I’m on one side of the bed and Westlyn is on the opposite. Together we pull up the covers, and our two wee ones tuck the linens beneath their arms.
“Da, will you read with me?” Lachlan, our oldest, asks.
Our son loves books and stories. So thirsty for knowledge. Such a bright lad thanks to Westlyn’s teaching and mothering. At five, he’s already able to read on the level of an eight-year-old.
“No, I want to hear our story again. The one with princes and princesses and how we came to be.” Our daughter, Bristol, never tires of hearing our family’s story.
“What do you say, Lach?” I give him a wink, our secret sign that we’ll pick up with last night’s story after his sister is asleep.
He tries to wink back, but it comes off more like a squint. “Okay. I guess we can hear our story… again.”
“Once upon a time there was a prince from a faraway kingdom who inherited the crown of a new kingdom.”
“And the prince needed a princess.” Barely four and my wee lass is already a romantic.
“Yes, baby. The prince needed a princess, but no ordinary princess. She had to be chosen from the royal family of his new kingdom’s enemy.”
“And the prince’s enemy wouldn’t give him his princess, so he had to ride in on his horse and kidnap her,” Bristol says.
“That’s right. He had three princesses to choose from and which one did he steal?”
“The bonniest one.”
I look at Westlyn across the bed, her fingers laced and her hands resting on top of her swollen belly. “Aye, she was the bonniest one indeed. And still is.”
“But the princess didn’t like the prince because he was mean to her.” Bristol punches my leg. “Bad Da for being mean to Mummy.” She always scolds me when we get to this part of the story.
“The prince was mean to the princess, but he became sorry and full of regret for being cruel to her.”
Bristol looks up at Westlyn. “Because the prince fell in love with Mummy.”
I pet the top of my daughter’s head when I see her eyes growing heavy. It always helps her fall asleep. “The prince did fall in love with the princess, and their marriage brought peace between the two kingdoms.”
“And their princes and princesses were half of one kingdom and half of the other. Their children would forever bind the two lands, so they would never be enemies again.” Westlyn’s voice is soft and soothing.
Bristol yawns. “And they lived happily ever after.”
I don’t know why Bristol asks to hear this story. She’s the one who ends up telling most of it.
My daughter closes her eyes, and Lachlan places his finger over his lips to shush me.
Westlyn leans down to kiss Lachlan. “I’m going to lie down while Da reads with you tonight.”
She usually stays while he reads.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Fine. Just aching in my back.”
“Sure it’s just a backache?”
She nods. “I’m fine. Stay and read with him.”
Lachlan usually reads to us for thirty minutes every night, but I cut our time short tonight. I’m worried about Westlyn. With her last pregnancy, she complained of a backache, her water broke, and she delivered… all within three hours. We barely made it to Royal Infirmary before she got the urge to push Bristol out.
“Doll?”
“Just a minute, Kier,” she calls out from the bathroom.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice is calm, which eases my worry.
The door opens and Westlyn comes into the bedroom wearing one of her short, sexy gowns. “Pregnancy hormones doing crazy things again?”
She nods and walks toward the bed. “Very crazy.”
She sits on the side of the bed and moves to the middle. “You know what I need, Mr. Hendry.”
I start taking off my clothes, beginning with my tie. “I do know, Mrs. Hendry. Very well.”
Westlyn is approaching her due date. Positioning has been tricky the last few weeks. “Tell me how you want it.”
She rolls on to her side. “From behind.”
“Not a problem, wife.” I love rear entry.
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
I lie on the bed and move behind her, kissing the back of her neck and shoulders. I do it to give her time to get wet, but I find that she’s already drenching when I reach between her legs. “Always wet for me.”
“Always.”
I ease inside her, and it’s impossible to suppress my groan. I pull back and thrust slowly, savoring the squeeze of her body around mine. “Fuck, I can’t believe how tight you are.”
How can she have given birth twice, almost three times, and still feel this virgin-tight? A woman’s body can do amazing things.
I thrust a few more times. “Is this position good for you?”
She’s tilting her bum upward, rocking to meet me with every stroke. “Mmm-hmm, but I want you to rub me. Make me come with you.”
I reach around her pregnant belly to that sensitive place between her legs. She moans, and without a word, I know I’ve hit it. “Right there, Kieran.”
I circle the whole area fast and hard. Slow and soft. Back and forth. Side to side. I give her a little of it all.
I move faster. My cock and fingers. “I want to feel your body squeeze me because you’re coming so hard.”
“Ohh… I’m coming, Kieran.”
I bury my face in the back of her hair. “I love you, Westlyn. So fucking much.”
She reaches over her shoulder and grabs the back of my head. “I love you, too.”
I plunge into her one last time and hold that position while my balls squeeze until they’re completely empty. When I finish, our arms, our legs, our entwined bodies collapse and go lax.
I pull out and reach for a pillow to place under her head. “Need one between your knees too?”
“Yes, please.”
I spoon behind Westlyn, wrapping my arm around her waist and rubbing her tummy. This is baby number three, and the movement I feel beneath my hand still amazes me. “He or she is going crazy in there.”
She places a hand on her belly next to mine. “I think this wee one will be coming soon.”
Her due date isn’t until next week. “Why do you say that?”
“I felt really good today.” She always gets a burst of energy the day that she goes into labor.
“Then you should get some sleep, in case he decides to come tonight.”
Westlyn’s prediction comes to pass five hours later when her water breaks, and we rush to the hospital. Same as last time. She’s barely admitted when she tells me that she needs to push.
We finally get to meet our next son or daughter.
Westlyn starts pushing, and the nurse tells her to stop because she needs to get the doctor.
“Hear that, doll? She’s calling the doctor to come.” I lean down and kiss Wes’s forehead. “I love you so much.”
She strokes my face with her hand. “I love you, too. But that doctor needs to come because I won’t be able to stop pushing when I have another contraction.”
“You have to breathe and not push.”
“Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen. This baby is coming. It doesn’t care who’s ready.”
Westlyn’s physician comes into the room. “Oh… it’s coming. I’m trying… but I can’t stop it.”
He hurriedly puts on a pair of gloves. No gown. “It’s all right, Mrs. Hendry. Just means it’s time to meet this wee one.”
I watch the head of our third child emerge from my wife’s body, and the doctor suctions his nose and mouth. Westlyn’s legs are shaking, and she’s breathing erratically when she reaches up to grab me. She pulls me down and squeezes me around the back of my neck. “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.”
“You’re almost finished. Push him out.”
Westlyn releases her ironfisted hold on me and works to catch her breath. She pulls her legs back, her eyes squeezed tightly, her brow wrinkled. A pair of tears escapes her eyes, and it breaks my heart to see her suffering in silence.
“Here he or she comes.”
I hear a gush of fluid and then a piercing cry—our baby’s first sound.
“It’s a boy.”
She falls against the bed, exhausted, and I kiss the top of her head. “You did it, Wes. We have another son.
He’s placed on her chest where the nurses wipe him clean, cover his head with a blue beanie, and stuff him inside his mother’s gown. Skin-to-skin.
Westlyn puts him to the breast, and it only takes a few minutes for him to figure out how to latch on. “Look at our boy, Kieran. He’s so much like Lachlan and you.”
“Ethan Graham Hendry.” I lower my face so I can get a better look at my son. “I already love him as much as I do Lachlan and Bristol.”
“Me too.”
I look at our third child and know that I owe all of my happiness to Westlyn. Without her, I wouldn’t know this kind of love and joy.
When I stole this beautiful woman, all I had in my heart was anger and rage and malice. I had cruel intentions. But then everything changed. My affection for her was unexpected. My love, unintended.