"Yours—" Breathless. Broken. "Gage, please?—"
"Please what." I stilled.
She made a devastated sound. "Move. Please, I need?—"
"I know what you need." I leaned forward, one knee still on the bed, one hand braced beside her head, close enough to see every flicker across her face. "I've always known what you need." I started moving again—harder this time, the headboard shifting—and she wrapped her legs around me and pulled me in. "You need me. Need my cock, don’t you?"
"Don't stop?—"
"Not stopping." I drove into her, steady and relentless, my hand sliding from her belly to her clit. She sobbed. "Not stopping, Millie. Gonna give you everything. Rest of our lives…give you whatever you want—" I worked her in tight circles, felt her clench hard around me, felt the tremor starting in her thighs. "Come on. Come on my cock. Want to feel you."
She shattered.
Clenched around me in waves, her whole body arching up off the mattress, and I kept moving—through all of it—chasing it, chasing her, my hand still on her clit until she was pulling at my wrist. I followed her right over the edge, spilling inside my wife, the love of my life…
The love of my life.
Met in the funniest circumstances—pregnant now with my baby, mine to have and to hold.
I collapsed beside her, breathing hard. She turned her head to look at me, eyes shining, lips red and lush.
“I love you,” I said. “You know that? I love you, Millie Calloway.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Eyes bright, hair spread across the pillow, her belly round and her cheeks flushed and my ring on her finger.
"Millie Holt," she said.
I looked at her.
"That's my name now." A small smile. "Millie Holt."
Something settled in me that I hadn't known was still waiting to settle.
I pulled her carefully against my side—working around the belly, the way we'd learned to, her back to my chest, my hand spreading flat across her stomach the way it always ended up.She covered my hand with hers. Outside the window the live oaks were still strung with lights, the last of the reception winding down somewhere below us, and I could hear voices distantly—my dad, probably, still talking about limestone to whoever was left.
"Your dad is definitely still out there," Millie said.
"Probably."
"He's going to be out there until someone physically removes him."
"That's accurate."
She laughed, soft and tired. I pressed my mouth to the back of her neck.
We lay like that for a while. The voices faded. The lights outside went out one by one until it was just the dark and the creek somewhere below and the sound of her breathing going slow and easy against my arm.
"Hey," she said, almost asleep.
"Mm."
"I love you too." A pause. "In case that wasn't clear."
"It was clear," I said. "It's been clear for a while."
She made a small sound. "Then why'd it take you so long to say it."
"I'm a practical man," I said. "I wanted to be sure."
