Authors: Brenna Lyons
Abby vented tears into his shirt. From the back seat, Michael started to fuss. It was inborn, the discomfort at seeing a woman in distress.
“Let’s get you both home,” he whispered. “This can wait.”
She nodded and tried to stifle her tears. Gabe pulled away from the curb and into traffic, his emotions reeling.
****
Abby sipped at the hot chocolate Gabe had given her, holding the breast pump with the opposite hand. He’d been nothing but solicitous so far. Gabe had gotten her settled in the gliding rocker, a pillow beneath her feet; he’d thought of every comfort.
He stuck his head in the doorway, Michael on his hip. Gabe looked much more comfortable in the clothing he’d taken from the bag in his trunk than he’d looked in his uniform. Then again, his street clothes were probably
Spice
wear, specially formulated to be comforting against sensitive Xxanian skin.
Their son rubbed at his eyes, fussing little sounds escaping from his lips.
“I hate to ask,” Gabe hinted. He tipped his head toward the quickly-filling bottle.
“Give me a second.” Abby set the mug on the table beside her, turned off the pump, removed it from her leaking breast, and unscrewed the bottle. “Hand me a nipple and a second bottle from the shelf, please.”
Gabe didn’t move. Abby looked up at him, her mouth going dry at his fixed attention on her uncovered breast. Completely unwarranted, her body went wet and warm for him.
He turned abruptly, searched the shelves and came back with a collar and nipple. Once she had it, he went back for a bottle. Gabe didn’t look at her again. He took the bottle of milk with a muttered word of thanks and ambled away with Michael and the bottle.
Abby sat there, her body and mind in a riot. She hooked the new bottle up with shaking hands and started expressing again. Her gaze strayed to the doorway often, but Gabe didn’t appear.
Of course not. If he is as confused as I am about what just happened, the last place he’ll want to be is with me.
But if that was true, why did she want him to come back?
****
Seir-God
lives!
The memory of her lush breast had Gabe hard and aching.
Now is the wrong time. I don’t know if there will ever be a right time again.
Michael patted at the side of the bottle, and he kicked his feet. His eyes slid shut.
There has to be a right time for us. For all of us.
Abby had said she wanted to mate with him.
She did then. Does she still want to?
Her arousal said she wanted something from him, but it wasn’t necessarily mating.
Sex had always been hot between them. What had started out as a chance encounter had led to a date. Three dates. Two years. And then it had ended abruptly.
In his arms, their son released the empty bottle with a sigh. He’d only dozed for a few moments earlier. Gabe suspected this would be a true nap.
He moved with all the stealth of a Xxanian warrior toward the nursery he’d found earlier. It was wholly unlike a Xxanian nursery nest, but it was cheery and welcoming. Gabe could easily understand how his son could be at peace here. It was a snug little home Abby had created for them.
Them alone. Without me.
Would Gabe be welcome in it now? For longer than she
needed
him to help her care for Michael?
His heart aching at what might happen tomorrow, Gabe settled Michael in the crib and tucked the blankets around him.
Chapter Two
Abby pushed the food around her plate and took peeks up at Gabe feeding Michael. He wasn’t using the ground meat she normally did, and he wasn’t using a spoon. In what she supposed was the Xxanian method of feeding a baby, Gabe was chewing cubes of meat and finger feeding them into Michael’s mouth, a process their son seemed to enjoy.
“You should eat, Abby.” Gabe’s voice was low and soothing.
She dropped her fork. “I don’t have much of an appetite tonight.”
He focused his disconcerting green-gold eyes on her. “Your head?”
“No. Just...everything else, I suppose.”
“Do you want to finish the discussion? Would it be easier to do it now?”
Abby buried her face in her hands.
His hand stroked at her shoulder.
He moved. He’s so quiet. I forgot how silently he moves.
“Abby?”
“How can you be so nice to me, all things considered?”
When he didn’t answer, Abby looked up at him.
His brow was furrowed, and his head cocked to one side. “Shouldn’t I be?”
She shrugged.
“Do you want to discuss it?” he offered again.
“Better now than later, I suppose.”
