Kala sits back a little further in her seat. Her head throbs; there's a persistent roaring in her ears.
He was married.
"She's the daughter of one of my uncle's biggest clients. We met at a club. Maybe 12 years ago? I didn't know who she was."
The entire time they were together - meeting her family, talking about their future, marriage, children - he was already married.
Kala concentrates, head cocked to one side, eyes narrowed. Her gaze drifts a little to Wolfgang's mouth, as if reading his lips will make sense of the words he's speaking. She concentrates harder.
"We kept running into each other. Went to the same parties. Drank at the same places." Wolfgang gives a shrug, looks away. "She really had a thing for me, you know? I thought I was the shit because everyone in those days was just drawn to her. She was a fun girl."
A fun girl. Kala raises her brows: a euphemism for someone capable of the kind of loose-moral partying that she is neither capable of nor inclined to do. She feels an inappropriate flicker of jealousy and frowns.
"Anyway," he continues, his eyes a million miles away, "we hooked up a few times." The way he says that - the faint tick of his jaw, the tension to his posture - sets off warning bells, but still she is caught unprepared: "We weren't careful. I got her pregnant."
Kala's eyes jerk abruptly up to Wolfgang. The roaring in her ears sounds even louder. Wolfgang meets her gaze, drops his own. His face flushes. "I don't have a kid I abandoned, Kala." He sounds defensive although she says nothing. "We got married because her father insisted and my uncle liked the idea of a fucking merger between our families. Lila lost the baby at 5 months. Doing something stupid. I asked for a divorce the first time not long after."
A baby.
A feeling very near hysteria bubbles up in Kala. She almost laughs. Of course.
...
"Hey." She feels a bristled nuzzle at her neck, a kiss to the pulse at the base of her throat. "I'm sorry I'm late, Suesse."
Kala smiles sleepily into soft blue eyes before suddenly recalling where she is. "What time is it?" she asks, voice thick with sleep.
Wolfgang was gone a week to Berlin. It's the first time they're apart since she moved in two months ago, and she misses him: She missed him the moment they said goodbye.
She planned a warm welcome. She made his favorite dinner and even found that dense German bread he likes so much but she questions jokingly is even really bread. Yesterday, she bought her first piece of lingerie ever: a wispy red confection of chiffon and satin and strategic lacing that pushes her breasts up and over while a matching thong (which she stared at dubiously for a good long time before actually putting it on) doesn't even attempt to cover her ass. Her pulse raced anticipating the look on Wolfgang's face when he sees her in it.
But even as she prepared for his homecoming, her cell phone buzzed with incessant delay notices from the airline: 40 minutes. 1 hour. 2 hours.
She gives up at the three hour delay mark.
The dinner she made is packed into the fridge: table settings removed; merlot returned to the wine rack; bread wrapped in the bakery bag. Kala grabbed a blanket and curled into a ball on the corner of the sofa, feeling disappointed and sorry for herself. She fell asleep watching late night television.
But now he's home.
"It's 1:30 in the morning," Wolfgang murmurs. His lips are making their way across her throat, his tongue laps along the base, sucking gently at the hollow.
She raises her arms in a cat-like yawn that descends and tangles itself around Wolfgang's short hair. The blanket she'd dragged over herself falls away a little.
"What's this?"
It takes her a second to remember the expensive lingerie she's wearing instead of his t-shirt. "A surprise," she says on a breath, neck arching into his mouth.
He lets out an exhale as he tugs the blanket further down. "Let me see it properly." His voice is low, raspy, faintly desperate. It's not the voice he has when they talk about each other, about what they want when they make love.
She disentangles herself from his arms, stands up, and steps far enough away that he can see her in the reflected flicker of the muted TV. He settles into the corner, legs parted, arms draped over the back of the sofa. His eyes meet hers briefly before they slide down.
She watches his face and feels herself blush at the carnal expression he doesn't hide. He is very noticeably hard.
Wolfgang lifts his chin, gestures for her to turn around. She arches her eyebrow at him. "Bitte," he says, lips quirking into a smirk.
She turns around for him. And when she hears his breath hitch, mutter in strangled German, she smiles to herself.
...
"So she was pregnant."
Despite herself, Kala feels a sudden stab of empathy for Wolfgang's unknown wife. "She must have been devastated to lose the baby so late in term."
The look Wolfgang turns to her is one of utter incredulity. "Lila?" he says. His voice holds a trace of amusement; he shakes his head. "Pregnancy was an inconvenience that didn't stop her from doing whatever the hell she wanted."
His voice holds enough bitterness that Kala feels the sting of it. She sits very still, worrying her lower lip.
She wants to ask what happened. How she lost the baby.
But she can't bring herself to ask, and she's unsure whether it's to spare Wolfgang or herself.
He finally takes a sip of his coffee, grimaces a little because it tastes like processed shit to him. "And Lila wanted to get married. She pushed for it. It got her out of her father's control. I didn't know." He is silent for several seconds, distant, before he gives a shrug. "So. We did."
