I couldn’t help but grimace at the sight. What in the world were we creating?
Tor snorted, hiding a smirk behind his hands. Either he’d seen my reaction or had had the same one himself.
I didn’t find it funny at all and glared at him.
“Mmhmm. Mmhmm.” She nodded and repeated her affirmations over and over again.
The doctor wasn’t freaking out about the way our bean looked. Maybe we really were descended from apes. God, that thing was ugly.
Although I’d read in a textbook that at one point in history the prevailing theory had held we’d been descended not from apes but fish. Which, yeah, I could believe that too. The bean twitched and I couldn’t help but smile at it.
A feeling of warmth flowed down my spine. It might be hideous, but it was mine, and that counted for something.
“How is she?” Tor’s rumble broke the ever-thickening silence.
I don’t think he was referring to the baby.
I’m a little surprised he took his lunch break to come be with me here today. He didn’t need to; I knew he was backed up at work. Ryko was pissed and Zoe was trying her best to pick up the slack. They desperately needed that third artist soon.
But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at all by my Viking, this was just his way. Thoughtful to a fault.
“Well, my dears, good news and bad news.” She flicked off the machine, pulling out the wand at the same time.
My heart clenched at the words bad news. “Bad news first,” I murmured, running my cold fingers down my gown as Tor helped me to sit up.
Flicking on the lights, Dr. Gold washed her hands and smiled. She had a really nice one. Open and honest—it’s why I’d chosen her to be my OB all those years ago. She was a middle-aged, slightly paunchy woman. But there was a toughness hidden behind her sugary sweet exterior that appealed to me.
Like she knew what she was doing and was more than capable of getting things done.
“Bad news, no sex.” She thinned her lips, giving us I’m sorry eyes.
Tor cleared his throat and I wanted to laugh at the pained expression that’d momentarily flitted past. We’d been hopeful that ban might be lifted.
Of course, I think him more than me. This week my body had decided to betray me. The bliss I’d felt at not having the typical pregnancy problems had laughed in my face when one morning my boobs had gotten to be two incredibly painful orbs stuck to my body and every morning saw me kissing the porcelain throne the moment I would wake.
Sex right now was pretty much the furthest thing from my mind.
But I did feel bad for him. I mean I could always give him permission to get his rocks off with some other chick, since we weren’t still a technically official couple. But yeah, the thought of it set my teeth on edge and made me want to bitch slap that imaginary chick. So I’m pretty sure that was not gonna happen.
Dr. Gold shrugged. “And that’s mainly because one of the fibroids is pressing right at the apex of the uterus. The fibroid isn’t the issue, though, it’s the way the placenta is nestling itself. Now, there’s a possibility as the pregnancy progresses that it’ll gradually move up thanks to the stretching that’ll be happening down there. If it does, well, then,” she said, dusting her hands together, “the ban will be lifted.”
I laughed. “Unless I stop puking in the mornings I don’t think I’d be up to the task anyway. Sorry, Charming.” I gave him a tiny smile.
He licked his front teeth and rubbed the back of his head, messing up his knot of hair. Have I ever mentioned how much I lust after his hair? I mean, yeah, so sexy. He looked adorable with his slightly pained expression and it made my heart melt.
“Believe it or not, the stronger the symptoms of pregnancy, the better the outcome for your pregnancy. Fibroids in and of themselves don’t pose a serious threat to you or the baby, other than to give moms heart attacks at the sight of blood, that is. It’s really the placement of the placental lining that’s causing you the issues, but with a little bed rest and patience, that should work itself out in a few months’ time. Also we got the results back on the biopsy and this is the good news: they are one hundred percent harmless.”
“Yeah, that is good to hear.”
“Yes.” Tor nodded and squeezed my fingers. “Very good to hear.”
Sitting, she crossed her legs and slipped a pen into her pocket after she’d written a quick something in my file. “Spotting is normal, but if you’re bleeding, like period bleeding, come in immediately.”
She wore a serious mom face.
“Okay. I promise.” My lips twitched feeling so much relief.
Tor rubbed my back slowly. “So she needs bed rest for the next nine months?”
“Nah.” She flicked her wrist, turning back to us as she clacked away on the computer. “Just take it easy. But still walk, do what you need to do to keep healthy. If you start to feel crampy, take a Motrin and place an ice pack over your tummy. It’ll work itself out. You’re not high risk, so apart from that, you’re quite healthy. Which is good.”
“Oh man, so no more foot rubs, damn.” I snapped my fingers, nudging his shoulder.
“I’ll still give them to you, Eskelde.” He kissed the top of my head.
“Good grief.” The doctor fanned her face, staring between us. “Your child is going to have some darn fine genes. Barbie and Viking Ken for parents, pretty much impossible not to.”
We laughed.
“What is the sex?” Tor asked with a hopeful expression.
“Too early to tell yet. At about the fifth or sixth month mark we’ll know for sure. So I guess…” She clapped her palms to her knees. “Just make an appointment for three months from now. That’ll put you at a little over four months. Next time we’ll get to hear baby’s heartbeat, that’s always exciting.”
