by Mignon Mykel
She laughed lightly. “Ah, they’re all on a hard drive. Or my phone. You know, the digital age.”
I nodded because I actually did understand that. The only picture I had around of my parents was in the bar, from when they opened O’Gallaghers, and it was right next to a picture of Rory, Bren, and I at the re-opening.
Mia moved to sit on the couch where I had previously been, her hands clasped between her knees. The move pressed her tits together and I had to fight the onslaught of another fucking erection. Good God, the woman did things to me.
“So what now?” she asked softly.
Wasn’t that the real question? What now?
“Well,” I said on a sigh, my hands still in my pockets, I looked down at her and shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure. We already agreed to be exclusive while we’re trying this out. Is there, like, a time limit or something?”
“Do you want a time limit?” Mia tilted her head toward her shoulder, her eyes inquisitive and on mine.
Did I want a time limit? Well, no. Not really. “I think I want to give this a good, real try,” I told her instead. “Dates. I’ll go to appointments with you. We figure out what’s best for us and the baby.”
Mia patted the couch beside her and I moved to sit next to her. “I’m kind of afraid that sex might cloud judgment,” she told me. “Or really if I’m being honest, the lack of multiple partners for you.”
I had an idea and as much as it baffled the hell out of me, it was going to throw Mia for a loop. “Then we don’t have it.”
She looked at me skeptically. “Seriously.” Her voice was deadpanned and her brows were lifted up to her hairline.
I nodded a few times. “Yeah. Why not?”
“Because you’re Conor O’Gallagher, that’s why.”
“I can go without sex.” Even I could hear the slight disbelief in my voice. No, I really hadn’t ever put myself on a celibacy streak, but I could do it. I knew I could.
Mia shifted in her spot and turned toward me, her leg folded to the side and between the two of us. Her clasped hands sat in the spot between her legs, in front of her pussy, her arms bracketing her belly. With her leg up, the cotton of her shorts stretched and I could almost, almost, see the land of glory.
She lifted a hand and snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Up here, Romeo.”
I lifted my eyes to hers and offered her a coy grin. “I can,” I repeated.
“Let’s just say for, I don’t know, a month.”
“Of us trying?”
“Of no sex. Keep up, Conor.”
Shit. I could do that. A month was nothing. “Alright. Deal.”
“We don’t have to go on dates, either. Maybe just dinner now and then.”
“I’m taking you out on a date, Mia.”
“Maybe just lunch after an appointment, then.”
“Mia. I’m taking you out on a date.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“Kettle, meet pot.” I reached out to take her hand. “I’m taking you out to dinner. I’m going to your appointments. And in one month, we’ll decide if sex is going on the table or not.”
“You mean you want to have sex on the table.” Mia, the sass, grinned.
“I think you’re the one who’s going to have an issue with the no sex clause,” I said around a laugh.
Mia just shook her head, still smiling though. “Nah. I’ve only had one partner. And you’re good, Con, you are, but…”
“You know you like it. Don’t even try saying you don’t. I’m better than your toys.”
Her brows went up. “How do you know about my toys?”
“Well, you eluded to them once, but I may have found them.”
Her brows stayed raised, but her eyes widened to join them. “You snooped?”
“I was changing and they were…just there.” I grinned wide and reached up to scratch my chin.
Mia jerked her hand from mine, only so she could put both her hands over her face. “Oh my God, this is embarrassing.”
I reached for her hands and pulled them down. “Nothing to be embarrassed about.” I leaned in to kiss her lips once. I was starting to regret not kissing her the first time I had her in my bed. “It’s sexy as hell. We’re gonna play with them in a month.”
Mia’s devilish side must have wanted to play because, while she was still blushing, she bit down on that lip of hers and said, “We could always play with them tonight. And tomorrow night. We just can’t have actual sex.”
I really liked the way this woman thought, but, “No.” I shook my head. “We are going to abstain one-hundred percent, Mia.”
She pouted and it was fucking adorable. “I don’t think you understand how pregnancy hormones work.”
“You’re all hot and bothered, yeah, I get that.” I reached forward to brush one of her tightening curls behind her ear. “But I want to do this right.”
“What’s the male version of a cock tease?”
Shaking my head, I turned on the couch, pulling Mia with me, so I could lay back. Mia’s ass stayed between my legs, snug up to my covered cock, and I pulled her down to lay on me. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, holding her in place. “You’ll survive.”
Mia rotated her shoulders so she could rub herself against me. “But will you?”
“Barely,” I groaned.
She turned, much to my displeasure, and pulled herself up to her knees, propping her hands on my bare stomach. “I don’t want you to resent me, Conor.” The words were said softly.
I reached up for her face, pulling her back down, and spoke against her lips, before kissing her. “I don’t think I could, Mia.”
Mia
One Month Later
The past month flew by.
Conor had invited me to a wedding in Wisconsin and I’d been shocked when I learned it was for an NHL player. Apparently Conor and the groom had become fast friends through the bar.
