Chapter 14: Efforts in vein
The email arrived on a Tuesday morning, its subject line innocuous: ‘Q2 Projections – Preliminary Review’. Julia’s stomach turned to lead the second she saw it. She knew that particular font, that spacing. She opened it.
‘One month down. I see that relationship is going well, but you are not pregnant. Remember you have 2 more months before the next Quarter to prove that you're pregnant.’
That was all. No further threat, no escalation. It was worse somehow. A simple statement of fact, a ticking clock built into her own biology. She printed it, the whir of the printer sounding like a grinding bone, and slid the sheet into her locked desk drawer next to the growing pile. Each one was a checkmark on a calendar she hadn’t agreed to.
Later that afternoon, she met Eleanor at The Orchid Lounge, a place of soft light and softer carpets where the clink of fine china was the loudest sound. Eleanor was already there, a pot of jasmine tea steeping between them. She took one look at Julia’s face and knew.
“Another one?” she asked, her voice low.
Julia gave a tight nod, her fingers tracing the delicate handle of her cup. “The reminder. The deadline.”
Eleanor poured the tea, the stream a pale gold. “Then we adapt. We optimize.” She said it like she was discussing a marketing strategy. In a way, she was. “The goal is conception. The method needs refinement. You’re… comfortable with him?”
Julia stared into her cup. Comfort wasn’t the word. It was a clinical tolerance, punctuated by flares of shocking, unwelcome pleasure. “It’s… functional,” she murmured. “It feels good sometimes. Physically. Which makes it worse.”
“That’s your body working,” Eleanor said, matter-of-fact. “It’s just nerves and responses. Don’t moralize it. Use it.” She leaned forward, her perfume a cloud of gardenias. “Let’s talk mechanics. Have you experimented? Not for fun, for efficiency.”
Julia felt a hot blush creep up her neck. She shook her head.
“Alright. Basic principles.” Eleanor’s tone was clinical, a surgeon discussing incision points. “Missionary is fine for romance, terrible for deep penetration. The angle is shallow. If you want to get pregnant, you need him as deep as possible. Gravity is your friend.”
Julia listened, a strange student in a stranger class.
“Doggy style,” Eleanor stated, sipping her tea. “Superior for depth. Also, you don’t have to look at him. Less… intimacy, more biology. Cowgirl gives you control, lets you find the angle that works for you. But it’s more… confrontational. Requires engagement. Spooning is lazy, but comfortable. Good for frequency without drama.” She listed off two more, her descriptions brisk and unembarrassed. “The goal is to try them. See which one your body responds to best. Which one he finishes fastest in. Time is a factor now.”
“I don’t want to… enjoy it,” Julia whispered, the confession feeling like a failure.
“You don’t have to enjoy the act. You can enjoy the result. Or you can enjoy the lack of his face in yours. Find a silver lining and cling to it.” Eleanor’s eyes were hard, practical. “Do you have a preference? Even a logistical one?”
Julia was silent for a long moment. The memory of the tailgate, of staring at a star, of the cold plastic against her cheek. Then another memory, from just last week. Barry had turned her over in his narrow bed, his hands on her hips. She’d buried her face in the pillow, the fabric muffling her sounds, her vision reduced to the weave of the cotton. She hadn’t seen him. She’d only felt the rhythmic impact, the deep, unsettling fullness that somehow triggered a cascade of sensation that left her shuddering silently afterward, furious at her own traitorous nerves.
“Doggy style,” Julia heard herself say, the words barely audible. “It’s… easier.”
Eleanor didn’t smile. She gave a single, sharp nod. “Good. Then that’s your baseline. Mix in the others to keep him from getting suspicious. But prioritize what works.”
---
Barry was giddy. Julia had initiated. It was a text, simple and direct: ‘Long day. Your place? I’ll bring wine.’ To him, it was a seismic shift, proof of his own irresistible charm finally wearing down her ‘refined’ resistance.
His apartment was what she expected: clean in a temporary, hired-help kind of way, with expensive, soulless furniture his aunt had likely chosen. He fumbled with the cork, pouring two generous glasses of Malbec. He talked about work, about a client he’d almost landed, his voice tinged with a boastful energy she’d learned to nod along with.
She waited until the glass was half empty, then set it down on the coaster. She stood up, took his hand. “Let’s not talk about work,” she said, leading him toward the bedroom. His eyes widened with thrilled surprise.
In the bedroom, she took control. It was easier that way. A performance with stage directions only she knew. She kissed him, letting her hands roam his back, feeling him tense with eagerness. She undressed him first, then herself, her movements deliberate, not seductive. Practical.
