Page 271 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

The first few thrusts are intense. The stretch and burn is so perfect I nearly sob, and I dig my nails into his shoulders, desperate for more, more, as if I could crawl inside him and be safe forever.

He reads the need in me and fucks harder, bracing my hips and driving me back with each motion, and the dresser rocks against the wall in time with both our heartbeats. His mouth is on my neck, teeth scraping the skin, breath wet and hot, and everywhere he touches I feel like a living nerve ending.

He says my name against my ear, almost broken, the syllables coming apart at the edges. I’ve reduced this man, this terrifying, terrifyingly beautiful man, to pleading, and I never want to go back to how things were before.

“Say it,” he mutters, teeth pressed to my jaw. “Please. I need to hear it.”

The confession stuns me, but not as much as the want in his eyes. After four years of silence, of warping himself around guilt, he still needs permission to want anything.

“I love you,” I say again, rougher. Feral. “I love you, Ethan, and I want your entire goddamn soul inside me. I want everything you’ve got.”

He shudders so violently the dresser nearly tips, and he mouths “fuck” against my skin, tongue everywhere, hands trembling.

He’s never been this raw or desperate, not even that first time in the airplane bathroom, and I’m somehow both on fire and held together entirely by him.

I grip his hair and drag him into another kiss, teeth clashing, and for now we’re not two battered people trying to patchwork hope together; we’re just animal and need and sweat and pulse.

When he comes, it’s all at once, like a plug pulled on storms, and I feel him shuddering through it, the tightness in his arms, the hitch in his breath as he splits apart inside me. I hold him, legs locked and arms tangled around his neck like I’m afraid he’ll float away.

I never want him to float away. I need him here with me forever.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Ethan

6 months later…

Addy goes into labor during breakfast.

Because of course she does.

One minute, she’s sitting at the kitchen island in one of my shirts, eating toast with strawberry jam and glaring at Captain.

The next, she freezes.

Every instinct in my body comes alive. “Addy?”

She blinks once.

Then looks down.

Then back up at me.

“I think,” she says carefully, “your children have decided to make their entrance.”

My heart stops.

Oliver gasps from his stool, spoon halfway to his mouth. “Now?”

Addy exhales shakily, one hand braced beneath her stomach. “Apparently.”

Captain barks.

“Not helpful,” I tell him.

Then I move.

I have handled emergency landings. Board crises, federal investigations, media fires, software failures capable of destroying billion-dollar contracts. I’ve stood in front of investigators and explained how the worst day of my life was built by another man’s arrogance.