True to his word, Conor didn’t try any frisky business with me, and that weekend away was the first time he and I stayed in a bed together since the night of our talk. I was semi-expecting, shoot, I was hoping, he would try something, touch something, but other than holding me through the night, his hands didn’t make any moves. If I had to guess, I would think he just liked keeping his hands on my belly to try to catch the baby moving, not the actual touching me part.
After that weekend though, Conor started staying the night.
Every night.
Said he liked to sleep next to me.
And that his California King was too damn big without me in it. That he’d take my little queen sized bed with me in it any day of the week.
Which baffled me because I personally would take the space of his large bed any day of the week. I was starting to get super warm at night and had to pee at least once a night, if not twice. Having Conor’s big, burly form wrapped around me kind of became a pain some nights.
Conor cut back on his time at the bar, too. Said he wanted to spend more time with me, and that Rory and Brenna were more than capable of handling the day to day operations. We also may have had a slightly heated discussion about it a week or two ago.
He still tended bar Thursday through Sunday, and still wore a kilt for ladies’ night, but swore he didn’t take any ladies up to the apartment with him.
Which I believed full-heartedly.
I mean, he always crawled into my bed thirty minutes after bar-close so unless he was doing magic quickies…
More than that, though, I was growing to trust him.
He still had his cocky ways with his fast grins, but when he was with me, he was with me one-thousand percent. We learned a lot about one another over the last month too, catching up on the last fifteen years.
I also started back at school two weeks ago. While Conor slept until noon, I went off to work. He would sometimes stop by the school during my lunch break and eat a brown bag lunch with me in my classroom.
Seeing Conor in a little green chair did seri
ous things to my heart.
But finally, we reached a month.
Today.
And I was newly two weeks into the third trimester and if I hit the ‘don’t touch me with that thing’ phase after spending the last four weeks in sexual need-but-not-getting, I was going to…
I don’t know, but Conor wouldn’t be very happy.
I considered going to his apartment, but he was at the bar and he’d know something was up. As it was, he was only working the lunch crowd today, leaving the crazy Saturday night to Stone and Rory.
He’d be back to my place in an hour. I wasn’t planning anything extravagant, and I didn’t have any fancy teddies or anything. It was hard to find something and feel super sexy with this belly. Thankfully, my belly hadn’t done too much growing the last few weeks; at least, I didn’t think so. Ask Conor, and it grew leaps and bounds. I was the one sporting it, though, and I didn’t really notice too much of a difference.
But my belly button officially popped out. And there was that line down my belly. And the stretch marks. They were all things these days.
Like I said. Hard to feel sexy.
I did order lacy boy shorts and a bra for the occasion, but wasn’t planning on putting them on until right before Conor walked through my door.
We had found an easy rhythm for us as a couple. There wasn’t any talk about what was going to happen after today, being the end of that first month, but I was comfortable with the thought this was happening, that this could be a long-term thing. That we could co-parent and everything would be right in Baby O’Gallagher’s world.
We hadn’t talked names, but we did discuss that the baby would take Conor’s surname. It only made sense to me. However, the closer we got to D-day, the more we should probably start considering first names.
With a sigh, I walked back to my room to be sure everything was in place.
Conor
I never realized how exhausting not having sex could be. Every night I slept wrapped up in Mia. Every night, I went to bed with a case of blue balls worse than the night before.
But while I went to sleep uncomfortable, I found myself waking up more than comfortable. This thing between Mia and me had an easy rhythm and, as much as I didn’t want to be the owner of the idea, I really think that the no-sex thing worked in our favor.
It was no secret that I liked sex, that before Mia coming back into my life, the longest I went without it was maybe two days. And I usually made up for those off days when I got back in the sack. Being with Mia, and not being able to sink into her wet heat, had its challenges, sure, but I think I decided I liked myself better as a person, and it reinforced that I could do the co-parenting and monogamy thing long-term.
Earlier this month, I brought her to Caleb and Sydney’s wedding with me. I enjoyed showing her off, her standing at my side and my hand covering her belly.
These days, Rory teased her like he teased Brenna. Bren and Mia… I was pretty sure they were on good terms now, too. Neither talked to me about what they talked about to one another, but things were easy all around where Mia and my family were concerned.
Today, Stone showed up to the bar an hour early, but rather than head to Mia’s, I went back to the office to try and do some bookkeeping that was due to be finished tomorrow.
Mia didn’t know it, but right after I found out we were having a kid, I bought a copy of that book, The Expectant Father. I devoured the months we were already past, curious about what Mia had been through, and then I fucking studied the hell out of the months to come. When I got to her apartment one Wednesday morning after close, something she said triggered a piece of information I read. I let her go back to sleep, pissy as she’d been, and in the morning I made sure to wake up with her and her alarm and we talked about me cutting down on my hours.
I owned the fucking bar. I made enough money managing the place that bartending wasn’t necessary. So we made a compromise that I’d work Thursday and Friday nights, Saturday afternoons, and leave Sunday for bookkeeping. That way when the kid was here, we’d have more flexibility once Mia went back to work.
As for tonight…
If I had my way, I was going to be up really late and wasn’t planning on leaving Mia’s arms until maybe tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.
