Dom trailed his wrist down Jesse’s side, holding him close. “Think about it,” he said. “Plenty of time.”
Jesse’s heart was too small to contain what he felt for this man. “I’m sorry about before,” he blurted. “When—When you asked me to keep the baby and I got mad at you.”
Dom blinked. Then he smiled. “I’m sorry about that, too. It’s your body. Your choice.”
Jesse pressed his forehead against Dom’s shoulder, just hiding his smile. He still couldn’t believe Dom was here, with him. They’d been very, very lucky. “I’m also sorry about that other time. When Larson kidnapped me and I almost shot you.”
He’d since sold the gun—he didn’t like the thought of having it around.
Dom slipped his arms around Jesse. “I wouldn’t have blamed you at all.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
Jesse looked up. Dom gave him a warm smile, slanting their lips together. It was a gentle kiss, just an exchange of breath and intimacy. Dom had seen Jesse at his worst, and this was all he responded with.
“Marry me,” Dom said.
Jesse’s heart stopped. “What?”
“I’m serious about that, too.”
Jesse just stared, trying to process this. Dom. Wanting to marry him. Hell, Jesse hadn’t even given Dom his other bonding marks yet. “You’re... talking about the rest of our lives.”
Uncertainty flickered through Dom’s gaze. “You don’t want to?”
Dom’s husband had left him. For him to offer Jesse a permanent place in his heart, and make himself this vulnerable again...
“Aren’t you scared?” Jesse blurted.
Dom huffed, his smile crooked. “Hell yeah, I am. But I’ve given you my markings. I’m not giving them to anyone else.”
Jesse’s heart swelled. With this question, Dom was offering Jesse his life, and his soul. Jesse wanted to offer him the same.
He brought Dom’s wrist to his lips, kissing the spot that smelled most strongly of blackwood. Dom sucked in a sharp breath.
“I love you,” Jesse said. “And I’m not leaving.” Then he sank his teeth into Dom’s wrist, breaking skin.
“Fuck, Sinclair,” Dom hissed, his gaze growing dark.
Jesse kissed his bite mark, where tiny droplets of blood were welling up on Dom’s skin. His instincts roared, Mine. “Shouldn’t that be ‘Fuck me, Sinclair’?”
Dom smiled, possessive. “Yeah. It should.”
He pinned Jesse against the rack of nail polish and kissed him, and Jesse didn’t care anymore who witnessed this. He already had the best gift in the world.
33
Childbirth
Seven months into his pregnancy, Jesse announced it to the team.
York’s coffee sprayed out his mouth. Alec stared. Brad’s eyebrows crawled up. Harris, Gareth, and Nate were not surprised at all. Dom slipped his arm around Jesse’s waist and squeezed his ass.
“Pregnant?” York asked, his eyes almost falling out of his head. “I thought... that was a beer belly.”
Jesse wrapped his arm around his abdomen, feeling awkward. “Well, it’s not.”
“When are you due?” Harris asked. He’d opted to stay with the team, instead of becoming station chief.
“In about twelve weeks. That’s if it’s a full-term pregnancy.” Dr. Smith had said their baby was developing at a normal speed, but she wasn’t sure if Jesse’s body could carry it for the full forty weeks. “I want to stay on the team for as long as I can.”
He’d talked about this with Dom, on and off. Dom strongly preferred to have Jesse stay home for the final weeks of labor. Jesse wanted to keep working—because he was a firefighter, damn it!
So Dom had allowed him to stay on the team for now, but Jesse had noticed that Dom put him on engine duty whenever there was a fire—to minimize Jesse’s involvement with the fire itself. Jesse didn’t complain—if this allowed him to remain on the team instead of bustling like an omega at home, then he would gladly deal with it.
His abdomen had begun to twinge, though. His hands and feet had started to swell a little, and the baby was moving a lot more than before. It almost... felt comforting, whenever their baby moved. That meant it was doing well in there.
“Congrats?” Alec said.
“Happy for you.” Gareth grinned. “Enjoy your sleep while you can.”
The rest of the guys laughed. York looked between Jesse and Dom—in a way that was painfully obvious he was trying to picture how Dom had gotten Jesse pregnant. Which Jesse wasn’t about to share.
The team smiled and shook their hands, and not once did Jesse feel out of place, even with this secret out amongst them. He really would miss these guys when the baby was born. But maybe... with the way Dom distracted him sometimes—maybe he might be too focused on the baby to miss the team. It wasn’t as though he was leaving them forever, anyway.
The days at the station passed, filled with calls and training. During their time off, Dom and Jesse got the house ready—they painted a nursery and assembled a cot, and Jesse read up on preemie care, just in case.
His body held on until the thirty-eighth week. Long before then, Jesse had admitted that he could only waddle now, and he wasn’t much help on the team anymore. So he stayed home and read aloud the picture books they’d bought for the baby—way in advance, but Jesse liked that he’d found his favorite books from when he was a kid.
He was in the middle of making a light sandwich, when a contraction rocked through his body. He gasped in pain, leaning against the counter. He barely heard Dom stepping into the house. “Think I’m going into labor,” Jesse said.
Dom hurried over, smelling like blackwood and the smoke from their job. “Yeah? How are you feeling?”
Jesse breathed out the pain, leaning into Dom’s chest. They couldn’t even hug properly anymore—his belly was in the way. “Fine.”
Dom snorted. “You’re panting, Sinclair.”
The pain was... not terrible. It still didn’t compare to the time he’d been cut open for the uterus, but that memory had faded some. “We’ll need the
