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vi.
HE WOKE UPwith her body tucked in against his, like it belonged there. She was still asleep, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her eyes closed, and he shifted, just a little, barely, in the scant light of the early morning, to brush her hair away from her face.
She stirred, but not too much. She sighed into him.
He gazed down at her and thought of being an orc in ancient times, when the orcs were just traveling clans up and down England and in parts of Scandinavia and some parts of the continent, too. When they had animal skin tents they put up and took down. He thought of holding his woman—his pregnant woman—like this, his larger body the only thing that would protect his family from the cold and the predators and the invaders and the rival clans…
He thought of being that, mattering to her.
I don’t matter to her,he thought.
It was fucked up, the thing he’d done when he was fucking her, making her say that she liked belonging to him.What the hell was that?
It had been hot, sure, but he probably made her do it because he was insecure in some way.
Lookat this woman. She was beautiful and smart and talented and she didn’t need anything from him. She’d been willing and ready to go through the pregnancy without his ever knowing.
He shouldn’t have taken her to bed last night, he realized. That hadn’t been smart. It made everything about this sordid and all about sex. Yeah, they’d seen each other twice and both times, they’d gone at each other like rabbits in heat or something.
Did rabbits go into heat?
Maybe the phrase was “bitches in heat” except he was not a female, but of course, he wasn’t a dog or a rabbit or anything else either.
Was this what he wanted to be thinking about?
I want this to be more than sex.
How much more did he want, though?
He’d gotten this trill of pleasure when she’d said the nice things about his house, and he liked impressing her. Truthfully, when he’d bought the house, he’d done it with Yenna’s approval, and he’d thought someday, they’d move into this house together.
But then things hadn’t worked out with Yenna, and he was left with the house, the one he hadn’t finished work on, the one that felt like a badge of his failures.
How was a man supposed to do it all, anyway? How was he supposed to provide the sort of life that a woman needed and then also be all the other things women wanted—an emotionally supportive partner and her best friend and a giving and unselfish lover and have any time for any leisure activities on top of that?
Well, at least with Hiljd, some of the pressure would be off, he thought. She wasn’t as needy as Yenna. She was totally capable of taking care of herself.
Yeah, with Hiljd, as if there’s something here. She doesn’twantme.
Or, no, was that true? Maybe she did want him, but she didn’t need him.
Or maybe…
She’d said it was harder being pregnant all alone than she had thought. Maybe she did need him.
He was confused. He wanted to be needed, but he wasn’t sure he could deliver what she needed—what anyone needed.
Why was being alive so hard?
Carefully, he got out of bed and got dressed. He went down into the kitchen and started coffee. He wanted to make her breakfast, but he also didn’t want to wake her up to ask her important questions like,How do you like your eggs?
Turned out not to be important, anyway, when she bustled down, dressed, hair in a sloppy knot on top of her head and ran for the door, saying she was going to be late for work.
He tried to apologize, but she was on the move.
She went right out the door, but she did pause on the way out and stuck her head back through. “Text me later?” She gave him a grin.
“Do I have your phone number?” he said.
