I nodded, barely.
His eyes dropped.
I watched him look at me—really look, the way he'd looked in the parking lot but without the parking lot in the way, without the mask, without any of it—and whatever he saw made something happen in his face that he didn't try to hide. His jaw tightened. His chest rose and fell once, slow and deliberate, like a man steadying himself.
"Christ," he said, low. Not to me. Just out loud.
My crossed arms dropped.
He noticed.
His eyes came back up to mine and they were darker than they'd been thirty seconds ago and my thighs were doing something completely involuntary.
"Dinner—" I started.
"Dinner can wait."
He said it the way he said everything, flat and certain, like it was just a fact about the world, and then he closed the last foot of distance between us and his hands slid from my jaw to my waistand I felt the full size of him up close for the first time and my brain produced the wordohand nothing else.
He was looking down at me. I was looking up at him. His hands were on my waist and they were big and warm and he held me like something he intended to keep.
“You really don’t know how perfect you are, do you?” he said.
I swallowed hard. “It’s been um…it’s been a really long time since anyone’s had the chance to see so?—”
“How long?”
“Three and a half years,” I whispered.
"That's a long time."
"I know."
"I'm gonna take care of that," he said.
It was the most understated sentence anyone had ever said to me and it hit me like a freight train.
"Okay," I breathed.
His hands tightened.
"I need you to know something first," he said.
"What?"
"This isn't—" He stopped. Started again. "The contract says we try. That's what it says." His eyes were steady on mine. "But when I'm in that bed with you, Millie, I'm not thinkin’ about the contract."
My heart was doing something genuinely concerning.
"What…what are you thinking about?" I said. It came out smaller than I meant it to.
His hand moved from my waist to the small of my back, pulling me flush against him, and I felt exactly what I'd clocked in the waiting room at eye level in those jeans and my brain shorted out completely.
"I'm thinkin’ about gettin’ you pregnant," he said, low and even and absolutely devastating. "About putting a baby in you and watching you carry it. About taking care of you while youdo." His other hand came up and pushed my hair back from my face, slow. "I've been thinkin’ about it since the parking lot."
“Me too,” I admitted.
He smiled this downrightwickedsmile. His hips rolled just slightly…and he was so, so hard on the other side of that zipper.
