduation she found out she was pregnant with her first and only child. There was pressure for her and Robert to marry thanks to the old world views of their small town.
That pressure was more than enough to convince them to get married. It was a quiet affair that was put together quickly. Her parents wanted to preserve her dignity and so it needed to be done before she started to show.
It was the first of many disappointments that she would experience in her marriage. Her pregnancy left her unable to go to school and so Robert got the housewife he'd always wanted.
Robert went to work every day and left Marie at home, pregnant and terrified. She hadn't planned on having children for years. Some part of her still wanted to get out of her small town and see the country, and maybe even the world.
She would have to come to terms with the fact that she was a mother and a wife now and that would define her for years to come.
Chapter Two
The birth of Richard was one of the happiest days of Marie's life, but it was promptly followed by weeks of soul crushing depression. No one ever talked about postpartum depression and so Marie didn't know to expect it.
Her husband was present for the birth of their son but that was where his involvement stopped. Men were expected to work and women were expected to care for the children. There was little cross over.
Thanks to this archaic view, Marie was left at home with a screaming infant and no one to look to for help. Her mother would shake her head in disappointment if Marie admitted to being terrified of the baby or unsure of what she should do.
The gruff, aging woman would tell her to follow her 'maternal instincts'. As a nineteen-year-old woman and new mother, she wasn't sure she had the instincts her mother was talking about.
