Unwound (1/4)
Title: Unwound (1/4)
Author: icedteainthebag
Word Count: 3,157
Rating: MA
Pairings: Bill Adama/Carolanne Adama, Bill Adama/Ellen Tigh
Summary: Unwinding the labyrinth.
Notes: tjonesy bought my services in the help_haiti auction and requested a story in which Bill and Ellen frakked. This is what happened. Thanks to her for inspiring me to write it and for putting her foot up my ass to finish it. My love and overly affectionate praise go out to somadanne and larsfarm77 for the amazing betas.
Summary courtesy of Laurence Sterne; first line is a quote from Barbey d’Aurevilly.
Link to: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Next to the wound, what women make best is the bandage.
x x x x
“You’re gorgeous,” Bill says into her ear, pulling her tightly against his body.
Carolanne is gorgeous, the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on. Even back when he first saw her in Caprica City, he was so frakking taken with her. He has no idea to this day why he caught her eye, but she certainly caught his, though he knew all the reasons why he found himself drawn to her. He’s no believer in dumb luck, but he’s always had a special place in his heart for high heels ever since hers had gotten caught in between the slats in the boardwalk along Lake Olympia, causing her to stumble.
He came to her rescue, of course, working her shoe out, saving the heel in the process. Not that she needed to be rescued. He could tell that some part of her found his chivalry wildly amusing, but it’s also what broke down that front she puts up to keep people out. He’s seen it a few times since then.
Tonight, she’s stunning-her white dress smooth under his hands, her hair swept up, her eyes aglow under the strings of lights hung above them. There’s a warm breeze off the lake and he’s buzzed on the Aerelon wine her father had brought in by the freighter load for their wedding.
She pulls away from him and looks at him adoringly. It always makes him smile.
“I love you,” she says; he reads her lips because the music has engulfed the two of them. She puts her hands on his cheeks and says it again.
She may have said it one more time, had he not kissed the words away.
x x x x
“We should have a baby.”
Sometimes he thinks she says these things just to see if he’s paying attention. This morning, he is, as they read The Caprican over breakfast. He echoes her with a chuckle, the syllables feeling foreign to him as they slip past his lips.
“Haven’t you ever wanted kids?”
He can’t believe they’ve never talked about this before. “I haven’t thought about it much.”
It’s not that he doesn’t want one. He wants everything with her; really, he wants to give her everything she wants, and up until this point, they’ve been the same things he’s wanted.
“I think about it a lot.” She taps her toast against her plate, dislodging the crumbs so she doesn’t get them on her blouse. She takes a dainty bite, then points at him with the bitten piece of bread. “You’d make a good father, Bill. It’s one of the reasons I married you.”
“I thought it was my rugged good looks.”
“I said one of the reasons.”
“I don’t know,” he answers. He traces circles in the condensation that’s formed on the outside of his glass of milk. “I don’t know if I would be.”
She lets out a low chuckle. “Course you would.”
“I’m not around enough,” he says. “Kids need both their parents around.”
“That’s not true. Look at your family.”
He’s silent as he looks out the sliding glass panes, the sunrise rippling the water of the koi pond with gold. As far as she knows, she’s right. He knows better.
“You could always be around a bit more,” she suggests, her toe nudging his shin under the table.
He glances at her, then takes a long swig of his milk, watching the sunrise again. “Can’t have it both ways. Never seen anybody juggle a career and kids with much success.”
She takes more interest in her toast, the sound of her crisp bite seeming louder in the silence between them. “I think we can do it, Bill.”
He’s afraid he doesn’t know how to be a good father, but he’s never been one to let his fears deter him from doing what he wants. Sometimes he wants things only because she does.
He knows he has what he considers a family on his ship; he’s memorized every one of their names, some of their birthdays. He cares for them, sometimes too much, though he rarely lets it show. He doesn’t feel like his life is lacking, but then again, Carolanne doesn’t have that. She reminds him often that when he leaves, he leaves her there alone.
“I want you to be happy.” He finishes his milk.
“I am,” she says, her smile hopeful. “But this would make me happier.”
He smiles back. She doesn’t seem to notice that he’s forcing it.
“Plus, we’re gonna have so much fun trying.” Her voice is a shade seductive as she leans over the tabletop. He leans in and kisses her, long and slow.
