The Rocker Who Shatters Me

  Devlin snorted. “Yeah, kid. That was the plan all along.”

  Devlin

  When the doctor came into the exam room, I was pins and needles. What if there was something wrong with the baby? What if Natalie’s blood pressure issue was something we needed to worry about? What if…?

  All my fears were laid to rest as soon as the doctor started his exam. He measured her stomach, which was still flat except for the tiniest of baby bumps trying to peek out. Then he put this little monitor on her stomach and the most amazing sound filled the room.

  When Tawny had been pregnant with Harris, I’d never gotten to do this. Never gone to doctors’ appointments with her, never heard my son’s heartbeat or watched him move around on a screen when the doctor did an ultrasound. I hadn’t even known I was going to be a father during that time.

  Experiencing all this with Natalie, while my son sat in a chair and witnessed it all too, was probably the best moment in my life up to that point in time. Dr. Rashid asked Natalie a few questions and then advised her to try and keep her stress level down for the next six months. When the tour was over she would need to pick an obstetrician and keep regular appointments with him. While her blood pressure wasn’t something he was overly worried about at the moment, it could be an issue later on in the pregnancy.

  She nodded and told him she understood, but I was the one that assured him that she would be getting the best care possible. She wasn’t going back to fucking New York. Emmie would have to find herself another assistant to deal with her East Coast shit, because Natalie was going to stay in California with Harris and me from now on.

  When the doctor was finished, we went back out into the waiting room where Axton and Dallas were already sitting. Lana was supposed to have an ultrasound so she and Drake were going to take a little longer.

  Harris went back to listening to music and playing on his phone while I sat with Natalie on my lap beside Axton. My bandmate gave me a grin as he glanced from me to Natalie and back again. “So, it looks like December is a good month to have kids in this family.”

  I snorted. “Looks like it’s a lucky month for us, bro.” Since Natalie and Dallas were both due in December, I would say it was pretty fucking lucky.

  “What did the doctor say about your iron level, Dallas?” Natalie asked. “Is it something to worry about with the way you’ve been craving those crazy ass things lately?” Nat had told me Dallas feared it might be a condition known as pica making her crave not only salty foods, but some pretty bizarre things in the last few weeks. Like laundry detergent. Nasty. Of course she hadn’t actually ingested it, but she’d been complaining about wanting it. A lot.

  “Dr. Rashid said that my hemoglobin level was perfect. He thinks that my cravings are just that—cravings. And the laundry detergent thing was just a part of me that wanted to start nesting.” Her eyes narrowed on Natalie. “I should have known that you were pregnant. No wonder you’ve been acting so weird. How is everything going?”

  While the two chicks talked about their pregnancies, I leaned my head back and watched the girl on my lap closer. The worry that had left her forehead tight for the last few hours was gone now that she knew that the baby was okay, and she didn’t have to hide her pregnancy any longer.

  Now she seemed to glow and I guessed it was what pregnant chicks were supposed to do. I liked it. The glow made her natural beauty shine brighter and I had to admit that it made me hard just to look at her like this. Unable to stop myself, I pulled her head down to kiss her, stopping her midsentence.

  Her arms wrapped around my neck without so much as a protest for interrupting her conversation. “I love you,” she said with a small sigh before taking control and deepening the kiss, but only for a moment. Then she was pulling away and resting her head on my chest before continuing the conversation she was having with Dallas.

  Twenty minutes later, Lana came out with Drake carrying a sleeping Neveah in his arms. If I’d been expecting my future brother-in-law to shoot me a death glare for knocking up his sister, I was completely wrong. He saw me holding Natalie and stopped, taking the two of us in for a long moment before finally grinning and shaking his head.

  “Arella has my nose,” Lana informed everyone as she waved the pictures in her hand at us. She’d had a 3D ultrasound done and when I finally got to look at the glossy pictures, I had to agree that baby Arella was going to look as much like her mother as Neveah did.

