She blinked up at him. “What?”
“Babies,” Vaslav explained. “And this one is extra small, no? She was born early, they gave her those steroids for her lungs, and—”
“Vaslav, what is the problem? We talked about this. Igor goes nowhere without his security. He doesn’t even sleep in the same place for more than a week. And wasn’t it you that told me he wasn’t in any shape to be caring for a newborn last week?”
They had talked about this.
This very, exact thing.
Many times.
The entire damn situation was so inevitable, in fact, that Vaslav didn’t think there was any way around Vera caring for Hannah’s child. The woman’s mother wanted nothing to do with the baby; the father wasn’t in any shape to be one; and Vera couldn’t help but martyr herself every goddamn chance she could.
Inevitable.
“Fine,” Vaslav muttered as he heard the footsteps approaching the front door.
Kiril and Mira, likely.
Coming to greet the baby.
When did Vaslav ask for a full house?
“Fine, what?” Vera asked him.
“Let me see her.”
The demand made his wife beam. She didn’t wait for him to say it a second time before spinning the car seat around and pushing back the rounded shade. He kneeled as Vera placed the car seat to the stone, getting a better look at the hazy, blinking eyes of the wrinkly baby snuggled under a pink blanket. The cotton cap with a big bow in the front fell over the baby’s eyes when she yawned.
Vaslav reached in to fix the hat, only to be frozen when the baby’s blinking gaze seemed to finally focus on him. “Hello there.”
She was small. Too tiny even if she could eat on her own and didn’t seem to have any other troubles besides underdeveloped lungs that just needed time and occasionally medication.
Vera bent down beside Vaslav, fixing the blanket around the baby and then stroking the tiny fingers grasping onto the edge of the fabric. “She likes to be rocked to sleep, but she won’t take a dummy at all.”
“A dummy?”
“Those soother things,” Mira said where she had to stand with Kiril in the doorway.
Vaslav nodded over his shoulder at her like he understood, but he really had no fucking clue. A baby was so out of his element. This entire situation felt un-fucking-real to him.
The baby yawned again, startling Vaslav just like the first time. Even if there was no noise to her sleepiness.
“She’s not going to bite you,” Vera said.
Yes, she would.
Eventually, the damn things got teeth.
Vaslav sighed, pulling the blanket away from the baby so he could access the car seat’s safety buckles.
“Well, what’s her name?” Kiril asked, finally jumping in on the conversation.
“What are you doing?” Vera asked Vaslav.
“Picking her up. I need to get the fuck over it. You know—just do it.” Vaslav fumbled twice with the five-point harness before Vera swatted his hands away to do it for him. Clicking the connectors apart seemed incredibly easy for her.
Had she practiced?
“There, you can pick her up now,” Vera said. “Support her head and back.”
The baby fit in both his hands. The zippered sleeper—pink like her blanket and hat—swallowed the girl in fabric. He’d picked up rocks heavier than the child. Vas would be a liar if he said that fact didn’t scare him even more.
How did people keep little humans alive?
At least, the baby stopped wiggling when he rocked her against his chest. Except there he could smell the lotion and baby powder that seemed to soak into his lungs with every breath. After a few seconds of him doing that and staring over the front yard, it wasn’t so bad.
“She doesn’t have a name,” Vera said, answering the question that had hung in the air since Kiril asked it. “Igor didn’t want to name her.”
Vaslav reached for Vera’s hand, and squeezed.
She shrugged. “He had a hard time even looking at her. I think it’s just—”
“We’ll pick one,” Vaslav interjected, stopping that worry of Vera’s in its tracks. “We’ll figure out something for her. She can’t be nameless.”
“Yeah, okay,” she muttered with a nod.
*
His dick was testament to his wife’s innate ability to turn him on without even needing to try. While a migraine played the drums between his ears, his cock would still get hard with Vera straddling him. She’d only climbed into the bath with him to do that thing he liked with her fingers on his scalp, but he was weak.
Well, she did get in naked.
On top of him.
Practically ready.
His favorite sex—perhaps not his best, though—was when he had to do very little work. She did the heavy lifting on top, getting herself off how and when she wanted, while he enjoyed the show she gave him.
The hot, bubbly water was a plus.
Vera sealed the deal when she laid herself over his chest, and worked her hips in slow circles against his dick. She smelled of the strawberry scented bubbles he’d poured into the bath water and she tasted of her need with every hungry kiss she stole from him.
Those whines crawled out of her chest.
Higher and higher.
Between her kisses, she begged for what was left of him.
“Won’t you come in me?”
Until both his hands clamped onto her ass, and held her into him, as she squirmed and squealed her way through an orgasm that milked out the beginnings of his own. He still needed to be deep in her when he came; hugged by her body; smothered in her life.
As soon as the rush of endorphins and pleasure started to fade from Vaslav’s nervous system, he was still left breathless from his lingering pain.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his head falling back to the ledge of the tub.
With his eyes squeezed shut to ward off the worst of the returning pain, his wife’s fingers helped to ease his breaths as they scraped and scratched along his wet scalp.
“If only I could keep you coming for—”
The high-pitch wail of a baby sent Vaslav’s eyes flying wide open. He found his wife staring back with a sympathetic smile as her hands retreated from his scalp.
One week in with a newborn.
Too many more to go.
“You good?” she asked as she steadied herself in the tub to stand, and leave.
“For now,” he replied.
He’d have to be.
“Ava,” Vaslav said to Vera’s back as she wrapped her body in the silk robe she’d discarded earlier.
At the random name, she looked over her shoulder. “I like that.”
Shocker.
She’d not cared any for the other ones he’d picked out up until that moment.
“It’s a palindrome. Like her mother’s.”
Spelled the same way front and back.
Also, Russian.
Igor had ignored Vaslav’s calls all week.
He tried not to think too hard about that.
“Ava,” Vera repeated to herself.
In the tub, Vaslav stretched out again, and let his arms hang over the rounded edge. For once, his wife didn’t bitch about the droplets of water falling from his hands to the floor in a gathering puddle she’d probably step in later.
He wasn’t good at remembering to clean it up.