Chapter 20 Swear to Me #2
“Promise you’ll never deny me again. Until you do, I’m going to keep denying you. Every night, I’m going to bring you right to the edge only to pull you back. Over and over.”
It was then that he teased my clit the way I had craved earlier, tormenting me with a high that was near but out of reach, like a mirage.
“You’re a sadist!”
“Yes. Until you give me your word, I’ll enjoy tormenting you just as much as I’d enjoy pleasing you. Your choice.”
He ran his tip over my intimate area, coating it in my arousal.
“Oh, for crying out loud! I promise! Now fuck me already.”
His hand crashed against my hip with a sharp crack, its impact searing my nerve endings with a violent need more than with pain.
“Is this how you speak to me? Promise what?”
“Sir, I promise I’ll never deny you again.”
With a hum of approval, Einar pushed himself inside me fully and then ground his hips against mine in a smooth, circular motion.
My innards turned to foam. And then the foam fizzled and spilled out of me as a cry of complete surrender. There was no stopping it.
He ceased moving with a frustrated groan. He stepped back, almost escaping from my intimate clasp once again, hands firm on my rear to deter me from any act of rebellion.
“NO! I promised! Don’t stop, please, you know I can’t take it ...”
“No, but we really can’t have you screaming like that,” he said and, without much ceremony, gagged me with a piece of fabric.
Given its texture and a vaguely intimate smell, I realised it was my underwear and savoured its taste of humiliation.
“That’s my good girl. Now you can be free.”
His hands were back on my hips and then he finally denied me no more, only himself surely, because he took enough time to make me reach my satisfaction repeatedly until I quaked uncontrollably in a state between consciousness and oblivion, each fibre of me existing only for the powerful currents that ran through me from the site of our joining, our connection the only lifeline I had to the outer world.
“So ... what brought this on?” Einar asked me some time later as we lay next to each other on the rough, patchy ground.
My nostrils tingled with the smell of damp earth.
I had been listening out for the owl’s hooting but didn’t hear it again.
Perhaps the bird had flown away. The night was dark, and even though the air was of the distinctly fresh mountain variety, the lack of light gave it an intimate, thick, cocoon-like quality.
“Well ...” I sighed heavily, considering how to answer him. “Tell me and be honest, please. Does it ever feel empty for you between us? Knowing that it’s futile, you know ... from nature’s standpoint?”
My head rested on his shoulder, and I felt rather than saw him move as he looked down on me sharply.
“Uhm, Ren, as far as I recall, I’ve been in fact trying to make sure that I don’t get you pregnant.” He stumbled on his words a little uncertainly. “You know, by ... arriving at my own finale externally ...”
“I am aware,” I assured him dryly, “but does it bother you that you don’t really have to? That we can likely never create a new life together?”
“I think we’re more of a destructive force, my girl. The both of us.”
“Be serious. Doesn’t it seem pointless sometimes without the purpose it’s meant to have?”
He hoisted me up so that we could speak face to face, even though the shine of his eyes was all that I could see of his.
“Ren,” he said emphatically, “I don’t know how else to say this, in my lifetime of not giving fucks, this is the most I’ve ever not given a fuck about something.”
I didn’t take his words lightly. As much as he enjoyed wheedling vulgarity out of me, he himself hardly ever swore when talking to me. When he did, it was for emphasis.
I nodded doubtfully, unsure if he would see me do so.
“Besides, the purpose it’s meant to have?
Please. As far as I’m concerned, a baby would have been a byproduct of what we have at best. Not the purpose at all.
No, listen.” Sensing that I was about to protest, his hand sought my face, and he covered my mouth with his finger, silencing me.
“I know what you meant, but even in nature, children are only the result of fulfilling a need. Not themselves its objective.”
“Hoot hoot,” sounded directly above us as if in agreement with Einar’s words, the owl alerting us to its continued presence.
