Love of a Shifter: A Paranormal Romance Bundle

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4The first day was nothing more than raw s*x. He wore only pajama pants that they called for and she wore a silk see-through robe as they ordered food from the chefs who waited on her beck and call in between periods of ravaging each other. She counted five times in the first day and it was more s*x than she had ever had in a single day, something that was so far beyond her comprehension that when he said that he felt like he was going to die, they decided to call it quits for a while. They spent the rest of the night talking and laughing, getting to know each other better.

Denton wanted to know everything about her. He said that he wanted to know every detail about the woman who was going to carry and be part of his child. She liked the fact that this wasn’t some callous, cold transaction to him. She liked that there was more to him than just that. But more so, she found herself liking Denton more than she had originally thought she would and truth be told, he was liking her more than either of them expected him to.

He was a scholar and an academic, the kind of person who spent more time in libraries than he did anywhere else. She found him brilliant and insightful on everything that he touched. She learned that the children of Shifters are usually gifted in some way, mostly physically, but that he had always been more of a black sheep, due to his inclinations toward the academic.

She didn’t understand why he would sound slightly ashamed of this, but he did. It was an odd thing looking at him and knowing that he had written papers that had blown away the minds of men at Harvard, Yale, and Oxford at a young age. He talked about how books were a sanctuary and a map to the world. She had once thought about knowledge like that, but she had grown in other areas. She was fascinated with social, physical, s****l, and skillful areas of life as well.

Denton only wished that he had more experience in those areas.

“Well, I’ll show you,” she said to him with a soft grin.

“I think you’re the most fascinating person I’ve ever met,” Denton said, laughing as he shook his head in disbelief.

“Then you must not meet a lot of people,” she said to him with disappointment and shame in her voice. She was a big fish in a little pond and she had realized on this trip that the world was an ocean and that there wasn’t a whole lot that she had in her life that was impressive. It was hard to realize this, but when he answered that statement with a kiss, she felt like she was a princess in a tower and that she had met her knight in shining armor.

When Denton wasn’t with her, it was lonely, but he spent as much time as possible with her. For the following two weeks, there was nothing but s*x, Denton, and waiting. The two weeks were, oddly enough, the happiest two weeks of her life. The freedom of doing whatever it was she wanted inside the single floor that she was allowed on, Tamara felt like she was the queen of some castle far up in the clouds above everything else.

She worked out whenever she wanted, ate whatever she wanted, and she read from an enormous library of books that she only had to ask for and it was delivered to her. She could watch television or movies that she was interested in or that were in the theaters. It was all fantastic and when she wasn’t alone, she had the most handsome man in the world who was just as eager to rip her clothes off as she was interested in ripping off his.

It only took a day to ask for lingerie and a lot of it. She wanted to be exciting and sexy for him and as they played with and experimented with all the different options that they had available for each other, she was delighted to find that she wasn’t even getting tired or bored with him. She could live up here, above the city forever, f*****g the most handsome man she had ever met until the day she died.

But, there were other moments to. She met with a financial advisor who invested her five million for her, assuring her that he was going to be putting it to good work for her while she was busy with the pregnancy. She was glad to hear it and all of it sounded very complicated to her, stuff that was beyond her pay grade. She had never been one for financial investments or anything along those lines. That wasn’t her area of academic specialty.

When the morning finally came for the results of her pregnancy test, Tamara felt like she was going to pass out. It was the earliest that they could detect whether or not she was pregnant and that made her nervous. What if it didn’t work? What if he didn’t get her pregnant and they had passed the point of his fertility and he was no longer able to reproduce? The thought horrified her and when she was in the examination room, she suddenly had a sinking feeling.

How many of these people were Shifters as well? It was strange that she would suddenly feel like she were surrounded by sinister people and entities, but Mr. Garrett’s words were starting to get to her. They were so absorbed with secrecy and hidden power, then why would they hire strangers to do this kind of work? How many of these Shifters were bred so that they could take care of things like the medical breeding of their species? She shivered at the thought of it and tried to keep her terror to herself. She didn’t want to look like a coward or give away the fact that she was starting to have sinister thoughts about her captors and caretakers in her gilded prison.

