Paul heard the door click shut behind her. No slam, no hesitation. Just the smooth, practiced sound of someone who knew they wouldn’t be back for a while.

Upstairs, she had been humming. Quietly, tuneless. She always did that when she was excited. When she was getting dressed for someone else.

He hadn’t followed her. Didn’t need to. He knew the rhythm by now—makeup, perfume, heels that clacked on the hardwood. A tight black dress that meant Don’t call me tonight unless I call you first.

She came down the stairs slowly, one hand on the rail, the other adjusting her earring. She paused at the door, gave him a look.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded, even though he wasn’t sure. She smiled faintly. The kind of smile that could pass for affection, or cruelty, or both.

“You want me to stay home?”

He swallowed. “No.”

“Good boy,” she said. And then she was gone.

He sat there for a while. Didn’t turn on the TV. Didn’t check his email. The silence in the house felt deliberate, like a stage between scenes. Like something was about to happen and hadn’t yet.

Eventually, he got up and poured himself a drink he didn’t want. Scotch, neat. He held it too long without sipping. The glass started to sweat in his palm.

The phone buzzed on the table.

He didn’t rush to check it. He made himself wait five seconds. Then ten.

Finally, he turned the screen over.

“Still think he’s too old for me?”

Attached was a photo. A dimly lit restaurant. Lisa’s hand holding a heavy whiskey glass, nails painted red. Just beyond her wrist, the edge of a man’s forearm. Broad. Tanned. Hair dusted thick to the knuckles. A gold watch, understated but expensive.

No face. Just a suggestion.

Paul stared at it for a long time. The glass still in his hand. Scotch untouched. Words started forming in his throat, but didn’t make it to his fingers.

He typed a reply, then deleted it.

Put the phone back on the table. Face up. Screen glowing in the dark room.

And waited.

The next message didn’t come for almost an hour.

Paul sat in the dark with his drink. One lamp on in the corner. The hum of the fridge the only sound. His phone lit up at 22:17.

A voice note.
Eighteen seconds.

He didn’t press play right away. He stared at the waveform, at her name.

Then he tapped.

Lisa’s voice, low, sultry, like she was talking too close to someone else’s ear.

“So… he doesn’t want to use a condom tonight.” A breath, then a laugh. “He says he wants to leave something behind.”

Silence. Just one soft exhale.

“What do you think of that?”

Paul sat very still. His mouth was dry. He swallowed, and it hurt.

He played the message again. Then again.

Then he stood up, walked to the sink, dumped the drink, turned on the tap and let the water run loud. As if that would drown it out.

She hadn’t said no.

She hadn’t said yes either.

He went back to the table. Picked up the phone. Typed three words.

Deleted them.

Typed five more.

Deleted again.

The screen dimmed. He let it. He leaned back in the chair, head resting against the wall, eyes closed. His heart was hammering in a slow, deep way. Not panic—something worse. Something older.

He thought about the year they’d tried. The tests. The appointments. The language they learned—ovulation windows, sperm motility, unexplained infertility. The guilt he never voiced.

She never cried over it. Never broke. Just moved on like she’d already mourned the possibility long ago.

Now she was ovulating again. He knew that.
She’d told him. Just last night. Casually, over dinner.
She’d said it while picking at her salad.

“Funny, isn’t it?” she’d said. “The body keeps cycling. Even if nothing ever comes of it.”

And now this.

Another message lit the screen.

“Lisa:

He’s in the bathroom. I’m thinking about taking off my panties before he comes back. Thoughts?”

Paul stared.
Typed nothing.

He didn’t know if this was real. If this were still a game.
He didn’t know what he wanted the answer to be.

Rising Tension

Paul didn’t respond.

He left the phone on the table and walked the perimeter of the house like it meant something. Checked the locks. Turned off lights that were already off. When he came back, the screen was dark. No new messages.

He checked the time. 22:36.

The silence felt louder now.

He sat down again. Thumbed the screen. Still nothing.

His mind looped back.

That winter, three years ago.
Lisa in the clinic, paper gown open in the back, cold hands folded in her lap.
The nurse saying, “It’s not always someone’s fault. Sometimes things just don’t happen.”

He remembered thinking: She looks relieved.

That thought had haunted him more than the diagnosis.

The phone buzzed. A new message. Just a photo.

Lisa’s legs, parted. Shot low, from the thighs down. Black heels still on.
Skin shiny. Wet.
Panties in a crumpled heap next to a man’s shoe. Brown leather. Polished.

