Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
“Layden,” she whispers, eyes brimming.
I nod. I know. I feel it, too, expanding my chest. “I love you.”
She throws her arms around me as I gently enter her.
She shudders and clenches around me. I lean in and kiss her, our lips barely touching at first. Light, glancing kisses. The barest brush of my bottom lip against her top one. Then, a gentle suckle on her cupid’s bow that becomes more urgent as she sinks all the way down on me, lifts up, and sinks down again.
“I love you so fucking much,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around her and holding her so tight it’s like I’m afraid she might disappear.
“I feel like I’ve loved you my whole life,” she says. “I was so alone before I found you.”
We make love passionately. Urgently. Her hips riding me as much as I’m thrusting desperately up into her hot, tight, wet—
“Layden!” she cries, and I can’t hold it any longer as I feel her start to spasm and shudder around me.
Our arms hold even tighter to one another as she comes, and my spine seizes, my balls tighten, and then finally, finally, I pump into the hot clench of my wife’s center as we climax together.
For several completely full moments, all of my life’s desires have come to fruition. I am so perfectly satiated, so perfectly in love, so perfectly fulfilled—
“Now, was that so hard?”
I blink in confusion at the deep voice that comes from nowhere. I’m still holding Phoenix tight, buried inside her, as the room around us begins to dissolve.
“Layden!” Phoenix cries, and I hear the fear in her voice as the actual room around us becomes clearer. We’re laying naked on a blanket on the floor, not a bed.
Horror hits as soon as I realize what’s happened. My father—our fathers. . . They’re watching on with satisfied grins on their faces. I move to cover Phoenix, a sick feeling settling in my stomach. They’ve gotten us to—
“Layden, my stomach!” Phoenix’s shout is frantic, and when I look back at her, I see why. Her lower abdomen is distending like a balloon. Like she’s—
“What’s happening?” she screams.
She drops a hand to her expanding belly, frightened eyes coming to me.
“First comes love,” my father sing-songs, “then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
LAYDEN
Present Day
Phoenix looks bewildered and horrified as she clutches her quickly expanding stomach with two hands now. “I can feel something moving. Oh god, Layden—”
I reach out and clutch her hand, not knowing what else to do. We’ve seen accelerated pregnancies in my brothers and their wives before, but nothing like this. Then again, their wives were normal human women. We never knew what might happen if two spirit beings from other realms made it here and tried to procreate. Not to mention whatever magic our fathers have conjured in this circle by their evil, infernal sacrifice.
Phoenix’s eyes squeeze shut, and her head tips back. “Oh god, Layden. I think the baby’s coming.”
My eyes fly wide. Baby? I look toward my father, but he’s still just standing there, grinning in satisfaction like a cat that just got the cream. Son of a bitch!
“It’s okay, we’re okay,” I tell Phoenix because I don’t know what else to do at this point other than lie.
“Layden,” she screams, her legs falling open.
Fuck, fuck! Am I about to deliver a baby? I move between her legs, and holy shit, I see a head crowning. A large head.
“Push,” I say for lack of any other ideas. If the baby keeps growing, it might get too big for her to push out. “Push now!”
Phoenix screams, and her hands clench in the blanket as she starts to push. Blood pounds in my ears as I reach forward to catch my child only minutes after procreating them. This is a mind-fuck if ever there was one.
The head comes out, face down. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. I just know I can see the hair on the kid’s head actively growing from peach fuzz to a downy brown. “Push!” I order, reaching out so I can catch the shoulders after Phoenix screams and bears down again.
The kid almost slips out, but I catch him. Him. “It’s a boy!” I cry, tears in my throat as I look down at my son, perfect little black wings nestled against his back.
“Layden,” Phoenix reaches down and grabs my shoulder. “Layden!”
“What?” I look up at her and lift the baby to her chest. She takes him, then starts shaking her head.
“There’s another one.”
Oh fuck. I look around us. Both Vlad and my father hold out their hands to take my newborn son from me, but I hold him in my arm, gook and all.
“Okay,” I say, trying to hold all my freaking out on the inside. “Okay! Now we know what to do.”