The blank, white zombie look on her face when she came out seemed to answer the question in his mind. No big deal, he told himself uneasily. He hadn’t really expected her to come bounding out joyously and announce the news.
It would’ve been fucking nice to see a little more god damned enthusiasm, but he hadn’t expected it!
It made him damned uneasy—and impatient—the way she wandered aimlessly around the room, as if she couldn’t figure out what she was doing. It occurred to him after a few minutes that he would’ve had a damned hard time sleeping through all the noise she was making opening drawers and slamming them again if he’d been trying to instead of just trying to pretend he was still asleep. He wondered if it was time to pretend to wake up or if she would notice one way or the other and finally decided it might be best not to ‘wake’ her from her trance.
He tensed to get up and race into the bathroom when she wandered out. He hadn’t had time to manage more than whipping the covers back, though, before she darted back into the room and raced to the bathroom. He threw an arm across his face when he heard her coming out a moment later, peering at her from concealment. Fortunately, she didn’t even glance toward the bed. She dashed out on tiptoes.
He hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of what she was trying to conceal, but he didn’t need to. She’d gathered the evidence and took off with it.
Listening until he heard a cabinet door open and then shut, he relaxed fractionally, trying to decide whether to get up or not. It was a short debate. He was wide awake now and not likely to get any more sleep and beyond that he didn’t want to give her the chance to rethink the situation and decide the trash in the kitchen wasn’t a secure enough disposal location.
He was pret-ty sure she’d taken the test and gotten a positive given her behavior, but he wanted to see the damned thing himself. Rolling out of the bed decisively, he headed into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar so he could hear her if she left the apartment. He discovered she was still in the kitchen when he left the bathroom and peered out the door of the bedroom. Deciding he didn’t want to give her too much time alone to think, he grabbed a pair of boxers and a pair of jeans and pulled them on hurriedly, heading into the kitchen without even bothering to fasten or zip the jeans.
She was standing at the sink, staring out the window holding a cup of coffee. Steam was wafting in little puffs off of the top of the cup. He studied the cup warily, wondering if he would get it in the face—or worse, in the crotch—if he slipped up behind her for a cuddle and finally decided to risk it.
She dropped the cup in the sink, shattering it when he slipped up behind her and curled his arms around her. Jumpy! He whipped her away from the sink as the hot liquid sprayed upward.
“Shit, baby! Are you alright? I didn’t mean to startle you!”
He couldn’t decipher the look in her eyes—mostly vague—but she didn’t look pissed off.
“What are you doing up so early?” she gasped after a moment.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he murmured, dragging her close again and nuzzling his face against her neck. “Why did you get up so early? It’s Saturday. You could’ve stayed and snuggled.”
“I felt a little nauseated,” she said flatly. “I thought breakfast might make me feel better.”
He frowned, but he didn’t want to address the nausea issue. “Why don’t you lie down? I’m up—and I could eat a horse. I didn’t get the chance to grab anything last night. I’ll fix us both something.”
“I’ll do it. What do you want?”
He wasn’t leaving the damned kitchen with that test so tantalizingly close! Folding his arms when she moved away, he propped against the counter, watching her as she moved to the refrigerator. “Eggs?”
Nodding, she took the carton out and set it on the counter. “Ham or bacon?”
“Whichever you feel like cooking.”
She took out a ham steak. “The water should still be hot. You want me to fix you cup of coffee?”
“Sure. If you don’t mind.”
She picked up the pot and shook it, frowning. “Actually, it’s low. I’ll have to heat more water.”
He shrugged when she glanced at him, watching her intently as she moved to the sink while he tried to think of some diversion to get her out of the kitchen for a few minutes. Unfortunately, nothing occurred to him immediately. He saw his chance, though, when she opened the ham steak and pulled the trashcan out to dispose of the wrapper. Surging forward before she could push the trashcan back under the sink, he shouldered her aside and grabbed the bag. “I’ll just take this out. I forgot to do it yesterday.”
