The man watched the lady every day, and she always knew.
A love admission was the reason he had openly stood over her as she filed at her nails, raked his attention up and down her body while she prepared for a night out, gazed at her soft features in the middle of the night with the help of the light flashing from her phone, smiled endlessly when she'd try guessing what new combination of ingredients he'd stir into her pancake mixture.
But now, as he gave in to his impulses to watch her, the look on his eyes was pleading. His weight was on the teetering edge of plummeting onto her chest, and his thighs kept her arms restrained. He hushed her, insisted she stops wriggling in her failed attempts to escape.
"Andreas, get off of me." Again, she tried twisting out from beneath him. Another miserable fail. The man tried settling her down. He brushed her hair with his fingertips, massaged her shoulders, requested she calms herself. It only frustrated the lady more that he only relied on the seat he took atop her to thwart her frantic efforts. She was not nearly amused; she sighed angrily and gave up.
"Baby, peace," he told her. "Promise me your anger will not arise."
He caressed her lips with his thumb in hopes of easing the rage he stoked. She snapped her head away from him, and he tentatively took his hand back.
"Fuck you," she spat.
"I need you to―"
"You don't need to sit on me just so you can show me a gift!" She yanked her head towards the door, but diverted her attention back to him as she caught a flash of movement. "What was that?"
The door to their bathroom was slightly ajar, and she saw it slide open a fraction. At first, she assumed the breeze flowing in from the windows of their new house did it. But she wasn't confident in the idea, because from the opening, a yellow palm-sized creature emerged. It waddled a few tiny steps.
Tiny steps were all the ducklings small feet could manage.
The lady glared at the man and spoke with a deadly quiet. "Tell me you didn't get us a pet duck."
The man opened his mouth, urged a few words to come out, and nothing came. It's only when he was pierced with a demanding glare that he found the courage to speak. "She was the closest thing I could get to a child."
The lady didn't harbour any of her enraged feelings; she writhed until the man finally let her go. She sat up and furiously watched the duckling cross the room and stop at her feet. She had inhaled and exhaled. Twice.
"Andreas," she spoke calmly. "It's either a real child or a duck. You choose."
On the other side of the bed, the man stood and monitored the fury of the lady begin to seep out of her calm exterior. With even that in clear notice, he still decided to steel himself and commit to an outrageous answer.
He rolled his shoulders and spoke nervously. "A duck."
The lady gently took the duckling in her hands and stroked it with a supple finger. "No sex for a week," she said.
On days where the man wasn't as irritating, the two would act more civilised. She returned from work and met him in his most recent pursuit―a newer, finer property that he, after months of planning and recovering from his previous business loss, dedicated his focus to.
The heel of the lady's boots clacked against the store's porcelain flooring as she moved through lanes with golden clothing racks that held the finest of attire in the entire mall. Silver and spindly mannequins hoisted on raised display cases were dressed in opulent finery, their posing limbs flaunting suits of richest leather and gowns of upmost modernity. The lady adored almost every snake-skin purse and handbag she went past, pausing at a tiered table to browse over them before reaching the front desk.
It was a long block of black oak with mirrored edges. Elegantly dressed employees toiled at registers right behind it, sorting through the clothes that customers had stored in gilded shopping baskets. The owner was leaning beside an ebony pillar, his arms crossed as he tried spotting his lady within the mass of bodies.
Using the clothing racks as cover, she snuck up behind and startled him with a quick kiss on the cheek. For a welcome, he opened his arms and took her in a tight embrace, pressing her to his chest in a way that told onlookers they hadn't seen each other for months when, in fact, they were a tangle of perspiring, moving bodies earlier this morning.
"Hey, Misses Scientist. Any amazing discoveries today? Maybe what it is that drives men like me so crazy for women like you. Or what it is brewing inside that stomach of yours that makes you so irresistible and delicious."
"Shut up." She stifled a laugh and led them back through crammed aisles where young women ogled at the man and disregarded the exquisite sets of dresses hung before them. He didn't notice though. His attention was fixed on the woman twisting them through the chaos―and the body he knew was hiding behind the ankle-length coat she wore.
He would get to touch her soon.
After rushing through the mall's corridor and being paused by slowing tides of consumers, they steered into a nostalgic store. It was a silent wind inside; the aisles occupied either one or no individuals and the only noise of walking came from the same set of spiritless legs. The customers seemed displeased, and that blame could only be cast upon the lack of products stocked on shelves and offered atop tables. To make matters worse, where there was an abundance of clothing for sale, there was an unorderly set up. It was a mess. You couldn't shop around without feeling uneasy in the eerie store.
Aressia was no longer a business that brought about the urge to indulge in a shopping spree. It was where the lady and the man would repeat their scheme.
She dragged him to the dressing rooms. An argumentative discussion between the lady's abominable ex and the man's repulsive past wife took place there about how they wanted to revive the productivity of their store. The two paused in their quarrel and rolled their eyes as the lady and the man took themselves into one of the changing rooms.
In an instant, clothes were torn off. They heard the arguing couple from outside stomp away and curse them for the frequent visits they'd take into the dead store. The lady and the man fornicated in this very room whenever they felt the need to proceed irking the exes. Getting kicked out wasn't an issue; the man held quite an ancient bond with the store's security guards, and since it was almost out of business, customers weren't there to hear the cacophony of moans.
