Pregnant with My Roommate’s Dad by Sofia T Summers

Prologue: Maxie

Anger was such a limiting word.

I wasn’t angry. My feelings went far beyond such a confining description. I’d been embittered by the hand I’d been repeatedly dealt by fate. I was envious of the awful people who wasted their chances at happiness. They didn’t deserve their luck. I despised seeing the unearned successes of mere mediocrity, but now . . . I was infuriated.

Ian Weiss had no right to level any of his accusations at me. He wanted to blame me for his problems,his family’s troubles. His steel blue eyes remained as immovable as always.

“You can’t say that Brandy’s struggles don’t all connect back to you,” he huffed, pacing around the living room.

Circling the coffee table, he paced in his dress shirt and jeans, his winter coat tossed on one of the two yellow velvet armchairs. I didn’t want to listen to his complaints. I had no interest in his silly griping. My Molotov cocktail of emotions was only worsened by the alcohol meant to soften the blow. My head buzzed like a colony of honeybees were making a home inside my brain. I couldn’t be calm, no matter how much my better sense pleaded with me.

Arms crossed, I fumed. “That doesn’t make them my fault! I’m not her keeper! Brandy makes her own choices!”

“And they all seem to involve you!” Ian shot back. “She misses our family dinner, and when I go looking for her, I find you! The classes she can’t pass are the two you’re taking together! She becomes your roommate, and it’s like everything in her life has gone to hell!”

Fed up with his cheap argument, I resorted to my own foolishness. “Would you blame the moon for Brandy’s problems?”

“What?” Ian scoffed, shaking his head in confusion.

“Every night Brandy goes out,” I shouted, “the moon is out and about too! Or maybe the stars! Maybe they told Brandy to stay up all night with them! Who’s to say she didn’t just do it of her own freaking volition?”

“That’s not even possible!” he exclaimed, annoyed with my dramatics.

“What? That the moon is a bad influence on your daughter or that she’s the one making trouble for herself?”

Exhaling a heavy sigh of frustration, Ian said, “You’re being childish, Maxie.”

“Maybe I am.” I shrugged, not caring whether I was rude or unkind to this man.

For the last fifteen minutes, he’d chewed me out for no good reason. I’d been watching his muscles flex in aggravation under his white button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows. With the top few buttons undone, I noticed the faint traces of light chest hair against his sun-kissed skin. It was a shade darker than his head of thick dark-gold hair. I imagined running my fingers down his breastbone, tugging at the buttons until the man was left bare before me.

My fury was getting mixed up with the burning sensation under my skin. Whether it was my hormones or the tequila talking, it had me hotter than a forest fire during a summer drought. I wanted to run outside into the snowstorm in my desperation to cool down. The frozen white feathers would melt against my skin, and I’d be free of the emotions tormenting me.

There wasn’t enough room for both of us to pace around the cheap coffee table anymore. I took an unsteady step back, but that still wasn’t enough.

Ian’s eyes were still on me, filled with the frustration that never ceased to exist. I could’ve ended it there, acting like the grown woman I was. Defiance had a hold of me. I wanted nothing more than to make this man burn as much as I burned.

His husky baritone lowering, Ian took one step forward, then another. He was closing the space between us, and I was running out of room to make it. It was just one half-step before I backed into the cream-colored walls.

“If I were your father,” Ian declared, his tone quiet but dominant, “you wouldn’t be acting like this, Maxie.”

“Don’t you dare claim to know me,” I shot back, but my own armor had started to fail me. “Don’t ever think you’ve got me figured out, Ian Weiss.”

The words didn’t hold the weight I wanted them to. They had plenty of edge, but I could feel it dulling. With Ian mere inches away, my fury had begun to falter.

My mettle was melting in the intolerable heat.

I was over all his brooding aggravation. I could see it in his unbreakable gaze, but I was gonna be the girl to break it. I didn’t care what it took. I was done with this madness.

“I’ve had enough of this,” I declared. “I’m going to my room.”

“No, you’re not going anywhere,” Ian demanded.

“Oh, yeah?” I taunted him. “Just watch me.”

Flipping my curtain of auburn hair, I stuck my tongue out like the fussy girl Ian was making me out to be. It was a big mistake. As I turned down the hall, one of his strong hands latched around my wrist, stopping me dead in my tracks. I could feel the rough calluses on his fingertips from years of woodworking and manual labor. Even through the heat of my own skin, I could feel his warmth penetrating mine.

“No, you aren’t,” Ian insisted. “If you want to act like a child, I’m going to treat you like one.”

I couldn’t pry myself from his iron grip. Twisting my arm, I gave up as soon as I knew it was useless. Ian was pulling me back toward the brown leather couch. The bees in my brain couldn’t bear the heat. Buzzing like mad, they wanted to escape the smoke and flames rising up through my body. I was too consumed by my feelings to resist.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

In a darkened tone, Ian replied, “Treating you like the insolent girl you are.”

