24. Pregnancy
24
PREGNANCY
“Can’t wait to meet you,” Jag said against Niall’s belly later that night. “Your dad’s quiet but amazing. I’m so proud to call him my omega.”
Niall blushed all over. “That’s just sweet talk.”
Jag raised an eyebrow and bit Niall lightly on his nipple, sending a jolt through his entire body. Niall gasped. “Say that again,” Jag growled, “and I’ll stuff my cock in your mouth to make you swallow your words.”
Niall moaned. “Aren’t we supposed to have boring parent sex now?”
“Who said parent sex has to be boring?”
“Um.” Niall’s brain blanked out. “Me. I think my parents had boring sex, but I also don’t want to think about it! ”
Jag snorted. “Well, you and I can be the parents of a few dozen kids, and I’d still fuck you through the bed. Make you scream and beg for my cock. Breed you over and over. Knot you with several loads of come deep inside.”
Niall moaned. “At this rate, maybe I’ll always be pregnant. We won’t really have a few dozen kids, will we?”
Jag laughed. “No, we’ll see how well you adjust to one baby first.” He pressed several kisses to Niall’s belly, cupping Niall’s sides, rubbing his nose against Niall’s skin. “I can’t believe we created a life in here, sweetheart. A baby from both of us.”
“I still can’t believe it, too,” Niall admitted. He’d looked at his belly several times today, but it was still so flat. He didn’t feel pregnant at all. “Maybe we’ll see some actual evidence in a week? Or a month.”
Pregnancies lasted for nine months, so it made sense that he wasn’t showing yet.
“It’ll sink in,” Jag promised. And he smiled against Niall’s belly, kissing it again. “I’ll protect you and our little one.”
Niall’s heart swelled. “Okay.”
“I should try breeding you again, just to make doubly sure that something took inside you.”
Niall squirmed onto all fours so quickly, he knew he should be embarrassed. But Jag growled and slid into him without even hesitating, filling Niall so full.
“That’s it,” Jag murmured, giving him several deep, hard thrusts. “That’s how you’ll take my cock. Like a good boy.”
Niall came. Jag pinned him down and kissed his neck, his hips rolling against Niall’s in the most sinful way.
Jag bred him that night, and the night after. And all Niall knew in bed, for months after that, was being stuffed with his alpha, surrounded by the warmth and safety of Jag’s arms.
Niall stared at the girthy phallic boat. It was huge. Well, it was longer than a two-person canoe, half of it shaped like a banana, and the other half a cock, complete with veins and pink rounded tip.
“I thought this was just an exaggerated story,” Niall breathed, awestruck. “Not real. But this is an actual, real life dick boat.”
Emmy would probably want to bring it home and live in it.
Jag snorted. “Want a picture with it before we haul it to the lake?”
“Yes! I... I could put it in my newsletter,” Niall said, still staring.
“On second thought, maybe I want to keep this photo all to myself,” Jag said dryly. He held up his phone and took a picture of Niall and the boat.
“We made some really great memories with this boat,” River said. He was an alpha slightly older than Niall, his arm wrapped around his omega Nico. Nico was a professor at Meadowfall College, with goggle-thick glasses and one really short arm sticking out of his shirt sleeve.
Niall wasn’t sure how he and Jag had ended up here—perhaps Nico knew Linus Bentham? Or perhaps Nico knew Kieran, who was Troy and Evan’s boss at the college soccer field.
Either way, Jag had contacted Nico and River, and they’d agreed to lend Niall and Jag their banana-dick-boat for the day.
“We’ll take really good care of it,” Niall promised.
“Have fun!” Nico beamed and waved—with his really short arm, that he was somehow not self-conscious about.
Maybe someday, Niall would be like Nico, and he wouldn’t worry about anyone’s judging eyes.
Jag loaded the boat onto a trailer and helped Niall back into the truck. Then he drove them to the lake on the outskirts of Meadowfall, unloading the boat into the water.
“I feel embarrassed just looking at it,” Niall said. “This can’t be safe for the public.”
“It’s early in the day,” Jag said dryly. “We’ll head to the far shore.”
