Knowing there was only one way to put his mind at ease—well, two if you include Google—I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Let’s ask the doctor and see what they say. They’re the ones who know about this stuff, so who better to ask?”
Please don’t say Google. Please don’t say Google.
So, that’s what we did. The doctor was friendly and seemed to know his stuff, and when he saw my yellow file and all of the readings from the hospital in Gonzales, he’d agreed with the diagnosis, medicine, and advice given.
When he’d taken a tape measure and measured my stomach from pelvis to some point only he understood, he’d noted that I was measuring fifteen weeks and one day, which fit with my scan dates if you added on the five days since we’d had it done.
He’d also booked us in for a checkup scan the following week and told us we could find out the gender of the baby during it. Judging by the excitement in Elijah’s eyes, he wanted to do that, so in seven days, we’d know if we were having a girl or a boy.
It was after he’d asked if we had any other questions that Elijah had blushed and finally brought it up. Thankfully it wasn’t rare for couples to ask the question, and even better, we were good to go on the sex front. I think having a doctor close by also put his mind at ease like he could relax his worries because there was someone who knew everything about pregnancies near us now.
As we walked out to the car, Elijah said with false casualness, “You’ve got a little bump.”
Looking around me at my backside, I tried to see what he was talking about. “Where?”
Unlocking the doors and opening mine for me, he helped me into the truck. “On your stomach. When you lay down for him to measure you, there’s the smallest little bump right here,” he put his hand over the bottom of my stomach. “It’s adorable.”
Pulling my seatbelt around me as I tried not to melt into a puddle on the chair with the heat inside the vehicle, I pouted, “I couldn’t see it. My boobs were in the way.”
Most women want huge breasts, but if you’ve got them, it’s hell. I could list the issues with them all day long, including back pain, but my new one was that I couldn’t see a damn thing over them while I was lying down, so I’d missed the supposed bump.
Pecking a kiss on my lips, he straightened up with a wink. “I’ll take a picture for you when we get home.”
Now do you see it? The man went the extra mile, thinking outside of the box to make sure I had everything I wanted and needed. I swear there wasn’t another one like him in the world.
I wasn’t sure if it was the heat in the car melting my brain cells or the gratitude that I felt for everything he did for me, but I blurted out, “I absolutely love the pants off you, Elijah.”
His eyes flashed, and then he was slamming my door shut and running around the vehicle to get in behind the wheel before I had the chance to make a break for freedom. Reversing us out of the space and steering the car toward home, he grabbed my hand and held it tightly against his thigh.
“The next time you tell me that, you wait until I’m inside you.”
The spasm in my vagina definitely wasn’t because of the heat, and I wasn’t giving the hormones credit for it either.
Chapter Seventeen
Elijah
The drive home was torture as I tried to adjust so that my jeans didn’t strangle my dick. That wasn’t me bragging, it’s a fact. Ask any man who’s ever had to do it—when you straightened your leg out to press the accelerator, you got slight relief, but not as much as you would if you were standing up. Move the foot onto the brake, and you’ve tightened the material of your jeans slightly across it. And the less you press the accelerator, the tighter they are because your leg is bent and resting higher up. I was in a denim-penis-circulation hell.
Which the little witch beside me knew full well, going by the giggles coming out of her.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing. It’s up to you to fix it when we get home.”
This just made her laugh harder. “And that’s an issue, why?”
If I took my eyes off the road to look at her, I’d end up pulling over to maul her, so I just shook my head and willed the traffic to move faster.
“Fuck me,” I hissed as we got stuck in yet another jam. “It’s only a twenty-minute drive. We’re only halfway home, and we’ve already been in the car for thirty minutes.”
“Looks like the traffic lights are broken, so it’s a free for all.”
Leaning back, I straightened my leg out fully, relieving the tension across the middle and tip of my cock, but not the base. That poor bastard was stuck until we got out of here.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m suffering, too,” Sadie whispered, wriggling in her seat slightly.
“Ah, come on!”
After five minutes, I thought I was going to die. Seriously, it was like every nerve and sensation in my body was centered in that one area.
And then the traffic started moving. No, not moving, flying away from where we’d just been stuck.
It was just as I was pulling down the lane that led to the house when I felt something drop onto my lap and looked down to see pale blue lace panties.
“Um, you might want to stop before you go into the side of the house.”
Looking up, I put my foot on the brake seeing as how she wasn’t kidding, and just as we came to a stop, she was out of the car and running for the front door.
Jumping out after her, I yelled, “Don’t run, you’ll trip,” realizing too late that I was telling her off like a dad with his daughter. I mean, I know I’d jokingly asked her to call me Daddy when I first met her, but that was to break the tension and get her to relax around me.
Not that she listened. Oh no, not my pixie. She had the door open, the security deactivated and was running up the stairs to the bedroom, clothes flying as she went.
“Catch me if you can!”
Using the toe-to-heel method, I had my shoes off and the front door locked by the time she said the last word, then I was racing after her, only just making it around the tight bend to the stairs with my socks on the tile floor. Seeing as how the stairs were varnished wood, I wasn’t taking the chance of slipping on them as I ran up, so I pulled my socks off and just threw them to the side.