She could convince him of anything; they both know that.
x x x x
The music is loud and the drinks are flowing. It’s another weekend night at her father’s house, another excuse for a social event of the higher order, and Bill is terminally disinterested in the scene playing out before him.
He’d gone on shore leave just that morning, and he already misses the calming hum of his ship around him. It’s beginning to feel like the only place he can truly be himself.
He smiles when Carolanne leans over and kisses him on the cheek, saying something indiscernible that he nods to in agreement. He drinks his champagne.
He used to just be a shadow among men at his father-in-law’s get-togethers. The obligation to attend was even clearer after they’d married, since it was her father who pulled the strings with the defense subcommittee to get him back into the Fleet in the first place. He couldn’t have his daughter married to a freighter deckhand. As Carolanne often reminded him, love is blind. People aren’t.
At the beginning, it was awkward being asked who he was, with the underlying assumption that he didn’t belong, and that the woman on his arm was his only way into this world of class and rank. As time passed and he worked his own way up the chain of command, they recognized his name as much as they recognized why he belonged there. She tolerated it when his presence was unassuming; she loved it when she didn’t have to introduce him anymore.
People started introducing themselves to him instead.
This was her scene, not one he especially enjoyed. In the limited time he had off rotation, he’d much rather have been doing anything else other than fraternizing within the confines of elite social circles. But there were two things that were the saving grace of these events: for one, the heels and clingy dress she wore as she held a champagne flute in her hand, hanging on his arm and staking her claim to the rising star of the Fleet.
More importantly, what happened after the events was what encouraged him to attend.
They would always screw around when they were being driven home, drunk out of their minds, putting up the privacy window so she could straddle him and moan as his hardness brushed against her thigh. She felt, sounded, and tasted so good as he kissed her and she teased him with her body.
He loved the way she looked at him like she wanted him; she possessed him in these moments and he possessed her, his mouth on her skin and his palms sliding under her dress, the fabric cool and smooth against the backs of his hands.
After this evening’s event, Carolanne seems more adventurous than ever; her eyebrow arches as she slides to her knees in front of him and works him out of his pants. She chuckles at the heavy hardness in her palm as he feels her breath against him, making him groan and shiver. The back of his head hits the headrest the moment her tongue begins to tease his overly sensitive skin.
They rarely make it to the bed after indulgent nights like this. Tonight they land on the couch and it’s mere moments before she squirms out of her panties and he’s inside her. She giggles in his ear and tells him how lucky she is to have him. It only makes him frak her harder, just to prove her point. Her laughter turns into moans that turn him inside out.
He surrenders to her completely. He’d never let his guard down so easily with anyone before her.
“Missed you.” She always tells him that when they’re done, sweaty and stuck together. He presses his flushed cheek against her chest.
“You too.”
x x x x
“We’ve been at war for so long that sometimes we forget what we’re fighting for.”
He’s been away so many times. She’s never seemed to care until now. There’s something different about the way she looks at him when he returns home from his rotation on Atlantia. He’s been gone three months; it’s the longest time he’s been away. Then again, she’s married to the military. She should understand this better than anyone. He’s an Executive Officer now, and responsibility and its spoils come at a price that in the past, they’ve been grudgingly willing to pay.
It’s after dinner and they’re sitting on the couch, watching television. He’s exhausted, sleepy from too much celebratory wine that they sipped while the tension mulled between them. He’s awake for her benefit.
“I don’t know if I can take this,” she says, like she’s talking about the show he’s pretending to pay attention to onscreen.
“We can change it,” he answers, roused from his groggy state. He reaches for the remote.
The sound she makes is somewhere between disgust and irritation. “If only it were as easy as flipping a channel, Bill,” she says. “If only you could just turn some feelings off.”
She grabs the remote from his hand and turns off the television. “It’s not that easy.”
“What feelings are you talking about?”
He tries to meet her eyes but she’s avoiding them, her fingers gripping the remote. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” he says. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
He gets that dull nausea in his gut almost immediately; the sense that something’s about to go horribly wrong, or maybe it already has.
“Are you insinuating something?” she snaps, looking him in the eyes. He tries not to visibly recoil from her instant anger.
