HIS BREEDING FARM

HARVEST MOON

by DevotedSub

Chapter 31 — The Long Labor

The scream that wakes Elena is not a scream.

That is the first thing her sleep-addled brain registers, lurching up in the black sheets — that it started as a scream and halfway through became a laugh, cracked right down the middle like a dropped plate, and that can only be one person on this entire farm. Beside her the bed is already empty. Damion is already moving. He is always already moving for his women; it is one of the things she loves most about him, that his body goes before his mind is even awake, six feet three of calm deliberate man crossing the bedroom floor barefoot while she is still untangling her hair from her face.

"Roxy," he says, not a question, and Elena is already out of bed behind him.

She is in the guest room at the end of the hall. She has been there for four days — since the night of the closing ritual, when Damion carried her up the stairs himself while she protested that she could walk, damn it, she was pregnant not paralyzed, and set her down on the guest-room bed and told her she sleeps in the main house until the baby comes. My wildest one sleeps where I can hear her breathe, he had said, and Roxy, nine and a half months round and glowing and furious about being fussed over, had gone pink to the roots of her blonde hair and shut up.

Her water broke in the bed.

Elena sees it before she fully understands it — the dark spreading stain on the sheets, the way Roxy is sitting up with her hands braced on either side of her enormous belly, grinning like a maniac, hair stuck to her sweating forehead, laughing.

"Fucking hell," Roxy gasps, "I pissed the bed, Elena. Tell Daddy I pissed the bed. He'll never let me live —"

Another contraction takes her mid-sentence. It rolls up through her like a wave seen from underwater, and her grin does something Elena has never seen it do: it falters. Just for a second. Just long enough for Elena to see the flicker underneath — real fear, bright and animal — before the wild girl clamps it back down and rides the wave with her teeth bared.

"That's not piss, wild girl," Damion says, and he is already at the bed, already kneeling on the mattress beside her, one hand spreading wide across the mountain of her belly, the other coming up to cup her jaw. He is steady as stone. "That's our son telling us he's ready to come out."

"Oh, he is, is he?" Roxy pants. "He's ready? Fantastic. Great. Love that for him. Nobody asked me —"

The contraction peaks. Her fingers dig into his wrist. Her breath comes in short hot bursts against his mouth, and he breathes with her, deliberately, audibly — in through his nose, out through his mouth, slow — and her body, trained by two years of following his rhythm in every other way, follows it now too.

"Good," he murmurs against her lips. "That's it. Ride it, baby. You're doing so well."

The contraction releases her. She collapses back against the pillows, limp, laughing breathlessly up at the ceiling. "Jesus Christ. Vivian made it look so easy. Vivian is a lying bitch. I said it. I'll say it to her face."

"Vivian will hear you say it," Elena says, smoothing Roxy's damp hair back, "and she will agree with you, because her labor was six hours and she told me afterward it rearranged her spine."

"Six hours," Roxy says faintly. "Okay. Six hours. I can do six hours. I once rode Daddy for six hours. This is — this is the same thing, right? Same muscles. Same —" She cuts off, her face changing, her hand flying to her belly. "Oh. Oh no. Oh fuck —"

· · ·

Dawn comes up grey and cool over the pastures, and the farm wakes to a different rhythm.

Elena moves through the main house like the queen she is, calm and certain, because she has done this before. She helped birth Wren — three months ago in Vivian's room in the Quarters, Vivian's hand crushing hers, Damion never leaving Vivian's side, the baby sliding out pink and furious into Elena's waiting hands while dawn came through the window. She knows what is needed. She knows what is coming.

"June," she says, finding her in the kitchen already wide-eyed, "water. Lots of it. Big pitcher, cool, and the tin cups. Tessa — clean cloths, the whole stack from the linen press, and cool water in the basin. Mara — candles. Every candle in the house, the bedroom and the hall. Vivian —"

"I'll stay with her," Vivian says quietly, Wren asleep against her chest in the sling, her serene face soft with memory. "I'll sit in the corner and pray, and I'll tell her it ends. When she stops believing it ends, I'll tell her again."

Elena looks at her for a long moment, and something passes between the two mothers that needs no words at all.

