“What time is it?” I wondered aloud.
A sigh.
“Too early.”
The arm caged around me loosened, but barely. Sully only moved enough to drag his palm over my stomach, letting it settle there, spread and possessive.
“Too early, El,” he reiterated, and then I felt the tip of his nose along the curve of my neck. “Go back to sleep.”
“Sawyer,” I protested. Weakly.
This was…not good. First last night and now this—this entanglement. Nothing about it was going to make our lives easier, but I wasn’t in a position to complain, considering I’d been the one to encourage him last night.
We were even now. He’d propositioned me in that elevator. And I’d…well, I’d asked to see him touch himself.
“For the love of God,” Sully groaned, and his face was buried in the dip of my collarbone now. “Just go back to sleep and let me hold you.”
I closed my eyes, hoping Sully couldn’t feel the rapid pitter-patter in my neck, how fast my pulse raced.
“You’re still here,” I breathed, stuck on that fact. I didn’t know how to get over the fact that he was here, pressing into me from behind. That I’d fallen asleep after we’d both ended up half-naked, and I woke up to find him not only here, but with his body wrapped around mine.
“I’m still here.” He lifted his head, making it that much easier to hear the husk in his voice that made my pulse flutter, interrupting its incessant beating. “When I came back after cleaning up last night, you’d passed out.”
Last night.
I didn’t know how to feel that we were acknowledging that last night actually happened. That last night existed.
“Sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say, but I was suddenly so unbelievably grateful that he couldn’t see my face. The warmth in my cheeks told me all I needed to know about how red I likely was.
We’d never done anything like that before—what I’d proposed on his couch. There were fleeting moments, of course. Moments I’d seen him stroke his hand down his length before I’d taken over or vice versa. But I’d never sat back and…watched. I’d never sat back and lethimwatch. AndGod, I’d liked it.
“No need to apologize, El.” He was drawing circles around my belly button now, and I had a feeling he had no idea he was doing it. “I didn’t want to disappear again, didn’t want to leave. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s okay.”
Okayfelt like a very poor descriptor for what it really was, but I certainly wasn’t mad he’d stayed. I was far from mad. I was a million other thingsbutmad.
Breathless and afraid to move, I lay as still as possible. Sully’s hard body was already touching mine in so many different places, sending liquid heat straight to my belly—which he’d returned to aggressively palming—and I was terrified that even the slightest adjustment would make everything so much worse.
“When do we get to talk about names?” Sully asked while softly drumming his fingers on my abdomen. Apparently, he’d given up on going back to sleep. “Is it too soon for that?”
“Probably,” I breathed as my brain caught up to what he wastalking about. He wanted to casually lie here together and dream up names for our child, as though this was a totally normal thing for us to wake up and do these days.
“What do you think about a last name?” he questioned anyway, as though that was better than first names and not totally devastating when, once upon a time, I’d imagined that if we were ever in this situation, I’d already havehislast name. “What do you think about hyphenated names? London-Summers? Or Summers-London? That’s what Noah and Gemma did for Delilah, since they weren’t married yet.”
But they were together, I wanted to say but didn’t have the heart to. And it didn’t really pertain. A hyphenated name would work regardless of whether Sully and I were together.
“I’m not opposed to it,” I finally said, forcing myself to answer him.
“No?”
“No.”
But for some reason, it didn’t feel right. It felt like a reminder of what I’d lost when it came to a future with Sully.
“What if I wanted their last name to be Summers?” I found myself asking.
I felt Sully shrug. “Feels fair, considering you’re doing a hell of a lot more work here.”
