Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

Lala

I licked my lips.

Seriously. Freaking. Hot.

Holden finished wiping the sweat from his forehead and let the hem of his T-shirt fall back in place. He glanced over to where I sat as he picked up the sledgehammer again. But when he saw my face, he set it down.

“Again?”

I bit my lip and shrugged. “I can’t help it. It’s the pregnancy hormones. And your muscles are bulging, your abs are glistening with sweat, and you’re mesting. It’s ridiculously sexy.”

His brows quirked. “Mesting?”

“Male nesting. There’s something so seductive about a man doing physical labor to get ready for the arrival of his child. Would it be weird if I asked you to take off your shirt, bang on your chest, and say, ‘Me, Tarzan. You, Jane’?”

Holden peeled the work gloves from his hands. “How about I bang something else instead?”

I giggled. I was insatiable lately. I couldn’t get enough of this man, especially since he’d started breaking down the wall between his apartment and my old one last week, after I finally moved back to New York for good. It was such a turn-on to watch him swing a sledgehammer and saw through wall framing to make room for our growing family. Who knew?

Holden stalked over to me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “You do realize, I’m going to have to keep you knocked up since you’re a little nympho when you’re pregnant.”

“It’s okay. I want to have lots of your babies.”

“We’re going to have to be quick this time. I need to take a shower to clean off before I touch you, and then we have your twelve-week OB appointment in an hour, too.”

“Take a shower before you touch me? No way. I want you sweaty.”

Holden chuckled. He leaned down and scooped me off my feet and into his arms. “Your wish is my command, sweetheart.”

In the bedroom, we stripped out of our clothes and fell to the bed, tangled in a kiss. We’d started our day with slow and sweet early this morning, and I wanted it hard and fast now. So I wiggled out from beneath him and climbed up on all fours. Holden didn’t need any prompting. He knelt behind me and reached down between my legs to test the waters. Finding me ready, he groaned. “I love how wet you are before I even touch you.”

“No time for foreplay,” I breathed. “I need you inside of me now.”

No matter how wet and ready I was, Holden was always a tight squeeze. He nudged the head of his cock inside, and my inner muscles clamped around every glorious inch of him as he eased in. When his hips were flush against my ass, his body started to shake. He pulled halfway out with another groan.

“I love to watch your face when I’m inside you. But this view is pretty damn spectacular, too.” He eased a few more inches out and pushed back in, painstakingly slowly. “Jesus Christ, I could watch this forever.”

Holden found his rhythm, gliding in and out at first, then speeding up and powering deep and hard. He folded his body over my back and reached around to massage my clit.

“Come for me, sweetheart, so I can fill this sweet pussy up.”

The mix of dirty and sweet detonated the climax that had been building, and my orgasm rushed over me. I moaned through every second of it. After, I felt like a puddle of mush, and it was difficult to hold my weight up as Holden finally took his turn. His fingers dug into my shoulders, and his hips powered against me in a long release. I felt aftershocks pulse through our joined bodies for a long time when he was done. Both drained, he turned us so we collapsed on our sides rather than our stomachs. I smiled to myself, knowing that was Holden being protective of the baby.

He kissed my shoulder from behind. “I have a dumb question, one I should probably know the answer to.”

“What?”

“How long can my swimmers live inside you?”

I turned over to face him. “Sperm can survive in the female reproductive tract for up to five days. Why do you ask?”

He grinned. “You know how many times I’ve filled you up over the last five days? I’m wondering if the sonogram tech is going to think she’s looking into a packed fishbowl when she does your ultrasound.”

I laughed. “Your swimmers have proven to be powerful, but I’m pretty sure they’re still microscopic. But speaking of the ultrasound, you better jump in the shower so we’re not late. I’ll go in after you.”

“Why don’t we save time, take one together?”

“Because we’ll never get out of here.”

“I can be good. I mean, we’ve had sex three times already today. I can probably keep my hands to myself for an hour or two.”

I shoved Holden off the bed. “I wasn’t worried about you.”

Forty minutes later, we were at the obstetrician’s office. Dr. Resnick did a quick exam and then a technician came in, rolling a machine with her. I was suddenly as nervous as I was excited. She set everything up, then pulled a condom over the wand and squirted lube on my belly.

