Night before the masquerade, I’m woken by movement in the bed. I snap upright, coming face-to-face with Greier.
“You’re home,” I whisper, relieved, my hand reaching to his face and gently stroking his rough cheek with my fingertips.
He crawls toward me, pushing my body back onto the mattress until he’s hovering over me.
“I couldn’t be away from you any longer,” he states as his mouth moves in for my neck. “Plus, Izzie said you weren’t feeling well, figured you might want me here.”
I sigh at the relief of his presence. I need him now more than ever. I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him into me, feeling his comforting weight atop of me.
He pulls away, studying my watery eyes with loving captivation, his gaze almost dreamy.
“What’s the matter, baby?” he coos.
“I’ve been so worried about you.”
He smiles sympathetically down at me, combing away the hair stuck to my soggy cheeks.
Climbing off me, he says, “Come on,” and then offers me his hand.
“Where are we going?” I ask, taking it without hesitation and following him across the dark room.
“I want you in the shower.”
“Oh,” I mumble, a grin slowly crawls across my tear-blotted face.
Wet and naked, I stand before Greier’s crouched body as his hands attentively dry me between my thighs. The source of his virility hanging proudly between his, muscular and dusted with dark hairs. He started at my feet, working up until his fingers close in on the puffy lips tucked at the apex of the gap. When the thick tips penetrate the folds, skimming the pulsing bud, I whimper out a moan. Amplified in the hot, steamy confines of the shower. Legs quivering, my palms press against the tile wall and the clouded glass door to steady myself. With a twinge of displeasure, his hands are gone as quick as they came.
He continues to towel beads of water off my skin, swiping the lush fibers across my lower tummy. Something about it warms me deep inside. Before sense comes back to me, the words I’ve been dreading build in my throat, forced out like water from a geyser. “I’m pregnant.”
He stops wiping, his hands and eyes frozen over my faintly expanding womb. With every second that passes, his silence terrifies me more and more. His reluctance to look me in the face doesn’t help much either. I’ve been on edge the past thirty-eight hours thinking about this exact moment, his reaction. At the same time, I’ve been dying to let it out. It’s actually a relief. It wasn’t easy keeping it from Izzie for an entire day. But Greier deserved to be the first to know since it involves him.
Taking mercy on my nerves, his eyes elevate to mine inch by slow inch. “How?”
“The usual way, I’m guessing.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m just,” he sets his open palm over my stomach, “shocked.”
“Yeah, I was taken off guard myself.”
“When did you find out?”
“Yesterday. I wasn’t feeling great, and Izzie insisted I see a doctor. I insisted I was fine. So, we drove to a doctor’s office in Baton Rouge. Because it’s Izzie, and as you’re well aware, winning an argument with her is the equivalent of moving a mountain. Anyway, the doctor confirmed it. I’ve got a pea in the pod.”
“How far?” he asks in a faint whisper.
“It’s pretty early.” I rest my hand over his. “Month and a half.”
“You got pregnant our first time?” He sounds both impressed and confounded. I was too when the doctor came into the clinical room, sat down on the seat across from me, and came out with the life-changing news as if she was ordering a turkey sandwich for lunch. Maybe it was because she’s likely said you’re pregnant more times than there are days in the year. It might have been a common scenario for her, but this was a first for me. A numbing, tingling itchy sensation moved down my body from the hairs on my head to the nails on my toes. My teeth were vibrating. I think I might’ve even gone deaf for a few seconds, a malfunction of the brain as it overloads with the information I’m carrying a tiny ball of life inside me, an unexpected bundle of drooling, screaming joy.
I never really thought about children. I always knew I’d have them because it was expected of me. It was a part of my training. It was a stipulation when my father and Lou shook hands on their deal. They wanted me to carry on the (blue) bloodline. But it wasn’t until then that I questioned whether or not I wanted a family.
Now, I was carrying Greier’s child. I knew without a doubt since I hadn’t had sex with Shaw in months. There wasn’t a sliver of a chance. With pretending to plan the wedding and my “classes on Southern etiquette”, we hadn’t had the time (or desire). Well, I hadn’t, but he certainly had. I took relief in the fact the baby wasn’t his. One less thing to tie me to him.
Since I left the doctor’s office, I’ve thought of nothing but what I want, what Greier would want, how he’d react. I went over our first time in my head. It was blurry through the lens of alcohol, but I remembered using protection. Sure, condoms aren’t one hundred percent. But something felt shady about it.
