“No, I’ll be okay. I just need to lay here for a little while,” he said, making sure to sound appropriately miserable as he laid there with both hands over his stomach, groaning in misery as she walked over to the door and casually set the locks, making sure that they weren’t going to be disturbed.
“You poor thing,” she said with a sympathetic frown as she turned around and headed back towards the bed where Danny now lay, groaning miserably even as he continued to sneak quick glances at her to see if she was still buying it.
“Why don’t you close your eyes and take a nap?” she suggested, which of course earned a sigh of relief that he tried to bite back, but not fast enough.
“If you think it would help,” the big fibber said, sounding unhappy about it, but that little smile of satisfaction as he grabbed another pillow, stuffed it under his head and closed his eyes said otherwise.
Shaking her head, because he really just couldn’t pull it off like Jason could, she double-checked the locks on the door. She reached over and dimmed the lights, idly wondering where they were. Not that she really cared, she thought as she ran an appreciative eye over Danny’s body.
She should care about a lot of other things right now as well, like why they were there, why Ethan and Jason felt the need to drug her, what day it was, why there was a wedding ring on her finger-
Okay, so she definitely cared about that one, she decided as her gaze landed on the matching one on his ring finger. She paused halfway to the bed and glanced around the room, noting the two double beds that looked well used, the mini bar, the folded blankets and pillows on the end of the long couch behind her, the floor to ceiling curtains that were closed before finally returning to the man on the bed.
They apparently had a lot to talk about, but it could wait until later. Right now she had other things on her mind and none of them had to with talking.
*-*-*-*
No one would believe that he’d once led an elite force of Marines if they saw him now, lying on the bed, pretending to be asleep just to escape his pregnant wife’s unpredictable mood swings. Then again, the first thing that he’d been taught in training was to know when to retreat. He just wished that he’d used some of that training wisely and had made a hasty retreat out the door with his father and cousins instead of putting himself at the mercy of his pregnant wife.
God, please don’t let her start crying, he prayed, not normally a very religious man, but if it would save him from hearing her cry then he would do absolutely anything. There were few things in life that he couldn’t handle and seeing Jodi cry was one of them and unfortunately for him and all the men in his family, who also couldn’t stomach the idea of a woman crying, she cried a lot.
He really wasn’t sure if this was normal or not, but he wasn’t willing to risk his balls by mentioning it to her. Whenever she cried he felt like the biggest asshole on earth, mostly because his brothers and cousins would shoot him glares telling him that they thought he was the biggest asshole in the world for making her cry. He felt so fucking helpless when she cried, which probably had more to do with the fact that everything he said and did to make her feel better usually resulted in making it worse.
Every time she saw a baby, she cried.
Every time he smiled at her, she cried.
Every time she had ice cream, she cried.
Every time she was tired, she cried.
She tried to fight it every fucking time. He saw it in the stubborn set of her jaw, the way that she tried to focus on something else, but nothing worked. Absolutely nothing. He’d learned months ago to just shut his mouth, open his arms and let her quietly sob against his chest while she apologized for crying. One time he’d made the mistake of telling her that it wasn’t her fault and that it was normal for pregnant woman to feel a bit emotional…
That hadn’t ended well for him.
It was also something that he tried not to think about, mostly because it still gave him nightmares. It was probably something that he would need years of therapy to recover from, but he’d most likely just work through the emotional pain by binge eating, he absently thought as he laid there, noting that it was quiet.
Really quiet.
She wasn’t crying, which was all that mattered, he told himself, but even as he continued to lay there with his eyes closed, waiting for her to make a sound, any sound that would clue him into her mood, he couldn’t help but promise to turn his life around if he made it through this in one piece.
That was of course after he hunted his father and cousins down and killed the bastards for sacrificing his ass so that they could make a clean get away. Seriously, what kind of asshole left a disabled vet alone with a hormonal, pregnant woman, who in theory had every right to be pissed off when she found out that they’d not only drugged her, taken her across state lines, but also managed to marry her all without her knowledge?
Only an asshole in his family would do something this fucked up, he decided, debating whether or not he should risk cracking open one eye to see what she was doing. If she was grabbing something to turn him into a eunuch then it would probably be for the best if he saw that one coming so that he could roll off the bed and drag himself to the door with the hopes that someone walking by would hear his cries for help and save him before it was too late.
Yet, even knowing that there was a very good possibility that he might end up singing soprano for the rest of his life if he didn’t move his ass wasn’t enough to help him overcome the terror that kept him frozen on the spot. He’d dealt with a lot of fucked up things when he’d served in the Marines, but none of the shit that he’d gone through during the war had ever terrified him as much as not knowing what his wife was about to do to him.
He was fucking pathetic, but even knowing that wasn’t enough to make him man up and open his eyes. Maybe if he played de
ad she would take pity on him and leave him alone? But, he knew better than to wish for the impossible.
Forcing himself to open his eyes, after several long seconds of debating the pros and cons of living the rest of his life as a coward trapped on this bed, he slowly opened his eyes and groaned when Jodi’s soft lips gently brushed against his.
“I missed this,” she whispered against his lips, sighing with pleasure as she moved over him until she was straddling his lap and the smooth curve of her belly brushed against him.
“I missed you,” he found himself whispering back, loving the way that her lips curled against his as he placed his hand on the swell of her stomach and groaned when he his hand was met warm, bare skin.
“I didn’t go anywhere,” she reminded him as she teased his bottom lip as he traced her curves that were a hell of a lot fuller than he remembered while she continued to brush her lips teasingly against his.
“No,” he agreed with a chuckle that was of a pained groan as he slowly traced his fingertips over the small of her back and down the curve of her bottom, “but you were on the very top of my ‘Off Limits,’ list.”
“I was taken off that list a month ago,” she pointed out with a little moan of pleasure that as she settled more comfortably on top of him, causing the part of him that had missed her the most to harden, desperate to feel her sheath tightening around him as he slid inside her beautiful body, but unfortunately he couldn’t allow that to happen.
Not if he wanted to get her home safely.
They had to stop now before it was too late, which unfortunately, it probably already was, but he had to try to stop this before it went any further. When she turned her head to deepen the kiss, he already knew that it was probably too late, but even though he knew that it was probably pointless to try and stop this before something happened that they couldn’t come back from.
Since telling his extremely pregnant wife, who was known to sometimes overreact to the smallest things, that he wasn’t going to make love to her after waiting all this time probably wouldn’t go well. He decided to take another approach, one that was guaranteed to fuck them all over, but one that was going to give them a chance to make it out of this thing alive.
“Welcome to Vegas, Tink.”