Echo of Redemption (13 page)

She hands him the tip to an ultrasound wand.

“What is that?” I ask nervously.
I didn’t expect this
.

“An internal ultrasound wand. Just relax.”

The cold plastic slides in and I squeeze Garrett’s hand harder.

The nurse turns the lights off and a monitor screen on. Waves of light and dark create shapes and patterns on the screen. I don’t have to be trained to know an arm and a hand when I see one.
Oh God
.
The images squiggle out of focus as he moves the wand.
Go back, go back!
The image swirls back into focus.

“I’m really pregnant.”

The doctor glances at me. “I wasn’t aware there was any doubt.”

I look at Garrett. He is transfixed by the screen. I look again as the doctor starts drawing on the screen. The nurse measures between the lines. He points to a flickering on the screen. He points again.

“Surprisingly, you are quite a bit farther along than I expected.” He runs his hand over my stomach. “You’re barely showing.”

Usually I am quite sunken between my pelvic bones. Not anymore. It seems since the inverted bondage session my gut is permanently pooched out.

He withdraws the wand. “The other one, please.”

The nurse wheels over a second machine.

Garrett asks, “Is there a problem?”

“Everything is fine.”

He spreads gel over my stomach. The cold surface of the transducer slides easily over my skin. Shapes appear and define. Three dimensional shapes. I gasp when a face appears. “Fuck!”

Garrett squeezes my hand harder than I am squeezing his.

The shapes go in and out of focus. The doctor smiles and announces dramatically, “
Voila
.
”

There is no doubt why he is excited. The monitor screen frames two babies, picture perfect images. Two faces, four arms. It looks as if one of the babies is rubbing its eyes and the other could very well be sucking its thumb. “Do you want to know their sex?”

“Isn’t it too early for that?” I panic, my knees are shaking.

“Not at all. You’re eighteen weeks.” He waits for a response.

Garrett nudges me. “Do you want to know the sex, sweetheart?”

I look at the monitor and jerk my feet out of the stirrups to sit up. I start to hyperventilate.

“Could you give us a moment alone?” Garrett asks, and both the doctor and nurse leave the room.

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh—”

Garrett pulls my face into his chest. “It’s okay.”

“I was twenty weeks before. Now—” Hyperventilating has escalated into full-fledged hysteria. “I didn’t know for certain but I felt like she was a girl. I killed her, and she had a face and fingers and toes.”

Garrett kisses my cheek, smearing my tears. “You can’t go back and change the past, Celia. You can only move forward. What do you want for your future?”

I am panting hard when I look into his face, but I am certain when I answer, “I want to be a mother. I might be a really, really sucky mother but I want the chance.”

He pulls me into his arms and hugs me. The cynical thought goes through my mind that he arranged for me to have a three-dimensional ultrasound on purpose. He wanted me to see exactly what I would be giving up. I push the thought away. What if he did? Everything is going to change in his world too because one thing is definite, we can’t go back to the way it was now.

A tap sounds at the door. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” Garrett answers loudly.

“I want to know,” I whisper.

Garrett opens the door to face the doctor. “We’re ready to know the sex now.”

“All right.” He comes into the room and sits down. He runs the transducer over my stomach again. Pointing out body parts as he finds them. Knees, toes. Penises.

“Boys,” I whisper.
Thomas’s sons.
I look at Garrett and his face is filled with an awe and wonderment that makes me start crying all over again.
Can they be Garrett’s sons, too?

The doctor wipes most of the gel off my stomach and scoots back. “You can sit up now. Why did you wait so long to see me?”

“I didn’t know I was pregnant.”

Both he and Garrett look skeptical.

“I rarely have periods on a normal schedule. How was I supposed to know?” I sit on the edge of the table, feeling exposed and accused. “Is the baby—” I correct myself “Are the babies okay?”

“You are going to have to add more calories to your diet. Your babies are substantially undersized for the amount of development I am seeing.” His voice is concerned. “Have you experienced excessive morning sickness? I can prescribe something to settle the nausea so that your meals stay down.”

