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Of belonging to something good.
All of which he thought about to distract himself from the sight of smooth skin that he knew tasted slightly salty with a hint of sweet and a belly button he’d slid his tongue into more times than he could count. He got hard just thinking about how putting his tongue there made her hips squirm.
Less than a minute in the room and his penis was standing at attention. In a pair of jeans. Pulling the edge of his shirt as low as it would go, he looked around at the instruments in the room, the monitor. The camera that the technician held. The gel she was squeezing onto Elaina’s belly.
And, God help him, thought about the gel Elaina had used to massage him right where he ached at the moment.
He could hear the technician telling them what she’d be doing, was doing, pointing to the monitor, and he had to wonder if she’d checked Elaina’s chart and if she knew that she was talking to a radiologist and an MD.
The woman lowered her camera to the gel on Elaina’s belly, sliding it around, and suddenly, Greg had no focus at all except the monitor, assessing every single shape of shadow and light. Noting at once that all of the formations were exactly as they should be. After that first bit of confirmation, he glanced at Elaina, meaning to get right back to the screen he was studying, but he couldn’t look away from the slight flush on Elaina’s cheeks, the uplifted tilt of lips that were trembling, and the glisten in her eyes.
She’d never been more beauti
ful to him.
And more inaccessible, either.
* * *
“I know it’s silly, but I’m going to make it my text message notification sound. I’m calling it my heartbeat song.” Phone in hand, tapping and thumb-typing, Elaina walked with Greg through the parking lot toward her car, frenetic, needing to pee and unable to slow down. She had to get back to work. But she just couldn’t stop listening to the steady rhythm that she and Greg had just heard moments before. One he’d thankfully recorded on his phone and had already sent to her.
She had a heart, other than her own, beating inside of her.
She felt combustible. Ready to explode. With joy. Fear. Awe. Disbelief. She just couldn’t come down from that high.
They had photo scans, too. Pictures she could read like a book.
An incredible, perfect, beautiful book.
Grabbing the strip of photos out of the satchel on her shoulder, she held them up, a long string of still shots. “Crazy how these seem to be entirely different from every imaging shot I’ve ever taken,” she said, and then gave them to him. “You want to take them back to the house?” And before giving him a chance to respond, said, “No, wait, I’ll keep them here, in my satchel.”
She went back to dealing with her phone. Her fingers fumbling as she tried to type. She had her own “Heartbeat Song.” There was no going back. No slowing down.
She didn’t want to go back or slow down, either.
“It was something, huh?” Greg asked as she reached her car and he didn’t branch off to his.
Glancing up from her phone, meeting his gaze for the first time since she’d entered the ultrasound room, she had a reply ready on her lips. It froze. And then evaporated. That golden glint in his eyes...would their baby have it, too?
“Yeah, it was something.” She managed to echo his statement back at him. In lieu of the plethora of feelings zooming through her.
Holding her gaze, he nodded. And it was as if he knew what she wasn’t saying.
Because he wasn’t saying it, either.
They’d walked out side by side. He was right there. Close enough that she could smell his musky scent—a mixture of soap and deodorant—and as their eyes met, she knew what was going to happen.
Their bodies were having a physical conversation of their own. That half-slumberous look in his eye, the way he was studying her lips, and the way her tongue immediately popped out and wet them as she started to lean in. To breathe a huge sigh at the thought of relief from the emotions coursing through her.
Then he stepped back. Blinking. And the man who stared back at her was closed off. A doctor at a bedside. A committee member heading up a table of professionals.
A man who saved lives for a living.
One who’d just saved her from herself.
And she had to be grateful.
* * *
