Page 108 of Act Like You Don't Care
Miles put his arms around me, twittering anxiously in my ear about something, but I couldn’t make it out over my body’s desperate screaming for oxygen.
Then our little girl curled herself up into a ball again and I could breathe. “Oh, stop,” I snapped at Miles, then leaned into him and put my head on his shoulder. “Sorry. She’s got a serious grudge against me.”
“You had me worried for a second.”
I sat up, suddenly super conscious of the scent drifting off his skin. What with the baby seemingly permanently ensconced in my belly and the resurgence of those practice contractions as we’d approached and then blew past my due date, I hadn’t been feeling too frisky, but the smell of him in my nose was one of the few things that could make me consider sex again, even in this state.
The door opened and Dr. Rodin came in. “Still refusing to budge, is she?” he asked cheerfully and motioned for me to get up on the table so he could do another exam.
After a few minutes of poking and prodding, listening to her heartbeat and peeking at her position with the ultrasound, he made a few notes in my chart and told me I could get up again. “I’m not seeing any sign that you’re getting ready to go into labor yet.”
“Isn’t she overdue now, though?” Miles asked. I patted his knee but kept silent to hear what the doctor had to say.
“Technically overdue, yes. But first babies tend to be late coming. Go home and do any last-minute things you still need to do.” He sat on the stool in front of his desk and folded his hands in his lap. “We’ll give it another week, then if there’s still no action, we should look at scheduling an induction. She’s not too big yet, but in two weeks that could be a different story. Hopefully, labor will start on its own before then, but it’s best to have a plan in place. Come see me again next week and until then, get some exercise and make sure you’re sleeping.” He smiled at us and started to leave, then paused in the doorway. “It’s kind of an old wives' tale, but anecdotally, having sex can sometimes cause labor to start. Likely a hormone in the alpha’s semen. If you’re not too uncomfortable, you could try that.” He winked and then the door closed behind him.
Miles and I were both quiet on the way back to my place. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking about, but I couldn’t let go of that last thing the doctor had said. It had been nine months since I’d had sex—real sex. Even with the baby I was raring to go. And if it got my labor started…
I don’t think I’d like you as much if you were a traditional omega.Something he’d said, a long time ago. Before I ever got pregnant, even.
What if I’d been going about this all wrong? I cast Miles a sideways glance and decided to take the leap. “Maybe we should consider what the doctor said.”
He jerked and the car swerved, very out-of-character for steady, focused Miles. It gave my heart unreasonable hopes.
“I mean,” I continued. “It’s what got us into this. Maybe it’ll get us out of it, too.”
He shot me a quick look, his eyes unreadable behind his sunglasses. “No.”
My heart fell and I turned away to stare out the window, until he muttered, “I can’t handle being teased right now.”
Teased? I whipped back around to squint at him. He ignored me like there was a solid wall between us.
If me offering sex was a tease then… Oh, shit. I really was an idiot. “Tease?”
His mouth tightened, the corners of his lips going white, and my heart fluttered with something… panic? Excitement? I held my breath and waited.
“Yes, tease. Don’t offer me something I can only have once,” he growled, his voice so deep I could feel it vibrate against my skin. It made me feel those parts of me that were omega. Normally I fought that sensation, but today I let myself roll around in it and refused to be ashamed of the way that growl and the pheromones pouring off him made me want to strip the two of us naked right here in the middle of the street.
So I hit him. “Pull over.”
The light turned green and he started driving again. “Why?”
I hit him again. “So I can beat the crap out of you. Do you feel anything for me? Not just physical, but forme.”
He kept driving, but the air between us filled with a tension that just made him all the more fuckable. “Why does it matter? We’re just co-parenting. You don’t want to settle down like that.”
“Fucking alphas,” I muttered and reached for the steering wheel.
He knocked my arm up and away, then glared at me in shocked anger. “What are you trying to do?” he demanded.
“Brake!” I shouted.
Miles glanced out the windshield at the rapidly approaching bumper of the car ahead of us before slamming on the brakes hard enough that I was grateful he’d made me put on my seatbelt, overprotective alpha that he was.
Why did that phrase make me feel so warm inside?
It always had, I realized. I really did need to get out of my own way when it came to life. “Pull over,” I said again.
He found a parking lot and took the first available space, slamming the car into Park. “What?” he snapped, turning to look at me.
