I stand outside his office, staring at the name on the bronze placard in front of me.
Dr. Luca Mariana.
I roll the name around my mind, testing how it feels—Luca Mariana, the father of my child, the father of the little girl who’s waiting for me right now back at my apartment.
She’s nearly six weeks old now, and I can barely believe how quickly the time has gone—Cara has been there for me pretty much every single day, making sure I have everything I need, fussing over me at every chance she gets. When I told her casually that I needed to get some fresh air and take a walk after being cooped up and recovering for the last few weeks, she practically chased me out the door, clearly glad to have some alone time with her niece.
“You get out!” she assured me, as I stood there in the doorway, fidgeting and wondering if this was the right thing. “You’ve already pumped, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but…”
“She’s asleep,” she reminded me, cradling Polly in her arms. “She’s not even going to notice you’re gone. Take a couple of hours to yourself, okay?”
I gave the two of them a quick hug before I headed for the door, and as soon as my feet hit the sidewalk, I knew there was only one place I wanted to go.
To see him.
He’s all I’ve been able to think about these last few weeks—at least, in the few moments I get a break from the sleeplessness and feeds and rushing around trying to take care of Polly. It’s been such a rush, fitting into this new routine, and nothing I did before I gave birth could have prepared me for how all-consuming it is. I prepped for months, cooking food, filling the freezer, building the nursery, all of it—and yet I still feel as though I can barely get my head above water to catch a breath. The nurse, Gina, assured me that it would get better in a few months when I came in for Polly’s checkup, but I don’t know if I’m going to last that long.
Especially not when I know her father is just a few blocks away from my apartment.
I haven’t been able to get him out of my head. I keep waiting to hear something from him, to step into an appointment and find him there waiting for me, but it hasn’t happened. Which is strange to me, because—well, why would he have made such a big deal about the fact that he was the father, if he doesn’t want anything to do with her? Was it just a matter of forcing my hand, making it so I had no choice but to confess? Or has he just changed his mind about the thought of going through with having a kid…
God, I don’t have any idea, but I know I need to find out.
Which is how I found myself wandering up to the hospital, my heart thudding in my chest. I need to know more about him. I’m telling myself that it’s just practical, really—I want to know if he has any medical issues I should know about with regards to my daughter, if there’s anything he’s needs to tell me to make sure I’m all caught up on everything that’s going on.
But truthfully, this is for me. I want to see him again because I know I need to. I need to know exactly what he thinks of all of this, where he stands, what he thinks of me, what he thinks of Polly, what he thinks of all of this.
I haven’t told Cara yet, of course, but I can practically hear her voice in my head, telling me to do something about it—He’s a doctor, you should lock that down while you still can! Which seems like a crazy thought to me, even now. The way he treated me when we were together that night, it’s obvious that he’s not used to settling down. When it comes to women, I get the feeling he gets everything he wants—and if he wanted a wife and kids, he would have them already.
I muster up all my courage, and lift my hand to knock on the door—but before I can, it opens before me, and there he is.
My eyes widen as they lock onto his once more. It’s almost too much, standing this close to him, as though his eyes might burn right through me on the spot.
“Uh, I—”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he growls, taking my arm and pulling me inside. “Quick, before anyone sees you…”
“You don’t want anyone to see me here?” I shoot back, tugging my wrist from his grasp. It’s not that he’s being too rough, no—it’s that his touch sends a shock of desire through my body, and I know I need to keep that shit on lockdown.
“What are you doing here?” he asks again as he pushes the door shut and rounds on me. He’s wearing a light-blue shirt and a pair of slacks, and I can’t help but remember the way he looked that night—behind the mask, hiding his identity. Maybe I would have been better off just keeping him that way…
“Is something going on with her?” he demands, and there’s a note of concern to his voice—he’s talking about Polly, of course.
I shake my head, touched that he cares enough to ask. “No, no, she’s fine,” I assure him. “I just, I—I needed to see you…”
“Why?”
He stares back at me, daring me to come up with a good answer. I flick my tongue over my lips. I don’t know how to put this into words. I feel as though I’m going to blurt out the wrong thing at any moment, and it’s taking everything I have to keep myself together in his presence.
“Because I need to talk to you. About…about everything that’s happened.”
His face darkens again, and he leans back on his desk. “What’s there to talk about?”