“What?” I scoffed.

I couldn’t figure what was happening before it was too late. The noise in my head was too distracting. Ian pulled me down over his lap. There was only one thing that could happen now.

“You won’t dare spank me!” I seethed.

“You were the one acting like a child, Maxie,” he persisted. “This is what happens when girls misbehave. This is what happens when they lie.”

My squirming proved to be pointless. Nothing could stop him now. As his hand slapped against my ass cheeks, my face flushed a more vivid color than my scarlet red sweater. The first few hits had me mortified. The embarrassment was worse than the force of his strong hand.

He shouldn’t be doing this to me. Besides the fact that he’d wanted to crucify me for crimes I hadn’t committed, I was twenty-two years old. I hadn’t had my bottom popped since I’d tried to steal a candy bar from a corner pharmacy when I was seven years old. Aunt Jane had taken me out by her old Buick, popped me on the behind, and told me that what I’d done was a sin.

Ian had me thinking of worse sins.

“You aren’t going to try and stop me anymore?”

“No, I won’t,” I huffed.

Biting my lower lip, it took everything in me not to react. The pain was shifting to undoubtable pleasure. I’d started to like the feel of his palm pressing against my black denim miniskirt. I could feel the grip of his fingertips sinking a little deeper with every hit. It was only adding fuel to my fire.

I remembered the desire I saw past the cold steel in his blue eyes. I wondered what they looked like now. I could feel his hand slowing, softening as his hand rested on the bare skin of my thigh.

“Tell me to stop, Maxie,” he said.

He wasn’t talking about the spanking. I could hear it in his voice. The worn but velvety sound had become ragged with want.

“No,” I insisted again. “I won’t.”

From where he had me, Ian couldn’t see the smile curling around my lips as his hand slowly pushed past my skirt. His fingers brushed at the black lace panties underneath. My heart quickened as he tugged at the delicate fabric, forcing his way inside.

“What are you going to do to me now?” I asked, unable to hide the smile in my voice.

“I’m going to give you a reason to listen,” Ian breathed.

He’d demanded to be the one in control. Using his height and his undeniable strength, Ian tried to take command of me, but he couldn’t. No man ever could. Ian could only give in to what he’d been craving the whole damn time.

“Fine,” I declared, “but it won’t work.”

“Are you still trying me right now?”

I wickedly grinned where he couldn’t see.

“I’m daring you, IanWeiss.”

His hands slid between my legs, and a whimper escaped my lips. My body had been begging for this moment, eager to welcome his fingers inside me. He swirled his finger around before slipping inside, and it was my first taste of relief from the blaze close to consuming me whole.

I hated the sensation as much as I adored it.

This was all against my better judgment. I shouldn’t have liked it this much. It didn’t matter how handsome this blue-eyed man was. Even though he didn’t look his age, he was forty years old. He was my friend’s single father, but I’d always taken pleasure in the perverse. Plus, being obstinate had always been one of my greatest talents. It had carried me through countless battles I’d endured in my young life. I didn’t want to turn this into another brawl. I wasn’t looking to cut him with my words. I knew I should’ve refused and cursed him out for making his move, but that would have been the sensible thing to do.

Sensibility would only get in the way of my sweetest sins.

Feeling Ian’s other hand slide up the front of my sweater, I reveled in my refusal to listen to logic. There was no point in denying what we both wanted. Fighting it was only a waste of our limited time.

“Are you going to give in now, Maxie?” Ian asked, his two fingers coaxing the whimpers out of me. “Will you finally learn to behave?”

“No,” I declared through my gasping breaths. “I won’t. You can’t make me.”

“I don’t believe you, Maxie.”

I swore. “I don’t care, Ian.”

His rhythm grew in intensity, pushing me to my limits. Everything suddenly felt surreal. I didn’t know how far I could go. I’d never felt such deep satisfaction build inside me, only to be released in a great wave of seismic proportions. It washed over my raging wildfire, cooling every inch of me. Like little aftershocks, my whole body trembled in euphoria. Ian had burned me up and rocked me to my core, but he had no idea what he’d gotten himself into.

“Have you learned your lesson now, Maxie?” he asked through his own ragged gasps.

Ian was reveling in his supposed success. There was a boasting to his tone, and his grasp still clutched at my chest. He didn’t notice how I was already rising from my own ashes.

“No,” I declared with a laugh. “You’ve made a grave mistake, I’m afraid.”

A pause hung in the air.

“What?” he asked at long last.

I shifted, grabbing at his hand still against me. My eyes met his glazed-over look. I might have been the one who’d been drinking, but he was the one who was drunk.

“I’m not a child.” I laughed wickedly. “I’m a woman who’s not to be messed with.”