  Seeing the ultrasound and then looking at Neveah made me wonder what our baby would look like. Would she look just like Natalie? Or was it a boy and would look like Harris and me? Whose eyes would the baby have? They were going to be blue, there was no getting around that, but would they be mixed with gray like Natalie’s or green like mine?

  Excitement bubbled inside of me and I couldn’t wait to see our baby in December. Couldn’t wait to meet him or her and complete our own little family.

  Natalie

  The star wasn’t straight.

  I stood in front of our Christmas tree, turning my head left and right to see what way I needed to adjust it so that it would sit perfectly on top of our first family Christmas tree.

  “I like it like that,” Harris grumbled from his seat on the floor in front of the sectional. He was supposed to be helping me put this tree up so that it would be ready by the time his dad got back. For the most part he’d been a great help, but he was getting bored with it now and was more interested in his phone.

  Or more to the point he was interested in if Lucy had texted him back. Normally she was blowing up his phone a hundred times a day, but in the last few weeks she had been avoiding him. I had my suspicions why, but I wasn’t about to tell them to my poor unsuspecting stepson.

  Now that Lucy was getting older and had officially hit puberty, I’d been noticing that the way she looked at Harris was a hell of a lot different than the way she used to look at him. She was nearly twelve and I could remember the confusion I’d felt at that age about how boys made me feel.

  It was killing Harris though. He was so used to having her to talk to at any time of the day that her avoidance was driving him up the wall.

  Finally I stepped back onto the small stepladder and twisted the star to the left. It was nice to be off bed rest and I could do more things around the house. The last two months of my pregnancy had in no way been fun since my blood pressure had been off-the-scales high. It had been so bad that at thirty-seven weeks my doctor had induced me because he’d thought it was the safest course of action for both the baby and me. But in the weeks leading up to the baby’s birth, I’d been useless around the house.

  When I finished, the star was even more crooked than it had been just a moment ago. Muttering a curse, I decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to pick up the whole fucking thing and toss it out our living room window into the Pacific Ocean that acted as our back yard.

  “Good thing we don’t have to worry about your blood pressure going up anymore,” Harris muttered without taking his eyes off his phone.

  I stepped off the ladder and shot him a death glare. “You’d better be glad I’m not one of those stepmothers that makes her stepchildren’s lives hell. I would send you off to some military boarding school and forget all about you.”

  “You would miss me at three thirty every morning,” he assured me with a smirk, not in the least scared that I might suddenly become that kind of stepmother to him.

  Of course he was right about the whole three thirty thing, too. Ever since the baby and I had come home from the hospital, Harris had been helping out even more than I would have ever expected him to. When his little sister woke up crying for a bottle, he was there, ready to give her a bottle of the breast milk that I pumped every day so that he and his dad could get to experience feeding her.

  The first time I’d gotten to sleep through the night just two weeks ago, I’d woken up scared that something had happened to my newborn daughter since she hadn’t made a sound during the night. When I’d gone into t
he nursery to find her asleep on Harris’s chest and an empty bottle sitting on the little table beside the rocker, I’d had my first postpartum meltdown.

  I’d gone back to bed, sobbing so hard that my entire body had hurt. I’d woken Devlin up from my crying and he’d been at a loss at how to deal with me. I hadn’t been sad or hurting, just so overwhelmingly happy at seeing my stepson taking such gentle care of his tiny baby sister. After I’d calmed down enough that I was able to explain that to Dev, he’d rocked me to sleep in his arms. How could anyone be as happy as I was now and not implode from it?

  It was hard for me to remember that at this time the year before, I’d been miserable and hating Devlin Cutter. Now I was so happy I couldn’t even remember how much pain I’d been in after finding out about that stupid bet.

  “What time is it?” I asked as I started cleaning up the storage boxes all of our ornaments had been in, plus the cardboard boxes that had held the new ones I’d ordered for this year.

