Paradise City: Harrison Series Book 1

by L. L. Ash

  “Oh, they’re really sensitive,” I whispered, and his suction let up to barely a soft touch.

  That tongue brushing across the peaks, worshiping.

  It was only a minute later that he stroked his hand down my belly, letting go of my breasts and pressing his palm to my mound. The pressure felt delightful to my fluttery brain and jello-like body. But of course, the hand let up and he rolled onto his back, heaving a sigh.

  I stretched my arms above my head luxuriously and basked in the afterglow. Nothing was said for a while. Minutes passed in silence until a hand grazed up my stomach and slid around me. A strong arm engulfing me as a large chest pressed against my side. For a moment I felt Tyler next to me. I envisioned his hands, his face. His glowing skin and crystal eyes. The bridge of his nose, and perfect lips. But when my eyes opened I saw olive skin, green eyes, dark hair, broad mouth. Another man, just as handsome, but widely different. I would always miss Tyler, but at least I found a partner in Scott. The idea of having betrayed Tyler crossed my mind. I had told myself that Tyler wouldn’t mind, as long as it was Scott. But I knew if he were alive he’d feel hurt, betrayed. But he was gone, dead, and I couldn’t live the rest of my life alone. I had to move on, and I decided that pondering betrayal wasn’t productive. I found a small sliver of happiness and I was going to cling to it with everything I had.

  I turned into Scott’s arms and pressed my face into his chest for comfort.

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to last,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s been months since I’ve had sex. Not since...”

  The humor in his voice died suddenly along with the rest of his words.

  “Since when?”

  “Oh, it’s not important,” he tried, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Since when?” I asked, looking into his eyes.

  “I just lost interest… Since your birthday.”

  “My birthday?” I asked confused.

  He nodded and stroked at the wild, stray hairs covering my face.

  “Why my birthday?” I was curious now.

  “I haven’t wanted another woman since that night. Since that kiss.”

  “Kiss?”

  I thought hard for a long moment, until I remembered that dream. The dream I’d had that night of Tyler kissing me.

  “It wasn’t a dream?” I asked, shocked.

  He shook his head hesitantly before tucking an arm under his head while staying on his side, facing me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We were drunk,” he shrugged. “It shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Your wedding to my SON was in a couple of weeks… It was a mistake.”

  He paused for a minute and brushed at more hairs on my cheek.

  “I couldn’t sleep, I was so afraid of what you’d say in the morning. And when you came out, terrible hangover and no memory of it other than a dream? I was happy to let you believe it.”

  “You would have just let me believe that?” I asked, feeling anger burning in me. “You’d have just been the martyr even though you loved me?”

  “First of all, I’m a parent, that’s what parents do as you’ll soon find out. And second, it wasn’t a pure love. It still isn’t,” he admitted. “I know I could never love you the way he could. You made each other happy, gave each other your whole hearts. I’ll never have a whole heart to give away to a woman. Part of it died when Jolani died. Even still, sometimes when I see you, kiss you, I see Jolani instead of you. I could lie and say I fight it… But it’s comforting, and I embrace it. I love YOU, but I also love that you are like her.”

  I sighed in relief.

  “I don’t have a whole heart to give either. And there are so many things you do that remind me of Ty. I understand. And I don’t mind. I guess we’re each other’s substitutes, huh?”

  One corner of his mouth twitched up in a half smile before pressing kisses to my face again.

  “Need a Viagra?” I asked to annoy him.

  Scott just huffed, grabbed my hand and pressed it to his erection asking, “Does it feel like it?”

  I giggled like crazy until we were moaning, writhing and panting together again.

  Chapter 19

  For months we went like this. My belly grew, and so did the comfort we afforded each other. Sex was the least of it. It was the intimacy along with the release that helped us to ease back into reality. We went out often, going shopping or to eat. We visited people, and occasionally my dad. Dad worried about me, approaching gently about the subject of Scott, but nobody wanted to open a pandora’s box with a 9 month pregnant woman.