An immense weight lifted off my shoulders as Tor walked me back to my Jeep a few minutes later. I’d discovered Tor didn’t actually own a car, he owned a motorcycle. Which would explain the biker boots he always wore.
I’d have loved to ride behind him on it, but apparently the vibrations of the motor could cause contractions. Who knew?
So many rules to understand when you were pregnant. Most of it I was okay with, like eating raw fish was bad. Fine, I wasn’t a fan of sushi anyway. Green papaya off the list. Okay, that one wasn’t too bad; I loved the vinaigrette I got at my local salad shop, but I could forgo the dressing for the next nine months. The one that stuck in my craw though was the unpasteurized cheese ban. The thought of not getting to eat a Greek salad with extra feta on top made me want to weep.
Tor promised he’d help me through it and would do without all those things himself. The man was too much.
We were pulling back up to my apartment when he said, “So I’ll see you tonight?”
“Yeah.” I plucked at a loose thread on my fuchsia floral top.
His thumb was tender as he pressed it to the side of my jaw. “You okay, love?”
He’d been doing that more lately, dropping little pet names at the end of almost every sentence. I was becoming dangerously addicted to this man it was almost scary how bad I had it.
“Are you?” I studied his deep blue eyes. “No sex.” I bit my bottom lip. That ban hadn’t been that important to me before, but for some reason it was starting to become more so. I didn’t want to analyze why. “I know we’re not technically ‘together together,’” I said, finger quoting, “but I really don’t want to sh—”
Leaning over, he stole my lips, silencing my words. His tongue was hot and demanding as he thrust it inside, twining with my own. He tasted of candy and mint. A delicious and heady combination that made my brain feel momentarily fuzzy.
I was dizzy when he pulled away and whispered softly, “I didn’t realize you needed me to actually say it, Jamie. Of course we’re together together.” He grinned li
ke I was so silly for even thinking otherwise. “This”—he palmed my slightly puffy belly—“and this”—he placed his other hand atop my beating heart—“are my treasures. You are mine, Eskelde, and I am yours.”
I giggled—yes, giggled; I hadn’t realized I was still capable of feeling this level of unfettered joy—and placed my hands over his. “You say the sweetest things, Charming. I wish we could have sex right now.”
His eyes darkened, rolling from blue to a bottomless deep one. The cool interior of the car felt suddenly stifling and my blouse too tight as our gazes locked.
“As long as it takes, the waiting will only make it sweeter.”
Chapter Thirteen
Month Two
Tor
Tonight was the night of the big concert. Standing backstage while I waited for the band before us to finish their set, I couldn’t get Jamie’s eyes out of my mind. She’s been pissed that I’d asked her to stay at the apartment.
But staring out at the writhing mosh pits crowding the front of the stage, I was glad I had. This was an outdoor concert, with very little backstage area for her to go and relax in. She could have stayed in our trailer, but she’d have been by herself and that place was a shitty dump hardly big enough for two people to sit in, let alone for one pregnant one to recline.
She’d begun bleeding again last week. Heavier than normal. I’d taken her to the ER with my heart in my throat, she’d been okay and so had our baby. But she needed to take things even easier than she’d been.
I knew she didn’t like not walking around the park in front of her apartment at night, but she had to relax. I simply wasn’t willing to risk either one of them.
Which probably made me a villain in her book right now. I sighed. So be it.
“Cheer up, man.” Zander clapped my shoulder, pointing at the rabid crowd.
There were over fifteen thousand in attendance tonight, though not really for us—this was a festival that drew in people naturally, but I couldn’t help feeling the pressure of this.
“All for us, dude. Suck it in.” He inhaled deeply.
Zander had put a thick rim of guy liner around his eyes, worn his most shredded and tattered-looking black leathers, and spiked his hair. He looked like he’d ripped himself straight out of the pages of some underground black metal band.
The man had aspirations, which was great. But he and I shared none of the same ones.
Our band was supposed to be a local celebrity sort of thing. No bigger than a crowd of a couple hundred, something comfortable. That’s what this thing was supposed to be when it started out.
I’m not sure how I didn’t see his ambition when he’d joined. How he’d had plans for far greater than the humble house band I’d created.
The final strains of a crying guitar solo reverberated through the suddenly still night. The stage lights turned blue; soon it would be our turn.
“I’m about to shit myself a little,” Zander snorted, patting the neck of his BC Rich Custom he’d sacrificed his left nut for.
His dark brown eyes glittered and suddenly everything was clear to me.
“This is my last show with you guys.”
“What the fuck? You’re saying this shit now?” He pointed at the stage.
“Look, man, I get that you have goals for this band. But Fok was never supposed to get huge. I’m good with being small, being local. I have other passions.”
The other band was taking their bows, and making their way off the stage. I loved music; it was in my soul. But not like this.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I can’t keep doing this.” I didn’t even like being thirty minutes away from Jamie right now. But I was now over an hour away and that worried me. Zoe was in town so could see to her if she needed help, but I felt the sense of that responsibility to her.
This shit wasn’t for me. Not anymore. Girls, sex, and rock-n-roll—I’d outgrown it.
“You’re such a dick, man. A pussy-whipped dick.”
