I came back from the bathroom to see Alois sitting at the table with my parents. I went to take the seat next to him but he pulled me onto his lap instead and wrapped one arm around my back and the other hand rubbed my belly.
“We have the due date on the calendar. We’re going to fly out as soon as you call, if that’s still okay?” David, my older and quirkier dad spoke.
“If that’s okay with my mate,” Alois said and patted my back for me to answer.
“You would come to the delivery? To see the babe?”
Colt spoke up. “We would be honored to be there, Miles. We’ve been without you so long. We don’t want to waste another minute. Now, let’s eat. You two stay right there and we’re bringing the food to the table.”
My parents had gone all out, and while we chowed down on a buffet of grilled meats and veggies along with coleslaw and my favorite pea salad, we caught up on everything. Alois’ jaw would grind when I mentioned Kent, and more than once they said they would kill him if he ever showed his face again, but mostly we focused on the future and the positive things to come.
Alois leaned over to kiss my temple a few times while my parents awwed at the gesture.
“Are we staying or…” I prompted as the sun went down outside the kitchen window. We’d been talking and laughing for hours.
“Alois said you could stay for a week, but that was before you knew he’d even made plans. Miles, Son, please stay and let us get to know you again, you and your very large and muscley mate.”
“Dad!” I yelled, embarrassed but knew it was true.
Alois laughed loudly and kneaded my thigh under the table. “He’s not wrong, but these muscles are all for you, my love.”
As he spoke, the babe, our daughter, inside me, kicked at the sound of his voice. “She’s kicking,” I said, and stood and walked over to my parents. I put both their hands on the lower left of my stomach and asked Alois to talk again. He got up and kneeled and spoke right to my belly. He told her how loved she was, and wanted in this world, and how he would protect her always.
He told me the same things, too.
Of course, like she always did, she responded to her daddy in kicks, and my parents both started crying again.
“I’m glad you will be in my life again,” I confessed.
“It’s all thanks to your mate, Miles,” they said and I agreed. Every good thing was because of Alois.
Chapter Eighteen
Alois
Our week at Miles’ parents’ home flew by. Mostly they sat around the table together and caught up with each other’s lives while I hung back and enjoyed my mate’s happiness. They called me their son-in-law, and while I was his mate and wed to him in my heart, we hadn’t taken the step of making it legal. I hadn’t wanted to push him, he could be so skittish sometimes, but on the last day of our visit, I decided to give it a try.
I showered, combed my hair back from my face the way Miles always said made me look debonair—something I’d never be but appreciated the thought of very much—and put on the nicest thing I’d brought, a Carhartt polo shirt and deep-indigo jeans. I replaced the work boots I wore nearly all the time with the deck shoes Miles had bought me for my birthday and looked in the mirror.
“Will you marry me?” I tried to make my eyes as piercing as he claimed they were but was afraid all I was doing was looking a bit psycho in the process so abandoned that. In fact, after repeating the question enough times that Miles’ dad David banged on the door to see if I was alone in here, I gave my frightened-looking reflection a nod, straightened my shoulders, and joined them at the breakfast table.
They were eating peach cobbler. A sign if there ever was one. I paused settled in my seat, the same one I’d taken since our arrival, and served myself some of the golden dessert. Taking a spoonful, I groaned. “Miles, this is as good as yours.”
He chuckled. “It’s okay to tell the truth. It’s better than mine. My dads go peach picking every summer then put up jars of filling so we never had, never have to miss a week. I had to make mine from ordinary peaches without the magic spell.”
David nodded. “It’s special to us. Did our son tell you we eat it every Sunday?”
I frowned. “But it’s Saturday.” And maybe Miles would rather just tell me when he was ready to get married. Proposing in front of his family might really put the pressure on.