I almost laugh at how ridiculous his question is—I don’t know how he can brush it off so flippantly, as though it’s nothing.
“Are you kidding?” I retort. “We have a daughter together, in case you didn’t notice. And I have no idea if you want to be part of her life or not, but I deserve a—”
He straightens up and takes a step toward me, not breaking my gaze for a moment. My heart skips a beat in my chest—there’s something about the way he’s looking at me that seems to plunge right through me, piercing my heart on the spot.
“You deserve what?” he asks. “You deserve an explanation? Because I can give you one. We fucked, you got pregnant, you had a child. And you had no intention of telling me about her, so I don’t see why you get to act this way now.”
I fall silent for a moment, my breath catching in my lungs. There’s almost…a note of hurt to his voice. I’m not certain if I’m imagining it, but the way he’s looking at me, I can’t say for sure.
“Because I had no idea who you were,” I argue back. “If I had known who you were, I would have—”
“When I asked you, you told me no,” he tells me. “You told me I wasn’t her father. Given the chance, you still lied.”
His words are harsh, but they’re not inaccurate.
“I was panicked!” I protest. “It’s not like you gave me much of a chance to make sense of it all. You were just a stranger, and then…”
“And then I was the father of your child,” he murmurs as he takes another step toward me. His gaze is burning into mine, and I can smell the scent of him on the air, the same way I did that night we met. Despite myself, my body lets loose a rush of hormones that draw me in closer to him. As much as I want to keep things calm, a desirous passion pulses through me that I can’t control.
“You didn’t seem to mind when I was just a stranger,” he adds, gazing down at me. His voice has softened slightly. I wonder if, like me, he’s thinking about what we shared that night, the incredible sex we had together at the masked ball. The sex that changed the course of my life for good…
And the sex that, whether I want to admit it or not, I want to have all over again.
I push that thought down. It’s just the hormones, nothing more to it than that. I am not going to let myself get drawn in by some stupid want—this is probably just my body responding to the fact that he’s Polly’s father, not anything real, not anything serious.
“Yeah, well, I would have kept it that way,” I shoot back.
“You still can,” he replies, planting his hand on the door next to me. “You can walk right out of here and we don’t have to talk about this again.”
“How can you be so callous?” I exclaim. I know it’s the mom in me busting out, but I can’t stand how he talks about this. As though she’s nothing. As though he’s not her father.
“Callous?” he snaps back. “You think this is me being callous?”
“You’re speaking about her like she doesn’t matter,” I point out. “She’s your daughter. She’s a person, and she deserves to know who her father is—”
“Yeah? You weren’t going to bother finding out for her,” he replies.
I stop dead in my tracks—okay, I can’t argue with him on that. I was ready to take care of this little girl all by myself, but that was because I thought I didn’t have a choice, not because I wanted to.
“It’s not like that…”
“Oh, yeah?” he presses, as he moves in closer to me. “What is it like, then? You want to explain that to me?”
His voice is laced with something, something sharp—something that lances deep into my core, even as I want to brush him off. I lift my gaze to his and meet his eyes steadily, staring back at him as though he doesn’t scare me at all.
“I thought I had to look after her alone,” I remind him. “I didn’t know who you were. I still don’t—”
“Yeah, you still don’t,” he agrees. “And if you did, you’d want nothing to do with me.”
“What does that mean?”
“If you knew who I was,” he repeats himself, slower this time, as though I might be having a hard time making sense of it, “you wouldn’t want me anywhere near your daughter. Trust me. Now, get out of here, before someone sees you—”
“And who are you, then?” I demand, cutting him off before he can cast me out entirely. “You want to tell me that part?”
He gazes back at me, his face impassive. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does,” I protest. “You’re my daughter’s father. I need to know what kind of person you are. What is it, are you married? You have a family of your own already…?”
“No,” he replies. “None of that shit. I’m not a cheat.”
“So, what is it…?”
The words hang in the air between us. There’s something he’s holding back, something he doesn’t want me to know. And it’s got nothing to do with him being a doctor. No, it’s more than that. I can’t see why he would lie about having another family—if I found out that was the case, I would get the fuck out of here and never look back. I don’t want my little girl involved with a cheat. But this…?
This is something else. Something more. Something worse. And despite myself, I can’t find it in me to make a move for the door and get out of here.
“Please, just tell me,” I whisper to him, but the words hitch at the back of my throat as I try to force them out.
