The jogging had given me a newfound sense of stamina, but at the same time, our desire for each other was growing every single day. A fleeting look, a tiny gesture—it all compounded into an overwhelming sense of urgency. An attraction that could never quite be satisfied—no matter how close we got. No matter how many times we came back together after pulling away.
It made keeping myself together during sex increasingly difficult.
“Come on, Wilder,” he teased with a grin. I had pressed a pillow over my face as my entire body arched up to meet him—that building pressure inside me was already almost too much to take. “You wanted this, woke me up for it. I demand that you wait—”
A loud knock on the door made us jump in our skin. My eyes opened tentatively, and there was a slight pause in our rhythm, before another deafening bang made us break apart.
“Who the hell is that?” I panted, trying to catch my breath.
Nick’s eyes were wide with both wonder and intense sexual frustration, as he gazed incredulously at the door. “Did you leave out a mug of coffee again,” he whispered suddenly, the edges of his face paling in fear. “You know what Louise said she’d do to us—”
The knocking started up again, furious as ever.
“I know you’re in there,” a British accent filtered through the door, “I literally just heard the two of you fucking—now open up!”
Nick and I shared an incredulous look, before bolting off the bed in one accord. He quickly darted to the closet and pulled on some pants, while I slipped a bathrobe over my shoulders, then hurried to yank open the door.
“Stacy?!”
A statuesque blonde stared back at me. The kind of woman who could stop traffic with a single glance of her eyes.
Right now—those eyes were boring a hole in my face.
“Hey,” she said without inflection, “guess what?”
Stacy Heathrow’s job title with the Hunters might have been as a mere stylist, but over the years, I’d learned not to underestimate her. I shot a nervous glance back at Nick, before offering her what I hoped was my best winning smile.
“What?”
Her perfectly painted lips turned up in a humorless smile.
“I’m pregnant.”
NEEDLESS TO SAY, MORNING sex was put on hold.
I hastened to get dressed—racing from one side of the bedroom to the other with an incredulous frown—as Stacy sat in the middle of the bed and told me the unlikely story of how she was to become a mother. Nick had been banished
downstairs to make coffee (and generally just make himself scarce), while she told me the entire bizarre tale.
“...so later that day, I decided to get a slice of pizza,” she continued on, in the billionth precursor verse to what had actually happened. “Which was really strange, because the last time I had carbs was on my twelfth birthday, and even then, my mom made me spit out the cake.”
With a half-latched earring still in my hand, I turned away from the mirror to look at her straight on. She seemed perfectly calm—which in a way made sense, it would take a level 4 hurricane to bring a spark of emotion to those jaded eyes—but this was motherhood! She was pregnant! With a baby! How the hell was she calm about this?!
But perhaps a more pressing question remained...
“Uh, Stacey—I love hearing about every detail that happened to you since the day of conception, but isn’t it a little...” I hesitated, searching for the right word, “...unlikely that you would get pregnant?”
She stared blankly back, and I rolled my eyes.
“That you and your girlfriend would accidentally be expecting a child?”
“Oh,” her face cleared immediately, “Lily and I like to mix it up every now and again.”
Like to mix it...?
...oh.
“Wait—you do?” I asked with a conspiratorial grin. “How does that even work? I thought you guys were—”