Swept Away (6 page)

He hisses and presses his forehead back down against her breasts, holds still there and makes some noises high and desperate like whimpering. “Fucking, shit,” he groans, wet and broken into her skin.

“I still want you,” Amber admits, she brings her legs up around his waist and holds him there. “Please, I just—I want this.”

He moans as she finds the head of his dick and it skitters off her belly. Breathlessly he agrees, promises her, “Okay. I’ll pull out before I come, okay?”

“Okay. Yes. Okay.”

Her head rocks back for the second time that night, this time swaddled in the soft press of pillows. He’s just as tight a fit as she’d feared and he burns going in, stretching her wider and wider on one long unending thrust.

It burns, it burns so bad though she’s used dildos before. But the feeling of getting filled, having him in there…fuck, that makes it all worth it.

He grunts, softly patient as he pushes himself in, slow increment by fucking inch. His arms brace himself up over her head, their fingers entwined and she squeezes down hard as he finally bottoms out, making her gasp with how much of him there is filling her up. His balls are brushing against her ass, her legs wrapped firmly around his waist and his jaw is clenched from how badly he’s restraining himself from just taking what he wants. She can see his pulse jump in his temple and it makes her pussy flood with slick, arousal shuddering through her.

She knows it’s stupid to agree to let him fuck her bare but she’s never wanted another human being as much as she wants him. It equals the fervor with which she wanted Michael, but different, more real, he’s actually in her arms, his chest squashing down her breasts so her stiff nipples sting with a beautiful hurt, his sweet breath mingling with her own, tongue sucking kisses out her mouth. It’s real. It’s what she wants.

Amber releases one of his hands and caresses his face. “Fuck me,” she breathes.

He does.

He fucks her deep and hard, as she bucks up to meet each thrust, slamming their hips together and rocking his bed with loud unmistakable crashes of the head board thumping into the wall above.

He fucks her until she’s trembling, caught on the precipice of another spine melting orgasm and stuck there.

He nips at her throat and soothes it with his tongue, growls into her mouth that he’s not leaving until Wednesday and laughs when she gasps out: “I don’t know your name.”

“Michael,” he groans, “Michael Westlake.”

Amber’s pussy clenches and convulses around his hard length as she realizes he’s not a stranger after all, she knows him almost as well as she’s known herself.

He keeps on humping and thrusting as she breaks apart, screaming her pleasure to the world.

He fucks her and fucks her and she takes it, loving every last second.

He takes her virginity in the most perfect way, even if it’s not flowers and candles and softly sweet with his mouth pressed against her pulse point like she’d fantasized about. Those were mostly the imaginings of a romance-soaked youth and his strength at her fingertips, his force pressing her mouth open to accept his tongue, his thick thighs between her legs, opening her up, it’s better.

Then fucks her full of his come, promise forgotten as his own orgasm seizes his muscles tight.

Amber melts into him as his hand trips down to her clit, she bucks her hips and rolls into his touch and orgasm swallows her up.

* * * *

She’s never sobered up so fast, not that she makes it a practice to get drunk in the first place.

“Michael?” Amber asks when her heart has settled down and she’s no longer on the brink of an attack. His cock is softening inside her and her legs are still around his waist, slick with sweat.

He moans, “Amber” into her throat. And at first she thinks it’s an answer to her question but then she realizes…she hasn’t told him her name. Not once has she said her name tonight.

Amber pushes him up and he goes loose limbed and flops onto his back, an arm thrown over his eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbles thick and hoarse, “I mean I don’t know your name so I can’t really—” he breaks off with a laugh that’s more hysterical than amused. “If you tell me your name, I’ll call you that instead. You just remind me of someone and I—”

Amber leans over him, lets her hair fall across his face as she moves his arm so she can see those beautiful eyes again. “Someone you know?”

His eyes soften as he looks up at her. “Someone I’ve been in love with for a very long time,” he admits quietly, “I’m just too much of a coward to tell her. God, I suck at this. I’m sorry, it was supposed to be your night, you just let me have your—you know, and I’m talking about loving someone else. Can you tell I don’t do this—pretty much ever?”

