10. Ollie

CHAPTER 10

Ollie

I might have been slow on the uptake when Julia set me up for her little blackmail scheme, but there was no way to miss the pointed glances between Steph and her twin brother. Once I took notice, there was no way to miss the fact that Steph had filled out quite a bit. Her breasts were noticeably larger, but so was her midsection.

She couldn’t possibly be pregnant. We hadn’t… I hadn’t been able to be intimate with her after that night with Julia. Not because I didn’t want Steph more, but because I felt dirty and guilty and a whole lot of other shit that I didn’t want to transfer to her unwittingly. Instead, I’d alienated her.

Three months earlier

Work was miserable. All I wanted was to come home, say goodnight to my boy and curl up in Steph’s arms. The woman had a way of making me feel like I was home and nothing could go wrong.

Den was already asleep, so I kissed his head, whispered goodnight, and left him there to sleep peacefully in his room. He was the one person in this world I never had to worry about because my kid was happy, smart, healthy, and well-adjusted. A lot of that was down to my wife. She made him feel loved and accepted from day one even though she wasn’t his mother.

The only thing that would have been better is if Denmark’s real mom had stuck around and filled the shoes that Steph now did. It didn’t seem like that would ever be a possibility, and I’d almost given up on her ever coming back. Some days, I didn’t even want her to. When I really let myself think about it, there was no way she could ever compare to Steph. It was a fantasy that I carried over from my time with Julia.

By the time I made it to my room, the stress of the day settled onto my shoulders again. Steph was asleep already. A glance down at my watch showed that it was nearly midnight. Fuck! It had been one hell of a day with back-to-back meetings and then Demetri Vasilyev wanted to go out for drinks to seal the deal. He was one of my clients that would never take “No” as an answer, so I went and we spent far too much time at his club. Far more time that I wanted to spend, considering the day I’d had.

After I showered and climbed into bed, I slid over to wrap myself around my wife. Her warm body felt so soft and welcoming against my own. My lips met the arch of her neck and I planted a sweet kiss there as my fingers trailed up and down her thigh.

“Mmm.” Steph moaned sleepily before turning her head to look over her shoulder at me. “You were really late and I couldn’t stay awake. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, precious.” I almost cringed at the endearment, but managed to keep a straight face before offering her a smile. I’d started to call her that years ago when my best man, Caleb, had said she was just too precious for me at my wedding. For the longest time, it was almost an insult that I used to maintain the distance between my wife and me. She was too precious to understand the real reasons I’d married her.

These days, it had taken on a slightly different meaning. There was more affection behind the endearment than the old, teasing, taunt the word used to signify. Not that Steph knew the difference. To her, it was a real endearment that showed I loved her.

“Rough day?”

“Rough night too. My client insisted on drinks to seal the deal. Thought I’d never get back home to my family.”

My wife smiled at that before she stretched and turned her body enough to meet me half way for a kiss. The loving little peck she had expected quickly turned heated. Despite being tired, there was one tried and true way to rid myself of the residual stress of the day and that was to crawl between my wife’s creamy thighs and lose myself in her body for a little while.

I gently pulled Steph over onto her back and then eased her thighs apart. She smiled sweetly up at me as I crawled between her legs.

“Were your celebratory drinks at a strip club?”

My eyes shifted from where I’d been admiring her already damp pussy to look into her eyes. Her sense of humor always captivated me and it never failed to show on her face. Her eyes brightened as she grinned at me. “You did, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “It was his strip club, but we were in the owner’s lounge and there were no strippers in there, if that’s what you’re asking. You’re the only reason I’m right here,” I emphasized as I rubbed the head of my cock against her clit several times. “You make everything better, Precious.”

Her eyes glinted with a hint of moisture just as I lined up and drove my cock home in her sweet heat. “You like it when I call you that?”

“I like it when you come home and surprise me like this,” she answered in that teasing way of hers.

“Yeah, you like it when I call you Precious and fuck you into believing it.” If she knew what it had always meant to me, that would have been insulting. For the first time ever, I felt bad about thinking that shit. So, instead of fucking her hard and fast the way I normally would, I rolled my hips slowly and teased her with gentle movements.

Steph’s eyes widened at the change of pace. We had only ever fucked. I’d never slowed things down and made love to her because it was a line that shouldn’t be crossed for a woman who I had no intention of falling for – in the beginning.

“Ollie?” She questioned. My wife might have been oblivious to a lot of shit, but this was different and even she understood that.

“Shh,” I hushed her as I pulled out slowly and then raised her hips just a bit before gliding back inside at an agonizing clip. Her eyes rolled back as her fingers clawed into my forearms. “That’s it, Steph. Feel that?” I asked. She bit into her plump bottom lip and nodded as I stroked against that spot harder. Her pussy fluttered around my dick and it was me who had to hold back a moan then. “Yeah you do. You feel it better this way, every inch of you that I stroke is screaming for more as I pull back out.”