Niall cringed as Jag helped him onto the boat. Sure, he’d written the word “cock” a thousand times by this point. But being in a dick boat? This was such a strange experience.
More so when Jag set a picnic basket between the seats, and they faced each other as Jag pushed them away from the shore.
Jag rowed powerfully with the oars. Niall stared at his bare, flexing shoulders, his jaw dropping.
“You’re drooling,” Jag said with great amusement.
Niall wiped it off on his sleeve. “I can’t help it if my alpha wants to show off in front of me.”
Jag rumbled, grinning.
At the far side of the lake, Jag opened up the picnic basket to offer Niall a drink. “We used to do this, my family and I.”
Niall’s heart stuttered at the wistfulness in Jag’s face. “With your dads? Is that how you learned to row so well?”
“Yeah. We used to drive up to the mountains in the summer and rent a house by the lake. We’d pack picnic baskets and row out to the middle of the lake—my dads in one canoe, Troy and I in the other. And we’d pull our boats together and share food between the four of us.”
“That sounds really nice,” Niall said. “My parents never did anything like that with me.”
“We’ll do that with our kids,” Jag growled.
Kids. Multiple. Niall opened his mouth to reply.
Except Jag pulled out a banana and peeled it—
The smell hit Niall right in the gut.
“Oh, gods!” Niall gagged. “Not the banana!”
Jag froze, his eyes growing wide. But it was too late.
Niall’s stomach was already heaving; he scrambled for the side of the boat and threw up into the lake, whimpering when Jag leaned in to rub his back.
“Fuck,” Jag muttered. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”
“ I’m sorry,” Niall mumbled. “I didn’t mean to do that down the side of the boat! Oh, gods, how do we wash the boat? I can’t—The banana—”
He caught another whiff and retched again.
Jag began flinging all their bananas into the water; they landed with great splashes.
Except they floated in the blue-green water like miniature boats, and Niall gagged at the sight of them. “I can’t look at them!”
“Fuck! Hang on, sweetheart. Close your eyes.” Water splashed. Jag began to row desperately, until they were far away from the banana dumping grounds. “You can open your eyes now. You’re safe.”
Niall carefully cracked his eyes open. No more bananas. Just a dirty boat. “I should wash—”
“I’ll do it.” Jag balanced himself with a hand on Niall’s seat and reached over the lip of the boat, splashing lake water onto its side to rinse it off. “There, all done.”
“Thank you,” Niall said weakly. He rinsed his mouth with some bottled water and took a few sips, sagging. “I can’t believe that happened.”
“The banana-throwing?” Jag’s smile was crooked.
“I should write that into a book, too.” Niall laughed self-deprecatingly. “I meant me throwing up into the lake, over the side of a boat. Sorry, fishies.”
“Are you feeling better?”
Niall nodded. “I think so.” He rubbed his stomach and looked down at himself. “Was that... morning sickness?”
“Very likely.” Jag’s eyes darkened. He pulled Niall close by his nape and kissed him softly on the lips. “That’s just the start of it. We’re going to be parents, sweetheart. And I want to help as much as I can.”
Niall’s heart swelled. His belly still wasn’t showing, but having this with Jag—it was so good.
He blinked himself into consciousness, trying to figure out where he was.
“Sweetheart?” Jag’s face was right in front of him, his gaze soft. “At least grab a pillow before you fall asleep. You have a crick in your neck, don’t you?”
Niall turned his head. Immediately, pain jabbed down his spine. “Owwww.”
“Damn it.” Jag caught his nape and pressed his fingertips against it, moving them around until Niall cried out. “There, there. I’ll make it better.”
He kneaded the stiff muscles gently, firmly, until the pain eased and Niall could move his head again.
“Better,” Niall whimpered.
“Good.” Jag kissed his forehead. “I should come in and check on you more often. You’ve been falling asleep a lot lately.”
“I’m so tired.” His friends hadn’t been joking about the pregnancy fatigue. Sometimes, Niall felt so tired that he could barely move. On those days, Jag carried him around and fed him things, and brought him to bed.
