Chapter 18: Le Dernier Mois
The door clicked shut behind Élodie, sealing them in the quiet of his apartment.The silence was a physical thing, thick and charged like the air before a storm. She stood just inside, her coat still buttoned, her hands knotted in front of her. She smelled of rain and cheap floral detergent.“You’re alone?” she asked, her voice small.
“My dad’s on night shift,” Owen said. He didn’t move from his spot by the door.LorHélène’s words were a brand on his brain. Be gentle this time.
“Do you want… something to drink?” The offer sounded hollow, a script from a different life.She shook her head, a quick, birdlike motion. Her eyes, usually so bright, were dull with a bruised exhaustion.She looked at the floor, then at him, then away. “I don’t know why I came.”
“You said you would.”
“I know what I said.” A tremor ran through her words. She finally unbuttoned her coat, letting it slide off her shoulders.Underneath, she wore a simple knit dress, one he remembered from school. It looked too big for her now.
He moved then, crossing the space between them slowly, giving her every chance to flinch away.She didn’t. She watched him approach with the fixed, fearful fascination of a rabbit before a snake. When he was close enough to feel the nervous heat coming off her body, he raised a hand and brushed a damp strand of hair from her cheek. She shut her eyes at his touch.“I’m sorry,” he whispered.It wasn’t a lie. The shame was a rot inside him, but it was real.
A single tear tracked through her freckles.“It hurt.”
“I know.” His thumb caught the tear. “It won’t tonight.”
He bent and kissed her, a closed-mouth press of lips that was achingly soft.She remained rigid for a heartbeat, then her mouth softened under his, yielding. A small, broken sound escaped her throat. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into an embrace that felt, even to him, like a grotesque parody of comfort. She buried her face in the gray cotton of his shirt—LorHélène’s shirt—and cried silently, her shoulders shaking.
He led her to his bedroom, a Spartan space dominated by a large bed and the ghosts of his childhood. He sat her on the edge of the mattress and knelt before her, taking her shoes off one by one.His movements were ritualistic, deliberate. He pushed the hem of her dress up her thighs, his hands warm and steady.She watched, mesmerized by his calm.
“Lie back,” he said.She did, her head sinking into his pillow. He hovered over her, caging her with his body, and kissed her again, deeper this time. He tasted the salt of her tears.His hands roamed her body, learning the new geography of her fear. He was tender, infinitely so. He undressed her with a slow reverence that felt more invasive than any violence. Every sigh she made, every tentative arch of her back, was a victory recorded in the cold ledger of his mind.See? he thought, to LorHélène, to himself.I can be this, too.
When he entered her, it was with a slow, persistent pressure.She was tight, unyielding at first, her body remembering only the last time. He whispered nonsense against her ear, sweet nothings that tasted like ash on his tongue, until she relaxed around him.The sex was quiet, rhythmic, a solemn pump of his hips. She clutched at his back, her nails digging in, not in passion but in a desperate search for anchorage.He made her come with his fingers while he moved inside her, a calculated kindness. Her climax was a silent, trembling thing, a seizure of release that left her weeping again.
He finished quickly after that, a few sharp, final thrusts, spilling into the condom with a grimace that had nothing to do with pleasure.He collapsed beside her, the sweat cooling on his skin. The gentleness had been the most exhausting thing he’d ever performed.
She curled onto her side, away from him.The silence stretched, broken only by their breathing. Outside, a siren wailed in the distance.His phone buzzed on the nightstand.Once. A single, imperious vibration.Élodie flinched at the sound.
Owen reached over and picked it up.The screen glowed in the dark.LorHélène: Is she still there?
He typed back, his movements shielded from Élodie’s view.Owen: Yes.
LorHélène: Send her home.It’s time.I need you.
He put the phone down. The warmth of the body beside him felt suddenly cloying, insubstantial.He got up without a word and walked to the bathroom. He didn’t look at himself in the mirror. He showered again, scrubbing the scent of Élodie’s fear and cheap soap from his skin. When he returned, dressed in clean jeans and a dark sweater, she was sitting up, the sheet pulled to her chin.
“You’re leaving?” Her voice was raw.“I have to go.”
“To her.” It wasn’t a question.
He didn’t deny it.He gathered his wallet and keys.
“What am I, Owen?” The question hung in the air, thin and desperate.
He paused at the door, looking back at her.She seemed so small in his big bed. A part of him, the old part, wanted to lie, to weave a beautiful, tragic story for them both.But that boy was gone. “You’re a lesson,” he said, his voice flat. “Go home, Élodie.”