“What the frak would I be insinuating?” He shifts on the couch, now curious as to what secrets she has to tell. Maybe there’s an obvious explanation for her standoffishness; it’s certainly not one he wants to accept at this point, but he can’t help but wonder as she gets up and walks over to the window, staring outside with her hand on her hip.
“I can’t take you being gone all the time. Why the hell do you need to be gone so much?” She doesn’t look at him, merely stares into the darkness beyond the glass.
He laughs. He can’t help it. “Because it’s what I do.”
“Well, maybe you need to rethink what you do.”
That turns his mood quickly; he didn’t expect that, coming from her. He feels suddenly on the defensive. “Why would I? What’s wrong with what I do? It’s certainly providing you with a good enough living.”
That gets her attention; he knew it would. She looks directly at him, anger settling into her features as she crosses her arms. “You’re never around. And you’re changing.”
“I’m changing,” he repeats slowly, pushing himself off the couch and running a hand through his hair with a deep breath. “Okay, maybe I’m not the guy you married. Maybe I’m better than the guy you married, now. Is that what you can’t take?”
She tilts her head and seems to be scrutinizing him. He feels a current of frustration running beneath the calm he’s trying to maintain. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“That I’m not your charity case anymore.”
There-he said it. He’d been feeling it for too long, anyway. He feels vulnerably exposed in this moment, though, and he can tell from the way she looks that she’s about to take advantage of it.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve worked my way up. Maybe you can’t handle that I’m more successful now than I was then.” He starts pacing the carpet, feeling it sink beneath his bare feet. “Is it easier for you to have me grateful for everything you’re doing for me?”
“You never seem grateful for anything I do for you anymore.”
She laughs and it grates on his nerves. They’re quickly fraying and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t stop this immediately. He could leave; he could just walk out of the room and leave her to stew. But this has been a long time coming.
He doesn’t stop.
“What have you done for me lately?” he asks.
“Nothing, lately,” she says, her tone biting. “Because you’ve been gone for three months. Off doing whatever to whoever.”
“Wait a frakkin’ second,” he growls. He stops pacing and faces her, teeming with anger at the implications behind her choice of words. The look on her face almost suggests she’s going to back down, but she’s never been one to back down for long.
“Bill, sometimes I think we don’t know each other anymore.” She sounds calmer, restrained.
“Have I changed that much?” He stares at her, not sure if he’s more upset or heartbroken at her declaration. He feels it in his chest, settling in like dread, heavy, tightening. “Have you really changed that much?”
“I don’t know,” she says, throwing her hands in the air and letting out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know, Bill, all I know is that this life is not what I wanted.”
“What the frak do you want, then?”
“I want a family, Bill. I want you here. I want the guy who’s around to love his wife and raise his kids.”
He shakes his head and doesn’t notice his fingers have curved into fists until he feels the deep impression of his fingernails sending pricks of pain through his palms. “Frak, Carolanne... you knew this going in. You knew going in that this was the direction our life was headed. You never had a problem with this before.” He watches her shift on her feet as she looks away. “Are you just making up shit now? Trying to come up with reasons why we shouldn’t be together?”
“I’m not making shit up, Bill. It’s right in front of your face. See it.”
“You wanna be with someone else or something?” He has a brief vision of hitting her and he’s even angrier at her for making him consider such an action. It shocks him and he blinks and bites his lower lip until he tastes blood before he continues, his voice low. “Did you find a better father for these imaginary kids you want so badly?”
She stares at him, then heads for the front hall closet and slides the wooden door open with a loud bang. It jolts him and he realizes she’s putting on her coat to leave. He walks over to her and puts his hand on her arm as she slides it through her coat.
“Don’t leave,” he says.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
His grip tightens on her arm. “Don’t leave.”
“Get your hands off me, Bill.” Each word feels like a dagger, pushing into his skin, into his heart.
He lingers. He knows he shouldn’t; some part of him wants to see her react. He feels like he’s nearly craving the next step in this frakked up dance they’re doing around each other.
The next step, he finds, is her open palm striking the side of his face. It’s unexpected, as is his response. He grabs the back of her hair and kisses her hard, holding her mouth to his as she struggles, a whimper of protest muffled against his lips.
