But again, no answer. The third time it happened, I shut my phone off.
It was late by the time Tor got home that night. The house smelled of rich spice cake and I’d lit candles everywhere.
I’d debated off and on all day whether I should wear the stupid thing Zoe had made me buy. Fifty dollars’ worth of lace and sheer royal pink fabric. Because, as she’d said, the pink would be the way to tell him.
But since I was more into baking than sexing him the color, I figured I’d bake the cake anyway. I’d bathed, shaved, put on a ton of perfume, and here I was sitting on the sofa not really sure what I was watching on TV and wearing the sheer, baby doll-length nightie wondering if I had enough time to run back there and take it off.
I felt stupid.
My stomach was full of nerves. We’d only had sex once. So it was sort of like the first time. I rubbed my belly. Though not really.
What if he was too tired? Or didn’t want to?
“Oh my god, what if he doesn’t want to?” I was jumping off the couch, ready to march back to the room to change when the door opened and my sexy Viking stole my breath as he always did.
His smile was huge but tired as he came into the room. I tugged self-consciously on my robe belt. An oversized, blue polka dotted monstrosity of a robe that covered me from head to toe and made me look lumpy to boot.
“So tell me.” He smiled, causing faint laugh lines around his eyes to crinkle.
We’d made a deal that I’d wait to give him the news in person.
“I know, but are you sure you want to?” I winked.
Chuckling, he tugged on the edge of my robe pulling me into his arms and sniffed. “Apartment smells like cake.”
I shrugged. “You know I like to bake when I get nervous. In fact…” I flicked his nose and dashed toward the kitchen, causing him to turn and follow. “I think you’ll like this cake.”
I’d pulled out all the stops to make this one. Italian buttercream sandwiched between layers of dyed pink spice cake. I’d dumped hot pink magenta food coloring I’d found at a specialty foods store all throughout the golden yellow batter. It wasn’t exactly pink, but it wasn’t red either. It was a kind of weird pinkish purple that was pretty but might not be totally obvious to him.
Pulling the cake stand toward me, I lifted the lid with trembling fingers, wondering what he’d think about the words I’d written on the cake.
“‘Hello, Daddy,’” he drawled.
I peeked at him.
I wasn’t sure if it would be possible for him to wear a bigger smile than he was now. Brushing strands of my hair off my neck, he kissed the base of my neck, making me break out in a wash of goosebumps.
“What is it?” he asked, fingers working their magic on the tight knots in my spine.
“Mm.” I leaned my head forward. He had such magical hands. “Cut into it and see.”
Handing him the cake knife, I waited expectantly for him to take it.
In one deft move he sliced into the cake and it was amazing to me to see how he glowed. There was an epiphany happening inside of me. A strange truth I kept trying so hard to deny to myself.
Also an obvious one.
I loved him. Totally. Completely. Absolutely.
Here he was, this big, beautiful, sexy man and he was glowing. About me. About us. About our child.
He sliced into the other side, ready to extract the wedge that would reveal all.
As if he knew exactly what I was thinking he looked at me. “You know whatever he or she is, I’m going to love him or her. And their mother. Right?”
I could barely see him for the tears blurring my vision. Why was I waiting for him to hurt me? Waiting for this to end?
He kept telling me to enjoy this moment and I was really going to try.
This time I wanted things to work, really work. More than anything I’d ever wanted with Angel. Angel had been my first love, but I was beginning to suspect that Tor might be my true love.
He pulled the slice away from the rest of the cake and I nibbled on my lip, wondering if he’d be able to understand that the purple meant a girl.
Tor stared at that slice of cake for what felt like an eternity.
Unable to stand the anticipation of his reaction one second longer I clamped my hand onto his wrist. “It’s a—”
“Girl.” He shook his head and then pulled me tight into his arms. “Eskelde,” he crooned in my ear, his voice quivering just slightly and I felt safe.
I felt home.
Like I always did when he was around.
Back in college I’d read a word.
Sensucht.
The word encompassed an idea that was so profound even the word itself couldn’t quite do it justice. Because it was a profundity of desire, an all encompassing yearning in the human heart for something we couldn’t describe or really comprehend, but desperately wanted all the same. Sometimes it related to longing for home, but other times for love. The word could mean so many different things, and yet encapsulated them all.
At the time I’d been so struck by the term, and had superimposed Angel’s image onto it. My desire that he and I reconcile, become the family we should have been. For years I clung to that hope, that dream, refusing to let it die because I wasn’t the type who could fall in love easily.
I was loyal, clinging even when I knew I shouldn’t. When I had no right to, desperate because I wanted someone to choose to stay with me.
My parents hadn’t.
Angel hadn’t.
I’d felt so alone.
“I love you.” The words slipped so easily, so surely from my lips, like they’d been there all along, just waiting for me to recognize it was okay to breathe them to life.
I pulled out of his arms and fumbled with the knot of my belt, letting the robe puddle at my feet, standing as tall and proud before him as I possibly could.
Unashamed of my curves, or the fact that I was short and had stubby legs. That my breasts weren’t very big, or that I had a clearly visible pregnant belly.