The coldness of his tone, the hard look in his eyes, sends a shiver through Kala.
"We never should have gotten married." Wolfgang suddenly turns his attention to her. "Did you have any kids, Kala?"
She is startled enough by the question to give a simple answer. She shakes her head. "No," she says, and there's a sadness that settles in that single reply, a pain she doesn't remember to hide. Wolfgang gives an exhale. He looks back at her, and his expression is equally pained before his eyes shutter.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly.
...
They don't make it into the bedroom.
His hands are all over her body, desperate fingers making quick work of bows and hooks and a completely useless thong. She's naked on the floor - top half on the area rug, bottom half on the wood floor - in record time. And there's something unbelievably hot about being that way when Wolfgang remains fully clothed, intent on devouring her.
But Kala is just as desperate.
She licks his mouth, bites as she wraps her legs around his hips, grinds against him. He bucks a little over her, dragging his mouth from hers to suck along her neck and down to a breast. She feels the pleasure of it spiral to her core. She grabs for his shirt and scores his back tugging it over his head, taking it off. His hand coasts around her bottom and between her legs.
The sex is frantic: a welling of need released after a wait that is longer than anticipated. Nothing else matters except that. And when Kala cants her hips against him, Wolfgang sinks mindlessly into her.
His eyes flutter close. "God." His voice is a husky croak. He is perfectly still for a mere moment, but she grinds impatient and urgent against him. "Kala." They'd never had sex without a condom. Ever. He is religious about it. But tonight he doesn't give a shit.
His control escapes completely.
...
When they finish, they remain where they are: boneless, sated. Wolfgang rolls off of Kala before he feels too heavy on her small frame, gathers her into his arms. She turns to plant a kiss on his shoulder.
"I've missed you," he sighs, moments from sleep.
"I've missed you too," she murmurs, tangling her legs with his.
"I'm sorry I couldn't wait." His voice trails. He sounds as if he's already half-asleep.
Kala smiles faintly. "I went on birth control, if that's what you mean." She twists a little to see his face. His eyes open, soft, but remarkably unconcerned. He pushes hair from her face, kisses her nose.
"I wonder what our children will look like," he says on a sigh. Her breath catches in her throat. "A little girl with your large, dark eyes and wild black hair?"
Kala laughs softly because for some reason, she is on the verge of tears. "Or a little boy with your beautiful smile and silly, silly laugh?"
"I don't have a silly laugh," he protests before he kisses her.
They fall asleep, entwined, on the rug.
...
Wolfgang admits he didn't try very hard to make his marriage work: He'd been accepting of the situation while Lila was pregnant, but after the miscarriage, he was full of resentment. He also wasn't interested in her or her family's business at all.
Which of course impacted his family's business.
"We separated. She didn't want a divorce. I'm not sure why it mattered. But we were still kids, almost. I volunteered to come here, help Steiner with the business since he was fucking it up, even though it meant I couldn't keep an eye on Felix." Wolfgang takes another sip of his coffee. She knows he must have been desperate if he had to leave Felix. "The rest you know."
Wolfgang meets Kala's dark gaze, and there's a bone-weariness to his face; a kind of fatalistic expression that settles in the back of his eyes.
It makes sense, suddenly; the wild partying he admitted to: the drinking, the drugs, the sex. Over-indulging in sensory experiences, waking up in places he didn't recognize with people he didn't know. Running from responsibilities. Oddly enough (or maybe it's not so odd when she thinks more about it), it is Will's calming presence that helps settle Wolfgang. Will might have been a long-forgotten name in a list of sexual partners if he hadn't also taken Wolfgang to the emergency room for alcohol poison and insisted on becoming a friend . Wolfgang would have died.
"Did Will know about Lila?"
Wolfgang shakes his head. "No." He leans in a little, stares at his coffee. "Not until I told him, maybe a week before I left. I told him not to tell you or Riley. I told him I'd fix things. I'd asked Lila for a divorce a month or so before then. She said she wouldn't object if I paid some ridiculous sum of money. Otherwise, it would be war." He frowns into his coffee. "She can be kind of a drama queen. I don't think she believed I really wanted the divorce."
"And you said someone found out but was willing to help you come up with the money?"
He smiles, but it is without humor, a mere baring of teeth. "Oh yes. Someone just as interested that I marry you as I was."
Kala's brows snap together in confusion. Her immediate thought is of her parents, particularly her mother. But while they were comfortable, they certainly did not have extra money lying around to pay anyone off a "ridiculous sum of money".
Wolfgang watches her face and shakes his head, his expression ironic. "I'll spare you the drama," he says. "Rajan's father found out."
A/N: This took longer to update than expected:/ Thank you for your patience!
This chapter is an edited version of one appearing on AO3.
Thank you for reading! As always, reviews are much appreciated:)