  My belly was so big, I felt awkward, uncomfortable, achy and just plain whale-like. Nothing sat right in my stomach anymore, I couldn’t stay in one position like sitting or standing for very long before it got painful. My baby, whose sex was still unknown by choice, was getting ready to make their big entrance into the world.

  Scott on the other hand, got the brunt of my discomfort and mood swings. I would go from crying to yelling to demanding for sex and he would cow and comply, doing anything to make me happy and as comfortable as possible. Nightly foot rubs became twice a day rubs. One in the office halfway through the day, and one at night before bed. We still slept together, cuddled up under his thick comforter, arms tangled around me. But even massages stopped relieving the pain by the time my due date rolled around. I laid on the couch after a long, long day at work. My feet swollen from my heels and my skirt bunched up around my thighs, I felt hot and cold at the same time, my pelvic pains throbbed and my hips felt like they were dislocated from my body.

  “Hey Sweet,” Scott said, sitting across from me on the coffee table. “How are you holding up?”

  “I want this damn baby out of me,” I said with a pout. “Nobody ever tells you that, after the first trimester of illness, and the second trimester of feeling ok, the third trimester makes you feel like your body is falling apart.”

  Scott laughed and I eyed him irritably.

  “I just need a distraction, just for a little while,” I told him.

  “I think I have just the distraction you need,” he said, kissing my lips before helping me to my feet.

  I groaned like a 90 year old man as I sat up, depending on Scott, mostly, but when I got on my feet he slapped my butt gently and said, “Go get that nightgown on. The one I got you last week.”

  I nodded and waddled toward the room. After shedding every stitch of clothing, I pulled on the lacy, leopard print, thigh length and flowy nightgown Scott had surprised me with the week before.

  After settling back on the hard mattress I winced as the baby cuddled up to my spine. Scott came into the room with a mug in his hand and a sympathetic look on his face.

  “Still aching?” he asked and settled next to me.

  I nodded, holding my hand out for his cup.

  “Ice,” he responded but held it out for me anyway.

  “Why do you have ice?” I asked him, handing it back.

  “Oh, I felt like ice today,” he said with a shrug and put the cup on the nightstand, popping a small piece into his mouth.

  He stroked my hair back, drawing his thumb down my cheek tenderly.

  “You may not like pregnancy,” he tried to speak around the pebble of ice in his mouth. “But pregnancy loves you. You’re positively glowing.”

  “I’d trade glowing for a decent nights sleep,” I told him, gazing back into his affectionate eyes.

  Scott scooted over a little, then stooped down and pressed a kiss to my lips. I felt the cold lips instantly. He opened the kiss and the coldness of his tongue and breath was oddly entrancing, different in a good way.

  “I just want you to lay back,” he told me, our noses touching. “Let me do anything I want to you and you won’t regret it. I promise.”

  I nodded, knowing by now that Scott’s imagination and sexual prowess were unmatched. He gently lifted the gown off me, then settled me, naked onto my side, my knees tucked into my huge belly and arms wrapped arou
nd a pillow. He placed a silk tie around my eyes before withdrawing. I could feel his heat retreat.

  “Comfortable?” he asked from a few feet away.

  I just nodded in response.

  “Your distraction, my lovely Sam,” he said and I felt a slight tickle on my shoulder.

  The tickle moved down my arm, sending shivers through my appendage. It followed along my side, my hip, leg and followed the outline of my body as I lay on my side, exposed to him. To say it was tickly is an injustice. The tickle was sensation. The shivers shot through my entire body, beginning at the nerve endings being brushed by the feathery thing he was touching me with. My pain subsided and I lost myself in the feel of it.

  “Roll onto your other side,” his gravely voice breathed into my ear.

  I traded sides with absolutely no grace, before the feathery touches returned, lining these limbs now.

  The feathery thing was gone now, and fingertips brushed on my skin, still light, still intense in the barely-there sensation.

