Page 45 of The Princess & the Prospect

Chapter 16

It took two months for the dust to settle after the Davis twin had been discovered. She stuck around town for a little more than a week, but after realizing she would have a crazed J-Bird following her everywhere, she finally left town. After all the initial delays due to her multiple suicide attempts and her lawyers delaying for various reasons, Seneca’s trial was finally able to move forward, despite the fact that her attorneys tried to forestall the proceedings again one final time, stating that their client was not of sound mind to stand trial. The claim was that she suffered multiple personality disorder, and believed that she was her twin sister locked up unfairly. No doubt, she had gotten the idea when her sister visited. It didn’t work though. The trial went on, and within a month, she was convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison with no option for parole.

Thirty years didn’t seem like a long enough time considering all the years we would now lose out on with my brother and the entire lifetime his baby lost out on. Somehow though, I didn’t think the club would allow her to serve out those thirty years in peace, so that was at least something.

Watching the trial commence and having to testify about Seneca stalking Toby as well as the day everything happened, took a toll on Gretchen. The bit of healing she had done slipped away and she was back to her sullen grief-filled existence. Ever and I worked with Beth to make sure she was never alone for too long, but with me moving further along in my pregnancy, it was becoming difficult to hold up my end so Kane and Zeke started taking turns too.

Evan and I also had a chance to grow closer over the last two months of living in the same house. We weren’t lovers again by any stretch of the imagination. He hadn’t even kissed me again since that one moment just after the ultrasound. I was so torn about everything going on between us. I wanted him to kiss me. I actually needed him to kiss me again, and I wasn’t really sure what was holding him back at this point. I had forgiven him. I was pretty sure I had. Now, I had started to worry that maybe he just wasn’t attracted to me anymore. I was seven months along in my pregnancy, and my body had changed so much. I had a nearly D-cup breast for the first time in my life, my butt could be the envy of any Kardashian fan. Those were the good attributes in a man’s eyes, I supposed. Then again, there was the giant belly with the stretch marks, and the weird brown line that ran from my belly button to my pubic region. I wasn’t exactly sure if it went all the way to my girl parts because I could no longer see past my belly to shave very well down there. I managed to keep the sides trimmed up, but straight beneath my belly was a lost world to me now.

Maybe he had seen at some point and was turned off by the fact that my lady garden now looked like an overrun forest? I didn’t know, but that was possible. I missed being intimate with Evan. For the past two months, instead of waking to dreams of us together before, I woke to dreams of that day outside of the doctor’s office. In some of my dreams, I never saw Seneca’s twin sister and we went straight home and made love together. I woke up just two mornings ago having had such a vivid version of that dream that I actually woke to myself climaxing. My body was feverish, I was so wet between my legs, I worried momentarily that my water had broken, and my poor belly was having weird contractions going hard as stone and then softening up. The pleasure piercing through my nerve endings was the thing that tipped me off as to what happened. I didn’t even know it was possible to have an orgasm without touching yourself.

Still, Evan wouldn’t touch me anymore beyond a hug or hand holding, so I was left with the worries that started to flood my brain whenever he was gone from the house. If he wasn’t attracted to me anymore, would he stray? Would he find someone he was attracted to? I was in the midst of wandering thoughts just like those when the door opened at just before 11 pm. Our normal routine had been that if I was awake when he came home, he would immediately come to me and touch my belly and talk to our baby. As he moved closer to do just that I smelled it. A cloying sweetness clung to him and turned my stomach with each step that drew him closer and made the smell more prominent.

I sidestepped him when he got close enough to attempt to reach out for my belly. “You smell like skank,” I informed him.

He laughed at my response as I stood there glaring at him. He soon realized he better start explaining why he smelled like skank. “I was at the club with the Deck to see Double-D.”

“So you got a lap dance or a private room show?” I asked accusingly.