After they were done with the test, she was taken back to her floor and the suite that was waiting for her. She sat in her room nervously, wishing that Denton was here with her and that she could hold him, hug him, and listen to him tell her that it was going to be all right. She needed that comfort and she needed that right now and it was all that she could think about in her loneliness.

It was the kind of choking loneliness that she had never truly experienced until this moment in her life. Tamara had always prided herself on being a person who could stand alone and who could do things on her own. She never wanted help and she never wanted a hand extended to her and offering her something that she didn’t need. She had this all under control.

Except she didn’t and right now she knew that more than ever. The thought that she was going to have to have s*x with someone for this job had disgusted and horrified her at first, but she had come to have serious and true feelings for Denton and that was unexpected as well. The thought of letting him down was horrifying. If she didn’t have a child with him, then she was going to force him into a life of loneliness as well, where he would never have a child and he would never have that hope and happiness that he was definitely searching for with a child.

He was one of those kinds of men who was clearly created for this kind of a situation, as far as parenting was concerned. He was the kind of man who simply had the demeanor and the drive to be a father, something that so many people lacked and so many people didn’t know what to do with. It was heartbreaking to think that she might be the one who made him not have that.

He hadn’t wanted to scare her with his desire to have children and he had definitely muted it a little, but it was breaking through and shining brighter with every passing day. The fact that he liked her so much was only making that more and more obvious to her now. God, she had to be pregnant. She had to be.

She just had to be.

When there was a knock at the door, she practically jumped out of her skin and all the fear, anxiety, and terror inside of her came boiling to the surface. She was trembling, but she refused to let it show. She walked toward the door and felt her hands shaking, clamping them down on her leg, she opened the door and tried her hardest not to look pale and terrified like she was genuinely feeling. Gripping the handle and opening it, she looked at the woman standing on the other side.

She was a beautiful looking woman who had her hair pulled back in a ponytail and bright eyes that drew all the attention to them. Her face was soft and sweet, but it was a serious face that had a polite mask. She wasn’t the kind of person who looked like she was going to hug you if there was bad news, but she wouldn’t deliver it like a robot. That made Tamara more nervous as she stepped aside and let the woman enter the room.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked her, the white lab coat clinging to her in an unnatural way. There was no ruffle, no blowing of fabric. It wasn’t what Tamara had come to expect from the flurry of lab coats she’d seen on television.

“I’m doing well,” Tamara said, shrugging nervously. “I’m starting to feel a little trapped in here.”

“I’m sure that it’ll go away in time,” the woman said with a brimming smile on her face. Tamara felt like there was something inside of her snapping and breaking. Maybe it was the doubt and the fear that she wouldn’t actually be the mother of Denton’s child, but when the woman spoke, Tamara felt something very close to euphoria spreading out through her like ice cracking on the surface of a forgotten lake.

“I’m pregnant?” Tamara asked her, her voice quivering and weak.

“It seems so,” the woman said with a pleasing smile on her lips that wasn’t too ambitious or too genuine. She was a professional and this was her job. Clearly she had told a lot of people in her line of work that they were pregnant. This was just every day work for her. There was nothing special about it at all to her.

“This is where the hard part comes in. You’re going to be here on this floor for the next nine months. There are many reactions people have to pregnancy, but we’re going to keep you on a fairly strict routine. We are going to encourage you to exercise and to maintain a healthy lifestyle while pregnant. Is that a problem?”

“No,” Tamara shook her head. “I’d like to maintain my body to the best of my ability.”

“I understand completely,” the doctor said nodding comprehensively. “We’ll monitor you so you don’t stress your body out too much and cause any kind of trouble for yourself. I’m excited for you. Welcome to the ranks of the pregnant, Ms. Ralphson.”