Upstairs, the labor settles into its long, grinding work.

They walk her first — that's what Elena remembers from Wren, that movement helps, that lying still lets the pain pool. Damion walks her. Roxy's arm is hooked through his, her belly leading the way like the prow of a ship, and they pace the length of the bedroom, past the four-poster with its ruined sheets (Elena has already stripped them; fresh black sheets, because some things on this farm are ritual), past the tall windows looking out over the pastures going gold with morning.

A contraction hits halfway across the room. Roxy stops dead, bends forward, braces both hands on her knees — and Damion is behind her instantly, his big hands spanning her lower back, his thumbs pressing hard into the dimples above her ass, his mouth at her ear.

"Breathe with me, wild girl. In — out — that's my girl —"

"I'm trying —" she gasps, and then, through gritted teeth, because she is Roxy and she cannot help herself: "— if this is what you felt like every time, Daddy, I take back every time I asked for harder —"

He laughs — actually laughs, low and warm against her neck — and kisses the sweat-slick curve of her shoulder, and the contraction breaks, and she sags back against his chest, all hundred-and-sixty-some pounds of her plus the baby, and he holds her like she weighs nothing.

"You're doing so well," he tells her, his lips moving against her temple. "That's my wild girl. That's my good bitch, taking it so brave."

She turns her head, grinning lopsidedly up at him. "Say it filthier. Distract me. I'm serious, I'm about to start screaming and I'd rather be screaming about something fun —"

So he does. While they walk, while she leans on the dresser and he presses his whole long body against her back, his hands sliding under the stretched nightgown to cup the enormous globe of her belly — his hands barely meeting around it anymore — he talks to her low and filthy and sweet, the house language, the language of the breeding barn and the hayloft and two years of nights.

"Look at you," he murmurs, his palms circling slow over her skin, feeling their son shift and roll beneath. "Look at this belly I put on you. Nine months of my seed growing in you and you're still the wildest thing on this farm. When this is done, wild girl — when you've given me our son — I'm going to lay you out in our bed and fill you so deep you'll forget your own name."

"Promise?" she breathes.

"Swear it on the ledger."

Her laugh is half sob. "God, I love you, you magnificent bastard — oh —"

· · ·

By midday the contractions are coming hard and close, and the joking starts to cost her more.

She is on the bed now, propped against a mountain of pillows, the fresh black sheets already damp with her sweat. The room smells of candle wax and clean skin and the sharp coppery tang underneath it all that Elena recognizes — the smell of a body opening, doing its ancient work. June sits on one side with the water pitcher, pressing the tin cup to Roxy's lips between contractions, murmuring, "There, sweet girl, there," her warm eyes wet. Tessa kneels on the other side with the cool cloths, folding and refolding them with nervous hands that have gone steady with purpose, laying them across Roxy's forehead, her neck, the heaving swell of her breasts. Mara keeps the candles lit and the hall quiet and brings broth that Roxy refuses and then demands and then refuses again.

Vivian sits in the corner in the rocking chair, Wren nursing sleepily at her breast, and prays — not loud, not showy, just a low continuous murmur like water over stones, the sound of a woman who has been exactly where Roxy is and come out the other side holding heaven.

And Damion never leaves her side.

He sits on the bed facing her, her legs draped over his lap, his hands never still on her — kneading her calves when they cramp, circling her ankles, and always, always coming back to her belly. Between contractions, when her body goes slack and her breathing evens, he worships her.

That is the only word for it. Worship.

He bends over the vast curve of her and presses his mouth to her skin — open-mouthed, reverent, filthy kisses that travel the whole taut landscape of her, from the dark line running down her center to the stretched silver crescents at her hips. His tongue traces the line. His hands spread wide and he feels their son move under his palms — a heel, an elbow, the rolling bulk of him turning — and Damion's grey eyes go dark and possessive and awed all at once.

"Feel that?" he says to Roxy, guiding her hand to where the baby is pressing. "That's him. That's our boy, getting ready. He's strong like his daddy."

"He's huge like his daddy," Roxy gasps, her hand under his on her belly, and then her breath catches — not a contraction, something else — because his mouth has found her breast.

