Chapter 28 Willow
WILLOW
For once, I don’t have any bad dreams.
I wake up, warm and comfortable, not drenched in sweat or feeling like my heart is going a mile a minute. I’m surrounded by three male bodies, and the smell of sex still hangs in the air.
When I shift, I can feel everything that happened yesterday.
The soreness in my ass, and the stretch of my muscles from the exertion.
But I also feel a contentment that goes bone-deep, and I like the physical reminders, the marks they left on me.
It’s proof that what happened was real, and I love that.
Judging from the light filtering into the room, it’s pretty early in the morning.
We all got dressed again after our marathon sex session and ate some dinner before passing out.
The guys are still asleep, Malice snoring softly.
The sound makes me smile, and I prop myself up in bed so I can look at all of them.
They’re all so different, even if they’re pretty similar too.
Each of them is so beautiful in their own way.
Malice with his scars and tattoos and muscles, the gruff look that he usually wears, and the rare moments when it falls away to reveal something softer underneath.
He’s sleeping on his stomach, half his face pressed into the pillow, arm tucked underneath it while he’s out cold.
Vic is curled on his side toward me, his face soft and unbothered in sleep.
It’s probably the only time he really slows down, and with how hard he’s been working lately, it’s good to see him take a rest. He’s just as handsome, sharp in a different way from Malice, but just as deadly when he wants to be.
And then there’s Ransom. He’s tucked on my other side, one arm thrown over me, brown hair a mess over the pillows. He’s the most classically handsome of the three of them, the one who has the model good looks and the easy smiles, but he’s just as dangerous as his brothers.
His long eyelashes flutter against his cheeks, his pierced eyebrow rising as he smiles slowly, clearly not as asleep as I thought he was.
“See something you like?” he whispers, his voice rough from sleep.
“Maybe,” I whisper back. “One of the benefits of having the three of you all sleep in bed with me is being able to look at you, after all.”
He snorts, opening his eyes. “Yeah, I feel the same way. You’re beautiful first thing in the morning.”
I make a face at him, reaching up to touch the matted mess of my dyed hair. “I need a shower, and the back of my head is one big tangle. I’m sure I’ve looked better.”
“Nah.” Ransom shakes his head. “You’ve looked different, or more dressed up, but there’s nothing better than seeing you fresh off a good night of sleep after you were fucked to within an inch of your life the day before. It looks damn good on you.”
My cheeks flush as I chuckle, and he reaches over to run his fingertips over my cheekbone.
“Still so sweet and innocent even now,” he murmurs. “How do you do that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel innocent anymore. I feel… powerful most of the time. Dirty in a good way.”
That makes him grin warmly, and he tips my chin up a little. “Good. That’s how you deserve to feel. It’s not just anyone who could have three men like us at her beck and call. You’ve tamed us pretty well.”
“I wouldn’t say any of you are tame. And I wouldn’t want you to be.”
Ransom draws me closer, pulling me into a kiss, and I go happily. But as his hands start to wander over my body, I’m suddenly struck with a wave of nausea. It isn’t the same as the panicky feeling I used to get after they first got me back from Troy, but it hits me just as hard.
Bile lurches up my throat, and I pull back from Ransom quickly, scrambling out of bed as quickly as I can.
I run to the attached bathroom, one hand over my mouth as my stomach clenches.
There’s barely enough time for me to kneel in front of the toilet before I’m throwing up, the sour taste of it burning my tongue.
It comes in waves, leaving me heaving for a few seconds, and I breathe through my mouth, feeling ill and shaky.
Ransom appears in the bathroom door a second later, and he’s quick to come over and wrap his fingers around my hair, rubbing my back with his other hand while I try to breathe through it.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, and I can hear the concern in his voice. “Is it… was last night too much?”
I shake my head, bracing my forearm on the toilet seat so that I can rest my forehead against it.
“No, I don’t think so. I felt fine in the moment.
Overwhelmed, but in a way that felt good.
And then this morning when I woke up, I felt a little sore, but I expected that. This has to be something different.”
“What did you eat yesterday?”
“I don’t know. The usual?” I try to think back. Vic made me lunch, a neatly cut sandwich and a bowl of fruit, and before that, I had cereal for breakfast. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“You didn’t order out at all?” he presses.
