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“Did you forget we were practicing?” I asked in a sleepy, playful tone.
“Not at all,” he said. “You just took it out of me, sweetheart.” He let out a sigh, brushing his hand over my jaw and leaning down to brush his nose against mine. “Now that I’ve almost caught my breath, time to help you with one of the most important parts.”
He pulled himself out of me, drawing a moan from both of us. I could feel the slick tether of some of his fluids spiderwebbing between us before it snapped, and the sticky substance spilled slightly out of me. He braced his thumb at my opening where his cum threatened to spill out, swiping it up and placing it back inside my aching core.
“Waste not, want not,” he said, smiling up at me again, his eyes still full of desire. He came to lie next to me, hooking my knees over the bend of his arm as he did. He hefted up my pelvis, changing the angle of it so that it pointed to the ceiling above us, making sure that the seed he’d left inside of me didn’t slip out.
“When we do this for real,” he said as he positioned more pillows beneath my hips, “I’ll hold you for a while just like this so that we use every ounce of opportunity to put life in your precious womb. Give the pregnancy a fighting chance to take, and I’ll get to hold you, too. It’s a win-win.”
I laughed, reaching up to push some of his damp hair from where it fell in his face. “You are way more into this than I realized you were. You’ve got it all figured out.”
He nodded and pressed a kiss to my lips. “Marley, I don’t think you realize how much time I spend thinking about you, baby.”
He let my legs fall, smoothing the hand that had been holding them up my torso before cupping my cheek and turning me to look at him a little more. “I can’t wait to start this journey with you, Marley. It’s sexy as hell, but it’s more than just the raw appeal of getting to breed with you. It’s the idea that you want a family with me. That you want to expand and grow not only as individuals, but you want to give me another child and my mom another grandbaby. It’s that you’re all in on this the same way I am. The way I thought a woman may never want to be all in with me.”
My heart ached as I bracketed his face in my hands, brushing my thumbs across the edge of his cheekbones. “I’m all in, Cole,” I told him. “I’m ready for the real deal. Even more than you know. You’re going to have a hard time getting rid of me at this point.”
“Get rid of you?” he repeated with an effusive smile. “I’d never dream of getting rid of you. You’re just as stuck with me as I am with you. And if I wasn’t sure of that, I never would have let you go through with that night in the forests of Georgia. Claiming you may have been permanent for you, but it was permanent for me, too.”
“Well, good,” I said. “Because you’re the only man I can see myself with.”
He leaned down and kissed me before pressing his forehead to mine.
“Forever,” he said.
“Forever,” I agreed.
Chapter 11
Cole
After getting Marley cleaned up and back in bed, she fell asleep quickly. I stayed awake for a while, watching her take her slow breaths. I gazed at her as she fell into her dreams, her eyes moving under her eyelids, her brows faintly twitching.
I wondered what she was dreaming about. I didn’t sense any distress from her, or any discomfort. I did keep an eye on her to make sure she wasn’t slipping into nightmares so I could wake her if the narrative in her head took a turn for the worse.
I couldn’t decide whether I felt embarrassed for how fully I’d lost myself in my desire to make a baby with her. My mouth had a way of running away with me when I was in the thick of my arousal, especially when it came to Marley. More than once, I’d felt a little embarrassed for the things I’d said when I was lusting after her, though she’d never teased me or made me feel bad about it the way Olivia used to.
Olivia was a woman who loved to dominate. It hadn’t necessarily been a bad thing. In fact, I’d quite enjoyed the power play between us in the bedroom when we’d been together. But the enjoyment of that had stopped when it started to leak into our dynamic outside of the bedroom. It wasn’t that I was frightened of powerful women—I felt Marley was remarkably powerful. It was the fact that Olivia had always made me feel small and insignificant.
She did it while we were together, she did it during the breakup, and she made one final hurrah at it when she leveraged my son for money. It was hard to let go of those things when I was dealing with Marley in some ways. It was hard not to worry about how things might change once we had a child together. But I wanted to try. I wanted to do everything I could to have a happy life with her.
I brushed her hair away from her face and tugged her close to me. She draped her arm over my waist as she settled in, even as she slept. I kissed her forehead, and she made an adorable, slack-faced kiss of the air in her sleep. I smoothed my hand over the delicate planes of her back and tucked her head under my chin.
I looked out of the window at the moon and made a silent plea to it. I prayed that she’d watch over us, that she’d protect my mate and my son. That this war and the gene therapy Marley was about to start wouldn’t take her away from me. Not when I’d only just finally found happiness. Not when she’d already been through so much.
The moon was silent as ever, but I felt like she was reaching out to me as I was reaching out to her. I could only hope that feeling was real, not just wishful thinking.
I fell asleep as I brainstormed ideas for our child’s name.
* * *
The days went too quickly, and before I knew it, it was time for us to prepare for Marley’s first injection and the beginning of replacement gene therapy for the shifters who’d been impacted by the injections done by Lanyon Clover. I’d taken some time off from my meetings with Farrah and Travis, where we’d been strategizing ways to keep the shifters safe in headquarters. They knew what I wanted for it, and I trusted them both to have enough common sense to make things happen without my constant supervision.
There were only a few days left before Marley started her transformation, and while she was being a goddamned trooper about it, I could tell she was anxious. I could feel it building inside her each day the transition drew closer.
I decided it would be a good idea to take some time just for us before my grandfather arrived with the other shifters from the Georgia Pack.
It’d been forever since we’d been on a date that was purely a date. Of course, I loved every moment of time I got with my wife. It was easy not to need a special outing because we were always so in sync with each other. Any time we spent, just me and her, felt like quality time. But I wanted to be a good partner and husband, so I put together a little something to surprise her.
