Chapter 9
Around the same time Qylar was showering, Kenji stood under his own spray until it turned cold and even then he didn’t rush to turn the water off.
He dried his body robotically, his mind spinning.
After hanging the towel, he looked himself over in the mirror.
He didn’t look pregnant, but it had only been a couple of months, and he thought it took a little while for it to show.
He hadn’t paid all that much attention in health class in school.
Why bother worrying about conception when he wouldn’t be knocking anyone up?
Little had he known that someone could knock him up.
And health class hadn’t covered alien egg pregnancies or mpreg.
Eggpreg?
That was a kink he’d never seen before, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. He turned to the side and slid his hand down his abdomen, not noticing any difference in his reflection.
Nothing he could see, anyway. He walked from the bedroom and collapsed across his bed, drifting off into a rocky sleep.
When he awoke, he checked the clock and realized he needed to be at work in an hour.
He considered calling out. His head was all over the place and potentially dealing with a bunch of drunk assholes might not end up going too well.
Rent had to be paid, though.
Kenji stared up at the ceiling, the pinging thoughts leaving him unable to move.
Call it shock or his executive dysfunction going haywire, but he was royally fucked.
By an ex-prince who was also an alien, too.
Hell, maybe his rich fantasy life had finally erupted and was spewing itself all over his real one and none of it was happening.
That seemed to make a lot more sense. He reached for his phone and shot off a text to his boss—who was going to lose it so close to opening—and called out.
After dropping the phone to his bed, he ran his palm over his abs again, ignoring the dinging of his phone.
With all the times he’d fantasied about mpreg and being a Cavill-Momoa production himself, one would think he’d feel elated that it was possible. Reality was far from fantasy romance, and all he could feel was terrified.
I might not be pregnant at all, though.
Qylar said he wasn’t really sure he’d released them.
Then he’d felt around in Kenji’s stomach and hadn’t felt anything.
If there were two eggs that big inside him—Qylar would’ve felt something, surely.
He sucked in his gut and pressed his fingers around, searching for round, hard objects in his gut.
There was nothing that he could feel. The eggs had had two months to grow, so they’d be even bigger and he’d feel them.
He climbed out of bed and returned to the mirror. He sucked in his gut again and turned to the side. And then the other.
No way. I’m not pregnant. Can’t be.
After a few more minutes of gazing at his mostly flat stomach and hearing it growl, Kenji scooted back into his bedroom, threw on some clothes, and headed out for something to eat.
He walked through his neighborhood and read through the half dozen angry messages from his boss before ending up in a Chinese restaurant he’d never had a chance to check out.
Once he’d ordered his wanton soup and lo mein, he took a seat on one of the ancient vinyl chairs and glanced around the restaurant.
On the large photo menu board, where the images looked nothing like the food actually served on the menu, there was a bowl of steaming soup at the top.
With two purple tentacles flopping outside the bowl.
He stared at them a moment, feeling almost surreal with the way his head felt.
Kenji closed his eyes and scrubbed his face, hoping they wouldn’t be there when he reopened them, but there they sat.
His mind shifted to Qylar in his shifted, tentacled form, swimming aggressively his way—and how those tentacles had dwarfed him once caught.
Although he’d been terrified and fought with all he had left, there had still been a sense of peace, sensing the creature was like him. When he’d seen Qylar appear where the tentacled alien had stood, he’d stopped breathing for a few seconds, his mind stretched too thin.
The woman behind the counter walked over with his bag of food, a smile on her face.
“Thank you,” he said, standing and slightly bowing to her.
“Good boy,” she said with a smile. She reached over and squeezed his upper arm. “You have a good night.”
He didn’t feel like such a good boy, especially after the way he’d ditched Qylar without a word—but he’d needed quiet against the loudness of his head.
After walking back to his apartment building, he climbed up the two flights of stairs. When he walked in, Tacoma was on the couch, making out with one of the many identical-looking men he made out with on the regular. As soon as he shut the door, they stopped and gazed at him.
“Sorry. I’m just headed to my room.”
“I thought you worked tonight,” Tacoma said.
