Page 16 of Highland Heat

I gasped when the noise first hit my ears.

“Holy shit,” he said, and his hand slipped.

It took him a little bit to get the heartbeat a second time. He squeaked when he found it and held perfectly still.

“That’s it,” he said. “We’re going to have a baby.”

“We are,” I said.

“I love you so much,” he said. “This is… amazing.”

“I love you, too. I bet you never thought you’d get yourself a family when you went to that livestock auction.”

“No, definitely not. But I’m very glad I did. It was the bargain of the day.”

“I’m glad you think so, because they have a no-refund policy.” I pulled him down for a long kiss.

Chapter 11

Graham

The first time I saw my mate standing there naked, I thought he was the sexiest man to ever exist, and he had been. But nothing prepared me for how he was going to look pregnant. Damn, that omega was fine.

During the first part of his pregnancy, Ewan had the cutest little baby bump ever. He’d still been my sexy omega, with this tint of adorableness, and I couldn’t get enough. I kissed his belly any chance I could, constantly put my hands on his bump, talked to our little one all the time. It was the best.

And then his little bump grew to where he could no longer wear his regular clothes. And that adorable little belly got hotter. I was still talking to our little one and kissing his belly all the time, but it also had me feeling like I did that day he was in heat. I couldn’t keep my hands off him. Best of all, he didn’t want me to.

It was a good thing he was already in his second trimester by then, and the exhaustion was long gone, because neither of us was getting enough time to sleep thanks to our knotty good time.

Now we were well into the third trimester. His belly was huge. So huge that Cora questioned if we missed a twin in there because of his size. She listened for heartbeats often and only ever found one. She even borrowed an ultrasound machine, just to be sure. In the end, she determined it was his position that had him out front for all to see.

I both loved and hated how large Graham’s belly was. I adored it when we were alone. It reminded me of our love and how we were going to be a family of three soon. And of course, it still turned me on. Somehow it had regained the twinge of cuteness his initial bump had. I couldn’t get enough.

When we were out? That was a different story. I hated it, and I hated that I hated it.

I hadn’t realized it before, but I was a possessive alphahole, and when strangers reached to touch my mate’s belly, I wanted to smack their hands away. There were a few times when I nearly did.

When they squatted down to say hello to our little one, I wanted to push them over.

When they made a comment about how good my mate looked, I wanted to growl, as if I were a wolf shifter and not a farmer.

I despised this side of me but struggled to keep it at bay.

There were days my mate found it amusing that I was so jealous of random people that meant nothing to him, and then there were times like today, when I could tell he was getting annoyed. That was why I decided we were done with our baby shopping at the box store before getting through all the aisles.

As much as I wanted to do better with my possessiveness, I didn’t think I was going to be able to settle down until this little one was here.

“Let’s pay for what we have and grab something to eat.”

He looked at the cart, which was overflowing. “We need to do the thing where we whittle this down,” he reminded me.

It was part of our process. We would put everything we were interested in in our cart and then decide which things we really wanted at the end. We didn’t do this at all stores, but for baby things, it became a necessity. Baby shopping was a test of willpower. It was so easy to find the cutest onesie ever one minute in, only to go to the next aisle and realize it wasn’t that cute because this next one was the new cutest onesie ever.

“Not today. Let’s just get it all.” Our baby was going to be so spoiled. I wasn’t sure I cared. As long as we didn’t let them become the brat part of spoiled, I didn’t see why he couldn’t have the best of everything.

This was far from our first trip baby shopping, and his uncles, which was what his cousins decided they wanted to be called, had already gifted him more things than most sets of triplets would need. They were as excited as we were about the baby.

“You’re sure?”