  Those fingers pressed my shoulder, causing my whole body to roll onto my back. Gentle hands pulled up my knees, getting me back into a somewhat comfortable position. His fingertips brushed against my thighs, up my hips and belly to brush around the tender peaks on my engorged breasts. He’d not been allowed to touch the nipple in weeks because they hurt so much.

  When his hands had their fill, the sensations retreated and I was disappointed. I wasn't really up for sex, but the intimacy satiated me emotionally in a way I couldn't really describe.

  I let out a sad sigh just as cold pressed against my belly. I shrieked and bucked away but he held me gently still, letting me get used to the temperature.

  “Feel it,” he whispered at me. “Feel it all, embrace it.”

  I fisted my fingers into my palms, nails biting into the fleshy part as the cold, likely the ice he’d brought in the mug I realized, slid over my skin. Around my navel it went, trailing upward to follow the path his fingers had made. Ice met tender breasts and the sensation was unbelievable. I gasped as my nipples hardened angrily, sending waves of chills through me.

  Down the ice went, covering my arms, my hands, until finally it reached my center.

  “Breathe,” he reminded me as the ice dripped onto my mound, following every crease. He settled the ice there and I heard more clinking of ice chunks.

  Cold breath hovered over my thighs as he settled between my legs. His frigid mouth descended, frosty lips over my skin and I began to shiver in pleasure. It was the strangest thing, these sensations leading to pleasure. After minutes of kissing my legs and hips, I could feel his fingers gently pry open my core, bursting a glacial wind against the hot skin only a moment later.

  I groaned and writhed against him, the sensations settling in now, building up for an amazing climax.

  “Oh, Scott…” I groaned as his cold lips and tongue glanced over the most sensitive bud.

  The chip of ice stayed in his mouth, occasionally brushing against my skin that shot even stronger sensations through me. He languidly kissed me there, taking his sweet time, not pressing anything into the core that was so sore and engorge.

  A strong contraction seized my stomach, Every muscle in my abdomen tightened around the baby and slowly moved down, my womb gently tightening.

  A slow warmth blazed through me and the contractions suddenly burst and sped up. That familiar, but slightly different peak passed slowly through me, everything in me relaxing. Scott was so good at this…

  “Oh Shit!” I heard him blurt as warmth touched my skin luxuriously.

  “Liked that, did we?” he asked with a silly grin as he ran to the bathroom.

  The warmth on my thighs suddenly turned cold with the fan above me spinning and I opened my eyes, wondering why he would pour warm water on me.

  When Scott returned he had a couple of fluffy white bath towels in his arms, that grin still on his face.

  “You’ve never done that before,” he said and started dabbing at the wet spot on the bed.

  “What?” I asked and started to sit up.

  “Oh FUCK.” was all that came out of his mouth as he started helping me up. “I think your water just broke.”

  “What?” I demanded again, that feeling of calm decapitating quickly.

  “I thought it was just ejaculation but when you sat up a bunch more came out. It has to be your water.”

  Just as he got the words out I felt a subtle tightening in my lower belly. My hand shot to it and my eyes widened, threatening to pop out.

  “You need to get to the hospital,” he articulated slowly, as if he couldn’t process the words himself. I nodded, waddling to the closet to get some clothes.

  Droplets of water kept dripping down my leg and I paused as another tight contraction hit me. The moan of discomfort seemed to break Scott out of whatever shock had paralyzed him and he was suddenly running around the room while I perched on the bed again.

  Scott gathered our overnight bags, pre-packed, and flew back with a nightgown to pull over my head. I tried not to think about it being a moderately sexy gown as I made my way to the front door. Scott was on the phone, barking orders sharply until he reached me. He slipped his phone in his pocket, put both bags over his shoulder and tucked one arm around me to help support me. The elevator arrived quickly, and brought us all the way down to the parking level where a car waited for us. We got into the backseat and I breathed through the twinges in my abdomin.

  After rushing to the hospital I was no longer able to walk comfortably so Scott took it upon himself to swoop me up in his arms to rush me in as if I were dying.

