“I can hear you thinking from here,” Peter said with a laugh.

Riley dipped his head. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“Marcus told my wife that you have a daughter?”

Riley couldn’t help the pride that filled his words. “Hayley, she’s just turned eleven.”

Time went quickly while talking about Hayley and the ranch and what everyone hoped for out of this surrogacy. By the time Riley shook Peter’s hand goodbye, he felt so mellow he hugged Rebecca gently and was stunned at the emotions that choked his throat.

Only back in the car could he let his guard down. He stopped Jack from starting the car and tugged him close for a quick kiss and a hug.

“Should we be adopting?” he asked before he even put his brain in gear. “All those kids in the foster system, like Max, we could have given them a good home.”

Jack closed his eyes briefly. “You want to do that instead?” There was confusion in his tone. Riley could have slapped himself.

“No, jeez, no. As well as having a baby with your eyes.”

Jack snorted a laugh. “How big is our family going to be?”

“We could think about it?” Riley said. He was focusing on Max and the connection he’d felt through Thomas the Tank Engine, but there were other children just as lost.

“I don’t see why not,” Jack finally said. Belted, they drove away from Rebecca’s house. Next time they all met up it would be at the clinic. None of it seemed real, but at least Riley felt like he’d moved on from terror to excitement.

Chapter 9

Jack stared down at the cup and worried at his lower lip with a tooth. In black and white this was simple, in actuality the idea of jacking off inside the sterile room was a pressure he hadn’t considered.

Riley smirked. “It will be fine.”

“You’re smirking,” Jack said. “This is not a funny thing to be doing. This is very serious.”

“Of course it is,” Riley had his best grave voice to hand. Jack could see right through it. Riley had been alternately smirking then freaking out all morning.

“Is everything okay?” The voice was loud enough to penetrate through the door and was accompanied by a knock. With a final kiss, Riley backed away. When he left, Jack locked the door and abruptly it was just him in the room. Everyone had deserted him. There was no clock on the wall, and he’d deliberately passed his watch to Riley. It was bad enough he had to imagine Riley and the nurse standing outside tapping their feet, let alone know how long it was going to take.

He placed the container on the small table and shuffled the titles on the table. Difficult to find any gay stuff, and really, women did absolutely nothing for him. Finally, at the bottom he located a magazine, a lone copy of Playgirl. That had to have something in there. Frustrated, he turned the pages, but each man in there was nothing compared to Riley. Too short, eyes not hazel, cock uncut and flaccid. Fuck. He knew he should have brought some of his own stash from his pre-Riley days, or hell maybe they should have filmed a session in the barn. Just him and Riley and a tube of lube.

The last time they’d been in there? Hell, it had to have been more than a couple of weeks. What with horses and oil, Hayley and school, Robbie, Eli, and the house, Riley-and-Jack time was restricted to the dark hours. He pushed down his scrub pants. He’d showered, stripped, and the green material was soft against his skin. If he moved the right way it was a similar feeling to Riley’s fingers tracing on his skin.

Settling on a chair and with the cup close by, he closed his eyes and attempted to pull up a fantasy to get off to. Nothing was coming to him, literally not coming. Except for the growing need in him to take Riley home and go straight to the barn. They never decided in advance who was topping whom, it just happened. One of them would win the fight, the battle for dominance, or sometimes Jack would back down. The next time they were in the barn there would be no chance of that. He would be getting inside Riley at the first chance he could. Six four of sexy oilman spread out on the blanket…no…standing, holding the bar formed by a broken ceiling joist. Riley told to stand and wait, Jack could tie him there, pull the ties until every muscle in Riley’s body was taut and he was moaning and whimpering as Jack tugged on cinnamon nipples.

The taste of Riley, sweat from the heat and the anticipation, was familiar and Jack inhaled as he ran his hand up and down the length of his rigid cock in a rough, regular rhythm. He could see every naked inch of his husband unable to move, and with a nudge of his knee Riley moved enough so that his legs were spread and his cock jutted from the nest of blond curls. Jack dropped to his knees, inhaling the scent and licking the pearl of pre-come from the tip of Riley’s cock. Then he swallowed him down—impossibly deep and every curse and whimper from Riley was making Jack harder and harder.

In this fantasy he tasted every inch of Riley until the man was an incoherent mess of begging, and then he was behind him and pushing straight in. The rhythm he set was punishing and he was so close. Just a bit more…come for me, Riley. Sensations skittered up and down his spine, and he moaned into the empty room. So close…

In the imagined scene Riley pumped over his hand and shouted as Jack fucked him over the edge. In the here and now, Jack arched up into his hand and at the last moment remembered his actual target. Finished, he sat still for the longest time, his breathing heavy and a grin on his face.

Who needed naked men when you had Riley freaking Campbell-Hayes?

* * * * *

The sample went to wherever samples went. Jack assumed to match up with the donor eggs. They went home and waited and the call came after two days to say the next stage in the procedure was done.

A technician with a clipboard had results and details. “There are two viable embryos. Our decision now is whether to implant one or both.”

“Both,” Jack said quickly.

“Both,” Riley answered at the same time.

They smiled at each other. Then they decided they needed coffee. They agreed not to interfere in any way with what happened next. As far as they were concerned, Rebecca had her privacy and even though she was quick to say they could stay, neither Jack nor Riley wanted to. Ironically there was something intensely private about the fact it should just be Rebecca, a nurse, and the doctor.

Instead they left the clinic and crossed over to the coffee shop they’d seen when they first got lost finding the place. Jack ordered his usual, but Riley couldn’t decide between coffee and chocolate and in the end ordered both. Jack smiled at the action but didn’t call Riley on the fact that he was visibly craving the sweet stuff. They took the last table at the window, which gave them a clear view of the clinic.

“You think we should have stayed?” Jack asked as he sipped on burning hot coffee.

Riley turned the question back on him. “Do you think we should?”

Jack felt like a kid asking Riley to go first, and he shook his head. “We made the right decision.”

“I can't imagine that you coming in a cup is going to make us daddies. We never talked about it, but did you have, uhm…any difficulty when you had to, y’know?” Riley made a gesture with his hand that Jack immediately recognized as the whole collection thing.

“No.” There was a reason they didn’t talk about it. It was such a freaking odd thing to have to do, and yet he was still getting hard every time he thought of that new fantasy he had created in his head.

“Did you manage to find a magazine or film or something?”

Jack leaned forward and lowered his voice. If Riley wanted to talk about this then Jack was happy to tease his husband. “Nothing useful, so I pulled out a fantasy and jerked off to that.” Riley raised his eyebrows in question. He and Riley often shared, and indeed acted out, fantasies every so often. Their sex life was past healthy and well on to explosive.