Page 44 of Vicious Betrayal

I make it through dinner without any further issues, sipping a glass of water while I eat my sandwich, and I start to think that everything will be fine as the nausea backs off.

After dinner, we watch a movie and end up making out on the couch. I'm feeling much better, and I try to push all the worries and stress out of my head and just focus on this—Cormac's mouth on mine and his hand on my breast, the way his breathing picks up as I nip at his lower lip and run my hand down his stomach toward the thickening ridge in his sweatpants.

I slide off the couch and tug them down, wrapping my hand around his stiffening cock as I bring it to my mouth. He groans, his hand tangling in my hair as he lets out a shuddering breath.

"Christ, I'm never going to get used to how good you look doing that," he groans.

He feels good in my mouth. I love doing this to him, hearing the sounds he makes, feeling his hand tangling in my hair, the throb of his cock on my tongue. I love pushing him to the edge, until he growls and lifts me onto the couch, tossing me onto my back against the cushions and tugging my leggings down so he can get one leg around his hip as he teases my clit with the head of his cock.

"I'm going to make you come like this," he murmurs against my mouth. "I want you so wet I feel it all over me before I even get inside of you."

The way he talks washes all my worries and fears away. As the pleasure builds, I forget why I'm here, who I am, what I'm supposed to be doing. There's only this man, who lights me on fire, who cares about what I want, who makes me feel special and wanted for the first time in my life. And I don't think about anything but how good he makes me feel, and how good I can make him feel in return.

Later in the evening, I wake to his hand on my hip as we're curled naked under the blankets, and his mouth at my ear. "I need you again, a chumann," he murmurs in his rough Irish burr. "Let me have you."

I arch against him, hooking my leg over his to pull him closer, and he slides into me from behind as he reaches over my hip to play with my clit. It's slow and sensual in the dark, his breath on my ear and against the back of my neck, and I moan his name into the darkness, feeling my orgasm slowly rise as he throbs inside of me.

Afterward, as he falls asleep behind me again, I think about what Reyes said to me—the house that I'm supposed to gain access to, how I'm supposed to be Cormac's real girlfriend, and all I can think is that I don't want to do this. I don't want to hurt this man, and I don't want to get hurt in return.

But for the first time in my life, I'm realizing that there's no way I'm going to get everything that I want.

—

The following week gets worse.

It's not anything dramatic. There's no fever or clear illness I can point to and say that's what's making me feel so off. But the nausea keeps coming and going, the smell of certain things setting it off, paired now with a tiredness in the afternoons that isn't like my normal self. I cancel on Bianca twice when she asks to get lunch. I eat crackers and drink ginger ale and water, and I keep coming up with plausible explanations for myself about why I don't feel well. I don't want to think about what all the separate things that are happening add up to.

That can't be what's happening. It can't.

But two nights later, Cormac cancels on me without telling me what he has to do instead, and I'm left to my own thoughts for far too long.

I went to the pharmacy the last time I was downtown by myself and got some anti-nausea medicine, and some cold medicine just in case. And, along with everything else, I got a pregnancy test.

Deep down, I think I know what's going on. I just can't bring myself to even fully think it.

I sit on the edge of my bathtub and look at the test for several long minutes. I try to think of all the reasons I wouldn't need to take it, all the things that could be making me feel sick that have nothing to do with this. And then I think about the fact that I missed my last period. That could be stress, too.

Or… it might not be.

I can't look at the test for the three minutes it takes to get the result. I turn my back on it and try to breathe. The air feels trapped in my lungs. Nausea rises in my throat, and I press my hand to my chest, feeling my heartbeat quick and erratic under my palm.

It's going to say I'm not. It'll be negative. It will. It'll be…

The timer on my phone goes off, and I force myself to turn around and look down at the counter.

Two lines.

12

OKSANA

Istare at the test for a long time, hoping I'm seeing things wrong. That I'll wake up from what is surely a bad dream. That reality will warp somehow, and it'll change.

I take the second test in the box, and I get the same result. And if I'd thought my world had already come crashing down, then I guess this is the rubble burying me.

I'm only twenty years old. I'm an informant for the FBI. And the man whose child I'm now carrying has no idea that I'm setting him up for betrayal. That I'm going to try to put him in prison, and everyone he works with, in order to save my family.

The nausea comes back in a rush, and now I can't pretend that it's anything else. I'm pregnant.