Page 84 of Fighting Fate

“My secret boyfriend,” I tease, keeping my face straight as I focus on Andrew’s car up ahead.

It’s wicked, and I should probably be ashamed of myself for doing it, but I miss this side of us. The fun of our banter and the easiness of our being together. Lately it’s all become too serious and cumbersome, and even if it’s just for a few minutes, I want the old us back.

“Doll, if I’m not getting some, you ain’t getting any either.” Rory flicks my thigh, and the contact races through me in a hot frisson that has goosebumps covering me from top to toe. “Certainly not with my kid inside you.”

“This spunk bank is pretty full, anyway.” I shrug. “I guess I’ll just have to look and ummm…you know…”

We pause at a red light, and he turns to look at me. Dark eyes narrow on mine as he asks, “I know…?” The purr to his voice is low and gravelly, in such a way that has my insides twisting. I know that tone. It’s promising and dripping with sex and all these things I desperately miss.

“Well.” I swallow the lump that’s pulsing in my throat as he continues holding my stare. “Andrew’s a pretty boy. All those tattoos and baby blues…can you imagin—”

“You don’t like pretty boys,” he scoffs with a faux nonplussed shrug, but the way his hands tighten around the steering wheel and the gear stick tells me he’s not so unbothered by it.

“Actually, you don’t want me to like pretty boys because you’re not one.”

“Basically a wordy bullshit way of saying what I said. Besides, sweetheart, how many guys do you think are going to get through me to get to the two of you?”

How the fuck did this backfire? I’m the one teasing him, not the other way round.

“Excuse me?”

“How many guys do you think are going to make it past me to you and…George?”

“Fuck off, we’re not calling him George, and it’s not up to you who I let near me.”

“In case you missed the memo, we’re stuck together forever, babe. You, me, and Arthur.” Rory glances down at my belly and smirks, and right on cue, as though he knows his dad is talking about him, the little one somersaults around.

If I didn’t like it so much, I’d probably bite back at Rory. But the more he talks, the more the baby wriggles around, and the feeling is so overwhelming that I’m silent for a while.

“You’re not stuck with me,” I finally say, blowing out a long breath. “But you are stuck with junior here, so you might want to think of names outside of knighthoods.” He gives me another narrowed side glance as though I’ve just rumbled him and his skewed sense of humour. “I’ve had you pegged for a while, Knight. That list you’ve got of popular knights isn’t going to make the cut.”

“How did you figure it out?” A lopsided grin cuts his face as he follows Andrew through a set of gates to a courtyard car park.

“Where are we?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“More surprises? Really?”

“How’d you figure it out about the names?”

“Well, firstly, I’m not stupid, and secondly…George was a knight before he became sainted for slaying the dragon. Arthur was the first Knight of the Round Table…”

“Technically, he was the king.”

“Yeah, that started the knightly fellowship of the round table, thus making him the first knight. Anyway, moving on…Lance? That’s not happening, along with Rodrigo. Who names their kid after El Cid?”

“Huh,” he scoffs at me with mock surprise while unbuckling my seat belt. “Not just a pretty face.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I grin at him, but my eyes are glued to the shallow dimples of his smile lines. They accentuate the thickness of his lips and the rugged lines of his face. My hands are itching to touch him, my fingers aching to trace his lips…

“Let’s not deviate from the real issue at hand,” he tells me, tilting his head to the side as if to see me better. Or maybe he’s doing his expert X-ray of my feelings. Either way, I’m squirming in my seat, incapable of doing or saying anything. “No one’s getting between us, doll. No one’s getting through me to you. And that kid’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Rory…”

“I got time. I got nothing but time with you, and eventually, you’ll come back to me. I’m not giving up, and I’m not backing down.” Pinching my chin, he draws me closer so that our faces are nothing but a breath apart. The tip of his nose ghosts mine, and every word he says splays over my lips. So warm that I can’t help but breathe them all in. So deep that it fills my chest to bursting point. “You’re just as stuck with me as I am with you. For no other reason than you’re still mine and that you’ve always been mine.”

The silence around us is loaded and heavy with the depth of his words and the ferocity glowing in his eyes. It doesn’t matter how much I want to refute him, I can’t. It doesn’t matter how scared I am of giving in to us again, because Rory’s right. I am his. Completely and irrevocably. There’s absolutely nothing I can do to change that. Me and him…

---