She gaped at him in dismay. “It isn’t even full!”
He snatched the bag out of the can. “Yeah, but we don’t want it to start stinking up the place!”
He felt her gaze on him as he headed to the door and wondered if she was going to watch him all the way to the dumpster. He relaxed when he realized the community dump wasn’t in view of the kitchen window. Setting the bag down when he reached it, he glanced around a little self-consciously, and opened it up to look for the test kit. A grin curled his lips when he spotted it. Snatching it up, he stared at the window and felt a dizzying wave of triumph shoot through.
He might have crouched staring at it longer, but a hollow metallic sound distracted him. Dropping the test guiltily, he jerked his head up just in time to see a man clambering out of the dumpster.
The other man halted half in and half out, staring back at him while his face slowly turned a deep red. He cleared his throat, seemed to wrestle with something, and finally shrugged. “My fiancée threw her ring in the dumpster. I thought there might be a chance of finding it.”
Garryk blinked at him, feeling coldness waft through him. “No shit?”
The guy climbed out, brushing at his clothes. “No shit,” he confirmed tightly.
“You pissed her off, huh?” he asked uneasily, wondering if he didn’t understand Earth people in general, and Earth women in particular, nearly as well as he’d thought he did.
“You could say that, I guess,” he retorted dryly. “If you happen to spot it while you’re looking for whatever your girlfriend pitched out …?”
Abruptly conscious of the stickiness on his hand, Garryk surreptitiously wiped his hand on his jeans before he thought better of it. “I was just looking for some instructions I lost. I just remembered I stuffed them in a drawer.”
The other man frowned. “Is there another dumpster?”
“I think there’s one at the other end of the complex.”
Nodding, the man left.
Garryk frowned as he watched the man walk off. Shrugging after a moment, he tossed the bag in and headed back to the apartment.
“You were gone a while,” Chelsey commented as soon as he came in.
He glanced at her sharply. “There was a guy going through the dumpster looking for a ring,” he responded a little absently, glad for an excuse. Not that he’d needed one!
“A ring?” Chelsey echoed.
“Yeah, weird, huh? I guess they had a fight.”
“They? So it wasn’t his ring? It was his girlfriend’s? You mean she threw it away on purpose?”
He was actually pretty relieved that she sounded so shocked and outraged. “He seemed to think so—said they’d had a fight.”
“Poor man!”
“Yeah, poor bastard—had shit all over him from dumpster diving. I’m glad you aren’t like that,” he said, studying her intently.
She shook her head and then looked a little self-conscious. “I flushed mine down the toilet when I broke up with Lawrence.”
Garryk frowned at the plate she set in front of him, thinking about the money he’d sunk into the ring he’d picked out and decided it was just as well he’d just put a third down to hold it. Maybe it would be better to wait a little longer to pick it up?
She hadn’t thrown anything at him when she’d gotten the test results—not even harsh words—but she’d bee
n in shock. She was still acting strange, if it came to that. He studied the food a little more closely and sniffed it, trying to remember if there were any odorless, tasteless poisons in the house, and finally dug into his eggs and cautiously took a bite, rolling it around in his mouth a moment to test it before he swallowed.
* * * *
It was a damned good thing she’d thought to take care of most of her chores on Friday, Chelsey reflected angrily. If she hadn’t she couldn’t have wasted most of the day Saturday driving back and forth to Lawrence’s house in an attempt to collect her child!
Staring at the empty house angrily, she tried to decide if they’d left for the weekend or if she just kept missing them. It was hard to avoid the fact that the notes she’d left at the front and the back were still there, though. Lawrence might have ignored them, but she didn’t think he would’ve left them.
Collecting the notes after a moment, she went back to the car and searched her purse for a pen. After scribbling out what she’d written before, she turned the paper over and wrote Lawrence a new note, informing him that she fully intended to talk to her attorney about getting a hearing to see what the judge thought about him ignoring the court order about her visitation rights.
