by Vivian Gray
She nodded frantically, and he saw tears starting in her eyes. A better man than him would have slowed down or eased off. He was not a better man. He kept up the relentless pace, watching her claw at the table so hard he thought she’d leave grooves.
His cock was throbbing, and he’d kept them waiting long enough. He yanked his pants out of the way and slammed into her, pulling her legs up to his shoulders so he could slam into her harder. She cried out, but it wasn’t enough. He reached down and pinched her clit, hard, twisting until he felt her cunt start to spasm around him. He shoved into her so hard the desk rocked, and he got that scream he wanted. Her back bowed off the bed as she ground into him, and he couldn’t hold back; he felt pleasure spill out of him as he fucked his knocked up girl. God, she was going to be gorgeous. As she came down to earth, he leaned over, resting his head gently on the spot just below her breasts. He was going to watch her belly grow, see her change, watch her be marked for him. His pretty girl.
His.
When she caught her breath, Laurie started to laugh. She wrapped her arms around his head and curled up around him a little. He couldn’t help it; he joined in the mood without knowing entirely why it was happening.
“You’re absolutely sure about this?” There was still some nervousness in her voice, but for the most part, his girl seemed settled. Reassured.
“Yeah,” he said. He pressed another kiss to her stomach. “I’m sure.” He pulled himself up to standing, carrying her with him. She snuggled against him, her head just fitting under her chin. “We’ll find another place. I mean, I love it here, but you can’t raise a baby in the clubhouse. At least, not all the time. A little place with a yard.”
He could feel her heart pounding against him, and he wasn’t sure that all of the sensation had to do with the incredibly intense sex they’d just had. It wasn’t often he met a girl who had come from what seemed like such a vanilla lifestyle, who’d had such a childhood. People thought his had been a mess – dead mom, biker dad – but his dad had loved him, he’d had a family looking out for him, and he’d never wondered where his next meal was coming from. Laurie hadn’t had any of those things.
He’d never wanted to protect someone before, not like this. People in general, sure, but one individual person? No way. Not this much. Not with a sense like he’d wake up next to her every day and look for another way to keep her safe so she could live her life like she wanted. And now, knowing that she was pregnant, it was just that much more intense.
“Okay,” she said, and he thought maybe that answer was harder for her than the choice to keep the baby. “Okay. Let’s give it a shot.”
Chapter Ten
Laurie
Laurie leaned back from the computer, rubbing her temples with her hands. She’d been bashing this particular bit of code for hours, and the output still wasn’t right. She needed a break like nothing else she’d ever needed.
She checked her phone; it was about an hour before Jacob was going to drive her back into the city for her next OB appointment. Something inside of her melted a little more every time she thought of it. He’d been excited when he found out, but she’d never expected a tattooed biker to be so... domestic. He’d gotten her a bureau and put it in his room, and started snapping whenever it was referred to as his room, instead of theirs. He’d insisted that she buy more new clothes as her belly started to swell, and he’d wander by her desk, kneeling down to stroke and kiss her belly before heading on to the next thing in his day.
The sex hadn’t softened up at all. Maybe he was a little more gentle when he tossed her onto the bed or against the wall, but he hadn’t started being sweet or something. He didn’t ask her before he pushed her up against the nearest flat surface and pounded her with his cock, and her rampant hormones so far meant that she came even harder and louder than she had before.
She’d expected the rest of the club to dismiss her at best and outright make her life hard at worst. After all, who was she? Some random girl who showed up as a bit of ass and was suddenly living in the president’s bed with as much clothing and tech as she could cram onto a credit card. Jacob had gotten her a new phone to go with her new computer, but he’d also read up on prenatal vitamins and pillows and yoga supplies and a thousand other things. The little room where she’d spent that first erotic and terrifying night had been transformed into some sort of pregnancy paradise. She had a small TV that had been well supplied with prenatal workouts and yoga videos and all the props and supplies to let her do the poses that helped her keep the aches and pains developing to the minimum.
Sometimes she looked back at the life she’d had before the auction and just shook her head. It wasn’t the money – though it was nice not to worry – but the sense of community she had here. Delilah looked out for her and had made sure to introduce her around. She spent time with the girls playing pool, checking out movies, or just getting to know people. She’d never really done that before; she’d never really bothered. Or had time. It wasn’t part of her plan. Her plan had been everything. At some point, her plan had taken over. It stopped being about the specific details of what she was going to do, and when, and how, and started being simply about running towards the next established goal post. And the goal posts never stopped. There was always another one.
Even in retrospect, there hadn’t been an end goal. She wanted to get away from what had come before, but she had no idea what that really was. She just... ran.
In a weird way, she felt lucky that she had run into Jacob’s arms. No, there was nothing about this situation that was typical or ideal, but she was glad that she was here, all the same.
She went out to the bar and grabbed a sandwich and a bottle of water. The nausea had finally settled down, thank goodness, and she was into the part of being pregnant that people – at least people on the Internet – seemed to enjoy. Her belly was cute, her body didn’t hurt too much, she wasn’t exhausted and tired all the time.
