Elliot rolled over, stretched languorously, and opened his eyes with a satisfied grin on his face.

It was hard not to smile after the night he’d just had.

He glanced aside, but the rest of the bed was empty except for the sunlight streaming in through the windows. Elliot was in no hurry to get up, though, and he relaxed back into the haphazard mess of blankets and pillows.

Elliot let his eyes drift closed, lips still curled up in a smile. He had to say, he’d been pretty resistant when his best friend, Andy, had coaxed him into going out the previous night. The clubs Andy frequented just weren’t his scene; Elliot much preferred small, chill bars to clubs packed tight with people whose only goals were to score or to score drugs. He’d been weaseling his way out of going to this one with Andy for weeks now, though, and Andy had won at last.

And damn was Elliot glad he had.

At first he’d still been reluctant, lurking by the sidelines with a drink in his hand while Andy vanished for a few minutes to say hello to what seemed like half the people in the place. But eventually Elliot had started to relax, even dancing in a cluster with Andy and three friends whose names Elliot forgot ten seconds after they were introduced.

Then he’d looked over… and seen him.

Elliot had no idea how more people weren’t paying attention to him, because once Elliot saw him, he couldn’t look away. To say the man stuck out was an understatement; tall, solid with muscle, and quite possibly the most gorgeous man Elliot had ever seen, he leaned against one wall of the club with a casualness that didn’t need to be faked. Motionless as a statue, he seemed to be the only one not moving or dancing.

Their eyes met.

A jolt, an actual jolt, ran down Elliot’s spine. He felt frozen in place and for a moment everything seemed strange, as though he and the mystery man were the only two normal people in the world while everything around them moved in slow motion. His heart pounded, but he forgot to breathe. All that mattered in that moment was those golden eyes staring into his from across the room, eyes that almost looked like they were on fire.

Elliot’s entire body was on fire.

Some tiny part of him knew that his reaction was completely insane; this was hardly the first time Elliot had been attracted to another man. But no one else had ever made him feel like he was literally on fire with just one look. No one else had ever made something inside him seem to snap into place, as though the two of them were two puzzle pieces that fit together just right.

And that was not to mention the physical lust roaring through him.

“I’ll be right back,” Elliot remembered himself mumbling to Andy, then moving in the mystery man’s direction like he was in a dream without stopping to wait for an answer from his friend.

No one else mattered.

The man smirked when Elliot approached, leaned down to whisper something into Elliot’s ear that he felt more than heard, and his fate was sealed.

The memory of how they’d wound up here in his mystery man’s house was blurred, but Elliot definitely remembered the things they’d done once they stumbled in the front door. Elliot hadn’t stopped to ask the man’s name, nor had the man asked for his; their mouths were otherwise occupied. Elliot didn’t know what had driven the man to choose him to go home with when the club was jam-packed with eye candy, but he didn’t have any intention of stopping to ask.

Touching this man felt like he was touching fire.

Maybe it had been stupid to go home with the first hot stranger he’d seen, sure; and it had definitely been a little stupid to fuck him without a condom.

More than once.

Still, Elliot couldn’t bring himself to be too concerned. He felt so delightfully warm all the way down to his toes, and thoroughly sated. He was a little sore and had no idea what part of town he was even in, but nothing could spoil the contentment that followed a hot, thorough fucking. Just the memory was enough to make him start to stir once more, and Elliot lazily ran a hand down his stomach, smirking at the salty remnants of the night’s activities that still clung to his skin. He couldn’t lie here in bed forever, though, and Elliot opened his eyes.

The house was still completely quiet even though Elliot had dallied in the bed for a while now. He’d had enough one night stands to know what that meant, and he was kind of glad. The shuffle the next morning as one or the other of them prepared to leave was always a little awkward no matter how many times he’d been through it.

Besides, Elliot didn’t trust himself not to jump his mystery man’s bones all over again, and his body definitely needed a rest after the multiple rounds the previous night.

A not-so-insignificant part of him wanted to wait around for his mystery man to return anyway, to hell with the consequences.

Instead Elliot cleaned himself up, called an Uber, and left. Other than fantastic memories from their night which he whipped up more than once when he was feeling horny, Elliot thought that was the end of it.

How wrong he was.

First came the dreams. In the beginning, they were fun; Elliot certainly wasn’t going to complain about reliving the night with his mystery man over and over. Often the mystery man wasn’t even doing anything—he was just there, night after night.

And there was always fire. Fire that didn’t burn either of them. Fire in the Mystery Man’s eyes, fire pouring from his lips and kissing Elliot’s skin with the intimate touch of a lover.

After a couple of weeks, Elliot started to get worried.

Sure, he woke up some mornings and spent some quality personal time as the man’s face danced in his mind… but it always left him feeling a little strange, too. Hot, all the time, like he was coming down with a flu that never actually developed. Elliot woke each morning soaked in sweat, his sheets and blankets pushed to the floor.

