Franny was gobsmacked. “Really? Just like that? You sure you don’t need a few days to think about things? I mean, I might shift in front of you. I’ll turn into a fully-fledged mythical animal, like Lupin-level wolf. It’s not a pretty sight, trust me.”
Ed shrugged. “I don’t care. I’ve had a crush on you from the moment you first walked into the library. You’re all I’ve been able to think about for months. I want to be with you, Franny. I don’t care if you’re a wolf or what. I just…like you. For you.”
Franny really couldn’t help what she did next. After that speech, it was only right that she abandoned her coffee, leaped off where she’d been sitting on the couch and plastered herself against Ed. What ensued was, in her opinion, one of the best make-out sessions of her life, which then led to some of the best sex of her life. By the time Rose got home from school, Ed and Franny were dressed again, sitting on the couch ostensibly reading, but really making side-eye at each other from behind the pages of their books. Rose shook her head as she walked in the door and made a beeline for the PopTarts Franny had set out for her. “Stop trying to be coy. I know what you’ve both been doing, and it’s about freaking time.”
Franny and Ed laughed and returned to their books, and for the first time since Rose’s birth, Franny felt her life finally falling into place.
---
“What are you and Ed going to do for your anniversary?” Rose asked Franny one night after she and Ed had been dating for six months. It was the longest relationship Franny had had since Rose’s dad, and it was by far the best one of her life. Ed was honest and sensitive and amazing, both in bed and out. He was a good friend to Rose, always making sure to spend time with her no matter his work schedule. Ed had begun teaching literature classes at the same community college with Franny worked, so while he had less free time than before, all of his spare time was now spent in Franny and Rose’s company. Rose had recently declared him her “favorite adult, next to you, Mom, of course.”
“Gosh, I don’t know. I guess go out to dinner?” Franny said in answer to Rose’s question.
“Mom! You guys do that all the time! You have to do something special.”
Franny turned to look at Rose, where she was sitting at the kitchen table finishing some of her math homework. “And what would you suggest?”
Rose closed the textbook she had been working in and laced her fingers together, placing her hands on top of the book cover. “Well Mom, I’ve done some research on this, and I think you should make him dinner here, and get a key cut to the house. Then, bake the key into a cake and serve him the slice with it. It’ll be a great surprise!”
Franny raised an eyebrow. “And what exactly would this key represent?” she asked.
Rose gave her a look that said, “how are you an adult and this dense?” “Duh, Mom, it’s a house key for here! To ask him to move in!”
Franny smiled. “Would you like that, Rose? If Ed moved in? It wouldn’t be weird, after so many years of it being just me and you?”
Rose shook her head, getting up from the table and coming to stand in front of where Franny was leaning against the sink. “No. I want you to be happy, Mom, and Ed seems to make you happy. But, he’s busy and away teaching a lot, so I think we’d get to see him more if he lived here.”
Franny nodded, amazed at how thoroughly Rose had considered this. She didn’t know why she was still surprised at her daughter’s maturity. Rose had been an adult from the moment she started walking, often helping Franny make decisions she wouldn’t have even been able to contemplate before the age of eighteen.
“Well, then it’s settled. I’ll make him my special lasagna and that vanilla cake you like, and we’ll hide a key in it.”
“Great!” Rose said, hugging Franny. “Just make sure you tell him there’s a surprise inside. You don’t want him to accidentally break his teeth. I feel like that might ruin the moment a bit.”
---
Franny had one ingredient left on her shopping list, a heart-shaped cake pan Rose had convinced her would take the cake to the “next level.” She was just turning onto the street that led to William Sonoma when Franny was overcome with a wave of nausea.
Franny looked into the right lane and said a slight prayer of gratitude that there was a parking space open. She pulled in and had just enough time to climb across the center console and open the passenger side door before another wave hit her and she threw her breakfast up all over the curb.