And Jacob seemed more delighted by her changing body every day. That was also a perk.
Today, though, when he came out of the war room with Snake-eye, his face was dark. If they hadn’t had somewhere to be, she would have been shivering with excitement, expecting to be hauled back to their bedroom so he could take out his frustrations on her ass with a belt. But her appointment was in half an hour, and they needed to hit the road.
Instead of a full-on whipping, he grabbed her hair and pulled her into him hard for a bruising kiss. His hand cupped her cunt right there where anyone could see, and it took everything she had not to hop up on the bar and beg him to fuck her with his fingers right there. She’d never thought that showing off like that would make her feel so wanton and free, but it did; it did, without question. Of course, it didn’t hurt that when she was coming down, she’d hear all the hooting and hollering about how great they looked together. That didn’t hurt at all.
She was his. He owned her. She’d do anything he wanted her to.
He left his bike back at the clubhouse when they went in for her OB appointments. She knew it was because he worried about her not being safe, but he always laughed and claimed it was because of how she gasped when he started the motor – big vibrating thing between her legs; how could she possibly complain?
Instead, he took a pretty red sports car out of the back garage. Riding into the city in a car that caught everyone’s attention wasn’t as directly stimulating as the vibration of a motorcycle applied directly to her clit, but it had its own appeal.
The ride into the city was quiet at first. Jacob was clearly still chewing over whatever had happened in the meeting. Laurie wanted to know, but asking him when his jaw was still tight like that wasn’t going to help either of them. So she sat quietly, watching the road pass or playing a game on her phone.
“We’re still tracking the Weapons,” he said, out of nowhere. These conversations always started like they two of them had been talking for hours, and not like he had only just started speaking outside of his
head.
“Any luck?”
He shook his head, his expression still thunderstorm-dark. “Strangest goddamn thing. We know they’re out there. We’re seeing Molly that doesn’t belong to us hitting the streets in our areas, and we’re hearing stories of bad reactions. Our customers are telling us about being approached by other sellers, but we can’t track down a single lead. Every single story is a ghost story.”
Laurie made herself take a deep breath and then asked the question she always asked. She hated the answer every time, but when she didn’t ask, Jacob eventually told her anyway. It was better to hear it like this, instead of waiting. “And the girls?”
This time, gratefully, he shook his head. “Nothing we’ve heard of, not since that first time. I don’t know, babe. Maybe they decided it wasn’t right for them. It was too risky. They didn’t want to take on the risk, given the hard look the city’s giving to domestic sex trafficking. Or maybe…” He went silent, his jaw working again.
“Or maybe they’re just managing to keep it out of your sight.”
His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “How could they? It doesn’t make sense. They’d have to know where we’re going to be looking if they’re going to avoid us. We’re into everything at this point, trying to see where they are. There’s no way they can avoid this for so long on dumb luck. But how the hell do they know?”
She asked the obvious question. “Could they have someone inside the Talons?”
“Absolutely not,” he said, and it was the kind of assuredness that always got someone in trouble in the movies, but somehow, she believed Jacob. “Every Talon who knows what’s going on is someone I’ve known since I was a child, or who was brought in by someone I’ve known that long. No one would abuse that trust.” Another layer of darkness on his face. “No one would dare.”
“Okay,” Laurie said, feeling a little twist in her stomach. She’d never seen him quite this dark. She was entirely sure she wouldn’t ever want to see the type of anger he was showing now flashing across his face because of her. “I believe you,” she added.
He nodded, and they drove a little further. “We’re not going to stop looking,” he said, with the air of someone adding something on, in large part because they were trying to convince themselves.
“I know,” she said.
He reached across the seats for just a moment and took her hand, squeezing it tight before putting it back on the wheel. “How’s the app going?”
“Making progress on security,” she said and delved into an intricate discussion of the problems she was having making the security functions work properly without crippling the speed of the app in general. She’d realized when the project started that Jacob didn’t expect her to dumb things down for him, but he also didn’t try to pretend he knew more than her on this topic. He’d never programmed a thing, and he didn’t want to. It had taken her a while to figure it out; he wanted to hear what she had to say on the topic. Because she cared about it, and that meant he cared about it.
It was a hell of a trip, really, having someone listening to her like that. Her roommates had all been nice enough, but it wasn’t like they were really friends. Or at least, she wasn’t friends with them. The almighty plan, after all.
He kept asking her questions and then listening attentively to the answers until they pulled into the parking lot for the OB. Laurie had expected to need to pick a doctor off a list on the Internet, but once news had gone around the club that Laurie was pregnant, and with Jacob’s baby, one of Delilah’s friends had immediately approached her with the name of an OB that several of the girls had used over the years. Dr. Jemisin was young, black, and friendly. She did not discuss whether or not she had been involved with their lifestyle at some point in her life, but it was clear that she understood how some of the details had worked.
