The Nanny & The Chef

His mouth works me open and the pleasure crests so hard I lose the whole room.

One of my hands is twisted in the sheet, the other buried in his dark hair, and Ilias keeps my hips pinned with both forearms while his tongue drags exactly how I like it. I come with his name caught halfway up my throat, my spine lifting off the mattress, my thighs shaking around his head.

Ilias doesn’t let up. He stays down there, pulling every last wave through me until it tips over into too much and I have to push at his shoulder.

“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay, I can’t take any more.”

He lifts his head. His mouth is wet, his eyes near black in the low light, and there’s that small tilt at the corner of his lips that he would never in his life call a smile.

“You can,” he says, in that low voice with the thick accent. “But I let you breathe.”

Ilias crawls up the length of me, and I get the full view I never tire of. The man is covered in ink. It runs down both arms, across his chest, over his ribs and collarbone.

Sixteen-hour workdays on his feet and pre-dawn runs on the cliff path have given him a lean, strong body. I feel every inch of him as he settles over me on his forearms.

When his chest brushes mine, I flinch. My breasts have been sore for days.

“What?” His hand comes up to my breast, and his face grows serious. “Hurt?”

“They’re just sensitive right now.”

He lowers his mouth and runs his tongue lightly over one nipple and then the other until the soreness turns into a deep throb low in my belly. His big, scarred chef’s hands with the little burn marks on the knuckles stroke down my sides as if he were afraid of hurting me.

“Ilias.” I shift under him. “Please, just fuck me.”

“Nai, agapi.” (Yes, my love.)

He lines himself up and pushes into me slowly, and my body grips him as he sinks deep. We both go quiet, foreheads close. Then he moves, and there’s nothing slow left in it.

This is the part I could never explain to anyone. Four years and my body still answers his like it was built to.

Ilias sets a rhythm that hits the sweet spot, one hand braced by my head, the other gripping my hip to hold me where he wants me. I meet him for all of it, heels in the backs of his thighs, nails dragging the ink down his back.

“Ilias.” I can hear myself begging, and I don’t care. “Right there. Please.”

He angles his hips and hits my G-spot, making me clench around him. He stays on it, again and again, until it stacks too high to come back from.

“You fuck me so good,” I gasp. “Don’t stop.”

“Not stopping.” His pace deepens, careful of my breasts even now. “Come for me again. I feel you want it.”

I break apart and muffle the sound against his shoulder. He follows a few thrusts after, whispering a low Greek word against my neck, his weight pinning me into the mattress.

For a minute he’s heavy on me, his heart beating hard against mine.

Then he pulls out, rolls off me, and gets up.

He always gets up. We don’t do the holding each other or the soft talking in the dark. We never have, and I trained myself to quit wanting it.

Ilias pads naked to the little bathroom in the hall, and I hear the tap run. He comes back with a warm, wet washcloth and cleans between my legs as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

He has done this for four years, and I am always surprised by it—the care of a man who never says a soft word out loud.

“Thank you.” I say after he’s done.

Ilias nods in response and stretches out beside me without touching me.

My sister, Amara, found the job listing a couple of years after we lost our parents. The agency needed two nannies for the Christakis children on their private Greek island, Thalassía.

Amara put our names in and talked me into it. She’s an amputee, and the health insurance that comes with this job covers her prosthetics and the maintenance they need. It’s better than anything we could have found back home.

I met him — the head chef — my first month here. It was a Tuesday, and I was coming on his tongue by Friday.

Four years later, here I am.

Nobody except my sister knows. My twin would take it to her grave, and she’s the only soul on this island I’d trust with it. To everyone else, I’m the nanny and he’s the head chef who barely looks up when I cross his kitchen.

He leaves a plate for me on the staff counter every evening. It’s whatever he prepared for the house, and always served with those cod fritters he makes specifically for me.

I tell myself that means something. A man doesn’t want you this hard, this long, unless some piece of him loves you.

“Your thesis,” he says. “Almost done?”

“Last chapter. I will send it to my advisor Friday.”

“Good.” A pause. “Then what?”

It’s a fair question. I don’t want to be a nanny forever.

TJ starts school soon, and Tasha will not be far behind. Baby Treyvon just turned one, it’s doubtful the family will need two nannies in the near future.

I have been looking at teaching positions back in the U.S., but everything I love is here. My job, the free cottage that comes with it, and Amara, the only family I have left in this world.

“Not sure,” I say.

After a while he sits up and reaches for his shorts. “I go now. Before light.”

Right. He has never once slept in my bed till morning.

He finds his clothes on my floor and dresses while I watch him from the sheets. Before he leaves, he catches my chin and kisses me.

“Kalimera, Nia.” (Good morning, Nia.)

Warmth from his body lingers in the bed as I lie in the dark, feeling a growing hollowness in my body. I press a hand to my chest and breathe through it. Then my stomach turns over.

I barely make it to the bathroom before I’m bent over the toilet, bringing up what little is in me. It passes fast, the way it has all week, leaving me clammy and weak with my forehead against my arm.

I rinse my mouth and reach for the mouthwash, but the bottle’s empty. I crouch and open the cabinet under the sink to dig for a new one, pushing past the spare body wash and tampons.

My hand closes on a slim cardboard box shoved to the back.

A pregnancy test. One Amara must have left when she lived here, before she moved in with Niko. The seal isn’t even broken.

I sit back on the bathroom floor and look at it.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell the empty room.

Because I am. Late periods happen. Stress does that.

And I am on the pill, have been for years. There was that round of antibiotics last month, when TJ shared her strep throat with the entire staff, but I took my pill every single day straight through it, same as always.

I’ve been running on no sleep and bad eating, and a man who leaves before the sun comes up. There are a hundred reasons that don’t end with this little box.

I almost put it back.

Then I think about my breasts, the sickness that won’t quit and the bone-tiredness that no amount of coffee fixes. The only way to stop worrying is to know.

So I take it.

While I wait, I sit on the edge of the tub with my notes pulled up on my phone. I try to read through the methodology section one more time, but the words swim and will not hold their shape.

I read the same sentence four times and cannot tell you a word of it. My leg bounces. The longest two minutes of my life crawl by.

When the timer goes off, I don’t look right away. I count to ten. Then I turn the test over in my hand.

A sound comes out of me and I press the back of my wrist to my mouth to hold the rest of it in.

Two lines. Not a faint one in the pair.

I am carrying the chef’s child.