Now, Please(42)

Hunter’s hand reached out slowly and traveled down my arm until he clasped my hand. “I barely flirted before she noticed me, and a short time later I was sneaking her into my room. I basically fell into intimacy. She wasn’t a virgin, nor was she interested in taking it slow. Our first time making out, I felt all the intimate places on her body. The second, we both stripped down to our skin. The third I lost my virginity. Just like that. I loved it, though—as you would expect from a sixteen-year-old. I didn’t have a clue about what I was doing, but she was always willing.

“After a while I wanted to spend more time kissing. Or just being together. She never did. Thinking back now, I realize I missed out on a lot of sexual enlightenment. Don’t get me wrong, she taught me the ropes on how to please her, but when it came to me, she just lined me up and let me hump away like a rabid animal until it was over. Sex couldn’t have been that much fun for her, but that realization came later. Too late.

“We kept on for a few months before my mother figured out what was going on. She sat me down one day and said that it wasn’t exactly prudent for me to be fornicating—that’s the word she used—with the hired help, but I would do as I pleased. She asked me, simply, that I use protection. Not only for safety, but because I was much too young to be having a child. I told her that Denise—that was her name—was on the pill. My mom never spoke against that, but she still asked me in her levelheaded way to take charge of my own fate. Use protection.

“My mother is a sensible, reasonable woman. She was always fair with me, even when I was being Satan’s helper. I did as she asked. And oh, the fights that caused with Denise. She raged at me, and fought with me, and denied me, saying I didn’t trust her. This just made me dig in my heels all the more. I don’t respond well to that behavior. I’m too stubborn. Besides, my mother was right—I needed to take charge of my own fate. Denise started seducing me all over the house, often away from my bedroom—I suspect she was trying to get me away from my stash of condoms. I always had one on me, though.

“After a while, she stopped trying to get me to go unprotected, and instead, didn’t want me as much. By this point, she was my world. Maybe it was all the drama that blinded me, that made everything so much more exciting, but I saw stars when I looked at her. I was completely in her power, and, I thought, thoroughly in love.”

Hunter took a deep breath. His hand was shaking in mine. “And then one day she sat me down and told me that she was pregnant. We’d been intimate for about a year. I was seventeen. I asked how, and she said one of the condoms must have leaked.”

Hunter’s voice dripped with emotion now. He hugged me tight. “I was terrified at first, not to mention worried about what my mom would say, but I was determined to do the right thing. I offered to marry her, and she accepted.”

He paused for a moment. I just waited quietly. Finally he went on. “After it all sank in…I was ecstatic. I’d never been happier. Something struck a chord in me as far as her pregnancy was concerned. I can’t explain it. I just remember feeling so euphoric. I’d created life, and she was growing it inside of her. I was blown away.”

He squeezed my hand. “But it didn’t last. My mother and father were having screaming matches by that point. They hated each other, and finally, she kicked him out. That’s when the whole, ugly truth came out. I got to Denise first, but he had more money. Even though he knew I was sexually active with her, he seduced her. Or maybe he just let her seduce him, I don’t know.”

Hunter’s voice dripped with scorn. “I thought it was my baby, and that I was going to marry her. I’d bought her a ring, fantasized about a family and being a good father… Nope. He’d bought her a bigger ring, and then flaunted her in front of my mother—while indirectly flaunting her in front of me. It was then, as Denise was telling me that I had always been plan B, and terrible in bed, that she also revealed it wasn’t my baby at all. It was my father’s. He’d taken not only my first love, but what I thought was my baby and my future. He’d taken everything happy in my life for his own, and sneered that we could still share her if I wanted.”

Hunter wiped moisture from his cheek. His voice shook with suppressed emotion. “I was a stupid kid. I’d had no experiences in life until that point. Sure, an adult would’ve seen her actions for what they were, but I wasn’t an adult. My father knew I loved her. He knew I thought that baby was mine, and that I’d proposed. He knew, and he didn’t give a shit. He let me go on thinking it until what he needed conflicted, and then took it.”