Amber laughs, just a soft small chuckle, and puts her fingers over his mouth.
It’s good to know he still rambles and says ‘you know’ every other breath when he’s nervous. Talking by letter left a lot to be desired.
“Michael, you can call me Amber. It is my name after all.”

She just looks at him until he gets it, a wide grin pulling sappy-stupid at her mouth.

Under her hand his chest has stopped moving, by the way his eyes widen it’s because he’s holding his breath not because she’s killed him with the surprise. “Amber Moore?”

“It’s me,” she confirms simply, “I told you I was coming to Australia, you’re the one that pulled out last minute.”

The words hardly leave her mouth before he’s crushing her to his chest and enveloping her in another spine-melting, knee-weakening, soul-shaking kiss. He doesn’t let her up for a long time and she doesn’t mind.

Their next time is just as slow and soft and sweet as every imagining, better. His hands caress every inch of her body, his mouth takes and tastes her entirety. And when he slides back in, sticky wet from their first time, slick on her own juices, she receives him eagerly, her hips helping to guide him in.

That’s the third time she falls in love with him. Hard and fast. Wildly, unbridled love too eager to bury herself within him, and have him melt into her just the same.

He comes in her a second, third, fourth time over the course of an unending weekend, fills her with his seed. And she lets him and they’re both stupid and she doesn’t care because he’s hers.

By the final time they’re both crying out into each other’s mouths, sticky and wet, her hands scrabbling at his broad slick shoulders, his tangled in her hair.

* * * *

“I imagined it,” Michael whispers into her hair, lips brushing over her temple on each word. “How you’d feel underneath me. Granted, I might not have been envisioning these quite so big.”

Teasingly a hand drops down to one of her breasts, swollen and warm from his lips not fifteen minutes before sucking on them eagerly. He squeezes gently and it stings, she slaps his hand away.

Amber is too happy with him in her arms to sulk for long. “Is it okay?” She could smack herself when the words wobble free.

Michael leans up long enough to swallow her insecurities in a heady kiss, squeezing her even closer along his side. “Amber, you don’t understand how happy I am right now, or else you wouldn’t have to ask that. You’re gorgeous. Everything: your ass, your waist, your breasts, your mouth, you’re so fucking beautiful it’s ridiculous.”

It’s her turn to initiate the kiss.

When they finally release each other they’re panting slightly.

They lay there for a long time wrapped in each other’s arms.

“Why’d you say you couldn’t make it?” Amber asks low, eyelids heavy and the smell of their love heavy in her lungs.

He’s silent for so long she’s afraid he’s fallen asleep.

“I was scared to see you,” he finally admits.

“Scared of what?”

“That you’d be able to tell…how much I love you. And you’d not care.”

Amber snuggles in deep to his side. “Never, I’d never not care. I’ve loved you for four years.”

Chapter Four

They have two weeks together and they make love every night, wake up in each other’s arms every morning. Sometimes she rolls over and just holds him, runs her hands down his beautiful body and touches and revels in the fact that she can. Anytime she wants. Other times he’s the one reveling and she’s never known someone could make love with just the use of their fingers and their mouth, but Michael does and she rides the crest he brings and crashes back to ground in his arms over and over again.

The only part of Australia she sees after the first night is the part of it confined to his bed, or her bed.

They use condoms every time after because she’s not on the pill and they proved over and over that he was crap at pulling out.

When she broaches the topic he blushes guiltily deep red, she’s never seen him blush like that before, and admits that her contractions are really tight and surprise him into coming before he can stop himself. Some days it feels like Michael can make her come just by looking at her so she certainly can’t help him with that; condoms it is.

It’s sort of disappointing after those first moments of bare intimacy but neither one of them are ready to be parents, she’s scared to try spermicide with all the allergies she has, and there’s no way to get birth control pills without her doctor’s advice so what else can they do?

The day she boards the plane to go back home comes too soon. Michael drops her off at the airport and kisses her long and deep in front of everyone, who ‘ooo’ and squeal and catcall while his hands grip her ass and pull her bodily into him.

