Chapter 17: Bratty Behavior
The silk of her nightgown was a whisper against his trousers. Julen’s hands came up to cradle her hips, not to guide, but to hold her exactly where she was, pressed against him. The earlier authority in his voice melted into something darker, more possessive.
“Bored?” he echoed, his thumb tracing the jut of her hip bone through the thin fabric. “After the day we’ve had?”
“Especially after,” she breathed, rolling her hips in a slow, deliberate circle. A sharp gasp caught in her throat; her own movement sent a jolt through her, intense and immediate. Her body responded on a hair-trigger now, every nerve ending wired to the central, humming fact of her pregnancy. “Everything makes me want you. The sonogram. The pickle ice cream. The way you said ‘strata council.’ It’s annoying.”
He laughed, a low rumble in his chest she felt through her own. “I’ll strive to be more boring.”
“Don’t you dare.”
She kissed him, not like a wife, but like a conqueror claiming tribute. It was all teeth and impatience, her fingers tunneling into his hair. He met her force for force, one hand sliding up her spine to fist in the cascade of her hair, tilting her head back just enough to break the kiss. He looked at her, his eyes black in the dim room light. The city’s electric glow painted his face in blues and cold whites, but his expression was fever-hot.
“You’re insatiable,” he murmured, not a complaint, a reverent observation.
“You made me this way.” She bit his lower lip, a quick, sharp punishment. “All of this. The penthouse. The baby. Looking at me like I’m… I don’t know. A miracle. It goes to my head.”
“Let it.” He stood suddenly, lifting her with him as if she weighed nothing. Her legs wrapped around his waist instinctively. He carried her the short distance to the grand, ornate mirror that leaned against the far wall. He didn’t take her to the bed. He stopped before the mirror, her back to the glass, his body caging her in. “Look.”
She turned her head. The reflection was a shock, even now. The girl in the mirror was all flushed skin and wild hair, her nightgown rucked up around her thighs, her belly a pronounced curve between their bodies. Her eyes were wide, pupils blown with want. Behind her, Julen looked every day of his thirty years—a sharp, focused intensity in the line of his jaw, a possessive certainty in the way his hands spanned her waist. He looked like a man who built empires, not a boy who designed games. The mismatch was the whole point. It was the engine of everything.
“See?” His voice was a rough scrape against her ear. “That’s not an incubator. That’s a goddess. And she’s mine.”
The words sank in, bypassing thought, feeding the hungry thing inside her. She reached back, gripping the back of his neck, holding his gaze in the glass. “Then prove it.”
He proved it. There against the mirror, the cold glass a shocking contrast to the heat of their skin. It was awkward and breathtaking, her palms flat against the surface for balance, her breath fogging the reflection. He was relentless, one arm banded across her ribs just below her breasts, holding her securely against him, the other hand splayed low on her stomach as if claiming them both. She watched it all, the jarring, beautiful collision of their bodies, the raw need on her own face. She didn’t recognize that girl, and yet she knew her better than she’d ever known herself.
After, he carried her to the bed. She was boneless, a puddle of satisfied sensation. He arranged her on the white linens, then fetched a warm cloth from the bathroom, cleaning her with a tenderness that felt incongruous after the mirror. She drifted, her mind soft at the edges.
A memory surfaced. Not the fake Monaco sunburn. This one was sharper.
They were in a different apartment, small, with a couch that sagged in the middle. Julen was 18, his hair falling into his eyes, laughing at something on his laptop screen. “Check this bug out,” he’d said, voice still cracking on the edge of manhood. “The character gets stuck in the geometry and just vibrates. It’s beautiful.” She—he—Alex, had leaned over from his own desk, grumbling about server costs. They’d ordered cheap Thai food. The air smelled like stale pizza and ambition.
The memory was a grain of sand in the oyster of her new life. It irritated. It didn’t belong.
“Penny for them?” Julen asked, sliding into bed beside her, his body radiating heat.
“Just thinking about the old place,” she murmured, turning to nuzzle his shoulder. “It was so… small.”
He was silent for a moment. “We were small,” he said finally, his fingers tracing idle patterns on her arm. “Playing at being adults. This…” He gestured vaguely, encompassing the room, the view, her belly. “This is real. We were just waiting for it to start.”