He pushes her up against the wall next to the door and keeps his mouth on her; he can feel her teeth against his lips and her body writhing under his weight as he pins her there, grunting into her mouth. He feels himself growing hard and he’s shocked that this, of all things, is what makes him want her more than he has in the three months he’s been gone.
He grinds his hips against hers and she manages to twist her mouth out of their kiss. “Frak you,” she gasps. “Let me go.”
“You don’t want me to.” His hand is still tangled in her hair as his other hand reaches for his zipper, tugging it down. Her hands are pulling at his shirt; at first he thinks she’s trying to rip it so she can scratch him. Maybe she’d make him bleed; maybe she’d leave scars. There’s nothing he can do about it.
Then he realizes that she’s trying to yank it up over his head. He unbuttons his pants as she sheds his shirt and this time, she kisses him, capturing his tongue and sucking on it, making him tingle.
His pants slip down his legs and he pulls his cock out, giving it a stroke, groaning at the feel of it pulsing in his hand. He pushes her pants down roughly with both hands, the cotton soft against his palms. Her underwear is next; he tugs it down so hard she cries out, sounding surprised.
He feels her hands move to the back of his hair, twisting into it, pulling so hard it hurts. It burns. There’s no stopping this now. He slides his cock across her heat, thrusting his hips so hard against her body that she hits the wall with a gasp. Lips capturing her breath, their tongues tangle aggressively.
“Tell me you want me,” he growls against her mouth, biting her lip. “Frak, tell me. Tell me.”
“I want you.” She whimpers, peppering his mouth with soft, short kisses. “I want you here, I want you here... ”
He pushes into her with a hard thrust and her words are interrupted by her sharp cry at the sensation, her fingernails raking over the nape of his neck. He pulls her thighs up and she wraps them around him as he pushes her against the wall as hard as he can for leverage. He fraks her, driving into her out of frustration and a desperate attempt at regaining some of the control he feels slipping away in their lives. Her thighs are shaking against his hips; she shudders around his cock.
She kisses him and won’t stop; she won’t let him pull away, even to catch his breath after he spills into her, a strangled groan caught in his throat.
Six weeks later, he receives a telegraph transmission that he’s going to be a father.
/ chapter one
Author: icedteainthebag
Word Count: 3,157
Rating: MA
Pairings: Bill Adama/Carolanne Adama, Bill Adama/Ellen Tigh
Summary: Unwinding the labyrinth.
Notes: tjonesy bought my services in the help_haiti auction and requested a story in which Bill and Ellen frakked. This is what happened. Thanks to her for inspiring me to write it and for putting her foot up my ass to finish it. My love and overly affectionate praise go out to somadanne and larsfarm77 for the amazing betas.
Summary courtesy of Laurence Sterne; first line is a quote from Barbey d’Aurevilly.
Link to: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Next to the wound, what women make best is the bandage.
x x x x
“You’re gorgeous,” Bill says into her ear, pulling her tightly against his body.
Carolanne is gorgeous, the most beautiful thing he’s ever laid eyes on. Even back when he first saw her in Caprica City, he was so frakking taken with her. He has no idea to this day why he caught her eye, but she certainly caught his, though he knew all the reasons why he found himself drawn to her. He’s no believer in dumb luck, but he’s always had a special place in his heart for high heels ever since hers had gotten caught in between the slats in the boardwalk along Lake Olympia, causing her to stumble.
He came to her rescue, of course, working her shoe out, saving the heel in the process. Not that she needed to be rescued. He could tell that some part of her found his chivalry wildly amusing, but it’s also what broke down that front she puts up to keep people out. He’s seen it a few times since then.
Tonight, she’s stunning-her white dress smooth under his hands, her hair swept up, her eyes aglow under the strings of lights hung above them. There’s a warm breeze off the lake and he’s buzzed on the Aerelon wine her father had brought in by the freighter load for their wedding.
She pulls away from him and looks at him adoringly. It always makes him smile.
“I love you,” she says; he reads her lips because the music has engulfed the two of them. She puts her hands on his cheeks and says it again.
She may have said it one more time, had he not kissed the words away.
x x x x
“We should have a baby.”
Sometimes he thinks she says these things just to see if he’s paying attention. This morning, he is, as they read The Caprican over breakfast. He echoes her with a chuckle, the syllables feeling foreign to him as they slip past his lips.
