by V. K. Ludwig
“We should do it without that guy, though,” Oriel added after a while. “There’s no way we can be completely honest while he is around. But he seemed pretty eager to be involved in this marriage thing. I doubt he’d leave that girl out of his sight until she’s a bride. Any idea how to get rid of him?”
“We could lure him away?”
“What or who would be convincing enough, considering he doesn’t know anybody here, and he isn’t one of ours?”
I spent the next minute gobbling up the cracker, the salt teasing my taste-buds and the crumbs settling my stomach. Then the solution hit me in the face with all its craziness. “Rowan!”
“Huh?”
“I will ask Rowan to show up and take him away from there under false pretense. It’s unlikely he’d turn down our chieftain, don’t you think?”
Oriel stared back at me with parted lips. “Rowan? You want to involve our chieftain in leading Jack by his nose?”
“Rowan already knows anyway.”
He scoffed. “So? Just because he knows doesn’t mean he’s willing to get involved in this shitshow.”
“Look…” I got up and placed my mug in the sink. “I don’t know why, but I’m certain he will help us out. He interrupted me when I wanted to tell Adair about our engagement, which tells me he is most likely inclined to make this better for everyone.”
A smirk grew on Oriel’s face. “Call him up then. I’m dying to see how this plays out. Should be interesting.”
The smirk on his face lasted for another four minutes, but quickly died down once I called Rowan, who agreed to be at Adair’s cabin thirty minutes later.
Oriel and I got dressed, and I grabbed the images Hazel had printed for me during the first ultrasound. Then we walked over to Adair’s cabin.
I hadn’t been back here ever since Hazel left the Clan, and my heart picked up the pace with each step we came closer to the front door. We skipped on the knock against the door, because Adair opened up the moment we stepped onto the porch.
“Can we talk?” Oriel asked, his eyes squinted but still carrying something sincere and well-meaning to it.
Wordless, Adair opened the door wide, and we stepped inside. I hung my jacket on one of the hooks like I had so many times, while Jack leaned with his back against the kitchen island and observed my every movement.
“I brought coffee with me,” Adair said, grabbed a cup and wiggled it in our direction. When I shook my head, he cocked his. “Sure? You love coffee.”
“Not lately.”
When his eyes filled with pain, I couldn’t do anything but share in it. “Right… the baby.”
Yeah. I had to tell him.
“So?” he went on and busied himself over the coffee maker. “What did you wanna talk about? Sure hope it isn’t about last night, because I’d rather forget about that.”
Oriel and I glanced over at Jack, whose eyes turned into narrow slits as if he could smell trouble brewing instead of fresh coffee.
Oriel flung himself onto the couch. “Where’s the girl?”
“Kim’s still in her room,” Jack said. “Why? What do you want with her?”
“Just curious…”
A knock on the door startled everyone. Everyone but me.
When Adair opened the door, Rowan stepped inside, his finger pointing right at Jack. “Good thing you’re awake. I need you to come with me to the longhouse. There’s some shit I wanna show you. Maps. Coordinates. Information I’m sure Knox would appreciate. Get ready so we can look it over.”
“I don’t think so,” Jack snarled and turned his back to Rowan.
Our chieftain was quick to stomp inside, throwing a pat against Jack’s shoulder that sent him halfway over the island. “Arizona told me Knox’s your president. What did he say? Ah… yes. El presidente gets what el presidente wants. Well, right now, right here, I’m your el presidente. So get your ass over to that door before I’ll drag you by your saggy balls.”
Jack squared himself up and brushed some crumbs off his shirt. “Fine.”
The two of them left, but only one of them carried a huge grin on his face as they did.
“What is this all about?” Adair asked and grabbed his coffee mug, sitting on the couch across from Oriel.
I walked around the couch and sat beside Oriel. “Can you call her? Kim?”
“Why?”
“Just do it already,” Oriel barked, but quickly went ahead and took matters into his own hands. “Kim! Would you join us out here for a moment?”
The door opened slowly and without making a single noise, then she poked her head through the gap as if she expected the worst behind it. “What do you need me to do?”
“You don’t need to do anything,” Adair blurted. “They only want to talk. Oriel and Ruth are friends of mine.”
She sneaked through the room and sat on the armrest of the couch, her lips the only thing in her face which had a tad of color left. Her hands lay jammed insider her armpits, and her eyes darted between Oriel and me.
“Well?” Adair asked, his fingers restless and his muscles jumping along his neck and shoulders. “Look, if this is about last night…” He took one deep breath, so sharp it must have punctured his lungs. “You want me to be happy for you? Is that it? Congratulate you on the… the…” His hand waved toward my stomach but his eyes wouldn’t dare to stare in the same direction.
Oriel leaned forward and folded his hands in his lap. “We’ve got a problem here.”
“No shit…”
“Ruth,” Oriel said, his voice driving anxiety into my bones. “Please tell him the truth.”
“Truth about what?”
All eyes fell on me. Kim’s held nothing but curiosity waiting behind a curtain of fear. Oriel held a plea in them. Adair’s held nothing but anguish.
