Chapter 20: Final Feast
The sterile glow of the maternity suite was a world away from the gilded studio, but the tension felt the same, just distilled, concentrated like a chemical under pressure. Lavender from a diffuser clashed with the astringent bite of antiseptic, unable to mask the underlying scent of my mother’s perfume—Vance Legacy, her empire in a bottle. It clung to her as she stood by the glass wall, a silhouette observing the city as if it were a board laid out for her taking.
My body was a separate country now, one ruled by deep, roiling contractions that came like tidal pulls. The bed’s adjustable backrest was raised, a pathetic throne. I wore only a thin hospital gown, open at the back, the sheets crisp and unyielding beneath me.
Julian hadn’t left. He’d been a silent, brooding statue in the corner for hours, watching my mother’s every move, his earlier fury in the studio cooled to a hardened, watchful ice. The nurses spoke to him in hushed, respectful tones he barely acknowledged.
Another contraction seized me, a fist tightening deep in my core. I gritted my teeth, breathing through it as the monitor beeped a frantic rhythm beside me.
“Breathe, Eliza,” my mother said, not turning from the window. “Panic is unproductive.”
“She’s not panicking,” Julian’s voice cut through the room, flat and final. “She’s working. There’s a difference your spreadsheets never taught you.”
Eleanor turned, a sharp smile on her lips. “And you’re an expert on labor now, Julian? How… domestic.”
The contraction peaked, a white-hot band of pressure, and a low groan escaped me. The moment it ebbed, leaving me shaking, Julian was moving. He crossed the room in three strides, dismissing my mother’s presence entirely. He perched on the edge of the bed, his hand finding mine, his grip crushing. Not comfort. Anchorage.
“Where’s the doctor?” he asked, his eyes on mine, searching.
“Resident said it could be hours yet,” I managed, my voice thin.
“Hours,” he repeated. The word seemed to trigger something in him. His gaze flicked over my face, down to the damp neckline of the gown, to the mighty curve of my belly under the thin cotton. A possessive heat, banked since the studio, reignited in his eyes.
My mother let out a soft, disapproving sigh. “Perhaps some ice chips would be more useful than theatrics.”
Julian ignored her. He leaned in close, his mouth a breath from my ear. His other hand slid up my thigh, pushing the gown aside. “You’re dripping,” he murmured, a dark, intimate observation. “I can smell it. Even through all this hospital shit. Even through her fucking perfume.”
His fingers touched me through the damp cotton of the disposable underwear. I jerked, a spark of purely electric sensation shooting through the dull ache. “Julian, not now—”
“Now,” he said, the word absolute. “Before the world changes. Before he changes everything.”
He didn’t wait for permission. He hooked his fingers into the elastic and pulled, the fabric tearing easily. The cool air hit my bared skin. He shifted his body, blocking my mother’s view, creating a private, brutal alcove with his own form.
“What are you doing?” Eleanor’s voice sharpened.
“Leaving,” Julian said, not looking at her. “You should, too.”
“I am not leaving my daughter—”
“You already did.” His hand was between my legs now, pressing firmly against my swollen flesh. “Years ago. You just stuck around for the portrait.” He looked over his shoulder, his expression devoid of any warmth. “Get out.”
It was the same command from the studio. Here, in this sterile room, it was even more devastating. My mother stood frozen, her composure cracking to reveal sheer, baffled rage. She saw him then, not as a son-in-law, but as a hostile force, a barbarian at the gate of her orderly world.
“Eliza,” she said, her voice tight.
I looked at her, at the woman who had orchestrated my life like a merger. Then I looked at Julian, at the fierce, terrible certainty in his face. I gave the smallest nod.
She left. The door hissed shut behind her, leaving a vacuum of silence filled only by the beeping monitor and my ragged breath.
Julian turned back to me. His eyes were wild, unguarded. “I need you,” he said, the admission ripped from him, raw and ugly. “I need this. One last time.”
He didn’t mean sex. He meant ownership. Claim. A reiteration of the bond before it was irrevocably altered by a third life.
He pushed me gently but insistently down against the raised backrest, his strength effortlessly arranging my heavy body. He slid down the bed, his expensive trousers scraping the floor, and pushed my thighs apart, his head going between them.
