Zoe sighed heavily as she shifted on his lap and he did his damndest to ignore it. It had been a week since he’d touched her. Seven nights and days filled with cold showers. It wasn’t exactly his favorite pastime, but she needed time and he was going to make sure that he gave it to her...as long as they were beneath the same roof, that is. The minute she tried to leave, all bets were off.
“Is something else bothering you?” Trevor asked, running all the possibilities through his head when she gave him another shrug. A thought occurred to him, one that actually frightened him a little and made him realize that he had something to tell her, something that she probably wasn’t going to want to hear but had a right to know.
“Zoe, I have to tell you something,” Trevor said, his hands tightening around her hips to stop her from running away from him.
He’d planned to keep her right where she was until she’d calmed down, even as he prepared himself for the same look of disgust that he saw on his father’s face, or the look of pity on his mother’s when they were told. No matter what, he wouldn’t allow her to leave until he’d explained things to her. He didn’t want her to worry about their baby, but he also thought that she should hear it from him before one of his relatives let it slip.
“Trevor, what’s wrong?” Zoe asked, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair, pushing it off his forehead and reminding him that he needed another haircut. Then again, he might keep it the length that it was just so she could run her fingers through it. He loved the way she touched him.
Taking a deep breath, Trevor forced himself to meet her eyes. “I have to tell you something because it might affect the baby one day, but I don’t want to freak you out.”
“Okay,” Zoe said slowly, “but you do realize that there’s no way that I can’t freak out after you start off like that, right? Now you’ve got me thinking that you have some freaky disease or something.”
“No, it’s nothing that bad,” he promised. “It’s just that...” He hated telling her this, hated anyone knowing for that matter. “I’m dyslexic,” he admitted softly, forcing himself to hold her gaze.
When her brows arched in surprise, he knew that this was going to be bad. Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut and-
“And?” she asked.
“That’s it,” Trevor said, frowning when her expression didn’t morph into disgust or pity.
She rolled her eyes. “I already knew that,” Zoe said, scoffing as she went back to tracing shapes on his chest.
“You knew? How the hell did you know?” he demanded, wondering which bastard in his family had ratted his ass out.
“It wasn’t that hard to figure out, Trevor,” she murmured, looking totally enthralled with what she was doing.
“What does that mean?” He’d been careful, very careful. He’d never read anything in front of her, never wrote anything more than his name or a word or two in her presence. There was no way that she could have found out without one of his relatives clueing her in. “Who the hell told you?”
Zoe rolled her eyes even as she leaned forward to press a quick kiss on his lips, which made him slightly happy, but not enough to forget that he needed to kill one of his relatives.
“You never read anything around me. You think you tricked me into reading for you. Then there was the time when we ran out of condoms and you flipped out because you thought there was supposed to be 42 condoms in the box of 24.”
“Would it have killed them to put a few extra condoms in the box so that you could have seen to my needs?” Trevor asked, remembering that damn night and trying not to wince. Okay, so maybe he gave himself away.
“The point is,” Zoe said, pressing another sweet kiss against his mouth, “that I’m not going to worry about it when there are more frightening things to think about.”
“Like what?” he asked, biting back a groan when she continued to kiss a path along his jaw.
“How we’re going to afford to feed another Bradford. We both might have to get second jobs,” she said, tracing her tongue down his neck.
He dropped his head back, allowing her more access as her words sank in. “We? Does this mean that you’re going to marry me?” Trevor asked even though he’d already decided that she was marrying him no matter what. Informing her that they were getting married was just a courtesy since he couldn’t think of one single Bradford that had ever proposed.
His Uncle Jared had simply told his Aunt Megan to meet him at the courthouse for lunch and when she’d showed up, he had the Justice of the Peace ready to go and all the exits blocked. His cousin Jason simply told Haley they were getting married and just in case she tried to change her mind or make a run for it, he’d married her two days later. His uncles and cousins had done pretty much the same thing. As far as he knew that’s what all the men in his family had done for generations, so really, she should at least appreciate the fact that he’d at least told her beforehand.
She really should be thanking him for his consideration.
“I’m thinking about it,” Zoe said against his neck and the only reason he wasn’t pulling her over his lap and spanking her was because he could tell that she was just teasing him, well, she damn well better just be teasing him.
“You are,” Trevor said, trying to sound smug when she was actually making him a little nervous.
“Uh-huh, we can discuss this afterwards with a few other things,” Zoe said as she kissed and licked his neck as her greedy little hands slid over his chest and stomach.
“After what?” Trevor asked, groaning long and heavy when her little fingers teased his nipples.
“After you fulfill your end of our arrangement,” she said, slightly moaning and driving him out of his goddamn mind.
“Our arrangement is over,” Trevor bit out, shifting his legs apart to make room in his now too-tight boxer briefs.