Then the puking started.

The first day it seemed like a bout of food poisoning; all it took was one whiff of one of his coworkers’ lunches to send him running for the bathroom. It passed in a couple of hours, though Elliot spent the rest of the day on his couch positive that he was coming down with some wild new variant of the Swine Flu or something. The heat still hadn’t abated, and Elliot eventually ventured out to a drugstore to buy a thermometer.

It had to be broken. That was the only explanation for the numbers on the screen, because humans couldn’t be that hot, not without it doing serious things to their health. But no matter how many times he tried, the numbers always came out the same.

Whatever illness this was, it was strange. The heat was annoying, but didn’t actually make him feel bad, just a little off-kilter. The nausea seemed to strike around the same time each day, but unless he smelled something strange it was generally manageable with a few swigs of Pepto Bismol when it got rough.

Searching for his symptoms online only brought up pregnancy results—which made absolutely no sense, so Elliot sighed and assumed that, since he generally felt ok, there was no need to go charging into the emergency room unless his symptoms took a drastic turn for the worst.

Time passed.

Elliot started putting on weight. He didn’t think too much of it, since he seemed to be absolutely ravenous whenever his stomach was behaving—and over time, the daily bouts of nausea seemed to be fading away. He had a particular taste for meat, especially red meat. Just the thought of a juicy steak made him salivate, and day after day he found himself inhaling food in greater quantities than ever before. It was like there was a black hole inside him sucking up all the food; he’d eat until he was full and then only an hour or two later his stomach would start grumbling again.

Eventually, it was a little hard to deny that something strange was going on. The weight gain seemed to be centered on his stomach, to the point where it was almost more awkward that his coworkers weren’t commenting on it when Elliot knew they had to have noticed. Even Andy hadn’t said anything, though Elliot caught enough sidelong glances to know that no amount of laughing and passing it off as a beer belly—even though Elliot hadn’t felt like going out with Andy since the night he’d met the Mystery Man and was otherwise too lazy to go out and buy alcohol—could really explain it.

It had to be a tumor, right? Elliot had seen enough of those medical mystery shows to know that whatever was going on, it absolutely wasn’t normal.

Because the only other explanation was completely, utterly, absolutely impossible.

Right?

Grudgingly, Elliot booked a doctor’s appointment at last. When the day came and it was time to actually go, Elliot got dressed, grabbed his keys, and stood in front of his door until the scheduled time came and went.

He did it again with the second appointment.

Every sane bone in his body told him that there was something seriously wrong with him… yet Elliot just couldn’t bring himself to go to the doctor.

Because deep down, he knew exactly what it was.

And when he looked at the calendar, found the day he’d been with the Mystery Man—the last person he’d slept with—and then counted forward, everything snapped into place. The nausea. The hunger. The weight gain. What he tried to tell himself were just gas cramps, when he knew damn well it wasn’t that at all.

Going to the doctor was absolutely out of the question.

Elliot used up his sick days at work, then his vacation days, then quit entirely. He hated to do it, but there was no way to keep deflecting questions when his stomach was inflating like a balloon by the day. He lied and said he’d gotten a raise somewhere else and hoped that would be the end of the gossip that had to be going around.

Thanking his lucky stars that he wasn’t going through all this ten or twenty years earlier, Elliot burned through his savings to make liberal use of food and grocery delivery services. It was easy enough to wrap a blanket around his shoulders like he was sick to hide how much his stomach bulged, and he figured that if the delivery drivers noticed anything odd, they’d just pass it off as him being fat.

He talked to his parents a few times, but always on the phone only, never video chats, because how was he supposed to explain this? His fathers were open-minded, but probably not so open-minded that they’d be able to accept that their son was, in defiance of all logic, pregnant.

And at night, Elliot laid in bed with his eyes closed and his hands resting on his stomach, just marveling the life growing within him.

For a little while, Elliot found himself in a state of peaceful acceptance. If he was completely honest with himself, he liked being pregnant. It made no sense and was completely crazy, but it was impossible to deny the joy that shot through him when he felt little flutters of movement beneath his hands.

He’d known the truth all along, he supposed, even though he’d spent months trying to deny it. Elliot didn’t dislike kids; he’d even thought a time or two that maybe, if he found the right guy to settle down with, adopting might be nice.

The knowledge that he was going to have his own child took his breath away.

And, as the due date drew closer, panic started to set in.

He was pregnant. Pregnant. As in, going to give birth in a couple of weeks, assuming the baby didn’t decide to come early.

He’d spent months reading practically everything about pregnancies he could, but he still felt completely unprepared to be responsible for a life. He’d never even had a cat! And now he was supposed to be a father of an honest to God, real life baby?