She pushed him gently onto the bed, onto his back. Cowgirl. Eleanor’s lesson echoed. Control. Angle. She straddled him, lowering herself slowly, adjusting the tilt of her pelvis until the sensation shifted from a blunt pressure to a sharp, focused ache. She moved, a steady, mechanical rhythm, her eyes closed. He gasped beneath her, his hands gripping her thighs, his face a mask of bewildered ecstasy. She focused on the ceiling, on a tiny crack in the plaster, counting the beats of her own pulse. It was efficient. He finished quickly, gripping her hips with a force that would leave bruises. She climbed off, the physical relief immediate, the emotional revulsion a slow seep.
“That was… amazing,” he panted, reaching for her.
“Shower,” she said, brushing his hand away with a soft smile that felt like a grimace. “I’m sticky.”
---
A week later, after a dinner where he’d droned on about a new sports car he’d never afford, she tried spooning. In his dark bedroom, curled against his back, he entered her from behind with a soft groan. It was less invasive this way. His arm draped over her waist, his face buried in her hair. She could pretend it was almost tender. The movement was slow, almost lazy. She could dissociate completely, floating somewhere above the bed, watching the two figures move in the dim light from the streetlamp outside. It was peaceful, in a hollow way. He fell asleep afterward still inside her, a damp, weighty intimacy she endured until his soft snoring signaled she could extract herself.
But the doggy style position was the one she returned to, her secret baseline. It was the most purely transactional, and therefore, the easiest to endure.
Tonight, she didn’t wait for foreplay. She kissed him until he was hard, then turned her back to him, bending over the foot of his bed. The ornate wooden frame was cool against her palms.
“Like this?” he breathed, his voice thick with sudden, raw hunger.
“Mmm,” she murmured, a non-committal sound he took as encouragement.
His hands were on her hips, clumsy and possessive. There was a blunt, ungraceful nudging, then the sharp, familiar breach. She let out a held breath, focused on the grain of the wood beneath her fingers—dark whorls like frozen smoke. He set a fast, frantic pace immediately, the sound of skin on skin loud in the quiet room. Each thrust jolted her forward, her cheek pressed against the duvet. She could see nothing but the shadowy cavern under the bed, dust bunnies in the gloom. She could hear everything: his ragged breathing, the creak of the bedframe, the wet, rhythmic slap of their connection.
Her mind blanked. It became a series of physical sensations separate from any thought. The deep, insistent pressure. The heat of his body covering hers. The strain in her shoulders. A coil of unwanted, tightening pleasure began to spiral low in her belly, independent of her will. She tried to stifle it, to think of the email, of the fraudulent accounts, of the cameras that might be watching even here. But the body has its own stupid logic. The coil tightened, a wave building against her furious resistance.
She bit into the duvet to silence herself as it broke, a silent, shuddering convulsion that left her weak-kneed and despising herself. He grunted, his rhythm faltering, and she felt the hot, internal pulse of his finish. He collapsed onto her back, heavy and spent.
“God, Julia,” he mumbled into her hair. “You’re incredible.”
She didn’t answer. She waited until his weight shifted, then went to the bathroom. She washed herself with water as hot as she could stand, scrubbing at her skin until it was pink. In the mirror, her face was a pale mask. No pregnancy. Just another transaction completed. Another checkmark.
A week later, standing in the harsh fluorescent light of her own bathroom, she held the plastic stick in trembling hands. A single blue line. Negative. Again.
The email would come tomorrow. She was sure of it. The two-month clock was ticking louder now, a metronome in her skull synced to her cycle. She placed the test in the small trash bin, covered it with a tissue, and looked at her reflection. The woman staring back was a competent VP, a loyal girlfriend, a terrified prisoner. She practiced a smile. It didn’t reach her eyes.
Downstairs, her phone buzzed on the mahogany desk. A text from Barry. ‘Dinner tomorrow? I miss you.’
She picked up the phone, her fingers cold. She typed her reply, each letter a conscious act of performance. ‘Can’t wait. My place this time? I’ll cook.’
She put the phone down. The performance would continue. The search for the right angle, the perfect conditions, the optimal mechanical scenario to trigger a biological outcome. It was all that was left.after the 2nd month of no pregnancy, she received another email.
The email landed with a quiet ping right as she was closing her browser for the day. Her breath hitched. The sender was a random string of letters and numbers, but the style was unmistakable. Her cursor hovered over it for a full minute before she clicked.
‘Your diligence is noted,’ it began, cold and robotic. ‘The account grows. Forensic audit flags are now automated. One month remains. Conception is your only exit. Failure guarantees prosecution. You will not beat the paper trail.’
