His cock is at my entrance. There is no reason for him to refuse. I bend so that his cock is poised to enter me.
“Wait—wait—” he says, pulling back.
Iknewit. Something is amiss.
I whir around in the bed so that I am facing him.
“Alfred,” I demand. “Why won’t you tup me?”
“I—I—I—will. I—just?—”
“This is thethirdtime you have avoided putting your cock in me. Have you suddenly grown tired of the act?”
It can’t be true. Not when his erection strains between us, indecent and so obviously ready to bed me that there is no use denying it.
“Well, it is only…”
“Yes?”
He puts his palms over his eyes and groans.
Now I am concerned. What on earth could be the matter?
“Are you ill?” I ask, reaching for the only thing that makes sense.
“No,youwere ill. I do not want to make you worse.”
“I feel perfectly fine.”
Although as I raise my head slightly higher to argue with him, nausea begins to grind in my belly.
“I don’t want to risk your health.”
“You fear I have some ailment that only your cock would make worse?”
I arch my brows at him. His face freezes.
Oh, God.He knows.
But if he knew, why didn’t he say anything? I know whyIhadn’t, of course.
But why would he keep silent if he suspects something? I assumed when I was ill yesterday, when he made so little note of it, that he believed me about the grippe. After all, how would a man like him know the symptoms of pregnancy?
“Annabelle,” he says, the set of his mouth very grave. “I don’t want to shock you. But I have been reluctant to bed you because—well, I think you may be with child. And I don’t want to harm the babe.”
He looks so serious as he says these ridiculous words that I am both moved—and moved to laughter.
I can’t help it.
I laugh. And then laugh again, covering my mouth.
“I do not understand,” he says stiffly. “You are not with child?”
I wipe the tears from my eyes. I do not know where to begin. With his assumption that, somehow, I am unaware that I am probably with child…or the fact that he feels his cock might somehow dislodge my pregnancy.
“No,” I say finally, when I feel badly enough for him that I force myself to speak. “I believe I am.”
“You do?” He looks endearingly hopeful. And when he looks like that, I can’t laugh at him any longer.
