Page 26 of The Alpha's Pregnant Mate

But Laurent was still staring at her, looking confused. “Rhietta, it’s not that I don’t—want—are you kidding? I’d…the very idea of…being a father? Seeing them grow, helping them, teaching them to—” He made an impatient, inarticulate gesture with both hands. Had she ever seen him this animated, or heard him express himself so poorly? “I would love to have children,” he said finally, and his voice shook in a way she’d never heard before. “But I can’t. I couldn’t. I shouldn’t, I’d be awful at it. I completely lack any kind—I don’t know the first thing about—how to hold them, or when they’re supposed to learn to walk and talk, or—or—"

Rhietta stared at him as he trailed off, waiting for him to reach the part of his explanation that was going to make any of this make sense. Then, when it was clear that the silence was here to stay, she tilted her head to the side. “You know I don’t know any of that either, right?” Laurent blinked, frowned a little. “Seriously. I was an only child, remember? I mean, I love cuddling with Anik, she’s the cutest baby in the world, but there’s no way I’d be able to take care of her. I don’t even know what she eats. Solids, I think? Or…some solids?”

It was fascinating, watching the color draining from Laurent’s face. “But—but—” His helpless gesture encompassed her entire midsection, and she found herself laughing—then laughing even harder at the growing horror on his face.

“I know! The baby’s gonna be here in a few months and I don’t even know what I’m gonna feed it! Why do you think I’m not panicking?”

“Because you’re insane?”

“Because I’m not alone, Laurent. And neither are you. Everyone who’s ever become a parent has been exactly where we are right now—facing down the biggest, scariest, most important job in the entire world, no idea how to do it or what it’s going to be like or how they’re going to cope, convinced it’s going to be a disaster…I feel all of that. Trust me, I do. And I let myself feel it, because I know it’s part of the ride, and when the baby’s here, I am going to ask one of the literal dozens of people who’ve done this before what to do. And then I’ll know! And in five years, or ten, some panicked-looking young person with a newborn in their arms will ask me the exact same question, and I’ll have an answer for them, because that’s how it works. You figure stuff out, and when you can’t, you ask for help from the people who love you.” She bit her lip, feeling suddenly self-conscious about how long she’d been talking. Laurent was still staring at her, though, and she could see his thoughts racing.

“Wow,” Laurent said, finally breaking a silence she’d been worried was going to last forever. “I thought you didn’t like lectures.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I suppose I’ve been hanging out with a bad crowd,” she retorted primly. “Bad habits are contagious.”

“I know what you mean. I just spent far longer than I’m proud of spilling all my embarrassing feelings out everywhere.”

“You call that a spill? You’re nowhere near my level, Laurent.” He was smiling. A real, visible smile, one that was curling his lips and making that severe face look suddenly much younger. She couldn’t resist leaning against him again, feeling the reassuring warmth of his shoulder, smiling faintly as his arm slid around her shoulders. Every time he did that, it felt more and more like it belonged there. “So. The lecture’s over. Thoughts?”

He paused. “Well, the structure could have used some work…”

It was all she could do not to shove him right off the log. “On our impending child, you absolute—”

“I know, I know, it was a joke, I’m…Rhietta, of course I’m…of course I want to be a part of—of course I want to be a father, of course I want…there is nobody in the world I adore or admire more than you. I can’t even imagine what kind of a child will…how much I’ll need to learn just to have a hope of keeping up—”

“Don’t make me give you the poorly structured lecture again.”

“No. Of course. I’m—yes.” Both of his arms were around her now, drawing her close, squeezing her against the reassuring warmth of his body, and she could feel her tears of joy soaking into both of their clothes. “If I think about how—how happy this makes me—I feel scared enough to pass out,” he murmured into her hair, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “What kind of crazy is that?”

“That’s not crazy. That’s just what happens when you let yourself love something. The other side of the coin is being scared of losing it.”

“Right.” A pause. “And how do you make that stop?”

She laughed again, feeling dizzy. “You don’t, love. You just live life scared.”

“All the time?” He sounded genuinely offended.

“All the time,” she confirmed, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes, to enjoy the rare sight of that actual smile on his face. “Trust me, it’s worth it.”

“It better be,” Laurent said darkly. But before she could retort, he was kissing her, and it wasn’t long before she was far too distracted to return to whatever it was they’d been arguing about. His lips were as soft and warm as she remembered, his hands already beginning to roam across her body, and it felt like just about every nerve ending in her body had woken up all at once at the reminder that, finally, there was nothing left standing between her and her soulmate. At some point, she knew, the two of them would need to make the long journey back to camp, where no doubt the pack would be worried about them both. There would be long political conversations to have about pack structure, about how to combine the two packs back into one and what that would look like, about adjusting the plans for construction in a way that would facilitate everyone staying…but right now, with the sky beginning to lighten as dawn approached and the whole world quiet except for the beating of her heart, Rhietta had her soulmate completely to herself. What was wrong with delaying their return for a short while, really? There would be plenty of time for all of the pack logistics later.

