He cut it into two triangles and set it down in front of me.
“You need the calories. You are eating for two now, and you are desperately thin. We need to feed you as much as possible before the baby gets bigger.” And before I got sicker. The words hung in the air.
Even though the food tasted like sawdust, I ate it. Val was right. I would need the calories.
Eli had out a notepad and was scrawling things down.
“We need a plan. If you are keeping the baby, obviously chemotherapy and other cancer treatments are out until late the second trimester. But we need to keep you as healthy as possible. I suggest bed rest and only light activity for the next nine months. I know a great obstetrician to add to your team of specialists. “
“I'm not spending nine months in bed, Eli. We’ll just get on with it until I can’t, and then we’ll work it out again.”
“Doing more will only deplete your reserves quicker. We need you to retain as much of your energy as possible. Optimally we need the baby to make it to thirty weeks to be viable and healthy. We can do this.” He dropped his head to his chest. “We can do this. I know we can. I just need to think of something.”
Actually. I have an idea. Ace’s voice surprised me. But you can’t tell the Seven. And you definitely, cannot tell Lucifer. Ever. It would not be worth the grief to both of us. He is sexy as hell but he has a killer temper.
Not tell any of them? But-
I know. You promised Eli no more secrets. Okay, you can tell Eli, but that's it.
She explained the plan, and I remembered why I loved my fallen angel so much.
Chapter Three
Eli tucked me into bed like I was a piece of porcelain. Then he hopped in beside me. I didn’t protest. I wanted him with me. I needed to feel one of them there, touching me, comforting me. The rest of the guys had gone to bed after much protesting.
“You need to get Ace explain this to me again. It doesn't make sense in any scientific terms.”
I could feel Ace’s exasperation. Damn men of science. If it isn’t in a peer reviewed medical journal, it can’t be true. Well, I have news for him. Seeing isn’t always believing. Heaven doesn’t give a shit about his science. They deal in miracles. And by extension, I deal in miracles. Try and explain it to him again. Go slower. Maybe use smaller words.
“Ace said that she is going to use her own life force to sustain the baby until thirty weeks, taking the added pressure off my body somehow. She believes that she has enough reserves to last that long without exhausting it and therefore ceasing to exist. She said it isn’t based in science. It's something more divine.”
Don’t forget the last part.
“And don’t tell the other guys or Lucifer. If he knew, he would lose his shit. Direct quote by the way.”
“And why would she do that?”
“Because she is mine. The baby is part of her, so he will be mine too. I protect what is mine,” Ace’s voice came out of my mouth in a booming thunder, her ethereal tone raising the hairs on my arms.
Eli’s eyes went wide. “What the hell was that?”
I began to shake. That had never happened before, Ace taking control. “It was Ace.”
I’m sorry, Arcadia. I did not mean that. It’s a sign that your life force is weakening. It’s good that we have chosen this course of action. I will protect your child, lowering my life force to similar levels as yours. If we didn’t, by the end, there would be hardly any Arcadia left.
She sounded genuinely remorseful. So full of love. Fallen or not, she was my protector. I love you, you know that right? I’m sorry for what I said earlier.
She chuckled. Your capacity for forgiveness knows no bounds. I love you too, Arcadia. And I will help you protect what is dear to you.
A hole in my chest opened, a sensation that made me gasp. A fullness that I had always had, but never noticed, left and settled around my womb.
Ace? I whispered.
I’m still here. She sounded further away than normal, like she was yelling down a long tunnel. He's so beautiful. His little life force barely a flicker, yet so pure. He will be like you, Cady. A beautiful soul. She began to hum something in a language I couldn't understand.
What are you singing?
A hymn of the angels. She laughed. He likes it.
He was barely more than bubbles right now, but I took Ace’s word for it. My eyes welled with tears.
“Arcadia? Are you alright?” Eli’s concerned voice snapped me back to the external world.
I nodded. “I am now. Ace is singing to the baby. It's beautiful.”