She sat staring at what she’d written, going back over it several times and wondered abruptly if it was really a good idea to warn him of her plans after her temper had cooled a little. Lawrence would already have thought of it himself, she decided. It was what he would do, after all!
And maybe the threat would be enough, she thought a little hopefully? She wasn’t going to let him get away with his damned highhanded tactics—ever again! But she’d just gotten her sister paid back from the last loan! Her lawyer would want another retainer. There wasn’t any point in even scheduling an appointment if she didn’t have the money in hand, and she didn’t.
She paid her child support religiously—making sure it was delivered by registered mail—and that didn’t leave her much after her living expenses. It was a good thing Marla had suggested it, too, when she’d told her Lawrence made it a point to avoid her when it was time to pay.
“The bastard!” she’d growled. “He’s trying to get you on non-payment! Don’t think for a moment he ‘accidentally’ isn’t there every time you go over to pay. Or that he’s taken pity and doesn’t want it because the bastard doesn’t need it and knows you do! Send it to him by certified mail or delivery confirmation if he won’t sign for it. You need to make sure you keep the receipts, too, as proof! It actually wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a money order. It would have his name stamped on it and you’d have a receipt for that, too.”
There was that not too subtle threat he’d had Larry deliver to consider, she realized. She was damned if she could see why it would create problems for her, though! What if Garryk was an exotic dancer? He didn’t have a record—that she knew of.
She considered that and dismissed it. Garryk had been a troubled kid, but he’d outgrown it. She knew damned well he wasn’t a habitual offender and there was nothing about him to suggest ‘jailbird’—that he’d ever spent a day in prison.
She didn’t see how Lawrence could suggest Garryk was a bad influence on their son. Well, she could. He could make up a pack of outrageous lies, but he couldn’t provide any kind of proof to back them up and she didn’t think the judge would listen.
Unless she ended up with the same bastard that had screwed her over so badly in the divorce and custody issue to start with?
She shrugged it off after a moment. She was either going to have to fight or to give up and let Lawrence have his way. The temptation to simply give up was strong. Fighting with Lawrence always left her the loser and made her so sick with frustrated rage she felt physically ill and she didn’t know how to fight for Larry. It seemed to her that the harder she tried the more hostile he was. Maybe she needed to change tactics in spite of what the psychologist she’d consulted had suggested? It sure as hell wasn’t doing any good to ‘reassure him’ of her affection. His typical response was ‘yeah’ or ‘whatever’.
She dismissed the thought. That was the pessimist in her talking. The psychologist must know what he was talking about. She just had to hang in until he got over being angry about the divorce and was willing to listen to her side.
Getting out of the car, she strode decisively to the mailbox and opened it. The note she’d left there was buried under another mound of mail, making it clear there hadn’t been anyone home to collect it. Removing her previous note, she resolutely shoved the new one in and shut the box.
Chapter Thirteen
Waking up with an erection wasn’t all that uncommon for Garryk, particularly since he’d taken to sleeping in Chelsey’s bed. It hadn’t taken long to discover Chelsey not only wasn’t a morning person, however, but she was opposed to being woken up for sex at any time and that was especially the case in the early morning … and that was before she got pregnant and began to have morning sickness. He usually ignored it and it went away—eventually.
It was a combination of things—not really well thought out—that prompted him to make an exception when he roused Sunday morning and discovered Chelsey was still nestled warm, soft, enticing, and, even more importantly, dead to the world in his embrace. The first was the erection itself. His cock had somehow managed to work its way between her thighs and was nestled in such close proximity to where he really wanted it that his barely functioning brain suggested it might actually be possible to angle it just a hair and get it in without waking her until he’d had the chance to convince her it was a good idea. The realization that it wasn’t just a piss hard but a product of abstinence due to a number of factors—including his thoughtfulness in being less demanding because she didn’t seem to be weathering her pregnancy all that well—was the second ill-conceived prompt. The third was the fact that she didn’t pop him or move away when he began fondling her breasts, further convincing him that he stood a good chance of planting himself successfully before she thought to object.