  “Just after six.” Harris stood and started helping me. When I would have lifted a particularly heavy box, he pushed me aside. “You look dusty. Go shower. Dad won’t be home for at least another forty-five minutes. I’ll clean up and listen for the baby.”

  “You’re a good stepson. I think I might keep you around after all.” I hugged him tight before rushing upstairs to shower.

  Upstairs, I showered and washed my hair. It had grown out faster than I ever would have expected thanks to the prenatal vitamins that I’d taken during my pregnancy. It was now down to the tops of my shoulders and I was determined to never cut it off again.

  Once I was clean, I got out and dried off then stepped into the red dress that I’d laid out on the bed earlier in the day. Tonight we were going to a Christmas party over at Emmie and Nik’s house. All of the Demons were going to be there since Drake and Lana were spending the holidays on the West Coast this year. All of the OtherWorld guys were also joining us as well as a few of the Alchemy and Trance band members. Even Linc was staying a few weeks with Harper and Shane.

  It was going to be a good night, and I was looking forward to seeing everyone. After the shit that this past year had thrown at some of my family, we needed this night to help us all realize that we were lucky to have each other.

  I was just putting the finishing touches on my makeup when I heard Devlin’s deep voice outside our bedroom door. I hurried to put on my lipstick and then almost sprinted across the room to open the door and throw myself into his arms. Those arms wrapped around me and lifted me off the floor, already kissing the lipstick off my lips before I could even tell him hi.

  For the last six weeks, OtherWorld had been in the studio recording a new album. They had some amazing songs that they had all had a hand in creating. Thankfully, however, we wouldn’t be going out on tour anytime soon with the new material. After the summer tour, I was pretty sure that we were all toured-out for at least a year.

  My back hit the mattress and I had enough sense not to start tearing his clothes off. I still had a few more weeks to go before getting the all clear from my doctor. It wasn’t easy to sexually deprive myself of my delicious husband, but it was something we both had to deal with for a little longer. As soon as the doctor gave me the green light though, I was going to jump his bones and we weren’t coming up for air until I was unable to walk straight.

  With a groan, Devlin rolled onto his back, taking me with him. I fell against his chest, struggling to get my breathing under control. “You’re killing me, Nat.”

  I lifted my head only to burst out giggling when I saw that my lipstick was all over his face. “That’s a good color on you.”

  “I don’t know why you wear that shit anyway,” he complained. “You don’t need it.”

  “I wear it to feel pretty.” I kissed him again before climbing off of him and going into the bathroom to fix my makeup. When I saw just how much damage I’d caused from our kisses, I sighed and reached for a makeup remover cloth. I’d have to start all over again.

  “The tree looks beautiful,” Devlin murmured as he came into the bathroom. He pulled his shirt over his head before reaching into the shower and turning on the water. When he turned back, his eyes were bright with a happiness that had been there for the majority of the last six months. There had been a hiccup here and there that had made that brightness dim along the way, of course, but for the majority we had been blessed.

  I tossed the makeup remover wipe in the trash and turned to ogle him as he started to unfasten his jeans. “Harris helped,” I told him.

  “What about Trinity?” Devlin asked, his eyes lighting up with the thoughts of our daughter. “Did she help?”

  From the day we found out we were having a daughter, Devlin started freaking out. I’d wondered if all dads flipped their lid at the idea of having a little girl to watch over for the rest of their lives, or if it was just my crazy husband. Did men really threaten to put up bars on the nursery’s windows? Lana and Emmie had assured me that it was a dad thing. I was just glad there had been no talk of buying a gun, although he and Harris had been looking at scary knives for a few days after we’d first found out that the baby was a girl.

  “She spit up on the stockings. Does that count?” I grinned.

  “It counts,” he assured me and then my mind went completely blank as I watched his jeans fall to his feet and he stepped out of them.

  Fuck, why did he have to be so sexy when I couldn’t even have a little taste? “You’re an evil man, Devlin Cutter.”

