“Come for me,” he demands, spanking me again. “Let me feel this pretty pregnant pussy come on my cock.”
I shatter with a loud cry, clenching hard around him as the orgasm crashes through me. My legs shake violently. Zane groans deeply, fucking me through it, drawing it out until I’m whimpering.
He pulls out suddenly, spins me around, and lifts me onto the desk. He spreads my thighs wide and pushes back inside me in one smooth thrust, this time face-to-face. The new angle makes me moan loudly. He grips my ass with both hands and fucks me deep and steady, eyes locked on mine.
His gaze drops to my belly between us, watching it move every time he thrusts. His hand returns to it, stroking reverently over the curve.
“Fuck, I love how you look like this,” he breathes, voice strained. “So full with me. So beautiful.”
The combination of his words, his cock hitting that perfect spot, and the raw emotion in his eyes sends me over the edge again. I come hard, crying out his name as my walls pulse around him. Zane follows right after with a deep, guttural groan, burying himself to the hilt as he comes inside me, pulsing hot and thick.
We stay like that for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing hard in the golden light. He kisses me slowly, tenderly, one hand still resting protectively on my belly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell him, the words simpler now than they were an hour ago, settled in a way I didn’t expect them to be.
“I know.”
“I still need you to understand what I told you in your office. About the file. About how this started.” I tilt my head to look at him. “Choosing to stay doesn’t erase that. I need you to know I’m choosing it with my eyes open, not because I’ve forgotten.”
“I know that too,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that sounds, for the first time since I’ve known him, almosthumble. “I’m not going to mistake this for forgiveness. I know the difference now.”
I settle back against him, the city outside doing what it always does, indifferent and ongoing, and for the first time in months I let myself simply exist in this moment without calculating what comes next.
It’s enough, for tonight, that I’m exactly where I choose to be.
38
ZANE
Alexei readsthe formal recognition aloud at eleven in the morning, the same council room Celine sat in alone for her first formal session, the long table fuller today than it’s been in months.
The language is dense, deliberately so, built by people who understand that ambiguity in documents like this becomes a weapon in someone else’s hands a decade from now. Marriage recognized. Heir’s position in the succession line confirmed, independent of any future change to the marital structure itself, the clause Celine fought for at her first formal council session, sitting exactly where she put it.
I watch the room receive it, watch the small adjustments in posture around the table, men recalibrating their understanding of where power sits now that the question has been settled formally rather than left open for anyone to keep contesting.
Fedorov votes yes without hesitation. Viktor and Dominic are the same.
Henrik is last.
I watch him for a long moment before he speaks. He has opposed this from the first dinner, quiet and consistent, never personal, the way Gregor’s opposition curdled into something rotten. Henrik simply believes what he believes, the same conviction that put him against my father years before any of us in this room existed as anything but a name on a future ledger.
“My objection stands on principle,” he says, his voice steady, no apology in it. “But I am the only voice remaining against something the rest of this table has already accepted. Continued opposition serves nothing now except my own stubbornness.” He looks at me, not warmly, but with something that might be respect for the first time since I’ve known him. “I vote to recognize.”
The vote is unanimous.
Alexei closes the folder. “It’s done,” he says.
I don’t bring the restructuring question to anyone that afternoon. That’s deliberate, though I don’t examine the deliberateness too closely in the moment.
Two agreements need to be amended now that the recognition is formal. The first governs inheritance priority, straightforward in its logic if not in its language, ensuring the child’s position cannot be challenged by any future organizational dispute. The second is more sensitive.
Guardianship contingencies, the structure that activates if something happens to me before the child reaches an age wherethe organization considers them capable of holding their own position.
Years ago, before I had any reason to think about fatherhood, my own father drafted a version of this document for a hypothetical heir who didn’t yet exist. I’m amending his framework now for a child who is very real, growing inside a woman who has spent the last several days choosing to stay with me and continue wearing my ring despite everything I’ve done to make that choice difficult.
I sit with the documents for most of the afternoon, marking changes and consulting with my legal team on language that needs to withstand every possible future challenge.
I don’t call Celine into the room.
