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“Well, was I wearing a suit in any of the dreams you’ve had?” I ask, moving to the chair in the space rather than the bed because if I get her on that bed, I’m not leaving her anytime soon.
“No,” she says, her blush deepening, and I smile, brushing a kiss to her lips before helping her with the jacket barely hanging onto her shoulders. The top she’s wearing clings to her belly, and I can’t stop touching it as she sinks into my hold.
“Then this must be real, because every time I’ve dreamt of you, it was in that sexy little skirt, without this cute little baby belly,” I add, before claiming her lips, needing her taste to keep me sane for anything we might discuss.
Chapter 4
Eden
I’m dragging today. More than normal, but Dr. Miller said it was normal to be fatigued at this stage of pregnancy still. She hinted at her curiosity about who the baby’s father is by asking if I know his medical history. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I don’t know who he is or that I haven’t started trying to find him yet.
I still have time for that. I’m barely twelve weeks now so I don’t have to rush it.
I’m definitely less stressed than I was two weeks ago thanks to the Cartwright family. Jesse and Annie keep telling me I’m family when I hesitate to ask them for help, and god bless Annie. She’s been over every day the last week to help me with the babies. It’s gotten all of us to bed earlier and sleeping through the night ever since.
Jake is not what I was expecting at all after learning Annie’s youngest was sixteen, but he certainly doesn’t look like he’s seventy-six. I mean, I kind of get how older guys might still have babies at his age after seeing him. There’s something about Jake that I just can’t quite put my finger on though, something familiar about him and it’s more than just how much he and Jesse look alike. I really like him though, especially with the way he talked about finding the quadruplets’ father and teaching him a lesson.
They’ve thankfully given me space with the whole me being pregnant thing and I’m super grateful for it. I don’t know how to explain sleeping with a total stranger without sounding crazy or a bit slutty. I mean, even hearing the others’ stories about how they met and got together, at least they knew the other’s name before handing over their virginity. Not to mention none of them ever did something so stupid in less than half an hour in someone’s presence.
Okay, Julie and Serena admitted that they went at supersonic speed after they were at Serena’s place that first night, but they’d met earlier in the day. Carly and Johnnie were similar, running into each other all over town for almost two weeks before he stole her home with him to keep her safe. They may have wound up in bed that night, but at least it was a bed, and they knew each other’s names.
I force the thoughts aside as I pull into the driveway of the gorgeous house, we’ve been staying in. It’s incredible. Even with all four babies’ cribs in the same room, there’s still room to move through it. Not to mention, there are four cribs now. I only had two in the apartment because it was all that fit, and all I could afford, but now, each of them has their own sleeping space, which might also account for them sleeping through the nights entirely.
The spacious room also has two changing tables that fit side by side, while the cribs line the other two walls. The walk-in closet is thankfully on the same wall as the door into the room, which leaves the entire middle of the floor open for the babies to scoot around while I’m getting the others dressed. They haven’t started crawling yet, but we’re not worried about it.
The doctor told me that due to being early they’re likely to reach milestones at a slightly later stage, and to simply let her know if I was worried about any of them falling further behind their brothers or sister. So far, I haven’t seen anything that causes concern, and thanks to Annie’s experience, her assurance they all seem to be doing incredibly well makes me worry even less.
There’s a new car parked behind Annie that I haven’t seen before, but I’m sure it’s simply another one of the Cartwrights. I’ve met a lot but not all of them in the last week, and Annie mentioned that the girls would be stopping by after school was out and while it’s still early, they could have had an early release day. We used to have them a few times a semester. Wow does it feel a lot longer than six months since I was in school somehow.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I’d seen both Jaime and Jillian in the hallways at our high school before, but since Jillian was only a freshman last year, there was no opportunity for us to interact at all. Same with Jaime. There were no sophomores in my courses I took last year, and I wasn’t exactly popular since I refused to date or go to parties. Most of my class just ignored me and that was fine by me.