Sitting back in the seat and rubbing her forehead, Franny tried to wrack her brain for what she might’ve eaten that could’ve caused such a reaction. The eggs she’d scrambled were fresh from the farmer’s market, and she knew there was nothing wrong with the tomatoes Rose grew.
Just then, an alert sounded from Franny’s phone. Her period tracker, telling her she was three weeks late. Franny paled, suddenly knowing the cause of her nausea. She was pregnant…again.
She and Ed had been careful, but there had been a night a few weeks ago when she’d forgotten to take her pill for a few days, and they had been out of condoms. Ed had been in the midst of giving her the best head when they realized they were out of Trojans, and at that point, Franny had thought penetrative sex well worth the risk.
But now, sitting here in her car with a baby growing inside her on the day she was supposed to ask her very new boyfriend to move in with her, Franny couldn’t help but feel that maybe it might’ve been worth it to forestall the coitus in favor of a quick trip to the condom section of CVS. Because now, in addition to getting a cake pan, she had to get a pregnancy test, and if it were positive, she would have more than one question to ask Ed at dinner that evening.
---
“Positive” the pregnancy test read. It was the fourth test Franny had taken in an hour, sitting in the bathroom as the cake baked in the oven and Rose sat quietly in her room, reading up on the latest chili pepper-cultivation techniques.
Four tests didn’t lie. Franny was pregnant, and the cake timer was sounding, and in an hour she had to tell Ed that she had a baby growing inside her, his baby.
“Mom? Are you okay?” Rose’s voice said through the bathroom door. Franny quickly sat up and bundled the tests in a bunch of toilet paper and buried them under various other bits of garbage in the bathroom trashcan. “You’ve been in there a long time, and the cake timer just went off.”
Franny flushed the toilet and washed her hands, then flung open the bathroom door. “Yup, great! Let’s see how that cake is doing!”
Rose gave her a strange look but followed her to the kitchen. They made the icing for the cake, a soft pink that Rose told Franny was very “in” that year and covered the whole thing in a variety of sprinkles leftover from previous baking endeavors. The lasagna came out of the oven, followed by homemade garlic bread, and then the table was ready, and Franny had managed to forget for the last thirty minutes that a baby growing inside her.
“Hello?” Ed’s voice rang out from the living room. Rose rushed to him, taking a blindfold from her pocket and wrapping it around his eyes. “Ed! We have a surprise for you!” she said, taking his coat and backpack and stashing it by the sofa before leading him into the kitchen.
Franny was smiling nervously when Ed took the blindfold off, hoping he didn’t notice that her anxiety was perhaps a bit over-the-top considering all they were doing was celebrating an anniversary. Before that morning, Franny had been a little nervous about asking Ed to move in, but she knew he’d say yes. They’d talked about it before, and while Ed had suggested it happen in a few months, Franny couldn’t imagine him minding the date be moved up. But now, that anxiety paled in comparison to what she was now feeling. What if he left her? She couldn’t blame him if he did. They had only discussed kids in abstract terms, as in “I hope one day I can do xyz with my kids…” And now Franny was going to ask Ed if he wanted to be a father to the wolf baby inside her. Because she couldn’t give up the pregnancy. She might have only been aware of it for a little over two hour
s, but she already knew she couldn’t bear to give up the baby growing inside her, even if it meant losing Ed.
“Ta-da!” Rose said as she untied the blindfold for Ed. He gazed down at the spread on the table, and a huge grin spread across his face. “This looks amazing! Franny, did you do all this?” he asked, turning toward her, hugging her to him and planting a kiss on her cheek.
Franny nodded. “Yup! Happy anniversary!” she kissed Ed on the mouth then gestured for them all to sit. “Let’s dig in!”
---
“That was amazing, Fran,” Ed said from where he was standing at the sink doing the dishes. “I can’t wait to dig into that cake.”
Franny looked over at Rose and nearly snorted at the very unsubtle, conspiratorial wink her daughter gave her. “Me either!” Rose said. “Let’s eat it now! Ed, come on!”