Her breasts are enormous now, heavy and veined and leaking. The nightgown is pushed down, and her nipples stand out dark and swollen, beaded with colostrum. Damion takes one into his mouth — gently, so gently, the gentlest he has ever been with her, this woman he has taken harder than any of them — and sucks, slow and deep, and her whole body bows off the pillows.

"Daddy —" It comes out wrecked. "Fuck — fuck, I'm in labor —"

"I know," he says against her skin, his hand sliding up the inside of her thigh, and she is wet — she is so wet, her body slick and ready and open, dripping down her thighs, the sheets dark beneath her. It is not arousal, not exactly; it is her body doing what her body was made by him to do, opening, softening, weeping readiness. But she is Roxy — insatiable to the bone, two years of being bred and filled and worshipped — and when his fingers find her, when he strokes her slow and reverent through her folds, her hips lift off the bed and she moans like he is inside her.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she pants, laughing through it, tears standing in her eyes. "I'm trying to push a human out of my body and you're — you're making me — oh God, don't stop —"

"I wouldn't dream of it, wild girl." His fingers move in her with exquisite care — not thrusting, not taking, just worshipping, circling her clit with the pad of his thumb while two fingers press slow and shallow inside her, feeling how open she is, how ready, how her inner walls clench and pulse around him with the echo of the last contraction. "You're so beautiful like this. So open. So mine. Give me that sound again."

She gives it. Her back arches. Her hand fists in his dark hair. And for one suspended moment the pain and the pleasure braid together into something so intense she can't tell them apart — and then the next contraction rolls in, huge and undeniable, and his hand stills inside her, holding her, grounding her, his thumb pressing steady against her clit like an anchor while the wave takes her.

"Breathe," he commands, soft as iron. "Eyes on me. Right here. You're doing so well, that's my girl, ride it —"

She rides it with her eyes locked on his, her nails scoring his forearm, and when it releases her she collapses, shaking, laughing, crying a little.

"That was the worst one," she whispers.

"It wasn't," Elena says gently from the foot of the bed, checking, her hands sure and practiced. "But you're doing beautifully. You're opening. He's moving down, Roxy."

"Tell me something true," Roxy says suddenly, grabbing Damion's hand with both of hers, her wild grin gone now, stripped down to something raw and young underneath. Her voice drops to a whisper. "Tell me — tell me I'm not going to —"

She can't finish it. She doesn't have to.

Damion goes very still. Then he gathers her up — all of her, the sweat and the fear and the enormous belly and everything — and pulls her against his chest, and holds her like the world is ending, his mouth pressed to the top of her head.

"Listen to me," he says, and his voice is the steadiest thing in the room. "You are the bravest woman I have ever known. You walked into my barn two years ago and told me to breed you harder than anyone, and you have never once flinched from anything I've given you. This? This is the last hard thing, wild girl. And then I put our son in your arms, and you will laugh at yourself for ever being afraid. I swear it to you. On the ledger. On my life."

A tear slides down her cheek. She wipes it away angrily. "Don't tell the others I cried."

"I'll tell them you roared," he says, and kisses her — deep and filthy and sweet, his tongue in her mouth, his hand cradling the back of her head — and she kisses him back like she's drowning and he's air, and June is crying openly now, and Tessa has her face buried in Mara's shoulder, and Vivian's prayer never falters.

"Okay," Roxy says at last, pulling back, scrubbing her face, the grin clawing its way back. "Okay. Okay, fuck it. Let's have a baby. Somebody get this kid an eviction notice —"

The next contraction hits like a fist. Her joke dies in a snarl. This is the part, Elena knows, where the long labor earns its name — where Vivian's six hours become Roxy's ten, then twelve, the sun crawling across the windows and sinking again, the candles lit one by one as the grey day bleeds into evening.

· · ·

Night falls over Cedar Hollow Farm, and Roxy is still laboring.