“No morning sickness,” I assure him. “I’ve just always been very, very thin, and when I’m stressed…I don’t eat.”

“Are you stressed?”

Am I?
I try to not think about Thomas’s brother’s bloody body on my dining room table or the fact that I just wrote an almost million dollar check under an assumed identity. That hasn’t been my excuse for the last four months. “Not especially.”

“She works very long hours,” Garrett explains. “She’s the owner and CEO of
The Darkness
. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? When she isn’t working there, she helps me at my club. I’m afraid neither of us have regimented meal times.”

He pushes his plastic rim glasses higher on his nose. “Try fewer hours and regular meals. I suggest six to eight small meals a day. I’m going to prescribe a prenatal vitamin. I want to see you every two weeks.”

“That seems excessive. Do you suspect a problem?” Garrett asks, seeming a little more abrupt than I would suspect. I wonder if he is speaking of time between visits or the sheer volume of meals, because there is no way I’ll be able to eat that much food.

“Your partner and babies are undernourished. Until I see some improvement in their condition, I want to keep a close watch. I would also advise you to refrain from impact play for the duration of the pregnancy.”

Garrett flushes scarlet, and I am not certain if it is anger or embarrassment.

“I understand that you are both quite renowned in the BDSM community.”

“I do not starve or abuse my partner.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you do, but as her doctor I am concerned about the bruises on her upper thighs and want to caution you on areas which could pose health risks to the developing fetuses. If I may?”

The tension level goes up ten-fold in the room.

The doctor tells Garrett, “I respect the work you’ve done as an educator in the community, and I would just like to use this opportunity to help get my message out as far as what is and isn’t safe play when your partner is pregnant. By having this discussion with you now, in these early stages, you can lead by example.”

“Yes, I can see where that would benefit the community,” Garrett answers and just like that the tension deflates.

The doctor is very thorough in what we should and should not do and I am left believing that the missionary position might be our only option.

As we leave, the parking lot becomes a battlefield when Garrett accuses, “You saw him today. Have there been other times?”

I don’t answer and by the time I reach the car, my hand is shaking so hard, I drop the keys.

Garrett picks them up and holds them ransom until we have the discussion he wants to have. “I have to be able to believe you when you go out the door!”

“Can we please talk about this tomorrow?”

“So you can have time to coordinate your lies with Thomas’s?”

“No!” I wrap myself in my arms. I knew this fight was coming, I was just hoping we could have a ceasefire for a little longer. “I do not want to discuss this now.”

He stares at me and I give him credit for not throttling me. If I were him I’d have shaken me senseless by now.

“I lied. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

The sun is setting and the sky is absolutely beautiful. Shades of orange and pink and purple swirl into and out of each other. I drop my head back and just take it all in. Delaying the inevitable? You betcha. I let out a deep sigh and look bravely into his face again. He looks exhausted and worried.

“Beautiful,” he says.

“The sunset is beautiful tonight.” I’m surprised by the reprieve. “I wish we were sitting on the beach so we could really enjoy it.”

He steps closer and takes me into his arms. “Not the sky.
You
.
I don’t always tell you how absolutely beautiful you are and I should.”

I let him kiss me. Thankful for the moment. I could wish I hadn’t met with Thomas, that I hadn’t allowed myself to be put into the position of lying to Garrett yet again, but as long as I wear two collars I am accountable to both of them. That’s a problem. I kiss Garrett back with everything I have. I want to forget for a second that I am torn between the two of them. I just want to have one man at a time in my head and heart.

“This isn’t the kiss and make up part, if that’s what you are thinking,” he warns.

“It could be.”

He lets out a shaky breath, and I realize it has been an equally emotional day for him. From his point of view, he didn’t know where I was or who I was with. I might have been with Thomas or I might have come face to face with the man who shot up his brother.

I take his face in my hands. “I am so sorry I worried you. I do love you.”

He nods and the lines of exhaustion around his eyes deepen. “Let’s go home.”

“I would love that.”

