He stared back at her, breathing fast. “See. That’s the problem. We’re not supposed to want this. We’re supposed to be making a baby. Procreating. Artificial insemination without the artificial part.”
She choked on a laugh.
“This is supposed to be clinical and calculated. For one reason only—to get you pregnant.”
She pressed a hand to her quivering belly.
“It’s not supposed to fun. Or enjoyable. Or…hot.”
He put a hand on her cheek, cupped her face. She stared up at him.
“So, just tell me when and I’ll be there to do my duty.” He gave her his back and walked out. She stood there, a trembling mass of ragged nerves and aching yearning. She touched her lips as Nate walked away.
She sank onto a chair, sat there for a long time, eyes closed. What was she doing? She’d been acting strange ever since Derek proposed this crazy idea. She wanted it. She wanted Nate. She wanted the baby he could give her. But at what cost?
She stood up on shaky legs and went downstairs. Derek was running on the treadmill. Sweat glistened on his face.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked him.
He didn’t need to ask what she meant. “Why? Aren’t you?”
She hesitated. She had a hundred questions chasing each other through her mind but was almost afraid to ask them. Maybe she was afraid of the answers.
“You know I’ll do it if you want,” she said carefully. Of course he knew that. Their whole life was like that.
“But…?”
She shook her head. “I just want to make sure you’re okay with it. Because…you’re the one who…Derek, I’ll be having sex with another man.”
“I know, Krissa.” Derek’s feet pounded on the rubber mat of the treadmill in a solid rhythm. He swiped a hand across his forehead. Krissa sucked on her bottom lip, watched him run.
“Okay.”
She could have asked more questions, told Derek all her fears, but he clearly didn’t want to hear them. Fine.
That evening when she tested her urine, it showed a surge in her luteinizing hormone. She would ovulate in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours.
Without thinking about it, she went first to find Nate. He sat in his dimly lit bedroom reading a book.
“Isn’t it hard to read in the dark?” she asked, leaning on the door frame of his room. He’d spread his things out around it, making it look completely different than the bare extra bedroom it had been before he’d arrived. She could even smell the difference—Nate’s musky after shave and his own unique scent. They’d bought the house with five bedrooms, anticipating the family they would eventually have.
“Yeah.” He closed the book. “But I’m bored out of my fucking mind and the only way I can read is if the light isn’t too bright.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?”
She sighed, stepped further into the room. “I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
He rubbed his eyes. Without his dark glasses he looked different. She’d gotten so used to seeing him with them on all the time. Without them, he looked…vulnerable. Her heart squeezed. She desperately wished there was something she could do to make it better for him. Instead, all she was doing was complicating his life.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“I know. I just feel bad.” Silence expanded between them. “I…uh…came to tell you that I’ll be ovulating in twenty-four hours.”
“Ah. Okay.”
“So, tomorrow night.”
“Yeah.” He shook his head. “It makes it weird, doesn’t it? When you have to plan it down to the minute?”
She nodded slowly. “Oh, yeah. You have no idea. We’ve been doing this for years.”
“Christ.”
She lifted her shoulders.
“Uh…where…?”
She inhaled slowly. “I don’t know.”
He tipped his head. “I think we need to have Derek in on this. Did you tell him?”
She blew out the breath she’d just taken in. “No.” Her first though had been Nate.
“Let’s go find him.” Nate tossed the book aside and swung his long legs to the floor. He wore a pair of plaid knee length shorts and nothing else. His abs rippled as he rose up, and her eyes moved from there to his broad, smooth chest, the flat brown discs of his nipples, the dark hair between.
“Okay. I think he’s out in the hot tub.”
“Great.”
She led the way through the house out onto the deck, the sky a deep midnight blue just after sunset, the mountains silhouetted blackly against it, the ocean the same hue as the sky. The lights of the oil rigs winked in the distance.
“Hey, buddy,” Nate said. Derek opened his eyes.
“Hey. Coming in?”
Nate glanced at Krissa. “Sure, why not?” His hands went to the button below his navel and her mouth went dry. Why would he bother with a swimsuit? After the other night, he was fully aware that they never bothered, and it was certain Derek was in there completely naked.
Nate’s back was to her as he slid the shorts down over his hips and thighs and stepped out of them. He wore no underwear. His broad back curved sleekly into two deep indentations just above his ass, which was tight and pale compared to the deep tan on the rest of his body. His long muscular legs carried him closer to the hot tub and he sat on the edge and swung them over and into the water.
He glanced over his shoulder and Krissa’s cheeks grew warm as he caught her staring at him. “Coming in, Krissa?”
She couldn’t do it. For the last two days, all she’d been thinking about was sex. She vibrated with it, ached for it, and getting in the hot tub with two gorgeous naked men would kill her. “No,” she choked. “Not tonight.”
Nate’s glance lingered on her, then he turned and slid into the churning water. She could just hear his sigh of pleasure above the motor of the spa, and it twisted something low inside her.
Krissa pulled up one of the cushioned wicker chairs closer to the tub. “We need to talk to you, Derek,” she said. Derek’s head jerked around.
“We?”
“Um.” Had that sounded bad? Like she and Nate had been plotting behind his back? “I did the ovulation test. It shows an LH surge.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
“Tomorrow night we need to…it’s a good time…”
“Yeah. Okay.” Derek stretched his arms out on either side of him along the rim of the tub. Krissa glanced at Nate.
“How do you want to do this, Derek?” Nate spoke up. “You need to be involved in this.”
She flashed Nate a grateful look. Derek nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“You should be there, with us,” Nate said quietly. Krissa’s tummy clenched. Could she do this?
If it would give her a baby, she’d do almost anything.
“Yeah,” Derek said again and she tried to reach his expression. He looked…excited.
Relief softened her body. If Derek was going to be tense about this, it would make it really difficult. Given his mild kink, it seemed he might actually be turned on by the whole thing.
Derek looked at her. “Okay, Krissa?”
She nodded, her fingers playing with the hem of her shorts. “Okay.”
Chapter Seventeen
Planning sex was weird, but necessary, although the lack of spontaneity did nothing to diminish Nate’s arousal. Christ, he’d been half hard for days.
All day, he and Krissa tiptoed around each other in the big house.
Every time they saw each other and their eyes met, heat flared and they both looked away. Krissa spent most of the day in her office, working at something on her computer, he didn’t know what, but around noon they’d met up in the kitchen, both hungry. She’d made sandwiches while he opened a bag of potato chips and fished pickles out of a jar. As they ate, the silence amplified and the heat intensified. He was excruciatingly aware of Krissa’s shiny dark hair, her soft skin, as usual much of it bared by the shorts and skimpy tank top she wore. His eyes lingered on her smooth thighs, her little bare toes with pink toenails. Would she wrap those legs around him? His dick twitched.