“I don’t want to lose this,” he says. “I have less than a year and then I’m out, I’ll get a job or go back to school or something but I wanna be where you are.”

Amber melts into him. “Yes, to everything. I want that too.”

* * * *

A month later, and it’s been the longest month of her life. Something’s wrong. With her, with the world, with life.

School is a week and a half from ending, and her family life is finally starting to settle back down. They’re in counseling now, Mom has a ‘sex addiction,’ Amber rolls her eyes every time she thinks about it.

Michael still writes and Amber is prompt with returning every letter. The weird thing is the tone of them don’t really change, he still tells her everything, except now that everything revolves around the life they’re both planning for themselves. He’s going to apply to a community college in Oregon and they’ll get an apartment together. She’s not sure how she’ll get out of paying for room and board at the University but she’ll figure it out when it’s time. She’s going on a partial academic scholarship and the rest her college savings her parents put away for both herself and her brother, who ultimately decided against college and is now, crazily, touring with his rock band. Who would have thought that would have worked out? So she’s got a little more money at her disposal than she might have otherwise.

For the first time in four years everything is going right. Except for the dizzy spells she’s been having, or the cramping that feels like a period starting without any sign of her actual period, and the way her breasts hurt if she just tugs on her bra too hard.

Amber isn’t stupid. She knows something is wrong the moment Monday morning rolls around and she gets violently nauseous over breakfast.

She knows something is wrong.

She doesn’t want to admit to herself what it is.

* * * *

Amber doesn’t bother with pregnancy tests, she goes straight to the doctor instead. She’s eighteen now so he can’t tell her parents unless she gives him permission which, hell no, she won’t be doing any time soon.

He’s got her knees up in these stirrup things that she’s used once before when they took her Pap. It’s just as embarrassing. The nurse is up by her head jotting something down on her clipboard and Amber secretly suspects that’s just her way of pretending they’re giving her privacy when really they’re not.

“Are you ready, Amber?” Dr. Walters asks. He’s been her pediatrician since they’ve moved here and has talked her through every embarrassing doctor-patient moment she can remember.

She still flushes when his latex covered hands press inside. It’s cold and embarrassing and hurts a little as well. And nothing at all like making love to Michael, thank God. She’d feared, once upon a time before Michael had wiped all those crazy thoughts away, that having sex would be kind of like getting a check-up. Prodding, invasive, huge pointy things stretching and poking at her most sensitive parts.

The plastic snap of Dr. Walters’ gloves being removed brings her back to reality.

“All right, you can put your legs down, everything seems okay in there.” He tosses the gloves in the trash and washes his hands in the sink.

Amber’s cold and sticky from that slimy stuff he used down there to ease the way. She’s terrified and embarrassed and she wants to take a bath.

Which is of course the time her blood test comes back and Dr. Walters confirms, “Congratulations. You’re having a baby.”

* * * *

The rest of the trip is a blur. Amber’s not sure how she gets home, or gets dressed, or keeps breathing for that matter. She’s pregnant. With Michael’s child.

She’s going to be a mother. How the hell is she going to be someone’s mother?

She still feels sick but it’s with the heavy knowledge that she’s not ready for this, none of it, and not just the general nausea she’s been feeling as of late because she’s…

She’s pregnant.

The first thing she does is find the number to Michael’s base. He doesn’t like her to call there because the only time he gets calls is when it’s an emergency and it terrifies him to hear the summons that he’s needed on the phone. But, Christ, if this isn’t an emergency she doesn’t know what is.

She blurs through asking for him, lips numb and uncooperative, hand returning time and again to her stomach. There’s a child in there. A baby inside. Michael’s and hers and she’s not ready for this shit, dear God why didn’t they use a condom. She will every single time from now on if someone just takes it away!

His voice comes on the line and it’s wrecked, terrified, “Amber? What is it? What’s wrong?”

And she nearly tosses the phone then and there, along with the little bit of breakfast she’d managed to force down and all the bitter acids in her stomach floating around.

Floating in her stomach along with a baby.

“I’m pregnant,” she blurts, tears are thick in her voice but they haven’t fallen yet.

And there’s a long silence.