  Scott irritably ground out, “My girlfriend’s having her baby, let us in!” into the little phone on the other side of the double doors that led into the labor and delivery.

  The door buzzed and he shoved in looking like a wild animal, his eyes were crazy. I couldn’t help but laugh at him.

  “My water broke,” I told the nurse behind the desk as she got my paperwork ready. After telling her my birthday, doctor and other things, Scott was twitchy with nerves.

  “You can set her down in here,” a nurse said as she rolled up a wheel chair.

  “I’ll carry her,” he responded tersely, gripping me tighter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as I tried to look back at her, “He’s so nervous.”

  “Don’t you worry. It happens a lot. Dads tend to be a lot more nervous than moms by the time they’re in the labor and delivery!” I swallowed at the label. Scott was not the father, but I didn’t bother correcting her. It was best to let them think what they wanted while we got the baby delivered.

  “This way!” she said happily and led up to a room I didn’t catch the number to. All that was there was a chair, couch/bed combo and a side table beside the hospital bed.

  Scott settled me gently onto the bed and scraped a chair right next to it to hold my hand.

  “We’re going to do some vitals, then we’ll have to check your dilation. We’ve informed your doctor and will keep him up on how you’re doing so he can be here for the delivery.”

  We both just nodded, clutching hands and the nurse started fiddling with the equipment around me before putting on the blood pressure cuff and taking my temperature.

  The Epidural was painful, and I sat there, tears rolling down my cheeks while the anesthesiologist poked my spine multiple times, trying to get to the sweet spot. I sat on the edge of the bed, contractions making me shake with pain while I tried to be still as the needle poked into me.

  “You can do this,” Scott murmured into my ear, my head resting in the crook of his shoulder.

  He squeezed my hands while whispering reassuring things. By the time the epidural was in I was ready to fall asleep for a year, if the pain let up enough so I could.

  I laid there, writhing in pain, weakly crying out with pain as the contractions became more forceful, sharper in their pain.

  3 hours later, with blood drawn from each of us, (my nails bit wounds of ha
lf moons in his hand, clutched in mine) we stared into the swollen, purple face of a baby boy.

  Scott cried upon seeing the baby, his macho image lost in the black eyes and downy white hair. I held my baby gently, afraid to break this newborn human being, so incredibly tiny in my arms. But his lungs were good, as he demonstrated by wailing. Scott and I looked at each other, teary grins on our faces.

  “You did it,” Scott told me and stroked stands of sweat-soaked hair off my face. “Congratulations. Tyler would be the happiest man on earth to see his healthy baby boy.”

  I nodded, fresh tears dropping.

  “What should I name him?” I whispered as my little boy tried peeking through his clenched eyelids to look at me with his eyes, not black as I’d originally thought, but a deep, dark blue.

  “It would be nice to name him after his father,” Scott said gently. “But Ty would hate that. He wouldn’t want a jr.”

  I laughed and stroked the feathery head in my arms.

  “Zachary,” Scott said suddenly. “Tyler’s middle name. Zachary.”

  I looked down at the little human in my arms and said quietly, “Hi Zach. I’m your mama.”

  Scott pressed a kiss to my hair and wrapped an arm around my shoulders as I stared at my baby boy.

  “Zachary Tyler Harrison,” I said out loud, letting the name sink in.

  “It’s perfect,” Scott agreed, his fingers brushing Zach's brow.

  I agreed completely.

  Chapter 20

  We got out of the hospital 36 hours later and went back to the hotel. I had agreed to stay there so Scott could help with the baby until I felt rested enough to go back to the house Tyler had built. I wanted Zachary to be raised in the home his father made for him so no matter how alone I felt, I would move back in and learn to live without Tyler, out of the canopy Scott had created for me.

  Dad and Mandy came to visit me once we got home. Mandy had a basket of baby boy things that she’d evidently gone out to purchase sometime between the birth and their visit.

  “You look wonderful darling!” Mandy said and placed the basket by the bed I was lying in.