I shrugged. I couldn’t care less what Zander thought of me; all that mattered was what I thought of me. This was my life and after tonight he’d play no further part in it. “Whatever, let’s just get through this set without killing each other.”
Lilith gave me a strange look. I suspected she knew I was wanting out. Somewhere inside me I was still kind of hoping the rest of the band would take my lead. We’d all started out with bar dreams, but looking at them now, the were they were pacing and practically glowing with the thrill of adrenaline, I was pretty sure I’d be the only one walking off this night.
It should make me sadder than it did. Right now all I felt was determination to get this over with.
The promoter announced us. Fog machines belched white smoke and a crack of thunder and flash of lightning seemed to descend from the dark heavens above as the stage guys set the tone.
Yeah, it was cool. Going bigger would allow us these sort of flashy-ass perks, but then again, Fok had never been about that for me. It’d been organic and pure, real.
This wasn’t real—this was smoke and mirrors.
The echoing chants of hundreds of voices crying out our name did give me a speedball shot of adrenaline. Laying her hand on my shoulder Lilith looked at me and smiled.
“You should stay, Tor.”
I didn’t have time to respond to that because we were up.
Getting behind my drums, I stared at the sea of faces; in the thousands before me there was one I actually wished was here. It was cool how big the band had gotten, and somehow the fact that we’d gone beyond a novelty act shouldn’t have surprised me the way it had.
As Lilith sang and the pan flute played and the faces around us became entranced by the otherworldly beauty of the music, I thought of nothing outside of the sounds.
This was what I liked, closing my eyes, letting the rhythm move through me, become a part of me. Following each individual thread of noise, then taking a metaphorical step back and letting each thread fill me up, until I swelled with the sounds of it all. Until it wasn’t just a guitar, or drums, flutes, or a voice, but one. I lost myself in it, losing my worries, my fears that still gripped me concerning Angel and what he might mean to Jamie down the road.
But eventually even those questions ceased to matter. Here and now there was only this…
Before I knew it the set was winding down. I was sweating, lighters were glowing, asking us to play one more song. Zander played up to the ground, caressing the body of his guitar like he was making love to it. Somewhere along the way the man had let the fame get to his head.
Death metal bands didn’t make it big, and even when we’d switched over to my haunting Celtic rhythms, those weren’t bands that American Idols wanted to mimic. But as we played the final song of the night—and I recognized it as one of Zander’s newest pieces, much more pop and radio friendly than anything else we’d done—I understand exactly where his true intentions lay.
Slowly he was changing our style, making it more mainstream and less underground.
In time they’d find another drummer as versed on the bodhran as I was and they’d move on. They might even make it big—they were all talented enough for it. But when I stood and waved goodbye to the crowd, I knew I was really saying so long. It didn’t fill me with terror or doubt that maybe I was making a rash decision; this had been coming for a while.
We’d have a group meeting later this week to decide the ultimate fate of Fok, but in the end it was over for me.
When we walked backstage I dipped my head. “So long.”
Lilith looked startled, as if she’d hoped our playing now might have changed my mind. “Did you not hear the cries, the chants for us? This is just the beginning.”
“It’s what I told him.” With a roll of his eyes, Zander sauntered over to the refreshment table and flirted with the petite brunette passing out drinks behin
d it.
Ophelia, our flutist, shrugged. She was easy going and rarely took the time to get riled up about anything. Life was too short, she’d always say. She disappeared back into our trailer.
Which left me alone with Lilith. Her blue eyes thinned. Tonight she’d worn a black dress that slid all the way up her throat and fell to her knees, exposing the deliberately slashed fishnet stockings encased inside her black Doc Martens.
Her corn silk blonde hair and piercing blue eyes gave her a fairy-like look; paired with her throaty vocals, Lilith was a study in opposites and a product of her Irish roots. Dark and light, sexy and reserved. I’d hate to lose her as my lead vocalist.
“You’re really leaving us?” she asked with the roughened voice that came after almost an hour of nonstop singing.
“Yeah.” I turned to look at Zander. “What he wants, it is not for me. This is not why I started Fok.”
Her pale lips thinned. “You are the soul of this group, Tor.” She sighed. “Zander is wonderful, but wild. I do not think I could rein him in, not as you’ve done. Ophelia will go wherever the majority leads.”
“And where does your heart lead you?” I asked her.
She picked at her black-painted nails. “It would be a lie to say that I have not enjoyed the fame in some ways, but ever since the day I walked into your tattoo shop and decided that I wanted to be in your band, my ideals haven’t really changed much.”
My heart kicked up a notch. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Zander loves his idea of death metal and mainstream colliding, and that’s okay. I could screech it till my balls dropped off.”
I chuckled.
So did she. “If I had any, of course. But you know that is not my style of choice. Do we have time to have a group meeting on this?”
I sucked in a deep breath, digging my cell phone out of my pocket when I felt it vibrate against my leg. Jamie had sent me a text.
“Jamie: Have a surprise waiting for you, Charming... Hurry home!!! :)”
Rockers After Dark: 6 Book Bundle of Sexy Musicians Page 72
