I needed something to do. I glanced around the room, suddenly realizing how lived-in my once-pristine apartment was. I liked it. But… it had been a while since we had picked things up. I’d rushed out and bought a bunch of baby things before Miles called a halt to that too. He wanted the whole nine yards, baby shower, couple shopping, whatever else it would take to prepare for the baby. I was just frantic to get everything ready now, so that I knew it was ready, even though we had months to go yet.
Miles had calmed me from my unpacking frenzy by attacking me and distracting me in quite delicious ways, but the end result was that boxes and bags and papers littered the living room.
I breathed a slight sigh of relief. A project would focus me.
I started by grabbing a giant garbage bag and throwing all of the packaging away and breaking down the boxes. Then I clipped all the tags from the clothes and set them aside to be washed in the special baby detergent the terrifying grandmother in the store had scared me into buying.
Sadly, cleaning and organizing the living room only took a couple hours, and Miles still wasn’t back. Nor had he texted. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t bug him, so I needed to find something else to distract my mind from wondering if he’d gotten in another car accident and that was why he couldn’t—
Stop. Clean the bedroom.
Somehow, a bunch of papers for work had ended up in the bedroom. (I suspected I may have forgotten to drop them in the office during another one of Miles’s… distractions.) I took my time gathering them and setting them aside. I opened a sealed envelope to see how to organize it, and quickly realized it wasn’t for me. I grabbed the envelope to confirm it had been written to Miles, but I’d read too much to not finish it.
My hands were shaking in anger by the time I’d completed it. I had no idea why Miles had an unopened letter from his mother, and she had probably never suspected that I would see it. Miles wouldn’t have had all the knowledge to put the pieces together, but I did.
The front door opened and Miles called out, “Honey, I’m home.”
I folded the letter and placed it into my pocket, my relief warring with my anger. We met half-way through the condo and I wrapped him in a relieved hug.
“See?” he mumbled against my arm. “I managed to go out for the day and come back safe and sound.”
“How was it?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
Miles’s smile was glorious as I loosened my arms and he looked up at me. “It’s amazing, Parker. I know we need to talk about it, but I really want to work there. The work they are doing—it’s just—I can’t even explain how good, how fulfilling the idea of working there makes me feel. You need to come with me for a tour. I can’t wait for you to see.”
I kissed his forehead. “Sounds amazing.”
As I pulled away, Miles’s smile fell. “Something is wrong.”
I sighed. I hated raining on Miles’s happiness. I pulled out the letter. “I found this.”
Miles’s face hardened. “I knew she couldn’t have anything good to say. That’s why I didn’t open it. I don’t know what kind of shit she wrote about you or me or us, but it’s not worth giving her the satisfaction.” He grabbed the letter and started to march for the kitchen. “I’m just going to throw it away.”
“No!” I reached out to grab his hand to stop him. “No, I think you should read it.”
We settled into the couch and he reluctantly read the letter. “It’s just what I said, Parker. She’s making claims about your ability as a business man and going on about how much better Andrew is than you.”
“Remember how I told you someone was embezzling the company?”
“You caught him, right?”
“Yes, but we couldn’t figure out where the money went. It was possible he had it in some private off-shore accounts, but something just didn’t feel right to me. Until I read this letter. Look here, where your mother says I stand to lose twenty-five percent of my worth this year? Timothy had already funneled ten percent out, and I’d almost missed it. That’s a ridiculous amount, though. I have no idea how he thought he would manage it.”
“Has he said anything?”
“Not a peep. His wife’s devastated. Apparently, nothing has changed in their lives or financial situation as far as she had been able to tell, which makes me think there was something else going on.”
“Like what?”
“Blackmail. Look at this part where your mom accuses me of having child molesters in my top executives, and how that’s going to be my downfall—Andrew will make sure of it.”
“That seems really sketchy,” Miles said reluctantly.
I set the letter aside. “I know. But I’ve built my entire enterprise on a combination of gut and logic, and right now my gut is telling me I will find the logic if I follow this line of thought. But I need your permission first.”
“Mine?” Miles looked confused. “Why do you need mine?”
“Your mother knows too much she shouldn’t know,” I said slowly. “If I’m right… there’s little chance your parents aren’t somehow involved.”
I watched the emotions cross Miles expressive face. Disbelief. Betrayal. Determination.
“Parker, you can’t hold back just because they’re my parents. But I don’t want you going after them because of how badly they’ve treated me either. I simply want you to pursue justice. Hand everything over to the police and let them deal with it.”
Miles knew me well. If it were up to me, I would destroy everything his parents had ever touched in retaliation for what they had done to Miles. But it would destroy something inside me as well.
“I promise,” I said. He pulled me into a deep kiss, his hands on either side of my face, and I felt my anger drift away in the waves of his love.
52
Miles
“We don’t need that,” I said for the four hundredth time. When I’d first told Parker to quit buying baby shit because I wanted it to be a couples activity, I was mostly saying it to get him to wait. I’d only known I was pregnant for half a day when he first went all buy all the things on me. Had I known then what I knew now, I would’ve told him it was an omega thing and done it on my own.
