Page 71 of Single Dad Problems
"Hi," he said, against my skin.
"Hi," I said back, and my voice came out wrecked and small.
Luke's hand had not left my belly. He looked up at me, and I could see him working the question over before he asked it.
"How far along."
"Doesn't have to be far. The math points at the lake."
"The lake." His hand spread wider on my stomach. He looked at Cole. He looked at Ben. He looked back at me, and the slow stunned smile that broke across his face was one I had never seen on him before.
"All three of us, then."
"All three of you."
"Cupcake." His voice was a little wet at the edges, but he was holding it. "I spent two years in therapy learning to share my feelings with one person, and I am apparently about to share a child with two assholes I love. I am going to need extra sessions."
Cole snorted. Ben's hand went still as he tried not to laugh.
"I'm in," Luke said. "Whatever this is going to look like. I am in."
Three hands on me at once, promising me and the little baby growing inside me a future together. There were no more tears to cry. I was finally, stupidly happy.
And then something else entirely woke up, and it was not maternal.
I was standing in a kitchen soaked through my pajama bottoms for three men who could smell it on me like sharks. Cole's nostrils actually flared. The only coherent thought left in my head was: I hope they devour me. I hope they take turns. I hope Tessa's guesthouse has thick fucking walls.
50
Callie
Nobody asked if I wanted to walk to the bedroom. One second I was standing in the kitchen having my deeply unmaternal thoughts, and the next Luke had scooped me clean off the floor like a fireman confiscating something flammable, and Cole was already moving ahead of us and working the bedroom door open with the efficiency of a man breaching a building, and I got out approximately half of the word "wait" before I was airborne.
I hit the mattress hard enough to bounce. Somewhere out there romance novels were describing women being lowered onto beds like rose petals. Meanwhile, I had just been deployed onto one like a sandbag.
It may have been the hottest thing that had ever happened to me.
Ben came through the door last. He paused, turned around, went back into the living room, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a very large stuffed bear being rotated to face the wall.
"Nothing personal, big guy," Ben said. "Some things you can't unsee."
The door clicked shut.
And then there were three men taking their shirts off in front of me at the same time. Cole reached back and pulled his off in one move and I forgot every word I had ever known. His tattoos wrapping up his arms and spilling down his ribs, the old silver scars I wanted the story of, every single one. Luke went button by button because Luke did everything button by button, which should have been boring and instead made me want to scream, and then the shirt fell away and those forearms were right there, and I had a wild desire to start licking his veins. Ben just yanked his over his head and grinned at me, his sun kissed muscles making my vagina do a happy dance.
Three men. One small bed. A baby the size of a pea and a six-foot bear in the next room facing the wall. My life was absolutely not what I had planned and I could not have planned anything better.
Cole took my chin between his fingers and tipped my face up. His touch was always lighter than I expected, which was the part that undid me: the fact that a man that large was capable of touching me so gently. His pale eyes held mine.
"Last chance to tell us no," he said.
"Cole."
"Cupcake."
"If you stop right now I will actually never forgive you and I say that as someone who just forgave all three of you for something much larger."
His dimples appeared just for a second, rare and devastating, and then he kissed me. His hand fisted in my hair to angle me exactly where he wanted me, his tongue swept in and took my mouth over until I was whimpering into him.