He pulls me to his car. “I’ll send someone for yours. I’ll drive.”

Once I’m buckled in, I take the ultrasound photo out of my purse and just look at it. “They seem so real.”

“They are real.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes. Three dimensional ultrasound is extraordinary.” He leans over and kisses me. “When did you decide to not abort?”

“When I felt them move the other day. I know you don’t believe me, but I felt them. From that moment I was lying to you and myself if I thought I could go through with an abortion.”

“Knowing how far along you are, I have no doubt you felt them. I’m sorry for doubting you. I know you’re scared, but as long as you want me by your side I’m going to be right here with you.”

I pull his hand from the gearshift and kiss his knuckles. “I know. We do have to figure out this Master thing though.”

He tenses. “This. Master. Thing?”

“Yes. As in me having to obey two men. It isn’t working. I can’t keep choosing who to obey and who to disobey. It isn’t fair.”

I earn an angry glance but my hand stays holding his as he downshifts to stop at a red light. “I am your
Master
. Thomas is your—”

“Other Master,” I interrupt. “Tell me you see it any other way.”

The light turns green, but he doesn’t drive. Even after the car behind him honks and goes around us, he just keeps looking at me.
Say something!

“Master?”

He shakes his head and looks forward again without saying a word. Shifting gears, he drives.

Really? This is the way we’re handling this?
“Seriously? What is your problem? You are my Master, Thomas is my Master. Nothing at all has changed from yesterday to today.” My voice sounds pinched and frustrated…and disrespectful. What has happened that suddenly I am standing up to him? Arguing with him?

“I know. Drop it.”

“No. You’re acting like this is suddenly a problem.”

“I want to protect you. I want to help you raise these children. I want—”

“The white fucking picket fence,” I interrupt, making him glare at me in response, not because I interrupted him, but because our opinions are so far apart on this topic. “Our ménage does not fit into your suburban fantasy. I swear I feel like you are two different men sometimes.”

We arrive at Lewd Larry’s and after parking he turns to me and demands, “Do you really think it’s suitable to raise children in my bachelor pad in the sky?”

Is that a rhetorical question, because I don’t have an answer for that. I’m still struggling with the thought that I am pregnant. I am going to have a baby.
Babies
.

There is no
suitable
in this situation. I am Kitten, Goddammit. Kitten. Not mommy material.

Defeated, I follow Master inside and discard clothing as I walk. I am shedding the layers that define me as Celia Brentwood. Jacket. Blouse. Skirt. Shoes. I leave a littered trail not caring which server has to pick up after me. By the time I drop to my knees, I am Kitten. Sex pet extraordinaire. Owned. Collared. And for a little while I do not have to think about anything.

“Do not seek the because—in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.”

Anais Nin

Garrett

The day’s special arrives, crab cakes with a succulent orange and brandy sauce, fried green tomatoes, and salade du jour. It is Kitten’s favorite, and I am quite surprised when she shakes her head the moment it is delivered.

“Eat.”

“I told you I’m not hungry.”

Hearing her voice here in The Oasis is unexpected. A single meow, a double meow, but not words, not here. It is one thing for her to violate protocol at home and quite another… Something rips inside of me and I am going back on my promise of no punishment in her immediate future. With all that is available to me, I can think of only one safe-for-her-condition solution. A hand signal brings security tableside. “Isolation Sphere.”

She gasps, meeting my gaze for the first time. It is too late to change the outcome. She can cool her heels until she is willing to obey me.

As she is led to the sphere she doesn’t struggle like she normally would, no hissing or baring teeth, no feline antics at all, and that worries me. Eddie, one of my men, positions her in the center of the sphere, secures her ankles and wrists in cuffs, leaving her spread eagle, arms over her head. She looks defiant as a ball gag is shoved into place. Once she would have cried, but that time seems an eternity ago.

As the sphere rises through the levels of the building, interior sphere lights come on so that all Kitten sees is herself, naked, bound, gagged. As it descends, the interior lights go down so that she can see her audience. For a while she is the main event.