The night air was a shock, clean and sharp. He drove across town with the windows down, letting the cold scour him. LorHélène’s apartment building was a dark silhouette against the city glow.He took the stairs two at a time, a familiar fervor building in his blood. He didn’t knock.The door was unlocked.
The living room was dark, but a line of warm light spilled from her half-open bedroom door. The low, slow thrum of a record player seeped out, a saxophone winding its melancholy through the hall.He pushed the door open.
She was a vision of decadent repose, propped against a mountain of pillows on the unmade bed. At eight months, her pregnancy was a vast, majestic arc beneath the thin silk of her chemise.The lamplight gilded the curve of her belly, the swell of her breasts. She held a glass of water in one hand, the other rested on the taut drum of her stomach, where a knee or an elbow made a fleeting, sliding bump beneath the skin.
“You reek of conscience,” she said, without looking at him. Her voice was a low, smoky drawl.“I did what you asked.”
“I know.I can feel it on you. The pathetic little effort.” She finally turned her head.Her eyes gleamed in the half-light. “But you’re here now.Where you belong.Come. Look.”
He approached the bed, drawn like a somnambulist.She took his hand and placed it firmly on her belly. The skin was hot, stretched tight as a sail. He felt a hard, rolling shift under his palm, a powerful, alien movement that was both horrifying and fascinating.
“He’s active tonight,” she murmured. “Maybe he knows his father’s here.”
The word dropped between them, toxic and heavy.Owen’s breath hitched. He’d avoided the math, the timelines.The possibility had lurked in the corners of his mind, a shadow he refused to examine.
She watched the understanding dawn on his face, her lips curling into a slow, victorious smile. “What?Did you think I just collected troubled boys?I breed them, Owen. Or at least, I breed this one.” She guided his hand lower, over the fierce, round prominence. “Your rugby build.My eyes, perhaps. A perfect little weapon, born from perfect little manipulations.”
A violent mix of revulsion and a twisted, possessive pride twisted in his gut. He was trapped, bound to her not just by will, but by blood.By a future screaming in that womb.
“You’re mine,” she continued, her voice hardening.“She was a palate cleanser. This,” she pressed his hand harder against her, “this is the main course. And you’re going to worship it. You’re going to worship us.”
She released his hand and shifted, sliding down the bed. With a grunt of effort, she spread her legs, the silk of her chemise riding up her thighs. The full, ripe delta of her was exposed, lips swollen and dark in the lamplight. The scent of her, musky and deep, filled the space between them.
“You’re all twisted up inside with her,” she said, her breath coming quicker.“I can smell it.Cleanse it. On your knees.”
He obeyed, the weight of her revelation driving him to the floor. The music swirled around them, a sad, sweet counterpoint to what was about to happen. He pushed her thighs apart wider, the reality of her advanced pregnancy a shocking backdrop to the raw sex of the moment. Her vulva was engorged, glistening with a need that was purely her own.
He leaned forward and dragged his tongue through her slit in one long, slow stroke. The taste was overwhelming, complex and salty-sweet, entirely LorHélène. She gasped, her hands flying to his hair, not to guide but to clamp down, to hold him in place.“Yes,” she hissed. “Lick me.Lick your son’s cradle. Get your fucking mouth dirty with me.”
He dove in, the filth of her words fueling him. He ate her with a desperate, focused hunger, lapping at her clit, sucking the stiffening nub into his mouth, thrusting his tongue as deep into her passage as he could. Her body was different, tighter, the internal pressure from the baby creating a fascinating, constricted resistance. He could feel the profound, heavy weight low in her pelvis as he probed.“Deeper,” she demanded, grinding against his face. “Make me come.I want to come around your tongue while he kicks. I want him to feel it.”
He worked her relentlessly, two fingers now sliding inside her, curving upward. The sensation was incredible—the incredible heat, the fierce grip of her muscles, and beyond, the undeniable, firm pressure of the baby’s head. She cried out, a sharp, unvarnished sound, and her orgasm hit like a quake. Her back arched clear off the bed, her stomach clenched into a hard, distorted knot, and she pulsed around his fingers, her fluids flooding his mouth. He drank her down, her taste becoming his only truth.
As she shuddered, a powerful, jarring kick thudded against his cheekbone, still pressed to her mound.He jerked back, stunned.
