Didn't You Promise (A Bad for You Novel) (24 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Eight months
,
one week
,
and two days later.

Bogus witch-doctoring, that’s what this is. I hit the trigger again. My teeth clamp down as another wave of pain tears through my belly. It washes over me then dissipates. I’m hot, so hot. I roll my hips back and forth on the Gym Ball, flap the front of my nightgown then hold the trigger out to Haithem. “Get this stupid thing off me.”

He pries the trigger out of my clutching fingers. So much for natural alternatives. I flop forward on the ball and bury my head in Haithem’s stomach. “I should have asked you to invent something for this.”

He leans over me and lifts my nightgown then peels the sticky pads off my lower back. My stomach contracts, but it’s not just my stomach, it’s my whole freaking torso. I moan, pushing my face deeper against his middle. He pauses from removing the electrodes and strokes my hair. Whispers to me about breathing through it.

I try that ridiculous puffing thing they showed us in the antenatal classes. Except this seems more like hyperventilating. The contraction finishes and I sniff into Haithem’s shirt. Fuck, and I thought getting stabbed was bad.

“Why didn’t you invent me something?”

He removes the TENS machine, smoothes my nightgown over my hips and leans back. “Want to try the bath?”

He dares look down at me so pained—as though he’s the one whose insides are trying to become outsides.

“The bath?” I pant and push him away. “Why would I want to be wet right now?”

I glance across the room to the midwife who’s managed to find a million things to do and none of them are bringing me something to eat. “I’m hungry.”

She walks towards me, checks the other machine I’m attached to. “Sorry, honey, you can have something after.”

My gaze snaps to Haithem. “It’s been eleven hours. This is your fault. Make her feed me.”

He frowns, and exchanges a look with the midwife.

“Right now, Haithem, you had better do it nowww—” My words are sliced by the strike of a hatchet to my midsection. At least that’s what I’d swear it is. I rock on the ball, and push my hands against his thighs.

“Well, everyone is doing just fine,” the midwife says. “You can try the bath if you like.”

I lock my elbows and puff air. “Fuck you both.”

“You seem angry?” Haithem says and strokes my arms.

“Maybe because you put two people in me.” I scrunch my face and scowl at him. “Two
you
-sized people.”

Oh why didn’t I think before I asked for this to happen—this man is a giant. I’m having two times giant spawn.

Giant spawns that want out.

I reach for his hand, and start to cry. “Please just help me into the bath.”

The midwife unhooks me from the heart rate monitor. I strip and let Haithem help me towards the massive hospital bath. I try not to look down at my enormous—ridiculously enormous—belly. My god, the things that have happened to my stomach. This shit’s never going to snap back.

I settle into the water. Haithem ties my hair up into some kind of bun at the top of my head.

“How are you feeling now?” he asks.

I shut my eyes. “Honestly, a lot fearful for my vagina.”

He leaves me some small shred of dignity by not laughing. I just hope I get to hold on to what’s left.

Something changes in the heart of the pain. Haithem pours warm water over my back. Kneels on the outside of the tub, keeping his cheek against mine, and tells me soft soothing things in Arabic that I’ve actually begun to understand. Everything goes quiet. I’m boxed in my body, and locked in a haze. But I keep on breathing, because his breath reminds me to. I grip his hand, fingers interlocked. Squeeze so hard we both shake from it. When it gets too much then he’s in the bath with me. I push while holding his shoulders, then there’s a baby.

A girl, wrinkled, angry and red. They put her between us, but Haithem has to hold her. It’s not over yet. I might not be able to do it, might not be able to push again, if it weren’t for this—the look on Haithem’s face with our squirming newborn in his arms. They tell me to wait, but my body won’t listen. He comes out so much faster, as though his sister showed him how.

Haithem eases me against his side as I collapse. Our daughter squawks, and my heart stills, because our son has not. I turn. The nurse holds him up, then puts him on my chest. I curl around his tiny body. His lips purse, and I can breathe—he’s fine. The same size and just as strong as his sister.