“Ollie,” Steph whimpered. The way she huffed out my name with such desperation would be replayed in my mind for years to come.

After putting a pillow under her hips to keep them tilted at just the right angle, I rode my wife with torturously slow strokes as my hands explored her body in a way I’d never allowed myself to do in the four years we’d been together. She was beautiful. Her dusky-rose nipples and the surrounding areola were like live wires as I touched and teased. The nipples standing at attention while the little bumps along her areolas demanded attention too.

I gave it to them as I kneaded her breasts and lightly pinched those nipples before leaning forward where I sucked them into my mouth one at a time. Each one grew harder as the wetness left behind by my mouth was exposed to the air.

My hips rocked forward and back, and with each suck on her exquisite tits, I gave a little swivel and swirl as I drove into her tight body. My mouth drew up as my need increased and I planted kisses along her collarbone, sucked at her neck, and then devoured her mouth as my thrusts increased. Steph’s hands, long since removed from the hold she had on my arms, trailed up my thighs and then dug in at my lower back, as if she could pull me closer. When that didn’t happen, she groaned illicitly and dragged her fingernails up my spine until she could grasp my shoulder blades with her hands while her legs wrapped around my middle and she pulled harder to get me deeper inside of her body.

“Getting close, sweet Stephanie?”

“Yes,” she whimpered against my shoulder as her teeth nipped me there. “Yes, Ollie. God, it’s never been this good.”

I didn’t miss the part she left off there. It had never been that good with me. I’d made her come before. I wasn’t a complete monster, but her needs had never been my focal point. It was only then, four years into our relationship, that I realized what I’d been missing out on. What we both had been missing out on. I promised myself then and there, since Julia had never come back, I was going to finally pack her away for good and give everything to my marriage. No more holding back.

Steph’s hips thrust upward to meet my own downward drive into her pussy and then, as if we decided it together, we both picked up the pace until we finally reached a frantic point of no return. My wife tipped over first and the way her cunt squeezed my cock made me forget that I needed to pull out. We were supposed to use condoms for a while because of the medication she’d taken for a recent round of strep throat that she’d caught from the kids at school.

I only allowed myself a fraction of a second to worry because there was no way I’d pull out and ruin the feeling of her pussy milking my cock like our very lives depended on it.

After a few minutes, Steph snuggled into my chest and kissed me just above my nipple. “That was everything, Ollie.” Her voice was a little rough around her normally sweet edges, giving away just how vocal she had been.

“I hope we didn’t wake Den with all that noise you were making.”

“I always thought everyone was full of crap when they said someone made them scream during sex,” she whispered. “Sorry, I’ll try to be quieter next time. At least Den usually sleeps like the dead.”

Her admission made me feel like shit. Our sex life had seriously been lacking. I always thought she had to fight to hold back on being vocal because she worried about my son overhearing us. I never realized it had never been an issue to begin with. That would have to change. My wife would have to try very hard not to scream during sex with me moving forward.

I winced as I thought about that night and the promise I’d made myself. There hadn’t been any sex moving forward. That had been the last time we were intimate. Three fucking months after that night of perfection with my wife and I’d thrown it all away for a mediocre hate-fuck with my ex that sent me down a guilty-spiral.

“We should probably sit down and talk about a few things,” Steph informed me on an overly loud exhale.

“Steph,” I called to her but she kept walking to the other room where she took a seat across the dining room table from where I entered. It was clear she meant to keep the table between us, but I ignored that and moved to take the seat beside her. “I’m so sorry for everything.”

“What does ‘everything’ mean, Ollie?”

“I’m sorry for ever being dumb enough to go there with Julia. I’m sorry that I got swept up in the nostalgia of being near her. I’m sorry that she had a plan to use me and that I fell right into that trap. Most of all, I’m sorry that you are the one who keeps getting hurt because of my stupid inability to realize she was never a good person to begin with.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know what you’re looking for here.”

“How about being sorry for the fact that you tricked me into marrying you?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sorry for that.”

“Are you kidding, right now?”

“Nope,” I continued to shake my head vigorously and grabbed for Steph’s hands, but she pulled them away. I stared into her whiskey-brown eyes and willed her to believe me. “I’m not sorry that you ended up married to me. That is one of the better decisions I ever made, even if it did take me too long to figure it out. The only thing I’m sorry about where all that is concerned is that I didn’t open up my heart to you right away.”

“So, you admit it. You used me as a live-in nanny for your son.”