Eli pulled me back into his body, curling his tall frame around mine protectively. “Sleep, Arcadia. Rest.”
I closed my eyes and listened as Ace sung to my baby. Maybe it would be alright.
The next week, the week I was supposed to start chemo, did not go exactly as planned. The first surprise that I didn't see coming was Valery quit as head chef at Epicurean, handing over the reins to his sous chef. Now he spent most of his time in my kitchen, making green smoothies and calorie dense junk food to help me put on weight. When he wasn’t cooking in my kitchen, or sometimes his if he needed a decent oven, he was watching Ellen with me on the couch.
Actually, one of the guys was with me at all times. Subtly ensuring I rested, and keeping me entertained. Completely platonically.
I was going insane. My hormones were beginning to go a little fritzy. Eli’s pregnancy test had confirmed what we all already knew. I was pregnant. Two blue lines. We wouldn’t know the exact date of conception, and we couldn’t run a DNA test until after he was born. So until then, the baby was Schrodinger’s baby. Everyone's and no-ones, but mine. Well, Ace’s too. She loved that baby as much as she loved me now. The thought made me smile.
But I was still going stir crazy.
Today, Ri was sitting with me, watching Superhero movies, and I was tucked under his arm.
“You know, we could go to my room and I could show you my Spider-Man underoos.” I waggled my eyebrows at him.
Ri gulped. “Nope. The Doc said no physical exertion. What the Doc says, goes.”
I pouted, but then smiled. “You know I’m not holding you to your monogamy vow, right? Asking you to stay celibate for nine months, especially if I…”
He kissed my head, and then my lips, gently. “I meant what I said. Besides, I just jerk off, like, twelve times a day.”
“Does that still count as lust?”
Ri scoffed. “If so, hell would be full to overflowing.” His eyes flicked back to the screen as the superheroes accidentally demolished another city block.
“You sure? Because soon I’ll look like I swallowed a watermelon.”
He stared at my eyes, and I saw the sincerity shining out of them. “You will be the most beautiful expectant mother I have ever seen. Pregnancy is one of the most wondrous experiences gifted to mankind.”
“I bet you say that to all the watermelons,” I said as I climbed onto his lap. I kissed his temple, the hard angle of his jaw and thengently nipped at his neck.
His hands ran up under my shirt, his fingers tracing the smooth skin of my ribs. “Only you.”
I kissed his full lips, tracing the line of his straight,white teeth. He was already hard and ready for me, and I could feel the hard swell pressing between my thighs.
“Eli only said no physical exertion. It doesn’t count if we take it really slow, and very easy,right?”
Ri bit my lip. “Totally doesn’t count.” He pressed down on my hips, grinding himself against me and I let out a moan. I kissed him hard, and Ri kissed me back with so much sexual frustration that we were going to spontaneously combust if we didn’t get to my bedroom right now.
I broke the kiss. “Bed. Now.” It came out almost as a pant. I slid off Ri’s lap and basically sprinted for the bedroom, throwing my clothes off on the way until I stood naked in the middle of my bedroom floor.
Ri was just in his boxer briefs, his tattoos curling down
his body, over his abs anddown his hip. I loved his tattoos. Every time I traced them with my fingertips, I found something new.
Ri pulled me to his body, wrapping his arms around mywaist and just holding me close.
“Slow down, Beautiful Girl. I’m going to make love to you properly.”
I didn’t want slow. I wanted to satiate all my needs right now. But I let Ri lay me down on the bed, and when he kissed me softly, I melted into his embrace.
He lay beside me, turning me on side so his body was curled around mine. His fingers skimmed my shoulders, my collarbone, and down to my breasts. I moaned as his slightly calloused fingers brushed my nipples, and then pressed back into him as he rolled them between his thumb and forefinger.
“You are a Queen, Beautiful, and I intend on worshipping your body every day for as long as I live.”
His fingers roamed lower, his finger dipping into my navel before tracing the round curve of my stomach.
“Glorious.” His fingers brushed down, over my hip and up my inner thigh.
