Page 83

"Careful."

"No. You made promises." But she pulls me in by the hips instead, scooting to the very edge, knees hugging my sides.

The head of me notches against her, hot and slick, and I stop. Old habit, and the best one I've got. She doesn't even let the pause finish. Her palm lands flat on the small of my back and presses. "Now, Aiden."

I push inside her slow, feeling her open around me inch by inch, and the sound we make together lands somewhere between relief and want. She's scalding around me. I brace my hands on the table on either side of her hips and make myself hold still, just to feel her.

"We're in no hurry," I tell her, starting to move, long and deep. "Married people aren't in a hurry."

"We're not married yet." Her breath stumbles on the second word.

"We will be. I'm practicing."

"Practicing." She grabs my jaw and makes me look at her, eyes bright and wet and happy. "You're going to be so smug at the wedding."

"I'm going to be unbearable."

Then talking gets harder, because she starts moving with me, hips rising to meet every stroke, and the pace I planned goes the way of the sequence. She leans back on both hands to change the angle and the new one pulls a long low curse out of me. The table legs scrape an inch across the floor. Neither of us stops.

"I planned slow," I manage.

"I know you did." Her nails skate down my chest. "More. All of it. I want to feel this on Monday, every time I sit down at my desk."

"You will." I give her what she asked for, deeper, harder, her heat gripping me on every stroke, and her breathing changes first, going high and thin, and I know that sound by now, so I keep the angle exactly where it is and refuse to vary it no matter what her hands do to my back.

Then she reaches for my hand. Finds it braced beside her hip, pulls it to her, and presses it flat and low on her belly, holding it there under both of hers, looking right at me while I move inside her.

"There's already a baby in me," she says, unsteady and certain at the same time, "And I still want you to try for another one."

My rhythm breaks for one beat. "Vanessa." It's all I've got left.

She goes over first, right there under our stacked hands, head dropping forward, one fist white-knuckled on the table edge, her pussy gripping me in long greedy pulls, her cry landing low and open against my throat, and it drags me straight over the edge behind her.

I don't try to hold it. Forehead to her forehead, our hands still pressed to her belly, I drive in deep and stay there, coming long and slow, emptying everything I have into her while the words fall out of me without permission.

"Mine. This is mine. You're mine, both of you."

She holds my hand against her the whole way through it. When I finally still, we stay like that, joined, her mouth finding mine soft and unhurried, both of us breathing like we've been running.

Come spring, there'll be three of us.

Epilogue

I wake up the way I do every morning. My husband wrapped around my back in our bed, his hand resting warm over the bump like he's checking his work.

His shirt doesn't close over it anymore. I sleep in it anyway, open, because some things are non-negotiable and being wrapped in his clothes is one of them.

The house is quiet the way it rarely is this time of the morning. No baby crying for a diaper change and breakfast. Nora stopped by last night, insisting she’s not seeing nearly enough of her grandson. She grabbed his diaper bag and packed it with her usual quick proficiency, wearing the face of a woman executing a warrant, and the negotiations were brief. She left with little Raymond strapped into the car seat that’s permanently in his grandma’s car, telling us not to worry about a thing and to enjoy some time together before Ray’s little brother adds his voice to the household chaos.

I'm aching for Aiden before I'm even properly awake, which is the second trimester's one reliable gift. Everything else about growing a person is a scam. The heartburn, the crying at dog food commercials, but the wanting is constant and shameless, and I've decided to enjoy every minute of it.

Aiden stirs against my back, hard against my ass, already interested. He noses into my hair and breathes me in slowly, like I'm the first good thing in his day. "Ray’s with my mother." Morning-rough. Hopeful.

"He is," I confirm, pushing back against him, and that's the entire conversation. Both of us having made it very clear where this is headed.

His hand slides up under the open flannel and closes over my breast, careful, because he's learned the hard way how tender they are now, and the careful is somehow worse. Better. Worse. His thumb drags across my nipple and the sound I make is a lot for this hour of the morning. Only a few more months before my milk starts coming in. Aiden goes feral when I’m lactating. Just the thought of it sends a furious zap of need clenching my pussy.

"You're really showing now." He says it the way other men say happy birthday, palm smoothing over the curve of the bump, proprietary and gentle at once. "My goddess of fertility, showing the world she’s swollen with my child."