One thing Laurie had enjoyed immediately was that Dr. Jemisin’s office wasn’t aggressively girly. So many maternity clothes and products she’d found, so far, were intensely ruffled and floral and generally just... girl-centric. She had never been comfortable with that sort of thing. Dr. Jemisin’s office seemed like any other doctor’s office. The chairs weren’t floral, the walls weren’t pastel, and there weren’t pictures of vaginas disguised as flowers on the walls.
She was twenty weeks along now, almost six months, and Dr. Jemisin had her scheduled for an in-depth ultrasound to look carefully at the developing baby. She and Jacob had gotten to look at tiny pictures of a little bean shape with a bright spot for a heart and a dark spot for an eye, but it was more of a concept than a real idea of a baby. But this felt different. This felt more real.
Dr. Jemisin came into the office shortly after she and Jacob settled in. The tall woman was heavyset in a comfortable way, her skin dark with reddish undertones, and her black and silver locks held back in a multicolored clasp. “Hello again,” she said, her voice low and calming.
Laurie hadn’t ever thought about it before she got pregnant, but now that she had, the idea of hearing that soft, calming voice while she was in labor sounded like the best possible thing. Jacob was determined to be there, which was both beautiful and terrifying – what if he saw something that put him off her body forever? – but it definitely made Dr. Jemisin smile.
After the usual preamble of checking her blood pressure and weighing in and peeing in a cup, Laurie laid down, and Dr. Jemisin squirted the cold, weird goo onto her belly. She pressed the ultrasound wand down onto the baby bump and moved it around, taking a minute to find the little bean-shaped lump that was making all this happen.
Only it didn’t look like a bean anymore; over the past few months, the tiny shape had morphed into a little version of a baby. Laurie felt Jacob clutch her hand, and she squeezed back hard. Dr. Jemisin counted off fingers and toes, hearts and lungs, naming all the different pieces and parts she saw. She asked if they wanted to know the baby’s sex, and both she and Jacob shook their heads. And then she turned on the sound, and they heard the baby’s heartbeat fill the room.
It was a beautiful sound, and every time she heard it, Laurie’s heart skipped around in her own chest. This little tiny life growing inside of her, and she and Jacob had made it together. A special and beautiful creation. Something she’d never even known she wanted, but now she knew she’d fiercely protect, no matter what happened.
Once Dr. Jemisin was done getting the measurements she needed and pronounced that everything looked just like it should, she toweled off Laurie’s stomach. “If you don’t mind,” she said, looking at Jacob with a wide smile, “this last part is a little sensitive. Could you…?” She gestured to the door, and after a moment, Jacob nodded, stepping out into the hallway.
When Dr. Jemisin turned back to Laurie, who was adjusting her shirt, her face was much more somber. “I just need to check,” the doctor said, her dark eyes neutral and calm. “Because he’s always here with you, and I know that sometimes people can end up in rough spots that they don’t know how to get out of. Is there anything you need? Do you feel safe?”
Laurie took a long breath. She absolutely understood the reason the question was asked. After all, what would she have said on that dark night, when Jacob had first come barreling through the door and pinned her up against the wall. If she’d gotten pregnant and never been let out of that room, would she have called herself safe? Could a moment like this one have saved her life?
And what about now? Was she safe? Was this the life she wanted for herself and her baby? She liked the clubhouse, she liked Jacob, she thought he’d make a good dad – but was that just because she was there?
What would happen if she said she didn’t feel safe? Would they smuggle her out the back door, fake a medical emergency or something? And what would happen to her and the baby? Domestic violence units couldn’t do as much as people hoped, and Jacob and the club had ties everywhere in town. It wasn’t like she’d get smuggled out of the city or something, and it wasn’t like she had other people to rely on.
/> But it wasn’t just her she was thinking of now. She had a baby to consider. A child.
Suddenly that little heartbeat wasn’t just sweet and romantic. There was a real person on the way, someone she was going to have to look out for and take care of. It was a solemn sort of moment, and one she held on to very tightly for a moment.
Then she nodded, thinking of the way Jacob’s eyes had lit up when he’d realized what was happening, how he’d treated her every day since then. Their sex was rough, but that had no bearing on his quality as a person. He was a good man, and he was going to be a good dad.
She smiled at her doctor and was entirely truthful. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I’m safe.”
Chapter Eleven
Jacob
Jacob sat in the waiting room with his hands tight on his knees. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew exactly why that doctor had wanted him out of the room for a moment. It was a good choice, and he respected that it was being made. He’d seen enough girls in enough terrible situations to be glad that someone was looking out for them.
But he couldn’t help wondering why Laurie was being asked. Was every pregnant person asked at this appointment whether or not they were safe? Was it because of his tattoos and his leather? If he had shown up to the appointments in a polo and khakis, would they still have asked? Because truth be told, it was those dirtbags who were the most dangerous to women, as far as he’d ever been able to see. The guys who played golf on the weekends and beat the crap out of their wives after a long day at work. But still. It was important to be sure. God knew he understood that. He wanted someone looking out for the women that were in danger.