His smile dropped, and he leaned his head against the door post. “They can hear you, you know.” He said with a slightly serious cast to his voice. “You and Nick were always the lucky number Sevens of the pack. You got that all the time you were growing up. These are gonna be the eights, no matter which daddy they’ve got. They’re gonna be great, just like their mother.”
“No one is going to care about that.” She looked defeated and just downright broken. “The only person who cares about me at all is you.”
“That’s not true. People are kinda pissed off at you right about now, but that’ll change. You know it always does.”
“Guess I’m not so interesting now, huh?” She said as she got up slowly and put her glass on the bathroom counter. She was certain Ziem would want to bolt now, as if the glares and stares weren’t enough. A wolf knocked up and not by him? That was plenty of reason to run. “Thanks for taking care of me these last few days, though.”
He looked intensely confused as he watched her walk over him to get back into the kitchen. “Okay, when did I seem not interested?”
“I’m having puppies, Ziem.” She said as she looked back at him, just as confused by his confusion. To her it was plain. “That’s a hell of a lot of baggage.”
“You’re talking to the guy who’s never had any baggage worth carrying around.” He had never once made it seem as though his exile was her fault, and he didn’t mean to do so now, though he knew she would take it that way if she wanted to. “I’ve been jumping from one bar to the next for ten years. Truth be told, I feel more than a little weird if I don’t come over here and wipe down your counters every day just because I’m afraid I’ll be out of practice.” He stood up to face her, though he didn’t move away from the doorway. “Do I look like the kind of guy who would mind having some kind of home to come home to once in a while?”
That was so unexpected that Aura didn’t really know what to say as she just kind of stared at him. “You…” She started to say as she moved closer to him. “You’d do that? Even though they’re not yours?”
He shrugged to make it seem like it was less of a big deal than it actually was, then looked her up and down once. “I had my mom and dad and brothers telling me every day and night how I wasn’t supposed to get close to you because I’m only fifth-gen, and it was a big deal, you having pureborn puppies someday, for the sake of the Council. But all that’s kinda shot to hell now. I don’t really care whose puppies they are, as long as they’re yours. You’re the one I always wanted anyway.” He said it in the same lackadaisical tone that he always said everything else, but Aura knew him well enough to know that that was just the kind of person Ziem was. He wasn’t terribly deep, never serious if he could avoid it, and never one to over-analyze a situation. If he wanted to do something, he did it. Which was more or less what had gotten them in trouble in the first place.
Aura went up the rest of the way to him and pulled him into a passionate kiss, unable to help the overflow of emotions pouring out of her. His loyalty to her was extremely unexpected and touching, and she couldn’t express her gratitude enough. A kiss was a good place to start.
Kissing Ziem was a very, very different experience than kissing Orlando, or even Nick. For a moment, he didn’t even react to the kiss, but as she felt him smile under the touch, he grabbed her waist in a way no pregnant woman ever ought to really be grabbed, and pushed her back against the sheet-metal wall. The wall instantly conformed to the indentation of her body, though the impact still hurt a little as she slammed into it. He wasn’t gentle the way Nick had always been, as though she was about to break, and nor was he gentle the way Orlando had always been, with subtle caresses and tingling nerves. He handled her like an equal, and his kiss proved it.
She was surprised, to say the least, but it didn’t stop her from kissing him several more times just to raise the heat between them. There was a reason why he was exiled and not simply punished, and it was because Nick’s father knew that her feelings for Ziem weren’t just curiosity or an innocent crush. Nick was the one that she lost her virginity to, but if they hadn’t exiled Ziem, Aura was sure it would have been him instead. She growled a little as her fingers gripped his back. “Wow.” She said between kisses.
He chuckled once as she said it, and kissed her again before responding. “I think that’s what you said the first time too. Though I’m pretty sure I was too horny the first time for there to have been enough blood in my brain to remember.”
Aura laughed and then just continued to hold on to him as she wrapped her arms around him. “I was so heartbroken when they made you go.”
“I wondered if you missed me.” He said with an honest shrug and a grin. “Obviously you can see I missed you.”
“Of course