Ed laughed. “All right, if you insist. Who am I to resist homemade cake, especially when it’s this nicely decorated?”
Franny did the honors of cutting the cake open, careful to serve the slice with the key to Ed. “Now, there’s a surprise in your slice,” she said, trying her best to give Ed a natural, not-nervous smile. “So, be careful when you take a bite.”
“A surprise? Interesting…” he said, then used his fork to slice into the cake. The sound of metal and metal rung through the silence at the table, and Ed peered into his cake. “Is that…is that a key?”
Franny nodded. “It’s a house key. To this house. Because I’d like you to move in. Well, Rose and I would, wouldn’t we?” Franny said, turning to her daughter. Rose was nodding enthusiastically. “Yes! We would!”
“Well, I accept!” Ed said, jumping up from the table and walking over to Franny to place a soft kiss on her lips.
“Yay!” Rose said, clapping her hands and getting up from her seat to give Ed a huge hug. He lifted her into the air and twirled her around the kitchen a few times, earning him excited laughter and giggles from her.
Ed put Rose down and stood in front of Franny, grinning from ear to ear. “I can’t believe this!” he said. Franny noticed Rose sneaking over to her plate and taking it out of the kitchen, winking at Franny. Franny was glad to be alone with Ed, both to share in his excitement and to ruin it with her news. She would tell Rose she was pregnant, but first, she needed to talk to Ed.
“And it gets better! Or worse, depending on how you look at it,” Franny said, gesturing for Ed to sit back down. He took Rose’s vacated seat to Franny’s right, breathing deeply and still smiling. “Nothing you could say right now would dampen my high, Fran.”
“Not even if I told you I was pregnant?” Franny asked, looked worriedly over at Ed. His smile stayed frozen for a moment before falling, replaced by a confused frown. “You’re…you’re pregnant?”
Franny nodded. “I felt really sick this morning and took four tests, all of which said Positive. I’m not sure exactly how far along I am, but I think a few weeks. Maybe six?”
Realization dawned on Ed’s face. “That time we didn’t use a condom, and you hadn’t taken your pill…” he said, trailing off in thought.
Franny nodded. “Yup, I think that’s when it happened.”
Ed leaned over and took Franny’s hands in his. The frown had cleared from his face and was replaced now by a big grin. “So, I’m going to be a dad?” he asked quietly.
“If you want to be, yes. I’ll understand if it’s too much. I mean, we’ve only been together a few months, and you haven’t even moved in yet and the baby might be a wolf and I know it’s a lot to handle and I totally get if you just want to turn around and run out the door and…”
Ed leaned in and kissed Franny, stopping her thought process as she relaxed against the feel of his soft, smooth lips against hers.
“Stop worrying, Fran,” he whispered against her lips. “We’re keeping this baby, I’m moving in, and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of me ever leaving you or Rose or this new little life inside you, okay?”
Franny nodded, kissing Ed, this time running her tongue along his lips, signaling him to open so she could deepen the kiss, leaning into the feel of his hard chest against hers. Ed wrapped his hands around Franny’s waist and pulled her onto his lap. She could feel his erection through her jeans, and began rocking her hips against it, the friction of her jeans against the soft, thin fabric of her panties doing delicious things to her clitoris.
“Fuck, Franny,” Ed breathed into her mouth. When Franny looked into his eyes, she saw nothing but icy blue pools of desire. She loved how he wore his emotions so openly, loved how he loved her so openly.
Ed stood up and held Franny under her ass, depositing her on the kitchen counter and beginning to unbutton the chambray shirt she had thrown on that morning. Underneath she had worn his favorite bra of hers, a black balconette demi-cup bra with a black lace overlay on maroon satin. Under her jeans she was wearing a matching thong she’d picked up earlier that week, and she couldn’t wait to see Ed’s reaction when he saw the set.
