Chapter 14

She lay staring at the ceiling in bed disappointed with herself. She broke. Helen Magnus broke. In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to let Nikola give her a massage. It screamed of bad idea, but Helen didn't seem to notice.

Instead, when they got home, Nikola gave her a massage in front of a roaring fire in her room. Again, letting him in her bedroom might have been a bad idea.

Thing had gone slowly; Nikola removed all of the knots that had gathered in her neck from all the stress from the past six months.

But kneading hands slowly turned into random kisses along her shoulder, which turned into roaming hands, which turned into more kisses, which ended up landing her in bed with Nikola.

Not that it was bad, Nikola was wonderful. The fact was Helen had wanted to take things slow. To spend time with Nikola, to make him earn her trust. And now she had blown that right out the window.

Nikola groaned and rolled over, his arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her close. Helen shivered at how cold his hands were, but at the same time enjoying having him hold her, actually being there when she woke up.

She felt him nuzzled his nose into her shoulder blade and lift his head sluggishly. He looked around, not realizing where he was, taking him a minute to recognize where he was. Nikola's eyes grew as wide as saucers as he looked over at Helen.

"Helen?" She twisted her head to smile at him.

"Good morning." Helen rolled over, lying on her side. She looked over to see Nikola was still looking distressed.

"Is everything alright?" She asked.

"We…we had…last night…oh no…"

"Well. There is a wonderful way to have your lover react to the morning after…" She remarked sarcastically. Nikola's expression turned to one of understanding and shook his head violently.

"I didn't mean…not like that…" Helen's sweet smile turned into a smirk.

"And how did you mean it, hmm?"

"I meant you said you wanted to take things slow. I pushed you. And now we're lying together in bed after a night of…" Helen moved her finger to his lips silencing him.

"It's alright; I'm just glad you were here when I woke up." And in that moment, Helen knew what she was saying was true. She didn't really need to take things slow. They had been taking it slow for the last hundred years. Nikola sighed in relief and flopped back onto the bed, putting his hands behind his head to prop it up.

"Well, that's a relief. I don't know how long I could do 'slow.'" Helen felt herself laugh, but that laugh quickly turned silent as a though occurred to her.

"You know," She whispered. "The baby would be kicking by now."

"Helen…" He warned.

"No really. He'd be a least a foot long. He'd be able to open his eyes. He'd…"

"He?" Nikola questioned. Helen looked down and blushed, embarrassed.

"The baby was going to be a boy."

"How could you know that? You were only two months…"

"Mother's intuition." She whispered. "I knew Ashley was going be a girl. This baby was a boy." Nikola pulled her close and they lay silent for a long time.

"What else would he be able to do?" Nikola finally asked. Helen smiled.

"Well, his little hands would be fully developed, his bones would be growing solid, his brain would be rapidly growing, and he'd only weight one to two pounds…"