Their clothes were discarded on the marble floor of the tight room. He took her leg and hooked it around his hip, his cock mere centimetres away from her. His gaze drifted over her bare torso, admiring the completeness of her tattoos.
Now, the last empty space along her arms was inked. The forest grew with twisting, thick vines that snaked up her forearm, bicep, and to the giant rose at her shoulders. More florets burst from the thorny stems and between dainty leaves. The tattoo gathered across her collarbone, coloured her chest, and even went down her spine in a column of flourishing life. Just like the man's.
But there was only one design different between the two.
While the man had an image of his lady's eye on his upper abdomen, the lady had an image of her man's eye. Long, curved lashes. A dark hue to resemble the deep brown. Smooth curves that helped approximate the natural shape.
He swept his thumb over the tattoo, and at the same time, swiftly thrusted. The lady clamped her fingers on his shoulders, using them to handle the thickness of him as she was rammed into. He saw the battle on her face, so he secured her leg around his hip and went harder.
"I'll"—Her words got caught on a sharp breath―"never get used to you."
"I fuck you everyday, baby, and I'm still smiling. Look at how beautifully you take my cock." He slid in at a steady pace, laid kisses on her cheeks. "Is my sweet girl enjoying herself?"
The pace slowed, a depriving tease.
"Hurry up. I'm―it makes me feel good. I promise. I just―"
He gently caught her by the throat, pressing his fingers into her raised thigh. "I want to know who you belong to." Kisses ran along her jaw. His cock sank in deeper. A soft noise came from her parted lips, and she pleaded with her eyes.
"You," she whispered. "I belong to you." Her award was a heart-warming kiss. One of battling tongues and teeth that nibbled. She whimpered when the kiss broke off, realising that he hadn't gone through with her silent plea that he works faster.
Even though he was groaning and had an almost unbearable urge to fuck her with all the love he had roaming unashamedly inside him, he needed more confirmation before he rewarded her.
"And who do I belong to, baby?"
"Me," she cried. Her nails dipped into his shoulders, his hand moving from her throat to waist.
"That's right. But I must know what that means."
"It means you love me! And―"
"And what?" He pecked the tip of her nose, grinning at her struggle.
"It means I let myself have you."
"Such a polite girl. I'm all yours."
Finally, he did what they were both longing for and powered into her. The walls of the tiny room began to shake. They didn't realize that the store was empty save for the two owners who continued their bicker out front, fully aware of what was transpiring in their changing room.
The man lifted her other thigh, her legs wrapping around him firmly. It was a step-up for the pleasure of them both. He was able to slide in deeper, and she...well she simply clawed at his back while he gladly filled her up.
An orgasm ran through her, and she moaned into his mouth. He slipped out for a few seconds in which he spotted kisses all over her face before proceeding with the immoral act of fucking her in a room that was a property of his ex.
His release spilled inside her, and his groans stood out in the silent air only filled with the lady's own thunderous noises as she cried out to the strike of her climax. The voices from before had ceased; the ex's stood by the changing room and waited for their respectful guests to depart.
The lady and the man decided from then on, they'd let vengeance take it's natural course. Later in the new year, she was snuggled up into a soft cotton blanket. She coughed into the fluffy material, the pain in her stomach like a merciless hand clenching her insides together.
To her temporary relief, the man appeared from within the corridor with a bowl of what she had demanded. Chicken noodle soup. The salty aroma skittered around the room, and when she got a sniff of it, she began sulking.
"No," she whined. "I don't want soup. I asked for...I asked for dumplings. I want dumplings and...a heat pack."
A half hour later, the man arrived with her two requests. She twisted onto her shoulder, and he set the plate before her, handed her a heat pack.
"Lie down with me," she asked.
He slipped in at her back, gathering her body to his chest.
"Hold the heat pack," she ordered.
He held the heat pack to her stomach, keeping it in place with a firm hand.
"Don't let go."
"I'll never let go."
The lady was losing her consciousness after devouring the last of her dumplings. Warmth soothed her stomach, undid some of those painful knots that struck at her monthly. Just before she slumbered away, she said softly, "Andreas."
"Yes, my love?"
There was only silence for a moment. "When will you ask me to marry you?"
The man's tendency to cloak what his heart felt had never died off. A velvet ring box was hidden beneath a slab of wood that acted as the base of a dresser drawer. More treasures, those of which didn't bind a person to marriage, as the man perceived the union, were stored there too. A gold bracelet, for instance, that had a ruby gem and matching earrings along with it.
He focused on fixing the heat pack to her, hoping all her pain would vanish. "Soon."
"Yeah, but...I want to get married now. I want to shop for a pretty dress and get my nails done and decide how I want my hair to be styled. And I want a big wedding―not like Aya's and Seb's calm one. And I also want...kids. Two or three or four. After you undo your vasectomy. No more ducks."
"I'll marry you."
"Promise?"
"Promise," he told her. "I'll do it. I'll marry you."
He repeated the same promise in his mind, and was certain that this time round, with his lady by his side, marriage would be a gift rather than a prison.