I knocked again. "Are you ill? Did something disagree with your stomach?"
I was a TMI type of guy.
She mumbled a no, but she sounded strange.
I was just getting my phone out to call Stephan when he burst into our bedroom without knocking.
I blinked at him. This had never happened before. He knew very well that our bedroom was not a safe place to enter without knocking. Odds were more likely than not he'd scar his eyeballs for life, doing a thing like that.
What the hell was going on?
His eyes ran over my face, and they were bright with excitement.
And possibly tears.
What the hell was going on?
He was just striding to me when Javier came up behind him to hover in the door.
Without a word, Stephan dragged me into a rough, back thumping embrace.
I patted him back, cause it seemed the right thing to do.
What the hell was going on?
"She didn't tell me first," he said, sounding excited. "I swear it. I just guessed. She said she wanted us to come over so she could tell us all something, and I just knew."
The confusion, the worry, started to change into something else entirely, something powerful and profound blooming in my chest.
"Tell you what?" I asked softly, right as she opened the bathroom door.
I moved away from Stephan to approach her. She looked pale, something vulnerable her eyes.
Her lower lip was trembling, her eyes pure liquid on me.
And she had something in her hand. She held it up with a trembling hand.
Stephan let out a loud whoop, thumping me on the back again repeatedly.
I approached, looked down at the little white stick in her hand. A pregnancy test. With a clear plus sign on it.
I dropped to my knees, burying my face against her belly, rubbing my face back and forth, taking deep steadying breaths, the strongest joy I'd ever known washing over me, head to toe.
I hadn't even been aware she'd gone off birth control. She hadn't told me she was trying, and I understood. She was already so nervous about it anyway. She hadn't wanted that extra pressure on her.
My excited, adoring eyes would have always been looking for signs of a pregnancy, from the second I knew it was even a possibility.
"How long have you been off the pill?" I asked her, lifting her shirt to kiss her stomach. It wasn't enough of her for me, and I dragged her shorts down, too, giving myself a generous amount of skin to wallow in.
I wallowed.
"About a year," she said quietly.
"How far along are you?"
"Twelve weeks."
My hands went to her ass, gripping as I rubbed my nose against her soft skin. Then my lips, my tongue, moving down, kissing from hipbone to hipbone.
Javier cleared his throat.
Reluctantly, I stopped, letting the other men embrace her. Stephan held her for a long time, so long that I just joined them, hugging her back as he took her front, my hands snaking around and between to rub over her belly, my face buried in her hair. We stayed like that for a very long time.
I was holding the magical stick. I couldn't stop looking at it.
"You know she peed on that, right?" Javier called out.
I shrugged. I could not have cared less, tracing that plus sign with my finger.
"James," Bianca called.
She was lying on the bed, side by side with Stephan and Javier, Stephan in the middle, looking at his phone. Javier's head was on his shoulder. Bianca and Stephan were holding hands.
She extricated her hand from Stephan's nudging him in the side. "Tell him what you were telling me."
"You need to get some coconut oil, to prevent stretch marks," he said, reading from his phone. "She's freaked out about what's going to happen to her body. Like, really freaked out."
She elbowed him for that, and he smiled, leaning over to kiss the side of her head.
I moved to sit at her hip, hand going to her stomach. It wasn't enough, and I turned, lifted her shirt up to her ribs, and rubbed my face into her skin.
She gripped my hair in both hands, stroking through the strands.
I started kissing her skin, and quickly got carried away.
"Seriously, man?" Stephan asked as I used my nose to push her shorts lower, mouth following.
I pulled up gasping.
"Just so you know, these sheets haven't been changed today." I waited a beat. "And we had a busy morning."
"Oh God!" Javier said, jumping up.
"That's messed up, man," Stephan said with a laugh, getting up more slowly.
It worked. They gave us a moment of privacy. Well, more like an hour.
I couldn't get enough of my mouth on her body. My face in her belly. Hands cupping soft flesh.
I pulled her shorts and panties off, pushed her shirt up higher to bare her bra, snapped it open, pulled it all off, and took my mouth to her again.
I ate her out excessively. Tenderly. I kept my tongue on her and in her until she begged for my cock.
We were gaming in the den, Bianca in the next room, sorting through baby things.
"I think you should have five," Stephan said to me right before he shot Javier in the head.
Javier cursed. "I vote two. More than two kids is too many, even with nannies."
"My womb is not a democracy!" Bianca called from the other room.
I couldn't stop laughing for the longest time. None of us could.
She'd taken to using coconut oil as her belly started growing. Just another reason I loved her pregnant.
She smelled like coconuts, vanilla, and Bianca. It was a heady combination.
"How many do you think we'll have after this one?" I asked her.
"How many what?" she asked lazily, half asleep.
"Orgasms." That woke her up a bit. I grinned at her. "I'm kidding. Kind of. But I meant babies. Children."
She looked thoughtful. "I don't know. I say we take it one baby at a time, if you don't mind."
"Just throwing this out there, but I love you pregnant. If that helps."
"Noted."
She was lying on her back in bed, and I had both of her feet in my lap, rubbing them. I'd enthusiastically taken over the task of oiling her up. You might say I went overboard with it at times. There was no such thing as having my hands on her too much or too often, though, as far as I was concerned.
We were staying at the New York apartment for a few weeks. I was getting some work done before we went back to Vegas, before Bianca had to stop flying.