“Haven’t you ever wanted kids?”
He can’t believe they’ve never talked about this before. “I haven’t thought about it much.”
It’s not that he doesn’t want one. He wants everything with her; really, he wants to give her everything she wants, and up until this point, they’ve been the same things he’s wanted.
“I think about it a lot.” She taps her toast against her plate, dislodging the crumbs so she doesn’t get them on her blouse. She takes a dainty bite, then points at him with the bitten piece of bread. “You’d make a good father, Bill. It’s one of the reasons I married you.”
“I thought it was my rugged good looks.”
“I said one of the reasons.”
“I don’t know,” he answers. He traces circles in the condensation that’s formed on the outside of his glass of milk. “I don’t know if I would be.”
She lets out a low chuckle. “Course you would.”
“I’m not around enough,” he says. “Kids need both their parents around.”
“That’s not true. Look at your family.”
He’s silent as he looks out the sliding glass panes, the sunrise rippling the water of the koi pond with gold. As far as she knows, she’s right. He knows better.
“You could always be around a bit more,” she suggests, her toe nudging his shin under the table.
He glances at her, then takes a long swig of his milk, watching the sunrise again. “Can’t have it both ways. Never seen anybody juggle a career and kids with much success.”
She takes more interest in her toast, the sound of her crisp bite seeming louder in the silence between them. “I think we can do it, Bill.”
He’s afraid he doesn’t know how to be a good father, but he’s never been one to let his fears deter him from doing what he wants. Sometimes he wants things only because she does.
He knows he has what he considers a family on his ship; he’s memorized every one of their names, some of their birthdays. He cares for them, sometimes too much, though he rarely lets it show. He doesn’t feel like his life is lacking, but then again, Carolanne doesn’t have that. She reminds him often that when he leaves, he leaves her there alone.
“I want you to be happy.” He finishes his milk.
“I am,” she says, her smile hopeful. “But this would make me happier.”
He smiles back. She doesn’t seem to notice that he’s forcing it.
“Plus, we’re gonna have so much fun trying.” Her voice is a shade seductive as she leans over the tabletop. He leans in and kisses her, long and slow.
She could convince him of anything; they both know that.
x x x x
The music is loud and the drinks are flowing. It’s another weekend night at her father’s house, another excuse for a social event of the higher order, and Bill is terminally disinterested in the scene playing out before him.
He’d gone on shore leave just that morning, and he already misses the calming hum of his ship around him. It’s beginning to feel like the only place he can truly be himself.
He smiles when Carolanne leans over and kisses him on the cheek, saying something indiscernible that he nods to in agreement. He drinks his champagne.
He used to just be a shadow among men at his father-in-law’s get-togethers. The obligation to attend was even clearer after they’d married, since it was her father who pulled the strings with the defense subcommittee to get him back into the Fleet in the first place. He couldn’t have his daughter married to a freighter deckhand. As Carolanne often reminded him, love is blind. People aren’t.
At the beginning, it was awkward being asked who he was, with the underlying assumption that he didn’t belong, and that the woman on his arm was his only way into this world of class and rank. As time passed and he worked his own way up the chain of command, they recognized his name as much as they recognized why he belonged there. She tolerated it when his presence was unassuming; she loved it when she didn’t have to introduce him anymore.
People started introducing themselves to him instead.
This was her scene, not one he especially enjoyed. In the limited time he had off rotation, he’d much rather have been doing anything else other than fraternizing within the confines of elite social circles. But there were two things that were the saving grace of these events: for one, the heels and clingy dress she wore as she held a champagne flute in her hand, hanging on his arm and staking her claim to the rising star of the Fleet.
More importantly, what happened after the events was what encouraged him to attend.
They would always screw around when they were being driven home, drunk out of their minds, putting up the privacy window so she could straddle him and moan as his hardness brushed against her thigh. She felt, sounded, and tasted so good as he kissed her and she teased him with her body.
He loved the way she looked at him like she wanted him; she possessed him in these moments and he possessed her, his mouth on her skin and his palms sliding under her dress, the fabric cool and smooth against the backs of his hands.
After this evening’s event, Carolanne seems more adventurous than ever; her eyebrow arches as she slides to her knees in front of him and works him out of his pants. She chuckles at the heavy hardness in her palm as he feels her breath against him, making him groan and shiver. The back of his head hits the headrest the moment her tongue begins to tease his overly sensitive skin.