I was aching. “Ri…”
“Shh, I’m going to make it all better.”
Good on his word, he slipped his fingers between my folds and stroked my clit. I bucked against his hand, moaning, as he rubbed gentle circles on my clit. The sensation was off the charts. I needed more. Now.
I must have whimpered something to that effect, because the head of his cock was soon pressing against me, asking for entrance. He didn’t need to ask.
I pressed back hard, and Ri’s cock slid into me like it was made to be there. I moaned as the sensation rippled through my whole body.
Ri slid back out all the way, before entering me again in one long, slow thrust.
“Oh,” I whispered. “Fuck.”
Ri repeated the slow, deep rhythm, showing better restraint than the sin of Lust should possess. He arched back and pressed kisses down my nape and across my shoulders as he picked up the pace. He wrapped a large hand around my thigh, spreading me wider so he could get deeper again, and I thought I was going to hyperventilate as he hit pleasure zones I wasn’t even aware I possessed. He rocked in and out of me, and I was getting so close.
“I want you to touch yourself for me, Beautiful Girl. I want feel your pretty pussy clench around me as you cum,” he whispered in my ear, and I was helpless to resist. My hand slipped between my thighs, and I flicked my clit, coaxing out the orgasm that was right therewithin my reach. Ri plunged into me harder as my body shuddered and I came on a yell. Ri was close behind, his hand slipping back to my hip as he thrust into me wildly, coming on a satisfied moan that was muffled against my shoulder blade.
He rolled onto his back, a slight breathlessness to his voice. “Sorry we didn’t go for longer. It’s been awhile.”
I turned toward him and kissed his shoulder. “It was perfect.”
He kissed my lips gently, and gave me that sexy grin, complete with bedroom eyes that made me want to throw my panties at him from the first momentwe met.
“Let me just get something to clean you up.”
Five minutes later, in which Ri cleaned and I tried to reconnect my synapses, we were back in bed and I was curled in Ri’s arms. He stroked my belly with such tenderness it made me a little weepy.
“Did you have kids in your former life?”
“Uh huh. Fifty-two.”
I jerked upright. “Get the fuck out? Seriously?”
Orion laughed, a little sheepishly. “Well, fifty-two confirmed children. There was a few more I suspected weren't legitimate heirs, if you catch my drift.”
“You can’t have been more than twenty-seven when you died.”
“Twenty-three. But this was before easily available contraception on the islands. They kind of considered me a fertility god. If people were having trouble conceiving, I would come, make love to their wife, and then poof, nine months later they would have an heir. I was part of no tribe and every tribe in that way. I just travelled from island to island, and they would have a huge feast and I would bang my way around the island. It was a good life, well until I died in a freak storm at sea, that is.”
“How old were you when that started?”
He pulled me back down into his arms. “I was fifteen when my first child was conceived. But it was a different time. I was considered a man.”
“That's six children a year!” The idea both fascinated and horrified me.
“Yep. Many Pacific Islanders can trace their ancestry back to me. From Hawaii to New Zealand.”
“Hardly seems worth sending a person to hell for though, right? Besides, they wouldn’t have been your gods.”
It was something I’d been thinking on. Lux’s wouldn’t have followed Christianity nor would have Sam. Some of those religions celebrated sex and life.
“That’s true. But they are all derivatives of the same thing. Some worship one over the other, some worship many, but in the end, they are all stories created by man to explain something divine. Even hell is just a convenient name from the place where you go when you do things that aren’t morally acceptable in most religions. And no Parthenon likes you to set yourself up as a false idol. I'm almost positive that is why I ended up in Hell.”
Confusing. But it made a strange sort of sense. If I had met Lucifer in a 1000 BC tavern in Sweden, wouldn’t I have thought him a trickster god? If I had seen Azriel on a battlefield, would I not think he was a God of Death?
“Okay.”
“Centuries of theological debate and countless wars, and she accepts the whole thing with an okay?” Ri waved his hands at an invisible audience. “Want me to start the movie back up in here?”
