With twins.
Again.
I had taken one of the painkillers an hour before, so I was seeing double of her. But she had the first ultrasound in her hand, waving it around as she talked animatedly.
Pregnant.
It was easy enough to pinpoint when it had happened. That day she’d kissed Shaw in front of me for the first time. I’d lost control that day. How the hell was I supposed to remember something trivial like birth control when I’d turned into a man possessed watching my smoking-hot wife kiss the second-hottest woman I’d ever met?
That may have been the first time she’d kissed her best friend in front of me. But it hadn’t been the last. Experimenting Era 2.0 was starting slow. I was sure that I was the reason she was taking things one step at a time instead of diving in headfirst. She wanted to make sure I was comfortable.
Apparently she still hadn’t completely realized that she was my fucking world, and now that world had expanded a little. If it made Violet feel good, I was down for anything.
But only if thatanythingwas with Shaw.
Which was a lie that I was done telling myself.
I was tired of pretending I didn’t notice how Jagger looked at Vi. How lost he got, unable to tear his gaze away. The yearning that radiated off him in waves that would drown a normal person in utter despair if they didn’t get what they ached for so deeply. I knew that look well—I had fucking been him those years I’d spent without Violet’s love. He never tried to touch her, though. Which meant he had a hell of a lot more willpower than me. Because when it came to Vi and Shaw experimenting, I couldn’t last two seconds before I was begging them to let me participate in some way.
Jagger had watched me go down on Shaw only two weeks ago. Something Vi had encouraged. Flat-out begged for it. But she’d barely gotten the words out before I was on my knees. Atthe time, I hadn’t cared how Jagger felt about it. I’d take the ass-beating if he wanted to throw down.
He didn’t.
He hadn’t moved a single muscle while he watched us. Didn’t seem to breathe until Shaw had come twice on my tongue. And then he was pulling her to him, fucking her right in front of us.
I knew why he hadn’t touched Vi, though, and I respected him for it.
Jagger was waiting for Vi to ask. Or maybe to put him out of his misery and just take.
Admittedly, I was having fun with all the experimenting when we had private time with our friends. But it would all stop in the blink of an eye if Vi said it wasn’t what she wanted. Her wants, her needs? That was all that I cared about. And if she wanted Jagger to kiss her, any part of her, I’d be down for that in a heartbeat.
“This is crazy, right?” Vi exclaimed, returning me to the land of the agony in my scrotum. She had on a pair of running shorts and a tank top that showed off a nice view of her tits.
I should not have been able to get so much as a twitch from my dick yet. The doctor had assured me that the swelling wouldn’t be too bad if I kept an ice pack on my balls and took the meds he prescribed. That fucker was full of shit. My balls felt like they were the size of peaches, and I was half hard.
“Insane,” I agreed, making a mental note in my high-as-fuck brain to double- and triple-check that my vasectomy had taken before I put my dick back in her.
“You said that out loud, babe.”
“Oh. Sorry. Did it hurt your feelings?” Fuck. I couldn’t tell. She was all bright-eyed and full of smiles. She’d even given me that beautiful laugh I was so in love with. But what if I missed something while I was lying there recovering from a little snip to the boys down south?
How did anyone get shit done on drugs? If this was what it was like every day for an addict, there should never have been an opioid epidemic. The most I’d ever done was get stupid drunk and do even stupider things. And that was plenty of experience with not being in control for one lifetime. A shudder crawled up my spine, regret making my stomach turn.
“Shaw. Where’s Shaw?” I glanced around, half expecting her to materialize out of thin air. I was surprised when she didn’t. Maybe I’d said the wrong name. “Jagger?”
Nothing.
“Where the fuck are those two?” Realizing I was swearing, I pressed my lips together and peeked around, hoping I hadn’t said bad words in front of my little princess. But Love Bug was absent. And there was no Grier chirping happily. Or Fallon terrorizing Elijah and Ethan. She scared the living hell out of them the majority of the time. They screamed when they saw her most days, then did absolutely everything in their power to avoid being in the same room with her.
It was not the cute kind of scared either. Not much frightened my sons, but Fallon? Yeah, those two were terrified of her.
Where Grier was the carbon copy of her mother, Fallon was a perfect blend of Jagger and Shaw. Which was dangerous as fuck, because that perfect blend wasn’t just Jags and Shaw. It was Emmie Armstrong and Dallas Cage, rolled into one small, strawberry-blond hell-raiser. Those blue eyes might look all sweet and innocent, but they had flames in them that had us all on edge, waiting for the inevitable explosion from the little bomb Shaw had birthed.
“Jags and Shaw have the kids at their house, so you can recover without Ethan and Elijah all over the place,” she gently reminded me, her voice soothing a restless part of me while simultaneously making the heartbeat I felt pulsing in my balls hurt like a son of a bitch.
“Right. I remember. Jagger is on daddy duty all week. My parents and yours both said they would help out if he and Shaw need backup, though. No, wait. Shaw shouldn’t be over there.” I frowned, trying to think through the fog that had invaded my brain. I hated those freaking narcotics. “Why isn’t Shaw here? Didn’t you tell her yet?”
“Oddly enough, no. I wasn’t having some crazy life-changing catastrophic event, so I did an at-home test on my own and then had it confirmed at my OB. Because you Thorntons always seem to double down, I was adamant about an early ultrasound. You’re the first to know anything this time around.” She frowned down at the picture in her hand. “But now I’m wondering if you are even going to remember this when the Vicodin wears off.”