We reached our month.
And I had plans for my baby mama.
There was also the fact that The Expectant Father mentioned Mia’s libido could potentially drop, and I’d be damned if we went a month without sex, a month where right before the vow, Mia was downright craving sex, for her to put up the red light because she wasn’t feeling it anymore.
I booted up my laptop and while my accounting program loaded, I opened up my email to check on the status of a ring I’d been looking at.
Yeah, yeah, it was definitely too fucking early to talk about marriage, but it was something that had been sitting in the back of my mind since watching Cael get hitched.
Damn internet was slow as fuck today.
I sighed and leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes while I waited.
Conor
My cock was getting some crazy attention.
What a fucking crazy sex dream, I thought as I started to come to. My book mentioned I may have sex dreams which I thought was fucking bogus. Mia, on the other hand, oh yeah, she was having some crazy sex dreams, but this was a first for me.
Not only could I imagine Mia’s hands rubbing up and down my cock, moving my zipper lower over the hardening length, but I could fucking feel that shit.
I groaned and shifted, trying to fully wake up, when a giggle that wasn’t Mia sounded in the room.
My eyes snapped open, my booted feet pushed my chair back as far as I could, and I searched frantically for the intrusion.
Sitting where my feet had been by the desk, was one of our blonde regulars.
She smiled wide up at me. “Hey, Conor. You were so exhausted behind the bar today, I thought I’d give you a little…pick me up.”
My heart was pounding, my hands on the arm rests of my chair. My body was fucking paralyzed, trying to figure out what the hell to do. I glanced down and saw my cock nearly completely out of my pants and just as I went to tuck myself in, just as I was going to stand up and order her out of the room…
My office door opened.
And Mia stood there.
Her face fucking fell, and it was a fucking punch to the gut. I thought I was paralyzed before? Everything fucking stood still right then.
I lost my breath, my heart was three times too big for my chest, and the erection I was sporting, the one I was sporting from thoughts of Mia, quickly deflated.
And then Mia turned on her heel, and my world spun into fast forward.
I tucked myself back into my pants quickly, not fucking paying attention to much of anything when I zipped, damn near zipping my fucking cock in the process. Fucking A, that shit hurt!
But it was nothing, fucking nothing, compared to the thought that everything I was working for this last month was about to just…
Go poof.
“You’re not fucking welcome here,” I issued to the blonde as I stormed out of the office. She just fucking stood there like a Goddamn doll, not caring about a damn thing.
Fuck.
I should have figured something like this was gonna to happen. I had a fucking reputation! Sooner or later, it was going to get around that I wasn’t fucking sleeping around anymore. God-fucking-damn.
I peeled around the corner as Mia pushed through the swinging door separating the kitchen from the bar. I ran the length of the kitchen, narrowly dodging my weekend cook at the fryer, and ran through the swinging doors.
“Mia!”
She was close to the door.
If she got through that door, if she got to her car…
Shit, I couldn’t think like that.
“Mia!” I lengthened my stride, reaching her just as she got to the front door. I slapped my hand over where the door and jamb met, and put
my other hand on her hip.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” she yelled, twirling around on me. Her yell was hysterical and before I looked into those whiskey eyes I was learning to enjoy so damn much, I knew, I fucking knew, they were going to be filled with tears. And these ones wouldn’t be due to pregnancy hormones.
“You were late, so I thought I’d check on you. I should have figured you couldn’t hold up on your end of the deal. How long, Conor? Huh? How long?” Her words were watery and she refused to look at me, instead looking clear to the side toward the back of the bar where our dart boards were set up.
I took her face in my hands and bent down to her level, forcing her to look at me. When she still refused to move her eyes, I leaned over, blocking her gaze. “Listen to me, Mia.” My voice was low, quiet, almost a whisper, but the desperation was more than clear. “I didn’t do anything.”
Her eyes moved back and forth between mine and she let out a small sob, followed by a hiccup, and shook her head with my hands still on her. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you, Conor.” Her voice lowered to a watery whisper, “I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t. I swear to fucking God, Mia, I didn’t do anything.” I wasn’t above begging at this point. I straightened enough so I could press my lips to her forehead. “I fell asleep and woke up and she was there. Fuck, Mia, I thought she was you!”
Mia sniffled and tilted her head down, this time looking at our feet.
Well, she probably really only saw her belly.
God, her belly.
She couldn’t walk away. She couldn’t.
“She’s blonde.”
I tried really fucking hard not to laugh at that. Hand to God, I didn’t mean to chuckle, but if that was the only thing Mia could come up with, then I knew this was going to be ok.
She swung her head up so fast, she nearly clipped me in the chin, causing me to almost laugh again but the glare in her eyes had me stopping. “She’s a blonde, Conor. How did you think she was me?”
“I was sleeping, Mia baby.” My voice was quiet again. This conversation was for Mia only, not the gawkers who kept glancing over at us. Stone, good man that he was, turned up the baseball game on one TV, and was talking loudly about the latest NHL trades with a couple of the patrons. “Come upstairs with me. Please.”