Pregnant (Lyra's POV)
The heat came in waves.
A burning sensation held steady deep in my lower abdomen. Between my thighs I was so wet that my legs slid against each other with the slightest movement, and my skin had grown so sensitive that even the air brushing across it felt like a touch.
I should never have drunk the cocktail Julie Thorne handed me.
She was the golden girl of Kinsley College's architecture department — heiress to the Thorne family, the kind of woman who could destroy your academic reputation with a single word to the department chair. She had always looked down on people like me, ordinary and without means. A drink from her hands should have been the last thing I accepted. But I was exhausted. The fatigue of juggling multiple part-time jobs had made me careless.
Now every cell in my body was paying for that carelessness.
I didn't know how I had ended up in this room. There were several gaps in my memory from the past forty minutes — I only remembered someone's arm around my waist, guiding me inside. The drug had bent my will entirely, dismantling every self-protective instinct and rebuilding it into pure desire for sex.
The room tilted. I reached for the nearest support and caught his forearm. The warmth of his skin made me want to tear his clothes off. His hands closed around my waist and steadied me.
A deep, inescapable ache spread through me and forced my hips to press against him and begin to grind.
"I..." My voice came out hoarse. "I should go."
He said nothing. His hand slid down from my waist and pressed against my clit, his slightly calloused fingers moving in a way that made my thighs clamp hard around his hand. It was overwhelming — I was too sensitive for this kind of friction. Then one finger pushed inside me, and the fullness immediately eased the burning in my belly.
I didn't pull away. I wrapped my arms around his neck and began to rock my hips, clenching around his finger, trying to take it deeper.
His breath was hot against my ear. He lowered his head and closed his lips around my nipple, pulling gently, and the sensation hit me like an electric shock — my whole body shuddered at once. I felt a rush of heat release inside me, trapped by his finger, unable to escape. My legs nearly gave out; I grabbed his lapel and held on.
He felt me tremble. He paused, then gripped my hips and lifted me, my thighs locking around his waist as he walked forward. I lost his fingers and found instead the hard line of his erection through his trousers, pressing against me, the fabric between us growing wetter with every second.
A moment later my back met the bed. The cold sheets sent one sharp pulse of clarity through the fog.
"Don't..." I said, barely a whisper, not entirely sure what I meant.
He paused and looked at me. Those wide, unfocused eyes moved across my face. There was no conscious will in them — only the same trapped thing I recognized from inside myself.
Then he lowered himself over me. His cock rubbed against my clit, then slid through the slickness and drove all the way inside. The breath that left me was long and involuntary — the release of something that had been held too tight for too long.
Before I could catch my breath he turned me over, my back pressed flush against his chest, the rough fabric rubbing against my breasts from the front. The sensation from both sides pulled me back under. His cock drove into me hard, and my pussy clenched around him uncontrollably — then a sharp, burning sting landed across my ass. He had spanked me.
The pain only sharpened the pleasure. I rocked back against him, and got another slap for it.
My mind gave up entirely.
"So good — harder — give it to me harder—"
The words sounded like they came from someone else. His hips drove forward one final time and he came inside me, the heat of it burning through the last of my reason.
But the drug didn't release. My body started burning again almost immediately. He turned me over to face him.
His fingers traced slowly down from my cheek — across my collarbone, over my nipple, past my navel — and settled on my clit, rolling it gently between his index finger and thumb. My hips arched up reflexively, trying to pull away, but I couldn't escape it.
He bent his head and took my breast into his mouth again, his tongue working my nipple with slow heat. The ache spread deep and full, and I heard myself say out loud: "It's so swollen — bite me." He did. The pressure of his teeth followed by a hard, sustained pull sent a current through me I'd never felt before. My arms wrapped around his head and I moaned softly against my will.
Fluid rushed out of me. My lower belly ached with a deep throb. Then he pushed inside again — completely beyond reason, driving into me hard and relentless. I watched the overhead light sway with the movement of the bed, heard his ragged breathing close against my ear, felt my pussy clench and flood around him in waves.
At the end, his eyes were still lost. That was the last clear thing I remembered before the darkness took everything: those wide, unseeing eyes — belonging to someone just as trapped as I was.
We were both victims of the same drug.
Morning light hit me like a slap.
I came awake all at once in an unfamiliar bed. The air was thick with stale alcohol and the scent of a man. My entire body ached. Beneath the covers I was naked, my throat and chest covered in marks of varying depths.
I sat up. My heart was already pounding.
Fragments came back: Julie's cocktail. Burning skin against skin. Those unfocused eyes.
I threw off the covers, dressed in under two minutes, and left without looking at the bed or whoever was still in it. As I moved toward the door, something caught the light on the nightstand — a pair of cufflinks, dark metal, engraved with an unfamiliar crest. I didn't stop to look closer. I had worked shifts at this venue before and knew the staff corridors well enough to avoid the cameras on my way out.
For the next two months I worked and studied and didn't think about it. I buried the memory beneath everything else and kept it there, though I couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching me — like a ghost following my every move.
Until the day the vomiting became impossible to ignore and I had no choice but to go to the hospital.
The antiseptic smell of the corridor turned my stomach before I even sat down. The doctor was a middle-aged woman with glasses and a steady voice.
"Your results show that you're pregnant. Approximately eight weeks."
Eight weeks.
I stared at the test report in my hands. The words blurred at the edges, then sharpened again, then blurred. Two months ago. That night. The unfamiliar room. Those wide, unseeing eyes.
The doctor kept talking. I heard none of it.
She kept talking. I heard none of it.
"Do you want to continue the pregnancy?"
My parents had died in an accident before I started college. There was no one. My checking account held a few hundred dollars. I could barely feed myself; keeping a child alive on top of that was an equation with no answer.
What am I supposed to do?
"I need more time to think." My voice came out dry and flat, unrecognizable even to me.
I collected my paperwork, walked out with my head down, and made my way back to my apartment in a daze, my mind completely blank.
A black sedan was parked directly in my path.
A woman stepped out — waved hair, black dress, sharp eyes that moved over me with cool calculation.
"You're Lyra Vane?"
I stepped back and gripped my phone inside my pocket. "Who are you?"
"My name is Sera Sterling." Her voice was perfectly calm. "I'd like to talk to you about the child."
My stomach dropped. How does she know?
"There's nothing to discuss." I turned to leave.
A hand clamped around my arm from behind — one of two men in black suits I hadn't noticed until now, his grip iron-tight.
"Don't be in such a hurry," Sera said from behind me, her tone unchanged. "There are things you can't run from just by walking away."
"Let go of me."
The second man moved around behind me. I caught a faint chemical smell a second before a rough palm sealed over my nose and mouth. Chloroform. Sharp and immediate. I fought with everything I had — straining against the grip on my arm, trying to scream into the hand pressed against my face. Nothing came out.
"Take her." Sera's voice was terrifyingly calm.
My vision began to blur at the edges.
No —
I'm twenty years old. I still have a future. I still have that architecture assignment I haven't finished. I still have —
The car door slammed shut. The world outside disappeared.
Then there was only darkness.
