Becca's Baby

“You almost ready?” he called, coming in from work and heading straight toward their bedroom. It was the last Friday in April, just a little more than two weeks since his golf game with John.

They’d been invited to an encore performance of a multimedia production at the university, put on jointly by Montford’s Dance, Theater and Music departments. Will had been asked to say a few words before the award-winning play began. People had been calling for weeks, seeking tickets to it.

After the play, he and Becca were hosting a private party at the university for the cast and crew, the faculty and all the visiting dignitaries.

Instead of finding his wife finishing her preparations for the evening as he’d fully expected, he found her curled up in bed, sound asleep.

Will stopped immediately, alarm shooting through him. Had something happened? Was there a problem with her blood pressure? With the baby?

“Becca?” he said softly.

Other than the steady rise and fall of her breathing, she didn’t move. Surely if she was ill, she wouldn’t be lying there so peacefully.

She’d been writing grants all week, preparing presentations for her Save the Youth funding drive. But other than Wednesday, when the town-council meeting had lasted until ten o’clock, she’d been in bed before nine every night. And she was still tired, despite that.

Glancing at his watch, Will wished he didn’t have to wake her.

And yet, just the fact that she was fast asleep before seven in the evening was unsettling to him. He knew that pregnancy was physically exhausting. But Becca had always been able to get by with very little sleep. Her energy always outlasted his.

Her fatigue was scaring him.

He crept closer to the bed. “Becca?”

“Mmm?” She rolled over, but didn’t wake up. The covers dropped away from her shoulders.

Another sensation shot through Will, rendering him weak and needful. What he felt was desire. Red-hot desire. Becca had obviously crawled into bed in the middle of getting ready for the evening. She was topless, her burgeoning breasts a gloriously welcome sight. Feasting his eyes on them, Will swallowed.

He should wake her. Turn away. Stick to the business at hand. The business of seeing his wife safely through this pregnancy. Period. He stared, instead. And fantasized. Remembering her softness, the way her nipples hardened into peaks that

he’d take into his mouth. Suckle.

He hadn’t had sex in more than six weeks. Far longer than he’d ever gone before. And she was his wife, dammit. The only woman he’d been with in his entire life.

With no conscious thought, no permission sought or granted, even from himself, Will reached out with both hands, taking those breasts into his palms, covering them, caressing them.

“Will?” Becca’s voice was groggy with sleep. Her eyes, when they opened and met his, were filled with desire—and questions.

Feeling like a first-class jerk, he stepped back from the bed, turning his head away from his wife’s beauty.

“It’s time to go,” he said, grabbing the clothes she’d laid out on the divan and handing them to her.

“What time is it?”

She still sounded half-asleep. And confused.

“Six-thirty.”

He should leave the room. Wait for her in the kitchen. He had to close all the blinds, anyway, turn on the outside lights and the lamp in the living room they always left on when they went out for the evening.

“We have time…” Hesitant invitation colored her words.

Will stood frozen, his throbbing body demanding one thing, his mind another.

He heard the covers rustling behind him and waited, poised, for Becca to approach him. Or had she merely moved over, making room for him to join her?

“Dr. Anderson said we should…”

Hating himself for the pleading he heard in her voice, Will swung around. It made him sick to think he’d reduced his strong vibrant wife to begging.