Michael fussed from his highchair, bouncing and slapping his hands on the wood top impatiently. Gabe returned to the meat and vegetables he’d been feeding their son. Gabe didn’t question her, leaving Abby to decide where to begin.
“I did want to become your mate,” she assured him. Why she thought it would make a difference was a mystery to her, but it needed to be said.
“And you left me because you couldn’t give me children.” It was stated as a fact. “How long after you left did you find out you were pregnant?”
Gabe popped another cube into his mouth and chewed in precise little movements of his jaw, his muscles bunching and releasing. He pushed the meat onto his fingertips.
“Three weeks or so. I was sick. I was exhausted, falling asleep at odd times...It never even occurred to me that...that I was.”
“Of course.” He scooped the food into Michael’s mouth and turned to look at her. “And why didn’t you contact me then?”
She shifted uncomfortably and pushed her plate away.
“Abby? Why?” He hesitated a moment. “You didn’t think I would turn my back on you, did you?”
“No. I did consider that you might think I was just coming back because of the baby, though.”
Gabe sent her an incredulous look. “But?”
“But what?” It had been a straightforward comment.
“That was only part of your reason.”
“How do you
do
that?”
He scowled. Gabe put a piece of broccoli in his mouth next.
Spitting the words out was harder than she’d thought it would be. How many times had she practiced this speech? Now she couldn’t untie her tongue.
Gabe looked at Michael long enough to poke another mouthful of food in. That freed her tongue.
“They said I’d lose the baby. One of the human doctors... He wanted me to abort, because there was no way I could carry to term. I never went back to him and don’t intend to,” she hastened to add.
His head swung toward her, his expression horrified.
“I couldn’t do it. A-abort, I mean. I had to try to carry Michael, but...”
“But?” he repeated.
The rest stuck in her throat, and Abby swallowed hard. Tears stung at her eyes. “I couldn’t do that to you.”
His eye slits narrowed, and his ridge plates stirred. “Do
what
to me?”
“Give you hope of having a baby, when the chances of delivering one were so hopeless. I had to try, but you... I couldn’t do that to you.”
“You didn’t think I would want to know?”
“What could you do?” she wailed.
“Be there for both of you.” There was a bite of something harsh in that.
Unforgiving.
Abby hoped she was reading him wrong.
Gabe fed Michael another bite of meat, visibly calming himself. “And when Michael was born?”
“I don’t know. I picked up the phone so many times, but I how could I tell you? How could I even begin?”
“You seem to be doing well enough now,” he quipped.
“Now you
know
we have a son. I’m not telling you that. All I have to tell you is why it happened this way. Pitiful as it is, I’m trying to do that, because you deserve to know the truth.”
“I deserved to be there from the day you found out you carried.”
“Yes... Yes, you did.” He’d deserved to be there before that, but Abby had screwed that up.
He didn’t reply to that.
Her nerves jumping, Abby searched for something to say to fill the silence between them. “You should know that Doctor Rayn never gave up for a minute. He was determined that Michael would survive. Even when I didn’t believe it was possible, he insisted it was.”
Gabe stared at her, his expressions shifting and his ridge plates extending halfway and retracting again. She’d clearly said the wrong thing, but Abby couldn’t fathom what it might be. She opened her mouth to ask.
He beat her to the punch. “Steven Rayn was your doctor?”
“They said he was the best there was with crossbred babies. How was I supposed to know—?”
Abby swallowed hard at his bland look. A look that seemed to proclaim:
“You could have known if you’d just asked me.”
That went without saying.
“Well, isn’t he?” she squeaked.
“Yes. Rayn is the best at saving the unsavable.” He grumbled something she didn’t catch.
And I’m not going to rock the boat.
Again, the silence grew into an oppressive cloud that even Michael seemed to perceive. Their son started to wiggle and fuss. Abby’s hands itched to pick him up and cuddle him. She fisted them in her lap. If she did that, Gabe would think she didn’t trust him with Michael, she was sure.
As it was, Gabe was monopolizing time with Michael.
He’s making up for lost time. I have to let him...bond with Michael, or whatever the Xxan call it.
