“Bryce,” she whispered.
“Jada,” I murmured back, holding her hips as I drove into her, a punishing rhythm that made breathing hard and holding back even harder. “You’re mine.”
I was done waiting to claim her. Done guarding my heart against getting hurt. She had the chance to hurt me, my business, in the worst possible way, and she chose honesty instead.
Well, I was choosing her.
Tension built within me until it exploded with my orgasm. I cried out with the release, with her, and her walls squeezed around me, milking out even more of my cum.
“That’s it, baby,” she told me. “All of it. Give me all of it.”
I pulsed into her, letting it all go. And as the orgasm faded and I looked into her eyes, I saw not just my woman. I saw my future wife.
42.Jada
I layin Bryce’s arms, completely naked and looking up at the ceiling in my bedroom. We’d moved here after the couch made cuddling impossible. My mind was spinning with thoughts of the future, and this time, they didn’t all end with the fallout of him finding out I was pregnant after our wedding.
Now, I let myself dream of what it would be like to be his wife. To lay with him like this every night, feeling so safe and supported in his arms while baby girl sleeps in her bassinet. It was like a dream, to finally get the man and the child I’d thought were out of reach.
Inside this bubble, it was hard to imagine anyone else penetrating it. But Bryce wasn’t exactly a wallflower. “What will everyone think when they find out I’m pregnant?” I asked him. His friends and family might not have the same reaction Glamma did.
I turned in his arms, watching him roll his lips together. “Who’s everyone?”
“Your family, for one.”
He twisted his lips to the side. “They’re used to blended families, remember?”
I gave him a look. “Come on, Bryce. I know they’re good people, but they’re not oblivious.”
“They don’t have to know whose baby it is,” he said slowly.
My lips parted as I processed what he was saying. “You want to let everyone think she’s yours?”
He reached up, brushing my cheek with the back of his knuckles. “It’s no one’s business what her DNA is. They’ll assume what they want to. I’m saying we let them.”
I looked up at the ceiling, at the dusty fan spinning in lazy circles. “How would that work? I’m already so far along.”
“No one knows when we started dating, only when we went public.” Bryce covered my hand at his chest with his. “And the people who do know wouldn’t tell anyone, right? The guys will be discreet, and isn’t Rei your close friend?”
I stiffened at the thought. Of course Rei would know that Bryce and I hadn’t been together long enough to have a baby so soon—she’d seen him trying to convince me to go out with him. And yet... “I still have to tell Rei.”
“Oh, babe...” he said softly.
“I know.” I buried my face in his chest, feeling the prickles of his close-cut chest hair. Then I looked up at him. The soft smile on his lips met his eyes. “Can you distract me?” I asked.
He bit his bottom lip. “I think that can be arranged.”
The next day, I asked Rei to meet me at my favorite park. It had miles of walking trails where I used to go on training runs, but now I just walked them when I had time. I arrived early with a couple of wrapped presents and sat at a picnic table near the parking lot.
The weather had cooled off a bit, but in my thick sweater and leggings, I was warm enough. My stomach churned with nerves, reminding me of the morning sickness I was glad had passed for the most part.
Most of my friends from college had dropped me after my parents died. I was too sad to be around, and our lives quickly veered on different courses. They had engagements and weddings and babies, and I had a calendar full of Grandpa’s medical appointments.
A silver car pulled into the parking lot, and I noticed my friend waving at me through the windshield.
I lifted my hand in a wave, despite the ratcheting pace of my heart. Now I realized I wasn’t just nervous about Rei’s reaction to my pregnancy news, I was worried I’d lose another friend.
She got out of the car and walked toward me, wrapping her coat tightly around her. “It’s cold as balls out here,” she yelled at me. Luckily, we were far enough from the playground that no children would be able to hear us.
