Page 66 of Nine Months to Bear

She took more than I thought she could take. Tougher than she looks, the little doctor.

She looks limp and boneless now, though, lying twisted in the sheets next to me. Her skin is glowing in the sun through thewindow, her lips slightly parted. I can still taste those lips on my own. A salty, buzzing sweetness. An addiction in the making.

I close my eyes and go back to sleep for a little while. It’s better that way.

Mostly because, if I’m asleep, I can’t dwell on the one thing I truly regret from this unexpected bend in the road. One tiny little moment that haunts me.

I was already aching as I rolled her onto her stomach and slid my cock into her from behind. She’d clenched the sheets in her fists and gasped into the pillow like I was hurting her, but her hips rose to meet each thrust like she’d never wanted anything so badly in her whole damn life. And when she came, she throbbed around me. It was as she was spasming, milking me, crying out, that I gathered her hair in my fist and bowed her back and snarled, “How does it feel to be mine, Dr. Aster?”

I don’t know what possessed me to say it. She isn’tmine.

Her baby will be. Her clinic, definitely.

But Dr. Olivia Aster herself is a one-time dalliance. Well, five- or six-time, technically. But no more than that. It won’t happen again.

It can’t.

A metallic clatter followed by Olivia’s muffled “Shit!” jolts me fully awake.

I blink and process my surroundings. It’s not my room, blacked out from thick curtains, but Olivia’s. Late morning sunlightstreams through half-closed blinds, painting stripes across the full-sized, barely-big-enough mattress. I can see the empty impression of her body in the bed next to me.

Fuck.

I’ve stayed too long. Mornings are dangerous territory. They create expectations. It’s when women start to believe they’re special, that they’ve earned some piece of me beyond the physical. They make coffee and ask questions and wear soft, hopeful eyes.

Yet here I am. The clock reads 7:23 A.M. The smell of coffee and bacon drifts through the cracked-open door.

I need to leave.Now.

I grab my sweater, not bothering to pull it on. I’ll dress when I’m in the car, speeding away. I’m head down, eyes straight ahead—on a mission to leave.

But as I emerge from the bedroom, I glance up and freeze.

Olivia is standing in the kitchen. Nearly every inch of her lean legs is visible in her tiny sleep shorts. Her loose tank top is old enough to be nearly transparent; it reveals the curve of her breast when she reaches for something on a high shelf.

It also reveals the marks I left on her skin—the inside of her thigh, her neck, her ribs. Purple and blue. Watercolor evidence of the mistakes we made together.

My cock twitches. I should be running for the door, but my body leans the opposite way instead. Towards her, towards the promise of an encore of last night. I could lift her knee onto the counter, shift between her legs, and sheathe myself inside of her.

I don’t do the morning-after thing, but suddenly, I’m wondering if I should. If maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to sample the concept. I have a feeling Olivia’s release would be just as sweet in the daylight as it was in the darkness.

A sharp knock on the door behind me interrupts my thoughts.

Olivia turns towards the sound. When she does, she catches sight of me for the first time. Her eyes widen, dropping immediately to my bare chest and lingering there before crawling back up to my face. Raw heat floods her expression, pupils dilating until only a thin rim of amber remains.

For one electric moment, we’re both thinking the same thing—how easy it would be to ignore the door and pick up where we left off.

Then the voice outside on the porch shatters the moment. “Olivia? Darling?”

The desire on her face evaporates, replaced by sheer panic. She looks at me with pale skin and mumbles in horror, “It’s my mom!”

28

STEFAN

It’s my mom.She’s never sounded more aghast.

“Hide!” Olivia rushes toward me, breasts swaying beneath her loose tank as she tries to push me toward the hall closet.