I shake my head, and then instantly regret the movement when my stomach gurgles unhappily. “No, it was all stuff we had here.”
“So probably not food poisoning.” He stops, as if something just occurred to him. “Or regular poisoning.” I glance up at him in alarm, and he shrugs. “I mean, Olivia is trying to have you killed. We have to consider—”
As if just the thought of that is enough to turn my stomach, I cut Ransom off by throwing up again, this time clutching on to the toilet as I heave violently.
Ransom helps me through it, and then gets me a glass of water.
I gulp it down gratefully, even if my stomach is still unhappy.
I know he’s got a point about the possibility of me being poisoned, but I don’t even want to think about that. And most likely, if Olivia was going to have someone poison me, it would be with something fast-acting. Something I wouldn’t have a chance to recover from.
There used to be times before I met the guys, where the combination of working long hours, dealing with school work, and barely eating anything because I couldn’t afford too much would leave me feeling sick sometimes, but it was never anything like this.
Never anything that came on so suddenly in the morning—
I suck in a breath as soon as I have that thought, my chest going tight. Hopefully it’s just a coincidence that I’m feeling this sick out of nowhere first thing in the morning, but…
With shaky fingers, I reach over to rub at my left arm, feeling for the place where my birth control implant is supposed to be.
But the usual bump of it isn’t there.
It’s gone.
My stomach drops out.
“Oh my god,” I whisper. “Oh my god. Oh fuck.”
I wrap my arms around myself, trying to take deep breaths, trying to calm down, but it’s no good.
When Troy abducted me in Mexico, I was drugged, barely conscious for an unknown amount of time as he transported me back to his safe house outside Detroit.
I’ve never had any real idea what he or his men did to me during that time, although I was well aware that at some point, they stripped me and changed my clothes.
I didn’t want to think about it too much, since every time I did, it just made me feel more horrified and helpless.
But the truth is, he had the perfect opportunity to remove my birth control implant during that time.
After the men got me back from Troy, I was beat up and bruised, with cuts and lacerations all over.
It didn’t even occur to me to check for it, partly because it never occurred to me that Troy might want to get me pregnant.
“Oh god,” I murmur again, the words thick and choked.
“Willow?” Ransom comes over and crouches on the floor beside me, but I barely notice him, caught up in my own panic.
He strokes his fingers through my hair, brushing it back from my face.
His hands are gentle, but I feel like I’m removed from the moment.
Like everything is happening to someone else, and I’m watching it from behind a pane of glass.
It’s all muted and distorted, and I have enough of a handle on things to recognize that I’m in some sort of shock.
“You’re scaring me, angel. Please talk to me. What’s wrong?”
The concern in Ransom’s voice cuts through the fog in my head a little, and I blink up at him.
“I…”
My voice sounds wrecked, half from the panic and half from my throat being raw from throwing up. I shake my head, not even sure how to begin to get something like this out.
How can I tell him?
How can I even come to terms with something like this?
A part of my mind casts around for some other explanation. Some other reason that I might be feeling sick. If I am pregnant, maybe the father is one of the brothers and not Troy.
But I know it doesn’t line up like that. Up until Troy captured me, I was on birth control. The implant was safely tucked away in my arm, doing the work of keeping me from getting knocked up. There was no real chance of me getting pregnant.
And now…
I cover my face, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes as if I could block out everything if I just try hard enough. My head is spinning out of control, and my heart is racing so fast it feels like it might beat out of my chest.
“Shit,” Ransom murmurs. “You’re pale as a fucking ghost. I need you to tell me what’s wrong. Was it poison? Do you feel worse? If we need to get you to a hospital or something, then we have to move—”
“No. That’s not it,” I manage to choke out.
“Then what is it?”
My entire body rebels at the idea of saying it out loud, but I know I have to tell him. I can’t do this on my own, and they’ll all find out soon enough if I’m right.
“It’s not poison making me sick. And it’s not something I ate.
My period is a bit late, but I didn’t really think much of it.
I thought it was just stress from dealing with Olivia and moving here and everything, but…
” I shake my head. “The timing lines up a little too well. I think… I think I’m pregnant. ”