I know the girls will come here first since Jake had to go up to check on their son Jeffery at college. He’s the youngest of the boys, a year older than I am, but I can’t say we ever interacted at school. No one knows quite what’s going on with him. All Annie said was that he said he’d been pulled over and detained for several hours last night so they were concerned. Annie just shook her head with a sigh after that, adding she was sure it was something stupid he’d done, like peeling off from a stop light in his sports car. It made me laugh and she smiled, warning me that no matter how well you raised them, the teenage years were bound to be rocky.
We have a long time before that’s bound to be an issue for us, and long before that, there’s going to be two new babies around here. There’s no way I’ll afford to move out somewhere new, to be able to stop relying on the Cartwright’s generosity if I don’t find the twins’ father. Even an apartment that will barely fit all of us will be out of my budget, especially with all the diapers we’re going to go through in the coming years.
A little groan slips from my lips remembering we’re almost out of diapers. Annie was going to pick some up when we realized we either lost a box in the move, or miscounted them, so we weren’t short, but the whole thing with Jeffery and Jake threw us off. I was going to slip into the store on my way home from my doctor’s appointment, but that went straight out of my mind after listening to the babies’ heartbeats earlier.
Right now, I’ll suck up the cost of a tip to have someone do a delivery rather than have to go out again today. It may be November, and the temperature falling quickly, but I’m just too exhausted to walk back out the door.
I move into the kitchen from the garage, looking up as a large body heads towards me, and it’s his voice that makes my body blaze with heat, before I even see his face, pulling a gasp from me when it’s not a mistake. The man that stole my virginity and sanity is really standing right in front of me, holding Emma.
“Eden?” he says, making my eyes widen further, another little shock slipping out of my throat, but my tongue is entirely tied. Before I can think again, he’s in front of me, pulling me up against his sinful body, making me shiver with memory and longing.
His face lowers to mine, a soft kiss barely whispering over my lips and a deep need slips from my throat, as reminder of just how sweet those soft little kisses were takes firm hold of me. His lips claim mine fully finally, the kiss deepening with every flick of his tongue against mine, his hand holding the back of my neck, keeping me from even trying to move from him.
As if I could. He’s consumed my thoughts every moment since I ran away from him, too freaked out over my lack of control to stop from doing it.
I was only a couple steps outside the door before I realized I didn’t want to leave, but the door had already shut behind me, and there was no way back inside without a key or code. That made me stress more, and combined with the craziness of what I just did, my total lack of control with a complete stranger, had vomit coming up before I could begin to stop it. It ended up all over my clothes and shoes, and I couldn’t begin to go back inside the front door at that point—not for anything would I have let someone see me like that.
Instead, I ran for my car and hurried home, only to wind up thinking and dreaming about him every second of the day. Until I realized I was pregnant, and then it was only half of the time, because the rest was consumed with worries about everything else.
Annie’s voice breaks off the kiss and I honestly have no idea what’s happening, until I’m upstairs in my amazing new bedroom, sitting on Jude’s lap, his hands holding me tightly to him. It feels like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he doesn’t keep hold of me, but that’s not happening now. Oh no, one new taste of him, and I’m beyond his.
He pulls back from a new kiss, his hand still resting on my stomach, and I realize I told him it was twins downstairs. That his mom now knows that these babies have to be his and a full attack of color hits my cheeks wondering what she’s thinking.
“Beautiful as you look with your cheeks flushed, tell me what’s wrong, kitten,” Jude says, his thumb stroking my cheek, making a content sigh flutter up from my chest.
“I…your mom…” I fluster out, stopping when his lips whisper that soft, sweet kiss to them again. He follows it with another one to my forehead and god…I love that. There’s nothing that compares to his mouth claiming mine entirely, claiming me entirely but these soft little touches make my heart flutter even more than those do. I mean, those deep searing kisses touch my soul, but the soft ones definitely touch my heart.