“You don’t want to know,” he warns me, but I shake my head.
“I need to. I…”
“If you knew,” he murmurs as he reaches his hand for my face, his voice softening all of a sudden—his touch caresses over the edge of my lip, and I suck in a sharp breath as a shudder of pleasure courses through my system. “You would never have come here.”
“But I’m here,” I point out to him, as my chest rises and falls swiftly. “I…I want to know…”
“And if you knew,” he continues, as his thumb reaches up for my lip. “You might have thought twice about getting with me at that party all those months ago.”
I press my lips together, trying to think straight. I can’t make sense of this. Here he is, telling me that being here is a bad idea, telling me that I should leave and never look back—and at the same time, he has his hands on me, touching me and caressing me like he can’t get enough of me. My head is a mess, and it strikes me that this might be part of his plan—get me into such a state that I can’t do anything but give in to what he’s saying to me, and let this happen once and for all.
“I don’t think anything would have stopped me,” I confess, the words spilling from my lips before I can stop them. A smirk curls up the corners of his lips—I can tell he’s pleased with my answer, though I doubt he would ever come out and say it.
“Oh, I see how it is,” he murmurs, moving in a little closer to me, our bodies so near to one another that they’re practically flush. He knows what he’s doing to me, and I get the feeling he’s using this power he has over me as some kind of distraction. I should be pressing for more information, pressing for the truth of what he’s keeping from me, but I can tell that my body won’t allow for something like that.
No, the only thing it will allow for is his hands on me once more. Before I can stop myself, I tilt my head back, look into his eyes, and plant my lips against his.
As soon as our mouths come together, it’s as though we’re back at that night—the night we met, the night we first came together, when I knew I should have held back and couldn’t find it in myself to even think of it. His hands slide down to my waist, his grip firm and controlling, his tongue snaking past my lips with ease as I arch my back to press into him. While my body has mostly recovered from the physical effects of birth, I feel as though I’m still dripping in this hormonal rush that makes it impossible to deny him what he wants.
He hitches me up against the door, pinning me against it and holding me there for a moment before he grabs my legs and wraps them around him. I’m only wearing a light dress, and it falls away from me at once, the fabric giving way to allow him to slip his hands onto my thighs. He groans into my mouth as he digs his fingers against my skin, clearly enjoying the feel of me, and I feel a flood of want pooling between my legs.
“There hasn’t been a single night since I fucked you that I haven’t thought about it,” he murmurs against my ear as his hands continue their journey upward till they find my panties. He slowly inches them off my legs, tossing them to the floor of his office beside us.
It strikes me that his colleagues are likely just outside the door, going about their business as they always do. This is risky, and not in the same way it was at the party—everyone there was hooking up, or at least knew it was happening. Here? Here, if we’re caught, then we’re going to be the odd ones out, and a shudder of excitement throbs through me at the thought.
He wants me so bad he’s willing to get in trouble to make it happen.
That thought sends another rush of desire through me, and I know I’m not going to be able to hold back much longer. I haven’t been with anyone since the night we met, and I need him right now. It’s crazy, to think that this is only the second time I’ve been with the father of my child, but it feels right—my body demanding him, like it knows where he belongs, what I need from him.
I can feel him growing hard against my hip, and I buck myself into him, moaning against his mouth. He slides his hand to my thigh, gripping tight as he lowers his mouth to my ear.
“You sure you can take this?”
I nod frantically. I will take anything he can give me right now, anything—and I’m sure he knows that. He slowly slides his hand to his cock, and unzips himself like he’s unwrapping a Christmas gift. My eyes trace down to the shape of him as he wraps his fingers around his length, and my ankles tighten around his back, drawing him closer to me.
He pushes aside my skirt and guides himself against me, pressing his head against my slit gently, as though giving me time to figure out how this feels. I know it’s early to be having sex, but the flood of pleasure that takes control when I feel him teasing me like this is impossible to deny.
His cock plunges into me, filling me all the way up to the hilt, and my eyes blur around the edges as I moan in pleasure. There’s something so perfect about the way he feels inside of me, as though the two of us were made for each other—maybe that’s why I fell pregnant, because my body knows we belong together. He slips his hands to my ass as he pins me to the door, grinding himself into me deep—he stills himself there inside of me for a long moment, breathing hard, and as he looks into my eyes, I can see the naked want written all over his face.
