29. Declan
29
DECLAN
“ W hat?” I turned back to her, suspended with tension for what else she might say.
This magnificent woman had given me so many ups and downs. Life was a roller coaster with her, and I wasn’t sure why she would be looking at me like this, worried and anxious.
And sad.
Does she not want this baby?
“I love you,” she whispered.
I froze, letting her sweet confession fill my mind and patch my heart.
“What did you say?” I stalked closer to her, impatient to hold her and look into her eyes for any hint of a lie as she repeated it.
She was still bound, and I rectified that as I reached her. Kneeling on the bed, I untied her as she stared up at me, her green eyes wide with vulnerability.
“I love you.”
“You couldn’t lead with that ?” I challenged.
She’d amazed me with this news about her being pregnant. As soon as she told me that we would be having a baby, I struggled to breathe through the shock. I felt struck. Knocked over. Blown away. The concept that she was going to be the mother of my child was such a large one that I lagged to accept it.
It sounded too good to be true.
It seemed like I’d wanted it for so long that now that it was happening, I had to shift my mind all over again. And open up my heart that much more.
Once her arms were free, she looped them over my back.
I slammed my mouth to hers, tasting the salt of her tears. She mewled, parting her lips as she breathed into me and kissed me for all she was worth. Pushing against me, she poured her affections into the gesture, and my already hard dick ached even more to be inside her.
“I love you,” she repeated as I held her close, reveling in her naked, warm presence that molded so perfectly against me.
“I love this baby, and I am so shocked and happy that we can have one.”
I kissed her again and brushed back her red tresses to peer into her turbulent gaze. “Why wouldn’t you be happy?”
“I…” She sighed, clinging to me as I hugged her closer, lying on my side to face her.
“I never wanted a child before. When I knew my life would be nothing more than working on Mom’s farm and making as much money as I could to care for her, I didn’t want to bring a new life into that hardship. But now that I’ve found you and realized how much I could love you, from the bottom of my heart, I am excited about the future, not worried. At least I’m not worried about this child’s future. He or she will have the best dad.”
Her slow, shy smile killed me. Her tender kiss melted my heart.
“And a present mom who will always acknowledge him or her.” She grinned, confident to express how much she’d love our child.
I held her tightly, kissing her as I prompted her to roll with me. With her body draped over mine, her arms around my neck and my hands secured over her ass, I moaned at the heat of her bare pussy over my erection.
“And a doting grandmother.”
She leaned up and frowned.
I wished I could say our baby would have a grandfather, too, but I wasn’t optimistic that Dad would last that long.
“What?” She shook her head. “I… I don’t understand. Your mother passed away long ago, and my mom…”
“Will soon be healthy and hardy to welcome her grandchild into this world too.”
She opened her eyes wide. “What do you mean?”
“I took over all her debt.” It was nothing, a chunk of change with my wealth, but it meant a world of difference to her. “I visited her doctors and the staff in charge of her care. She’s doing fine with the slight respiratory infection that landed her in the hospital. So fine that she didn’t hesitate to warn me that I must treat her one and only daughter well.”
Gaping at me, she seemed unable to move.
“She clearly learned her lesson about mixing with Mob men.” I grunted a laugh, unable to resist touching my wife. Up and down, I rubbed my hands over her ass cheeks as I explained. “She wanted to know what I was there for, and I told her all of it. That you’d married me to pay off her debts. That Shane lied to you.”
She swallowed hard. “ All of it?”
I nodded. “All of it. She was protective, worried about you with someone like me, but I explained that you weren’t ‘mixing’ with me or having a fling like she had with your father. I made sure she understood that you are my wife.” I pulled her down for a hard, sound kiss, earning a sexy mewl. “And you will be my wife until we both grow old together and die.”
She dipped low to kiss me harder.
“I’ve taken on her bills, and she will receive her kidney transplant next week. As soon as she is cleared from this respiratory concern, she will be transported for the surgery.”
“Declan…” She lowered to kiss me again, slow and sweet. “I don’t know how to ever thank you.”
I chuckled, rubbing her ass and reveling in her soft skin. “Thank me?”
She nodded.
“You don’t have to thank me. I’m your husband. You are my family.”
Again, she laid her lips on mine. I gripped her ass and pulled her down on me.
Sitting up abruptly, she tugged my pants off, and I removed my shirt.
But I didn’t want her to resort to sex just yet. It was a foolproof way for us to be close and connect, but I wasn’t finished explaining.
As she straddled me, kissing me and rubbing her moist pussy over me, I held back and growled.
“You are my wife, Cara. And I wish you could understand how much you matter to be able to tell me all of that.”
She sighed against my lips, pressing her weight to my dick. “I did tell you.”
“Later,” I argued.
“I was too scared to tell you sooner. I didn’t know… I wasn’t aware that I could love you so much. That we would click and make sense like this.” She cut herself off, kissing me again as she ground over me.
“And once I realized that you had my heart, I did tell you, because I hated to think of hurting you or deceiving you.”