He shrugged. “And you said you want to leave before dawn tomorrow so you can get home and rest up for work on Monday. So...we’re making today Sunday.” He scooped up a big bite and held it in the sunlight streaming over the table from the big windows at the back of the house. “It was our wedding dessert.” David reached for his husband’s hand. “Did you know we got married when we were just a couple of months from giving birth ourselves?”
Okay. Wedding dessert, wedding talk...serving a dessert we also had every week because we both enjoyed it so and it reminded me of our first days together.
“I hope I’m not overstepping, but while I have you all together, I’d like to ask my theta a question.”
Spoons stopped halfway to mouths, and the dads gave each other a look that held so much hope. “Please do,” chorused the wise old foxes.
“Don’t I get a say?” protested Miles. “I mean…hey!”
I dropped to my knees beside him and fished a box out of my pocket. Something I’d picked up from my folks months back. Rather, something Mom had pushed into my hand on a visit when she was also asking when we were getting married. A bit old school, my mom. “Don’t you want that baby to have both his dads when he’s born?”
No amount of explanation had convinced her that we were mated with or without a city license. I opened the lid and held up the box. “Miles, theta mine, will you marry me?” I winked at his dads who were holding hands, heads close together and eyes sparkling. “My mom says we need to do this...but I want to as well.” I returned my attention to my gaping theta. “I want to with every bit of my soul. Please, Miles, say yes.”
Tears poured down his cheeks as he held out his hand and I slipped the ring on his finger. “It’s beautiful,” he sniffled. “All the colors of gold braided together.”
“It was my grandfather’s,” I told him. “My mom has been holding it for me. She wanted you to have it.” I gave my head a little shake. “I mean I wanted you to have it...well, I guess we both do. And my dad.”
“And your dads,” chimed in the pair who were so in tune they could speak at the same time. “All your family.”
We kissed then, sweet and soft then deeper. I was lost in him, in the sensory experience that was my theta. All my senses engaged. He was so handsome, the sound of his voice like music to my spirit, he tasted like the peach cobbler, and his jaw was like rough silk under my palm when I cupped it to get a better kissing angle. And his scent...always like the lemon cookies he’d made for me the first time, sweet and tart and irresistible.
Finally, we came up for air, to find we were alone. “Looks like your dads took the rest of the cobbler with them,” I remarked. “I was hoping for seconds.”
“Hmm, probably not after they take it in their bedroom with them.”
I winced. “What do they do to it?”
Miles’ grin spread wide. “I’ve never been sure. Probably they just eat it up. But…”
But they were very much a loving couple, and if we’d smeared peaches and their sticky juice over our bodies...well...it didn’t bear think of. Then I realized something. “You didn’t answer the question, theta mine.”
“What?” He was admiring the ring, twisting his hand this way and that in the light. “I’m sorry?”
I chuckled. “Well it is a formality, but will you marry me?”
Chagrin spread across his expression and he flushed. “Oops.” Then a mischievous grin took over. “Well, I don’t know. I have other offers, alphas lined up on the sidewalk to—hey! What are you doing?”
“Carrying you off to your former childhood bedroom to ravish you until you ag
ree. I’m only grateful in the remodel they replaced the twin bed you’ve mentioned with one we can both fit in.” I paused. “Do you think they will know what we’re up to?”
He slung his arms around my shoulders and pressed his lips to the skin under my ear, the spot that always made me shudder. “No more than we know what they are. Seriously, they will grant us our privacy, especially today.”
“Are you going to say yes at any point...today?”
He nipped me. “Mmm, probably, but what’s the fun if I don’t tease a little first. It’s the theta way.”
“It is, huh?” I carried him through the doorway and dropped him on the bed, but carefully. “You’d better hurry up because the wedding is scheduled for when your dads come for the birth.” I worked on freeing him from his shirt, but he struggled away from me, in an awkward, off-balance way.
“You planned my wedding without me?” His cheeks flushed, and he held one hand to his belly protectively.