Ed’s fingers traced soft lines down Franny’s belly as he finished unbuttoning her shirt and held the fabric opening, baring her middle to him. Motherhood had made Franny soft there, and no amount of yoga would ever give her the flat stomach she had before Rose, but Franny liked it that way, and so did Ed. “God your skin is so soft,” he whispered in her ear as he ran his fingers back up and under her bra, fingering her nipples between his thumb and index finger.
Franny arched her back at his touch, restraining a gasp as Ed bent down and began kissing the tops of her breasts. He reached around her back and unclasped the bra, allowing her breasts to drop free from their restraints. Her dark brown, puffy nipples were soon engulfed in Ed’s mouth and hands, and Franny could feel herself growing wetter by the second as he lavished her tits with attention.
Gradually, Ed’s mouth traveled down to the waistband of Franny’s jeans, and then the soft fabric was sliding down her legs, leaving her in just her thong, goosebumps raising on her legs from being sat on the cold tile.
“Is that a new thong?” Ed asked, stepping back and running his eyes over Franny’s body. She nodded, smiling wickedly as she jumped off the counter and stalked toward him.
“Yes, but you can’t do anything with it until we get these clothes off you,” Franny said, leading Ed by the hand toward her bedroom, which was one floor down. Franny shut the door behind her and leaned back against the wood, watching as Ed threw his shirt and jeans off and came to stand before her, completely naked.
Franny smiled, marveling at the sight before her. She admired his lean stomach, strong arms and muscular legs, but as much as she loved those parts of him, what she loved most was the cock standing at attention for her. Long and thick and slanted just slightly to the left, it was hard and ready for her, and Franny couldn’t wait to feel that exquisite sensation of fullness, of being completely at one with her partner, as Ed buried himself to the hilt inside her.
“Get over here, Fran,” Ed whispered, his voice raspy as he held his hand out. Franny walked toward him and squealed as he grabbed her by the ass, spanking her and kneading her cheeks. “God, I love you in this thong. I wish you would wear it every day,” he breathed into her ear. Franny smiled and placed a soft kiss just over his heart.
Then, Ed lifted her onto the bed, depositing her in the middle and climbing over her until he was seated between her thighs. Lacing his finger through the gusset of her thong and pulling it to the side, Ed leaned down to lick one long, smooth stroke of his tongue down Franny’s center, smiling as she gasped in pleasure. His tongue moved back up, tracing fiery circles of heat around her clitoris until Franny was clutching the sheets in her fingers and arching her back, begging for Ed to claim her. “Please, Ed, I need you. I need your cock,” she whispered and said a silent prayer of gratitude when he lifted himself back on his knees and dove into her without preamble.
Franny loved the feeling of Ed’s hips pounding into hers as he pumped in and out of her, and somehow, knowing that th
ey wouldn’t always be able to make love this way, that soon, her belly would grow too large for missionary, made her enjoy the feeling of Ed’s weight on top of her even more. Franny’s orgasm built quickly, licks of fire racing down from her core to her cunt, tightening her walls so much that Ed muttered a curse as he too began to come.
“Fuck, Franny, I love you, I love you,” he said as he collapsed on top of her. They lay like that for a moment, their chests heaving as their breaths slowed into the same slow, steady rhythm. Ed rolled off Franny and curled her into his arms until her head was resting on his chest and his chin was on top of her soft, curly black hair.
“Thank you,” he whispered against the strands, taking one of her ringlets and twirling it around his fingers.
Franny looked up. “For what?” she asked.
“For loving me, for welcoming me into your home and your family, for having my child. I’m just…I’m so happy,” he said, and Franny didn’t miss faint glisten of tears in his eyes.
They lay in bed for a long time, and then Ed went back to the kitchen to sneak a few pieces of cake back into the room. They snacked on the sweet, vanilla treat and stayed up all night, discussing baby names and the best books to read to toddlers, and then they fell asleep in each other’s arms, knowing that the next morning they would wake to the beginning of a new chapter in their relationship, one filled with love and babies and so much more.
Franny had finally found the man who loved her no matter what she was, wolf or woman.
FIN
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The Baby Shift- California Page 3
