The next night she awoke, half in a daze, to find the doctor sucking painfully hard at her still-dry breast. Her milk had not come in yet but that had not stopped him.
Oliver's lips were closed tight over her nipple, his tongue playing lightly across her oversensitive skin. The pressure was both sweet and unbearable. Marilyn felt the slow throb begin between her legs even before she could bring the room into focus.
"Baby," she mumbled, groping carefully for his head so she could weave her fingers through his thick dark hair.
He made a low noise of appreciation into her breast and went on nursing.
Marilyn tangled her fingers deeper and tugged at him insistently.
"Baby, stop," she elaborated. Her nerve endings felt overloaded and she tried to arch away from his wet insistent mouth.
"Mommy," Oliver murmured, and it was clear he was in one of his darker places; his catlike body thrummed with predatory energy as he bucked his hips slowly against her thigh.
A weak whimper escaped her.
"Oliver, please." Her fingers searched his face until she felt the warm softness of his lips against her skin. She began to carefully stroke the doctor's handsome features in supplication. "Please, baby, you have to stop."
He mumbled something that sounded like "how?" and ran his strong heated palms down over the gentle curve of her slowly growing belly.
"Oh, sweet baby," Marilyn purred, the feelings of pain and pleasure twisting together in a sinful surge. "Give mommy a break, good boy." A single warm tear slipped from the corner of her eye but she didn't know what it meant, seeing as the heat of his mouth had made her wet and wanting, so she wiped it away frantically before he could notice.
Oliver let loose a frustrated growl and diverted his attention towards her neck, his tongue flicking against the places he knew made her weak in the knees.
The near-unbearable intensity finally ebbed a little as he was focused away from her hypsersensitive breasts. Marilyn sighed softly in relief.
"You're driving me crazy," the doctor said huskily into the curve of her neck.
She knew he was exaggerating, talking dirty, but the words were like a slippery ice cube down her back. How close to crazy could the doctor be pushed before he reached the point of no return?
She could feel his length hardening further as he pumped in a tortuous rhythm against her thigh. His stubble brushed lightly against her collarbone and she let out a helpless moan.
"We should get some sleep, Oliver," Marilyn murmured, but she didn't even sound convincing to herself, let alone the doctor.
"I can't sleep." His long fingers spidered over the swell of her belly and down to the warm place waiting between her legs. "You're here, and you're mine, and you're carrying our child..." The very idea drew a low noise of arousal from his throat; he began moving the warm pad of his index finger over the sensitive little bud at the apex of her thighs. Pleasure shot through her like a bolt of electricity and she found herself moaning again.
"Baby," she whispered, her hips twitching towards his feathery-light touch.
Oliver grunted and took hold of her black negligee, pulling it over her head, his hands almost clumsy with desperation. He pressed his body against hers, the need for skin-to-skin contact suddenly and apparently overwhelming him. His palms ran along her curves in manic little strokes as though her flesh was water and he a man dying of thirst.
"All that work," he mumbled, nearly incoherent, "all that terrible work is behind me, I know it... no more Bloody Face, never again, never never again..."
His low voice was a throaty rumble against her collarbone as he split her legs with a quick jerking of his knee. Marilyn pressed her fingertips to the high handsome cheekbones of the doctor's face and mewled softly when his thick erection slipped inside her yet again. It seemed to happen so often, and more frequently these days.
"Mommy," Oliver gasped, repeating the word like a prayer over and over as he bucked his hips desperately. "Mommy, Mommy..."
He was becoming unhinged. Even through the haze of pleasure she was sure of this. Something about last night, her final spiralling descent into fully accepting her role as his mother and lover, had frayed the already thin seams that held together the doctor's sanity.
Marilyn clutched at his back. She buried her face into his shoulder; the smooth skin there smelled of clean soap and dark aftershave.
She thought she was taming the monster. Perhaps she had, instead, unleashed it.
"Stay with me, Oliver," she whispered. "I need you here, please, stay with me..."
His eyes met hers at once and their glassy sheen of madness chilled her to the bone.
He was a monster, he was insane, oh god, Lana was right! She was right! What an idiot she'd been, this was a nightmare, he had lost his mind and soon she would lose hers, it was only a matter of time...
She grasped wildly for any mental footing and found, with some shock, that she was still in control, that her careening thoughts were brought back on track, if not at the last moment possible.
Marilyn forced herself into action and placed a gentle kiss on the doctor's parted lips.
"Stay with me," she said again.