The grain of sand dissolved. Yes. That was it exactly. They had been waiting. The shabby apartment, the cracked coffee mugs, the uncertain future—all of it was a prologue she’d somehow mistaken for the story itself.
She woke in the deep night, parched. Julen was asleep, a solid, warm line beside her. She padded barefoot to the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of cold water. The city was quieter, a constellation of fewer lights. She stood at the window, drinking, her free hand resting on the firm dome of her stomach.
A flicker of movement. A tiny, distinct push from inside. Not a flutter. A kick.
She froze, the water forgotten. It came again, a soft but unmistakable thump against her palm.
A laugh bubbled up, pure and unfiltered. She set the glass down with a clink and hurried back to the bedroom, switching on the soft bedside lamp.
“Julen. Julen, wake up.”
He stirred, blinking up at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Here.” She grabbed his hand and pressed it firmly against the spot. They waited in the lamplight, breaths held. For a moment, nothing. Then—a deliberate, rolling push against his palm.
His eyes snapped to hers, awake and utterly focused. Awe transformed his face, stripping away the CEO, leaving something profoundly vulnerable. “That’s…”
“I know.”
They lay there for an hour, hands stacked, talking in whispers as the baby moved. Each kick was a tiny shock of reality, a punctuation in their strange fairy tale. It made everything else feel more solid, more true.
By morning, the last vestige of the old Alex had been relegated to the status of a ghost. Over a breakfast of mango and yogurt, she announced, “I don’t want to work anymore. My business. It’s stupid. It’s just… stuff. I want to focus on this.” She rubbed her belly. “And on being here with you.”
Julen sipped his espresso, considering. The old Alex’s online retail business had been his last tenuous link to the person he’d first met. He gave a single, slow nod. “I’ll have my team wind it down. Liquidate the inventory. The capital can go into the baby’s trust.”
“Good.” The word was final. It felt like closing a book she’d already read.
The designers came that afternoon. Three of them, with rolling racks of fabric that felt like liquid and sketches that looked like architecture. Alex played the part perfectly, the petulant young muse. She dismissed ivory as “corpse-like,” silk chiffon as “insubstantial.” She wanted structure. Color. Something that would make a statement in a room full of older, sharper women.
“I’m not hiding,” she told a startled designer, a woman in her sixties with a severe bob. “I’m expanding. Make the dress understand that.”
Julen watched from a chaise lounge, a tablet on his knees, a faint, proud smile on his face. He interjected only once. “The neckline on that sketch is too modest. My wife has nothing to be modest about.”
The kick inside her was a secret agreement.
As the designers packed up, babbling about muslins and alterations, Julen’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and the easy satisfaction on his face tightened into something else. He stood. “I need to take this in the study.”
“Who is it?” Alex asked, picking at a bowl of grapes.
“The lawyer. About the Lumina building.” He was already walking away, his voice assuming the cool, detached tone he used for business. “It seems the current majority owner is experiencing sudden legal difficulties. Unforeseen audits. It’s a shame.”
The door to his study closed softly. Alex popped a grape in her mouth, sweet juice bursting on her tongue. She looked out at the skyline, picking out the sleek needle of the Lumina tower. Soon, she’d be floating in that glass-edged pool, her big belly buoyant in the sun-warmed water, Julen watching her from a deck chair.
She was eighteen. She was pregnant. She was loved with a terrifying intensity. The last question mark in her mind smoothed itself out, becoming a period. This wasn’t a transformation she was enduring. It was a destination she’d arrived at.
In the study, Julen stood at his own window, phone to his ear, his instructions quiet and precise. He was building a world for her, brick by ruthless brick. And as he worked, a memory surfaced for him, too—not of a sagging couch, but of the first time he’d seen her, really seen her, after the change. She’d been crying, confused, clutching a too-big t-shirt around her new body. He’d felt a surge of pity then, but beneath it, something else: a dizzying sense of opportunity. A blank canvas. A story he could write.
He’d started writing it with kindness, with support. The plot had just… thickened beyond his wildest ambitions.
He ended the call. Through the door, he could hear her humming, a pop song he didn’t recognize. The sound was light, careless, perfect. He smiled. The story was theirs now, and the next chapter was already beginning, kicking against its confines, demanding to be born.