She read it three times. The threat had crystallized, moving from vague ruin to a specific, mechanical process. The fake financial account wasn’t just a threat; it was a living entity, growing in the dark, ready to trip automated systems. They weren’t just threatening to send evidence anymore. They were building a case the authorities would inevitably find themselves. She printed it, her hands steady now with a cold, focused fear. One month. Thirty days to change everything.
She redoubled her efforts with a grim, surgical precision. Her calendar became a grid of ovulation cycles and scheduled intimacy. She researched prenatal vitamins, bought a basal thermometer, and charted her temperature every morning with the focus of a lab technician. The act itself remained a carnal hurdle she had to clear. She tried all of Eleanor’s suggested positions, rotating through them like a mechanic testing tools. Cowgirl felt performative and exhausting. Spooning was tolerable but distant. Doggy style remained her default for its efficiency and emotional distance, but even that was wearing thin.
The strange thing was everything outside the bedroom. Barry was, in his own clueless way, incredibly kind. He noticed her stress and brought her terrible coffee without being asked. He listened, or seemed to, when she talked about work frustrations, offering simple, supportive nods. He planned dates—bad movies, worse pizza—with an earnest enthusiasm that was almost endearing. She found herself laughing at his dumb jokes, texting him stupid memes during boring meetings. The blackmail had forced them together, but proximity had bred a fragile, genuine companionship. She had to admit it: he was her boyfriend. And she didn’t entirely hate it.
The sex, however, was a wall she kept slamming into. Her body would sometimes respond, a purely physiological betrayal, but her mind recoiled. She saw the pattern Eleanor warned about: the enthusiastic chatter over dinner, the way her shoulders would tighten as they moved toward the bedroom, the mechanical way she’d initiate contact. She was going through the motions, and the motions were getting obvious.
One Friday night, after another silent, face-down session ended with him panting into the pillow beside her head, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. The silence felt different. Charged. “Hey,” he said, his voice quiet. “You wanna… stay for a bit? Watch something?”
They moved to the sofa, a plush, oversized thing that swallowed you whole. He got them beers instead of heading straight for the shower. He sat not next to her, but turned toward her, one leg folded under him. “Julia,” he started, then stopped, rubbing his jaw. “We gotta talk. Seriously. Not to fuck. Just… talk.”
Her heart sank. She took a long pull of her beer. “Okay. Talk.”
“It’s just… I feel like you’re… I don’t know. Somewhere else.” He gestured vaguely with his bottle. “When we hang out, you’re awesome. Chatty, fun, you laugh. But when we… you know.” He looked down, uncharacteristically vulnerable. “The last few times, it’s just been… from behind. Which is great, don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about that. But it feels like you can’t stand the sight of me while we’re doing it. I hear you. I know you… you know, enjoy it. The sounds are real. But you never look at me. You always turn away.”
The accuracy of his observation was a knife twist. She had crafted the perfect lie for this, rehearsed it in the mirror, and now the moment was here. She set her beer down slowly, buying time. She let her shoulders slump, summoning a演技 of shame.
“Bare,” she said, letting his nickname hang in the air softly. “If… if I’m honest.” She looked at him, letting her eyes glisten with manufactured tears. “I’ve chosen to be a woman. And I want to be one, more than anything. But having sex as one… it feels repulsive sometimes.”
He blinked, confused. “What? Why?”
“Look at it from my view,” she whispered, leaning forward as if sharing a terrible secret. “I fucked a lot of women before. Sex always seemed more… straightforward from that side. Fun. Now, when I’m with you…” She looked away, a perfect gesture of pained vulnerability. “When you’re on top of me, I can only picture myself where you are. That guy, just fucking another woman. Because for so long, that was me. That was the closest I ever got to being a woman myself. Until now.” She let a single tear trace a path down her cheek, a masterstroke. “It’s not you, Bare. It’s the fact that I can’t unsee myself as the man in the situation. And that… that’s what repulses me.”
The silence in the room was absolute. Barry’s face went through a journey—confusion, dawning understanding, a swell of sympathetic pity. He reached out, his hand covering hers. “Oh, shit, Jules. I didn’t… I never thought about it like that.”
She squeezed his hand, feigning gratitude for his understanding. “It’s my baggage. It’s stupid.”
“No,” he said, earnestness flooding his voice. “It’s not. It makes total sense. Hell, that’s… that’s deep.” He pulled her into a hug, his chin resting on her head. “We’ll go slower. However you need. We don’t have to do anything that makes you feel like that.”
