Chapter 6: Nacho's Rejection
She stood outside Nacho’s loft building, the modern glass and steel reflecting the late afternoon sun in sharp, blinding shards. Her knuckles were white around the strap of her bag. Inside, her phone held two more unanswered messages from him, each one terser than the last. The last one simply read: We talk. Now.
Charly’s face, etched with that devastating hope, floated behind her eyes. Say maybe to me. She’d left him sitting at their kitchen table, staring at the wall. She hadn’t said yes. She hadn’t said no. She’d just walked out, the weight of his impossible proposal a lead cloak on her shoulders.
The buzzer sounded harsh, a digital scream. She jumped, then pressed the call button.
“It’s me.”
No reply. Just the electronic lock disengaging with a heavy thunk.
The elevator ride was silent and too fast. The doors opened directly into his loft, a vast, open space that always felt more like a showroom than a home. Cool, conditioned air smelled of sandalwood and faintly of his cologne. The city sprawled beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, a panorama of possibilities that felt, today, like a prison vista.
Nacho stood by the kitchen island, a sleek monument of marble and steel. He was dressed in dark jeans and a tight grey henley that showed the musculature of his arms and chest. He held a glass of whiskey, the ice clinking softly as he turned.
“You’re late,” he said, his voice flat.
“I needed to think.”
“Think about what?” He put the glass down. The sound was precise, final.
She stayed near the elevator, a safe ten feet of polished concrete between them. “About us. About what this is.”
“It’s simple.” He took a step forward. “It’s you and me building something real. Something with a foundation. Which we discussed.”
“You discussed,” she corrected, a spark of her old fire flickering. “You told me what you wanted. You didn’t ask me what I needed.”
He gave a short, humorless laugh. “I know what you need, Sara. You need a man who knows his own mind. Who doesn’t share his woman like a fucking committee.” He closed the distance, not rushing, a predator sure of his ground. “You need to be claimed. To be taken out of that… confused little situation you call a life.”
His words were a scalpel, dissecting her truth with brutal accuracy. It shamed her, which made her angry. “My situation is my own. It’s complicated. It’s human.”
“It’s weak.” He was in front of her now, looking down. He cupped her chin, his grip firm, forcing her to meet his eyes. “And you’re not weak. I see the fight in you. That’s what I want. For us. For our children.”
Our children. The words hung between them, solid and real. Charly’s offer of a scaffold seemed to wobble in comparison to this finished castle.
She pulled her face away. “I can’t just abandon him, Nacho. Not after everything.”
A shadow passed over his features, cold and quick. “You already have. You’re here, aren’t you?”
He was right. She was here. The guilt was a toxic lump in her throat.
“It’s over, Nacho.” The words came out whispered, brittle.
He stared at her. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then a slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. It didn’t reach his eyes. “No,” he said, softly. “It’s not.”
“It is. I’m ending it.” She tried to sound firm, but it wavered.
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, intimate register that slithered over her skin. “Let me tell you what happens if you try. I don’t fade away, Sara. I’m not your sensitive boy at home, waiting with tea and tissues.” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, his fingers lingering on her neck. “I go to him. I look him in the eye, and I thank him for sharing you. I tell him every detail. How you scream my name. How you beg for my cock. How wet you get just thinking about me fucking a baby into you.”
She flinched, a full-body recoil. “You wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t I?” The smile vanished. “You think I play by his rules? By your rules of careful feelings and gentle let-downs?” He leaned so close his lips almost brushed her ear. “I break things. And if you walk away from what we could have, I will break that sad little life of yours into pieces so small he’ll never be able to glue them back together. You think he can look at you after that? Knowing you came back to me, again and again, knowing how you really are?”
Terror, cold and slick, coiled in her gut. He would do it. Not out of malice, but out of a sheer, unyielding certainty that she was his. It was a different kind of love, one that consumed rather than accommodated.
“You’re a bastard,” she breathed, her voice trembling.
