Chapter 6

Julie sighed as she stretched and relaxed. She smiled as she realized she had a lot to learn about men. She'd gotten a lot of it right, but there were nuances of manhood that she didn't expect, or understand yet. She was learning, though... learning quite quickly.

Bob's reaction to "the getup" had vastly exceeded her expectations. Like a whirlwind, he had enveloped her. It had almost seemed like she was never quite able to catch her breath. That, or maybe she had been a little tipsier than she thought. At any rate, she had a hard time remembering exactly how things happened, either because she was tipsy, or because they happened so quickly.

His mouth and hands had been all over her, touching her in places she would never had thought were 'sexy' before, but which made her body tighten up like the strings on some huge instrument. She knew "the getup" would need some repair if she was ever going to wear it again. The bra had flown away while she was in the act of falling onto the bed under him. His sudden almost violent penetration of her, with the panties still on, but pulled aside, had taken her breath away, though, now that she looked back on it, she had to have been physically prepared for it. He hadn't used any lubricant, and he had been overpowering, but she hadn't felt any pain at all.

He had rutted in her. That was the only word she could think of to describe what he had done. She might be the lioness, young and supple, but his mature strength and size had completely dominated her as he pounded her into willing submission. Somehow, while he dominated her, orgasms seemed to keep crashing over her like she was under a waterfall of them. She couldn't even get enough breath to tell him to stop... to let her breathe.

She remembered his hard body sliding all over hers, sweat pouring off of both of them. She remembered his amazingly strong grip on her waist, lifting her and turning her, forcing her onto her hands and knees while he approached from behind and skewered her in that position. She marveled at how different that felt, especially with his fingers pulling at her nipples, or sliding down to press and strum her clit while that long, hard thing plumbed her depths.

It was in that position that she felt the warm flow of wet deep inside her as he paused for the first spurt. But, to her delight, he started lunging into her again, still hard. He flipped her again, putting a pillow under her hips before mounting her and sliding in, this time so easily that she was afraid she wouldn't feel anything, so slick was she. His feet kicked her legs closed, though, and, while she lay straight as an arrow, he rocked on top of her, his entire weight on the thing driving into her and scraping her clit every time it moved, until she screamed her pleasure.

When she went limp that time, he slowed a little, sliding into her several more times, almost languidly, before he pushed hard and groaned again. More of that warm, wet feeling deep inside her belly made her moan with him.

She was surprised to find that, when he rolled off of her to lie on his side, his hand making lazy circles on her abdomen, that she didn't mind his weight being gone. Before she had loved the heavy feel of him on her, but this was nice too, as she strained to breathe. The pillow felt strange under her hips and she reached for it, tugging ineffectually until he gripped her wrist and stopped her.

"What?" she said.

"Leave it there," he said.

"Why?... it's uncomfortable."

"It's to keep all my seed inside you," he said. "To make a baby." His hand came back to her belly and stroked again. "To make our baby."

Julie's consciousness fragmented into distinct little pieces at that moment. Part of her mind realized that she knew exactly what lovemaking was all about, and how babies were made. Another part of her reminded her that she had decided not to go on the pill for the express purpose of making herself fertile during her honeymoon, and that she had told Bob about that... invited him... TEASED him about fertilizing her. Then there was the part of her that said "Whoa, there girl! Dreaming about it is one thing... actually getting knocked up is another!"

And there was the part that reminded her that she was supposed to get pregnant by her husband, not the proprietor of a beach resort. There was the part of her that didn't believe she COULD get pregnant. Lots of women don't believe it can actually happen to them until it does.

Another bit of her mind was recognizing that the man who had put all that warm seed in her belly had just shown a side of himself that she would never have suspected was there... an animal... powerful... completely male side. That thought split into two fragments, one grinning at the fun it had been to be dominated like that, and the other fearful that he might act like that too often, or when she wasn't ready for it. That thought trickled into a realization that she HAD been ready to be loved this way... to be dominated... to be bred, and that surprised her too, because she would never have thought SHE could be like that.

Still another part of her mind was outraged that he would so intentionally try to impregnate her, knowing what had happened to her. She realized she was rigid, and staring at the ceiling. The pillow felt like it was pushing her womb up, offering it as a sacrifice. A different place in her brain shouted that she had goaded him into it... had intended for it to happen.

All these thoughts were zinging around inside her skull, each one shouting to be heard... to be dominant over all the others. She dimly heard him call her name while this battle went on, but she was too busy to respond.

Then, like a knife, cold, hard and sharp, coupled with him taking his hand OFF her belly, his next statement cut through the babble in her head, shredding all those thoughts and banishing them back to a place where she could store them for a while.

"It's OK... I can get you the morning after pill, Julie."

She was still rigid, still arrow straight on the bed, her hands at her sides, her belly still poking up into the air. All her thoughts were replaced suddenly by the thought that a tiny little life might be in there already, not yet with a beating heart, but getting bigger as two cells became four, and then ten and then hundreds.

Now, instead of feeling like her womb was being sacrificed, she felt like it was being honored... lifted up in celebration of new life.

All her emotion... all the guilt, and fear, and disappointment... all the anger and anxiety was pushed out of her by the remembered emotions of overwhelming love... of the sharing that two people can do together that cannot be experienced any other way... of hope, and expectation... of unrealized dreams. Those new emotions flooded her whole body as it relaxed and she sobbed at the very concept of halting that life that might already grace her womb.

She rolled to face him, tears streaming down her face, arms grappling and fumbling for him, unable to get under him and having no place to go. She buried her face in his chest.

"No pills," she sobbed. "No pills."

His arms came around her, and she snuggled up against him, loving the feeling of being safe again.

