An Act of Persuasion(81)

“What about her diet? She’s eating an abnormal amount of ice cream. Should I restrict that?”

“Ben! I do not. Dr. Bradley, do not answer him.” Anna struggled to sit up until Ben reached out to assist her. “I am perfectly capable watching over my own health and you will not be restricting anything. Enough of these questions unless you have something serious to ask.”

Ben frowned. “Fine. Doctor, you may not be aware but I was recently treated for leukemia. It’s our wish to preserve the placenta after the birth. Who do I need to contact about making sure that happens?”

The doctor nodded and made a note in Anna’s folder. “We’ll have that on her record. I’ll give you a few contact names of the companies who handle that kind of storage. Anything else?”

“I have a question. You know, me—the actual mother. When will I feel the baby move?”

“I would say anytime. You might not recognize it at first. But usually by twenty weeks you’ll feel something.”

Ben watched Anna cover her belly with her hand. He tried to imagine what it might be like to feel life from the inside of his body reach out to touch him and failed. Women, he thought, were certainly the better choice to carry the newborns. Anna seemed to adjust to her changing body with aplomb.

Ben didn’t imagine he would be so serene about it. He certainly hadn’t liked it when he was losing his hair and weight by what felt like the hour.

They finished with the doctor and Anna made her appointment for next month. The next time they came for the appointment she would be at twenty-three weeks and already more than halfway to her delivery. It was crazy to think how fast time was moving.

“Can I ask you a question?” Ben asked as they were leaving the clinic.

Anna glanced at him. “It had better not be about a sexual position. I can’t believe you talked about that with my doctor.”

“Technically she’s the baby’s doctor, which makes her our doctor. I wanted to make sure I didn’t hurt you or it. We’ve been...engaging in sex quite often.”

The reality was they had been going at it like monkeys. Really horny ones. If he took her out for dinner or if they stayed in to cook, they would end the evening in her room, in her bed.

Her bed.

And once ensconced in her domain, Anna happily let him be in charge. It was exactly where he wanted to be and how he wanted things to be. At first, he wondered if the frequency and intensity of the sex was somehow linked to his recovery. That he was happy to be alive and be with Anna. He’d believed that her responses were about her matching need for him.

Lately, though, when he watched her face and listened to the sounds she made in the back of her throat, he could sense that sex was part of an escape for her. A way to not think about how things were changing between them. He supposed that shouldn’t bother him. After all, sex was about physical pleasure, not necessarily an intellectual activity. The fact that she threw herself into every experience and let him overtake her with pleasure meant she trusted him. When it was over she now slept in his arms, the two of them sexually completely content.

Still, he felt as though something was missing.

Most likely he was overanalyzing this and his conclusions were ridiculous. He was more than thrilled to satisfy her every desire, especially if the act of sharing pleasure was bringing them closer. He was convinced each time they were together the ties between them got stronger and more difficult to break.

On the nights he didn’t see her—because every once in a while she would say she needed some space, a gesture, he thought, made mostly to be perverse—he was edgy and nervous. As though with each minute that passed while he was away from her, he was losing some of the ground he had gained.

Ben didn’t do nervous and edgy well.

She was at nineteen weeks already and, while they had fallen into a normal pattern of domesticity, suddenly he felt like it wasn’t enough. He wanted more of a commitment.

“Call me crazy,” Anna said, pulling his attention to this moment. “But I thought you were happy engaging in sex...quite often. Right now, however, you don’t have a happy look on your face.” She bit her lower lip in a way that drove him wild.

“Of course I’m happy with our sex life. Hell, we’re standing in a parking lot in front of a hospital in the middle of the day—the least romantic place I could possibly imagine—and still I’m thinking of taking you. Against the car with your impossibly tight pants around your ankles.”