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I’m six months along, and I can’t see my feet. My ankles are swollen. I pee every forty-five minutes. I cried yesterday because the chef made the wrong kind of pancakes, and then I cried again because I felt bad for yelling at the chef. And I want Nik all the fucking time.

I want him when I wake up. I want him in the shower. I want him when he walks into a room, when he walks out of a room, and when he’s just standing in the kitchen in a pair of gray sweatpants drinking his coffee like he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing to me. He knows. He always knows. He can hear every single thought in my head.

Right now, it’s three in the morning, and I’m wide awake in the middle of our bed, staring at the ceiling, so wet I can feel it on my thighs. He’s asleep next to me. Or he’s pretending to be.

Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up. Wake up and fuck me, you big, gorgeous monster…

“Go back to sleep, Red.”

I fucking knew it.

“I can’t.” I roll toward him, which takes way more effort than it used to. “I need you.”

“You had me four hours ago.”

“That was four hours ago!”

He opens one eye. It glows in the dark. “Four hours ago,” he rumbles, deep and lazy, “you came three times on my cock, then told me you were never letting me touch you again because your back hurt.”

“I lied.”

He huffs out a laugh. Then he rolls onto his side to face me, and his huge hand slides over my belly. He does that all the time now: when we’re eating, when we’re watching TV, when we’re sleeping. He can feel her kicking through it, and every single time she does, he gets this look on his face like he still can’t believe she’s real.

It’s a girl. We found out last week. He went so feral in the doctor’s office I had to send him to the car.

She kicks right under his palm, and he goes completely still. “She’s awake too,” he says.

“She’s always awake.” I put my hand over his. “She’s just like her daddy.”

His eyes flash. Then the monster’s back, and he’s pulling me closer by my hip.

“Say please,” he orders.

“Please.”

“Please what?”

I glare at him. He just waits, smirking.

“Please fuck me,” I say through my teeth.

“That’s my girl.”

He doesn’t put me on my back anymore. He says it’s not safe for the baby, and he won’t hear a single argument about it. So he turns me on my side, facing away from him, and fits his whole body around mine from behind. His shadows slide under my belly and hold it, cradling all that weight so my back doesn’t ache, and I melt.

Then his hand slides down between my legs, and his fingers find out just how wet I am.

“Fuck, Red.” He groans into my neck. “You’re soaked. You’ve been lying here thinking about my cock for an hour, haven’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Desperate little thing.” He pushes two fingers inside me, slow. “I bred you, and now you can’t even sleep without me inside you.”

I moan. I can’t help it. My whole body’s different now. My breasts are bigger, so sensitive his shadows barely have to touch my nipples before I’m squirming. My pussy’s always swollen, always aching, always wet. Everything he does to me hits ten times harder than it used to. And he knows it. He fucking uses it.

He works me with his fingers until I’m right on the edge. Then he pulls them out and slides his cock between my thighs from behind, rubbing it through my slick without pushing in.

“Nik…”