They rarely make it to the bed after indulgent nights like this. Tonight they land on the couch and it’s mere moments before she squirms out of her panties and he’s inside her. She giggles in his ear and tells him how lucky she is to have him. It only makes him frak her harder, just to prove her point. Her laughter turns into moans that turn him inside out.
He surrenders to her completely. He’d never let his guard down so easily with anyone before her.
“Missed you.” She always tells him that when they’re done, sweaty and stuck together. He presses his flushed cheek against her chest.
“You too.”
x x x x
“We’ve been at war for so long that sometimes we forget what we’re fighting for.”
He’s been away so many times. She’s never seemed to care until now. There’s something different about the way she looks at him when he returns home from his rotation on Atlantia. He’s been gone three months; it’s the longest time he’s been away. Then again, she’s married to the military. She should understand this better than anyone. He’s an Executive Officer now, and responsibility and its spoils come at a price that in the past, they’ve been grudgingly willing to pay.
It’s after dinner and they’re sitting on the couch, watching television. He’s exhausted, sleepy from too much celebratory wine that they sipped while the tension mulled between them. He’s awake for her benefit.
“I don’t know if I can take this,” she says, like she’s talking about the show he’s pretending to pay attention to onscreen.
“We can change it,” he answers, roused from his groggy state. He reaches for the remote.
The sound she makes is somewhere between disgust and irritation. “If only it were as easy as flipping a channel, Bill,” she says. “If only you could just turn some feelings off.”
She grabs the remote from his hand and turns off the television. “It’s not that easy.”
“What feelings are you talking about?”
He tries to meet her eyes but she’s avoiding them, her fingers gripping the remote. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” he says. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
He gets that dull nausea in his gut almost immediately; the sense that something’s about to go horribly wrong, or maybe it already has.
“Are you insinuating something?” she snaps, looking him in the eyes. He tries not to visibly recoil from her instant anger.
“What the frak would I be insinuating?” He shifts on the couch, now curious as to what secrets she has to tell. Maybe there’s an obvious explanation for her standoffishness; it’s certainly not one he wants to accept at this point, but he can’t help but wonder as she gets up and walks over to the window, staring outside with her hand on her hip.
“I can’t take you being gone all the time. Why the hell do you need to be gone so much?” She doesn’t look at him, merely stares into the darkness beyond the glass.
He laughs. He can’t help it. “Because it’s what I do.”
“Well, maybe you need to rethink what you do.”
That turns his mood quickly; he didn’t expect that, coming from her. He feels suddenly on the defensive. “Why would I? What’s wrong with what I do? It’s certainly providing you with a good enough living.”
That gets her attention; he knew it would. She looks directly at him, anger settling into her features as she crosses her arms. “You’re never around. And you’re changing.”
“I’m changing,” he repeats slowly, pushing himself off the couch and running a hand through his hair with a deep breath. “Okay, maybe I’m not the guy you married. Maybe I’m better than the guy you married, now. Is that what you can’t take?”
She tilts her head and seems to be scrutinizing him. He feels a current of frustration running beneath the calm he’s trying to maintain. “What do you mean?” she asks.
“That I’m not your charity case anymore.”
There-he said it. He’d been feeling it for too long, anyway. He feels vulnerably exposed in this moment, though, and he can tell from the way she looks that she’s about to take advantage of it.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve worked my way up. Maybe you can’t handle that I’m more successful now than I was then.” He starts pacing the carpet, feeling it sink beneath his bare feet. “Is it easier for you to have me grateful for everything you’re doing for me?”
“You never seem grateful for anything I do for you anymore.”
She laughs and it grates on his nerves. They’re quickly fraying and he doesn’t know why he doesn’t stop this immediately. He could leave; he could just walk out of the room and leave her to stew. But this has been a long time coming.
He doesn’t stop.
“What have you done for me lately?” he asks.
“Nothing, lately,” she says, her tone biting. “Because you’ve been gone for three months. Off doing whatever to whoever.”
“Wait a frakkin’ second,” he growls. He stops pacing and faces her, teeming with anger at the implications behind her choice of words. The look on her face almost suggests she’s going to back down, but she’s never been one to back down for long.