His hips stilled; Oliver's thick brows twisted into a small frown but at last she saw it clear, the terrible unsettling gleam of insanity lifting from his dark eyes and leaving behind the man who, while unpredictable and terrifying, could still be tender and caring and loved her in his own psychotic way.
He let out a shaky breath, pressed his forehead against hers, began thrusting again. Slower now.
"I'm here." Oliver closed his eyes, breaking the electric connection between their gazes at last. He seemed nearly as relieved as she was to be grounded again. Tiny drops of sweat had broken out on his face.
Marilyn peppered his cheek with light kisses as she felt sweet relief wash over her in waves, colliding with the waves of pleasure that had begun again with the pumps of his lithe hips.
"Oliver," she whispered, and what always happened happened again: she whimpered with desire and his seed pulsed into the warm wet place between her legs and that was okay because he was not lost just yet, even if she already was.
After their orgasms faded and his breathing had returned to normal the doctor rolled off of her and fell almost immediately into a deep, soundless sleep. It was Marilyn who now found herself wide awake, unable to shake the crystal-clear mental picture of his eyes shining with insanity. She ran her palm over the swollen curve of her belly and waited patiently for the sun to rise.
The next morning she pretended to rouse from sleep and greeted Oliver with a deep kiss and a motherly embrace. She smoothed the rumpled hair back from his face, pressed her lips to his forehead. Did what she could to keep him calm and happy and sane.
She was his protector. She kept him safe from the world, and the world safe from him.
He told her he was taking the day off. She nodded. Smiled. His words were like heavy rounded stones sinking to the bottom of a black pond.
Marilyn watched his perfect mouth tell her that he agreed, it was time to do what they should've done a long time ago - it was time to get rid of Lana.
He would go into the basement and strangle her. That would be the end of it. He knew Marilyn wanted to help but it was simply too dangerous. With the life growing in her womb he just couldn't put her in harm's way.
He sounded so calm and measured. The very picture of a mentally healthy young doctor. What he said, the careful cadence of his words, seemed to make so much sense. So again she nodded.
His fingers tangled in her hair. Oliver kissed her face and got quickly to his feet. There was no use in delaying the inevitable, he said; it was time for him to do his duty as a father. The very thought brought a bright childlike smile to his lips.
"I love you," Marilyn said, the words suddenly escaping her like water overflowing from a dam about to burst.
She wasn't sure who was more surprised, her or the doctor. Slowly his shock gave way to a kind of endearing determination and he gave her a brisk little nod.
"We won't have to worry about her anymore," Oliver murmured, and moved out the door before she could see the tears welling in his eyes. But of course, she had already seen.
The moment his tall lean frame left the doorway Marilyn leaned back into the pillows and fell almost immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep. The doctor was going to take care of things, and she would take care of the doctor, and all would be well again.
She awoke with a start, immediately aware that something was amiss.
Something had gone wrong. She could feel it in her bones, and in the aching of her breasts.
"Oliver?" Marilyn called, a high note of panic in her voice. She stumbled to her feet, one hand protectively cupping the little belly that held the son or daughter of Bloody Face.
She shuffled to the hallway, towards the basement, listening for anything that might tell her she was wrong, everything had gone fine, Oliver was just in the kitchen waiting for her to wake up.
The kitchen was empty. The door at the bottom of the stairs was closed.
"Oliver!" she cried this time as she nearly fell down the steps. "Oliver, where are you?"
There was light coming from the basement. Marilyn fumbled with the heavy soundproof door, flew around the corner and scanned the room frantically for Oliver, Lana, anyone.
"Baby?" she whispered, and in that moment she felt a bizarre sense of clairvoyance - before it even happened she somehow knew Lana would leap out from one of the dark corners of the basement, push past her and scramble up the stairs on all fours in her animal desperation to be free. Yet when it did happen Marilyn wasn't prepared, not even close to ready.
She only saw the reporter's drawn pale face for a split second before she was on her ass, a bright bolt of pain shooting up her spine to the base of her neck. Marilyn reached dumbly for the white cotton hem of that dreaded nightgown but it slipped through her fingers like a spiderweb on the wind.
Lana was moving fast, so fast, there was no time to look for Oliver to see what had happened to him. There was a brief moment of doubt where she knew this may be an end to her baby, the fall and what she was about to do, but it was the only answer. She had meant what she said: strangely, insanely enough, she did love him.
Marilyn leapt to her feet, adrenaline coursing through her veins like heroin, and went after Lana.