The bedroom has become a world entire — candlelight throwing huge soft shadows on the walls, the air thick with heat and wax and sweat and the iron-sweet smell of birth getting closer. The women keep their vigil without being asked. June hasn't left the water pitcher in hours; her arm must be aching, but every time Roxy surfaces between contractions the cup is there. Tessa's cloths are cool and endless. Mara sits at the foot of the bed now, holding Roxy's feet, massaging them the way Damion taught them all, murmuring filthy encouragement in her sharp voice gone soft: "Come on, wild thing, give him hell, push that boy out like you mean it."

Vivian finally rose from the rocking chair an hour ago, laid the sleeping Wren in the cradle Elena brought up, and came to kneel beside the bed. She took one of Roxy's hands in both of hers — the experienced broodmare, the one who has done this, the only other woman in the room who knows exactly what this fire feels like from the inside.

"It gets worse right before it ends," Vivian says quietly, her serene face inches from Roxy's. "That's how you know. When you think you can't — that's when he's almost here. I wanted to die, Roxy. And then Wren was in my arms, and I would do it again tomorrow."

Roxy stares at her through the sweat and the pain, and something in her wild face settles. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Vivian kisses her knuckles. "You're almost there, mama."

And Damion — Damion has not left her side in fourteen hours.

He is behind her now, sitting against the pillows with her leaning back against his chest, her legs spread and bent, his arms wrapped around her — one hand splayed over her belly, feeling every tightening, every roll of their son; the other holding her hand crushed against his heart. Between contractions he talks to her without stopping, a low continuous river of filthy-sweet devotion poured directly into her ear.

"That's my wild girl, you're doing so well, give me our son —" His lips brush her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. "Feel how strong you are. Feel him moving. He's right there, baby, he's right there —"

"He hurts," she sobs, and there is no grin now, no joke — just truth, raw as an open wound. "Daddy, he hurts, I can't —"

"Yes you can." His voice doesn't waver. Not once. Fourteen hours and it has not wavered once. "You've got more in you. I know you do. I've watched you take everything I've ever given you and beg for more. This is the same. Take it. Take it for me. Give me our son, wild girl."

"I —" Another contraction seizes her, the worst yet, her whole body bowing taut as a drawn bow against him, a sound tearing out of her throat that is barely human —

And then Elena, at the foot of the bed, between her legs, goes very still. Her hands, slick and sure, freeze. Her brown eyes fly up and lock on Damion's over the mountain of Roxy's belly.

"Damion."

One word. It is all she needs. His grey eyes sharpen. The whole room holds its breath — June's pitcher suspended mid-air, Tessa's cloth dripping unnoticed onto the floor, Mara's hands still on Roxy's feet, Vivian's prayer catching and going silent.

"He's coming," Elena says, and her voice is thick with tears and triumph both. "Roxy — baby — he's right there. I can see him. His head is right there."

Roxy makes a sound that is half laugh, half scream. "Don't — don't tease me —"

"No teasing, wild girl." Damion shifts, turning her in his arms so he can see her face — her beautiful wrecked wild face, soaked and shining, eyes huge and dark. He cups her cheeks in both hands. His voice drops to the steadiest, surest thing she has ever heard. "Listen to me. One more push and I hold our son. You hear me? One more. Give me everything you've got, right now, and then he's in my arms, and then he's in yours."

She stares at him. The contraction builds — she can feel it coming, the big one, the last one, rising up through her like the ground itself moving —

"Roxy," Elena says from between her legs, urgent, commanding, the midwife's voice, "when I tell you — push —"

The wave crests —

· · ·

The ledger, that night, in Damion's hand — the leather worn smooth, the page for Roxy marked not with a breeding count but with hours, line after line:

Hour one. Hour four. Hour nine. Hour fourteen.

She never flinched. She never stopped. My wild girl.

Chapter 32 — Cassian

The labor had taken everything Roxy had to give, and she was still giving it.

When the pushing started they'd carried her down from the guest room to the Breeding Barn's lamp-lit nook, where Elena had clean linens and hot water waiting and the furs were thickest.

Three pushes past midnight and she was done being brave about it. The roar that tore out of her in the Breeding Barn's lamp-lit nook wasn't ladylike, wasn't controlled, wasn't anything but pure animal — and Damion, braced behind her on the padded claiming post, hands framing her hips, just ...