His mouth was on me, hot and demanding, before I could form a thought. His tongue, thick and skilled, laved a broad stripe through my soaked folds, then zeroed in on my clit, swollen and throbbing from the contractions. He sucked it into his mouth, and the sensation was a lightning bolt, cleaving through the deep muscular pain with shocking, bright pleasure.
“Oh, god—” I gasped, my hands tangling in his hair.
“Mine,” he growled against me, the vibration shivering through my core. “This cunt is mine. Gonna make you come one last time before this baby steals it from me.”
His words were filthy, wrong, and they sent a fresh flood of heat between my legs. He was relentless, his tongue circling, flicking, sucking with a desperate hunger, as if he could drink the essence of me and keep it. One hand slid up to cup my breast, kneading the full, tender weight, his thumb rubbing rough circles over the nipple until it beaded painfully, a drop of colostrum dampening the gown.
Another contraction began to build, a deep, inward clenching. “Julian… wait, it’s coming—”
“Come first,” he ordered, his voice muffled against me. “Come for me. Now.”
He plunged two fingers deep inside me, curling them, finding a spot that made my back arch off the bed. He fucked me with his fingers, hard and fast, in counterpoint to the exquisite torture of his mouth. The two sensations—the mounting, inevitable crest of the contraction and the sharp, coiling pleasure he was orchestrating—collided.
Pleasure won.
It tore through me, a brutal, dazzling wave that made me scream, a raw sound that drowned out the monitor’s beep. My body clamped down around his fingers, pulsing, milking them. He groaned into me, lapping up the rush of wetness, drinking it down as I shuddered.
The crest of the orgasm blurred seamlessly into the peak of the contraction, one intense wave rolling into another, different kind of agony. I sobbed, overwhelmed, completely conquered.
He rose above me, his lips glistening, his eyes blazing with a feral triumph. He fumbled with his belt, his hands uncharacteristically clumsy. He freed his cock, thick and violently erect. He was already positioning himself, the head nudging my entrance, stretched and slick from his attentions.
“Julian, the baby—” I panted, the rational world trying to reassert itself through the haze.
“He can wait,” he muttered, driving into me with one deep, claiming stroke.
I was impossibly full, stretched tight around him. He bottomed out, his hips flush against mine, and held there, a shudder running through his frame. He dropped his forehead to mine, his breath hot and ragged.
“See?” he whispered, a desperate edge to his voice. “Still mine.”
He began to move, slow, deep, piston-strokes that rocked the entire hospital bed. Each thrust was a assertion, a reconquest. His hands gripped my hips, holding me in place for his invasion. The sounds were obscene—the wet slap of skin, his ragged grunts, my broken whimpers that were part pain, part a dark, shameful ecstasy.
He was chasing his own end, his rhythm becoming frantic, brutal. He fucked me like he was trying to brand himself inside me, to leave a permanent imprint next to the child fighting to enter the world. His release, when it came, was a harsh, guttural shout against my neck. He pulsed deep within me, his body rigid, as if pouring his very essence into the same space our child occupied.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of our breathing, the slowing beep of the monitor.
Then, a new, stronger contraction gripped me, a powerful, unmistakable urge. My body bore down, utterly beyond my control.
Julian pulled out of me slowly, collapsing back on the bed beside me, spent. He saw the change in my face, the focus shifting inward to a primordial process he couldn't command.
A different kind of fear flashed in his eyes.
The door swung open. A nurse bustled in, her eyes taking in the scene—my exposed state, Julian hastily adjusting his clothes, the charged, humid air in the room. Her professional mask didn’t flicker.
“Okay, Momma,” she said, her voice cheerfully impersonal. “Let’s check you. Looks like things are moving right along.”
She moved to the end of the bed, as Julian straightened his suit, his expression smoothing back into its usual impenetrable mask. But his hand found mine again under the sheet, his fingers lacing through mine, holding on with a grip that felt, for the first time, less like possession and more like a man clinging to a cliff’s edge. The world was shifting, and his empire, his control, his claim, meant nothing in the face of what was coming next.