“Querida, I brought...” He stops. I hear the rustle of bags being set down, then his footsteps crossing quickly to where I sit. “What happened?”
He’s kneeling beside my chair before I can answer. “Are you okay? Are you stuck on the plot again? I will buy the publishing house and—”
“I finished it.”
He stops mid-sentence, brow furrowing. “What?”
“The book.” I laugh through my tears, which only makes me cry harder. “I finished the book, Antonio. Just now. The last chapter. It’s done.”
Understanding dawns across his face, and then he’s pulling me out of the chair and into his arms, holding me as tightly as my thirty-week belly will allow.
“You finished it,” he repeats against my hair. “Minha linda, you finished it.”
“I thought I wouldn’t.” I’m sobbing now, all the months of doubt and fear and frustration pouring out. “I thought the words were gone forever, and then they came back, and I didn’t trust them, and now...”
“You did it.” He brushes away my tears. “We need to celebrate. I’ll make reservations somewhere at that rooftop restaurant you love, or the Italian restaurant by the water. Or champagne. Well, sparkling cider for you, but...”
“Babe.”
“...I could call our friends and make it a whole thing. Or just us, if you want just us. Whatever you want, querida. This is your night.”
“Antonio.”
He stops talking. Looks at me.
“We’ll celebrate after,” I say quietly. “Right now, I want you.”
His eyes darken, and I watch the shift happen in real time. The excited, rambling boyfriend disappears, replaced by someone hungrier.
“Yeah?” His voice drops low. “What do you want, querida?”
I answer by pulling his mouth to mine.
The kiss is desperate, and his hands slide beneath my shirt, warming my skin. I tug at his hem impatiently, and he breaks the kiss just long enough to pull it over his head.
We make it to the bedroom in stages. His mouth on my neck in the hallway. My bra unclasped somewhere near the door. By the time we reach the bed, I’m bare from the waist up, and his hands are everywhere.
Antonio sits on the edge of the mattress and pulls me between his legs, pressing kisses to my belly, my ribs, the undersides of my breasts. I thread my fingers through his hair and let my head fall back.
His hands slide down to my hips and tugs down my shorts and underwear. I step out of them and his palm glides back up my thigh.
When his fingers find me already wet, the sound he makes sends heat pooling in my belly. “All this for me, querida?”
“I just wrote the emotional climax of a love story. I’m feeling some things.”
He laughs against my skin, pressing another kiss to my belly. “Happy to help with the physical climax too.”
“That was terrible.”
“You’re smiling.”
I am. Even now, standing naked between his legs while his fingers do things that make my toes curl, he makes me laugh. That’s the difference, I realize. That’s what I was missing in every relationship before him.
He circles my clit and I grip his shoulders to steady myself. When he captures one of my nipples between his lips, stillworking me with his other hand, my thighs tremble as the dual sensations build.
“That’s it,” he breathes, pulling back to look up at me. “Let go for me.”
I try to form words, but they dissolve into a moan as he slips two fingers inside me. The pressure builds fast when his thumb presses harder and his fingers curve deeper.
