Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Some girls in love don’t get their happy ending.
The men they love don’t love them back. The men they love can’t love them back. And so they are forever blue.
They’re forever sad and aching.
They’re forever longing.
But my Halo won’t be one of them. My Halo will be loved.
By the first man she’ll ever love.
The man with sparkling vampire skin and glinting wolf eyes. Her daddy.
He will carry her in his muscular arms, play with her with those fascinating hands. He’ll even put her on his shoulders so she feels like she’s at the top of the world. He’ll make her smile and laugh. He’ll wipe her tears off, bandage her scrapes. Maybe teach her to ride a bicycle.
He’ll protect her from everything bad. Or at least he’ll try to.
I know that.
I know that he’ll lose sleep over how to protect her, how to make her life easier, how to give her everything. How to make all her dreams come true.
I’ll take my happiness in that.
I’ll watch them together, our baby and him, and all the blue inside of me will fade for a while.
For now though, I’ll let myself cry.
In the shower, at school during lunch, when I’m shut up in the restroom. Even in class, sitting in the last row while teachers are explaining to a bunch of uninterested, delinquent girls how a heart functions or why Romeo and Juliet is the greatest Shakespeare play ever written.
It’s not.
It’s tragic and painful. There is nothing great about tragedy.
There is nothing epic in keeping two people who love each other apart.
Heartbreak is not glorious. It’s not poetic or an inspiration for generations to come.
Stupid, sadistic, sick Shakespeare.
Although crying in class is much harder, not because my teacher cares that a pregnant girl is sitting with her head down all the way in the back, possibly not paying attention.
But because my girls are there and they worry over me.
Especially Salem, who always sits right adjacent to me.
Something that accidentally happened in the beginning of the year and that’s how our friendship started.
But I tell her and the other two that it’s the pregnancy.
That’s my excuse for everything.
I’m crying because I’m hormonal.
And I am.
The only good thing is that I can eat meat now; as soon as I entered my twenty-third week, something shifted and I started craving meat again. So peanut butter ice cream with beef jerky bits on top? That’s the food of the gods. That’s like my pregnancy anthem.
Other people don’t think so though.
Especially the guy who got me pregnant in the first place.
Scooping a spoonful of my ice cream, I put it in my mouth and look up to find him watching me. With my mouth full, I ask, “What?”
As he stands by the door, his wolf eyes rove over my face, my ballooned-up cheeks, my propped-up form on the bed, surrounded by pillows.
It’s only late March but I get so hot these days that I’ve ditched his hoodies — though I keep them close if I want to smell him and he’s not around to lend me his sexy body — and started to wear all the maternity stuff that people have gotten for me.
So I’m wearing a white, frilly, sleeveless nightie that goes down to the middle of my calves.
He spends a lot of time on that, on studying my nightie and my baby bump.
When he comes back to my face, I swallow the ice cream and glare at him.
“You think it’s weird, isn’t it? That I’m eating this.
You think peanut butter and beef jerky is weird.
” I stab my spoon at him when all he does is stare at me with amused eyes and lips that are on the verge of smiling at me.
“But let me tell you something: you are weird. You, Roman. For not liking it. For thinking that my ice cream is weird. And it’s not as if it’s my fault that I like it, okay?
Halo likes it. She wants it all the time and everybody thinks I’m crazy.
And it’s all your fault. Your fault, yes.
You’re the one who got me pregnant and now I’m eating weird ice cream and I’m fat and my ankles are always swollen and my… ”
I trail off because he’s moved.
He was leaning against the door, his arms folded. But now he’s straightened up, his hands at his sides, his eyes on my verge-of-crying face as he approaches the bed.
He still has his work clothes on, white shirt and dark dress pants, and suddenly I don’t want to cry anymore.
I want to kiss him.
I want him to kiss me because God, he’s so sexy. All masculine and strong and tall. And pretty.
So pretty that I’m breathless by the time he reaches me, which only takes him about three seconds, but still. And when he does, he bends over and grabs my face. “And what?”
I lean up to his touch. “What?”
“Your ankles are swollen and what?”
“My fingers. They’re swollen too.”
He glances down at my hands. One is holding my ice cream tub with the spoon in it but the other’s free and he grabs it. “These fingers?”
Sniffling, I nod. “Yes.”
And without taking his eyes off me, he goes on to kiss every single one of them, making me curl my toes and squirm. “Roman…”
That’s all I can say. His name.
