Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Eric groaned dramatically and slid into the driver’s seat of the car while I found myself sandwiched between my mates in the back. “No. No. You’re not going to have sex in my shower, or anywhere else in my personal space. Understood?”
Brandt snorted as he buckled himself into the passenger seat and met my gaze in the rear-view mirror. “He did not mention the labs or the clinic rooms.”
“Ugh,” Eric complained, pulling away from the curb. “I hate you all.” The curl of his lips gave his amusement away, though, and I laughed.
“Just wait until you’ve got a mate or two of your own,” I played into the game, feeling lighter as we put more and more distance between ourselves and the cell I’d been held in.
The conversation was also keeping my anxiety about the baby at bay.
“You’ll be christening every room in the clinic yourself. ”
Eric’s cheeks turned a little pink, but he huffed, “What makes you think I haven’t already been defiling the clinic after everyone else has gone home?”
Bran and I exchanged amused glances. “Uh, because we know you, baby brother,” I teased. “The day you choose getting lucky over your science-y stuff is the day pigs learn to fly.”
He snorted, then muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “Oink oink.”
Narrowing my gaze, I opened my mouth to ask him about it, but a wave of nausea hit me out of nowhere. “Pull over,” I urged tightly.
Eric jerked in surprise, eyes flitting to the mirror to meet my gaze. “What?”
“Gonna hurl. Pull over.”
Thankfully, it was late enough that his swerve from one lane to the side of the road was pulled off quickly and safely, with no other cars in sight.
I launched myself over Serge’s lap, barely making it to the dirt before what little slop I had managed to force down for my night-time meal made its way back up and out.
Hands rubbed at my back and held my greasy hair back, while I heaved and spat, and someone else handed me a bottle of water once the worst of the episode seemed to have passed.
I sipped at it, swishing the room-temperature liquid around my mouth to clear out the acrid taste before spitting it out and drinking the next few sips.
“Well,” Eric mused as I re-settled in the middle of the back seats, “the morning sickness is a good sign that everything is progressing as we’d like it to.”
“Great,” my reply was doused with liberal amounts of sarcasm, “love that for me.”
But as Dex chuckled and Serge kissed my temple again, I had to admit that, despite the discomfort, I was relieved. If the throwing up was a good sign, I wasn’t going to bitch about it.
Well, not too much, anyway.
“And there we are,” Eric smiled as he pressed the ultrasound wand hard into my lower abdomen. Serge and Dex leaned over me in what seemed to be coordinated movement, the pair of them squinting at the monitor screen.
I didn’t need to see it to feel a tidal wave of relief and joy wash over me.
Eric’s relaxed demeanor and his smile were enough to tell me everything I needed to know.
He shooed my mates backwards and rolled his eyes, gesturing at the screen suspended from the ceiling, specifically placed there for expectant parents to see what he could see.
“Up there, gentlemen. You can’t see much right now, but the black space here—” the pointer on the screen wriggled around in the described black spot “—is the gestational sac and this—” the pointer now aimed towards a gray blob inside the black “—is the baby. It’s too early to expect a heartbeat, so I’m not concerned that I haven’t picked one up yet.
Everything seems to be developing right on schedule as far as I can tell. ”
I felt a flicker of disappointment that we weren’t able to hear the heartbeat yet, but hearing that everything looked right made up for it. “I’m really pregnant,” I murmured in awe, finally allowing myself to properly enjoy the news. “Holy shit.”
“Don’t think we’re not going to talk about you hiding an alpha and a three-way bond from me, Sage,” Eric gently chided as he continued to run the ultrasound wand over my belly,
I frowned. “We’re not bonded.”
“That feels like semantics at this point. Plus, you can’t tell me you’re not going to go home and make it official the second I let you go.”
“We’re not,” Sergio told him seriously before I could reply.
My heart sank. “We’re not?” The question was hard to force out around the lump in my throat.
“You’re getting some proper food into you and then we’re making sure you sleep well first,” Dexter told me, gripping my hand and squeezing it to let me know that he knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Oh.” I said lamely.
“And then we’re going to claim the fuck out of you,” he finished with a grin, turning the conspiratorial smile on our alpha. “Aren’t we, darling?”
Sergio nodded. “We are indeed.”
“I don’t need to hear any of this,” Eric snarked.
“Really?” I couldn’t resist prodding, affecting innocence with wide eyes and a sweet tone. “You don’t want to find out how the magic happens when there are three people involved?”
“Argh, you know I do. I just don’t want to hear the flirting. That part isn’t necessary.”
