Page 14 of Vengeance

And it's not just him physically here with me that I’ve been denied. I’ve been denied a text asking me some mundane detail that doesn’t really matter to our plan because he’s too stubborn to admit he just wants to talk to me. I’ve been denied hearing his voice in my ear over the phone or video calls to go over more complicated things late at night that can really wait until morning but he really just wants to hear my voice too.

When this is all over, we’re going to work on that. Stop finding a reason to be around each other because we don’t want to admit we want to be around each other. Because for so long, we couldn’t admit it.

But later. Right now, I focus on his hot lips on mine.

He kisses me harder. Demanding. Takes my breath away. Gives me no room to fight back. But I don’t want to fight right now. Right now, I relish in the fact that this is what I’ve been dreaming of for months.

As though reading my mind, Viper pulls away just slightly and murmurs, “I’ve been waiting to do this for a while now.”

His lips are back on mine again. Already, my heart is racing, I can feel my pussy soaking my panties, and I’m growing hotter with more need to take my clothes off and have his hot skin pressed against mine. I’m so desperate with desire for him that I almost forget about my pregnancy until his lips begin to travel down my jaw and neck. His hands begin to search the layers of my dress to find a way to get it off me.

“Wait,” I say, reaching into his dark blonde—no black—hair and tugging to pull him away. “I have to tell you something.”

“Cres told me as much. It can wait.”

He’s about to settle his weight on me. Any other time, I’d relish in his heavy body on top of my smaller one until it almost crushed me. Today, I rush to stay him with a hand on his chest and the other on my stomach, just in case I can’t stop him in time.

Viper notices the hand on my stomach and takes the hint as he sits back.

“What’s wrong?” he insists as he takes my hand away from where I placed it on my stomach and places his hands there instead. “Are you hurt? Eileen told me you were fi—”

Viper cuts himself off as his hands begin to feel the distinct curve of my round belly under my dress. He instantly lifts the hem all the way up to my breasts, exposing my pregnant belly to his gaze.

“I’m fine,” I assure. Then I take his hand, still gripping onto the hem of my dress, and place it on my belly where I feel the baby moving. “We’re fine.” And then, even though it’s obvious from the sight of my stomach and the movement I know he feels under his hand, I add, “I’m pregnant.”

7

Viper

I’d already suspected what was going on the moment I placed my hands on her stomach and instead of encountering smooth, toned skin through the layers of her dress, I encountered hard curves. I certainly figured it out when I lifted up her dress, and saw her swollen stomach. But there’s something about hearing it come out of her mouth that confirms it and makes it real. Also, her insistence that she wanted to tell me herself and Cres’s refusal not to tell me anything is… understandable now, at least. I make a mental note to make it up to Cres with some exclusive item she hasn’t been able to get her hands because she’s not influential or famous enough later.

Right now, I look at Dele dazed, not sure how to react to the news. Because of everything I suspected her little secret could have been, this wasn’t it.

Movement through her belly under my hand snaps me out of my stupor.

“I thought you said it wasn’t possible,” is the first thing I manage.

Dele just smiles and shrugs. “Well, don’t get too excited about doing it again. Even my doctor said it was a lucky fluke when they examined me.” She frowns and says, “You are… excited, right? Well you don’t have to be excited. I’m not excited. But you’re okay with this. If it happens?”

I feel myself break out into a grin as I look down at her and say, “I’m excited.”

Then the full comprehension of what she said dawns on me. “You’re not? Then why didn’t you—”

“No. No. I don’t mean like that. I mean… I’m excited. At least, I want to be. But...” Dele sighs and averts her gaze from me as she continues, “This wasn’t supposed to be able to happen. And I can’t convince myself that something’s not going to go wrong if I let myself get my hopes up. So I’m taking it one day at a time.”

I roll my eyes. And I’m supposedly the paranoid one. “That’s nonsense. Everything will be fine.”

“I hate when you make promises you can’t keep.”

“So you lied when you told me you’re both fine.”

“No… just—”

“Is that what your doctor said?”

“Yes, but—”

I grab her chin and force her to look at me.

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