His gaze raked over my nakedness. He gave me a predatorial look. “Lie down.”
Delicious anticipation washed over me as I backed up and lay on the bed. Luka slowly crawled on top of me and kissed his way up to my mouth. I felt his hardness against my stomach, my breath coming out in ragged gasps as I prepared myself to give the only gift I had for him.
I never would have guessed that the man I’d been saving myself for all my life would have been a vampire. Life was funny that way.
Chapter Sixteen
“Don’t lift a finger!”I snapped at Demi, Sage, and Liv. I moved to grab the boxes in the entryway to Sage and Walsh’s new house as Luka, Walsh, and Sawyer came in behind me.
The three pregnant women looked at me with annoyance.
“We’re pregnant. Not handicapped!” Demi snapped, holding her six-month pregnant belly.
Sage rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and Demi and I are werewolves, we can handle lifting a box.” Sage was five months along. She and Walsh got pregnant right after her wedding.
“I’m fine not lifting a finger. I’m going to milk this with everything I got!” Liv exclaimed, and we all chuckled. Liv was nine months pregnant and ready to pop any day now. She was carrying a beautiful, healthy little girl for Luka and I. Modern science was amazing, and the fact that two vampires were about to have a pretty much human baby was kind of insane.
She would be seven percent Ithaki, and Luka and I agreed we wanted her to stay human and just be the way she was born unless she chose otherwise. Luka was working on dissolving the laws that required a king to have a vampire heir. We hoped one day that our daughter could rule the vampires as a human, or they could find someone else in the Drake lineage, but we wouldn’t force a change on her like it had been forced on us.
“You’re right,” Sage exclaimed to Liv. “Let’s go in the kitchen. I have chocolate peanut butter ice cream.”
“Yum,” Demi and Liv said at the same time, following Sage into the kitchen. I stayed close behind their three waddling butts and tried not to feel sorry for myself that I couldn’t carry my own child. I was going to focus on the positive. The fact that I was a vampire and could evenhavebiological children was amazing.
Twenty minutes later, the girls were halfway through their ice cream when Liv winced.
“What’s wrong?” I zoomed to her side, hand on her belly.
She looked up at me. “It’s fine. It’s been happening all day. I’m just gassy or something.”
Sage and Demi shared a look. Both spoons clanked into their bowls. “Gassy or contractions?”
Uncertainty flickered over Liv’s face. “I mean, they don’t really hurt. It just feels hard.”
“Those are contractions!” Demi sputtered.
I whipped out my phone. “I’m texting the midwife.” Because Liv was Ithaki, we had a supernatural midwife right here in Werewolf City. Coincidently, she was the one who would be delivering Sage’s and Demi’s babies too.
“Oh!” Liv leaned forward and grimaced. “Now they hurt.”
Shit.
‘Luka, Liv’s in labor.’I had barely sent the mental message to him and then he was there in the kitchen holding a box marked “garage stuff” and staring at Liv with wide eyes.
My phone buzzed and I looked down. “Midwife is on her way to the hospital. She’ll meet us there.”
Demi and Sage both squealed. “You’re having a baby!”
Excitement thrummed through me. I looked at Liv. She was almost green with anxiety.
“Remember, I get an epidural or we never speak again,” Liv warned as she stood.
I laughed. “Whatever you want.” I grasped her by the arms as she hunched over in pain.
Luka drove like a cautious maniac to the Curt Hudson Memorial Hospital. By the time we pulled in, the midwife was waiting in the lobby. After getting Liv checked in and hooked up to an epidural, Luka and I camped out by her bedside and whispered words of encouragement as she listed every single cuss word imaginable between grunts and screams. Talon showed up halfway through and offered words of encouragement to his girlfriend. Apparently, the epidural didn’t fully work on Ithaki, and Liv’s fey side was rejecting the medication.
Oops.
“I hate you,” she growled in my face.