Holden stood beside me, holding my hand so tightly. He looked as nervous as I felt.

The technician rolled the wand around, and a loud heartbeat echoed through the room. She fiddled with some knobs. “Strong heartbeat. Running a hundred and forty-eight beats per minute.”

Holden squeezed my hand. “Does everything look good?”

“I’m just going to take some measurements, and then I’ll give you an anatomy tour. But so far everything looks perfect.”

“Thank you for saying that,” I said. “Because I think I might be losing the circulation in my fingers.” I looked over at Holden, who took a minute to realize what I’d meant. When it clicked, he loosened his grip.

“Shit. Sorry.”

The ultrasound tech and I shared a smile.

She spent a few minutes scanning my belly and then pressed a little harder while pointing to the screen with her other hand.

“Eyes, nose, mouth. Little chin.”

I leaned forward, amazed at how clear it was. “Wow, it looks like a real person.”

She moved the wand again and a hand with five fingers came on the screen, clear as day. “I think he’s waving.”

“He?” Holden said. “It’s a boy?”

“No, sorry.” The tech shook her head. “That just came out. I actually don’t know to tell you if it’s a he or a she. We can’t usually see sex at the twelve-week exam.” She showed us the spine, knees, and feet. It was the coolest. I’d known I was pregnant, of course, but seeing a real human inside of me on the screen was mesmerizing.

Suddenly, the tech gasped and lifted the wand off my belly.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

She shook her head. “Oh my gosh. Nothing. I’m sorry again. I didn’t mean to scare you. I was scanning the reproductive organs. Like I said, normally I can’t tell the sex at twelve weeks. But I definitely can with this baby.”

My eyes bulged. “Really?”

The tech laughed. “I think this little peanut might go down in the books as the biggest gender-reveal show off I’ve ever seen. The legs are wide open, flaunting its sex organs.”

Holden and I looked at each other.

“This is definitely your child,” I said.

“Sex organ? Does that mean it’s a boy?”

“I said sex organs, not organ.” She looked between us. “But do you want to know?”

I said no at the exact same moment Holden said yes.

The woman smiled. “I can tell just one of you, if you’d like.”

I shook my head. “No way. Telling him would be like telling me. This baby’s father is the worst secret keeper in the world. Six weeks ago, we agreed we would tell a small, select group of a few friends and wait until the second trimester to tell anyone else. Every day I have strangers in the building we live in coming up and congratulating me.”

Holden shrugged. “What can I say? I’m happy. I want to tell the whole world you’re having my baby.”

I knew he meant that, which was why it was impossible to get mad at him for blabbing. The sonogram tech finished up her exam. She set the wand back in the holder and gave me a wad of paper towels to clean the lube off my belly. A row of pictures printed out from the machine, and the tech handed them to me.

“None of these show the sex. I’ll let you two talk for a few minutes. If you decide to find out, just tell the front desk to grab me.”

“Thank you.”

I looked down at the images as she finished packing up her machine. Glancing over each, I smiled. It was surreal to hold the first photos of our child. Each picture was a black square with a thin white border around it. On the bottom, there were tiny little letters and numbers typed within the white edges. I thought I could make out what they were, but I had to be wrong, had to be imagining what was there. So I pulled the strip of pictures to my nose for a closer inspection.

It can’t be.

The technician was halfway out the door already. “Wait!” I yelled.

She stopped.

I turned the sonogram images to face her and pointed to the bottom. “What are these letters down here? Is this your name?”

She leaned and squinted. “Oh, no. That’s the practice name. It’s abbreviated.”

I blinked a few times. “Really?”

“Yes, why?”

“I guess I just never saw it abbreviated like that. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Once she shut the door, I turned to Holden.

“You’re never going to believe this…”

“What?”

I held the photos out to him. “Look for yourself.”

Holden’s eyes bulged when he saw what I saw.

“What’s the practice name again?”

“Resnick, Yanez, and Nussbaum.”

RYANwas printed on the bottom of every page.

“Holy shit,” Holden said. “I guess he’s okay with it after all.”

My eyes filled with tears. “And I guess we have our baby’s name, if it’s a boy.”