And he had no help. Forget raising the kid, what about the birth? What if something went wrong? Elliot had done his research online and ordered the full complement of prenatal vitamins and everything ages ago. His instincts told him that his baby was healthy, but what if it wasn’t? Who was he supposed to call, how was he supposed to deal with this all on his own?

Not telling anyone was a mistake, even though Elliot didn’t know who exactly he would have broken the news to. It wasn’t like he could call up Andy and say, “Hey, I know I’ve been a complete shut-in and haven’t even seen you in like almost three months now, but surprise! I’m pregnant and I need your help giving birth.”

Ha.

No.

The baby stirred inside him as it sensed his worry and Elliot forced himself to take a few deep breaths to calm down. Panicking wasn’t going to help anything; all it would do was distress his baby further.

No. The only person who could help him was the one who had done this to him in the first place, and Elliot should have hunted him down months ago.

One problem: he had no idea how to find his Mystery Man.

He certainly knew the man’s face well enough; Elliot didn’t dream of him every single night any more, but it was still frequent. But he had been so wrapped up in lust the night they’d hooked up that he hadn’t paid any attention to where they’d gone… and all he’d noticed the next morning was that they were somewhere up in the hills, then he’d fallen asleep for the rest of his ride home.

Okay. Think.

Going to the club was not an option. Besides the fact that the idea of waddling his way into the club with a stomach as big as the moon was mildly horrific, Elliot had no guarantee that the Mystery Man would even be there. And Elliot didn’t have the time to go back night after night in the hopes of lucking out.

No, what he needed to do was find that house.

Soon.

At least he had the internet. Over the next couple of days, Elliot used every minute he didn’t spend eating, sleeping, or peeing—though those three things seemed to occupy most of the minutes in his day—on his laptop scouring Google Earth for any sign of the house he’d woken up in that morning. It was a frustratingly slow process; the hookup was almost nine months ago now and Elliot’s memory of the house was hazy. He moved the camera up and down each street multiple times, seeking anything that triggered his memories.

Late on the third night, Elliot finally found it.

He almost passed it by at first, sure that he had already gone down the street. Using his massive stomach as a makeshift table while he lied on the couch was handy but not the most stable, though, and the laptop slipped. In his haste to grab it before it fell to the floor, Elliot accidentally clicked the mouse button a few times… and when he looked up, it was at the house he’d been searching for.

Hardly daring to believe it, Elliot spun the camera around a few times, making sure he wasn’t just imagining it. But no, that was the bush the Uber driver had almost hit when doing a U-turn on the narrow street, and that was definitely the stoop Elliot had sat to wait on.

He’d found it.

Now came the scary part.

It was night, at least, which was a blessing: fewer people to see him. It took what felt like a ridiculously long time to haul himself up off the couch, change into a clean pair of sweat pants, grab a hoodie that was way too large in the arms but still barely stretched comfortably over his stomach, and waddle his way out the door.

His heart pounded like a drum the entire drive over.

When he arrived, Elliot parked on the street two houses beyond and on the opposite side of the street. Gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white, Elliot stared at the house. It was dark, which made sense considering the late hour, and the porch light was off. The entire block was quiet, though Elliot felt like the way his heart hammered should have been loud enough to wake the entire block.

He couldn’t delay forever; if he didn’t make himself move now, the sun would come up and he’d probably still be sitting here in his car like a statue.

Besides, he had to pee.

Just as he was about to open the car door, a car turned onto the block.

Flushing, Elliot sank down in his seat and tried to be invisible. Nothing strange about a pregnant man lurking outside some houses at three a.m. in a neighborhood he’d only be able to afford if he won the lottery or something, right? The car turned before it got to him, though, and Elliot’s breath caught as it parked in the Mystery Man’s driveway and the driver stepped out.

Oh. It was him.

Almost immediately, any reluctance Elliot had was replaced by indignation. What, had the Mystery Man gone and picked up some other unsuspecting man to—to breed with? He probably even went to the same club. For all Elliot knew, there was a whole legion of guys out there who were or had been in the same predicament as he was but hadn’t said anything, because who in their right mind would go talking about it, even online?

The fact that the Mystery Man headed inside alone did nothing to calm Elliot down.

How dare he? One night stands were one thing, but to fuck him and do this to him and then just dump him with no warning about what was going to happen? What the hell gave him the right?

It was his fault Elliot sat here now, close to giving birth and terrified out of his mind. And this man—or whatever he was—either didn’t know or, even worse, didn’t care.

Well, he was about to.

Elliot realized his hands were starting to hurt from gripping the steering wheel. He made himself let go, got out of his car, and started stomping toward the Mystery Man’s house. Well, he tried to stomp, anyway; it was more of an awkward shuffle. Glaring at the door all the while, Elliot made his way up the steps by the curb and to the door.

Ready to face the Mystery Man again, he knocked.