He’s just, somehow, still trying to sleep.

I look at Haithem. He looks at me. There’s no possible way to fall in love with each other more, yet we just did.

Haithem

I fell in love the first time in a shower—the second time in a bathtub. But the girl who stole my heart today, I can hold with one hand. She pushes up off my chest with balled fists. At hours old she’s strong. Her head bobs, and huge eyes settle on me.

No, this girl stole my soul. I touch her baby cheek with the pad of my finger. Her mouth turns towards the touch. I move my hand away but the greedy child chases after it. I drag her higher, touch my nose to the top of her head, and breathe in her baby smell.

She’s tiny, my hands engulf her, but I’m not afraid of breaking her. Like her mother, she’s nowhere near as delicate as she looks. She wiggles, trying to move.

“I think it’s her turn now,” Angelina says, and pulls her nipple out of the mouth of our other child. This one, the boy, doesn’t fidget. His head lolls to the side, milk trickles out of the corner of his lips, and he appears to have fallen into a state of milk-drunkenness.

But then he greeted the world that way. He came out with a double chin, and his eyes closed. Didn’t cry, just joined his hands in front of him. As though he could have used the three extra weeks they were supposed to be baking for nap time.

I’d never seen such a content human until him.

Propped up against the pillows, Angelina lays our son along her forearms, her knees drawn up for support. She runs her gaze over his tiny naked form, a dreamy smile on her full edible lips. Then she closes the blanket around him loosely, and holds him out to me.

I take my son, but can’t relinquish my daughter just yet. I set the twins next to each other on my chest, tug the blanket off him, and lay it over both siblings. I’m sold on this skin-to-skin bonding. In fact, I may never allow another person back into this hospital room.

I’ll steal this moment, and extend it forever.

The twins turn to each other, and our daughter winds her arms around her brother. His lazy arms find their way around her. They fuse like two links in a chain. Our fussy girl falls still.

“Ohh...” Angelina says, “Look at that.”

I brush the bottom of my chin gently against the tops of their heads. “Must have been her brother she was after all along.”

Angelina glances at me. There’s so much in her eyes. Something joyful and bittersweet. Her hair’s a wild tangle over her bare shoulders, and her breasts—sweet mercy, her breasts—like the rest of her they’ve developed a layer of maternal softness that I want nothing more than to bury myself in. These babies will need to learn to share.

Fuck me
,
I
love this woman.

“I suppose they need names,” she says, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth to conceal a rueful smile.

“Do they now?” I wrap my arm around the twins and lunge forward to kiss that mouth of hers. “Any ideas?”

She does chuckle now, a husky sound that makes me grin. She refused to talk names until they were born. As though naming a thing allows it to be taken away. I’d have named them at conception if I’d been allowed to know their sex. She wouldn’t have us know that either, only that there were two. She sighs, and draws the blanket farther from their faces and studies them, then brushes the what I’d call red, but what she calls auburn, hair from our daughter’s crown. Her little head wiggles.

“She’s busy,” I say. “Bet she’ll never sit still.”

Angelina looks up from our children and smiles. “I’m sure she’ll grow up to fit forty hours in a day and spend all of them tormenting you.”

I clear my thickening throat, and watch my beautiful wife say the name I already know she’s chosen.

“I think she’s a Leila.”

My chest fills with air. “My mother would be honored, and so am I.”

She leans down and plants a kiss on my mouth. We both know the same longing, and apparently, we both also think the same way.

She draws back. “What about him?”

We gaze at our son.

His lips press together. Pink, pouty lips I could catch between two fingers. “Hmm, he’s kind of sweet.” I shift my gaze to Angelina, and watch her expression, in case I have this wrong. “Joshua?”

Her mouth opens, then she lays down beside me and rests her arm over our babies. I move my arm under her, and haul her closer to my side. Nothing has ever been so warm. Our family wrapped around each other.