No words.

Paul’s chest tightened. He felt it physically now — blood rushing to his cock and throat at the same time, confusing arousal with fear.

He zoomed in on the shoe. Tried to read something in it. Tried to undo the image with logic.

Nothing came.

He typed:

Did he finish inside you?

Paused.
Deleted it.

Typed:

Are you safe?

Deleted that too.

He wanted to scream. Or jerk off. Or both.
He did neither.

He opened their shared photo album. Scrolled through old vacation shots. Lisa in Copenhagen. Lisa laughing in Rome. Lisa asleep in a train cabin.

Then the last photo he’d taken. A week ago.
Lisa in their kitchen. Hair messy. T-shirt pulled up.
His cum leaking out of her.

She was smiling in that one. Soft, warm, his.

The phone buzzed again.

Another photo. Blurry. Restaurant bathroom tile.
Her reflection in a mirror.
Mouth red and swollen. Mascara smudged.

No panties now.

Text followed:

“Lisa:

I let him pull me onto his lap.

I can feel him throbbing.

Not sure how much longer I can pretend to care about the rules.”

Paul’s mouth went dry.
He typed:

Are you going to let him come inside you?

Sent it.
Instant regret.
But he didn’t unsend. Didn’t apologize.

She didn’t reply.

Ten minutes passed.

Then twenty.

Then an hour.

Nothing.

The silence came back, but now it had teeth.

Paul sat in it.
Rocked slightly.
Waiting for a message that would either destroy him
or make him come.

Maybe both.

The key turned in the lock at 01:12.

Paul didn’t move from the couch. He’d shut off all the lights. Let the house go quiet as a tomb.

Lisa stepped inside without a sound. No heels. Just the soft press of bare feet on tile. Her scent reached him before she did—perfume dulled by time, sweat, smoke, something animal beneath.

She stood in the doorway.

“Still awake?” she asked, voice low.

He didn’t answer.

She crossed the room slowly. Stopped in front of him. Wore only her coat. Open.

Nothing underneath.

Her thighs glistened in the streetlight cutting through the blinds.

“You didn’t say goodnight,” she said.

“You didn’t answer me.”

She tilted her head. “You asked the wrong question.”

He swallowed. “What’s the right one?”

A long pause. She reached out and touched his hair. Gentle. Possessive.

“Ask me what it felt like,” she said.

Paul closed his eyes. Pain, lust, shame, all pressing against the same nerve.

“Did he come inside you?”

She smiled.

Then: “Do you want to taste it?”

His breath caught. He didn’t know if she meant it metaphorically, cruelly, or literally. He didn’t ask.

She climbed onto his lap. The coat fell open around them. Her skin was hot. Her inner thighs tacky with slick and heat and something else.

He didn’t resist.

Her hands gripped his wrists and pinned them to the cushions.

“I let him,” she whispered. “No condom. All the way.”

Paul shuddered. “Why?”

She leaned in. “Because you needed me to.”

They fucked hard on the couch. No foreplay. No teasing. Just teeth and skin and breath and buried rage.

She rode him like she was erasing someone else. Or engraving him in deeper.

When she came, she bit his shoulder and whispered a name that wasn’t his.

He came inside her seconds later. He didn’t know what he felt.

Only that it wasn’t relief.

Morning came without ceremony. Grey light bleeding through the curtains. A stillness to the air, like the house knew something had shifted.

Paul woke alone. His shoulder ached. The bite mark was deep.

Lisa was in the kitchen, barefoot again. Hair tied up. Calm. She poured coffee like it was any other day.

He stood in the doorway, unsure how to enter the room.

She glanced at him. “Milk?”

He nodded. Sat down.

Neither spoke for a while.

The silence between them was no longer cold. It was clinical.

She finally broke it.

“I didn’t take the pill this week,” she said, pouring sugar into her mug. “Not since Monday.”

Paul blinked. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t sure it mattered.”

She sipped. Looked him in the eye. She reached into her robe pocket and placed a pregnancy test on the table. Still in the wrapper. Not used.

“I’ll take it in a few weeks,” she said. “If you want to watch.”

Then she got up, kissed the top of his head like he was an obedient pet, and walked back upstairs.

The coffee in his cup had gone cold.

Paul sat alone, staring at the test.

He didn’t know what terrified him more—

The thought that the child might be his.
Or that it wouldn’t be.