“I’m not like Petr. To look at you and only see the one thing you cannot do is like looking at the Sistine Chapel and only seeing a building. And it reflects solely on the person looking. Not on you.”
He laid his hand flat on my lower stomach, where my scar was concealed underneath my clothing. I suppressed the urge to shrug it off, knowing it was no accident that Einar placed it there specifically.
“You’re fascinating, Ren, one of a kind. I knew almost from when I first met you that you were like me. A wolf among sheep.”
I sensed his smile somewhere above the corner of my eye.
“Without you, the world was grey, and now there’s colour in it. That’s what I care about.”
It was getting colder, and I snuggled closer to him. Instantly, he wrapped his arms tighter around me, supplying me with his own bodily heat.
“I’ve never told you this, but my mother left shortly after I was born. She went back to Norway and never came back. Never tried to get in touch with my dad again once the divorce went through. Never asked after me.”
“Oh, Einar, I’m so sorry.” I propped myself on my elbow and kissed him, not minding the dirt and pebbles that cut into my forearm. “Now I feel bad for every time I complained to you that I never knew my father. Why didn’t it even occur to me that you may have had it worse?”
Einar made an indeterminate sort of noise at the back of his throat to convey his sangfroid as far as that topic went.
“My point is, I’ve seen it first-hand that a relationship is never not threatened, never not altered, by the addition of a child.
” He paused for a second, considering. “Why risk something that’s already perfect?
All the pleasure I can have with you without ever being forced to face the consequences of my actions.
All the passion never to be extinguished by the onerous demands of its own products . ..”
His breathing slowed while speaking the last two sentences, and his posture changed, his whole body tightening as he kissed me with unusual tenderness and his hands sought my hips.
“If only there weren’t something so very appealing about being the man who finally gives you what you want the most.” He took a deep breath, and I felt him stiffen in the dark with the air of someone making a monumental decision.
“That is to say ... I’m happy for us to try.
If you want whatever little chance I can give you? ”
I froze, my heart speeding up and my throat suddenly very dry, my very senses assaulted by the unreality of what he was suggesting.
“Are you serious?!”
“Always.”
“But you just said ...”
“I know what I said.”
“But you know how unlikely it is!”
“Not what I asked.”
“Even if it did happen, it would be so dangerous.”
“I dread to think. But I want it to be your choice.”
“But what if the impossible does happen and I get pregnant immediately? You need me for clearing!”
Einar exhaled heavily with exaggerated impatience. Despite not being able to see his face clearly, I could visualise his expression: eyebrows arched, eyes sharp and penetrating as always, and the slight tugging of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
“Do you want it or not, Ren? That’s all you need to decide, simple as that. I’ll take care of the rest, no matter what.”
The answer was on the tip of my tongue, and yet I hesitated.
Yes, I wanted it, damn it, even though I knew I shouldn’t have.
Not only because Einar and I hadn’t known each other for long.
Not even because, as I had just pointed out to that slovenly woman in red, getting pregnant on purpose during the worst pandemic in history was completely irresponsible.
I could live with being a hypocrite. No, the main reason why I had to refuse was that I knew, I knew, that in my circumstances, hope could only lead to heartbreak. I had to say no ...
“My answer is yes,” I said instead, elated as well as resigned. “Yes, I’ll take whatever chance I can get.”
He exhaled very heavily, his breath shaky, and his posture changed to convey the angst of someone who knew that something he had feared was about to happen.
“It’s close to impossible.” I ran my hand along the side of his face. “My surgeon told me it likely wouldn’t happen even with the help of modern medicine, let alone without it.”
“I know. I doubt I’d have the courage to even suggest it otherwise, knowing the risks for you. No matter how appealing the idea is of seeing your pussy covered in my cum.”
He sought me in the dark, and his lips pressed against mine with agitated urgency.
“So that’s your motivation. I should have guessed ...”
The owl hooted for the final time before departing with a loud flap of its wings.