Van’s thumb strokes the back of my hand as we head back to our car, freshly baked bread from our favourite bakery in hand. “Happy?” he asks.
I stand up on my tiptoes and he obligingly bends so I can kiss him. “Yeah.”
When I return homeafter my doctor’s appointment and see my husband shirtless and sweaty as he helps our employees harvest grapes by hand, there’s only one sentence that crosses my mind.
“I can’t stop thinking about how fucking good you’re going to look pregnant.”
I’m beginning to think he knew exactly what he was doing when he said those words to me last week. Technically, my ovaries shouldn’t be firing out anything yet, but in my mind they’re exploding right now.
“How’d it go?” he asks, walking beside me back to our house that sits below the last field of vines.
“Alright,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at the other shifters helping out today. I wait until we’re inside and away from their ears before telling him more, following Van into the kitchen as I speak. “She was on the fence about me getting a new IUD given the fact that the same thing might just happen again; she’s not convinced that I can rely on it being 99% effective the way that humans can, which I understand. So then we discussed the pill, and how I’m mostly human and that itdidseem to work for me before, back in my late teens.”
“Right,” Van says, pulling out a bottle of juice and beginning to chug the whole thing.
“But you know she’s a werecat, so she looked me in the eye,” I continue, miming how the doctor had swivelled in her chair and given me a hard stare with her green cat-like eyes, “and said ‘I would never say this to a human, but what are you doing? Just use magic. You have the ability, just cast a birth control spell,’and I told her I don’t know any spells, all my magic is intuitive and she said ‘I know who your mother-in-law is, you should speak to her.’”
Van chokes on his drink at the mention of his mother, and I give him a few cursory slaps on the back, though I don’t think it helps at all. “What?” he wheezes. “She actually told you to talk about this withMom?”
“I don’t think she meant the whole story… which was fucking embarrassing to tell her, by the way. I know she’s a doctor and it’s just sex, but… I mean, it’s not your typical sex, is it? And byyour, I mean the general human population.”
“Which she isn’t part of. And neither are we.”
“I could tell she struggled to keep a straight face.”
Van frowns. “Did she examine things?” he asks, nodding at my crotch.
“Yeah. Lucky me, I got a surprise pap smear as a bonus.” I hesitate, walking around Van and opening the fridge myself, peering inside but not really seeing anything as I continue, “We also discussed fertility and trying to conceive, and how if I can open my cervix at will the way I appear to be able to, that I actually have to be really careful to not do that when I am pregnant. She said if I can, I should try and speak to other fae about that particular ability, and also that while knotting when you’re in your regular form should be okay, we should absolutely avoid full moon sex when I do get pregnant.”
“I mean, yeah, that makes sense, I wasn’t ever going to think that would be okay anyway, given how?—”
“—fucking huge your dick is in that form?” I finish for him. He grins, shrugging.
“I mean, if the shoe fits…”
I am morethan a little tipsy by the end of the evening. Like all the vineyards here on Motuwai, including our own, the car park at this estate is loose gravel, and I wobble in my heels, clutching onto Van’s bicep.
He lifts me off my feet, burying his face in my neck, a shiver running down my spine at the brush of his lips as he murmurs, “You’re such a fucking lightweight,” in that teasing tone of his.
“Hey, I don’t have your freakish metabolism, okay?” I whine, my hand already reaching between us to grasp the hard bar of his cock. There’s no one else around — we slipped away early — and Van presses me back against the side of our car, his lips descending on my mating scar. I moan loudly and he silences me with a possessive kiss, grinding against me. I dig my hand into his thick dark hair, wrapping my legs around his waist, the skirt of my dress hiked up my thighs, enjoying this for what it is — a messy make-out session reminiscent of when we were our younger, carefree selves. It even ends the same way it always used to — Van pulling back suddenly, though this time he outright says, “We’ve got company,” rather than the vagueI thought I heard somethingexcuse he used to use pre-Unravelling, back when he heard people approaching from far too far away but had to pretend to be human.
Home is a half-hour drive across the island. Van’s eyes shine in the dark as he drives, reflecting the small amount of light from the dashboard’s screen. I stare at his profile, unashamedly basking in his presence. “You’re so beautiful,” I tell him, my eyes dancing between his long, dark lashes, his straight nose and strong jaw, his face entirely clean shaven for once.
“I think you’re drunk.”
“Hardly. You know I’m not. And I’m allowed to appreciate how handsome you are.”
“You’re the beautiful one.”
I shake my head and stare out into the darkness. There’s no street lights on the island outside of the main suburban areas, and at this time of night I can’t make out anything but the road directly ahead of us though I’ve driven along these parts often enough to know where we are. Minutes go by, the silence in the car growing heavier, the feelings in our bond amplifying it all.Hesitation. Nervousness.
I can’t take it.
“Why are we waiting?”
Van knows exactly what I’m talking about. I can feel the instant relief from him, and that at least makes me happy. “I was wondering if you were going to bring this up. We didn’t exactly finish our conversation from earlier about where you got to with the doctor.”
“In terms of contraception? Yeah. Because I wanted to talk to you about whether I even bother with anything.”
