Chapter 22 #2
Apparently, ever since Reed and Ledger ganged up on me, Ledge doesn’t openly glare at Reed anymore either.
Which is great but I hate that there’s so much testosterone around me.
The only person that I know who does glare at him is my ballet teacher, Miss Petrova.
Aside from forcing her to apologize to me all those months ago, Reed gets on her nerves. Because he likes to watch my lessons and Miss Petrova thinks it’s disruptive.
But of course Reed doesn’t listen.
He still sits there and still watches me awkwardly hold my poses and heave and pant as my pregnancy progresses and my bigger belly messes with my balance. But my doctor has said that as long as I don’t exert myself too much and do it all under professional supervision, it should be fine.
“You know, you’re starting to creep out other girls too. That you sit there and watch me and don’t even listen to our teacher,” I tell him when he opens the door to his Mustang to drive me back home after class one evening.
“And I should care about that why?”
“Because they might call the cops on you,” I reply, raising my eyebrows. “Because you’re acting like a stalker.”
He narrows his predator animal eyes. “I know all the cops, remember?”
“So what, you’re going to keep stalking me then? Like a criminal.”
“No, like a villain. And you’re pregnant with my baby.” He flicks his eyes over me, over my bun and sweaty neck, my white leotard and ice blue tutu that hides my pregnant belly. “It’s my fucking job to stalk you.”
I run my hands over my tutu, cradling my belly. “But —”
His eyes follow the gesture as usual before he murmurs, cutting me off, “Besides, you should tell your Miss Petrova that this isn’t the first time I’ve stalked you in a ballet class. So she should really stop gasping every time she sees me watching you.”
“What?”
His wolf eyes that I know are going to be the death of me sparkle then.
They glow like his beautiful vampire skin as his lips tip up in a smirk.
“Long before I made you spin for me in the woods, I used to watch you spin on your toes at Blue Madonna. I used to watch you leap and jump across the dance floor while your fucking Miss Petrova smiled at you proudly.”
My skin wakes up in goosebumps but I know it’s not the winter breeze that’s making it happen. It’s him.
“You used to watch me?” I whisper, looking up at him. “Before the woods.”
“Why do you think I blackmailed you into dancing for me that night?”
“B-because that’s what you do. That’s your thing.”
His smirks changes into a lazy, languid smile as he confesses, “Yeah, that. But also because you were my tight little ballerina long before you knew it.”
My heart goes up on its tiptoes and I do too. “But you never said anything.”
“If I’d wanted you to know, Fae, I would’ve told you. Now get in the car.”
This is crazy and incredible and exactly like the pregnancy book, isn’t it? That he was trying to hide that day.
And I can’t help but ask, “Why do you hide it, the things that… that might make someone like you?”
I don’t know where the question came from but now that I’ve asked it, it feels like the most important thing I could ask him. The most important thing that he could tell me.
“If you think watching a girl dance through the window like a creepy stalker is something worth liking, then you need to reevaluate your whole thinking, Fae,” he says with a tight jaw. “And I don’t want people to like me. I’m pretty happy being hated. Now, for the last time: get in the car.”
And I do.
With a spinning heart and heaving breaths.
With something moving and melting inside of me. With my stomach fluttering, and I know she’s melting inside of me too.
At him.
At her daddy.
Melting and melting like thick raindrops on the windows, on the roof for which he cleaned those gutters last week.
Melting like the honey when he makes me come.
Because he does.
He does make me come every night.
And God, when he does, stars explode in my veins. I feel it in my stomach, my womb, my trembling thighs and my ballerina toes.
Ever since I forgave him and he apologized to me and my body on his knees three weeks ago, he does it every night. He apologizes with his hands and his mouth. With his warm and wet and sucking kisses.
His kisses that taste like cupcakes, my favorite dessert in the world, the most addicting dessert in the world. So is it any wonder that I’ve become addicted to his kisses? To his mouth.
To him.
Some of it could be my hormones again because God, I’m horny all the time. But I know that majority of the credit goes to him and his sexiness.
In fact, I can’t even go to sleep without him.
Before when I was really sick, I’d pass out in the bed and the only way I knew that he stayed with me in the same house, not in the same room or bed, was because he’d always be there if and when I woke up during the night to throw up again.
These days though, I remember everything.
I remember how he puts me to sleep. How after making me come, he kisses my pregnant belly and my forehead before cuddling with me.
Gosh, his cuddles.
