Fin (Irondad)

1

9 Years Ago

Anais Clark moved as though the elements flowed through her veins. 

Slim, tanned limbs floated in repetitive, smooth movements which captured the eye of anybody in a mile-radius. Her hips rotated, drawing gentle, but indescribably powerful rings. Perfectly formed, platinum curls bounced around her body, a body so perfect it could've been sculpted out of stone.

Anais Clark could seduce anybody with so much as a glance, and she knew.

As soon as Tony Stark had a hint of those caramel eyes, he was like a dog on a scent. He had to have her. He wanted to feel those curves, to exchange oxygen with those lips, to mirror her polished swoops and swings.

Everybody else was irrelevant, blank faces swimming in an ocean of nothingness. 

He pushed his way past the bodies, eyes fixed on the woman who he could only really describe as a goddess. Because she had to be a goddess, he'd never seen anybody so impossibly perfect.

She resembled something like a trophy. Everything about her was bathed in a golden hue, her hair, her eyes, her skin.

Tony had found himself admiring her curves, like polished brass that had been moulded just for him to take home and enjoy the glory.

And she was intelligent.

They exchanged few words, her body did all of the talking for them. She didn't need to talk to portray her intelligence, it was radiating from her irises. 

He took her home, Happy drove and Tony locked lips with Anais in the back seat. Seat belts disregarded, they kissed and grabbed at each other for the whole twenty minutes, desperate and heated. It was messy and sweaty and disgusting, but Tony didn't care because he was drunk and this woman was hot and he didn't want to think about the tragic death of his parents or the constant ache in his chest. 

When he woke up in the morning, she was already gone, another token of her intelligence. 

She understood that she was just another nameless face in a long list of one night stands and wasn't about to stick around to be humiliated. 

Anais Clark was almost an oxymoron in herself, beautiful and tall and tanned, willing to sleep with anybody for kicks, for just a snapshot of exhilaration. But she was dignified, and perspicacious, and above all she was self-aware.

Anais Clark was unlike anybody else that Tony had slept with before, and that's only one of the reasons he'd never forget. 

9 Years Ago

He hadn't expected to see her again. 

That's how it typically works with one night stands, either that or you bump into them and have a really awkward conversation in the middle of Walmart, but Tony Stark didn't do Walmart. If he had to leave the house, he'd send someone out to do it for him. 

So, he hadn't expected to see her again.

That was, until she marched right into his office.

Having recently been growing a spark with his personal assistant, Tony's stomach dropped. Anais was a one night stand, from over two months ago. He hadn't intended on having any extended connections with her, not strings. Things had been better, him and Pepper had been getting along, she was helping him to sort out his self-destructive habits and he was softening to her. He'd have been damned if he'd have admitted it out loud, but he wanted to settle with her. He wanted to put his playboy tendencies behind him and start something soft and warm with a woman he really loved.

She looked just as beautiful as before, if not a little more composed and tidier. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, situated half-way down her head so that the locks flowed over her left shoulder. A white blouse tucked neatly into her gray pencil skirt, the top few buttons left untouched to reveal a hint of implicit cleavage. Under her right arm, she held a black and rather inconspicuous-looking folder.

Despite her business-like appearance, something seemed off, and it wasn't just her unexpected arrival. 

It sat over the room like a dark cloud, heavy and ominous, but Anais wasted no time in throwing herself into the chair pulled up to the billionaire's desk and placing the file on the wooden surface.

Tony blinked at it for a moment, then at the woman in front of him, before his hand fell away from his mouse in an aborted movement to close the tabs. What would Anais get out of stealing his business ideas? 

More importantly, why is she here in the first place?

Except that isn't what he asked. The words must've gotten lost or muddled somewhere on the way to his mouth, because the question that tumbled off his tongue was, "How did you get past security?".

He doesn't think he was actually anticipating an explanation, the silent, smug smile that bloomed across her familiar lips failed to surprise him at all, but he was slightly unnerved by her sly and calculating nature. 

Silence again.

Anais' eyes wondered around the room, taking in the glass walls and immaculate carpet. She scanned over the narcissistic portraits on the walls and her smirk was amplified. 

Then, in a split second, it was gone. 

The smirk was wiped from her face and replaced with a look that Tony can only compare to the one which Pepper enrolled when entering the boardroom. It was intimidating and powerful and so so attractive. A month before, the philanthropist would've leapt at the chance to kiss it right off her face. But a month before he wouldn't have connected it to Pepper; Things change.

However violent and shocking the change in personality, nothing could have prepared him for the sentence which Anais spoke next. It was only a few words, ones which the woman had swilled about in her mouth for days, preparing herself to spit out, devoid of emotion and hollow. She was ready to turn the billionaire's world upside down, to flip his view of everything. Knowledge is power and she had knowledge.

"I'm pregnant. It's yours".