His Secret Baby

by Natasha L. Black

  27

  Gael

  “Gael, I think you have it in your head that I’m hiding something from you, but I’m not hiding what you think I’m hiding,” Syn said.

  I snickered. “Then, enlighten me.”

  She licked her lips. “The thing with me and Liam? Not planned. He presented me with a shitty idea that I went along with because he threatened you. And I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I don’t care about Liam. All I care about is this child and you.”

  “If you want the truth, you need to listen to the whole story. Got it?”

  I growled to myself. “Fine. Got it.”

  “Good. I told Liam the day he came to set that I’d think about his offer. I’d think about it. I didn’t know if I was going to take him up on it.”

  “Then, you did.”

  “No, you’re not letting me finish. Shut that trap of yours and let me finish.”

  I drew in a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “Madison called me after the last time we, you know. And I had to take that phone call upstairs? She was telling me that Liam was threatening to come to set and cause a scene with you. He was threatening to take this entire thing that he knew was a charade to the media and throw us both under the bus. And I wasn’t willing to let you go through that.”

  “I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

  “Facing Liam isn’t what you signed up for. It’s what I signed up for. I wasn’t going to let you do that, so I agreed to the dinner. Just the dinner. Then, in the middle of the damn thing, I told him to get bent.”

  I blinked. “You did?”

  “Yeah, I did. That dinner was nothing more than a glorified ‘I’ve had it with your shit’ moment. It wasn’t anything else. I was done with Liam the second I walked out of that restaurant.”

  “Then, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Because everything happened so fast! I got home and you weren’t here. I stayed up waiting for you, and you didn’t come home before I fell asleep. I woke up and you were hungover, in my face, yelling about all sorts of shit without giving me a chance in hell to speak the truth. Then, you fucking stormed out! And don’t you dare throw some shit in my face about coming after you. You didn’t make any of this easy.”

  “No, I guess I didn’t. But what about the baby?”

  She sighed. “When I figured out I was pregnant the day before New Year’s, I took all the precautions I could to keep it out of the media.”

  “Because you were concerned about your image.”

  “No,” she spat. “Because I was concerned about having this child in the middle of a lie. Gael, my entire adult life has been in front of those cameras. My entire adult life has been spent turning myself into someone I’m not. Being someone I’m not just to garner an audience and make a damn paycheck. I didn’t want that for our child. I didn’t want to use this child as a media exploitation or some bullshit focus piece.”

  I stopped listening after “our child.”

  “So, the baby’s mine?”

  Shock washed over her face. “What?”

  “The baby. It’s mine?”

  “Who else would it belong to?”

  I shrugged. “Well, you were seeing Liam behind my back. Who was I to know what was going on?”

  When she recoiled, I knew I had misstepped.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked.

  “Syn, it’s just a practical question. Look at it from my point of view.”

  “I was not cheating on you!”

  “I know. I know that now.”

  “I would never, in a million years, do that to someone! Sleep with two men at once like that!”

  I held out my hands. “Syn, I know. Take a breath for me.”

  “That meeting was for show, Gael! Didn’t you hear me? I told him to go fuck himself!”

  I cupped her cheeks. “You’re spinning out. Come back down to earth.”

  I felt her trembling, and it worried me.

  “I never slept with Liam. Even when we were in a relationship,” she whispered.

  My forehead fell against hers. “It was just a question. I had to ask.”

  She sniffled. “What the hell kind of person do you think I am? I haven’t been with anyone for years. Who else could be the father?”

  My thumbs swept across her wet cheeks. Hope burst in my chest as our skin touched for the first time in months. But just because I was the father of this child didn’t mean she had real feelings for me. Assumptions and accusations had gotten us into this crapshoot situation. I had to hear it. I had to have confirmation before I assumed anything. And doubt gnawed at me more than ever before.

  “I still have more questions,” I murmured.

  She pulled away from me. “Figures.”

  “I just—we’ve assumed so much and made so many bad judgment calls on false information. We have to put this all out there.”

  She wiped her tears away angrily. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Go ahead and ask me.”

  “Would you have ever tried to track me down? Even after you had our child?”

  “I don’t know, Gael. Maybe once I got my life back on track.”

  “Would you have ever let me have a relationship with my child?”

  She didn’t answer me, and the hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end.

  “Would you ever have sent those annulment papers my way? Because if you hired a good enough lawyer, they would’ve tracked me down. And you would’ve known where I was to give me the information I had a right to.”

  And when she still didn’t respond, I sucked air through my teeth.

  “Answer me, Syn.”

  “I’m thinking,” she said.

  “Why the hell does this require thought? You’ve had seven months to think.”

  “I’ve had seven months to mourn!”

  She whipped around with more tears in her eyes and a glare that burned a hole in the middle of my chest.

