Cora turns her head, and I bend forward to capture her mouth with mine.
“God, I love you!”
I freeze. The words transport me to another place and time. The image of Tessa sprouts in my mind as if it were yesterday. She’s standing in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, looking at me with eyes filled with so much love.
God, I love you.
“Are you okay?”
Cora’s words jolt me back to the present.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Panic rises in my throat. I swallow hard and push it down, forcing my mind back to the present and caressing her back. I fuck Cora mechanically doing all the right things, but the magic is gone.
It wasn’t supposed to get this serious. An orgasm builds up, and I increase the pace of my thrusts. Cora cries out as her inner walls clamp around my cock. I explode into her and roar as my cock throbs inside her over and over again.
I pull out of her and collapse by her side. A desperate urge to leave comes over me. The plan is to wait a while before I excuse myself. Usually, Cora and I fool around for most of the evening and cook dinner together.
“Can we talk?” she asks again, and that sinking feeling returns to my belly.
“Sure.”
“One thing that I’ve learned from Jasper’s death is how short life is,” Cora says.
I know that too well. I push away my painful memories. I’ve dealt with my loss and moved on.
“He was such a great guy,” Cora continues. “And he and Riley were so in love and looking forward to the future.”
Cora and I have been lovers for almost three months now, and so far, I’ve managed to keep my distance. I haven’t met any of her friends, though I’ve seen Riley from a distance at the gym. It’s all deliberate, and yeah, I’m an asshole, but the best way to keep an affair casual is not to meet her friends or family. When Cora and I first hooked up, I did warn her that I wasn’t looking for anything serious. She had said that she wasn’t either.
Experience though has taught me that women say one thing but quickly change their minds. And when that happens, it’s usually time for me to move on.
“They wanted to have a baby as soon as they got married,” Cora says, her tone sad.
I feel for her and her friend, but this is when I’m beginning to feel like myself again. I’ve been through what Riley is going through right now. A shadow of pain goes through me. Riley has a long way to go.
I met Cora shortly before the senseless murder that dominated the headlines for days. Jasper was a cop and had been responding to a domestic dispute call. He had found an injured woman outside her apartment, and when he ordered her partner to open the door, the man came out shooting. Jasper had died on the spot.
Cora rolls onto her side to face me. “Let’s have a baby.”
My heart gallops in my chest.
“We’d make great parents,” she says.
Tessa had wanted a baby too, but it hadn’t happened for us. She was so desperate for a baby, and I couldn’t understand the rush. After all, we had our whole lives ahead of us. She had wanted us to visit a fertility clinic, but I managed to convince her to let it go. It was selfish on my part. I wanted to enjoy my wife for a little longer before starting a family. Besides, I knew the rigors of fertility treatments and what they did to a couple. If we were going to go through fertility treatment, we needed to build a strong foundation. Tessa had reluctantly agreed, but I saw how she looked at families and knew how much she longed for a baby.
Then the accident happened. Tessa was coming home from her real estate job when a car rammed her from behind. She had died on the way to the hospital. The driver had been texting while driving. He was charged with vehicular homicide and jailed for ten years, but that brought little comfort to our families and me.
Tessa was gone and with her went her dreams of having a baby. The guilt of knowing that I had denied her the one thing she had been desperate for had plunged me into a darkness that I was still struggling to crawl out from.
The thought of even contemplating having a baby with another woman sickened me.
“Can you imagine, a little boy who looks just like you?” she says.
Nausea rises up my throat. I feel constricted as if I can’t breathe. I throw back the covers and get up. I grab my boxer briefs from the floor and pull them on.
“Are you okay?” Cora says.
I don’t respond at first. I need to think. Cora wants a baby, and from my experience with Tessa, I know she won’t stop until she gets her baby. I denied one woman that opportunity, and I can’t bear the thought of being responsible for another one.