Chapter 264: Chapter 264- Pregnancy Test

She felt his arms.

Going around her.

Both of them — the full, encompassing, both-arms-around quality of it. Her face against his chest and his arms around her and her belly between them.

“’I hate you,’” she said.

“’I know,’” he said.

“’You monster,’” she said. The word arriving with the honest delivery of someone who had chosen it carefully and meant it. “’You absolute— what are you? What did you do to me? What did you—’”

His voice, near her ear.

“’I can make you forget everything that happened here.’”

She heard the words.

She heard them through the crying. Through the wet, broken, chest-emptying quality of the crying.

She felt them land.

Not in her mind. Below her mind. That sub-conscious level where things land that do not go through the normal channels.

Her crying slowed.

The hiccupping, decelerating quality of crying that has been interrupted by something the body is more interested in than the crying.

“’I can take you somewhere,’” he said, against her ear. The quiet, low, intimate quality of it. “’And you will not think about this room. Or that corridor. Or his voice.’”

She pressed her face harder into his shirt.

Her hands — finding the fabric of his shirt and gripping it. The two-fisted grip of someone holding on and not being sure what they were holding on to.

“’Stop,’” she said.

“’Mm.’”

His hands.

She felt them.

The movement of them from the wrap-around position — the slow, deliberate tracking downward. Both hands. Moving from her back to her hips to that finding-the-curve quality of his palms against the roundness of her hips.

His fingers.

Spreading.

The full, palm-out, possessive spread of both hands — one on each side, pressing against the fullness of her hips and sliding backward, finding the curve of her ass through the fabric of her skirt.

“’Raven—’”

“’Mm.’”

His thumbs.

Finding the center. The deliberate, knowing tracking of both thumbs along the fabric until they found each other — the fabric of her skirt, the fabric of her panties below, and underneath the fabric, the location his thumbs were seeking. The cleft. His thumbs pressing inward, the fabric pressing with them, the panty pressing into the cleft between her ass cheeks.

Spreading.

The slow, deliberate, fabric-assisted parting — the panty pressing into the cleft, pulling aside, his thumbs on either side pulling the fabric, the sensation of air finding skin that had been covered.

Her asshole.

That involuntary sensation of it — the parting of the fabric, the exposure, the targeting quality of his thumbs pressing against the fabric on either side and pulling gently outward. The stretch of it. The morning-after sensitivity of it — the used, claimed, comprehensively attended-to sensitivity of something that had been introduced to his attention for the first time this morning.

She felt it.

Every millimeter of it.

She felt it the way she felt everything now — at double volume, the sensitivity of a body that had been recalibrated. Her nipples tightened against the damp blouse, the twin wet spots darkening further as fresh milk beaded in response.

Her breath.

The broken, catching quality of it — changing character, the change arriving in the middle of the exhale, the point where the breath went from the ragged quality of crying to the different quality of something else.

“’S—’”

Her teeth closed on his shirt.

“’St—stop—’”

The words were there. The intention was there. The meaning of the words and the intention behind them was absolutely present and she absolutely meant them.

But her hips.

The traitorous, comprehensive, completely-independent-of-her hips.

The slow, rolling backward press of them. Pressing into his hands. The body finding the spread of his thumbs and pressing into the contact in the animal, non-consulting way of something that had been trained overnight and was now operating from training.

She felt the moan arrive at the back of her throat.

She bit it.

With his shirt in her mouth, her teeth in the fabric, the moan compressed behind her closed jaw. The contained, bitten-off, fabric-muffled quality of it — still audible, still present, still the sound of a woman whose body was producing a response she had not authorized.

“’Ahnnn—’”

The small, wet, broken sound of it around the fabric of his shirt.

“’S— st—’” She breathed. Rapid. Unsteady. “’Stop— I—’”

His thumbs.

Pressing.

The inward, deliberate, unhurried press of both thumbs — the fabric pulled between them, that pressure of it against the location that had been, this morning, pierced for the first time and had received the information of what being pierced felt like and had been sitting with that information for the last two hours.

The pressure brought the information back.

All of it.

The heat. The stretch. The full, comprehensive, morning-after memory of exactly what those thumbs were the prelude to.

“’Ahhnn—’”

She said it into his shirt.

The full, moaning, broken quality of it — the sound of a woman whose word ’stop’ was present and whose body had received a message from a different language entirely.

“’S…st…stop—’”

The stammering quality of it — the bitten, fractured delivery of a word said by someone who was saying it through a moan that was saying the opposite.

“’S…st…’”

Her teeth released his shirt.

Both hands.

She put both hands against his chest and pushed.

The full, committed, two-palmed push of someone who had found the last available resource in her body and was spending it on this single motion. The push of a woman who was done receiving.

He stepped back.

One step. The easy, accommodating step of someone who had not been moved against his will but was choosing to register the communication.

She looked at him.

Her face — the wet, wrecked, comprehensive state of it. The tears still running. Her lips pressed together in that mouth-pressed quality of fury too large for the space behind her teeth. Her breath came in short, rapid bursts, the not-quite-controlled rhythm of someone running on the last available fuel.

“Get your hands off me,” she said.

Not loud. The low, distinct, I-mean-every-word quality of it.

He said nothing.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. Louder now. The building quality of it — the sentence finding its volume as she found the ground under her feet. “Don’t — don’t ever touch me again. Do you understand? Don’t come near me. Don’t look at me. Don’t —”

Her hands were shaking.

She looked at her hands.

At the trembling quality of them in the morning light. That fine tremor of hands attached to a body that had been through too much and was now being asked to manage fury on top of it all.

She looked at him.

“It is ALL because of you,” she said.

The words arrived with the full weight of what she meant by them. Not just last night. The whole inventory — Vikram’s face, the DNA test he was calling for down the corridor, her husband’s voice saying ’you fucking bitch’ in that quiet register worse than shouting, the dried milk on his gown, the marks on her neck, the state of her body, the settled warmth inside her belly that felt like something had changed without asking her permission.

All of it.

“You came into my life,” she said. The words finding their sequence now, the anger doing what anger does when it finally has full volume — organizing itself. “My life was much better. I was pregnant. I was — I was —”

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