She laughed, a breathless, spent sound.“See? He approves.” She lay panting, her chest heaving.Then her eyes, dark with intent, found his.“Now. I need to be full. Really full.”
He stood, fumbling with his belt, his erection painful and urgent.He pushed his jeans and boxers down just enough to free himself. He was so hard it ached.
She hooked her heels on the edge of the mattress, opening herself obscenely, a glowing, well-used portal. “Slowly,” she warned, but her eyes burned with a dare. “Feel every inch of what you helped make.”
The head of his cock pressed against her slick, swollen entrance.He pushed.The penetration was a revelation of shocking, impossible tightness. Her canal was a hot, clenching vice around him, rearranged by the life within. He groaned, a raw, animal sound, as he sank deeper, the sensation so intense it bordered on pain. She whimpered, her nails digging into the sheets, her face a mask of strained, unbearable pleasure.
“Oh, fuck, Owen,” she breathed.“You feel it? You feel how full I am?Of you.Of him.”
He did.Every thrust was a conquest over immense pressure. He set a slow, deep rhythm, each stroke measured and profound.Her stomach quivered with each impact. He leaned forward, bracing himself on his arms, and watched their conjunction, watched his slick cock disappearing into the impossibly stretched entrance at the base of her magnificent belly.
“Harder,” she begged, her composure shattering.“Stop being gentle.Fuck me like you mean it. Fuck the mother of your child.”
The permission, the profanity, unleashed him. He drove into her, his pace accelerating, his balls slapping against her ass with a wet, rhythmic clap.The bedframe protested.The record skipped, caught, and the saxophone wailed. She met him thrust for thrust, her cries guttural and uninhibited, a liturgy of filth and possession.“Yes!Right there! God, you bastard, you fucking breed me so good! I’m gonna… I’m gonna…”
Her second climax tore through her with a violence that stole her voice. Her body locked, her inner muscles milking him in frantic, irresistible pulses.It tipped him over the edge. With a choked roar, he buried himself to the hilt and came, a scalding, endless eruption that felt like he was pouring his very soul into that crowded, secret dark. He collapsed onto her, careful of her belly, his face pressed into the sweaty hollow of her neck. Beneath him, her stomach danced with frantic, jubilant movement.They lay there, spent, fused. The music had ended, leaving only the faint pop and hiss of the run-out groove.
Her hand came up, fingers carding softly through his damp hair.It was almost maternal.“You see now?” she whispered into the quiet dark. “Everything else is just practice. This is forever.”
And in the heavy silence, under his cheek, he felt the relentless, undeniable proof of it kicking back.
»
Et dans le silence pesant, sous sa joue, il sentit la preuve implacable et indéniable de ce qui se retournait contre lui.Ce n’était pas une vague douceur. C’était un coup de talon sec et affirmatif, une poussée de coude vicérale contre le mur intérieur de son ventre. La vie se déclarait, insouciante de la boue dans laquelle elle s’enracinait.
Il se redressa, son sexe glissant hors d’elle avec un éclat humide. Le mélange de leurs fluides, chauds sur ses cuisses, semblait trivial face à l’activité derrière cette peau tendue. LorHélène regardait son visage, lisant la stupéfaction mêlée d’horreur.
« Il a tes horaires, » dit-elle d’une voix épuisée et satisfaite. « Toujours en mouvement après la tempête. »
Un autre mouvement, un glissement lent cette fois, déforma la surface de son abdomen.Owen ne put détacher son regard. C’était une chose d’y penser, une autre de voir l’évidence physique se tordre sous la soie.C’était sien. Ce mouvement était une conséquence de son corps, de ses choix, de cette chambre.« Touche-le, » ordonna-t-elle. Sa voix avait perdu sa dureté provocatrice, devenant presque douce. C’était pire.Il tendit une main hésitante. La peau était chaude, ferme, dynamique. Un genou ou un coude pressa contre sa paume, s’y maintint un instant comme pour se faire reconnaître, puis se rétracta. Une onde de nausée l’envahit, suivie d’une chaleur possessive et complètement fausse. C’était une corde nouée autour de ses entrailles, serrée d’un cran définitif.
« J’avais besoin que tu le sentes, » murmura LorHélène. Elle se mit sur le côté, gémissant un peu sous son poids. Le spectacle de son dos nu, pâle et marqué de veines bleutées, était vulnérable.« Pas comme une abstraction.Comme un fait. Tu m’appartiens parce que ça m’appartient. C’est une possession mutuelle.»