“Bill, sometimes I think we don’t know each other anymore.” She sounds calmer, restrained.
“Have I changed that much?” He stares at her, not sure if he’s more upset or heartbroken at her declaration. He feels it in his chest, settling in like dread, heavy, tightening. “Have you really changed that much?”
“I don’t know,” she says, throwing her hands in the air and letting out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t know, Bill, all I know is that this life is not what I wanted.”
“What the frak do you want, then?”
“I want a family, Bill. I want you here. I want the guy who’s around to love his wife and raise his kids.”
He shakes his head and doesn’t notice his fingers have curved into fists until he feels the deep impression of his fingernails sending pricks of pain through his palms. “Frak, Carolanne... you knew this going in. You knew going in that this was the direction our life was headed. You never had a problem with this before.” He watches her shift on her feet as she looks away. “Are you just making up shit now? Trying to come up with reasons why we shouldn’t be together?”
“I’m not making shit up, Bill. It’s right in front of your face. See it.”
“You wanna be with someone else or something?” He has a brief vision of hitting her and he’s even angrier at her for making him consider such an action. It shocks him and he blinks and bites his lower lip until he tastes blood before he continues, his voice low. “Did you find a better father for these imaginary kids you want so badly?”
She stares at him, then heads for the front hall closet and slides the wooden door open with a loud bang. It jolts him and he realizes she’s putting on her coat to leave. He walks over to her and puts his hand on her arm as she slides it through her coat.
“Don’t leave,” he says.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
His grip tightens on her arm. “Don’t leave.”
“Get your hands off me, Bill.” Each word feels like a dagger, pushing into his skin, into his heart.
He lingers. He knows he shouldn’t; some part of him wants to see her react. He feels like he’s nearly craving the next step in this frakked up dance they’re doing around each other.
The next step, he finds, is her open palm striking the side of his face. It’s unexpected, as is his response. He grabs the back of her hair and kisses her hard, holding her mouth to his as she struggles, a whimper of protest muffled against his lips.
He pushes her up against the wall next to the door and keeps his mouth on her; he can feel her teeth against his lips and her body writhing under his weight as he pins her there, grunting into her mouth. He feels himself growing hard and he’s shocked that this, of all things, is what makes him want her more than he has in the three months he’s been gone.
He grinds his hips against hers and she manages to twist her mouth out of their kiss. “Frak you,” she gasps. “Let me go.”
“You don’t want me to.” His hand is still tangled in her hair as his other hand reaches for his zipper, tugging it down. Her hands are pulling at his shirt; at first he thinks she’s trying to rip it so she can scratch him. Maybe she’d make him bleed; maybe she’d leave scars. There’s nothing he can do about it.
Then he realizes that she’s trying to yank it up over his head. He unbuttons his pants as she sheds his shirt and this time, she kisses him, capturing his tongue and sucking on it, making him tingle.
His pants slip down his legs and he pulls his cock out, giving it a stroke, groaning at the feel of it pulsing in his hand. He pushes her pants down roughly with both hands, the cotton soft against his palms. Her underwear is next; he tugs it down so hard she cries out, sounding surprised.
He feels her hands move to the back of his hair, twisting into it, pulling so hard it hurts. It burns. There’s no stopping this now. He slides his cock across her heat, thrusting his hips so hard against her body that she hits the wall with a gasp. Lips capturing her breath, their tongues tangle aggressively.
“Tell me you want me,” he growls against her mouth, biting her lip. “Frak, tell me. Tell me.”
“I want you.” She whimpers, peppering his mouth with soft, short kisses. “I want you here, I want you here... ”
He pushes into her with a hard thrust and her words are interrupted by her sharp cry at the sensation, her fingernails raking over the nape of his neck. He pulls her thighs up and she wraps them around him as he pushes her against the wall as hard as he can for leverage. He fraks her, driving into her out of frustration and a desperate attempt at regaining some of the control he feels slipping away in their lives. Her thighs are shaking against his hips; she shudders around his cock.
She kisses him and won’t stop; she won’t let him pull away, even to catch his breath after he spills into her, a strangled groan caught in his throat.
Six weeks later, he receives a telegraph transmission that he’s going to be a father.
/ chapter one