The slight weight of her pert little ass rested on his arm, one cheek gripped in his hand. He released her mouth and lifted her higher on the wall. She cried out in surprise, but it spun into a lusty moan when he clamped his mouth over a beautiful, beautiful tit.
These sweet babies had been off limits for a few weeks; apparently pregnancy had made them too sore to touch—even, according to Sage, the touch of fabric was uncomfortable, and she’d thought hard about taking the barbells out—but in the last week or so that soreness had gone off with her morning sickness and left her feeling a lot better. All of her sexual energy had returned. And brought friends to party.
When he sucked on her now, she arched violently off the wall and clamped her hands on his head, digging her nails into his scalp. “Fuck yeah!”
He tasted his fill of her, giving each little tit its due, sucking and nipping, catching the barbells in his teeth and pulling until her carnal moans and eager ramblings became sharp cries. Her hips flexed and flexed, rubbing herself on his belly, almost too much for his hands to keep hold of, and goddamn, she was wetting his shirt with her juices.
The throbbing ache inside his jeans was almost too much to bear, but he wasn’t ready for that yet. He could feel—in the heat between them, in his ache and her cries, in her hot, wet pussy against his gut—that when he pushed into her they’d go at each other like animals and be done far too fucking fast. He wanted more of her than that. He wanted to feed on her until he was sated.
Rearing back from her tit, he hoisted her up even higher on the wall, shrugging his shoulders under her legs so her knees hooked over him.
“What?” Her question was little more than a frantic breath.
He answered by diving in between her legs and lapping his tongue through her folds, delighting in the taste of her. One night during the summer, on a lustful whim, he’d bathed her and shaved her, and they’d fucked wildly and wetly on the bathroom floor. Since then, she’d kept her pussy bare, and fuck, how he loved the caress of her soft, hot, smooth flesh on his face.
His stitched cheek protested all this activity, especially now, with her thighs clamped around his head, but he ignored those slight pains for this intense delight.
“Oh fuck, Beck! What the hell? Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
He brought his hand up so his fingers could play inside her as he sucked her clit, and she squealed and curled her body over his head. Her pussy quivered all around his hands, and her clit swelled in his mouth. Ah, he could feel how close she was, how high she’d climbed, how spectacular this fall over the cliff could be.
“Come for me, honey. Come all over me.” He said the words with his lips on her folds, and then he got right back to his feast.
And she came, loudly, brilliantly, in a rolling crescendo that filled the room. Her body clamped in a curl around his head, and she screamed as her release filled his mouth and every one of his senses.
When he sensed the beginnings of its end, he yanked his fly open and wedged the vise of her body loose enough to slide her back down the wall until he could push into her. Holy Christ, she was slick and thick and hot and wet, and this was heaven, nothing in any world could ever be as good as the feel of filling her like this.
Still twined tightly around him, still gasping and dazzled from the force of her climax, Sage began to rock on him, and Becker knew he couldn’t last long. Too much anticipation, too much desire, too much need deferred to feed her own. He was almost at his peak already.
“Ah fuck, hon. Ah fuck.”
“Come for me,” she murmured at his ear. “Fill me up. Come so hard inside me.”
He swung around, set her on the counter, and did what she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sage grunted and squeezed Becker’s hand. He squeezed back with both of his. “You’re hurtin’ her.”
“Sorry, sweetie,” the technician woman said, not backing off the plastic thing she was using to rape her. “Trying to get a good look.”
The doctor was in here with them, studying the screen by Sage’s head as the technician moved the wand around.
“Is everything okay?” She was enduring this torture of a procedure they called a ‘transvaginal ultrasound’ because she was getting too big too fast, and the doctor hadn’t liked the sound of the heartbeat. Then she also hadn’t liked the images from the regular ultrasound, so now, three hours after Sage and Becker had come to a regular OB appointment, with plans for lunch after, she had a plastic wand up her twat and a cold hand of fear squeezing her heart out of shape.
Becker didn’t look any calmer. His brow was low and tight over his eyes, and his mouth was set in a fierce line.