Here’s where being over a foot and a half taller than Sadie was handy—I was able to take those steps two at a time, making up for the head start she had on me. And as I raced around the corner, I came face to face with the only wet dream I was ever going to have again.
Sadie lying naked on the bed, with her legs slightly open, teasing me.
“You’ve been bad,” I growled, throwing my t-shirt to the side and unbuttoning my jeans one button at a time.
Her eyes had been focused on my hands, but hearing the words, she glared at me. “If you’re going to start that daddy bullshit again, I’ll brain you with the lamp.”
“Hell no. But from now on, no running in the house.” God, as soon as I stopped, I wanted to brain myself with the lamp and save her the job.
What in the ever-loving fuck, Elijah?
Holding up a hand to stop her from tearing me a new one, I conceded. “Okay, that sounded bad, but do me a favor and don’t do that again. The floors are easy to slip on, and once your bump grows, your center of gravity will be off, so it’ll be easier for you to fall.”
Her expression softened, and the grin she shot me made any of the hardness I’d lost during my stupidity come right back. “Deal. Now, you’ve got something that I want.”
Seeing as how her eyes were focused back on my crotch, I knew exactly what she was talking about. Pulling my cock out, I pumped it a couple of times and then stopped, taunting her. “What’s that, my pixie?”
“Elijah,” she breathed. “Please.”
Getting up onto the bed on my knees, I gently stroked my length again. “You can have it once you touch yourself, baby.”
Her eyes shot up with surprise, but there was also heat in them.
“What?”
“You heard me, pixie. I want you to touch yourself first, show me what you like.”
“I like that,” she nodded at my dick with her head.
Laughter during sex was new for me. Never had I ever met anyone who stimulated every single sense at the same time like she did. Still, I did my best not to laugh as hard as I wanted to at how sad she sounded.
“I know, baby, and I love your pretty pussy. But I want you to touch her for me first.”
Slowly, showing how shy she was, she skimmed her fingers down her stomach until she reached her core. Watching, I held my breath as she ran them through her center, then brought them back up to circle the hard bundle of nerves at the top.
Like she’d finished a task, she lifted her hand away. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Tucking myself away, I walked over to her on my knees and rubbed her thigh. “Pixie, I want to see what you like. I know we had three weeks of learning each other, but the best way to make sure I know is for you to show me.”
“You put him away, Elijah,” she snapped angrily, making me chuckle again. “Bring him back.”
Unable to stop my hand, my cock was back out, and I was gently stroking it while she watched. “Your turn.”
And then she did something that I swear to God would remain in my head until they put me in the ground. She ran two fingers down her slit until she reached her entrance. Then, eyes locked with mine, she slowly pushed them inside and threw her head back as her hips moved in response.
Fuck it!
Diving forward, I knocked her hand out of the way to make space for my mouth. Plunging my tongue into her, I groaned as the taste of her hit me, something I’d missed every day since our last time. As I pulled up to circle her clit, her thighs closed tightly around my head, making me smile against her as I sucked the bundle of nerves into my mouth.
It didn’t take long for her to go crashing over the edge, but as soon as I felt her go, I was up and easing my hard cock into her, making sure not to go too hard or too fast. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would ever hurt her, including me.
Feeling her spasm around me, her walls fluttering as I made my way into her, I almost joined her, but I managed to stave it off and forced the tingling in the base of my spine to go away by thinking about what color to paint the nursery walls. Then I started to think about which room should be the nursery and what type of security to add to it.
The tactic almost backfired on me until she clenched down tightly around my length.
“I feel like I don’t have your attention,” she rasped, wrapping her legs around my hips.
Staring her straight in the eyes, I told her the truth, and nothing but the truth. “You always have my attention no matter what. You’re all I see.”
Her expression went from amused to gentle, the words hitting her somewhere deep. “You know the words I said to you before?”
I was so focused on her face that I almost missed what she’d said. Then I remembered what words she was talking about and started to move faster. “Not yet.”
I don’t know if I sounded desperate or demanding, but something about how or what I’d said set her off laughing, which made her clench down tightly around me.
Groaning, I increased the speed of my thrusts into her, plunging fast and as hard as I’d allow myself to, never forgetting about our precious baby.
Feeling the tingling coming back into the base of my spine, the orgasm alarm bells ringing again, I shifted my weight onto my left hand so that I could use the thumb of the right one to bring her with me. The second it touched her clit, she tightened her legs and started to tremble.
Making sure she was looking at my eyes, I leaned down and breathed against her lips, “I love you, my pixie.”
Just as I finished, my orgasm hit me light a freight train, almost rendering me deaf and blind. But I still managed to hear her scream, “I love you, Elijah,” over the roaring in my ears as she came with me.
It felt like it went on for hours and took a piece of my soul with it, but when it finally left me, and I was slowly gliding in and out of her, I held her head between my hands and kissed her.
If souls truly existed, ours had entwined completely, and I was never letting go.