“Ehh…”
I grabbed inside the pocket of my jacket and pulled the images out. The moment I unfolded them and put them on the coffee table between us, Adair shrunk back as if the edges of the paper were razor blades, and a closer look might carve his eyes out.
“Congratulations…” he said slowly, each syllable a drowned mess as if the word alone had left blood along his throat.
I kneeled down on the floor and pointed at the numbers above the images. “This shows the estimated gestation. Ten to eleven weeks pregnant. That was almost two weeks ago when Hazel performed the ultrasound.”
“So? What does that have to do with me?”
Oriel let out a sarcastic laugh. “Dude, it has everything to do with you. Come on, man. Your dad was a teacher.”
I shoved the images across the table. “Oriel isn’t the father. You are.”
For a moment there was no reaction as if he hadn’t heard what I had said. Then his hands reached out for the images, trembling from his fingertips all the way up to his shoulder.
“When you didn’t come back,” Oriel said, “Hazel asked me to marry her in order to keep her and the baby safe and taken care of. And maybe even a little to keep your name clean. I agreed and here we are, but I swear nothing ever happened between us.”
The more Adair’s body trembled, the more my body shook. I waited for him to look at me. To gift me one of his mesmerizing smiles. But his eyes continued to wander across the images, his thoughts lost deep in the specks of black, brown and orange.
Oriel rose and walked over to the wardrobe to grab his jacket, saying, “I just wanted you to know the truth.”
“Does that mean I have to go back?” Kim shouted, her body swaying back and forth as is if to comfort herself. “I can’t go back there. Please don’t make me go back!”
“No,” Adair shook his head. “I promised I’d get you out and I won’t go back on my word. Promise.”
As much as his words comforted her, they cut me deep and made an uncomfortable heat pool inside me. We had promised each other marriage if I carried his child. What made his promise to her more important than our promise to each other?
For a second I thou
ght I was upset with him. The way he reacted or, rather, lacked any reaction at all. Then I thought I might be upset with her, because she didn’t belong here and most definitely didn’t belong with him. But then I realized that all this was nothing but an extended reaction to a choice I had made months ago. Back when I didn’t appreciate what he and I had.
Adair folded the images and shoved them back across the table. “Can I have a moment alone with Ruth, please?”
“Yeah, sure.” Oriel handed Kim his jacket. “We’ll be waiting right outside.”
Kim wiped a stray tear off her cheek, let Oriel help her with her jacket and disappeared with him behind the door.
When I sat back on the couch, Adair walked over to me, kneeled down in front of me and hovered his hand inches away from my stomach. “Can I feel the baby?”
Chapter 27
Adair
Ruth put her hand onto mine and pressed them gently against her stomach, placing the tiniest bump inside my palm. Something that would have gone unnoticed by everyone. Except me, because I knew every pore on her body and that one extra inch protruding from right below her belly button hadn’t been there three months ago.
I made each breath I took a deep one, containing that desperation inside me and battling back those tears. For a moment, I had found a place of content. Ignoring all the shit around it. Holding my child right underneath the skin of my palm. Our child.
I placed a kiss onto her stomach and lowered my head onto her lap, nourishing myself in the way she tousled my hair and pulled me closer against her.
My hand still rested on her. My fingertips searched for movement, anything that would make this even more real, though I realized it was probably too early. “I fucked up good, didn’t I?”
“No, no… no.” Despair clung to her voice like it clung to my guts. “It’s my fault. I didn’t know I was in love until we argued at the warehouse. And I’ve realized it more and more with each day you didn’t come back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I would never have left if… shit. I should never have left.”
“I was scared…” was all she said, letting the silence that followed do the explaining. And I got it. But two questions remained, slowly burning the lining of my stomach. How could we fix this? Though the more important one was if she even wanted to.
“You said you realized that you loved me…” my voice trailed off, held back by fear of the answer.
“I still love you.”
Four words turned my heart into a bag of convulsing muscles, clenching my arteries so tight I feared I might not live to remember it. To relish in the memory of it.
The woman I loved still loved me back, and now she carried our child. Everything I ever wanted now pressed itself against me, and I had no intention of letting it go. Ever.
I got up, slung one arm around her neck and shoved the other underneath her thighs. The moment I lifted her up, she wrapped herself against me, her shallow breath tickling the side of my neck. I carried her over to my bedroom like I had so many times, though this one felt like it counted like none of the ones before.
Tears formed behind her eyes when I lowered her onto my bed. I stripped her out of her pants and shirt, relieving her of her panty for which she willingly picked up her pelvis.
“What about Oriel and Kim?” she asked, lying in front of me naked and delicious and so fucking sexy.
I stripped out of my clothes, my cock hard and ready to claim her as mine once more. Because that’s what she was. She was mine. “I don’t wanna think about anybody else right now, except the three of us.”
At that, I climbed onto the mattress and lowered myself on top of her, supporting myself with one arm as not to squish the baby.
“I love you, Ruth,” I whispered and cupped her cheek, growing harder at how she threw her head back as if my words alone had made her come undone.
She dug her hands into my hair, and I placed kisses all over her body starting by my child and working myself up toward her breasts. The moment I grabbed for one, she flinched. “Ouch… please don’t. They’re sore… the hormones and everything.”