He kisses me again as he starts to move in me, taking his time, as though he’s savoring every inch of me wrapped around him. I can’t help but feel a little self-conscious at how different I must feel compared to the first time we were together, but when he slips his tongue into my mouth again, all of that vanishes from my mind.
“You feel so fucking perfect,” he murmurs against my ear as one of his hands begins to rove around my body, taking in the feel of me, the sensation of me beneath him. He slides his hand underneath my dress, grabbing one of my breasts roughly, drawing a gasp from between my lips.
“Oh, fuck,” I groan. This is crazy, and I know it is—just an hour ago, I was cradling my little girl in my arms, and now here I am, hooking up with a doctor in his office right in the middle of a hospital, where anyone could see us. I know this is reckless, and I know it might land me in more trouble than I know what to do with, but as I run my hands along his arms and over his shoulders, I find it hard to care.
He presses his forehead to mine, and there’s something in the way he looks at me that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Whatever it is he was warning me about earlier, it’s close to the surface now, threatening to break through at any instant, and I don’t know how much of a chance I have of dodging it. Even burning under the heat of his fiery stare, all I can do is melt into him.
He presses his face to my shoulder, turning his head so he can work his tongue hungrily along the side of my neck—I can feel his teeth catching against me slightly, like he wants to tear a chunk out of me right then and there. He’s still moving inside of me, deep, slow thrusts like he’s making the most of every moment we have together, and I can do nothing but cling to him for dear life and pray I don’t get washed away by the sheer intensity of our passion together.
I can feel myself stirring—something building inside of me, my orgasm starting to pulse toward its climax. It has been so long since I’ve thought of myself in these terms, as a sexual being, as a woman with physical needs and desires, but to have them sated like this, so unexpectedly…
Can I really claim that? As I grab his head and pull him around so I can kiss him once more, I don’t know if I can even convince myself of that any longer. I don’t know what I came here for. I said I was going to raise Polly alone, so the only reason I’d have bothered to come here is if I was looking for something entirely different…
He plunges deep into me, driving every thought from my mind as our lips meet once more. I can’t linger on what’s going on inside my head right now—I can only focus on the powerful pleasure he’s driving through me, as I get closer and closer to the edge, until…
When the orgasm hits, it’s so strong that for a moment, I feel as though I can’t think at all. He pushes himself in deep, his cock lodged all the way inside of me, holding himself there like he doesn’t want to pull back—and at last, my pussy spasms around him, my clit throbbing as I go over the edge. I cry out, the sound muffled by his mouth against mine, and I can feel him grinning cockily as I come for him right then and there.
A few seconds later, he reaches his own release inside of me. When I feel the warmth of his seed, I’m distantly aware of the fact that I should likely know better than to go without protection—but there’s a part of me, no matter how stupid and how reckless, that aches to feel his closeness. I have given up so much over the course of the last few months; don’t I get to indulge in something that’s just for me…?
But as the orgasm begins to fade, and my more sensible side starts to edge in once more, it hits me what I have just done. And I unwrap myself from him, doing my best to plant my shaky feet on the floor even as they feel like they’re about to give out from underneath me.
“Hey, careful,” he murmurs, one arm still looped around my waist to keep me upright—but I can barely pay him any attention. I scrabble for my panties where he tossed them onto the ground, and tug them over my shaky legs.
“I—I should go,” I blurt out, hardly able to look at him. He catches my arm before I can make it to the door—and as his gaze burns into me, I want nothing more than to stay. I can’t stand the thought of being far from him, not when my body craves him as much as it does, not when there’s a part of me that longs to give in to him for more…
As I stand there and try to contend with what the best course of action is, my phone rings, and I snatch it up at once. I’m grateful for the distraction. Or at least, I was, until I hear Cara’s panicked voice coming down the line.
“Katie?”
“What’s going on?” I ask, my eyes widening. “Did something happen to Polly? Is she okay…?”
Guilt tears at my guts—shit, I shouldn’t have left her there alone, I shouldn’t have been so selfish…
“She’s fine,” Cara replies at once. “I just—your apartment building, there was some flooding in the basement, and they had to evacuate everyone. I grabbed as much as I could, but we’re just standing outside right now, and…”
“I’ll be right there,” I promise her as I hang up the phone. But when I lift my gaze to Luca and find him staring back at me—I know he’s not going to let me go that easily.