The wand hit another tender spot, and she flinched. She really was trying to be tough, but she was too scared. Nobody would tell them anything.
He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.
“Okay,” the doctor chirped. “Now we’ve got some good pictures.” She pointed at the screen. “Do you see?”
Sage had been looking at that thing forever, but all she saw was blobs. “No.”
The doctor took over the wand—more hurting, fuck everybody—and said, “Right there.” With her free hand, she tapped on a keyboard, and a little arrow on the screen moved, pointing to a blob with a pulsing spot. “That’s a heart.” She shifted the arrow a tiny bit and said, “Do you see that, how the beat isn’t quite in sync right there? That’s not a murmur. That’s a second heartbeat.”
Becker dropped her hand. “Excuse me?” His voice was several notes higher than usual.
Sage turned from the screen to the doctor. “Twins?”
“Holy Christ,” Becker muttered and held Sage’s hand again.
“Twins. Identical. More than that—what we call mono-mono, or mo-mo twins. They’re sharing an amniotic sac. I wanted to get a good close look and make sure what we were seeing was two babies rather than serious abnormality in a single fetus. They’re holding each other, and you’re barely out of the first trimester, so it’s not easy to get a good image of where one starts and the other begins.”
“They’re holding each other?” Sage whispered. That one thought was the only one that had fully formed yet. Two babies, already taking care of each other.
“They’re not ... Siamese, right?”
The doctor turned her attention to Becker and answered his question. “Conjoined twins is a very rare but potential outcome from a mono-mono pregnancy. It’s a bit early to know for sure, but I don’t see signs of it. That’s what we were doing here, and everything we see suggests we’ve got two whole sets of separate organs and limbs.” She struck some more keys on the keyboard under the screen and finally pulled the wand out. “There are other potential complications, though, Sage. Your babies are sharing resources more than other twins do, for one thing. For another, you’re a fairly petite woman, and you’ll be carrying a lot of weight with two babies growing. We’ll need to keep a close eye on things, and you’ll have a caesarean delivery. But your youth will be a help—your body is fit and strong and flexible. There’s no reason to think you won’t have two beautiful, healthy babies in five or six months.”
“Boys or girls?” Becker’s voice sounded miles away.
“It’s too early to tell yet. We’ll do an ultrasound in another few weeks—we’ll do one at least once a month for the rest of the pregnancy—and maybe we’ll see next time.”
She handed Sage a big wad of tissues, and she handed Becker a strip of blurry black-and-white photos. “When you’re ready, Tansy will show you to my office, and we’ll talk about how to take care of yourself and your babies. Congratulations, Daddy,” she said as she pulled off her latex gloves and left the room.
The technician pulled the ultrasound machine out of the way and followed after the doctor, and then Becker and Sage were alone in the dim room.
Becker was staring at the strip of photos. Sage looked over his shoulder but still saw only blobs. Two babies? Could she be a good mom to two babies at once? She wasn’
t all that sure yet she could be a good mom to one at a time.
What did Becker think? He just kept staring at the blobs, saying nothing. She said the words at the head of her mental queue. “I’m sorry.”
His head shot up, and he frowned at her. “Sorry?”
Yeah, that had been a dumb thing to say, but the feeling was still there. She said more dumb words. “I didn’t mean to.”
His frown broke apart on a laugh. “Shortcake, what the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“I don’t know. I’m just ... I don’t ... How?”
He stood up and grabbed his crotch. “My boys are strong. Twice the power.”
Now she could laugh, too. “Gross, dude. So very gross.” His arms came around her, and she settled into that calm. “I’m scared.”
“I’m not. You’re my tough girl. You are gonna be a great mom, and we are gonna make a great family. Twice as great now.”
~oOo~
That night, Sage brushed her teeth and washed her face. Finished in the bathroom, she tided up and patted her thigh to call Lemmy—who absolutely could not stand being left on the wrong side of the bathroom door—with her.