“Right…” I said, my voice a pitch higher because of the way that big, fat grin had pulled on the corners of my mouth.
I shifted my weight onto one of my sides and pulled her against me, then grabbed for my cock and placed myself right at her sleek entrance. She was so wet and ready, waiting for me to show her that I was home for good.
“You made me a promise.” I worked the tip of my cock inside her, the friction of her tight walls immediately bringing me to the edge. “You promised you’d marry me if you carried my child. And you are carrying my child.”
I placed my hand back onto her stomach and pushed insider her, and both of us released a deep moan at the same time. She raised her pelvis and ground herself against me. “What about Kim?”
I thrust deeper and moaned, losing myself in the haze of my cock ready to spurt if I moved another inch. At that moment she arched her back, raising up that baby bump and making reality crash down on me as if anything before that had been nothing but a daydream.
The area around Ruth’s nipples had turned a shade darker, and one of her breasts seemed bigger than the other now. Firmer, too. Her skin was softer, creamier, and the area along her temples shinier. She was pregnant. This was neither a wish anymore nor a dream. This was real. So fucking real. And it turned me on so bad.
I returned to a steady pace of thrusting in and pulling out, never letting go of that baby underneath my palm. “I’ll figure something out.”
And I had to, because there was no way I would let my family slip away from me once more. Neither was I one for empty promises, and I had promised her just like she had promised me.
Family.
I tasted the word between my lips and seasoned it with the salt of the skin along her collarbone. Three months ago, she would have pulled me deeper. Would have shoved me off her to ride my cock. But not this time.
She gave me full control of my thrusts. Soft when I wanted her to know that I loved her. Hard whenever I told her that she was mine. Each time she moaned. Sometimes she screamed in pleasure. Not sure if it was because of how long it had been, or if the hormones played a role in it as well. I didn’t care which one it was as long as she stayed pliable for me to form. And hell did I form her.
I straddled her legs and watched my shaft disappear underneath a set of swollen lips and white froth, my tight balls pressing against the junction of her legs. But nothing was done with force, and I kept the rhythm steady, each in and out accompanied by kisses and caressing of her body. For the very first time, she watched and enjoyed, allowing me to make love to her.
It had been so long since I was last inside her, and no matter how much strength it took, I tried to make it last. Her body writhed underneath mine.
So sexy.
So familiar.
She sucked in a sharp breath and licked her lips.
“Am I hurting you?”
“No,” she moaned and pressed her eyes shut, her face scrunched up in pleasure.
I pressed my mouth onto hers, letting my tongue dart inside and explore as if it had never been there before. She kissed me back, except for the moments when she spilled my name over our lips.
Her pussy clenched around my cock, telling me how much she had missed me. Had missed us.
“Adair.”
“That’s right.”
The way she screamed my name turned my cock painfully hard. But the thought that I couldn’t get her any more pregnant than she already was sucked the cum right to the tip.
“Oh!”
She let out all those sweet little sounds I had missed so much, her body growing frantic as she bucked against me from underneath my hips.
I let go of our child, just for a moment, and flicked my finger across her clit, whispering, “marry me.” Then I continued to rub my finger between her folds, pressing down on her nub whenever my cock disappeared inside of her again. “Y
ou promised.”
“I’ll marry you.”
She fucking came right then and there, her feet curling up stiff and her head thrown back by one, long, deep moan. I watched it all. Took it all in. All the while, I emptied my cock inside of her like I had so many damn times. But this one was different. This one was more than sex and fun and release. It was a tie. A promise our bodies had given each other. And the result of it, so sweet, so small, so wanted, grew right between us.
I let myself fall onto my back and pulled her against my side, and she rested one of her legs intertwined with mine while her fingers played along my chest.
“This is what I missed the most,” she whispered, her breath slowing at each inhale. “And I’m sorry it took me so long to understand that.”
I placed a kiss onto her forehead and let my hand stroke up and down her back. “I shouldn’t have pushed you the way I did. It’s just… I was so desperate to lose you. And I wanted you to marry me before you figured out that… that…”
She pushed herself up and gazed deep into my eyes. “That you’re not good enough for me?”
The warmth of her hand settled against my cheek. “You’ve always been good enough, Adair. With or without me. For me or for someone else. And once you understand that, others will see it, too.”
After she had settled her head back against my shoulder, I draped the sheet over our naked bodies. “Do we know what it is?”
“The baby?”
“Uh-huh.”
She poked the tip of her nose against my neck, a silent laugh blowing against my skin. “Your sister said it’s too early to tell, but she’s quite confident it’s a girl.”
“A girl.” The word wrapped me in a blanket of comfort. Girls were for daddies, everybody knew that. And I knew I’d do right by her, letting her know each time I got the chance that she was good enough. “You know… when I returned yesterday, I kept telling myself that I was over you. Until I jumped off the bike and you stood there. So beautiful and so special. When Oriel told me you two were engaged, it made me want to die on the spot. The memory of you turning me down was one thing. But you choosing another over me? It was more than I could handle.”