  “I’ve had seven months to mourn the loss of you, the loss of the first good and real thing I’ve had in a long damn time, and not one second of that time has been spent on doing anything I needed other than planning for a future for our child and doing this all on my own. So don’t you dare come riding back into my life on your bike with your helmet and your bullshit and try to pin this all on me like I’m some kind of villain. We both had a part in how things went down between us. We both had secrecy. We both had shitty assumptions we jumped to. We both had issues to work through and expectations that didn’t get met. Don’t act like this is all on me.”

  I rolled my shoulders back. “And what expectations did I not meet, Syn?”

  These were the answers I dreaded the most. But I needed to hear them. I needed to hear her tell me these things instead of letting my mind run wild.

  “I’m done with the games. Either you talk to me, or I’ll find a lawyer that will get me the answers I need,” I said.

  28

  Syn

  Answering his questions meant exposing too much. It meant admitting to feelings he might not return, but he came all this way just to confront me and get the answers he needed. And I knew he deserved them. If he didn’t care about me, why would he have done that? He said so himself: he could’ve simply lawyered up and gotten his answers that way. Demanded them by way of court, and I wouldn’t have had a choice.

  “I’m not leaving this set until you talk to me,” Gael said.

  The expression in his eyes was unreadable. It wasn’t pure anger, but it wasn’t pure frustration, either. Was he… tired? No. Maybe he was… exasperated?

  Yes, he had exasperation in his eyes.

  Just tell him, you coward.

  It was time to be the person I had resigned myself to being one I’d found out I was going to be a mother. It was time to be honest. Time to be me.

  “I just don’t want to fight anymore,” I said.

  “That’s fine by me,” he said.

  I nodded. “Okay
. Gael, I get that our marriage was in name only. I get that it was a charade. But the more time went on, the more I found myself liking you.”

  I searched his face for any sign of, well, anything. His stoic stare prevailed, though.

  “The more interaction we had together, the more I enjoyed your presence. And the more I came home to you—or had you come home to me—the more I wondered if…”

  Stay strong. You can do this.

  “If what, Syn?” he asked, his voice my softer then.

  “The more I wondered if we might be able to keep things that way, somehow,” I said.

  His brow ticked, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I know that sounds weird. I mean, we hardly knew one another, but I felt this connection with you. This pull toward you. And I couldn’t shake it so, when Liam started threatening you like that it felt like he was actually threatening my husband. Someone I cared for, deeply. I wanted to kill him for that. I dreamed of slaughtering him in the media for it. No one goes after my family. No one goes after someone I—”

  I swallowed hard as the word lodged itself in my throat.

  “Someone you what, Syn?” Gael asked.

  His voice said he knew what I was not saying though.

  “We had a connection, Gael. And not just in the bedroom, but I knew we had made a deal for a marriage of convenience so, I tried to shake it off. You didn’t sign up for the real emotions. And, quite frankly? Neither did I. So, I did my best to keep things professional. Avoid you at all costs whenever I had to in order to keep my heart in check. In order to keep my feelings in check. Gael, when I found out I was pregnant? I didn’t try to find you any more than I did because I figured you weren’t interested in seeing me anymore. You had backed out of the deal. You stormed out of here without any of your things. Gael, you never fucking came back. Not once. Your stuff is still in my house, for crying out loud!”

  He blinked. “You didn’t get rid of it?”

  “No! It was the last remnant I had of you. Of your smell, and the feel of you. The size of you. The beauty of you. I wasn’t ready to let go. I’m still not ready to let go.”

  He took a step toward me as my ass fell against the edge of my vanity.

  “No one likes rejection. When I found out I was pregnant, I wanted to tell you. I wanted to just—call you up and hear the happiness in your voice. Or, the worry as you told me things would be okay. I wanted to call you crying and in a panic and have you rush back over and hold me and tell me we’d get through it together. I didn’t have that luxury, though. You never picked up. You never returned my calls. Or my texts. It’s not that I didn’t want you to know, Gael. It was just a mixture of you being done and me not being able to handle your rejection. Or, worse, your rejection of our child.”

  “Do you really think I’m the kind of man to reject my own flesh and blood?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think you were the kind of man to storm off without another word, either. But you did.”

  I slowly raised my gaze to him and saw guilt filling his eyes. Sadness and regret. Things that clenched my heart and made the blood rush a little faster through my veins.

  “I’m so sorry, Syn,” he said.

  I nodded. “I’m sorry, too. I did so much wrong to you.”

  “We both did wrong to one another.”

  “Yes, we did, but you need to know that this child is yours. And if you aren’t interested in being a real and present father, that’s fine. We will be okay. I’ve made sure to set things up so that we will be, but if that’s your choice? You need to leave. Now. I’ve prepared myself to raise this baby on my own. To love this baby more than any other two parents could.”

  I felt tears trickling down my cheeks before I even realized I was crying.

  “What I can’t have you do is come in, promise me the world, and then storm back out without a second thought. I can’t have you do that again, Gael. I love you too fucking much to go through that again.”

  I felt his fingers grip my chin as he pulled me a bit closer. My massive stomach pressed against his abs, and I felt my baby boy kick. Our baby boy. Gael’s eyes widened and his hand dropped from my face. He looked down at my rotund figure before his massive hands slid against my tight, clothed skin.

