Page 65 of Dead Crown
“For your cousin too.”
“I have a little more money.”
“You already paid me. I don’t like seeing people go hungry. There’s enough of that lately.”
Jaki took the bowls into the cabin where Lumi was huddled on the bed with Jacqueline in his arms.
“The timing is right.” Jaki set the bowls on the bed and pressed the glamor to shift back while he tried to think of what else to say.
“She’s yours,” whispered Lumi. “Not Tivar’s. I knew a month after we fucked, and it was too soon for it to be his. The cramps came one night, and Tivar was too dumb to figure it out.”
“She has my eyes too. No one else had pink, right?”
“No.” Lumi stared down at her. “She looks like you and me.”
Jaki couldn’t deny her. “Okay. She’s not my niece.” He told himself he could get used to it.
“If you don’t want anything to do with her, I get it…”
Jaki sat on the narrow bed next to him. “If you let me, I can be a Father to her. I was thinking you might not want anything to do with me in that regard. I’m sorry for what I did that morning.”
“I wanted it.”
“The heat said so for you. Technically, I forced you.”
“I wanted you even without the heat. I wanted in your trousers for three years, and I wasn’t always pushing my heat. You didn’t rape me.”
“If you can’t have sex without the heat, then I did even though you never said no and you begged for it. I should have had control instead of…hate fucking you.”
“I still wanted you,” said Lumi.
“You wouldn’t let me prep and fuck you without it.”
Lumi shifted a little against him. “That’s different. Even though I wanted you for so long, I couldn’t do the action without the heat. I've been using it for years. You didn’t force me.”
He was too lost in the act he’d maintained to survive. Tivar had probably loved seeing him all “eager” every time he raped him. To show otherwise would have brought punishment.
“If I had said to stop, would you have stopped?” asked Lumi.
“Yes, but-”
“Tivar would have punished me for daring to utter the word.”
But what if he was too scared to say the word no with Jaki with Tivar’s expectations so firmly mortared in his mind? Jaki still didn’t like it no matter how much Lumi argued.
“I can still think on the heat, you know? The begging wasn’t fake.”
It sounded like he wanted to drop it. “Since she’s mine, I want to be her Father. If any man has a kid and knows of it, he should take care of it. Sex has consequences. I’m proof since I'm an accidental child too.”
“You’d really stay? I mean, as her Father?”
“We’re family, and while I didn’t intend to have a child like this, yes. I…I don’t know how to be a Father.”
Lumi finally looked at him.
“I thought I’d get married to a man because women aren’t my thing. If my husband weren't an abundant male, I’d get a consort and have nine months to mentally prepare for parenthood. That’s about as far as my thoughts on having children went.”
Lumi leaned on him and suddenly giggled although it was quick and rough. “I don’t think it’s that hard, Jaki.”