Jag gathered Niall into his arms now, carrying Niall out of his office. “I’m done for the day. Time for dinner.”
Niall could only cling to him and blink groggily as his alpha brought him out of the house, over to his own house next door. “You painted the window trims.”
“Yeah, I did that yesterday. You don’t remember me showing that to you?”
Niall tried to sift through the fuzz in his head. “I don’t know,” he groaned. “I can’t remember.”
“Shh. It’s okay, you don’t have to. Do you like how the house looks now?”
Niall squinted at the front of the house. It looked so different from... before. He couldn’t recall what “before” was, but— “It looks really nice.”
Jag’s house had pastel purple walls with a deep brown trim around the windows. The eaves, too, were a matching deep brown. A new pebblestone path ran through the front lawn, and several flowering bushes had been planted around its edges. Jag had redone the driveway, too, and... several things around the house that Niall couldn’t remember. It was all amazing though. Like the recessed lights in the ceiling, the framed pictures on the walls, and the door handles that Niall could use.
“I like it,” Niall sighed, slumping when Jag set him carefully on a kitchen chair.
“Good,” Jag rumbled. “What about the interior colors? Do you like them?”
Niall turned slightly so he could see without lifting his head. From this angle, the kitchen looked amazing. The living room walls were a soft peach pink, and the couches looked so comfy. “I like.”
Jag grinned. “I showed you the paint swatches. Do you remember picking them out?”
Niall scrunched up his face. “Vaguely.”
Jag ran his hand through Niall’s hair, then grasped his shoulders and kneaded them. Niall moaned.
He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, but when he next opened his eyes, there was a bowl of mashed potatoes and eggs in front of him, and Jag was by his side.
“Hungry?” Jag murmured, his hand on Niall’s neck.
“A little.”
It was tricky, working around Niall’s morning sickness, but he thought Jag was doing a good job of getting food into his stomach.
Jag held out a spoonful of pickle-flavored scrambled eggs. Niall took it into his mouth and moaned.
“I don’t understand how you find that delicious,” Jag huffed.
“So good. So pickle-y and dill-y.”
“Pickle-y and dill-y? Are you an author?” Jag grinned.
“Hey! Language evolves,” Niall said. “You should see how the kids talk these days. I’m just helping things along.”
“You’re not that much older than them.”
Niall rolled his eyes, smiling. Even though he was much younger than Jag, Jag had never once acted as though Niall was lacking because of his age. He did tease Niall about it though, every so often.
“You might get to take the casts off soon,” Jag said. “Maybe on the next doctor’s visit.”
“I hope so. They suck.” It had been five weeks of Jag doing everything for him—bathing him, clipping his nails, getting him food... Niall kept expecting his alpha to grow tired of it, but Jag was still as patient as ever, feeding him one spoonful at a time.
He leaned into Jag’s side, and Jag leaned back against him.
Jag’s phone buzzed. He picked it up and thumbed at it.
Ever so slightly, he tensed.
Niall wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t been resting his weight against his alpha. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself about, sweetheart.” Jag shoveled some mashed potatoes and carrots into his own mouth, then held out another spoonful of eggs for Niall. “Eat.”
Niall frowned. “Tell me.”
“Everything will be fine. I’ll tell you when it’s over.”
“What is it?” Niall pouted.
Jag nudged the egg into Niall’s mouth. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
He set his phone on the kitchen table, face-down, but there was a tension in his eyes that didn’t go away.
Niall glanced at Jag’s phone and wondered.
“I’m changing the passcode,” Jag said. “Don’t try to look.”
“But that just seems even more suspicious. You’ve never hidden anything from me before,” Niall said, feeling hurt.
Jag melted a little. His gaze was full of regret as he wrapped his arm around Niall, giving him a squeeze. “If I tell you—” Jag’s gaze went faraway for a second, like he was considering the outcome. He tensed again. “This is something you have to trust me on, okay?”
“Fine,” Niall grumbled.
When he managed to grab Jag’s phone later that night, Niall discovered that his alpha had already changed his passcode.
What was so bad that Jag didn’t want him to know?