Chapter 12: The Crib Deadline Comes Due
Six months had turned the pool deck into a lumber yard of small beds. Fourteen cribs stood in crooked rows along the tiled edge, some fresh pine still smelling of the mill, others painted soft green or cream, every one of them built for a child that already had a heartbeat and a due date chalked on a slate propped against the patio door. Jasmine climbed the trellis the way it always had. Under it now sat a semicircle of lounge chairs, and every chair held a woman with her hands folded over the curve of her belly.
Jordan came out with the tray of iced tea and stopped at the top of the steps just to look. The low afternoon sun lit the whole gathering gold. Katherine sat at the center in a wide cushioned chair, eight months along and utterly unapologetic about it, her silver-streaked hair loose for once, one bare foot resting on a footstool that had been brought out for her specifically. She wore nothing but a linen robe open over the vast round weight of her, and she did not cover it. Nobody covered anything anymore.
"Set it down and come here," Katherine said. "We're doing the count."
He set the tray on the crib nearest the door, a dark walnut one with iron rails that Sable had hauled over from the stable yard herself, and walked the line of chairs. He knew the count already, but the count liked being spoken aloud.
"Celeste," Katherine began, and Celeste lifted her chin from where she'd been dozing, five months round under a loose cotton dress, dark hair damp at her temples from the heat. "Sable. Alexa. Rosa. Maren. Vanessa. Naya. Priya. Elena. Becka and her two." Katherine's hand moved down the row as she named them, touching each belly in turn like a landlord checking locks. "Thirteen, counting mine. Fourteen cribs, because Mara insists on a spare. Has anyone seen Mara?"
"She said she'd come after the clinic," Celeste said, stretching until her back popped. "She wants to feel all of them again. She pretends it's for the records."
"It is for the records," said Alexa from the end of the row. She filled her chaise the way she filled any furniture, broad shoulders, black braids piled high, and at seven months her belly sat enormous under her stretched tank top, dark nipples flat and wide against the damp fabric. She looked at Jordan with the flat amusement she always carried. "Sit down somewhere, Jordan. You look like a man standing in front of a firing squad."
"He is," said Becka. She was sprawled on a towel on the tiles rather than a chair, four months along and proud of it, freckles dark across her nose, sun-bleached hair tied up with a strip of leather. Her two cousins flanked her, both showing the same gentle early roundness. "One last finish each before we close up shop. That's the whole agenda. Katherine announced it at breakfast."
"Did she," Jordan said.
"I did," Katherine said. "Sit."
He sat on the arm of her chair. Her hand came up at once, familiar, and pressed flat against his stomach through his shirt, then slid down to the waistband of his jeans and rested there, warm and heavy and entirely casual, the way she'd touched him for half a year.
"The midwives cleared everyone through thirty-six weeks," Katherine said. "After that, no more. The bodies close for the birth, and my son doesn't put a hand on a pregnant woman past thirty-six weeks. So we have today and maybe two more. Thirteen women want their last one while they can still enjoy it." Her thumb worked the button of his jeans open without hurry. "You'll be busy."
"Am I ever not," he said, and the row laughed, all of them at once, a sound like birds going up off the garden.
"Order matters," Katherine said, still working the button, the zipper, unhurried. "Celeste goes last because she's staying in my bed and she knows it. Alexa next, because she's furthest along and it's cruel to make the seven-month one wait." She looked up at him. Her eyes were the same sharp dark eyes that had run this house his whole life. "Well? Say something diplomatic. You always say something diplomatic."
"You all sat in the sun for an hour waiting for me," Jordan said. "Tea's getting warm."
Alexa stood first. Standing, she was taller than him, and she crossed the tiles with the unhurried stride of a woman who spent her days lifting horses' feet, hooked two fingers into his collar, and walked him to the widest lounger at the end of the row. The other women turned to watch. Nobody pretended not to.
"Shirt," she said. He pulled it over his head. She pushed him down onto the lounger cushions and worked his jeans down over his hips with the same economical hands that palpitated cattle, and his cock was already hard, because thirteen pregnant women had watched him cross a garden and that did what it did. She made a low satisfied sound at the sight of him.
"Still the same boy," she said. "Still fills the hand."
She pulled her tank top off over her head. Her belly came out huge and taut and dark, a stretch of copper skin shiny and tight, and above it her breasts hung heavier than ever, wide dark nipples aimed at him, already leaking a bead at each tip. She climbed onto the lounger and straddled his thighs, and the weight of her settled across him, belly pressed to his stomach, hot and round between them.
"Hands on it," she ordered. He put both palms on her belly and felt the baby press back, a hard little limb rolling under his hand, and Alexa closed her eyes for a second at the contact. "There. It knows you."
She reached down, took him in her fingers, and seated him. The slide in was slow and tight and slick, six months of her body changing everything about the fit, and she gasped once, low, then grinned down at him with her teeth.
"Tighter than last time," she said. "Everything's crowded in there. You'll have to be patient with me."
"Take your time," Jordan said. His hands moved from her belly to her hips.
"I don't want time." She braced on the lounger back and started to ride, long slow strokes that dragged her whole body over him, her belly sliding against his stomach with each pass, slick with sweat and the faint sweet smell of her milk. Her breasts swung heavy above him and dripped, one thin white line running down from the left nipple onto his chest. One of the cousins, out on her towel, made an envious noise.
"Focus on your own finish," Alexa said without looking around. Then to Jordan, faster now, breath going ragged: "Deeper. I want to feel the head of you on the cervix I'm about to seal up. One last time, boy. Give it to me deep."
He gripped her hips and drove up into her, and the lounger creaked under both their weights, and she threw her head back and let out a sound that carried across the whole quiet deck. Thirteen women watched their son's cock disappear into the veterinarian over and over, and Katherine sipped her tea and smiled like a queen at a coronation.
"There's my girl," Katherine said. "Take your last one."
Alexa dropped her weight down hard, ground herself against the root of him, and came with a shudder that ran from her shoulders down into her clenched belly, milking him in long pulls. He held it as long as he could, hands shaking on her hips, until she breathed "now" against his jaw, and then he let go and spilled inside her, thick and deep, his hips jerking up off the cushion while she rode every pulse down.
When it was over she stayed seated on him, full and dripping, and pressed his hand back to her belly.
"Count it," she said. "Twelve left. I hope you stretched first."