One tip of my head was all the confirmation I could give her. “That was my original plan, but then we got to know one another better. You became a friend first, and then of course my lover.”

She scoffed at that. “That’s obviously nothing special to you.”

“No, you’re wrong. Until the incident with Julia, you were the only one. I swear to you, and I know my word doesn’t mean shit right now, but you were the only person I was with from the moment we went on that first date until Julia came to town three months ago.”

“Right. And then I was back to being nobody. Just the live-in babysitter.”

“No, Steph. No! That’s when I realized exactly what I stood to lose by going there with Julia. I realized she had never been worth a second thought of mine from the time she left. What I felt for you was stronger than anything I’d ever imagined with Julia. That I liked you more than I ever thought possible became painfully obvious the night I stupidly went there with her.”

“That’s gross. You realize that, right? You have to know how horrible that sounds. It took you sleeping with your ex to realize you liked me more?” She visibly shivered.

“I understand you’re seeing it one way and I get that it hurts to know that I undervalued what you meant to me before that. My mind was still clogged up with all the abandonment shit that I never bothered to sort out. I was still stuck on not letting anyone that close to me ever again while not realizing I had already let you in. Piece by piece, you dug your way deeper into my soul. Your laughter penetrated first. The way you teased and joked and lightened the very air around you made my barriers come down.”

She turned her head from me and her dirty blonde hair flitted down to hide her beautiful, fuller face from me. I didn’t like it one bit.

“The way you loved my son chipped away at another brick in my wall. The way you took care of both of us has continued to break down those barriers. You’ve been chipping away at my wall the whole time, and you did it in such a fucking gentle way that I didn’t even notice there was barely a wall left anymore.”

“Obviously, there was enough of one, since you chose to betray me and the vows we took.”

I looked away from Steph, not knowing how to make her understand something that only began to dawn on me recently. “I fixated on her for years. It wasn’t healthy. I’m the first to admit that. It wasn’t love for her. It was like putting a dream on hold and hoping when you picked it up again the thing that person did to disappoint you would not be a problem anymore. I don’t know that I’m explaining it well enough.”

“You know what? I get it,” Steph said without emotion. “That’s exactly how I felt when you put our relationship on pause. Only, up until that point, I’d been living under the delusion that we had a real relationship to begin with. It never even crossed my mind that I was simply an unpaid intern who you fucked when you got horny.”

“Jesus, Steph. It was never like that.”

“You all but admitted it was.”

“No. I explained that you meant more and more to me as time moved forward. You were never just an employee. You were a friend who grew into more.”

“That’s the crazy thing, Ollie. For me, you were always my boyfriend, the man I fell in love with, then my husband who I adored. All the while I was just a tepid relationship for you. I’ve loved you for years and you only just realized you might care about me. And the real kicker is that you claim to have done so in the midst of destroying me and what we had.”

What could I say to that? In a way, she wasn’t wrong, even if it felt blown out of proportion. I pulled Steph’s hands into mine and tried to make eye contact again but she refused.

“Are you pregnant?” I finally asked, my voice whisper fucking soft as I did.

“I didn’t want you to know.”

“You weren’t going to tell me?” That shocked the shit out of me. Of all the women I’d ever dated, Steph was the last person I would have thought would hide something as important as a pregnancy from me.

“I planned to, but not now, so soon after….” Her voice trailed off as she stared out the dining room window. “I would have told you after.”

“After?” I questioned, not liking what that one word implied. There was no way she meant she would have waited until after our child was born.

“After the divorce.”

I dropped her hands, shocked by that revelation. “That would be six months from now, at the earliest. Nine months since you must have gotten pregnant. You would have made me miss the whole pregnancy if Steve hadn’t drawn my attention to it?”

Her eyes finally met my own and I immediately wished they hadn’t. The soft, loving looks I was used to from my wife were replaced with pure hatred in that moment.

“Your actions are what would make you miss out – not me. We could have been happy. We could have done this together. You chose someone else instead. You chose your lies, your walls, your feelings , and your ex. You. You. You. The only choice you’ve made is for yourself.”

She could have run me over with a fucking tank and it wouldn’t have hurt as much as the truth did as she slapped me in the face with it.

“So, when you look back years from now, and wonder why I was the evil bitch who took it all from you, remember that you never once chose me. I had to choose myself. I chose my peace of mind. I chose a pregnancy without drama and other women involved. I chose to be less stressed and only be around people who really , truly love me.”

When I said nothing she continued. “You cause me stress, you take my peace, break my heart, wounded my soul, and you have well and truly proven that you do not love me . Why on Earth would I invite you to be a part of this? Why would I invite you to further ruin what is supposed to be a joyous occasion for me ?”