  And still, the tears rushed down my cheeks.

  “I’m already in love with this child, Syn,” he said.

  His eyes came back up to mine, and my heart stopped in my chest.

  “Just like I’ve been in love with its mother since the night we tied the knot.”

  His lips crashed against my own, and my world exploded in fireworks. Love. He’d said it. Holy shit, this man loved me, too. I sobbed as I kissed him and cupped his cheeks. And when his arms cloaked my back, holding me like he used to, the whole of me gave way to him. My stomach pressed into his gut. I stood onto my tiptoes to taste more of him. My world clicked into place, piece by piece. Until there was nothing else left to fix. Nothing else left to worry about.

  “I love you,” I whispered.

  He groaned at my words. “My God, I love you, too.”

  I pushed him back against the door. I reached down and locked it before I pulled him over to the couch in my dressing room. Silence filled the space beyond the doorway, signaling the fact that everyone else was at lunch. I pushed him onto the cushions and straddled his lap. And as his hands slid my shirt over my protruding gut, his lips fell to my stretch marks.

  “I love you so much, little one,” he murmured.

  His warmth burned through me. I felt our son kick against my stomach, causing Gael to chuckle. He kissed every place our child pressed. He massaged my itching skin and slid his arms down my hips. Down my thighs. Touching me and invading my space in ways I only dreamed of for months.

  “Gael,” I whispered.

  His hands hooked into my stretchy pants.

  “Gael,” I groaned.

  He slid them down my legs before helped me step out of them.

  “I need you,” I whispered.

  And as he stood to undress the rest of me, drinking me in with his eyes, he smiled as he cupped my cheek.

  “I need you, too. I need you both,” he said.

  29

  Gael

  She looked ravishing. Absolutely amazing. Her breasts, swollen with milk and ripe for the taking. Her stomach stretched to the brim and ricocheting with marks. Her ankles, begging to be massaged. Her shoulders, already tense. I slid my hand down her neck and along her shoulder, until I reached for her hand and brought it to my lips.

  “You won’t be doing this alone. Not anymore. Okay?” I asked.

  I kissed each of her knuckles as I watched tears line her eyes.

  “Promise?” she asked softly.

  “That’s a promise I know I can keep.”

  My lips fell against hers, my hands roaming her body for the hems of her clothing. I loved this woman, and she loved me. And now, I wanted to show her just how much. I cast her clothes off to the side, her dressing room shrouded from the rest of the world. At least, it felt like it was.

  I didn’t care either way.

  I guided her to the couch and pulled her down on top of me. She twisted around, placing her back against my chest. I let my hands roam over her protruding stomach. I felt our child wiggling around as she rocked herself against my needy cock. I kissed her shoulder, nibbled her neck. I sighed against her ear, watching goosebumps prickle all the way down her body. Her nipples became peaks for me, the heat of her pussy sliding along my thigh. I gripped her hips and moved her to where I needed her to be.

  And felt myself slip inside her delicate warmth.

  “Oh, fuck,” I groaned.

  “Oh, yes. Gael. I’ve missed you so much.”

  We moved in tandem, her curves gliding against my muscles. I wrapped my arms around her, splaying my hands along her thighs. She ground against me. I bucked up into her as her wetness trickled down my shaft slowly while we savored the moment with one another.

 
“Oh.”

  I paused. “Is everything all right?”

  “Can we—try a different—oh.”

  I felt the hard kicks against my hands and helped her off my lap. I spun her around as her hands dropped to the couch, my cock still sheathed inside her body. And when she bent forward, she sighed with relief.

  “That’s it,” she moaned.

  I ran my hands along the edges of her spine. I gripped her hair, remembering just how soft it felt. I slid back out and inched my way in, drawing it out as long as I could. My balls were already pulled up, though, ready to explode and mark the woman I loved as my own for good.

  “Gael.”

  “Syn, fucking hell.”

  “Gael, yes. Harder. You can go harder.”

  I snapped my hips against her ass cheeks, and she whimpered.

  “Just like that.”

  My head fell back.

  “Please, don’t stop.”

  I thrust faster as the sounds of skin slapping skin filled my eardrums.

  “Faster, please,” she breathed.

  I pulled her back against me, fucking her like I’d dreamt of for the past seven months. My heart sputtered to life, fluttering in my stomach as her walls collapsed against me. I felt her on the edge, ready to give herself over to me like she had done so many times before.

  But I wanted to gaze into her eyes as it happened.

  “Couch. Now. On your back,” I commanded.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Just do it.”

  I pulled out from between her legs, and she lay down. Her stomach, still a soft mound, gazed up at me like the light in her eyes. I smiled down at her as I hovered over her, sliding between her legs. I cocked myself however I needed to because her comfort was paramount to me. And when her legs locked around my own, I grabbed my cock and slid back inside.

  My body had come home, and my heart felt settled.

  “I love you,” she breathed.

  I bottomed out against her before I kissed her forehead.

  “I love you, too, Syn. Since the night we met.”