Free HIS: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (Part One) by Glenna Sinclair

Chinese place and I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how many carbs I was going to eat out of the noodles, egg rolls, and sweet sauces that he’d ordered. I finally made an educated guess and filled the syringe with insulin, but then my hand shook when it came time to actually inject it. They made me do it a dozen times in the hospital, but there was a difference between injecting a potentially lethal substance into your body in a hospital setting where nurses were waiting to bring you back to life with an injection of sugar, and doing it in the privacy of your own home where only you and the father of your child—both quite uneducated about this condition—were there to provide sugar if a mistake was made.
    “Do you want me to do it?” Nicolas asked.
    He seemed sincere, so I handed the syringe to him.
    “Where do I…?”
    “A fatty area,” I said. “I was doing them in my hip in the hospital.”
    He nodded as he came to stand beside me. I tugged at a corner of my jeans and pulled them down just enough to expose the area where I had intended to inject myself. Nicolas picked up the alcohol pad I’d already prepared and pressed it to my flesh, making me hiss a little with the suddenly cold. And then his fingers were moving over my hip, pushing back my clothes, the contrast between the cold alcohol and his hot fingers distracting.
    Would I always feel this sort of reaction whenever he touched me?
    He carefully injected the insulin, moving quickly, but proficiently, making me wonder if he had experience with needles. And then thoughts of Aurora filled my mind, of her illegal drug use and the substances he’d supposedly seen her take. Did he help her inject herself with meth or heroin? Did he help her boil down crack cocaine and inject it into a vein?
    Those thoughts made me shudder. Nicolas must have thought it was a reaction from the shot because he tugged my jeans back into place and whispered, “All done,” in my ear.
    I pulled away from him, the scent of his cologne so intoxicating that I wasn’t sure I could control myself if I didn’t.
    We ate in silence for a few minutes, both of us lost in our own thoughts. And then he poured himself a glass of wine, staring into its depths rather than drinking from it.
    “I have a new project coming up in a month. It films here, so I’ll be close, but I won’t be at the house for the majority of the day.”
    “Okay,” I said, as I picked at a spicy egg roll. I thought I was going to eat a lot, but the babies had shifted and my stomach was already screaming that it was full.
    “Constance will be around if you need anything. And one of my security guys will always be within screaming distance.”
    “That’s reassuring.”
    “I just…I didn’t know that you would be having health problems when I agreed to this project.”
    “I didn’t either.”
    “I know.” He put the wine glass down and studied me for a second. “This has just made the whole thing a little more real for me.”
    I looked away. It had always been real for me. So real I’d called a lawyer while I was in the hospital. I wanted to know what my options were after the babies came. But his advice hadn’t been very hopeful. He’d promised to look over the contract, but he didn’t think I’d be able to keep the babies or even share in any part of their lives if Nicolas didn’t agree to it.
    Not very encouraging.
    “Aurora was pretty excited about it,” I said suddenly, needing to hurt him in some way for reasons I couldn’t even begin to explain. “She talked about decorating the nursery and buying all these cute little outfits. She even showed me one once, a pretty little sailor suit she couldn’t pass up in a department store.”
    “It was just a passing infatuation with Aurora,” Nicolas said. “A new thing to keep her busy for a while. She was always flitting from one thing to another.”
    “When she talked to the doctor and learned her eggs were dividing, she’d been so