I was speechless. My wife had broken and become someone who I no longer recognized and I wasn’t dumb enough not to see the truth. I caused it. Her change was because of my bullshit.

“After the baby is here, you will be informed. After the baby is born, we will discuss how to coparent moving forward. Know this, if Jia is in your life, in any capacity, my baby will not be.”

“You need to watch the press conference. You’ll…”

“I watched it. I don’t trust you, your words, your promises, or how you react to her . So, heed my warning because my lawyer is drawing up a no contact order. Right now, it is only for Jia. It won’t take much to add another name to it.”

“Caleb already sent a text. Thanks to my speech for the cameras, the D.A. is opening an investigation.”

“I thought you had to press charges for that to happen?” Her hurt tone said more than her words. She didn’t believe I was over Jia because I didn’t press charges myself.

“I used it as leverage instead.”

“For what?”

“To make her sign away her parental rights to Denmark, so you could officially adopt him. If you still want that.”

“Of course, I want that. Denny-boy is mine.” The ferocity in her statement made me proud to have her as my son’s mother. She really would do anything for him, despite them having no shared DNA.

“We’ll make it legal for you.”

“Let me guess,” she stated snidely, “in exchange for not divorcing you?”

I shook my head. “No. I won’t coerce you into taking me back and not divorcing me. I’d never use my son that way.” She scoffed, and for good reason, since he was the reason we had ever gotten together to begin with. At the time, it had been something I was doing for him, so it didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

“Okay, how about this bit of logic, if I coerced you into dropping the divorce, I’d never know if you were with me for the right reasons or if you resented having to be here.” I realized immediately that was the wrong thing to say.

Steph laughed but it wasn’t her usual bubbly sound. It was something far darker. “You mean you don’t want our relationship roles reversed?”

“Right,” I huffed, wishing that I had more time to think out what needed to be said to convince my wife without making her hate me more than she already did. “I don’t ever want to sit there and wonder and throw in your face that you don’t really love me over and over again.”

“You don’t,” she challenged.

“I do,” I argued.

“Then why was the first time you ever said it to me AFTER you got caught having an affair?”

That couldn’t be right. She wouldn’t have married a man who never declared his love for her. I sifted through my memories, looking for one to refute her claims but I came up empty. “I didn’t realize,” I muttered.

“It’s easy not to realize when you refrain from saying something you don’t mean.”

“No, Steph.”

“Ollie, can we just stop with the lies? A person who loves someone not only tells them without even thinking about it, but they don’t turn around and betray them either. If you loved me, you never would have been tempted by your vile ex.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree. I won’t stall the divorce if that’s what you want, but I would like to be involved in your pregnancy. You already have a leg up on me in the bonding with the baby thing, since you’re carrying him or her. I’d like to be able to be involved too. You’re carrying our child. I don’t ever want them to feel unloved or unworthy of a parent the way Den has.”

“That’s a low blow, Ollie.”

“Not meant to be. It’s just the truth.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You good keeping Den with you until things calm down?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. I think it’s safer. I will need to be able to come visit my boy, though.”

“We’ll schedule it.”

“Right. I don’t want to upset you more than I already have, but you need to know that I’m not giving up on us.”

“You should. We were over the day you slept with someone else. I could have gotten over your other lies eventually. Cheating on me isn’t something I can move past.”

“Steph,” I started to beg.

“No, Ollie. You need to listen to what I’m saying. I will ALWAYS wonder. If you’re late, I’ll wonder who you’re with. If a phone call or text takes your focus away from me or the kids, I will wonder who in the hell is more important than us and why. That question will always be at the back of my mind now. If we were intimate again, I’d always compare myself to the nameless, faceless whoever you might be doing behind my back or the one I know you did already.”

Fucking hell. My stomach felt like it was full of rocks.

“To you, it was just a blip that you can somehow get over because it wasn’t as great an experience as you hoped it would be, what with the blackmail and all. To me, you ruined the very foundation of my life. Now, I have to question everything because I can’t trust myself to know when I’m being made into a fool. Not only did you marry me under false pretenses, but you also cheated on me and then carried on with your ex while lying to my face about what you were doing and where you were going for months. So, I was triple the fool.”

She could have taken a knife and plunged it into my heart and it would hurt less than her words and knowing what I’d done to her – to us.

“I’m going to give you space, Steph, but I am not giving up on us. I’ll prove to you that you can trust yourself and that one day, you’ll be able to trust me again too.”

Her head shook and the stiff muscles in her shoulders and neck stood out. It was time to leave because as she had already said, I was causing her stress. Too much of it.

I couldn’t give up on us, even if she wanted me to because she was my family. My wife. My love. The mother of my children. If it took me a lifetime, I wouldn’t stop until I fixed everything I broke between us.