“Yeah, that’s perfect.”

* * * * *

“This isn’t a romance for the lighthearted. It’s gritty and wild and passionate...will have readers falling hard and fast.”
—Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
on
Didn’t I Warn You

Amber
Bardan
returns
with
a
heart
-
stopping
third
installment
in
her
high
-
octane
,
highly
addictive
Bad
For
You
series

A
fling with her best friend’s reclusive business partner should’ve been harmless.

When Emma meets him, the only way she’s looking to be tied down is in the literal sense. But Avner—shady hacker, off-the-books investigator, occasional spy—takes her breath away. He’s the first man who doesn’t turn to mush under her sexual spell: a fact that makes what’s between them very different, and very real.

Beautiful and uninhibited, Emma is everything Avner thought she would be and more. Yet his deadly past and dark duties can never be forgotten...not even as he succumbs to their seductive intimacy. But for the first time he’s after something of his own, as well.

And now that he’s found Emma, he’ll protect her, no matter what. Because anything worth loving is worth fighting for.

But nothing about Avner is remotely harmless.

Soon, Avner has infiltrated Emma’s personal life, stalled her career and nearly destroyed everything she’s worked for—all in the name of
protection
. Desperate and heartbroken, drawn into a secret criminal underworld in her quest for understanding, Emma discovers the truth: Avner’s secrets are far more devastating than his lies.

This book is approximately 85,000 words

Book Three of the Bad For You series

Acknowledgments

To everyone at Harlequin Australia and Carina Press, thank you for your fantastic work and for giving this series the perfect home. It has been a privilege working with my editor, Angela James, whose insights have made these stories shine.

I am tremendously grateful for my agent, Laura Bradford, for her constant dedication.

Thank you to my husband, whose support makes my dream job possible. Thank you to our parents, the grandparents of our kids, for always helping out. Thanks to my sister Melissa, for being my reader cheerleader.

A million times thank you to my dear friend Dani, for all your wisdom and guidance.

Thank you to my publicist, Lisa Filipe, for your wonderful work and for making my job easier.

Thanks to all my lovely friends at Melbourne Romance Writers Guild and also Romance Writers of Australia for making this journey an even greater one.

My dear critique partners Eden Summers and Tracey Alvarez, thank you for the many hours of critiquing and cheerleading. Your support has meant so much.

This writing gig can be lonely—thank you to all my virtual friends. Connecting with you keeps me sane and grounded. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to leave messages, reviews, comments and tweets about my books. Your words mean everything.

Also available from
Amber
Bardan
and Carina Press

Didn’t I Warn You

Coming
soon
from
Amber
Bardan
and
Carina
Press

A Bad for You Novel: Avner and Emma’s story!

About the Author

After spending years imagining fictional adventures, Amber finally found a way to turn daydreaming into a productive habit. She now spends her time in a coffee-fueled adrenaline haze writing thrillingly erotic romance.

She lives with her husband and children in semirural Australia where, if she peers outside at the right moment, she might just see a kangaroo bounce by.

Amber is an award-winning writer, Amazon bestselling author, and member of Romance Writers of Australia, Melbourne Romance Writers Guild and Writers Victoria.

You can find out more about Amber by visiting her website,
www.amberabardan.com
. Connect with Amber on Facebook at
www.Facebook.com/amberabardan
or Twitter at
Twitter.com/amberabardan
.

Looking for more heroes who will do anything for love? Don’t miss Anna del Mar’s romantic suspense series!

“This is a must-read for fans of romantic suspense.”
—
The Romance Reviews
, Top Pick

THE ASSET (
A Wounded Warrior Novel
, book one)
Anna del Mar’s explosive, sexy debut novel tells the story of a woman desperate to escape her dangerous past—and of the navy SEAL who would lay down his life to save her.

The
Wounded Warrior
series continues with THE STRANGER (August 2016).

Order your copies now!

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