Il s’assit au bord du lit, le dos voûté. L’adrénaline se retirait, laissant une froide lucidité. « Tu l’as planifié.Depuis le début.»
« Est-ce que ça change quelque chose ? » Elle roula sur le dos, un bras jeté sur ses yeux. « Le résultat est le même.Je te voulais.Je t’ai eu.Maintenant, il te veut aussi. Tu ne peux pas rompre avec un enfant, Owen. Tu peux fuir une femme, mais pas ça.C’est dans ton sang maintenant. »
Le mot ‘enfant’ sonnait faux ici.C’était une ‘arme’.Une ‘preuve’. Une ‘conséquence’.L’innocence n’avait pas sa place dans cette chambre.
« Et Élodie ?» La question sortit d’elle-même.
LorHélène rit, un souffle bref et sec.« Ton exercice de pénitence ? Elle servira.Tout le monde a besoin d’une tétine, parfois.Même moi. Surtense d’une tétine, parfois.Même moi.Surtout moi. Mais elle ne touchera jamais ça. » Sa main caressa la courbe de son ventre.« C’est le noyau.Tout le reste est périphérie. Tu apprendras. »
La fatigue le submergea, une lourdeur d’acier dans les os.Il se leva, trouva son jean dans l’ombre. « Je dois partir.»
« Non.» Ce n’était pas une supplication. C’était un rappel.« Tu dors ici.Sur le canapé si tu veux. Mais tu restes.Le père ne quitte pas la scène après l’acte. C’est mauvais pour le moral des troupes.»
Il la dévisagea. Elle souriait, les yeux clos.Elle gagnait toujours. Il prit un oreiller, un drap emmêlé, et traîna le tout vers le salon. L’air y était plus froid, moins imprégné d’elle. Il s’allongea sur le canapé, le corps douloureux, l’esprit parcouru d’images éclatées : les larmes salées d’Élodie, la bouche musquée de LorHélène, le coup de pied violent contre sa joue.Le sommeil ne vint pas. Il écouta les bruits de l’appartement.Le frigo qui vibrait.Un robinet qui gouttait. Et, une fois, un grognement étouffé venant de la chambre, suivi du froissement des draps.
Il se leva avant l’aube, ses vêtements froissés collés à sa peau. Il se pencha sur l’évier de la cuisine, se rinça le visage avec de l’eau froide. Sur le plan de travail, à côté d’une pomme à moitié pourrie, traînait le carnet de recettes de LorHélène.Il l’ouvrit au hasard. Ce n’étaient pas des recettes.C’étaient des listes.Des noms. Des dates. Des détails anatomiques notés d’une écriture nette et impitoyable.Marc, 19, cycliste, dos fort, genoux fragiles. Un biffé.Philippe, 22, trop sentimental, pleure après. Un biffé.Son propre nom n’y figurait pas encore. L’arme, elle, n’avait pas besoin d’être cataloguée.Elle était en cours de fabrication.
Il referma le carnet, la nausée lui brûlant la gorge. La porte de la chambre était entrouverte. Elle dormait, une jambe hors des draps, son ventre imposant modelant l’ombre. Il se faufila dehors, fermant la porte sans un bruit.Le froid du matin le gifla. Il respira à fond, mais l’air n’avait pas de goût de liberté. Il était lesté. Il marcha sans but, les rues désertes amplifiant le vide en lui.Son téléphone vibra dans sa poche.Un message. Pas de LorHélène cette fois.Élodie : Je suis désolée pour hier soir.Pour tout. Peut-on parler ?S’il te plaît.
Il s’arrêta devant une vitrine brouillée par la buée. Son reflet lui parut étranger, plus vieux. Elle était sa sortie de secours, sa bouffée d’air pur empoisonnée.Une faiblesse.LorHélène avait raison. Il avait besoin d’une tétine.
Il répondit, ses doigts engourdis par le froid tapant des mensonges qui avaient le poids de la vérité. Pas aujourd’hui.Je ne vais pas bien.C’est moi qui suis désolé. Il l’envoya.Le téléphone vibra à nouveau presque immédiatement. LorHélène cette fois.Pas de mots.Une simple photo. Un plan serré sur son ventre nu, à la lumière laiteuse de l’aube. À un endroit précis, la peau se tendait, formant une petite butte pointue, dure comme un poing fermé.Le pied.Le talon.Une prise de position.
Sous l’image, un seul mot : Rentre.