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“You could, if you wanted to. It’s been done. Probably more often than we realize. There are solitary shifters out there. You’d have your family, so you’d never be alone. If you needed support, you could always ask and any one of us would be there to answer your questions or help you with whatever you needed. We’d get you through it somehow. I’d find you the best doctor out there for your pregnancy. Get Josephine to find the best specialist Phoenix has. If you ever need money, you wouldn’t have to worry about that. I can help you out financially and—”
“No.” The word boomed out, sounding so final. “No, I don’t want that.”
Tavish raked a hand through his long hair, ripping strands out of the elastic. He did it again, then brushed a hand over his jaw. Back up to the hair. His shoulders bunched, he paced two steps, then he pulled out a chair and sunk downhard.
“I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you or the baby because I’d convinced you to stay.”
She wasn’t sure if now was the right time to ask him about his parents, but she ventured to put her thoughts into words anyway. “I know you probably didn’t grow up with a mom. I don’t even think you knew her. I don’t want our child having to go without his dad. Did you know yours? Your dad?”
Was it possible for someone to light up and their face fall with grief at the same time? “I did. He died a few years ago. He had a heart attack. He was old, though. Ninety-two.” She must have shown the surprise she felt because he gave her a lopsided smile. “When our baby is my age now, I’ll be in my late eighties.”
“I’m so sorry about your dad. No matter how old someone might be, that’s so hard. It’s hard too becoming a parent later in life, knowing you might not be there for them as long as you want to be. I tried earlier and nothing came of it. I thought it wasn’t meant to be. I guess the time just had to be right. We didn’t plan this. Something bigger than us planned this. I refuse to believe it was just an accident, but even if it really was just us coming together and the chemistry being right at the right time in the right way, then, to me, that’s still a miracle. We might not have as many years with our child as we’d have if we were younger, but we can make those years count. We can make every single day count. Together in a relationship or together co-parenting, but I want to be here. I don’t want to be in Seattle. I think it would be best for our child to grow up here, learning about who he is.”
“He?”
“I’m just guessing,” January responded. The kettle went off, so she shut off the burner. “I’d say it’s a pretty solid guess.”
“You’re right.” He shook his head. “God. Kier. Kier is going to be a dad.”
She took a mug out of the cupboard, then on second thought, grabbed another. She’d make him tea anyway. Put in some sugar and cream. He looked like he could use something fortifying as badly as Kier looked like he needed it. She’d seen how pale he was sitting in the kitchen across from Trace at the clinic when she and Josephine came back down together.
“Did you know?”
“I didn’t.” He paused. “I did know he’d been seeing another shifter, one from the other clan, but I couldn’t say anything. It would be betraying someone else’s secret, and it wasn’t for me to tell.”
“When?”
“The other night.”
“The other night?”
“Last night.”
The fight. The fight with another male. A male Tavish had startled because he was… meeting with his woman. Mate?
“Yeah,” Tavish confirmed. “I didn’t mean to startle them, but they were being intimate.”
“Oh.” Her face flamed hot even though she was beyond the age to get embarrassed by something like that. But the fight made even more sense. “I really overreacted, then.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you more.”
“I understand now. It makes sense that he would have charged you. I was so scared about an accident happening to me or to our child, but I see now that those types of things don’t really happen often. You were right about everything you said. I took my worries too far and that was straight up fear talking.”
He tensed. “Me too. Just now. Maybe. I don’t really know what to think.” His great big hands ended up on the tabletop, fingers laced together. If January didn’t go to him now, she thought she might lose him. He’d start to pull away in order to protect his own heart, but more because he thought he had to sacrifice what he wanted in order to save her. He’d been so selfless from the moment she met him.
She went to him. There was enough room between him and the table that she could climb onto his lap. She straddled him since the chair had no arms, set her hands on his shoulders, and stared into his eyes. He was shocked at their position, but she could feel him responding, a hard bulge in his jeans throbbing at the inside of her thigh. It made her ache in response. She could feel herself getting wet, but she ignored that. She had to get this out before anything else.
“I don’t want our child growing up not knowing his dad. I don’t want our son to have you in his life on the weekends or once a month, or just once or twice a year. Yes, I’ll miss my parents, but starting over here is something that I want to do. For our baby. For me. For you.” He shook his head, but she set her finger on his bottom lip. “We couldn’t have dealt with the flat tire ourselves and I couldn’t have stitched up my own leg, but the mouse? I’m pretty sure I could have found my lady balls and taken that out myself. I could have told you that I didn’t want to go to dinner that night, but I did. I could have left at any time, ran away from that alley. I could have gone back to Phoenix and stayed there. But right from the start, I think I knew. I didn’t want to give up who I am, but you never asked me to do that. I don’t have to lose me just because I’m here. I work from home, so I can be anywhere. I don’t have to lose my career, my hobbies, or the things I love.”
She leaned in, so their lips were only an inch apart. His chest started to pump as he breathed harder and faster. The sound of those deep breaths sent a hot spark cascading through her veins. So did the fact that his pupils were dilated, and his cock pulsed between them again. “I think that I’m finding what I truly was meant to find. I know that I’mdefinitelyfinding more things to love. Places. People.”
The air between them went electric and all she had to do was tip herself forward and there was no more distance. The heaviness and uncertainty she’d felt since she’d left Greenacre and Tavish evaporated and it was just them, and a certainty that seemed resolute. She met his lips eagerly. One hand stayed on his shoulder and the other twisted into his hair. She pressed herself to him, and he slid both hands behind her back.
She’d been waiting weeks to taste him, and when he tasted her back, his tongue licking at the seam of her lips, she gave in without hesitation. She let him dip his tongue into her mouth. She was just as eager, thrusting her sensitive breasts up against the solid wall of his chest. The pressure sent a tingling through her that went straight between her legs. His hard cock was trapped between them and even though there were layers of clothing in the way, she could still feel almost the whole length of him.
Her tongue caressed his, their breaths messy and wild. She gasped when his hand came between them, creating a trail of fire down her neck and then lower, as he cupped her breast. She wriggled against him, thrusting that orb deeper into his hand. She whimpered, her brain scrambling at the pleasure, but she had enough rational thought left to reach between them and tug hard at the sides of her green cardigan. The buttons slipped through the holes easily.
Tavish did the rest, peeling her sweater away. She had a plain black camisole underneath, a long, tighter fitting one, but his solution for that was to slide the straps down her arms along with her bra straps, and free the hooks at the back. The camisole dropped down to her waist, exposing her breasts. They were more sensitive than they ever had been.
