Free The Rising: Antichrist Is Born by Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins Page A

that way. Never had.
    Curious who it was? Sure. She had speculated it might not be just one. It could have been several women. Maybe he was a grazer, a bar hopper, a one-night stander. She didn’t care. It made her resolve never to let her guard down, never to give in if he pressured her for romance. Who knew what disease he might bring to bed?
    Was he about to tell her? Would it be someone she knew? Marilena had never suspected anyone from the university. He had to be smarter than that. She had detected nothing between him and anyone there.
    “Okay,” she said carefully. “Do you need me to ask?”
    “No,” he said. “You deserve to know. It’s time you knew. It’s Baduna.”
    “What? Baduna! But, you, I—Baduna Marius?”
    “Don’t worry,” Sorin said. “I won’t leave you for him. I can’t. He’s married, and happily, believe it or not.”
    “But I—”
    “And he is not willing to come out.”
    Marilena closed her eyes and shook her head. “And you are?”
    “Am I what?”
    “Willing to come out?”
    “Who do you think doesn’t know about me, Marilena?”
    “Well, I for one!”
    “Come now. Please.”
    “I didn’t know!”
    “Marilena! Why do you think my children will have nothing to do with me? Why do you think I was divorced? Why do you think I have shown little interest in—?”
    “I didn’t know.”
    “Well, now you do. Frankly, I’m relieved. Maybe now I can simply tell you, ‘I’m off to see Baduna.’ Maybe I can even be gone overnight occasionally. I need not remind you that no one knows about him.”
    “Don’t worry. I barely know his wife.”
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    Ray Steele began to be more difficult and vocal at home. He was sarcastic and sassy, and even he hated the way he sounded and acted. Sunday school and church seemed meaningless and boring now, and while he had a few friends there, he fought going. His dad laid down the law: Ray was going and that was that. But Ray hated it, acted up in class, doodled and read in church. None of it made sense to him anymore, so he simply tuned it all out.
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    So it wasn’t her. Marilena was living with a brilliant scholar who happened to be a homosexual. She tried to imagine his life had he been born a few generations earlier. Tolerance had come slowly to Romania, especially in the area of sexual preference.
    So much for admitting to him that she longed for a child and wondering if he would ever consider changing his mind about giving her one. Had she discovered that he had had a bevy of female companions—and knowing that he had apparently lost interest in her sexually long before—she had planned to ask him to simply be a sperm donor anyway. She certainly didn’t want to subject him to anything as distasteful as sleeping with her. And now that went double.
    What could she do now? Find a man? Have an affair? Marilena certainly felt justified, but she had to admit there had been times when she wondered if she herself was a homosexual. She couldn’t imagine it, because she had never felt attracted to a woman that way. But neither was she attracted to men, except to Sorin because of his mind. Finally, in her reading, she hit upon the perfect description of herself. She decided she was asexual.
    That wouldn’t do, however, in the matter of her current need. Adoption was an option, of course, but she ruled it out except as a last resort. It had come to Marilena over the past several months that this child she longed for had to be flesh of her flesh. She wanted to experience pregnancy, birth, breast-feeding, nurturing her own child and being loved by it.
    That was way too much to lay on Sorin, of course, especially when he had entirely misread her. She would wait several weeks, then broach the subject again, just to test the waters. It would be hypocritical of him to deny her a relationship that would result in a pregnancy, but that was no longer the issue. He had made it plain years before that he wanted no more children, and she didn’t