“Fucking hell—like I said before, as if you’d volunteer to be sick?”
“I know, but still. I wish . . .” She tried to tilt her head back so she could look at the ceiling, but her neck was too painful.
“You’re hurting.”
“It’s nothing unusual. This is how I always feel after I . . . well, anyhow.”
Guess two could play at the avoidance game.
“This is so unnatural,” she blurted.
“What is?”
She had to turn her torso so that she could look at him properly. And absently, she measured how good his dark skin looked against the white sheets, the contrast making both seem to glow.
Selena tried to find the words. “I feel like there’s this huge . . . I don’t know, divide or something . . . between us. It makes no sense. I mean, you’re right here beside me—but there are words that we’re tripping over, subjects we don’t want to talk about. It’s just . . . well, it sucks. Because right now? This is the good part. I mean, check me out.”
She lifted her free hand and splayed her fingers wide; then wiggled them.
“Mobile and awake is so much better than where I was, right?” When he simply stared at her, she felt like a fool. “I’m sorry, I guess that sounds weird—”
Trez leaned in and kissed her quiet, his lips lingering. “No.” He eased back. “It’s . . . I know what you mean. It’s not crazy, and you’re right. Now is the good part—”
“You are so hot.”
Trez let out another cough. “Damn, female. What are you like.”
“I told you last night—or, jeez, what time is it? Anyway, I told you before, I’m all about honesty now.”
His lids dropped low. “Being straight up suits me just fine. So lemme ask you, if I were to pick you up and carry you into the shower, would you—”
“Get on my knees again under the hot spray and see if you taste as good as I remember?”
The sound that came out of him was not a cough. But it wasn’t a coherent statement, either. It was part growl, part groan, with a little moan thrown in for good measure, like he was getting ready to beg . . .
It was pretty much the sexiest thing she had ever heard.
“Is that a yes?” she drawled.
He kissed her again, harder this time. Longer, too. Then he pegged her with eyes that were boiling. “Shit, I’m dying over here—”
As Trez stopped himself again, she got thrown by that word herself. When it came to the two of them, one was, in fact, dying. It was her, not him, though.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I won’t say that ever again.”
“It’s all right.” She forced herself to smile. “Let’s wash our cares away—”
“I’m going to find a cure for this,” he said gravely. “I’m not going to let you lose the fight, Selena. I will literally move heaven and earth to keep you beside me—no divide, nothing but our naked skin . . . our souls.”
Tears speared into her eyes, and she forced them back, willing them to get gone and stay that way. Reaching up to his handsome face, she brushed her fingertips over his features.
“I love you, Trez.”
“God, I love you, too.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
When Layla woke up, she was lying on her side on a much softer surface than the vestibule’s floor. In a panic, she brought her hand to her belly.
Everything felt the same, the hard swelling, the size it had been—but dearest Virgin Scribe, had she injured the young? She could remember getting out of her car, struggling to walk over to the mansion’s entrance, losing consciousness—
“Young,” she mumbled. “Young okay? Young?”
Instantly, Qhuinn’s blue-and-green stare was right in front of her. “You’re all right—”
As if she cared about herself right now. “Young!”
With a curse, she thought, why had she ever complained about being pregnant? Maybe this was punishment for her having—
“Everything’s okay.” Qhuinn glanced across the room, focusing on someone she couldn’t see. “Fine, just . . . okay, yeah, fine.”
The relief was so great, tears flooded her eyes. If she had lost their young because she was meeting with Xcor? Because she’d been staring at him while he . . . did that to his sex?
She never would forgive herself.
With a curse, she wondered why had she asked that male to do those things. It was wrong on so many levels, adding to her guilt when she was already choking on the stuff.
After all, it was so much easier to take the high-road victim role if you were not asking your blackmailer to jerk off.
“Oh, God,” she moaned.
“Are you in pain? Shit, Jane—”
“I’m right here.” The good doctor knelt down beside Qhuinn, looking tired, but alert. “Hi there. We’re glad you’re back. Just so you know, Manny reset your arm. It was broken clean through. We’ve put it in a cast and . . .”
There was some kind of conversation about her recovery time and when the plaster could come off, but she didn’t pay attention to any of that. Doc Jane and Qhuinn were keeping something from her: Their smiles of reassurance were like photographs of the real thing—perfectly accurate, but flat.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she cut in.
Silence.
As she struggled to sit up, Blay was the one who helped her, gently grasping her good arm and giving her something to push against.
“What,” she demanded.
Doc Jane looked at Qhuinn. Qhuinn looked at Blay. And Blay . . . was the one who eventually met her eyes.
“There’s something unexpected,” the fighter said. “In the ultrasound.”
“If you make me ask ‘what’ again,” she gritted out, “I’m going to start throwing things, and to hell with my broken arm.”
“Twins.”
As if time and reality were a car that had suddenly had its brakes punched, there was a metaphoric screeching sound in her head.
Layla blinked. “I’m sorry . . . what?”
“Twins,” Qhuinn repeated. “The ultrasound is showing that you are carrying twins.”
“And they’re both perfectly healthy,” Doc Jane added. “One is significantly smaller, and its development has been delayed, but it appears viable. I didn’t catch the second fetus during your previous ultrasounds because I understand—from a consult with Havers—that vampire pregnancies are different from humans’. There was apparently another fertilized egg that had implanted but did not enter a significant embryogenesis stage until much later—your last ultrasound was two months ago, for example, and I did not see anything at that time.”
“Twins?” Layla choked out.
“Twins,” one of the three replied.
For some reason, she thought back to the moment when she’d found out she had, in fact, conceived. Even though pregnancy had been the goal, and she and Qhuinn had done what they’d had to do to get there, the news that the needing had been successful had been the kind that stunned. It just seemed so miraculous, and overwhelming—a joyous gauntlet that she was not entirely sure wouldn’t get the best of her.
This was the same.
Except without the joy.
She had known two of her sisters to carry twins, and one of the pregnancies had been lost. The other had resulted in only a single, living young.
Tears started to fall from her eyes.
This was not good news.
“Hey.” Blay leaned down with a handkerchief. “This is not bad. It’s not.”
Qhuinn nodded, although his face remained a mask. “It’s . . . unexpected. But not at all bad.”
Layla put her hands to her stomach. Two. There were two young that she now had to get over the ultimate finish line safely.
Two.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, how had this happened? What was she going to do?
As the questions ran through her head, she realized . . . well, hell. Like so much of life, this was out of her hands. An impossibility had become manifest—her job now was to do what she could to help herself and the young get the rest, nutrition and medical care that was required.
That was the only thing she could directly affect. The rest of it?