“But this one reclines and rocks.” He was pointing to a nursery rocker that not only cost more than my last car, but was ugly as sin.
“Alpha.” I admit it, I was using his title as a means of control, but I had to. It was ridiculous. He was going to give the kid the world before his first birthday if I didn’t stop him. “We need a crib, a dresser, a bookshelf, a lamp, and a changing table from this department. Nothing else.”
“But what if you are nursing and you want to sit down?” He mimicked the salesperson’s words. High pressure sales on new dads was morally bankrupt, if you asked my opinion.
“Then I will sit on the daybed we already ordered. Or--and this is a crazy notion--I can walk to the living room.” I gasped for effect. I loved that he wanted to provide for us. I just wished he didn’t need to go all gung-ho before we even had an ultrasound.
But I got his urgency. I did. It was the anniversary of the accident when we had lost our first child and each other, and for the first time in all those years, I was happy. The dull ache still sat there, but this time hope outdhone it.
“I’m being ridiculous, aren’t I?” He embraced me, his lips grazing my head, his hand dropping to my belly. “I just want it to be perfect this time. Especially--”
“Especially today. I get it and I love you for it,” I lifted my lips to his for a far too brief kiss. “But our child will have so much love that none of this will mean anything.”
In that way, our baby was going to have so much more than either of us ever had. We would love them unconditionally. Both Parker and I had Parents who chose their own needs over their children and not in the healthy every parent needs some grown-up time kind of way. Our parents were selfish, self-centered poor excuses for parental units. We were going to be nothing like them. We were goin
g to love them for who they were, not who they wanted to be.
I shivered just thinking about what my parents had done, Parker’s hand coming to my shoulder, giving me comfort and pulling me from my reverie. His parents were just as bad as mine, so he understood. Their horridness just manifested itself differently and Marcus took the brunt of it unbeknownst to my mate.We were all on a better track now, but sometimes the emotion still got away from me. Darn pregnancy hormones.
“So no ugly ass rocker?”
“Thank you. For a second there I thought you liked it and I wondered who I was getting married to,” I teased, taking his hand and leading him to a simple, much more reasonably priced nursery suite.
“I’m holding you to that, you know.” He nodded at the sales person, indicating we would take the set. I still couldn’t grasp how this rich people shopping thing worked. I was used to conversations, paperwork, and the odd dickering.
“The furniture? Go for it. I stand by the selection.” Truth was, it was probably for the best we picked out furniture before we knew what gender our baby was because I could’ve been easily swayed to the turn our child’s nursery into a train station theme they had cooking the next display over. No way was that set reasonable.
“No, omega mine, the marrying part.” His eyes shone such love I almost cried of joy. I blamed it on the hormones.
“Oh, you’re putting a ring on it alright.” I smiled back. “You gave me stretch marks, you give me a ring. I call that a far trade.”
“Miles, you have given me so much more than you can even fathom.” His hands held my cheeks, his eyes boring into me with such love, such devotion. “You gave me happiness, love, hope, yourself, a second chance, and, one day soon, our child. You can have all the rings in this store and it still wouldn’t be a fair trade.”
Tears were flowing down my cheeks and he swipe each one away with his thumbs. My alpha. My strong, powerful, loving alpha.
“And that is where you are wrong, Parker. It is you who have given me everything.”
53
Parker
“Are you nervous?” I asked Miles, adjusting his tie one last time, heedless of the people bustling too and fro in the hallway around us as we stood outside, waiting to enter the courtroom for his first case working with Omega House.
Miles patiently batted my hands away and pulled me in for a sweet kiss. “I’m fine.”
And he was. I’d never seen him more confident or at home in his own skin. Part of it was that pregnancy glow, but mostly it was that he was in his element. It was me who was the mess.
“You didn’t need to come, you know,” Miles said. “It’s not like this is my first case. We could have just met at the doctor’s this afternoon.”
“Don’t remind me,” I gruffed. “I missed your first real case. I’m not going to miss any more firsts if I can help it.”
My fingers had twitched up to adjust my own tie and Miles pressed his hands against mine. “Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate you.”
Then the court doors opened and Miles left me to go sit with his client. I felt slightly disappointed that I didn’t get to see Miles go into full oration mode, addressing a jury and pleading his client’s innocence or, I don’t know, whatever dramatic story my imagination had run away with. This was simply a motion to file for a legal separation between his client and his former alpha, who refused to acknowledge him, and also refused to let the omega access their former home to gather up the legal documents he needed to move on with his life.
I just couldn’t imagine being so cold and petty to someone I had once loved. Or cared for at all, at any point in my life. I waited patiently while Miles advised his client after they were dismissed, and then smiled proudly as he came to me.
“You were amazing.”
Miles laughed and tried to wave my compliment away. “It’s just normal stuff. Any lawyer could do it.”
“But not just any lawyer is doing it for low pay, while pregnant, without a hope for prestige.”
Miles blushed. “Well, it’s what anyone should do.”