They lay like that long enough that she almost dozed. She jerked awake, though, lifting her head.

"I love you," she said.

"I know, baby," he said back. "And that's good, because I love you too. You're stuck with me now."

She kissed him. "You can stick me any time you like."

"I don't suppose you'd think about getting married again," he said, kissing her under her ear.

That jarred her consciousness again. Marriage was something to be worked toward... planned... anguished over... Wasn't it? Her mind flitted back to the way she had methodically worked... and planned... and anguished. It had all been ludicrous. It had almost been contrived somehow. Now, his simple proposal burst into her consciousness like the brilliant light at the end of a dark tunnel. She thought ironically of how often her mother had made this decision, and wondered briefly if it had been as easy for her mother as it suddenly was for her. Then she pushed that out of her mind and looked at him.

"I came here to have a honeymoon," she said, kissing him back.

"It will take a week or so to get your first marriage annulled," he said. "Then however long for you to plan the ceremony. You want to do it here, or back home, so your mother can be there?"

"If I have my way, my mother will never lay eyes on you," said Julie firmly. "And she's certainly not going to help me plan another wedding. No sir... I'm staying right here. If I never go back home again that will be just fine with me. The last thing I need is my mother trying to get into your pants."

"Sounds like an interesting woman," laughed Bob.

He told her, quite clearly, that, at some point in the near future, he would ask her formally to marry him, and that, until that time, he would help her do whatever needed to be done to straighten out her situation. He told her that burning bridges was a very risky thing to do sometimes, and that she should leave as many of them intact as she could. That included the bridge that, if she thought about things, and decided she had been rash in her relationship with Bob, could be used to escape that situation.

"Why do you keep thinking I'll run away from you," she asked peevishly.

"When I marry you, I intend to stay with you for the rest of my life," he said simply. "I fouled things up with one woman and I lost something very dear to me when that happened. I'm not going to let that happen again. If you go through with this mad little scheme of yours... OK... ours, I want you to understand it's for life. Period. Good or bad... this marriage is going to stay together."

"I love you," she said simply. "I know we've only known each other for a few days, but I also know I love you. I'm not going to question that feeling. It's the strongest I've felt about any man in my whole life, and I'm going to trust that feeling."

It took two weeks, in fact, for all the legal issues to be dealt with. Roger, when he'd left the Bahamas, had not flown back to the United States. Nor had he flown to London. He had, in fact, flown to Paris, France, where he either still was, or where he had gone underground, moving out of that city by some method that did not require him to identify himself. He had maxed out three credit cards, getting cash advances, and had also emptied his bank accounts. A Warrant had been issued for his arrest on bigamy charges. There were indications that there might even be more marriages, in other countries.

They found all this out in court, when Julie was required to fly back to the U.S. to get the marriage annulled. She insisted on using the return ticket that was still in her carryon bag, and using the one Roger had left behind, for Bob, who insisted on escorting her. He went everywhere she went, almost pathetic in his attempt to keep her in sight.

It made her feel wonderful.

The whole time he complained about the smells, the noise, the pollution and the crowds. They stayed in Julie's apartment, which had been paid up through the end of the month, and the first thing she did when they got there was drag him, not unwillingly, into her bed, a bed no man had ever graced. Most of her things had already been packed up, in anticipation of moving them to her new home once the honeymoon was over. She went through those boxes, consolidating things into a few boxes they shipped to the Bahamas, and then, on the last day, set the rest out on the sidewalk for anyone who wanted it. By the time they got in the cab they had called for, half the stuff was already gone.

On the flight back to the Bahamas, Julie leaned back in her seat and sighed.

"I don't want anything fancy. I just want us to be part of each other's lives," she said.

"What you want is what you get," he said, reaching for her hand.

"I was only supposed to get married once," she sighed. "Roger promised me I'd never even think of marrying another man. That seems like years ago now."

"So, don't think about marrying me," he joked.

"That's not as funny as you think it is," she said dryly. "When I was getting ready to marry Roger, all I could think of was how my life would change, and how I'd be a wife now, and all the things that went with that. He said he didn't want me to work, so I wondered what I'd do with my time. It was like my whole world was being turned upside down."

Bob squeezed her hand.

"But when I think about us... I just think about the beach, and maybe cooking sometimes, and learning to fish and things like that," she said. It's almost like I found my best friend, and I'm just going to live with him."

"We can't be best friends," he said seriously. "Best friends don't have sex."

She looked at him. "I don't even know you, really. I love you, and I love being around you. I love the way you make me feel." She leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially "I especially love the sex." She leaned back. "But I don't know anything about you. I don't know your birthday, or where you grew up or any of that kind of thing. That's what I think about when I think about our future. There are so many things I get to learn about you, and I can't wait to get started."

"OK," he said. "We'll just break that rule. Best friends who have sex. I can live with that." He grinned.

The next disaster was something neither of them could possibly have anticipated. Nor could they have planned for it. It just happened, and when it did, it was as if the genie came out of the bottle and floated in front of both of them. Once that genie was out, it could not be stuffed back into the bottle.

They were in a small, tidy office with whitewashed walls and a ceiling fan turning lazily overhead. They were filling out the documents necessary for their marriage to be licensed in the Bahamas. Bob knew the clerk, and he chatted with the black-faced smiling woman as Julie carefully penned in all her personal information. She had been told in court that she need not ever identify herself as having been married, at least not to Roger Crandall. So her part of the form was pretty simple, requiring only the same information she was used to.

"I don't know who my father was," she said, lifting her eyes to those of the clerk. "He ran away when I was little, and my mother changed my name to her maiden name."