I rushed to reassure him. “Not me. Mom. She has a whole list of things she wants you to decide on. You know how she is...I tried to say no.”
He relaxed. “Mom does like me a lot. She told me once she thought maybe even more than you.”
I hmmphed. “Yeah, it shows.” But I didn’t mind if my parents liked him better or his did, too. I liked him best as well. He was a gift I’d never earned. “But are you saying yes?”
He looked blank for a second then smiled and wrapped a hand around the back of my head, drawing me close. “Of course it’s yes, you dumb alpha. It was yes from the moment I let you put this baby inside me. It only works with my one and only you know.”
“I’m starting to understand.”
We kissed then helped one another undress in a slow, we have our whole life to look forward to way. Touching, caressing, kissing until we were both gasping before I rolled him to his back and knelt between his legs. Poised at his slick, I gazed up the line of his body. The day I put the baby in him, his belly had been concave, his arms and legs thin as sticks. The pregnancy and all the good food he prepared and we ate together had filled him out and I was so proud. Proud to provide for him, proud to watch him start college, proud to see him swell with our daughter.
I watched his expression as I pushed inside then out, deeper with each thrust. When I got close, I gripped his cock and jerked him off so we came together his cum covering his chest and belly, mine inside the velvet fist of his body.
The best part of marrying him was sharing our commitment to one another with the world. Because between us, it was already there.
Chapter Nineteen
Miles
I made Alois buy a suit and he hated it. Not like Brussels sprouts, which I had roasted, baked, and sauteed, to try to make him like, but hated it in the way that it would probably stay in his closet, way in the back, for the rest of our lives after today.
“You look amazing, my alpha,” I said, straightening his tie. We’d decided to have the wedding in his parents’ backyard. His parents definitely gave him his green thumb. The place was a flower-filled paradise.
“Not as amazing as you. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up from this dream.”
For a guy who was more muscle than bone, and worked himself to those bones to support us, he was mushy as hell. I loved it. He always knew exactly what to say to me to make me melt.
But this time, he was dead wrong.
I looked like a whale who had tried to go shopping and found the first thing that had fit around my big-ass belly.
“I’m huge,” I replied and leaned my head forward to lay against his chest.
He rubbed circles on my back. “You are beautifully swollen, carrying our daughter. I’ve never seen you more beautiful. You simply glow, my love.”
See what I mean?
“Thank you. I love you so much. I can’t wait for her to come so we can enjoy our family.”
And I meant every word. We had repainted the spare bedroom for Lena’s nursery in a pale yellow and let the light and beauty of her papa’s garden come through the window.
Everything was ready—including me.
I’d about had enough of the peeing every five seconds and even water giving me heartburn.
“I know what you mean. I want her in my arms. Are we about ready to go?”
I nodded. We had decided to forget the honeymoon and simply get married and come back home. I was beyond big and what I really wanted, in advance, was a honeymoon with my alpha later on, when we felt comfortable leaving Lena with his parents or mine and I wasn’t sporting a beach ball under my shirt.
Over the months with Alois, my heart had finally stopped skipping a beat every time a voice was raised or a door was shut. If Kent was going to make a move, he’d have done it by now. I slept through the night now, my alpha’s arms wrapped around me, caging me in trust and love.
I could breathe again.
“I’m ready for all of this. I know it’s just a piece of paper, but I need to be your husband.” I shrugged one shoulder, not knowing if I’d crossed the cheesy line or not.
“And I need you to be mine. Come on, let’s go.”
He picked up the flowers and held my hand all the way to the truck. While we made the drive to his parents’ house, I texted mine who were meeting us there. I finally would have the wedding I dreamed of.
Alois’ parents had gone all out. Not only was the garden more gorgeous than usual, but they had invited cousins and family I’d never met. My dads were there and had already been introduced by the time we arrived.
“Let’s do this. I think you’ll be surprised at who the officiator is.” Alois winked at me and my stomach fluttered.