I shrugged and snuggled back in as Ri turned on the tv and pressed play on Netflix again. I didn’t need Clark Kent,I already had my superheroes.
Chapter Four
Oz laid with his head on my thighs, and the others were scattered on the beanbags and couches around Oz’s apartment.
“What about Englebert? My dad’s name was Englebert.”
Tolliver choked on his beer. “We cannot call a baby Englebert. Actually, no one should be named Englebert. Ever.”
Oz huffed as he rubbed his cheek on my bump. It actually looked like a pregnant belly now, rather than like I had a really big burrito for lunch. But the bigger my belly grew, the fainter Ace sounded. I was worried, though I didn't let on to anyone but Eli. The only time she moved away from the baby was when Luc came to visit, which was pretty infrequently since they'd arrested a terrorist cell in Tanzania, which meant there was a lot of last minute deals with the Devil.
“Well what do you suggest? Tolliver Junior?” Oz screwed up his nose. “I don't think so. Poor kid might already have to put up with your face.”
“I was thinking Axel.”
It was Sam’s turn to screw up his nose. “Why don’t you just call him Bruiser if you want him to join a motorcycle gang that bad?”
They bickered about the name, what color to paint the nursery, whether the baby should have a walker, what school he should attend.
Only Lux believed it was a girl. He pat my stomach from time to time, and murmur, “Hope.”
It was the perfect name if it was a girl. Ace wouldn't tell me, saying she didn’t know, but I suspected she did.
I was four months along, and getting weaker by the day. Eli cut down his availability at the hospital to care for me, and spent several hours a day talking to doctors all over the world about research into cancer treatment for pregnant women. Every night, he would attach a drip filled with god knows what to keep me healthy, and then he’d sleep beside me. Or if one of the other guys filled that spot, he’d sleep on the couch in the living room in case the machine beeped during the night.
Most of them had cut down their working hours, or given it up all together, to stay with me, or try to do things that would hopefully negate their sins. Oz was even doing Crossfit five times a week. He looked like sex on a stick, his wide shoulders now bulging with muscle.
On th
e advice of Tolliver’s lawyers, Sam and Tolli had set up a charitable foundation, but they still went out once a day to give money directly to people, or to homeless shelters, or soup kitchens. They’d eventually been outed as the Robin Hood Ninjas, so they used their public profiles to encourage more of the rich to give to charity. I was sure they would be fine. They even seemed happy in their roles. Sam didn't even miss modelling, though it probably helped that he kept getting spreads in newspapers and magazines. The publicity went back and helped the poor, so surely that would be okay, right?
Ri sat with me most days, or took me up to the rooftop pool to swim, and worked nearly every night. He looked like crap though.
Despite my offer, he was sticking to his celibacy unless it was me. And he refused to make love to me unless Eli said he could. And Eli was against me doing anything but my best impression of sleeping beauty.
“What do you think, Cady?” Sam asked, bringing me back to the present.
“Mmhm? I was daydreaming. Sorry. What was the question?”
“We’re back to names. Have you picked one yet?”
I shook my head, although I had some distinct favorites. But I knew if I suggested anything, they would agree with me just to make me happy, and I liked this little slice of normalcy.
“I want to wait and see what the baby looks like.”
“It will look like a tiny, wrinkly alien. You can’t call the poor kid Wrinkles,” Ri got in on the action tonight. Normally, he, Eli and Valery stayed out of it. They all knew they couldn’t be the fathers, because I'm pretty sure the baby wasn't an immaculate conception, but I purposely drew them in. This was our baby. The eight of us. I wanted everyone to feel connected, included.
Valery put down several trays of piping hot nachos on Oz’s coffee table, one tray just for me. I didn’t know what it was about nachos, but I craved them all the time. It was the only thing I could stomach after the morning sickness, which for some strange reason, always struck in the late afternoon. What kind of false advertising was that?
I dug into my nachos furiously. No one tried to take them from my tray now, not after I almost stabbed Oz in the hand with a fork.
The Redeemable Part Three Page 2