“What are you thinking about?” Greier asks, his gaze searching mine, pulling me back to the present.
“We used protection that night, didn’t we?”
“You’re not trying to insinuate…” He can’t even finish the thought.
“No.” I place my palms on his muscular shoulders for the pure need to connect with him. “I just don’t understand how this happened. We were safe.”
“We were,” he confirms. Then something seems to click, his face twisting with a worrisome thought.
“What?”
“Lotte,” he mutters, his eyes glazed over.
“What about her?” I’m unable to hide the irritation from the mention of the she-beast’s name. Words seem to fail him, killing me with his silence. “Greier,” I urge him. “Spit it out.”
“Before she left me to fuck your husband, the relationship was falling apart. It was always fucked up, but those final months were the worst. She got it in her head that a baby would fix things between us. I think she wanted one for financial stability. I told her she was crazy for wanting to bring a kid into the middle of our problems. She stopped talking about it after that, but—she’d want sex all the time. We always used protection, so I didn’t think much about it at the time.”
My ears can’t believe what they’re hearing, so my mouth verifies. “Are you saying she sabotaged the condoms?”
“She’s twisted enough.”
I chuckle. He gawks at me as if I’m looney. Maybe because I am. Downright insane. My chuckles turn to shuddered whimpers as reality sets in. Flooding my cheeks, tears burst from my eyes as if they’re sprinklers. I’m a goddamn hormone monster. I’m all for a good cry, but this is frickin’ ridiculous.
“Say it. It’s too soon. We don’t know what we are or if we want to be together for a lifetime. We’re just getting started. We barely know one another. What’s your middle name? I don’t know. Oh, and there’s the little matter of my being married to another man.”
“Elias.”
“What?”
“My middle name is Elias—after my paternal grandfather.” He clasps my hips and looks at me intently. “I’ll never lie to you, Rae. I’m fucking shitting myself. And maybe we’ve only known each other for the same amount of time this kid has been in existence. And maybe you are married to my cousin. And maybe we have no fucking clue what we’re doing. But there’s no maybe in the way I feel for you. I’m in love with you. I want this child with you. And when this bullshit is over, I’m going to make you my wife. And you, me, and our baby are going to live a happy life.”
Fingers digging into my hips, his lips move toward my womb, skimming and kissing it with tenderness. It’s so loving, my heart may burst. My fingers vanish into his thick hair, bunching it in my grasp.
When I’m gray, with only my memories to keep me company, this is the one I’ll remember vividly. When I knew I’d spend the rest of my days loving this man. Hopefully, more than less.
“Greier,” I weep, collapsing into his arms, draping my mine around his neck. He cradles me while I cry from happiness, from fear, from the chemicals raging in my body, from my love for him and the child growing in the deepest part of me. My heart.
With an arm under my legs and around my back, Grey rises from the shower floor, carrying me out of the bathroom to the bed. He climbs in with me, holding me, caressing me, comforting me while I’m curled in his lap. He’s loving and tender and everything I need him to be.
“Everything’s going to be alright, baby. I swear on my life.”
His strong lips pepper gentle kisses over my forehead, down my face, and across my salty cheeks, finally landing on his target. His worshipping mouth makes me forget everything until I’m no longer crying and kissing him back. His hand meets the back of my head, securing it. His lips flutter against mine like butterfly wings, traveling south to the exposed line of my neck. His tongue following the trails of tears streaking it, taking its time to savor every bitter drop. Under the spell his mouth casts, I tilt my head back.
“Rae,” he whispers as if it were a prayer, my name tickling my skin.
“Greier,” I breathe out, as if his name were the air in my lungs.
His free hand cups my sensitive breast, and I suck in a sharp breath through my teeth.
“Should I stop?” he asks, his consideration for me overwhelmingly sexy.
I rest my hand over his, using it to massage my aching breast with careful strokes. It’s an exquisite agony.
“Never.”
Lying me on my back, he stares down at me with a look in his eyes I’ve never seen before. It’s dreamy and intense, like I’m his wish come true. His gaze moves down to my lower tummy where his fingers skate across the faint bump. I trace the outline of his face with the pad of my finger, every defined line and perfect imperfection. I admire him as he admires me, memorizing his masculine features until they’re catalogued and filed away in my psyche. I’ve waited for this very moment, when I give all of myself to the man I care for deeply. More than I ever dreamed possible. I watch the father of my child, thankful and blissful and terrified, because, for the first time in my life, I have everything to lose.