Chapter 444: All In

Chapter 444: Chapter 444: All In

Spring arrived in Deira with rain, flowering gardens, and Mezos finally getting married before anyone could turn his wedding back into an international summit.

Rubis had won.

The ceremony lasted less than half an hour beneath the eastern pergola, with fewer than forty guests, fresh greenery climbing the pale stone, and enough food afterward to keep everyone in the gardens until sunset. Theron had behaved. Kamal had behaved better. Arik had behaved only because Liam kept a hand on his thigh whenever he looked remotely capable of causing trouble.

To Arik’s profound satisfaction, it was also the last formal event on their calendar for months.

Government dinners and ordinary obligations would come, naturally, but nothing would require another royal wedding, coronation, engagement, state celebration, or carefully choreographed family gathering until birthdays began appearing the following year.

Arik intended to enjoy the peace.

Liam apparently intended to enjoy Arik.

Aggressively.

The first indication came three days after Mezos’s wedding when Arik returned from a council meeting and barely crossed the threshold of their private apartment before Liam caught the front of his shirt.

Arik looked down at him.

Liam was dressed for work in dark trousers and a soft gray sweater, his hair tied loosely at the nape because he had spent most of the day in one of the engineering laboratories.

"You’re home early."

"By twelve minutes."

"Good."

Liam opened the first button of his shirt.

Arik’s eyebrows rose.

The second followed.

"You missed me."

"I saw you at breakfast."

"An eternity."

Liam pulled the shirt from his waistband.

Arik did absolutely nothing to discourage him.

The contraception had been gone for weeks.

Whatever restraint Liam had possessed before its removal seemed to have disappeared with it.

Arik had expected enthusiasm.

He had not expected to become something Liam attempted to undress whenever they occupied the same private room for longer than five minutes.

He found the development magnificent.

"You have a meeting in forty minutes," Arik murmured.

Liam pushed his jacket off his shoulders.

"Thirty-eight."

"Very efficient."

"I am an engineer."

Arik laughed as Liam began working on his cuffs.

There was something deeply satisfying about being pursued by his own mate.

Arik had spent most of their relationship being the one who closed distances, pulled Liam into his lap, carried him away from work, and invented reasons they should abandon whatever responsible task stood between them and a bedroom.

Now Liam had apparently concluded that conception required dedication.

Arik supported scientific rigor.

Enthusiastically.

The meetings were not the only evidence.

Their bedroom had acquired books.

At first, Arik had assumed they belonged to whatever new technical obsession had captured Liam’s attention. That was normal. Liam frequently left reports, tablets, diagrams, and engineering journals scattered across places where nobody should logically attempt to work.

Then Arik picked one up.

Early Childhood Development.

He stared at the cover.

Another book rested underneath it.

Pregnancy, Bonded Physiology, and Infant Care.

Beside that sat a tablet displaying an article about newborn sleep patterns.

Arik slowly looked toward the bed.

Liam was sitting against the headboard wearing one of Arik’s old shirts and reading something with the concentration of a man preparing to redesign civilization.

"What are you doing?"

"Reading."

"I can see that."

Liam scrolled.

Arik crossed the bedroom and sat beside him.

"What happened to the structural assessment you were reviewing?"

"Finished it."

"This morning?"

"Yesterday."

Arik glanced at the book.

"You are studying babies."

Liam finally looked at him.

"I know very little about them."

"That has never stopped most parents."

"That is a terrible argument."

"I thought it was comforting."

"It wasn’t."

Arik smiled and stretched out beside him.

Liam returned to the article.

"I never cared about this before."

Arik’s amusement softened.

Liam shifted the tablet onto his knees.

"Children existed. Other people had them. I understood the biological part, obviously, but I never had a reason to know what newborns actually need beyond the most general things."

"And now?"

Liam looked at the screen again.

"Now I want to know everything."

Arik propped himself on one elbow.

"You understand that our child will not arrive with an instruction manual."

"That is why I am reading several."

Arik laughed.

Liam elbowed him lightly.

"I’m serious."

"I know."

"That face says otherwise."

"My face says I love you."

Liam paused.

Arik reached over and closed the tablet.

"That is also why I find this incredibly attractive."

"Me reading about infant feeding?"

"You committing yourself to something completely."

Liam’s expression changed subtly.

Arik knew that look now.

It usually preceded the removal of clothing.

He glanced toward the clock.

"You have another appointment."

Liam reached for Arik’s collar.

"I cancelled it."

Arik stared.

Liam pulled him closer.

"You cancelled work?"

"I moved it."

"For me?"

"For our reproductive objectives."

Arik made a helpless sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan.

"Gods, you are romantic."

"I thought you appreciated efficiency."

"I appreciate everything about this."

That was painfully true.

Arik loved the books stacked beside the bed.

He loved Liam interrogating physicians about nutrition and fertility windows.

He loved finding search histories about cribs, pregnancy monitoring, infant ether sensitivity, and whether bonded children recognized parental pheromones before birth.

He even loved that Liam had begun examining nursery locations despite not being pregnant yet.

Mostly, though, he loved Liam’s certainty.

This was not something Arik had dragged him toward.

Liam wanted it hard enough to catch Arik by the shirt the moment he came home and look at him with the unmistakable intention of making the theoretical child considerably less theoretical.

Arik allowed Liam to push him backward onto the bed.

"You know," he said, settling comfortably against the pillows, "I feel extremely used."

Liam climbed over him.

"You look devastated."

"I am suffering terribly."

"You are smiling."

Arik placed his hands at Liam’s waist.

"I have accepted my fate."

Liam bent to kiss him.

Arik kissed back with absolutely no dignity.

The books slid toward the edge of the mattress and were forgotten.

For someone who had spent years believing he would need to convince Liam to slow down long enough to build a family with him, this was considerably better than anything Arik had imagined.

His mate was all in.

Arik intended to enjoy every shameless second of it.