  He rubbed his hand over his bare chest as he walked toward me in nothing but his boxers. They didn’t hide the impressive outline of his hard cock. “I’ve been thinking…”

  “Yeah?” I murmured, licking my lips as I watched him come closer. Would it be so bad if I dropped to my knees and started sucking his cock? I’d been dying to do that but he’d stopped me every time I’d tried. If I couldn’t have it then he didn’t want it either. We would both have to wait until the doctor lifted the sex ban.

  “What if we went away for a few days once the doctor has given the all clear?”

  I lifted a brow. That question had really not been what I’d been expecting him to say. “Define ‘we’, Dev.”

  “Me and you. Just for two nights at the most.” I opened my mouth to answer him but he rushed forward, thinking that I was going to automatically veto his plans. “I know that you don’t like to leave Trinity, but I want to take you on a mini honeymoon since we weren’t able to have one after we first got married.”

  My mouth snapped closed and I lowered my eye so that he wouldn’t see the emotions swirling around in them. My mother hadn’t wanted me to marry Devlin. Even after telling her that I was pregnant she hadn’t accepted that he was going to be a huge part of my future whether I married him or not. When she’d point blank told me she wouldn’t come to any wedding I happened to have, I’d lost it and told her to go fuck herself. If she couldn’t accept Devlin then I didn’t want anything to do with her and her judgmental, uppity bitchiness.

  So I’d convinced Devlin to elope with me. We’d flown straight to Vegas after the last concert on tour and gotten married at the same little church that Jesse and Layla had gotten married in. It had just been him and me. No other family. Not even Harris or Jenna. I’d been happy with the way we’d gotten married and that we didn’t get to have a honeymoon because of all the shit that happened around the same time didn’t bother me.

  All that had mattered was that I’d been Mrs. Devlin Cutter and I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.

  Devlin caught hold of my chin and lifted my face so that I had no choice but to meet his gaze. “I only want two days with just me and you, Nat. Will you give me that?”

  Blinking back tears, I nodded. “Yes, of course. Thank you for wanting to give me a honeymoon, babe.” I lifted onto my tiptoes to brush my mouth with his. “But what are we going to do with Trinity?”

  “Marissa and Wroth will stay here at the house and watch he
r. It will be good practice for them since they are talking about finally using Marissa’s eggs that she had frozen.” His big hands stroked up and down my spine through my red dress, making my entire body hum with sexual energy that had nowhere to go anytime soon.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked, rubbing myself against him like a cat wanting to be petted.

  He kissed the tip of my nose. “Nowhere too far away. I don’t want to waste our two nights away from Trinity by having to travel. I was thinking we could go upstate and rent a cabin. We can cuddle up in front of a fireplace and drink hot cocoa. Maybe roast a few marshmallows. Or make love on some cheesy bearskin rug.” He winked and stepped back. “Sound like a good idea?”

  “I love you,” was my only answer as I followed after him and he stepped into the now steaming shower. The only thing keeping me from immediately following him inside the stall was the fact that I was wearing the only dress I had for tonight’s Christmas party. I bit my lip, wondering if I wanted to risk arriving obscenely late if I took off my dress and climbed in with my husband to wash his back.

  Of course that meant that I would have to redo my hair and everything else…

  The decision was taken out of my hands when I heard Harris come into the bedroom with a crying Trinity in his arms. “She’s hungry, Nat,” he called out and I decided to forgo reapplying my makeup so that I could hurry and feed her. I still needed to get her ready once she’d been feed.

  It was over an hour later before we pulled into the driveway of Emmie’s six-bedroom beach house. We weren’t the last to arrive but we definitely weren’t the first. Devlin helped me out of the front passenger seat while Harris took his sister and her car seat from the back of our tank-like SUV.

  As we stood on the doorstep, I didn’t immediately reach out to ring the doorbell. Instead I took a moment to take in my small, perfect family. My husband in his ripped jeans and dress shirt and sports jacket, with his long hair pulled back into a man bun was probably the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.