Page 58 of Rescued By the Alien Bull Rider

I think I’m about to ejaculate.

She pressed her lips together and covered her breasts with her arms, her gaze darting away.

“That bad, huh? This is why I didn’t want to bother with it at the wedding!”

“Bad?” I croaked. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re all… All white-eyed and grumpy looking. Frankly, you look like you’re trying not to puke right now.”

“Trust me,” I gritted out, scrunching my eyes shut for a moment in an attempt to reestablish control. “Vomit is the last bodily fluid I am worried about involuntarily ejecting right now.”

“Oh. Oh,fuck.” A strangled gasp had my eyes flying open. Jolene’s hands were on her belly, her face drawn suddenly tight.

“What is it?” I asked, immediately alert, arousal forgotten.

“Oh. Nothing,” she said, her eyes unfocused. “Sorry. It just felt like… For a second there… Like someone just took a fucking hammer to my pubic bone and –fuck!”

This time, with my eyes open, I saw the tightening of her belly, muscles squeezing beneath the skin.

“Jolene,” I said, immediately getting to my feet. “You are having contractions.”

When her eyes found mine, they were wild with terror I had not seen since our first night together, just before I’d thrown her up onto Wyn’s back.

“But I’m not ready!” she cried. “I don’t… I don’t know what to do!”

I bent and placed a protective, possessive hand against her belly. Just for a moment. Just for now.

I held my wife’s panicked gaze and said, “I do.”

24

JOLENE

Iwas only a couple of hours in, and labour was kicking my fucking ass. I’d always assumed that I’d hold out for a long time, maybe last the whole thing, without needing some pain relief. No clue why. Some fucked up need to be strong, I guess. To not be a burden. To need as little from Zohro as possible.

I stayed in the tub at first, hissing through clenched teeth every time a contraction tried to turn my insides into mush. But before long, that hissing was swearing. Then, the swearing was garbled, animal moaning.

The pain was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. Like someone was crushing my pelvis inside a vise. It made panic swell inside me and stole my breath, no matter how many times Zohro kept reminding me to inhale and exhale.

Thankfully, only one of us was freaking out right now. I’d always had the impression that husbands during labour were mostly useless. Too stressed out to do anything but try not to pass out beside their screaming wife.

But Zohro? He was the complete fucking opposite of that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him so calm, so in control. He movedwith a smooth, swift competence. Apart from the blazing white of his eyes that indicated some strong emotion, he showed absolutely no signs of stress at all. Even when I begged him to end my pain because I thought I might die if he didn’t, he merely took gentle but firm hold of me and lifted me out of the tub as easily as he might lift a child, taking me to a medical table type thing, telling me that he would start administering fluids so that he could place the epidural as soon as possible.

He placed me on my left side and got to work, preparing IV solutions and hooking the line of it into my arm. I barely felt it, barely noticed what he was doing at all, too preoccupied with my agony. I had to trust Zohro wholly and completely now. My body was giving in to processes I had no control over, and I was barely able to keep breathing let alone pay attention to what he was doing.

Between contractions, I did dazedly become aware of him placing sticky circles on my belly.

“What… What are those?”

“I will use these to monitor the fetal heartrate,” he told me. He placed a final circle near the top of my belly, near my ribcage, and suddenly frowned.

Uh oh.

Another contraction wracked me then, so I couldn’t ask him what that look had been about. Was something wrong with Baby Girl’s heart rate? It was so much harder to feel her moving with the contractions.God, no.

“What?” I cried, dragging the word out of a moan as the contraction subsided. “What’s wrong?”

Zohro was pressing his fingers all over my abdomen, his frown deepening.

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