My gorgeous villain gives the best cuddles ever.
Maybe because he’s so much larger in comparison to me. So when he spoons me, he covers my entire body. When he settles his muscular arm on my waist and presses his splayed palm on my belly where our baby sleeps, he spans my entire torso.
And when I close my eyes at night, I feel safe.
I feel replete and satisfied.
But I know he doesn’t.
I know that.
Because that’s all he ever does.
He makes me come but he never takes his own pleasure.
He doesn’t ever ask anything from me. He doesn’t ever fuck me, and yes, I know it’s a bad word. But I don’t care. I’m bad for him. I always have been.
And yes, I know that fucking will make everything complicated. But I feel so restless without him. I feel so achy. My belly is filled with his baby but I’m so empty.
So what’s a little dirty talk if it means he’ll do it? He’ll do me and put himself out of this misery. And me too.
I don’t even know why he’s holding back.
I’ve forgiven him, haven’t I? He gets to touch me everywhere, every night. So why would he torture himself like this? Why wouldn’t he take that final step?
Especially when every day he comes to pick me up at school, I see how tense he is. How after a long day of work when he comes home for dinner, how agitated he appears.
That job is killing him and he doesn’t even talk about it; I tried one more time, just casually, to strike up a conversation but he shut me down. So I’m at my wit’s end.
I don’t know what to do, how to give him relief.
So I try this.
I try to make him take me, tempt him as much as I can.
In fact, one night when he’s kissing me on the bed, I make the bold move of pressing my hand on his dick. “You’re hard.”
He is.
He is rubbing me right there, right where my pussy is, his cock.
It’s making a small hill inside his jeans. And it’s so thick and swollen that he always has to pop the button of his jeans to let it breathe. If I focus hard enough I can see the dark shadow of his cock pressing up against the edge of his pants.
“Shut up, Fae,” he growls, taking my hand off his cock and putting it up above my head on the pillow.
Glancing up at him, I say, “But it’s hurting you.”
He grabs my hand harder. “It’s fine.”
“I can help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
I lick my lips. “I can suck on it like you suck on me.”
“Stop talking.”
“Or I can jack you off,” I say from under him, moving my bare pregnant belly against his hard t-shirt-covered abs; because he doesn’t even take his clothes off while he strips me and makes me lose my mind. “I can use my hands. I’ve never done it but if you teach me what to do I —”
“Stop fucking talking.”
“Or you could… you could put it in me.” I arch up, rubbing my bare tits on his chest. “In my pussy. And this time you won’t even…”
“I won’t even what?”
God, I’m shameless.
So shameless to tempt him like this.
But I can’t stop. I won’t.
I need him to stop torturing himself. I need him to give me what I want.
“You won’t even have to pull out,” I say and his eyes become slits. “You could come inside me, inside my pussy. You could give me all your pain, all your hurt. Because I won’t get pregnant.”
“Yeah, because you already are,” he says, in a guttural voice, his one hand holding mine over my head and the other buried in my hair, all tight and punishing.
“Yes.”
“Because I already did that. I already blew my wad inside you before I had the sense to pull out and knocked you up.”
Biting my lip, I nod. “So you can come inside me all you want now, can’t you? You can fill me up, Reed. Until I’m flowing with you. Until my pussy is all creamy with your cum and leaking and —”
“Stop. Fucking. Talking.”
And then he kills my words himself with his lips as he kisses me and doesn’t stop.
Not until he’s completely overpowered me and made me come again and again.
Until I forget everything.
By the time my twenty-week appointment comes around and they tell us the sex of the baby, I don’t think Reed will ever end this torture on himself.
And I don’t think I’ll ever stop crying, because I get what I always wanted.
It’s a girl.
I’m having a baby girl.
“It’s a girl,” someone whispers, and I think it’s me. And when I do, I feel a pressure on my hand. Because the guy whose hand I’m holding, lying on the exam table, has squeezed my fingers.
He’s wrapped his long, strong fingers that I adore around mine tightly.
I look up and my ballerina heart skips a beat.
I’ve never seen him happier than this. It’s not an outright, bright happiness though. It’s a subtle thing.
The lines around his wolf eyes are crinkled slightly and the ones around his ruby red lips are loose and relaxed. And there’s this glint in his gaze and an easiness in his posture that usually disappears in the evening after work.
“We’re having a girl,” I tell him as if he doesn’t know.
“With blonde hair and blue eyes,” he whispers back, staring down at me.