He stroked my hair back from my face. “I got something else too. For me, but for you. For us.”
He looked suddenly nervous.
“I wasn’t going to tell you tonight. It felt kind of presumptuous. Only later, if things went well.”
I frowned, totally confused. “What is it?”
“It’s not a thing. It’s um, a date. An appointment, I mean.”
I quirked my head, still lost. “STI testing?” I asked, half-joking.
“No. I got that done before the last time I met you. And haven’t been with anyone since.”
Of course. He’d told me all of that. Just like I’d told him that first night we were together.
“Though I did get tested again. Just to be triple sure. But it’s not that.”
“Tell me already!”
He smiled. “It’s a vasectomy, Ellie. So you don’t ever have to worry again.”
For a moment, I didn’t say anything.
Sam’s expression went from hopeful to confused. “Ellie. That’s a good thing, right?”
I swallowed, backing off of his lap. “Yeah.”
But my voice didn’t match the word. Neither did the way I was sitting on the couch next to him, my body suddenly in turmoil.
“Ellie, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I just…don’t know if I want you to do that.”
Sam was frozen. But it only lasted a moment before his pupils began to flare slightly. “Ellie. What are you saying?”
I didn’t know what I was saying. I didn’t think this would come up. Ever.
“I just um… I…”
“Ellie,” His voice was low. Serious, like he didn’t trust himself to speak. “Would you be open to having more babies? With me?”
His tone was so loaded, my heart thumped hard and fast in my chest.
I took a shaky breath. “I think maybe there’s a possibility I am. I um… I love my kids. I’m happy right now. But I never got the chance to anticipate them, you know? Like totryfor a baby. To feel that joy and excitement and anticipation. To see a positive pregnancy test and not freak out. I think I want…”
I met Sam’s eyes. “I could want to do it again, Sam. With you. Not now I mean, but?—”
I cut myself off. Because Sam looked like he was going to combust. I expected his hands to shake as he reached for meagain, but they were strong and steady and firm as iron. “Ellie. If you’re telling me I get to put another baby in you, on purpose, I might fucking die.”
The way he phrased that had heat roaring back into me ten times hotter than before. It screamed through me.
“I think in the future, yes, that’s a possibility.”
“Why not now, Ellie?” Sam asked, standing. He looked wild. Ravenous. “What if”—he gripped my hands, practically making me fly in the air as he pulled me up. “What if I fuck you bare right now? What would you say to that?”
He pulled me against him, his hands bunching my dress up behind my thighs. This time I forgot about propriety. I was liquid fire inside. I couldn’t care less if the whole town saw me naked right now.
“What if,” Sam said, taking a predatory step toward the house with me attached, “I fill that pussy up right now and don’t let a single drop escape. How would you feel about that?”
