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He chuckled lowly, his breath brushing against the skin of my neck. “By the end of tonight, you’ll be whimpering my name, sweetheart. And you’ll be begging me to put a baby in you.”
I smiled, finding myself biting down on my lower lip. I didn’t know why, but for some reason, I was feeling so much more sheepish about this treatment than I did about any of the other times he was particularly rough or dominant with me. There was almost a vulnerability, a realness, that hadn’t been present in our past love-making.
He kissed me, the pressure against my lips soft and romantic. He was taking his time, enjoying me and allowing me to enjoy him. When we both ran out of breath, we recovered, our brows pressed together as we breathed each other in. When I was finally able to breathe slowly enough to speak, I kissed the stubble on his cheek.
“I can’t stop thinking about how good it’s going to feel to raise a family with you,” I said. “I can’t stop thinking about you coaching soccer games, and Noah walking his little sibling to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and weekend waffles. I’m so excited for all of it, to have it with you. To watch our family grow, and watch you age...”
I opened my eyes to look into his. Cole was looking at me, stricken.
My heart kicked up as I immediately worried that I’d said something wrong. Had I misinterpreted his excitement? Had I been insensitive?
“Cole? What’s wrong?”
He drew back just a bit to look down at me before shaking his head. “N-nothing. You didn’t say anything wrong,” he said. “I just...I just...I only just realized that we really are going to do this together. We’re going to raise a family. Together.”
I blinked and snorted a little laugh. “Well, of course,” I said. “What did you think, I was just going to pop out a baby and leave you?”
As soon as I said it, I realized why he was suddenly so emotional, and I immediately felt terrible for forgetting. Noah felt so much like my own son that I sometimes forgot he wasn’t. That there was a woman before me who had crushed Cole’s heart and made him pay her off to live a peaceful life with his son.
I watched Cole’s face crumple, his eyes filling with tears as he dropped his head.
I reached up to catch him, bringing the angle of his face back up so I could look him in the eye again. “Cole. Cole, I’m so sorry. I put my foot in my mouth—I wasn’t trying to be insensitive. Please don’t cry, honey.”
He shook his head again, more tears falling down his face. “No, they...these aren’t sad tears,” he said, chuckling through them. “They’re happy tears.”
My heart squeezed in my chest as I swiped his tears away. “Happy tears?” I said. “Did you forget we’re married, silly? Of course I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me, whether you like it or not.”
He laughed, more tears spilling. “No, of course I didn’t forget. I just...I think it only just hit me that this is for real. Marley, after Olivia, with how hard I had to fight to get my son, I'd just accepted that I’d always be alone in this. I’d convinced myself that I was happy to do it on my own. That I was more than capable of raising a child on my own—”
“You are,” I said. “Noah loves you, and you’ve done a marvelous job raising a sweet, thoughtful boy.”
“I know,” he said. “I mean, not to be arrogant, but I know I’ve been doing a good job with him. But I don’t think I realized just how much I wanted to have a partner in raising him until this moment. I don’t think I’d ever really let myself want that. And now you’re here, and you’re ready, and I....”
There was a long silence as his eyes flickered around my face before meeting my eyes again. “Marley, I love you so much. And I’m so happy that you have enough love in your heart for a whole family. Because I want to have this with you, not just out of some bullshit kink daydream. I truly, truly want the chance at the family I’ve always dreamed of. And you want that, too.”
“How lucky are we?” I said, feeling my own eyes start to burn with tears. “How lucky are we to have found each other?”
“So lucky,” he said, closing his eyes and bringing his forehead down to meet mine again. “I am the luckiest man alive.”
He closed the distance between us and kissed me again. Slow, deep, intimate. Each meeting of our mouths was like a dream we were sinking into together, hand in hand. As he kissed me, he leaned forward, his biceps bulging, his large hands braced against my back as he laid me down in the bed beneath him.
He held himself above me once I was so delicately placed on my back, his forearms on either side of my head as he used gentle fingertips to brush hair behind my ear, away from my forehead. He carefully settled his hips against mine, letting his weight sink into me as he gave slow, tickling kisses to my eyebrows, my cheeks, my jaw, my chin. I just watched him shower me in affection, soaking in the strange chastity of it all.
His hand left my hair to smooth down my clavicle, softly ghosting over the soft skin of my breast as he continued to kiss my body. He lowered himself to my stomach, pressing a kiss to the hollow just below the bottom of my ribcage before letting his hands rest on the fleshy part of my waist.
“You’ll look like this for a while, at first,” he said softly. “At first, you’ll be tired and nauseous. You’ll be really sensitive to some smells, and we’ll have to be careful about what foods we bring into the house.”
I chuckled. “We don’t have to make it such a high-maintenance thing.”
He looked up at me, brushing his hand over the faint curve of my belly. “Yes, we do,” he said. “You’re my mate, and my wife, and it’s not just me who will make sure you’re supported and comfortable during your pregnancy. My pack will, too. It’s my job to take care of the pack, and it’s the pack’s job to take care of us. And that means you’ll be a priority.”
I bit down on my lower lip, feeling my face flush as I regarded his sudden intensity.
“Besides,” Cole continued as he focused back on my stomach, pausing to kiss it again, “you’re going to have a much more sensitive nose soon, sweetheart. You’re going to be smelling notes in foods you’ve never noticed before. You’re going to be a little edgy, probably. A lot of shifter women get edgy when they’re carrying a litter.”
“A litter?” I repeated.
“Just a turn of phrase,” he promised. “Although, twins are much more likely occurrence for shifter couples.”
