Chapter 71: Pregnant Doggy Style
The chocolate digestive biscuit tasted of cardboard in his dry mouth. Rupert washed it down with sweet, milky tea, the normalcy of the ritual clashing violently with the scent of Karen’s skin still on his face. He sat at her small kitchen table, the hum of the refrigerator loud in the quiet.
Karen leaned against the counter, watching him. The cerise kimono was tied loosely again, but her expression had shifted. The businesslike focus was still there, but beneath it swam a darker, more urgent current.
“That helped,” she said, folding her arms under her heavy breasts. “The ache’s gone. But now there’s a different one.”
Rupert froze, the biscuit halfway to his mouth.
“It’s like a deep, thrumming empty feeling,” she continued, as if diagnosing a fault in her car. “The midwife said intercourse can be even more effective. The prostaglandins in semen, you know? Better than a sweep.” She pushed off the counter and padded toward the lounge. “Come on. One more go. Properly.”
He followed, a marionette with worn strings. The nest of cushions awaited. She knelt on the rug, then with a grunt of effort, arranged herself on all fours, her enormous belly suspended between her arms and thighs. She’d piled several large pillows beneath her chest and head for support.
“This is the only way that doesn’t crush my lungs,” she said, her voice muffled by the cushions. “Don’t need a condom. Obviously. It’s not like you can plant a seed in already harvested soil, is it?”
The clinical analogy did nothing to dampen the raw, visual shock of her. The curve of her back, the swell of her, the dark cotton knickers now pushed down to her thighs. Rupert stood, paralyzed. This was beyond mouth and hands and toys. This was the act itself, the foundational marital act, stripped of all context and delivered as a prescription.
“Rupert,” Karen sighed, turning her head to the side. Her cheek was pressed into a velvet pillow. “I’m not a delicate vase. I’m a fortress. And I need you to knock on the gate. Hard.”
His hands trembled as he unbuckled his belt. The memory of Julia’s command in the playbarn echoed: You are a thing to be used. This was that, but profoundly different. This was biological, elemental. He freed himself, already half-hard from the prolonged, olfactory immersion of the afternoon. His own arousal felt secondary, a mechanical response to the sheer, overwhelming fact of her.
He moved behind her, his knees sinking into the soft rug. The air was warm, close. He positioned himself, the head of his cock finding her slick, swollen entrance. She was so open, so ready, her body preparing for a passage far greater than his.
“Yes,” she hissed, pushing back against him. “Finally.”
He slid in. The sensation was shocking in its totality—a deep, engulfing heat, a soft, muscular clasp that was both familiar and utterly alien. Her body accommodated him with a profound, effortless ease. A low groan escaped him, unbidden.
“That’s it,” Karen encouraged, her voice steady. “Just like that. Do your duty, accountant.”
The phrase, so absurd, unlocked something. Duty. This was his appointed task. He set a rhythm, his hands finding purchase on the broad shelf of her hips. The sounds were wet, animal, utterly frank. Her cries were not of passion, but of profound physical relief, punctuated by the occasional grunt of effort as she pushed back against him.
He lost himself in the motion, in the sheer, brutal functionality of it. His mind blanked. There was only the feeling, the scent of lavender and sex and warm skin, the visual of her bowed and massive before him. The jeopardy was gone, replaced by a strange, hollow clarity. He was a piston in a engine, a tool achieving a specific, agreed-upon end.
His climax built not as a peak of ecstasy, but as an inevitable conclusion. It washed through him with a force that buckled his arms, a deep, pulsing release that left him gasping, shuddering, emptying himself into the warm, accepting depths of her. He stayed there for a long moment, draped over her back, his forehead against her spine, spent.
Beneath him, Karen let out a long, satisfied sigh. “Oh, yes. That’s the spot. Perfect.” She gave a little wriggle. “Alright. Off you pop. I need to lie down before my ankles turn into tree trunks.”
He withdrew, the cold air a shock. He fumbled with his clothes, his movements clumsy. Karen, with a practicality that bordered on the majestic, used a wet wipe from a packet on the floor, cleaned herself up, and then heaved herself sideways onto the nest of cushions with a contented groan.
“You’re a good man, Rupert,” she said, her eyes already drifting closed. “Tell Margot thanks. And that I recommend the coconut oil for next time. Less sticky.”
He stood, dressed, feeling disembodied. The room held the intimate, heavy aftermath of something both profound and completely mundane.
“There’s cupcakes on the sideboard in the kitchen,” she murmured, already half-asleep. “Take one for the road. You’ve earned it.”
Numb, he walked back to the kitchen. A plate of iced fairy cakes sat under a glass dome. He took one, the white icing smearing on his fingers. He let himself out, closing the blue door quietly behind him.
The November evening was bitter, the cold slapping the warmth from his skin. He stood on the path, the cupcake a ridiculous weight in his hand. The village was settling into dusk, lights coming on in windows, smoke curling from chimneys.
He had done it. He had crossed a line that even the playbarn and the sleep sack had only hinted at. He had fucked a heavily pregnant woman who was not his wife, on his wife’s orders, and come inside her. And she had thanked him and given him a cake.
The surreal horror of it should have crushed him. Instead, as he began the walk home through the gathering dark, a different feeling began to seep into the hollow spaces the afternoon had carved out.
A strange, unassailable peace.
He was, he realized, following the calendar. He was executing the plan. There was a terrible, simplifying freedom in it. No decisions, only instructions. No confusing marital negotiations, only clear, erotic objectives.
He took a bite of the cupcake. It was sweet, vanilla, utterly normal. He finished it as he turned onto his own street, licking the icing from his thumb. The light was on in their kitchen window. Margot would be waiting.
He didn’t know what he would say to her. He didn’t need to say anything. The red ‘X’ was through November. His body was the receipt.
He opened his front gate, the hinge squeaking as it always did. The chapter was closed. He wondered, with a distant curiosity that felt entirely new, what December would bring.