No Turning Back (Breaking the Rules #4) - A.M. Madden Page 0,80

Everything will be fine.” His eyes drilled into mine. “Okay?”

I nodded, knowing that was his way of warning me our “being truthful no matter what pact” was effectively on hold. There was nothing I could do to change that. Just like there was nothing more I could say or do that would convince him otherwise. I knew he would react just as he had, and all I could do was keep calm while keeping him calm.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Ryder

The first thing I did after Riana informed me of her doctor’s instructions for bedrest was to hire a dog walker. There was a teenage boy a few floors down who always loved seeing Kayla in the elevator or foyer. I paid him a visit and offered a hundred bucks a week if he’d walk her during the day. That would help me not have to worry about her when I was entrenched in work. He eagerly agreed, and we decided on a twice-a-day schedule running Monday to Friday.

Since Riana already had a housekeeper who came by once a week to clean the apartment, although I hated it was paid for by Cooper and Ricky, I gave Harriett a call and asked her to come twice a week going forward. The added day was now on me, and that appeased me a bit.

It took a few hours to successfully end Riana’s concerns that came from being put on bedrest. She slept peacefully that night and every night, which was more than I could say for myself.

Granted, lack of sleep was a trend for me lately… but since Wednesday it wasn’t just work that had caused the unrest.

There wasn’t a doctor on earth who could convince me her high blood pressure was coincidental. Especially when she suppressed all her stress since finding out what Cooper had told me. I loved Riana dearly, but an actress she was not. It was when she thought I wasn’t paying attention, when I could see the evidence on her beautiful face. Specifically, the way she stared out into space, lost in thought, or the way she would forcibly shut her laptop if I walked into a room. I knew she wanted to help, trying to find anything online that would give us more information of the damages Doug had done so far.

All in all, it caused her stress… and now she was suffering because of it.

And while my heart felt heavy over her condition, my libido yearned for her more than ever. It didn’t help she made no excuse for her horniness, every damn chance she got.

Sure, my cock springing to life by merely watching her walk across the room wearing my oversize football jersey was a given for me. And sure, I was hornier from not having initiated sex since her appointment a few days ago… but this went beyond that.

I first noticed a change that my sexual draw was at an all-time high when last week I walked in on her as she showered. From the doorway, I watched her soaping her body… a normal trigger. It wasn’t her nakedness that made me want to storm in and take her. It was when she cradled her bump, one that seemed to be getting bigger with each day that went by, that some foreign energy surged through me.

I couldn’t say it was just sexual, although that was a dominating ingredient based on my hard-on. It was something more that made my desire for her different from before. Later that day, when she complained her breasts had gotten bigger, that same surge occurred. On a normal day, Riana was beautiful… Riana pregnant was captivating.

Unless it had to do with her appetite, or her clothes getting smaller, she rarely talked about being pregnant… what she felt physically, what she experienced emotionally. I suspected that she kept those changes to herself to spare me. Still, curiosity prompted me to skim that book she read daily, learning of things that were probably happening to her.

The book claimed at around eighteen weeks a mother could begin feeling her baby moving inside. Coincidentally, the day I’d ogled her in the shower had been just about that time. Was that what had her staring down at herself in awe, tenderly skimming her hands over her belly?

This had to be hard on her, carrying two babies that weren’t hers. Having a fiancé who was a detached bystander to the whole thing. It made me wonder: Was it sadness that caused her to keep things to herself