“Neither. Two of the fucking dancers broke out in a biting, nail-scratching, hair-pulling brawl. Deck grabbed one and I took the other and pulled her off to the side for the staff to deal with. Your dad and Deck were there the whole time, beautiful. They can tell you. Now, get over here and let me have my baby belly time,” he demanded.

I shook my head back and forth. “Nope. Go shower first. You stink,” I told him as I wrinkled my nose and started rubbing my temples with my fingers. The smell really was incredibly strong.

His face dropped, but he turned and moved to do as I had asked while I plopped my big butt down on the sofa to wait. My whole body was vibrating with pent up emotion. I couldn’t stop those images I’d conjured just moments before he came through the door from filtering in as the scent of stripper floated in the air. Those same worries and insecurities came flooding back to me. With a strange woman’s scent in the air – even though I had been given a reason for it – my brain decided that my fears were true. It might not have happened tonight, but Evan had already proven that the only interest he still had in my body – even after seeing a stripper throw down – was to say hello to my baby bump.

When she told me to go get a shower before touching her, I knew there was more to the request than the nasty, sickly-sweet perfume left clinging to my clothing from the bitch I had pulled off of Roxy – the newest star of the recently opened strip club. It was modeled after a club we had in South Dakota called Renegade Rosy’s, and seemed to already be drawing a larger crowd than the others.

I stood under the hot water of the shower, scrubbing vigorously at my skin to free it of that scent when I laughed at the fact that the smell wasn’t the only thing I had to get rid of. There was glitter falling down, probably from my hair or neck somewhere, that must have been transferred from the stripper I’d picked up. That shit was like a disease you couldn’t get rid of. For every shiny fleck I washed away, there seemed to be two more bright and shiny spots that would spawn in its place.

It wasn’t until I finished up in the shower and made my way back to the living room that my suspicions had been confirmed. Anna was sitting there on the couch staring off into space, not even realizing I was back in the room and there were fresh tears tracking down her face. I suddenly felt like the world’s biggest asshole. I should have showered at the clubhouse so that I didn’t come home looking or smelling like that. More importantly though, I knew this was about our wedding night all over again. She tried to tell herself that she had forgiven me for that, but it was obvious that even if she had forgiven, she would never forget. Deck’s words from that day when I woke up with the wrong woman in my arms came back to haunt me.

“This shit you pulled on that girl’s wedding night? She will never be able to forget this.”His words rang truer in my head now than they had at the time. It had been so many months, and still my actions hung between us and weighed her down. I turned my focus back toward Anna instead of memories of the past too. No use in us both getting lost there.

“It’s okay, you know?” Anna finally said, making me realize she had, in fact, realized I was there.

“What’s okay?”

“That you’re with other women instead of me. I understand you’re not attracted to me like that anymore. It just took me a while to get it.”

“To get what exactly?” I clipped out, getting angrier at the situation with every word she spoke.

“We’ve been working on a friendship this whole time. I thought it might have been more, but I get it now.”

“No! Clearly, you don’t get it – at all!”

“But…”

“But what?”

“We don’t have sex,” she admitted.

“No, we don’t. This is why we don’t.” I explained my way of thinking to her, or thought that was enough for her to get my meaning. I realized it wasn’t when she just stared at me with a confused look on her face. “When you tried to come on to me, or touch me, before what did I tell you each time?”

“That the time wasn’t right,” she stated grudgingly.

“Anna we’re still building trust here along with our friendship. I haven’t been with anyone else. I don’t want anyone else. I’m fucking desperate to get my hands on you again and seeing you growing rounder with our child isn’t helping matters any. You’re beyond fucking gorgeous. But we’re not there yet, as much as it pains me to admit that. This conversation proves that. How long have you been wondering if I was sleeping around on you?” She didn’t answer, but the guilty expression she wore spoke volumes. “The fact that you couldn’t just ask me tells me I was right to wait. Anna, I fucked up enough already where you’re concerned. I won’t do it again.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered through her tears.

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