I looked to the arch where his parents had arranged ivy and flowers in an intricate design. Inside the arch stood my dad David, waggling his eyebrows at me.
“How?” I asked.
“He got his license on the Internet. Apparently, it’s an easy thing. Your dad will be marrying us today, my love.”
Kent had made sure I had no family around, and Alois guaranteed they would always be a solid part of our life.
That was real love.
“Let’s not delay.”
We walked together to the arch, mostly to make sure I didn’t topple over. Vows were said with tears in my eyes and my heart in my throat. I meant every single word. Alois would have my love, my soul, and my heart for the rest of our lives.
Maybe even beyond.
The reception lasted into the wee hours of the morning. My feet ached, but I didn’t want to miss a single dance with my husband. We wouldn’t get this chance again.
But sooner than later I couldn’t last another second.
“I can’t go another song,” I whispered into his ear.
“I was wondering how long you would last, my love. You’re carrying some precious cargo there. Let’s get you to bed.”
Inside, Alois tucked me into bed and kissed me good night. Not really the raunchy lust-filled night I wanted, but this body was exhausted.
“I love you, Husband,” I made sure to whisper, loving the sound of the word, as my eyes closed.
“I love you more,” he responded and kissed my belly.
Chapter Twenty
Alois
Since we’d scheduled our wedding for a week before Miles’ due date, it shouldn’t have been the biggest surprise when he woke me on our wedding night. “Husband, I think it’s time.”
“Whew, that little girl was cutting it close,” I said, scrambling into the clothes I’d laid out on the chair by the bed a month ago, shoes neatly lined up underneath. I might have even practiced dressing for speed. ‘“Can I help you get ready?” I hoped my voice sounded as calm and competent as I intended and did not reflect the panic of my racing heart and surging adrenalin. “I wish you’d let me lay out clothes for you, too.”
He paused, clinging to the dresser and breathing through a contraction. “I think I can manage getting a T-shirt and sweats from a drawer. Why don’t you call and
let the doctor know while I finish, then you can come back and help me with shoes.”
He hadn’t seen his feet in months, and it was the only thing he let me do, tie his shoes, since he hated slip-ons. “All right. And all the parents, too. I’ll just call my mom and let her take charge of that.”
I grabbed my phone from the charger and went into the living room to make the calls. “Ready for shoes?” I bent and tied the laces then grabbed a hoodie from the closet. “Here, put this on. It’s cold out.” I actually had no idea how it was outside, since I hadn’t checked, but it made me feel better to hold it up while he slipped his arms in.
I wanted to help.
When he grabbed my biceps and clung, doing the breathing we learned in prenatal classes again, I tried to think how long it had been since the last one. “Shit. We are supposed to be timing these things.”
He let out a long exhale and gave me a tight smile. “Four minutes, alpha. Actually closer to three.” He waved his phone at me. “I’m using that app you downloaded.”
Three minutes? My heart seized. “Miles, why didn’t you wake me sooner? I think you’re already supposed to be in the hospital at this point.”
“Uh-huh. It came on pretty fast, actually. So do you think we can get going? Home birth was not in the plans.”
And suddenly I went from panic, nearly out of control, and about to faint, into another mode entirely. My theta and my daughter needed me to take charge here, to get them to the hospital so Lena could make her grand entrance. “You’re right, theta. This way. Your chariot awaits.”
I held his arm as we made our way to the car, stopping only long enough to grab his bag and for him to have another contraction. Then I settled him in the car and drove fast but carefully, grateful for the lack of traffic in the hours before dawn.
A nurse waited for us with a wheelchair at the hospital entrance and by the time I returned from parking the car, both sets of parents were in the maternity level lounge, laden with stuffies, balloons, and a six-foot-high greeting card personalized with both their names and Lena’s. I guess we didn’t count anymore.
Welded: MM Mpreg Romance (Industrial Alphas Book 1) Page 7