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Usually her belly.

The loft has a strange smell. Old, like dust. There’s also an edge to it, metal and the tang of salt. Rust and paper. We’ve been here a week and no one is more surprised than me to find I miss home. Part of that is the professionally contained bedroom I can lock myself into, not to mention the impeccable medical facility built into the palace, but maybe what people say about the Princes is right. Perhaps we really are spoiled.

I missmysilk pillows.

As I’m dumping my bag and emptying my pockets, I watch her carefully. She goes to the fridge, swinging the door open to stare at the contents for a long moment. Verity does this new thing where she’ll pick at her lips when a craving hits her. She does it now, bottom lip pinched gently between forefinger and thumb as she gazes at the selection. I’ve had it stocked with vegetables, fruits, and easy proteins since our second day here.

Her chest swells and shrinks with a long sigh.

She opens the freezer.

My mouth twitches as I watch her work through the mental steps of what it is she wants. Her hair is pulled up into a messy bun, the back of her neck flushed. She’s been hot all day. She’s not hungry. We ate at the gym just two hours ago, with seventeen DKS members, twelve cutsluts, her mother, and Remington Maddox.

I kick off my shoes. “Ice cream.”

Without even meeting my gaze, her eyes pop wide, a delicate, longing ‘ooh’ floating off her lips. “Mint chocolate chip,” she moans. And then, with a pout, she lets the freezer door swing shut.

No, I don’t stock the freezer with ice cream.

“There’s yogurt,” I offer.

She cuts me a horrified look. “It’s not the same.”

“I’ll get some tomorrow,” I promise, unbuttoning my shirt.

She shrugs like she doesn’t care, watching as I collapse on the couch. A jaw-cracking yawn takes me, and I know there are things I need to do—brush my teeth, check the baby’s heartbeat, get her a pint of mint chocolate chip—but I can’t bring myself to do anything other than reach for my hair tie, letting my hair loose as my eyes flutter closed.

I hear more than see her shuffling around the room, the sounds growing closer.

The instant the weight of her presses into the couch against my hip, I reach for her, splaying my hand across her stomach. I don’t feel him moving. He must be resting. Maybe he had a long day, too.

“Can I ask you something?” The sound of her voice, small and confusingly fragile, is the only thing that could make my eyes flutter open. Her tired eyes stare back, fingers fidgeting with the hairband around her wrist. It’s only now that I realize she’s taken her hair down too, the red locks cascading over her shoulders.

My thumb sweeps soothingly against her belly. “Of course.”

She glances down, catching the motion of my hand, and stills it by placing her own hand on top. “Remember back when you were… making deposits?”

Something in me stirs at the quick flick of her eyes to mine. The timidness. The blush rising to her cheeks.

God, I want to feel her beneath me.

Haltingly, I answer, “Yeah.”

“Why did you…” A crevice appears between her eyebrows as she works through the stilted nature of her words. “Why did you always make me look at you?”

I blink, fighting the urge to pull my hand away. Instead, I squirm, clearing my throat. “I don’t know.”

She finally meets my gaze, leveling me with an unimpressed stare. “Yes, you do.”

With a resigned sigh, I think back to those long weeks. Most of the time, filling those syringes meant sitting in a dark room, desperate to get it over with—tocome—out of nothing but obligation and a fear of failure. There was no passion in it, only desperation and persistence. I’d think of her, of course. Sometimes, I’d have Pace pull me up a clip of her and Wicker. More often than not, I’d put myself in his place, imagining I was the one emptying my balls into her with the same untethered grunts.

But mostly, it was just a battle with my body, fighting to stay hard.

“Because if my seed took hold,” I begin, struggling to put something so absurd into words, “I wanted to know it was done with…moreof me than just a lousy nut into a specimen cup.”

Okay, it definitely sounds stupider when I say it aloud.

Looking up, I catch her watching me back, her head cocked curiously. “Why?”