And then softly, he asks, “Is it mine?”

She does throw the phone then. And she does cry. She sobs and she heaves for breath and when she’s done she does throw up.

Both Mom and Dad find her there on the kitchen floor, surrounded by her own mess, falling apart with the dial tone heavy and screeching loud in the air.

* * * *

“You have some options,” Mom says. They haven’t gotten along in almost five years, since the moment Dad broke down in tears in their living room moaning, “Why, Patricia? Why? Why? Why?” while Amber and Jeremy stood on the stairs, frozen in panic. Neither of them had ever seen their father cry before then.

Amber needs her now though. Dad doesn’t understand, he’d just as soon “beat that little punk’s ass” as figure out what she’s going to do now. Actually, he’d probably prefer the latter. His face has stayed a steady shade of angered red since Amber has managed to hiccup out her confession.

“You can have the baby,” Mom says calmly, her hands envelop Amber’s own trembling uncoordinated ones. “Or you can have an abortion.”

Amber flinches away at that one and Mom grabs on tight to keep her from fleeing. She doesn’t want to talk about any of this. She wants Michael’s arms around her holding her tight and all this to just be a dream. One long, terrible nightmare.

“If you have the baby you can either keep it or we can find an agency and find a family who desperately wants one and will love it like their own.”

Amber’s eyes flood with tears again and there are little shudders still running through her body.

“Either way, baby, we’ll support you through this. Okay? Dad and I both, it’s going to be okay.”

Amber succumbs to sobs again and Mom pulls her down into her lap, her cool hands pressed against Amber’s face and wiping the tears as they fall.

* * * *

When Amber wakes up she’s in her own bed. Dad must’ve carried her there. She feels sore and fevered and she misses Michael so fiercely even though she’s angry at him the most.

She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. She feels empty inside, hollow, but she knows it’s not true. There’s life in her stomach and she’s not ready for it.

Amber tries thinking without all the terror and anguish, tries to push that away and just think it out like she would a school problem. Or a debate round.
Pros: Mom and Dad said they’d support her either way. Cons: Mom and Dad can’t support themselves most days. Jeremy got out of the house as fast as he could and Amber is right on his heels except for the fact that now she’s got a child of her own baking in her belly and how the hell is she supposed to do school like that?

She can’t. She’ll have to un-enroll, or apply to somewhere local and stay at home and then what? She’ll be raising a kid in the same household that nearly broke her. With the silence, with the screaming, with the promises that always get broken. With their constant fights that grind mind-numbingly from one day into the next.

And if she moves out? Then what? What kind of job can she have as a high-school graduate? She’s not going to ask Michael for money, even though she’s sure he’d give it to her, even after that terrible question she can’t believe he doesn’t love her and won’t try his best.

But she won’t because all he has is what the Navy gives him and that’s not terribly a lot, he’d planned on using it to pay for school himself, and…she doesn’t want to be the girl that decides on keeping a baby but then turns around and makes it the father’s problem. She’s seen that girl, that’s not her.

She could use the money her parents saved for college ‘cause if she moves out she’s not going to college anytime soon. That’s a few thousand, it’d take her through the first couple of years at least.

But then…

Amber huffs a sigh and rubs her head, it’s pounding and sore as the rest of her.

Then, there’s the real problem. She’s not ready to be anyone’s mother. She doesn’t want to be, she
can’t
be. She wouldn’t be good at it even if she tried, not now. Not with her life bright and mapped out in front of her and a baby solidly not any kind of part of that plan. Not with her own childhood shredded behind her and the memories of it still ringing in her ears. Not with Michael and those soft, hesitant words still between them “is it mine?” like she could love anyone else, like she could offer herself up to anyone else.

She’s not ready to be a mom and he’s not ready to be a dad, and she just
can’t
.

Amber rolls into her pillow and sobs again.

* * * *

The summer is ending and fall is hovering on the horizon of every day. She’s supposed to be going to college soon. Really soon. But she doesn’t know if she will.

Fall is her favorite season. The air is crisp and cool around her and the pretty leaves dance as they float to the ground. Amber ties her hair back and throws her head back and takes a deep breath.