She smiled against his lips, realizing just how much he’d already begun to rub off on her. She was genuinely looking forward to logistics, of all things. It seemed that Laurent wasn’t the only one of the two of them who’d changed a lot in the last few months.

The heat between them grew quickly, both of their bodies responding eagerly to the contact despite how weary they were from the battle, and from being out here as long as they had. But Laurent certainly wasn’t letting his own extended stay in the wilderness affect his enthusiasm. His hands were all over her, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world when they started shrugging off their clothes. The wide open sky above them, the ocean beyond…but there was nobody here to intrude on the perfect peace of their privacy. And as her arousal grew, as her breathing began to accelerate, Rhietta realized she wouldn’t have cared if there had been a whole city on the other side of the trees. She’d waited an impossibly long time for this, to have Laurent in her arms again, his hands and lips exploring the curves and hollows of her body with a reverence that made her skin tingle. Nothing was going to stop them now.

She wondered, briefly, whether the neat, fastidious Laurent might object to the setting, especially as they lost more and more layers of clothing. But the grass beneath them was soft and yielding, and at any rate, he didn’t seem particularly interested in raising any complaints when she drew him down on top of her and the two of them rolled across the grass in each other’s arms in a playful struggle for dominance. She let him win, of course, and was rewarded for her generosity when he paused for a moment to gaze down at her with the widest, softest smile she’d ever seen on his face. She reached up to push back his dark fringe, which had flopped into his eyes at some point, delighted to see him a little less manicured for once.

“What?”

“You make messy look so good,” she said softly, grinning at the slightly affronted look that flashed onto his face. In what seemed like retribution for the teasing, he lowered his head to kiss her throat, working his way down every sensitive place on her body until she was gasping and writhing in the grass with every touch. And when she felt like she couldn’t wait another moment, she felt the firm grasp of his hands on her thighs, drawing her legs apart to grant him access to her sex. She could feel his breath ghosting across the sensitive flesh there, already so flushed with her arousal that she shuddered at even that much contact. Completely at his mercy, she paid no mind to the volume of her cries, her inarticulate demands for more…and at last, she felt him bury his face between her thighs, and she felt her body ignite with a rush of sensation that chased every last thought from her mind.

How long did he spend devouring her, she wondered later? Impossible to keep track when her every thought was focused on exactly what he was doing to draw such pleasure from her body…his lips and tongue teasing and exploring her, his fingertips eventually joining them when he seemed eager to explore her body in even more depth. By the time she drew him reluctantly up to kiss her, the sky was lit up by the early light of dawn. As handsome as he’d been in the light of the moon, she decided she liked the light of the sun a little better, if only because it let her see him in so much more detail. Judging from the look on his face as he gazed back at her, the two of them were in agreement on that point.

She leaned in and whispered what she wanted into his ear, grinning at the full-body shiver that the brush of her lips against his ear seemed to cause…or had that had more to do with what she’d said? Whatever the cause, Laurent’s usual mask of composure was gone when he pressed her back down against the grass, deliciously rough, a dark, demanding gleam in his eye that sent fresh arousal tingling down her spine. An interesting new side of him…one to take note of for future exploration…

But she had precious little time for note-taking, because she could feel the head of his manhood pressing against the slick heat of her folds, could feel every part of her body begging for him. Still, as if to prove that he remained in control of the situation, Laurent hesitated for a long, excruciating moment before his resolve gave way and he drove himself into her with a choked, guttural moan that was echoed by her cry of delight. She tensed her body, rocking her hips up to meet his thrusts, legs wrapped around his waist to hold him there, possessive, demanding. He’d held her so close to the edge of her climax for so long that she could feel it hurtling toward her already, but she steadied her breathing, holding it back, torn between her desperation for that final moment of release and her desire to savor every last moment of this pleasure, of the heat between them, of the feeling of Laurent wrapped in her arms and losing all control of himself as he buried himself in her, again and again.

She wasn’t sure how long she managed to hold herself back, suspended there on the very brink of pleasure, but when Laurent began to groan against her throat she knew she couldn’t hold herself back much longer. The cry she let out as her orgasm struck her must have been loud enough to be heard across the entire island, and she wondered briefly if she’d deafened her soulmate completely, but it seemed he was too distracted by his own climax to be too worried about something like that. Their bodies damp with sweat and morning dew, they collapsed into the low hollow their lovemaking had formed in the grass, tangled in one another’s bodies, utterly exhausted and utterly content.

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