Knowing them, it likely had another word, considering what binding meant to them.
Or maybe not. Binding was binding.
But what if their parent-child binding is unbreakable the way mate binding is.
Abby came to her senses, her hands halfway onto the tabletop. She forced them back to her lap.
I don’t know what Xxanian fathers are supposed to do. I have to let him bond and hope it’s not too late for them to form one.
Gabe started cleaning Michael’s face, and he didn’t look at her. “If you have a spare blanket and a pillow, I can sleep on Michael’s floor tonight.”
Her heart aching, Abby forced herself to answer. “If that’s what you want. Sure.”
What? He’s supposed to fall in bed with me after everything we’ve been through?
Part of her wished he would. The rest knew that era of their lives was over.
Abby fled the table. By the time Gabe had Michael out of the highchair, the blanket and pillow were in Michael’s nursery, and she was closed into her bedroom.
****
Gabe looked down at the pile of linens on Michael’s floor, swallowing down a roar, his ridge plates coming halfway erect. Michael looked up at him sharply, his ridge plates stirred, and his eye slits narrowed. Gabe forced his back and rumbled out a calming sound in Xxan. One fist went into his son’s mouth, and he started teething on the knuckles.
He’d hoped Abby would argue with him, offer him somewhere else to sleep. When she’d sounded so hesitant, he’d been sure Abby would act on her continuing attraction to him and invite Gabe to her bed.
I’m dreaming. It’s over. She’s offering me a place in our son’s life, but she’s not interested in us as a couple anymore.
He looked down at Michael, offered a weak smile, then collected a fresh sleeper from the bureau and a diaper from the changing table.
Soft. Spice
Industries
made the softest, most absorbent diapers around, and they sold them at a discount to Xxanian families, calling it a ‘medial need’ to have such diapers for crossbred infants. With SLAL aiding Abby, it was clear they’d arranged for
Spice
diapers for Michael.
Only the best for my son.
“It’s time for a bath, little man.”
It was long past time for a seir’s first bathing of his son.
Gabe pulled the bottle of clove bath gel out of his bag and carried baby and supplies to the bathroom.
He set Michael on the plush bath rug, and the baby clapped his hands on his thighs.
Gabe smiled widely. “Like your bath, do you? Well, that is normal for our breed.”
His son cocked his head to one side and lost his balance. Gabe reached out and scooped him up. Michael squealed in delight and bounced in his
seir’s
arms, seemingly speeding Gabe toward the bath.
“Just a minute, Michael. We have to undress you first.”
That was easier said than done. Michael was in perpetual motion, moving an arm or leg, just as Gabe reached for the fabric to maneuver a limb out, rolling while Gabe was trying to work fasteners.
“How does your mother do this?” he inquired calmly. The warrior in him wanted to pin the squirming and flailing infant down and force his clothing off.
Not the right answer, Gabe. Definitely not right.
The tub had the prerequisite five or six inches of water for an infant bath in it long before Gabe lifted a very naked Michael to settle him inside. He stopped halfway at the sensation of the spreading wet spot on his shirt. A look of disbelief down at the tapering stream of urine later, Gabe scowled at his son, earning him a peel of laughter from the plump face.
“You think I deserved that, do you?” Gabe cocked one eyebrow up. “Can I assume you’ve similarly christened your mother?”
Michael clapped and reached for the water.
“I see. I guess that’s all right then.” Maybe this was a rite of acceptance Gabe didn’t know about.
Or maybe young ones have no control over releasing their bladders.
He deposited Michael in the water and pulled his fouled shirt off, tossing it for the open hamper.
His jeans were halfway off when Gabe looked down again. His heart stuttered, and he reached for Michael, then pulled up short. When he’d seen the young one lying back in the bathtub, he’d flashed on the training tapes he’d seen about drowning.
“
An infant can drown in less than two inches of water.”
But Michael wasn’t drowning. He was floating on his back, his arms spread wide, his feet kicking lightly. Gabe placed a hand to cushion Michael’s head at the moment he would have hit the drain side of the tub.