“I was supposed to… but my schedule got changed.” He wasn’t sure why he lied other than he didn’t want to hear any shit about paying his rent on time. He’d never been late in the many months he’d lived there, but Tacoma never missed an opportunity to make him feel like he repeatedly had.
He might as well not have bothered lying.
“I hope you’re going to make enough to cover rent,” Tacoma said.
Kenji stopped in his tracks and glared at Tacoma.
Tacoma, who’d never looked intimidated since Kenji had moved in, did for once. He lifted both palms in a show of surrender. “Sorry… just want to make sure there’s no issue.”
“Has there ever been?” Kenji asked.
“No,” Tacoma said, his voice low.
“Then stop nagging me about it,” Kenji said before continuing on to his bedroom.
Seconds after he closed the door, a knock sounded. He whipped it open and glared at Tacoma again.
“Don’t be rude. I have a message for you,” Tacoma said.
“What is it?”
“Some big, huge guy ran into me at the Eagle last night. He said he’d been looking for you since the last time you were there.
He recognized me and asked for your number.
I didn’t give it to him, though. He seemed like he might be a stalker.
” Tacoma handed over a slip of paper. “He asked me to give you his instead. Not sure if I spelled his name right, but I figured you’d know who he was. ”
“Qylar?”
“Yeah,” Tacoma replied.
Kenji scoffed. “Well, he wasn’t lying about looking for me.”
“You two already caught up?”
Kenji nodded. “Late last night.”
“You fuck him again?”
“No.”
“Is it because he’s too big a boy for you?” Tacoma asked with a grin.
“Something like that.”
Tacoma grabbed the slip of paper from Kenji’s hand, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the wastebasket. “If you don’t want him, I do.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want him.”
“Ken… look…”
“Kenji.”
“You really don’t have the experience for a guy like him. I do. He’s into leather… I’m into leather… and that’s not really your scene. Add in the fact he tore you up, why put yourself through that? I can handle a big boy with no problem.”
“You’re literally making out with a guy out on the couch… and trying to steal my guy at the same time, Tacoma.”
“Him?” Tacoma said, waving toward the living room. “Just a distraction. I was waiting to see if Qylar would soon be available and now it looks like he is.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t be interested in you. Did you ever think of that?”
“Actually, he said if you told him he was too much for you, he’d give me a try.”
Kenji stared at Tacoma. “No… he didn’t.”
Tacoma’s smile faded. “He straight up said… if Kenji tells me to my face that I’m too much, I’ll give you a try. Dig his number out of the trash and ask him yourself.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Go for it.”
Kenji laid the bag of food on his bed and rooted for the crumbled ball. After fishing it out, he flattened it and dialed the number.
“Hello?”
“Qylar?”
There was a brief pause. “Kenji?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so glad you called. I was worried about you,” Qylar said.
“Hey, did you tell Tacoma you’d give him a try if I said you were too much for me?”
Another pause.
“Kenji, it’s not how it sounds.”
“Oh? And how else is it supposed to sound? You want my roommate, you can have him. The one person you’re never fucking again is me.”
Kenji hung up and immediately blocked Qylar’s number. After tossing it onto the bed, he turned to Tacoma, who wore a satisfied grin. “Get the fuck out of my room!”
“Sore loser,” Tacoma said, pulling the door closed. “By the way, I didn’t think you were going to be here tonight and my guy on the couch is kind of a screamer. You might want to put on some headphones if you’ve got them.”
Tacoma grinned before he shut the door.
I’ve got to move out of this hellhole. Not going to be easy if I keep ditching shifts.
A sudden wave of nausea hit Kenji, and he raced for the toilet, making it just in time to lose the contents of his stomach.
He stared down into the bowl, panting and waiting to see if he was done. After a few minutes and nothing else, he washed his face off and wobbled to the bed. He stared at the bag of food and shook his head. A waste of money. His stomach was a shitshow.
After sliding the bag off the bed and setting it on the floor, he gingerly lay in bed and covered himself in a cocoon of blankets. Tears formed in his eyes. How much worse was his day going to get?
His phone buzzed beside him on the bed.
Sure it was work trying to guilt him into coming in again, he reached out to silence his phone. Spying the screen, it was a text from a number he didn’t recognize.