By the time his slumberous brain had worked through that much, he was alert enough that he should have been capable of detecting the flaws in his reasoning, but he was also fully aroused by that time, which deprived him of a number of IQ points, resulting in something of a stalemate. He was awake enough to recall he was on shaky ground at the moment due to the fact that Chelsey had yet to express her joy that he’d planted a bun in her oven, but deficient just enough intelligence to begin to feel a little resentful and a lot abused.
He knew she’d had a lot on her mind lately, but he wanted her when he was half dead from working twelve or fourteen hours! The very least she could’ve done was to try to convince him she wasn’t pissed off with him!
He tried to dismiss that on the grounds of being completely illogical even to him even in his current state, but he knew immediately why the thought had occurred to him. He needed proof she didn’t hate him. He wanted to catch her off guard and see if she responded to him as she always had before.
That worked!
Allowing one hand to drift from her breast after a moment, he glided it lightly over her belly and cupped her mound. Pausing for a moment when she shifted, he held his breath and then decided to tease her clit before he ‘tested’ the waters. She began to shift lightly against him after a moment, restlessly, but her breath had begun to catch slightly—enough to convince him she was aroused.
He slipped one finger along her cleft and checked the temperature. Hot and wet! That discovery was almost enough to make him blow his load right then and there, but he wasn’t wasting it even if he had already successfully completed his mission!
He nudged her hair out of the way and sucked lightly on the crook between her neck and shoulder. Rear entrance? Or full frontal? He could get more depth with the frontal and that cinched the matter. Rolling her onto her back, he planted his mouth firmly over hers to stifle any objections she might think to make, sliding smoothly into position between her thighs at the same time. He�
��d managed to get the head of his cock firmly wedged before she came around enough to fully realize she’d been nailed. He was aroused enough by that time for both of them, however, and refused to be dissuaded by her sluggish reaction to his heated kiss, persevering until she kissed him back. By that time, he’d managed full penetration in a series of determined thrusts—because she was fully relaxed—mostly.
He had to break the kiss to suck in a lungful of air or pass out as the pleasure reached fever pitch and he began struggling to slow down enough for her to catch up. She gasped when he lifted his lips from hers. The sound threatened to push him over the edge. He gritted his teeth, struggling to think of something else, anything beyond the fact that his testicles felt like they were going to explode.
“Garryk!”
Thank god! Grinding his teeth, he managed to hold out when she bucked against him a couple of times and then drove deeply inside her and released the floodgate before the dam could burst. The release was pure, agonizing bliss. He hadn’t realized four days of abstinence when he’d grown accustomed to having sex at least every other day would result in such a mind-blowing, gut wrenching experience!
Or maybe it was the damned pills, he thought vaguely, nearly comatose with relief when his body finally stopped expelling his seed?
“Get off!” Chelsey growled through gritted teeth.
It was the latent instinct for self-preservation that propelled Garryk off of her. He didn’t think he could’ve consciously gathered enough strength to lift himself if his life had depended on it. He’d barely hit the mattress beside her when Chelsey leapt off the bed and raced into the bathroom, in too much of a rush to even slam the door behind her.
Brought abruptly down to earth by the painful sound of vomiting, Garryk’s eyes popped open in alarm. To go or not to go, he wondered uneasily? A sense of guilt and remorse, belated but perhaps stronger because of that, compelled him to rush to her rescue. A stronger sense of self-preservation urged him to vacate the apartment until she’d had time to overcome the wrath that was bound to follow her bout of worshipping at the porcelain altar. Resentment chased the uneasiness for, despite the fact that he knew she couldn’t help her predicament, it was still a blow to have her dash off to puke the minute he finished making love to her.
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