I didn’t argue with him. We both knew that what people should do and what they did were worlds apart. We grabbed a quick lunch before our appointment at the doctor’s office.
While we waited, I couldn’t stop my knee from bouncing. “What if she sees something wrong?” I asked. “What if they realize the baby has Down’s, or they’re intersex.”
Miles’s eyes were concerned. “Then we’ll talk over things, and continue to love the child just as if it were typical.”
“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean… I just… I already feel so damn protective of this baby. I can’t bear the thought of the world somehow disapproving or not understanding them. Or of them feeling lonely. What if they have ears like I did as a kid, just elephant ears, and other kids make fun of them?”
Miles didn’t even bother to try and hide his snicker. “You realize how ridiculous you’re being, right?”
“Elephant ears are no joke,” I grumbled.
“Did you seriously have no friends?”
“No,” I admitted, shifting uncomfortably in the plastic chair. “But a lot of kids did make fun of me.”
“Then it will make our child into a kind, compassionate person who is understanding of others’ differences.” He pressed my knee down, forcing me to stillness. “Don’t borrow trouble ahead of time. Let’s just wait to see what the doctor says. And you’re going to forget all about those worries when you see the baby’s face.”
“Miles Schofield?”
Miles squeezed my hand as he rose, finally revealing a tiny sense of anxiety. I couldn’t understand how he could be so damn calm. We were lead to the ultrasound room, and the nurse handed Miles a gown to change into. And then the ultrasound tech was there. I held Miles’s hand in a vice grip during the thirty minutes she took for the scan. She made small talk, but didn’t tell us any of the particulars about the baby, saying that was for the doctor.
Miles had been partially right—when I saw our child’s face, my worries faded. It no longer mattered whether my child had a condition that would make the world harder for them. A fierceness instilled itself deep in my bones, and I practically dared anyone to give my baby a hard time. They’d have to face me to do it.
After she finished the scan, we were escorted to one of the normal examination rooms. Neither of us said anything, both feeling the anticipation of the doctor’s words. We only had to wait ten minutes, thankfully, and the first thing the doctor said was, “Congratulations! You have a beautiful, perfectly healthy baby girl.”
Everything she said after that pretty much went over my head. Miles seemed to have a better head about him, as he asked her a few questions, but she handed over our photos and sent us off with a reminder to schedule Miles’s next appointment with reception.
I felt like I was floating on cloud nine all the way home. We kept sharing giddy smiles all the way home, and as soon as we were safely ensconced at home, I was on Miles. I kissed him down the hallway, carefully pushing him backward, pressing him gently down onto the bed, kneeling to stay on level with him, my head just slightly lower than his, my hands buried in his hair, Miles buried in my heart.
54
Miles
I lost myself in our kiss. His reverence and love flowing through every caress of his lips.
“I need you, alpha,” I pleaded as his lips left mine, traveling down my neck. No one told me how needed pregnancy mad a guy.
“Shh, love. You have me, you always have me.” His hand settled on my swollen belly. “Both of you,” he vowed, before he began nibbling my neck once more.
I allowed myself to push back all thoughts and just feel. Feel the love he had for us. Feel the weight of my parents’ wrongs transferred to his shoulders. Feel the lust building inside of me as my cock swelled with need. This was where I needed to be: in Parker’s hands.
His hands found my buttons and one by one popped them open, kissing my skin as it was e
xposed before pushing the garment away and focusing on my nipples. He knew exactly how much pressure to use as he nibbled and tweaked my erect nubs and I was panting before he moved further south. The man could make my body sing.
He kissed down, stopping at my belly as our little one decided to give him a kick in the chin.
“You’re gonna be daddy’s little fiesty one, aren’t you?”
To which they responded with another kick.
“Just like your papa, a fighter.” Parker looked up at me, a grin plastered on his face. “They’re gonna be just like you. I can tell.”
“I never kick you in the head,” I said with seriousness, which he took it as a cue to push his hands down my pants, and the turned me back into a moaning fool.
“It looks like we need to stop this talking thing. You appear to have some needs.” He pulled his hands from my pants only long enough to divest me from them. “And it looks like my mouth is needed for more important things.”
Parker settled in between my legs, just looking at my cock, his tongue swiping across his lips before giving my tip a lick. My head fell back, the feel of it too good and as he took me into his mouth, I nearly came. Damn he had a mouth on him.
“If you don’t stop, I’m gonna come before we get started.” I warned with no actual warning in my voice. Parker had a sick love of making me come fast and often. Shit, I had a love of it too. Giving myself to him so completely was freeing and sexy as sin.
“You know that’s the point. And we have all night.” He went back to working my cock, my balls tightening quickly and as his finger entered me, I lost it, coming down his throat with a scream. I so needed that.
“I told you.” I panted. “And thanks. I—”
“I know love, I know. Now… what should we do with the rest of our evening?” He placed a finger on his lips, humming. “There are so many options.”
Reclaiming His Omega: M/M Non-Shifter Alpha/Omega MPREG (Cafe Om Book 5) Page 17