“Pfffft,” Dex cut in. “Give us a break, Eric, we only just got him back. I think we’re entitled to a bit of flirting.”
My younger brother was quiet for a long moment before he nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
I pouted at my omega lover, feeling a stab of empathy for Eric. He was probably just as upset by what had happened to me as my mates were. I knew Brandt had been.
Dexter sighed and looked back at Eric. “No need to be sorry. We’re just stirring you. This is how I’ve always dealt with highly emotional situations. They make me uncomfortable, so I deflect.”
Sergio tugged Dex in for a hug while the corners of Eric’s lips lifted. “I feel like I should be disturbed by how easily I relate to that, only I just bury myself in my” —he rolled his eyes at me— “science-y shit.”
“Stuff,” I corrected lightly, winking. “I called it science-y stuff.”
“You’re becoming him now,” Eric moaned, tossing me a towel. “That’s even more disturbing.”
“Just think,” I continued to tease, wiping the lubricant off my bare stomach with the towel, “we’ll be raising another one. Together.”
The exaggerated look of horror that statement earned me had me laughing harder than I could recall in recent memory. Eric turned his attention to my alpha, “This is your doing.”
Sergio just looked smug. “I fail to see the problem.”
Eric slumped in his seat dramatically. “Oh, delightful. Now there are three of you.”
Those words, more than anything, made me glow inside. He wasn’t wrong. There were three of us, and we were perfect for each other.
Try as I might to convince them otherwise, my mates insisted on their plan for me to eat and sleep before they would do anything more than cuddle with me.
I loved how much they cared about me, but the shower I’d had at Eric’s before the ultrasound had been invigorating, and once we learned that the baby —and, holy shit, I was having a baby!
— was okay, I’d felt a whole new lease on life. And I was suddenly horny.
So incredibly horny.
“Please,” I whined, rubbing up along Serge’s side, “I’ve missed you so much, alpha.”
He growled. “Stop trying to tempt me, beautiful. You need your rest.”
“I don’t want to rest. I want to fuck.”
Dexter’s laugh was damn near musical as it rang out behind me, then the warmth of his hand on my hip followed. I squirmed as his long fingers tickled me. “You spend a few nights behind bars and suddenly you’re a naughty boy, hmm?”
I craned my neck and batted my lashes at him, aiming for coy. “You like me being naughty, don’t you Dex?”
The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled while the blue orbs themselves glinted with warmth and affection.
“Nice try, baby, but you heard both your brothers. You really should take it easy tonight.” The hand on my hip slid around to my front, and my breathing hitched as it came to rest over my stomach.
Neither of my mates had touched me this way yet.
My heart hammered as Dexter’s voice turned gentle and sweet.
Far sweeter than I’d ever heard him. I liked it. I liked it a lot.
“For him,” he crooned softly. “Or her. Or them. Whatever they choose to be. Please, baby?”
Gods damn it.
My mate knew exactly which buttons to press, didn’t he?
My arousal melted away, replaced by love and a much deeper, achier feeling of longing that extended beyond the physical. Then, suddenly, I was tired. So tired. My eyelids were heavy, and my mattress felt so soft and luxurious, and my mates were so warm and smelled like home and safety…
I didn’t remember falling asleep at all.
The next morning, I woke up with a start, feeling disoriented and a little panicked. It only lasted a few moments, before my mates’ scents and low murmured voices registered in my sleep-addled brain.
“Shh, beautiful,” Sergio’s lips brushed the top of my head and I arched into the contact like a cat, “go back to sleep. It’s early. I’m sorry we woke you.”
“You didn’t,” I insisted, rubbing my cheek against his shoulder, “This did.” I rocked my morning wood into his thigh, relishing in his hiss of pleasure. “You promised, alpha.”
“I promised that I—oh, gods, Sage,” he groaned and arched into the hand I had slid into his pajama pants, finding his cock just as hard as mine, “I…I promised I’d wait until you were well rest—Sage.”
So sue me, the temptation to squeeze and stroke the prize I had found was too strong to fight. “I am perfectly well rested,” I informed him, borrowing from Dex’s usual brand of cheek. “C’mon, Serge. I’ve been dreaming of your knot since you first popped one.”
His resolve crumbled right in front of my eyes, filling me with satisfaction and pride. And, hopefully, I’d soon be full of his gorgeous cock, too.
“I’m allowed to watch, aren’t I?” Dex purred the question, resting his chin on my shoulder before he started mouthing at my bare neck and back.