I exhaled a long breath of relief. Those sweet, sincere words meant the world to me.
“Do you understand now, Cara?”
She raised her brows.
“Do you understand that I love you?” I angled my dick up toward her entrance, sliding in slowly.
Her head hung down. Her auburn tresses curtained her face, and with a slow push back, she sank over my hardness.
“I love you, Cara.” I promised it with a kiss, and she dragged out her retreat, lifting off me until just the tip remained.
“I fucking love everything about you,” I growled, squeezing her ass as she rode me slowly. “And I will always do everything I can to make you happy.”
She hummed, smiling lazily. “Oh, I’m very happy with you like this.”
I lowered my lids, looking up at her with pure contentment. “I can tell.”
“I want to make love with you,” she purred as she slid down me all the way.
The tight suction of her pussy was perfection, but I let her take charge for once. “Why did you tell me to stop earlier?”
“I was afraid you’d be rough.”
I squeezed her ass tighter. “I thought you liked it rough.” Teasing her with my finger along her ass crack, I watched as her expression changed to a hotter degree of desire.
“I do.”
Holding her up, I replaced my dick with my finger, gathering her cream to lube up my push into her ass. She didn’t want that, readjusting until she wrapped around my dick again.
Slow, but steady, I played with her ass as she rode me.
“I… I didn’t want to be rough with the baby.”
I grinned, loving how worried and careful she already was. She would be an excellent mother. I already knew she was a perfect wife and an amazing lover.
“Harder,” she begged.
I added another finger, still careful to be slow and easy.
We came together, and she sagged in my arms as I carried her to the shower. In the stall, I held her close, never wanting to be far from her again.
“I can’t believe you went to see my mom,” she admitted.
I kissed her brow, rinsing the shampoo out of her hair. “That was why I was gone. I had to do things right by you.”
“For two days?”
I loved that she’d counted down the time.
“I stopped at the Murray residence first.”
She angled back, giving me a stern look. “Why?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Still, she was curious. “Is… he alive?”
I chuckled, loving that she could be just as dark to wish him dead. “Trust me. Making them pay back every cent of debt and more will be a worse punishment than the mercy of death.”
I felt her cheek rise in a smile against my chest as I held her again.
“Then I was at the hospital. Ian has been handling a lot of it. He’s the diplomatic one between us. I had him begin the process of paying for it all.”
“All that administrative headache,” she said, sighing.
“Yes. Once Nora is healthy enough to travel after the kidney transplant, she can move here.”
Again, she jerked back to face me. “ What ?”
I would never get tired of surprising her and spoiling her. In bed and out of it.
“If that is what you want. And what she wants,” I added. Having a complete family here would be nice. If I had to dictate the future, we were only getting started.
“She’ll be eager to meet her grandbaby.” I furrowed my brow. “Which reminds me.”
“What?” She looped her arms around me, and I relished her loose embrace.
“She was protective. So much so that she was blunt to put me on the spot and ask whether I’d married you just to knock you up.”
She frowned.
That had been the plan. And that plan got screwed up along the way.
“Why would she think you could be knocked up?”
Cara shook her head. “I have no clue.”
“And what also doesn’t make sense is the lack of medical notes from anything that indicated that you’d lost an ovary during surgery.”
“How would you know?”
I smirked. “Cara. I make people talk. I move papers. I say get it done and it gets done.” How else did she think I’d taken over her mother’s medical care so easily?
“I tasked Ian with finding all your medical history. I wanted to know how slim the odds were with you.”
She kissed my chest. “If the chances of my fertility were that low, would you have left me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Letting you go was never an option.”
Her mouth dropped open. “But we shook on it!” She smiled, laughing.
I shrugged. “I lied. And no.” I leaned down to kiss her. “If you had slim chances of fertility, we’d keep trying. Forever. I want you, and only you, to be the mother of my children.”
She smiled up at me.
“Ian has yet to find any record of your enduring a surgery that would complicate your fertility. And when your mother seemed to think otherwise…”
Furrowing her brow, she seemed pensive and confused. “I don’t get it. When I had pain in my back and stomach, Mom rushed me to the city. The clinic near the farm wasn’t equipped for too much, and that was the one time she'd insisted on my father paying for anything for me.”
I nodded. “Right. There is a document of your having an appendectomy. But nothing more.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Then why was I told I’d lost an ovary and…?”
“ Who told you that?”
Her face turned stony. “Keira. My father suggested that she stand in and talk to the nurses and doctors instead of ‘troubling’ him or me. My mom had to go back to the farm. It bothered her not to be there, but she had to make things work to count on our livelihood to continue.”
It was making more sense now.
“Keira had to have fudged the truth. Made up the stuff about my ovaries and whatnot.” She shook her head, growling lightly. “That bitch !”
She did it out of spite, I was sure. Just to hurt Cara.
“We’ll make sure you have the best medical care now. You and the baby both,” I promised as I cupped her face and kissed her tenderly.
Now that we’d found each other, I would never let anything stand in the way of ensuring that she was happy and healthy.
And with me. Forever.