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“Gah!” I groan, shaking myself physically so hard that it sends white blearing lights ripping through my pounding brain. I step back from the door. “Did someone follow you?”
She shrugs, and her faded and worn brown leather jacket rises and falls. The band T-shirt she has on underneath hides breasts that I know are the most perfectly pert breasts in the entire universe. It’s crazy to see someone after what is supposed to be a one-night stand on your doorstep, fully clothed in the daylight. She was here before, standing there casually and leaning one shoulder against the wall, but when I opened the door—against my better judgment and moral compass—she was all blazing fire, stripping off her clothes and mine.
Stop. Going. There. If my mind keeps rehashing those lovely, steamy scenes, my dick is going to make a full-on tent in my sweats, and how embarrassing would that be? Maybe it would take my mind off my rocky stomach and the fact that if Ayana had a tail today—the bikers like to follow her pretty much wherever she goes because everyone knows her dad is overprotective to the point of being paranoid—my dick probably won’t have a chance to make tents in anything. Ever again. Because they’ll rip it, and my balls, clean off and glue them to the back of my head like a fucked-up snowman with balls and a dick for eyes and a nose.
What the fuck was I thinking?
I don’t realize I say that out loud until Ayana brushes past me and shuts the door firmly, twisting the deadbolt into place. She braces her back and shoulders up against it, staring me down with eyes the same soft shade of scotch poured over fresh grass. I mean, they’re hazel with green and soft brown spokes with flashing golden dots. Christ, my mind is a wreck right now.
“You were thinking with your dick,” she mutters. “And now I have something to tell you. I know we used protection, but that doesn’t always work out.”
My mind races as fast as it can at the moment, which is somewhere near the speed of an engine that won’t turn over. All I can think of is that the night Ayana approached the bar, I played along, not really believing the direction she was going, then I was hardly able to believe my luck. Everyone knew who Ayana Timewell was, and everyone knew to stay the heck away from her if they didn’t want to end up dismembered. The whole thing played out in my head for a few seconds—the forces of good and evil, weighing the consequences of doing the better good against the even worse evil of using someone innocent as a means to an end, namely getting information on a tightly closed-up club that none of us, not even Granny, could hack.
Logic prevailed, and I knew I couldn’t do that to Ayana. That would have been wrong, no matter what information I could have gathered to right an even bigger wrong. By all accounts, she wasn’t involved in any of the club business. Her dad had always been a loving father, and he kept her away from the shadier parts of his life. That was all I had gathered in six months. That night at the bar, I hesitated before I gave her my address. If it wasn’t for intel, then it shouldn’t be for pleasure. I should never have let her come over that night. I’ve been well-trained in the arts of hacking and self-preservation, and I knew it was a bad move. It turned out that it was a move I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about ever since.
“I’m sorry, what?” My brain comes back around to what Ayana just stated so very calmly. What did she just say about protection? It doesn’t always work out. What the ever living shit on shit is that supposed to mean?
The delicate, porcelain column of Ayana’s throat works as she swallows thickly. Her eyes flash, and in the overhead hall light, they look like straight-up whisky, which isn’t so great for my rocky stomach. Wait. That could be the fact that she’s talking about protection, and she’s here a little after the fact, looking like a badass who has information I don’t.
“I’m. Pregnant.”
She lays it out, flat out, just like that. She lays out her words, but those words lay me out. I absorb them like a physical blow.
“As in, with child. Your child. At first, I thought it would be a real problem because I’m twenty-two, we don’t like each other, and I don’t want to be a mom. I’m not ready. I mean, I just graduated from college. I don’t even have a real job yet because I just freaking graduated, and I’m still trying to find one. I have a lot of life to live and way too much ahead of me to get thrown the curveball of all curveballs, but then I sat and thought about it all night and all day today, and I’ve changed my mind. I seriously changed my mind.” Her hand flies to her stomach, and the fiercest determination storms over her features. “I’m keeping it. I only ever had one parent—”
