Released (Caged #3)(66)

“But she’ll be closer if she’s over there!” Tria’s voice became markedly louder as she stabbed at the air with her finger. “If we have to get up in the middle of the night—and you know we will, at least, I will—I suppose you can just lie there!”

The look coming out of her eyes was nothing less than pure evil. I was actually considering hiding in Frankenstein’s Fanny Pack.

“What the f*ck did I do?” I asked, like a total moron.

“You aren’t helping at all!” Tria cried as she ran out of the room.

Jesus H. Christ in a hockey rink riding a Zamboni.

I followed her, tiptoeing into the living room and wondering if I was entering the lion’s den. Tria was on the couch with her head in her hands, sobbing loudly. As soon as I sat down beside her, she flung herself into my arms.

“You think I’m ugly!” she wailed.

“Tria! For f*ck’s sake, why would you say that?”

“You don’t want to have sex with me because I’m a giant f*cking balloon with two more balloons sitting on top of the first, bigger balloon and a pair of big-ass balloons around the back!”

For the sake of saving my own life, I bit down on my tongue hard enough for the shooting pain to keep me from laughing out loud.

“Tria…baby, you know that’s not…” I halted as the daggers of pending motherhood stabbed into my heart from her eyes. “I mean…shit, Tria! I want to f*ck you all the time!”

“You haven’t today! You didn’t even get the stuff I wrote on the list this morning!”

I had no f*cking idea what the grocery list had to do with anything, but I wasn’t about to ask.

“It’s ten-o-clock! I’ve been up for an hour, and you were already rearranging furniture!”

“We didn’t have sex yesterday.”

“I didn’t even see you yesterday! You went shopping with Chelsea early, and I got home from work late. You were already asleep.”

“You used to wake me up for sex.”

I sighed. I knew I wasn’t going to win this with words alone. Anything and everything I said was whirled around in a hormonal blender with the lid off, and I ended up splattered on the walls. I could tell her how she just about castrated me the last time I woke her up for a little nookie, and I could tell her how she needed to get as much sleep as she could now because once the baby was here, we were likely to be sleepless, but there was no point.

I could only win with action, not words, so I gently gripped her arms and held her in front of me. I examined her beautiful face, wiped tears away from both cheeks, and looked into her eyes.

“I’m ugly,” she whispered. “I’m fat and ugly.”

“Hush.” With my hand against the side of her face, I ran my thumb over her mouth. “You are incredibly beautiful.”

She tried to turn her head away, but I wouldn’t let her.

“Every time I look at you,” I said, “I see not just the beautiful woman who showed up in my life and gave me a reason to live it but the manifestation of everything we are together.”

I moved my hand slowly over her abdomen.

“Every time I see you, I love you more. Every time I touch you, you become more important to me. There is nothing in this world that could make me feel any different, so don’t you tell me what I like and don’t like. I like you exactly how you are right now. You’re beautiful and sexy, and you’re mine.”

Without giving her a chance to respond, I crushed my lips to hers. My hands roamed over her hips, her stomach, and up her side to one, bountiful breast. I touched it lightly on the side with the back of my fingertips. I found the edge of her neck with my mouth, and I slowly kissed up the side to her ear.

“Do you know what goes on in my head when we go out?” I asked her. My voice was soft and deep, almost growling. I kept going before she could respond. “When we would go places, it used to be that I would see other guys look at you…”

A little snarl escaped from my throat.

“They would look at you, and then I’d see them size me up—looking to see if they could take me out—make you theirs.”

I shook my head slowly, my lips never leaving the skin just below her ear.

“But now…now when they look at you…”—I emitted another soft growl—“Now when they look, and they see…They don’t just wonder, they know. They know you’re mine. And I love looking at them and having them know you’re carrying my child. They know you’re mine—both of you. I love that they know exactly what I’ve done to you to put that child in there. I love that there is no doubt—no doubt at all. They know they don’t have a chance.”

I held her closer to me.

“You’re mine.” I growled low in her ear. “The way you look now—that just proves it. I’ve never seen you more beautiful than the way you are, and every guy who looks at you knows where I’ve been.”

Tria was silent for a moment, breathing a little more heavily and holding herself perfectly still until she finally spoke.

“You…um…I think you might have gotten an extra dose of testosterone when God was handing that shit out,” she said and then giggled slightly.

“You may be right,” I admitted. I sat back against the couch cushions and kept myself from making any potentially lethal remarks about raging hormones. “I can’t help it. I love that other guys know I’ve f*cked you—that I did this to you.”