I’ve been saying that a lot these days. Ever since I realized he missed it, missed me calling him that.
So now I call him that all the time. Without occasion, without reason. Just like that.
“And your ice cream is weird, huh?” he rasps, still bending over me.
I nod. “Poe laughed at me.”
“Yeah?”
He knows all about my St. Mary’s friends now.
“Yes. And Salem too. Even Wyn. And she never laughs at anyone. People think I’m weird, Roman.”
His eyes have that same melting color that I’ve come to like, liquid mercury. “But you’re not, are you?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Then what are you?”
My heart spins in my chest as I whisper, “Your fairy.”
Possessiveness flickers through his features when I say that. “Fuck yeah, you are. My glorious, gorgeous, pregnant fairy.”
“And hot. I’m always hot. And I have to pee like all the time,” I whisper, almost accusingly, wet between my legs. “You did that.”
This pregnancy thing is hard.
He breathes me in, smells my hair, kisses my forehead. “My poor, sweet fairy.”
“I’m fat too. All slow and awkward. I’m an awkward, clumsy ballerina, Roman.”
I can’t dance anymore though. It’s become more difficult.
But Miss Petrova, despite being super angry at Reed still, helps me with stretches and exercises. Which is good and will keep me in the loop.
Oh, and I’ve also started Lamaze classes, and of course, Reed goes with me. And of course I cry in class when I see all the happy, cuddly couples. And when I do and Reed wipes my tears with a concerned, clueless frown, I tell him it’s the hormones.
I sniffle, continuing, “You did this to me.”
“Yeah, and this too.” His arm reaches out and he spreads his fingers over my belly, rubbing his palm, and Halo kicks back, making his eyes go tender. “Made my sweet fairy all swollen and ripe. And horny. You horny, Fae? You want my cock?”
God yes, I’m horny.
I’m horny, horny, horny.
I’ve become a devourer. I eat and eat and I need his cock. I need him. My Roman.
All the time.
“Yes. Give it to me, Roman. Make it all better,” I order and he does.
He bends down to kiss me. He bends down to lick the peanut butter ice cream off my mouth and eat it himself. To keep kissing me until I forget everything else.
The ice cream, my hormones, the fact that I’m heartbroken.
When he plays with my lips and my body, he makes me forget about my heartbreak.
Which means nights are better for me.
The time when all heartbroken and lovelorn girls cry in their pillows, I cry different kinds of tears. I cry in his arms, his body covering me.
Ever since we had sex a few weeks ago, Reed has been insatiable.
He has been a fiend.
It’s like something has been unlocked inside of him, years of pent-up desire, years of lust, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
My gorgeous villain has no clue what to do with me, with the fairy that he’s finally captured.
So he does everything.
Whatever he wants to do. Bite, suck, fuck, love.
Some nights he makes me come — once, twice, three times — with his mouth between my legs and his large hand covering my swollen belly. As if to make sure that our baby is safe and sleeping while at the same time reveling in the fact that he did this to me.
That my body is his wonderland, his playground, and he’s changed the landscape of my bones and muscles.
When he touches me like this, I don’t feel fat. I don’t feel ungainly and awkward.
I feel beautiful.
He makes me feel beautiful with his hand on my belly.
After he’s satisfied, when he’s finally had his fill of my pussy, he emerges from between my legs, all naked and glowing, my juices running down his chin, his stubbly throat, his muscular chest.
He settles himself between my spread and languid thighs before giving me what I crave the most.
His cock.
He enters me in one easy stroke and why wouldn’t he? He’s made my pussy all wet, pounded it with his tongue, trashed it with his mouth so much that she opens herself to him easily now.
Like a flower. A daisy.
He pounds her with his big cock, beats her up, looms over me, his beautiful muscles tightened and standing up. His face is doused in lust, his wet-with-my-juices lips pulled back and his teeth showing and snapping like he’s really an animal.
Part human, part wolf.
I’ve always thought that, and it has never been clearer than when he’s fucking me like this.
All beautifully and tenderly and savagely.
Lovingly.
And I come.
I come so easily these days. So viciously and violently.
It’s like as soon as he touches my pussy, I don’t stop coming and he takes advantage of that. He keeps fucking me, he keeps making my pussy come as it flutters and ripples around his rod.
And then it’s his turn.
To come, I mean.
Some nights he fills up my pussy so that I flow with him. So that I feel him leaking out of me as I toss and turn in the bed, as I go to school the next day and sit in class with sticky, wet panties.