She buried her face in his shirt, the fabric scratching her cheek. His compassion was a heavier burden than his lust. She had lied perfectly, and it had worked. He believed her. He would be more patient, more careful, more considerate. And all the while, the clock in her head ticked down, the fake account ballooning in some digital vault, and her window to conceive shrinking with every passing, sympathetic day.
And all the while, the clock in her head ticked down, the fake account ballooning in some digital vault, and her window to conceive shrinking with every passing, sympathetic day.
Barry’s pity was a palpable thing after her confession. He wore it like a new suit, ill-fitting but worn with earnest care. His touches became softer, more deliberate. He started asking questions about her day that required more than a one-word answer. He began to listen, really listen, his head tilted in a performative kind of attention that felt, against all logic, genuine. Inside, Barry marveled at his own performance. He had fed her the exact trauma she’d need to confess to, and she had swallowed the bait whole. He knew every syllable of her lie was fabricated, because he had written the blueprint for it himself. He knew about the repulsion, the disconnect, the phantom memory of being the man—he’d planted those concepts in the earlier, more subtly coercive emails. Hearing her parrot them back to him was a dark, private triumph.
He doubled down on the role of the understanding partner. He started bringing her small gifts: a ridiculously expensive orchid for her office, a specific brand of dark chocolate she’d mentioned once, a first edition of a beat poetry book she’d loved in college. “How did you even find this?” she’d ask, her real surprise cutting through her constant dread. He’d just shrug, a shy, lopsided smile on his face. “I pay attention.” The gifts were calculated, of course, each one a data point in a psychological profile he was building, but the pleasure he took in her genuine, fleeting smiles began to feel less like strategy and more like a reward. The jealousy that once gnawed at him for Julian Vance was gone. This Julia, this vulnerable, brilliant, trapped creature, was entirely his creation. And he was, to his own dark surprise, falling for her.
The sex stopped completely. He was the one who suggested it. “We don’t need to, Jules,” he said one night, holding her on the couch as some reality TV show flickered silently. “Not until you’re ready. However long it takes.” He felt her entire body go slack with relief against his, a tension unwinding he hadn’t fully appreciated was there. He held her tighter, savoring the power of his own perceived sacrifice. The deadline loomed in his own mind, a secret timer she knew nothing about. He watched her, counting the days until her next likely ovulation, playing the long, patient game.
Instead of intercourse, he introduced other intimacies. He would kiss her for hours, lazy, exploratory kisses that left them both breathless and nothing else. He’d massage her shoulders, working the perpetual knots from her neck with a surprising, gentle expertise. And then, one night, he went further. He kissed a slow trail down her stomach, his hands hooking under the lace of her panties. “Can I?” he murmured, his voice a warm vibration against her skin. She froze, a stiffening he could feel in the muscles of her thighs. “Just to make you feel good,” he whispered. “Nothing else. No pressure.” Her consent was a hesitant, breathless nod. He did it slowly, attentively, with a focus that felt like worship. It was a technical act, one he performed with clinical detachment even as he listened for the tiny, helpless sounds she made, cataloging what worked. Afterward, she cried, silent tears leaking into the pillow. He held her, shushing her gently, stroking her hair. “It’s okay,” he lied smoothly. “It’s just you and me. However you need to be.” Her trust in him, a fragile, glassy thing, thickened and hardened. She began to relax into his care. She started sleeping through the night at his apartment, a deep, drugged sleep she hadn’t known in months. He would watch her sometimes, her face smoothed of its constant anxiety, and feel a rush of possession so complete it stole his breath.
With ten days left on his internal deadline, he set his plan in motion. He told her to keep a Saturday night completely free. “Wear something nice,” he said, a spark of real excitement in his eyes. “Really nice.” The uncertainty was part of the design. He picked her up in a hired town car, not his usual scuffed sedan. “Where are we going?” she laughed, the sound lighter than it had been in weeks. “It’s a surprise.” The car took them to a private airfield. A sleek six-seater helicopter waited, its blades still. Her jaw actually dropped. “Barry, what is this?”
“Dinner,” he said, guiding her gently aboard.
They flew over the city as the sun bled orange and purple over the skyline, the towers shrinking into glittering grids below. He held her hand, pointing out landmarks, his thumb tracing soft circles on her palm. They landed on the rooftop of a building she didn’t recognize. A single table stood there, covered in white linen, set for two under a canopy of fairy lights and heaters. A server appeared silently with champagne. The food was intricate, beautiful, barely a bite of anything but flavor exploding on her tongue. He talked, not about work or cars, but about her. Her ideas, her laugh, the way she frowned when concentrating. He made her feel seen, not as a project or a target, but as a person. A woman. The narrative he was weaving was working perfectly. The fear in her eyes was being replaced, minute by minute, with a dazed, disbelieving fondness. She was disarmed, utterly.