Becker was already in bed, a book open facedown on his lap. Travels with Charley. He was really into John Steinbeck. Sage, on the other hand, found Steinbeck depressing. She’d tried to get him to read Kerouac, thinking he would love On the Road, but he’d pronounced it ‘rambling gobbledygook’ and hadn’t even finished it. He’d turned his nose up at Naked Lunch, too.
Becker would read anything. Excepting, apparently, the Beats.
He wasn’t reading at all now, though. That strip of blobby pictures was in his hands. Their kids. Two of them.
All afternoon, they’d been in a haze. Talking to the doctor afterward had only made things more scary. She was having a ‘high risk’ pregnancy now, with more rules and guidelines and instructions about how to take care of herself and the babies. There were a lot of things that could go wrong, a lot of things to watch out for—and that knowledge had, like the flip of a switch, morphed Becker from a slightly bossy protector to an OCD tyrant. He wanted her to quit her job. He wanted to hire a maid service. He wanted her basically to sit on the couch all day with her hands in her lap.
And that might come soon enough. There was a chance she could end up on bed rest, later in her pregnancy, when the babies were bigger. But that was later. There was absolutely no chance she was going to stop having her life before the doctor said she had to.
But she certainly liked her man’s powerful need to keep her safe. Even when it started a fight. He was bigger and stronger and older and wiser than she was, sure. But when she dug her heels in, he couldn’t say no. Or stay mad.
He smiled as she climbed in next to him. Lemmy jumped up and spun around at the bottom corner of the bed until he found his perfect spot to curl up in. Having learned that his people moved around a lot in bed and did weird things together that made no room for him, he stayed at the foot of the bed until they turned out the lights and settled in for sleep. Then he snuggled close.
“I don’t think new blobs are going to emerge if you look long enough. That’s as close to baby-looking as they get.”
He chuckled and hooked his arm around her. “Just gettin’ my head around it. Twins. Shit. That was not on my radar. You know, Gun’s a twin.”
“He is?”
“Yeah. His brother died when they were teenagers. He doesn’t talk about him much.”
“Were they identical?”
“I think so. I’m gonna see if he’ll talk about what being a twin was like.”
Sage stared at the photos. Her babies. Just grey smears on a black field, but she’d seen those beating hearts. Or, at least, she’d seen the fluttering smears the doctor had said were beating hearts.
“I’m kinda scared. Two at once. What if I suck at this?”
“You won’t, hon.”
“I didn’t have much in the way of a role model.”
“Yeah, you did. Me too. We know what not to do. We know the damage we can do if we’re not strong—not just for them, but for us, too. And we got a great big family doin’ it right. We’ll be good.” He set the photo aside and closed her up tight. “I want you to stop working. Let me take care of you, shortcake. Let me do this right.”
This was a sweet, cuddly moment she didn’t want to end, so Sage closed her eyes and took a nice, deep, calm breath before she pushed back a little to look him in the eye. “Here’s the deal, babycakes. I know I have to quit eventually. If I’m gonna have two rugrats at once, I don’t see how I’ll have time to do much else. But I’m not quitting until I have to. I like that job. I like having a job, and I love Mrs. Dub. And”—she cut off, worried how he’d take the other thing. But it needed to be said. “And it’s hard to give up having my own money.”
His bright eyes darkened with hurt. “Sage, I—”
She put her fingers on his mouth. “I know you’ll take care of me, and I know we’re solid. I love you, and I love how you make me safe. But since I was fourteen, I’ve earned my own keep, and I always knew I’d be okay in a pinch because I was making my own money. I need to give that up on my own time, okay?”
His stare went on for several seconds. Then Sage felt his lips purse into a kiss on her fingertips, and he took her hand away from his mouth. “Okay. When you’re ready—or when the doctor says it’s time to take it easy. You don’t push back on that.”
“No, I won’t. I want these blobs safe, too.”
~oOo~
She hadn’t been to The Spin Bin since Abe had fired her. Being fired for getting her face broken had sucked hard, and she was still mad at him for doing it.
