Free Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition by Heidi Rice

back, but the picnic table prodding her hips stopped her retreat. What was wrong with him?
    He dragged her back.
    ‘You’re not aborting the child,’ he said, his voice low with suppressed fury. ‘I won’t allow it.’
    She should have demanded he let her go. Should have told him the decision to have the baby was her choice, not his. But she was so shocked by the force of his anger, andthe raw, turbulent emotion swirling in his eyes, she simply blurted out, ‘I’m not having an abortion. I couldn’t.’
    His eyes narrowed, the fury still bubbling. ‘You’re lying. I heard you make an appointment.’
    ‘No, you didn’t.’ She struggled against his iron grip, realised she was stuck fast. ‘I was making an appointment with my GP to sort out my antenatal care.’
    ‘Why?’ he said, loosening his fingers at last. ‘It’s already been arranged.’
    ‘Not by me it hasn’t.’ She tugged her arm out of his grasp, rubbed the skin where his fingers had dug in, and felt her own temper ignite. What was she playing at? She shouldn’t be on the defensive here. He had no right to talk to her like this. To manhandle her.
    ‘I want my own GP treating me during my pregnancy. Not that it’s any of your business,’ she said firmly.
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Lester’s one of the top obstetricians in the country.’ That raw, savage fury had disappeared, to be replaced by the condescending proprietorial tone she hated.
    Her fighting spirit kicked in with a vengeance.
    ‘I don’t care if Lester’s the top obstetrician in the known universe. It’s my decision who provides my antenatal care, just as it’s my decision whether or not I have this baby. Not yours,’ she shouted, her chest heaving with all the force and fury of a heroine in a penny-dreadful novel. How dared he presume to tell her what she was and wasn’t allowed to do with her own body? ‘Because, in case it’s escaped your notice, I’m the one having this baby. Not you.’
    He frowned, but didn’t look all that chastened. ‘Considering the great job you’ve been doing so far, you ought to be grateful for my involvement,’ he said. ‘After all, if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t even know there was a baby,’ he finished, but at a considerably reduced volume.
    He sounded ever so slightly less sure of himself.
    Louisa took heart. ‘Well, now I do know. So I can take things from here.’ She bent to pick up her phone, shoved it back in her bag. ‘I want you to drop me at the nearest train station. I’ve decided I’m going back to London.’ She swung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. ‘And from now on you can keep your great big interfering nose out of my affairs.’
    She was feeling pretty good about her parting shot—until she went to march past him. He gripped her hips and stepped into her path, stopping her dead as she bumped into him.
    ‘Not so fast,’ he said, the volume now at a dangerously low level.
    She struggled, bringing her hands up to his chest, but he just wrapped his arms around her and held her still. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, her voice breaking on an annoyingly feeble squeak.
    ‘You’re not going anywhere until we get a few things straight.’
    ‘There’s nothing to get straight,’ she said, still squeaking. He was so close she could see the flecks of blue in his irises, and her belly was pressed against something that was fast becoming even less accommodating.
    She quivered, felt the treacherous response at her core and hated herself.
    ‘I’m the father of this baby,’ he said softly, but there was no mistaking the menace in his tone. ‘Which means I get a say in every single detail of its life. So you’d better get used to the idea. I don’t shirk my responsibilities and I’m not shirking this one.’
    The implication that she had shirked her responsibilities up till today was clear, and Louisa felt a dart of shamepierce her armour. He’d scored a hit, and she could see he knew it when his