“Dr. Gold told me it was okay to—”
Tor blinked, and then like someone flicked a light switch on, he scooped me up. I laughed, wrapping my arms around his neck as he took ten very big steps to our room and kicked the door shut behind us.
He didn’t speak as he laid me down on the bed. His eyes never turned from mine as he kicked his shoes off, then unbuttoned and slowly worked his pants off his legs. From the corner of my eye I could see his boxers were tented and my heart pounded almost violently in my chest.
The memories of our one night came flooding back. The way he’d moved, how he’d felt. I hungered for it. Needed it.
Butterflies with razor-tipped wings sliced at my insides, my toes curled into the faux-mink comforter. The one I always complained was too hot for Texas, but that I always curled into at night anyway.
The one he teased me for being too girly with all its pink floating hearts everywhere, but that he knew I loved because it was the last gift my father had given to me before they’d left to Nigeria and so he never asked to switch it out for another less feminine one.
Finally he broke eye contact, but only because he’d had to yank his shirt over his head. The movement caused the knot of hair he kept his hair in to slip down.
He looked like my Viking god come down from Valhalla to slay me.
“You are so beautiful, Tor,” I murmured, knowing it was what I always said to him, but it was true.
His lips twitched. “I should be the one saying that to you.”
The heated cadence of his words made my blood hot. Liquid heat crashed between my thighs as my center tingled with a fierce rush of longing. All I had on was a thin scrap of dental floss.
I might have felt silly if it weren’t for the fact that his gaze was eating me all up.
“Jamie, I wish to worship you this night.”
Gulp.
What exactly is a girl supposed to say to that? Then my lips curled and I exposed the length of my throat as I tipped my head back. “Yes, please.”
Laughing, he shucked his boxers off, causing his cock to spring free of its confines. Bobbing at me thick, and hard, and all mine. I licked my lips.
He crawled over to me on the bed, gliding his big palm up my calf, over my knee, and up my thigh, stopping only an inch before hitting the juncture between my legs.
Biting onto his bottom lip with his strong, white teeth he gave me an evil grin. “Have I ever mentioned to you how damn sexy I think you are?”
“Oh.” My cheeks heated. “Do you find me sexy, God of Thunder?”
He laughed. “Very. You make me a very desperate man.”
“Did you know,” I said as I slid my hands up his biceps, which flexed under my touch. Man, he was a big boy. “That I have a superhero fetish?”
“Mmm,” he rumbled, tracing his finger along the inside of my thigh, flirting dangerously close with my apex, making me moan and shiver beneath his sexual torture. “Do you now? And who is your favorite?”
I dragged my claws into his arms when he finally slipped a finger beneath the pathetic excuse for fabric called my thong. The sensitive nerve endings pulsed, making me want to keen and scream out because it’d been too damn long.
“I always had a thing,” I panted and then groaned long and deep when he pinched my clitoris, “for that sexy God of Thunder. Tor!” I nearly jumped out of my skin when he inserted a digit into my hot channel, moving it softly in and out.
“Gods, you feel good,” he moaned, rubbing his nose in my hair.
Words abandoned me as I become a creature incapable of reasoning beyond the pleasure of his touch, the feel of him as he inserted another finger inside me. Filling me, stretching my almost virginal passage once again.
I clamped my teeth onto his shoulder, not biting hard enough to break skin. But it was no girlie bite, either.
He mumbled something I could not even hope to understand and then he said something I did.
“I need to have you in every way, Eskelde.”
His warm, mint tinted breath scraped my nerves raw. And when he pulled out of me I cried out, wanting him back.
But then he was moving down my body and my eyes went wide because I knew what he was about to do. Something Angel never did. Something no one had ever done for me.
“Tor, I don’t think—”
He pushed a finger against my lips, the one he’d just had inside me and I should be so grossed out to smell myself on him, but I wasn’t. I almost feel like I’d been branded, but that I’d also branded him.
My man was claiming me, and I wanted him to.
“Don’t think,” he murmured before planting a quick kiss on my belly button. “Just feel.”
And then his trail of kisses moved lower and lower and lower, until I was quivering from the ache, from the unbearable anticipation of where his next one would be.
The thong Zoe bought me tied up on either side, and with one quick flick he’d undone them and exposed me. Cool air rushed against my heated core and I shivered. But the cold didn’t last long. I clenched my eyes shut so hard that stars exploded behind them the moment his lips clamped tight to my nub.
I jerked beneath him when his teeth joined in on the attack, sucking and nibbling, and then his fingers were back inside me as he manually worked on me and I knew he’d done this to others. He had to have, he was too good at it. And for a second I was so freaking jealous, so angry that anyone else has gotten to experience this with him.
But Tor was mine now, and the anger, the jealously, it didn’t last. It couldn’t last, because this was so damn perfect.
I was writhing, clutching at his head, pushing him in deeper. Being completely wanton, overtaken by my lust, by my need as I wiggled on him. Moaning and crying out because there was no way I could survive this.