Back at his apartment, the magic lingered. He’d filled the living room with more candles, soft music playing. They danced, badly, her head on his shoulder. The kiss that started was different from all the others. It was hungry, charged with the promise of the entire night. He walked her backward towards the bedroom, their mouths never parting, his hands cradling her face. At the threshold, he broke away, his breathing ragged. The candles from the living room threw shifting shadows across his face, making his expression unreadable.
“Julia,” he said, his voice thick. “I want nothing more than to be with you.” He paused, letting the weight of the night hang between them. “Will you let me guide you in this? Just this once. I promise. You won’t feel repulsed.”
Her mind, floating on champagne and the ghost of his kindness, crashed back into her body. The deadline. It was now. It had to be now. This was her chance, perhaps her last, best chance to control the how. She looked into his eyes, this man who had shown her a dizzying, unexpected kind of grace. “Okay, Bare,” she whispered.
He led her into the room. He didn’t push her onto the bed. Instead, he backed her gently against the wall, his kisses leaving her lips to trail down her neck, along her collarbone. His hands slid down her sides, over the curve of her hips, and gripped her thighs. He lifted her, smoothly, as if she weighed nothing. Her surprise was a gasp against his mouth. He held her there, pinned between his body and the wall, her legs wrapping instinctively around his waist. He had always been lanky, but this strength was new, solid. It was the kind of wiry, determined strength a man develops not in a gym, but from a deep, focused need.
With one arm supporting her, he used his free hand to shove his pants and boxers down. He tugged her panties aside. There was no fumbling. He entered her in one slow, inexorable push, filling the space completely. The angle was new, shocking. The wall was at her back, solid and unyielding. He held her entire weight effortlessly, his arm muscles corded under her thighs, his other hand splayed against the wall near her head. He began to move, not with the frantic pace of before, but with a deep, rolling rhythm that pushed her higher up the wall with each thrust. She was completely in his control, airborne, possessed. Her eyes closed against the vertigo, the old repulsion rising in a bitter tide.
Then he did something he never had before. He leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes open, locking onto hers in the dim light. “Look at me,” he breathed, his rhythm never faltering. “Just look at me.” She forced her eyes open. His gaze was intense, but soft. There was no triumph there, only a raw, open need. He was with her, completely present, not lost in his own sensation. The physical act didn’t change, but the context shifted. She wasn’t a receptacle. She was the entire focus. The deep, grinding friction, the solidity of him holding her aloft, the unbearable intimacy of his gaze—it coalesced into a wave that broke over her without permission. A sharp, silent cry was torn from her throat as the pleasure detonated, visceral and total, wiping every other thought from her mind. He followed her over the edge, a low groan against her lips, his grip on her finally shuddering.
He carried her to the bed, collapsing with her in a tangle of limbs. She was asleep almost instantly, a deep, blank nothingness.
Morning light pierced the gaps in the blinds. She woke feeling strangely rested, her body heavy and sore in a new way. Barry was still asleep, an arm flung over her waist. The events of the night flooded back: the helicopter, the rooftop, the wall. The shocking, unbidden pleasure. A cold knot of panic formed in her stomach. She slipped from the bed, went to the bathroom, and dug the last pregnancy test from her purse. Her hands were steady. She’d done this so many times.
She set the stick on the edge of the sink and turned away, unable to watch. She counted to sixty in her head, each number a hammer fall. When she turned back, she had to blink, her vision blurring. Two lines. One dark, one fainter, but undeniably present. A positive. Pregnant.
A violent, seismic relief slammed into her first, so powerful her knees buckled and she had to grab the counter. It was over. The deadline was met. The blackmail, the threats, the spectral prison sentence—they evaporated in that instant. She was safe. She let out a choked, soundless sob of pure deliverance.
Then the second wave hit, cold and slow and dreadful. The reality. Her hand drifted to her stomach, flat and unchanged. Inside her, a cluster of cells was dividing, a life beginning where no life was ever meant to be. A man made into a woman. And now… pregnant. The impossibility of it was a physical weight, a stone in her gut beside the burgeoning, microscopic fact. She stared at her reflection, at the face of Julia Vance, VP of Sales, girlfriend, blackmail victim, and now, against all reason, a mother. The relief and the dread twisted together inside her, inseparable, a double helix of salvation and ruin.