But she also missed hanging with Dylan. Not until she’d stopped working with him had she understood how much of their years-long friendship had happened in the store. She’d thought she had lots of friends, but what she’d really had were co-workers and their friends.
Except for Dylan. Though most of their time together had been spent leaning on the sales desk at the Bin, he’d also been her go-to when she’d needed a sofa to crash on. He’d never told her no, never asked her to explain.
She’d seen him once since she’d stopped working with him—when he’d brought her last check to the house. Actual months had gone by with little more than a few phone calls.
Their friendship was ending; she knew that perfectly well. Not only were they no longer working together, but her life had taken a sharp turn onto a path with no room for him or any of the people she’d hung out with before. Now she was the Brazen Bulls’ president’s old lady—and the mother of his children. When Cecily and Leah wanted to poke at her, they called her ‘queen.’ They laughed when they said it, but there was truth in it, too. Becker had brought it up a couple times—that the clubhouse was hers to command, if she wanted it.
She didn’t want it. The thought scared the pants off her, in fact. But no matter what lens she looked through, she saw a totally different life than the one she’d had before. A better life, much fuller, and far happier, but different. The change was not without some loss.
So one day after a shift at the library, she went through the front doors of The Spin Bin like a customer. She hated the thought of just drifting away into a new life. Her jobs had saved her during her old life.
Dylan was at the front desk, and he glanced up, ready to do his perfunctory greeting, which said, ‘Welcome to the Bin’ but meant I know you’re here, and I’ll be keeping an eye on you. Don’t swipe our shit.
He stopped on the first syllable. “Wel—Sage! Hey, freak.”
“Hey, mutant. How’s it hanging?”
“Long and hard.” As she came around to the front of the desk, he got a good look at her. Not even four months into this pregnancy, she was already quite obviously pregnant.
“You either got fat in the weirdest way, or you’re carrying a basketball around in your pants.”
Sage laughed. “Those are your only guesses? You want to
try one more time?”
“Fuck me, no way! You’re knocked up?” Dylan reeled back and crashed theatrically into the counter behind the desk. Pinned to his chest was a new name tag, with the title Assistant Manager under his name. He’d been promoted into her old position. Well, good for him.
She answered with a shrug and patted her ball of belly. “Twins, even.” Nodding at his tag, she added, “Hey, nice.”
“Yeah, thanks. Abe didn’t have much choice, I guess. Nobody else could work the right hours. Fuck him, though, for canning you.”
“Yeah. He’s not around, right?” He hardly ever was in the afternoons, but better safe than sorry. She’d liked him fine before he’d fired her, but now he was somebody who could fade out her life easily.
“Nah. He left a couple hours ago.”
“Good.”
After a few seconds of stunted quiet, Dylan asked, “You come in to shop?”
“No. I ... I guess I’m coming in to say goodbye.”
“You moving away?”
“Sort of. I’m not leaving Tulsa, but ...”
“But you’re a biker chick now, all knocked up and shit. No time for your old peeps.” He said the words gently, with lilt of affectionate understanding, but they still packed a wallop. The impact must have shown on her face, because he came close and leaned on the counter. “Hey, it’s okay. Life happens, you know? I get it. I sure as fuck don’t want to be rotting in this heap for the rest of my life. You happy?”
“Yeah. It was a shitty summer, but life is good now. Best it’s ever been.”
“Then it’s cool. I’m happy for ya.” He held out his hand, and she slapped it. Then she gripped it.
Her throat clenched tight all of a sudden, and she thought she might actually cry. But then Dylan blanched and yanked his hand back.
“Jesus, don’t start blubbering!”
Sage laughed instead.
~oOo~
“You alright, lass?”
Standing in the doorway at the edge of the chaos, Sage spun around and faced the older woman with the coolly beautiful face. Bright blue eyes like Becker’s and dark hair like his, too. Despite that similarity of features, they weren’t related—not by blood, anyway—and Sage had only met her a few times, at kids’ birthdays and Fitz and Kari’s wedding.
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