The pleasure that was carved in pain, the fire racing through me. The building, surging, gathering heat spiraling tighter and tighter within me like a helix contracting so hard in on itself that an implosion was inevitable.
I was a bomb seconds away from detonation.
“Yes,” I moaned. I was surprised I was even still capable of thought. Although I wasn’t by much, because yes seemed to be the only word I could say.
Then his tongue swirled and sucked and his fingers moved in so hard I couldn’t stay together. I was fracturing, becoming splinters of myself and crying out as the pleasure rolled in on itself, over and over, and I was sure I was dying.
But Tor was chuckling and he was holding me, wrapping me up in his big, warm arms and he was kissing my neck, my face and I loved him so much.
“I love you. I love you.” I whispered it to him, lost in this moment, in the pleasure.
His lashes fluttered. “I could go all the days of my life never growing tired of hearing you say those three words to me.”
“I thought you were going to kill me.” I laughed and so did he.
But then I felt something thick and hard nudge against me and I knew he wasn’t done, but neither was I. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I opened my legs so that he could fit between them, but he shook his head.
“You’re pregnant. I don’t want to squish the baby.”
I automatically rubbed my stomach. “So we can have sex, but I still can’t have sex.” I pouted.
“Actually,” his eyes lit up, “I’ve been reading in that book I gave you and there’s a position we should be able to try.”
“A position, huh?” I teased, nipping at his sexy jaw. “Do tell.”
“Turn your back to me.”
“Ohh, kinky.” I giggled when he flicked my bum. “Fine. Fine.” I maneuvered my big old self onto my side, filled with excitement at just what we were about to do. I’d read that part of the book too and it’d looked uncomfortable to me, but then again it wouldn’t hurt to try.
He tapped my leg. “Put your leg on mine.”
I lifted it up until my foot was resting on his thigh, opening myself wide to him. Certain this wouldn’t work. But then he scooted behind me, putting us flush with one another and I gasped as his cock stroked my still-wet center.
“It’s gonna work,” I breathed and then shivered when his warm breath caressed my nude shoulder blade.
He placed a gentle kiss there and said, “No condom this time.”
“Not that it worked the first time,” I gasped when he slid in. Pushing in smoothly, and the position was snug, tight, but not uncomfortable.
“Gods, you feel good,” he groaned and then began a slow, easy glide in and out of me.
I’d already orgasmed once, but feeling him push in from behind me, having his arm band around me tight and his fingers lightly flick at my nipple like he was strumming his guitar, the desire and heat spread again.
Tor was tender and gentle and I could feel his restraint. Knew he wanted to shove into me hard, I felt it in the trembles of his muscles, the way his breathing hitched, but he kept the pace slow and steady and even.
“Have you been masturbating?” I groaned when the tip of his cock pushed higher within me.
“What?” He chuckled. “You ask the strangest questions, Eskelde.”
I moaned, head growing fuzzy and dizzy with the building orgasm. “It’s just that you’ve got too much stamina for a man who’s been without all these months.”
He palmed my breast, kneading and rubbing it gently and wow that felt good. Those puppies had been so sore and off limits for the first three months, and now I wanted him to touch them all the time.
Opening my eyes, I glanced around the room. Listening to the sounds of our mating, watching the dying rays of sunlight play along the bronze hue of his tanned skin,
inhaled the scent of our union along with the soap and cologne of his body.
I was building a memory, a picture of this. I was going into it this time with my eyes wide open, because I never wanted to forget it. I wanted this as a permanent snapshot in our lives. Hopefully the beginning of many more.
“I may have done it a time or a hundred,” he finally whispered before planting kisses along my shoulder.
Pushing down on his thigh for support, I lifted myself up so that he could go even deeper. He hissed and so did I as he stoked the fire inside me to a fever pitch.
“No more, Tor.” I shook my head and swallowed hard. “Okay? No more. If you need me, I’m here.”
His arm banded around me and then he was grunting hard, and I felt the warmth of his ejaculation flowing through me.
“Come on, babe,” he murmured, still pulsing inside of me.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come again, but then his hand slipped between my legs and his fingers found my sensitive nub and that was all it took for me to climax for the second time.
When I could finally breathe properly I rolled over. “Pregnant sex rocks.”
He chuckled and I nuzzled into his chest. He stroked my hair a few times before finally rolling out of bed.
“Where are you going?” I pouted as he headed to the bathroom.
“I’m going to get a rag to clean you up.” He winked at me and then disappeared behind the door.
I smiled, luxuriating in the feeling of having had my mind blown twice in one day. He’d worked me like a master violinist, making me sing for him. Crossing my arms behind my head, I grinned when he returned to my side, taking the time to lovingly tend to me.
Finished, he was getting ready to crawl back onto the bed, when I twined my fingers together. “Charming, since I told you I love you and you found out you’re the proud pappa of a little girl who in all likelihood is gonna be just as good looking as her mamma—”
He snorted. “What do you want, woman?” His blue eyes twinkled.
I was pretty sure it was impossible for me to ever get tired of him.
“Cake?” I gave him a sheepish grin.
Rockers After Dark: 6 Book Bundle of Sexy Musicians Page 75