“I’m your bastard,” he corrected. His hand slid from her neck down her arm, his thumb tracing the inside of her wrist where her pulse hammered. “And you love it. You love that I don’t ask. You love that I just take what’s mine.”
Her body betrayed her. A traitorous heat flushed through her, a thrilling counterpoint to the icy fear. He saw it. He always saw it.
Without another word, he kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a conquest. His mouth claimed hers, his tongue forcing entry, tasting of whiskey and dominance. She tried to twist her head away, a feeble protest, but he cradled the back of her skull, holding her firm. The fight seeped out of her, replaced by a familiar, shameful surrender.
He broke the kiss, his breath hot on her face. “Tell me you don’t want this.”
She couldn’t. The lie wouldn’t form.
He walked her backwards, never breaking eye contact, until her knees hit the edge of the enormous, low-slung sofa. He pushed her down. She landed amidst the soft leather cushions, looking up at him as he stood over her, unbuckling his belt.
“You think you can go back to that?” he said, his voice rough. “After what I make you feel? You think he can touch you like this?”
He knelt over her, his weight pinning her hips. One hand yanked her jeans and panties down in a single, brutal motion. The cool air hit her exposed skin, followed instantly by the heat of his hand. He didn’t tease. His fingers found her, rough and knowing, sliding through her wetness.
“See?” he growled. “You’re already fucking dripping for me. And you’re trying to tell me no?”
He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them. She gasped, her back arching off the couch. It was too much, too fast, a raw invasion that short-circuited her thoughts. Shame evaporated, burned away by a surge of pure, animal need.
“Say it,” he commanded, his fingers pumping. “Say you’re mine.”
She shook her head, a last vestige of defiance, but her hips were moving against his hand, seeking more.
He withdrew his fingers, brought them to her lips, smearing her own wetness across them. The taste was salty, primal. She tasted herself on his skin, and something deep within her unraveled.
He freed his cock, thick and already fully erect. He didn’t guide it. He just positioned himself and drove into her in one relentless, unforgiving stroke.
She cried out, a sound torn from her throat—shock, pain, overwhelming fullness. He buried himself to the hilt, letting her feel every inch, letting her body stretch to accommodate him. He held there, his body shuddering with the effort of control.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
Her eyes, which had squeezed shut, flew open. He was watching her, his gaze fierce, possessive.
“This is where you belong,” he said, each word a hammer strike. “Under me. Taking my cock. Getting pregnant with my child.” He began to move, a slow, deep, punishing rhythm. “Forget him. He’s a ghost. This…” he thrust harder, “…this is real.”
He was right. In that moment, it was the only real thing. The crude, physical truth of it obliterated everything else—Charly’s tear-stained face, his whispered proposal, the labyrinth of guilt. This was simple. This was a force of nature. Nacho fucked her with a single-minded intensity, each thrust a claim staked on her body, on her future. He gripped her thighs, pushing them wider, going deeper. The slap of skin on skin, the low grunts from his throat, the creak of the leather sofa—it was a symphony of possession.
She came violently, a wave of sensation that tore a ragged scream from her lips. It wasn’t tender. It was an eruption, a giving over. He watched her the entire time, his rhythm never faltering.
“Good,” he rasped. “Now take your reward.”
His pace turned frantic, brutal. He was chasing his own end, and he wanted her to feel it. He drove into her, once, twice, three more times, then stilled, plunging as deep as he could go. A harsh groan ripped from his chest as he pulsed inside her, his body shuddering with the release.
He collapsed on her for a moment, a heavy, sweat-slicked weight, before rolling to the side. They lay there in the fading light, breathing ragged, the scent of sex thick in the air.
He reached over, his hand settling possessively on her lower belly. “It’s already done, Sara. You know it. You feel it.”
She did. In the hollow ache between her legs, in the terrifying emptiness where her resistance had been, she felt the terrifying finality of it. He had won. Not with logic, not with a beautiful, heartbreaking offer, but with the sheer, unstoppable force of his will.
She thought of Charly, probably still at the kitchen table, waiting for her to come home.
She was home.