“I love this tiger tattoo,” Sadie murmured, stroking the inside of the bicep on my left arm. “What does it mean?”
I wish I had a poignant story associated with it, but I guess in a way, it was. “When we were seventeen, I went with Cooper to see this underground fight. This guy comes out, trying to be all Rocky Balboa, with Eye Of The Tiger blasting and people screaming for him. So, he gets in the ring, and out comes this guy to fight him, who was the size of a freaking wall. No joke, he was about double my size.”
Seeing where it was going, she buried her face into my ribs and started laughing.
“The other guy’s taunting him and has this smug sneer on his face, and we were sitting there thinking he must have some mad skills. Every time he bounced forward and waved at the behemoth to come at him, the crowd would go wild and start chanting, ‘Knock him out, knock him out.’ Coop turned to look at me and said something about how it’s always the guys you least expect, when the behemoth raises his fist, pulls it back about six inches, and then punches the other dude in the face.” I was laughing hard at this point.
“Pixie, that guy’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and I swear to God his legs just melted away. It was like watching a woman faint in an old romance movie.”
Because her nose was pressed against me, the loudest snort came out of her as she tried to get air into her lungs, making me laugh even harder.
“Come to find out, they’d been chanting for the behemoth guy, not the smaller dude. We got absolutely wasted that night and hit up this guy who worked for the fight club. He had his own tattoo place and did some work on fight nights in a studio that was set up and even had a certificate from a hygiene inspector—”
Tilting her head back, I grinned when I saw how red it’d gotten from her laughter. “How the hell did they get that in an illegal underground fighting club?”
“The inspector was one of the dudes who fought for them, but he made sure it really was up to scratch because apparently, he was a professional who was proud of his no shit reputation.”
Snorting again, she ran the tip of her fingernail over the stubble on my jaw, her eyes watching it and lighting up at the raspy noise it made. Yeah, we’d discovered how much she liked my stubble on different parts of her body, mainly her sensitive nipples.
“Why did you choose the tiger, though?”
“We both got the same one. After seeing the guy put on a huge show, our drunk minds tried to make us wise, and we figured you didn’t have to use drama to make yourself look better. The tiger has beautiful fur, but underneath he’s all muscles. He doesn’t use his outer appearance to make himself appear more than he is, he uses it to blend in, knowing that his inner strength will win the fight. We went home that night after getting the tattoos and threw out all of our flashy clothes—”
“Flashy clothes?” she wheezed. “What, like designer stuff?”
“Exactly, all of the stuff that would draw attention to us because of what it was. It left us with plain t-shirts, jeans, shorts, and just stuff the average Joe would wear. Whatever we looked like on the outside didn’t matter, it was what was on the inside that gave us the strength to be ourselves.”
Looking at me softly, she whispered, “And did it work for you both?”
“Absolutely,” I whispered back. “And look what I managed to catch.” I squeezed her waist.
“Well, on a technicality, it was a lot of whisky and your piercings that did it,” she chuckled.
“This is true,” I sighed dramatically. “Maybe I should go out and buy some designer shit.”
Grinning up at me, she pulled my face down to meet hers. “I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
Rolling her onto her back, I kissed her and thought about where I’d b
een for almost two years. Lost, drifting, fighting to get the torment inside of me out. Then I’d met her, and Sadie had become an anchor for me when I was going through the worst storm I’d ever been hit by. She grounded me and made me into the man I’d always hoped to be, and hopefully a father who’d give my kids what my family gave me.
I hoped I did the same for her because I wanted to give her that security, that feeling that she was loved no matter what.
The strength to fight every battle.
This time when we made love, it was gentle, it was slow, and it was full of whispered promises and plans. Plans I couldn’t wait to see play out in reality.
Chapter Eighteen
Sadie
One week later…
I needed to pee. I think it was an excited pee, though, not a pee because my bladder was full type of pee.
“Pixie, they said you didn’t need a full bladder for this appointment, so you can go to the bathroom when we get in,” Elijah told me as he pulled into a space near the OB/GYN’s office.
“What if they need to test my urine? Then I’ll have to pee under duress, and my bladder gets shy.”
“Then, don’t go to the bathroom.” He made it sound so simple, but I swear my bladder had shrunk to the size of a walnut.
Carefully getting out of the truck, I met him at the front and took the hand he was holding out for me. Tipping my head back, I saw the excitement in his eyes. “Are you ready to go and find out?”
Pulling me into him, he leaned down and gave me a lip touch before guiding me toward the entrance. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl, so long as he or she is healthy and takes after their mum, I’m a happy guy.”
That’s something he’d started doing recently—saying mum instead of mom like he was trying to meet me in the middle of our two worlds. It wasn’t necessary, but I loved that he’d do that for me. Did I care that I spoke differently to people here? Not even a little bit. I had British and American passports, so I was from both worlds, but just raised in the other one. Plus, the only person I’d come across who’d been nasty about it had been Shonelle. Everyone else just accepted it.
Great Sass: Providence Family Ties Series Page 19
