Page 5 of Riley Goes Home

“Numbnuts has it right.”

Haze ruffled my hair, so I drove my elbow into his ribs. His oof was music to my ears.

“We stay as long as you want to stay,” Fen told her. “We leave when you’re ready. No one’s more important than you and the babies.”

I wanted her to stop blushing each time we said shit like that, even though I liked the pretty pink colour of it. It reminded me that she hadn’t taken this for granted yet. That we loved her to distraction, that we’d only ever be hers until the day we all died.

“So are we getting this shit show on the road?” Blake appeared with a pillow and a bag of snacks. “Sit with me in the backseat and I’ll massage your back when it starts to ache.”

“Or you could sit with me up the front and control the aux cable?” Haze asked, fluttering his eyelashes at our mate.

“Aux cable for the first hour or so,” she said and Haze pumped his fist. “Then in the back with Blake.” His smile made clear what he thought about that. “And pee stops. So many pee stops.”

“All planned out on the map.”

Haze held up his phone, making clear all the places we could stop on the way, but while that might have relieved Riley’s concerns, it didn’t mine. You can never go back home, that’s what people say, and I was pretty sure I knew why. The men we were when we left Bordertown were broken, lost, and not sure what else to do but follow our hearts. Well, we did. Riley was always the compass we followed, and if it was back ‘home’ for a while, then so be it, but I’d make clear to anyone and anything that tried to get in my mate’s way just how different we were now.

“What the fuck…?” Ryan hissed as I slid past him and into the backseat with Blake.

“If Blake’s massaging Riley’s back, then I’ll do her feet,” I replied with a smirk. “Riley, who gives the best foot massages?”

“Couldn’t say,” she said with a sigh, settling into the front seat as Haze helped her settle her pillows around her. “I’ll have to try you all out on the drive and decide.”

Chapter 4

Riley

I don’t know what I expected to feel on our journey. Not this persistent feeling of deja vu as I watched farmland whoosh past out the car window. The massive silver-barked eucalyptus trees that seemed determined to claw at the sky, the paddocks of sleepy sheep cropping grass, they were what I saw every time we drove up to the city as a kid, and yet it felt so weird as an adult. The persistent pressure of my belly was the only thing reminding me that I wasn’t a child anymore.

A really persistent one.

“Pee break?” I asked Haze as we rolled into another tiny town.

“You got it.”

He’d already mapped out every public toilet on the way, knowing what my bladder was like now. Pulling up out the front of a park, he was around to my door and opening it before I could even turn, hands out to help me exit the car.

“You know you don’t have to do this,” I huffed.

“Yeah, but you’re doing all the hard work in this pregnancy, so doing this kind of thing helps alleviate my guilt. Just go with it, OK?”

Those piercing blue eyes of his twinkled, but that wasn’t entirely a lie.

“Are you going to pull my pants down and help me sit on the loo?”

That was a joke, but as soon as I said the words aloud, I had a terrible thought. I was having quintuplets. Was that the way it would be? Towards the end of the pregnancy, would I even be able to see my pants to pull them down? His smirk widened.

“If I’m pulling your pants down.” He drew me closer, his voice a low buzz in my ear. “It’s to do something a whole lot more interesting than that. Women are supposed to get hella horny when pregnant.”

Shit, his words were like a switch to turn my body on. I felt something slick shift inside me.

“It’s the increased blood flow,” I replied stiffly, looking around us for the first time. The town was quiet, the only evidence of life the cars whizzing past on the highway. “The babies’ circulatory systems are connected to the mother’s, so more blood is produced to ferry nutrients around the body and to each child. That means greater blood flow to the groin, resulting in easier and more intense arousal in some individuals.”

“That’s it, baby,” Haze crooned. “Talk science to me.”

“Stop turning our mate on.” Fen’s crisp tones were like a splash of water to the face, forcing me back, but when I moved, I found him right there. His fingers pushed my hair back from my neck, then he traced the shape of my mating marks. I couldn’t help but shiver, a faint echo of the pulses of ecstasy I’d felt when they claimed me rushed through my body. “Or at least wait until I can play too.”

They each moved closer, wedging me tightly between their bodies, but it wasn’t enough. I needed their hands on my skin, their lips mapping every curve. I wanted them to see every inch of me and how my body changed as their children grew within. I wanted to be claimed over and over again, even as their hands cradled my belly. Sometimes pregnancy felt like one long, lowkey heat, something that had Candy tearing her hair out.

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