Page 42

Dionysus

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“What changed?” I ask, studying her face carefully.

“I don’t know if I understand.”

“Before we went to get Joseph, you said you didn’t want to be with me anymore. You were unwavering, in fact.”

“Have you changed your mind?”

“No, I never go back on a decision. I want you.”

“I don’t know how we’re going to make this work.”

“You don’t know how we’ll make what work, Cecily? We are free.”

She doesn’t say anything. I take her hand again and start walking down the stairs.

It’s freezing—I’ve broken out in a cold sweat—so after positioning the baby monitor on the kitchen table, I sit her on the counter and fit between her legs.

Cecily looks silently around the room and then at me. I know neither of us can forget what happened here. A desperate act of desire, passion, one that perhaps created an eternal bond between the two of us.

“What will we have to work on?” I repeat the question.

“Being together.”

“Are you afraid of being pregnant?”

“Yes, I am, but that’s not why I want more. It’s you. Us together. However, it will be a mess. I will be your babysitter during the day and your girlfriend at night.”

“Why not a full-time girlfriend ?”

“In that case, I would have to move into my apartment again. You would need another nanny for Joseph. I don’t want to leave him.”

“Why would you need to leave him? Say what’s on your mind, Cecily. You’re talking in code. That doesn’t work for me. I like everything clear.”

She swallows hard. “I’m proposing a secret relationship.”

“What? I’ve never hidden myself. I don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

“You’ve never hidden because you’ve never needed to bring any women into your house, but you never took them on either. With me, you’ll only do it because I have to be here. Don’t you realize we’re a mess?”

I pull her close, cupping her face. “Yes, we are a mess. I don’t like mess, but I like you.”

“You want me, you mean.”

“Madly. Right now, I want to pull your panties to the side and fuck you hard, but I like you too, even if I didn’t plan on it.”

“Can you plan this kind of thing? If so, please tell me how.”

“Why? You’re with me now. No need for plans for liking other guys anytime soon. Maybe never.”

“Don’t say things like that.”

“Why not? It’s something we have to consider.”

“I’m scared. I’d rather not think about the possibility of a baby until it becomes real.”

“Two weeks.”

“What?”

“That is the time it will take before you know whether you are expecting my child.”

“You don’t seem scared.”

“I’m a man, not a boy, Cecily. Children don’t scare me. And they aren’t made by just one person. My active participation was required. I never run away from my responsibilities.”

“I wasn’t implying that you would, but what I was thinking was that when you talk about children and marriage, you believe that you will be getting the mother as a freebie. You weren’t in love with Sue. And you’re not with me, either, because we barely know each other. How can you even consider linking your life to mine forever?”

“I believe in destiny. If it has to happen, it was written that it would be like this. Our meeting was unusual, to say the least.”

“Just like with your first wife.”

I frown, thinking about something that’s never occurred to me.

What the hell was Sue doing near the bank? At the time, when she regained consciousness, she said she had bought the second-hand stroller she was carrying that day, but there are no stores or thrift stores around that area. Commercial buildings only.

I never thought about that before. Maybe the conversation with Odin turned on my distrust.

“No, not like what happened with Sue. With her, I felt protective because she was pregnant. I want you for yourself.”

“ Desire,” she repeats.

“Yes. What’s wrong with that? Can you deny that you feel it too?”

“I’m not denying it.”

“I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want another night nanny for my son. Let’s renegotiate your terms.”

“We keep everything secret until we take the pregnancy test. Maybe it will come back negative, and maybe, by then, we’ll see that everything between us was nothing more than a strong attraction, and then we’ll be able to go back to the way we were before we got together.”

I should feel relieved about the proposal. Cecily is offering me two weeks of no-strings-attached sex and telling me that if she’s not pregnant, I’ll be free again.

I don’t feel relieved, but rather pissed. “Why are you so detached?”

“What?”

“How can you be like this? I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I know that women, as a rule, get more attached, and you’re inexperienced, Cecily. But you’re acting as if what happens between us is something you experience every day.”

Her face falls, and she jumps down from the counter.

“Stop trying to run away every time you are confronted.”

“I’m not running away, but I am upset by what you said. You know I’ve never experienced what we did together. I was a virgin. You were my only. My first everything.”

Words hang heavy between us. Their strength hits us simultaneously.

I walk over to her, pick her up, and lean her against the wall. “Say it again.”

“You are my only. My first everything.”

I pull her panties to the side and lower my zipper, entering her pussy completely.

“We can’t do it like this.”

“I’m not going to come inside you, but I want to feel you wetting me. Repeat that you are mine.”

“I’m yours.”

I fuck hard, without pity. “If you are mine, why this detachment, then?”

She grabs my shoulders and starts to open my shirt, kissing my chest, biting me. “Because I’ve never had anything. Neither dreams nor hope. I’m afraid to feed them, to empty myself into them until there’s nothing left of me.”