Ned

I spent my whole pregnancy on board the Neptune’s Jewels, trying to capture Jeremiah and The Felicity.

If I thought my seasickness when I stowed away on a ship was bad, it was nothing compared to morning sickness in the captain’s cabin.

Sometimes, walking around the ship’s deck helped. But the first time I scrambled up the ropes and into the crow’s nest, I thought William was going to have a stroke. I had spent an hour up there before he even noticed. The wind blowing in my face seemed to take all my morning sickness with it. Right up until William showed up at the bottom of the mast and started shouting.

In an instant, I was back in my father’s house, listening to him talk about all the ways that men who loved other men were abominations.

Back then, I had been required to keep a stiff upper lip.

This time, I did when I never would have been able to do then, and with the perfect excuse.

I leaned over the edge of the crow’s nest and vomited. The wind had died down in that instant, so it dropped squarely onto William’s head.

I froze, terrified of what his reaction might be, and everyone around him on the deck went utterly still, as well. Slowly, he reached up toward his head, and from my foreshortened view of him, I saw him wipe a glob of it off. He tossed it down to the deck with a splat that I could hear all the way up where I was.

Then he put his hands on his hips, leaned back so he could see me, and to my surprise, began laughing wildly.

“Stay there,” he bellowed. “I’ll be up to join you as soon as get I cleaned up.”

He did more than that, too. He brought a small pail of water and a cloth for me to use to clean myself up, too.

As we sat up in the crow’s nest, me curled up in his lap so we would both fit into a space really meant for one, I told him about my childhood, about how much I had wanted to have a baby with a beautiful man, even though I knew it was inappropriate.

In return, he told me of his childhood, loved by Jolly, but unable to ever know his birth parents, always saddened by the thought that his alpha-father didn’t love him enough to keep him after his omega-father died.

“Promise me,” I said, “that our children will never believe that they are unloved or unwanted or anything less than perfect.”

“I promise,” William said, wrapping his arms around me and giving me a squeeze.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now. I am tired and want to go to bed. Spot me as I make my way back down to the deck? And never yell at me for climbing up here again.”

On three other occasions, William completely changed our heading to take us into port to satisfy my pregnancy-induced food cravings.

“It will slow us down catching up with Jeremiah,” I protested the first time. “I only said I wanted coconuts because I thought we had some aboard.”

“If the baby inside you wants coconuts, that’s what he’s going to have.” William gave me a mock glare.

I shook my head, but I was secretly pleased that he would give up his own desire to track down the man who had stolen his ship in favor of taking care of me and our child.

And as my pregnancy grew and I began to show, I discovered he made love to me more and more often.

“Shall we go to the cabin?” he asked one afternoon, wrapping his hands around to rest on my belly, waggling his eyebrows, and kissing me lightly on the lips.

“Are you reading my mind?” I asked.

“No, but I have a feeling.” William gave me another, more forceful kiss as he spun me in his arms and his hands trailed up my spine.

I licked the corner of his mouth, and he smiled softly.

Soon, we found ourselves locked in a gentle embrace as William traced my collarbone with soft kisses, sending shivers down my spine, through my whole body. Slowly, we moved toward the cabin, where we shed pieces of clothing, leaving them in a trail on the cabin floor. Our hands explored each other’s bodies carefully before I crawled back onto the bed, naked and waiting for William to follow me, drawing him forward with my eyes.

He kissed what felt like every square inch of my body, achingly slowly, taking care to make me feel amazing before he finally climbed on top of me, where having him slide into me was like coming home. My head rolled back onto the pillow as a low moan escaped my lips, my hands tracing the muscles on his back.

This wasn’t the urgent, lustful, rough sex we’d often had. This was something else entirely. This was slow and sweet, tender and caring. It was spiritual. Real. As we gazed into one another’s eyes, our souls seemed to dance in time with our bodies. For a brief moment, it was as though everything in our lives had been leading up to this, as though this ship, this bunk, was where we were meant to be.

This was about worshiping each other. It was about expression. We melted into one another, and the way that William was moving, so sweetly, so gently, told me that this was more than the physical, and he was completely absorbed into it. We were basking in one another.

My orgasm this time built slowly, drawn up from the center of my being, from some deep reserve where emotion and physical sensation wound together higher and higher until I almost shattered from the joy of it.

Afterward, we lay together in bed, waiting for his knot to subside, William drifting in and out of sleep with his arms around me, both satisfied and content.

“I could learn love you so much,” he whispered into my ear.

My body stiffened in his grasp for a moment before I finally returned the sentiment. “I think I could learn love you too, William.”

I hoped I was telling the truth.