He helped me sit, piling pillows that smelled of him under my back, and then rushed to the chest of drawers to retrieve a glass of water, already poured. He pressed the glass to my lips gently, and tipped it up slowly. I wanted to complain about the fussing, but drank instead.
“Is that enough? Do you need more? Do you want ice cubes?” he asked, ready to bolt for the kitchen as soon as I said the word.
“I’m fine for now.” I chuckled darkly. “You know, I can drink water on my own. I’m not completely useless.” Though I did feel a hell of a lot like it.
He ignored my protests and set the glass down instead. His gaze traveled the length of my body before he slipped his hand into mine. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I sighed. Should I tell him the truth? Or should I put on my tough Evie act, the one I had perfected? In the end, I found so much vulnerability in his gaze that I opted for the truth. “I’m as well as can be expected. I feel like crap, I’m scared out of my wits, and it seems like I have a parasite growing inside me.” I laughed to try to cover my discomfort, then stilled when I caught his reaction.
“A parasite? You think our baby is a parasite?” His jaw tightened as my heart melted all over again at those words.Our baby.
What was with me? I wasn’t the maternal type. I was the kick-down-doors type.
He pulled his hand from mine but I caught it before he could pull away. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Though I kind of had. The baby wasfeedingoff me, for fuck’s sake.
“Then how did you mean it?” His words were defensive.
I let the tension ease from my shoulders and tried for honesty again. “Listen, I’m not used to this kind of, er, stuff. I don’t do feelings, and I don’t do... babies.” He went to pull away again, but I persisted. I huffed, blowing strands of hair from my face. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m out of my element, and I’m kind of freaking out here. I don’t know what to think.”
“So you’re spewing at the mouth?” he offered.
I grunted, offended, before I noticed the kind smile that graced that gorgeous mouth. The corners of my lips came up as I gave him a very small smile back; it was the best I could do right then. “I’ll never admit to spewing anything, but, yeah. I might appear calm and collected, but I’m not. I’m totally losing it.”
He laughed, a real hearty sound, but he didn’t let go of my hand. “You? Calm and collected?”
Yanking my hand away from his, I crossed my arms across my chest, giving him a full-on pout.
He laughed some more and sat on the bed at my side, placing a possessive hand on my thigh. Even beneath the blanket, the heat of his hand radiated through the point of contact, straight to my core. Damn, what this man did to me. I was in trouble, and now I was carrying his baby. What the hell kind of turn had my life taken without my permission?
“You aren’t even a little bit calm and collected,” he said, and I glared, doing my best to ignore his wide smile. “You’re fiery as fuck, stubborn as hell, sexy as sin... and now the mother of my child.”
I gulped and my pout fell. Well, damn. If he was going to be like this, how the hell was I supposed to keep my distance and remain angry at him? I was starting to want to curl into the safety of his arms, and that was so not me. I didn’t rely on anyone else to prop me up. Were the pregnancy hormones messing with my emotions already? Yep, I was sure they were. It was like PMS on steroids.
I didn’t know what to say. Already this pregnancy was turning me into something I wasn’t.
“I want to help you,” he said. “I want to take care of you.”
“Take care of me? Just because I’m carrying a baby doesn’t mean I’m a baby myself. You realize that, right?” But my protest was half-hearted and he knew it. I’d lost so much weight in the past week, it was clear I did need someone to take care of me.
“I know you don’t need me to take care of you. Iwantto.” His eyes twinkled. “Even though you are pretty gimpy at the moment.”
The comment made me bristle, and then I realized he was totally joking. I was in over my head; no point pretending things were normal. “Is Sabine a hundred-percent sure I’m pregnant?” It wasn’t like I could actually feel a baby moving around inside me, or anything. The baby was probably the size of a pea at this stage, if that.
“She’s totally sure.” Joy lit up his face, and I melted like chocolate in the sun. Damn him, his sexiness, and baby loving nature. “She ran the tests multiple times, coming at them from different angles. There’s no doubt about it. You’re carrying my baby.”
You’re carrying my baby.Those words shouldn’t have made desire flare to life inside me, but they did. He wasn’t asking me to get an abortion, or paying me off to raise the kid for eighteen years alone. No, he was holding my hand, two seconds away from asking me to move in with him. My, how the tables had turned.
He simply sat there, looking so happy that it was easy to imagine him a carefree boy, without all the weight and responsibility of being an alpha of a good-sized pack.
“You really are happy about this pregnancy, aren’t you?” I asked. I was still processing my shock, but he’d taken the news well.
“Of course I am! You might not know this, but werewolf pregnancies are rare. There’s no guarantee you’ll get to have a child when you’re one of us.”
“But… you have brothers!”
“I do, but things have changed since my mother conceived us. Something’s been happening to the wolf genes. It’s gotten increasingly difficult for female wolves to conceive, and when they do, more often than not the pregnancies result in miscarriages.” Sadness tugged at the edges of his face.
I frowned. “Could that happen to us? To me?” I hadn’t been sure I’d wanted this baby until the second he said ”miscarriage.” Now my heart was pumping like crazy, and I wanted to do everything possible to make sure this baby was safe.
