An Act of Persuasion - By Stephanie Doyle Page 0,93

then those names would have been used. All Mark had to do was find the admittance of a non-insured pregnant woman on the particular day and year of Anna’s birth. How many could there be?

“Can I ask how recently this was?”

“Recently? No, this didn’t happen recently. I would have recalled immediately. Trust me when I tell you we don’t get investigators down here every day asking about falsified birth certificates. No, this would have been maybe...a few years ago. But I want to say the circumstances were the same. He was an investigator of sorts and was trying to find some girl’s parents.”

Mark nodded. Of course he was. He was Ben.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“RIGHT THERE. OH, YEAH. A little harder. No, no, too hard. Oh, yes. Oh, that’s good.”

Ben closed his eyes and tried not to listen to the torture that was the sounds Anna made as he rubbed her back. After her thirty-fourth week of pregnancy they had officially crossed the sex-is-no-longer-fun threshold. Her breasts were too tight and achy, her feet were too swollen and he hadn’t been able to find a right angle to make her come during intercourse.

He had resorted to using his fingers or his mouth to pleasure her. And while he enjoyed it, he’d learned it didn’t give her as intense an orgasm as when he was fully inside of her.

Eventually even those tactics had stopped working and he knew she’d been trying to enjoy the sex for his sake.

The motivation was sweet in a way. But a part of him wondered why she simply hadn’t told him to stop. Anna wasn’t demure about stating her demands. Hell, in the beginning of their relationship she’d been very clear about saying no to sex until she was ready. So to merely lay back and let him have his way, even though she wasn’t getting as much from the experience as he was, really bothered him. She might have continued the ruse, but he’d put an end to it and announced that they were done until after the baby was born.

This was just one of a host of things he didn’t understand about her lately. For the life of him he couldn’t get her to agree to let him move in with her permanently. He’d managed to sneak in much of his closet, his bathroom stuff, his favorite pillow and several of his books that he’d mingled with hers.

He wondered if she was waiting until they had reached this point where sex could no longer be the glue that held them together. Maybe she thought without the sex he’d grow bored and wouldn’t be as interested in staying over every night. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. In the past two weeks since they had called a halt to their sexual activity, Ben was entirely content to lie down with her at night and rub her back or her shoulders. Anything to bring her a little comfort in a body that was no longer comfortable.

In fact, he loved doing that for her. He just hated the erection he got thanks to the sounds she made—relief was a long way off. Another four weeks or so of pregnancy then another six weeks of healing time—he had already asked the doctor—then the decision to resume sexual activity would be left up to her.

Of course they would have the baby to consider then. They would be up doing feedings. Ben certainly didn’t plan for her to take on all the work. The breast pump he’d purchased would allow her to store her milk so they could divide the night feedings.

Still, he’d heard about the perils of sex after the baby from some of the fathers in the Lamaze class they attended. Fathers who were on their second and third child. Some stories he’d heard referenced months...and months before being invited anywhere near their wives. Those men had appeared very stressed-out to Ben.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

Easing off her side, she rolled toward him. He made room for what they had recently nicknamed The Great Beast—her stomach and their child.

She smiled serenely. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You want me to do your feet?”

“Nah, I’m good. I’m tired. Even sleep is getting hard for me. I can’t seem to get comfortable in any position and then as soon as I do The Great Beast goes ballistic on me.”

“You know we’re going to have to stop calling it that. What if it can hear us and develops a complex? Because it can hear. It says