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It’s only ever been him.
I suppose a small part of me feels that I’m owed this little slice of happiness. After all, I gave Alec up immediately, as soon as Celine told me how she really felt. Why should I be expected to give Ilarion up, too? Especially when what I feel for him is a thousand times stronger than what I felt for Alec.
“You’re thinking about things you shouldn’t be thinking about,” Ilarion gently scolds, breaking through my reverie.
I scowl. “How can you tell?”
“I just can.”
He leans down and presses a feathery kiss to my lips. He tastes like mountain rain. Beneath me, his body is hard as stone.
One kiss is good, but two is better. I drape my hand over his neck and pull him closer for another one. The second is as good as the first, so I go for three, and then I just keep him there, swiping my tongue across his soft lips until they part and I can taste more of him.
He grabs me and pulls me to him, tickling me beneath the water. I squeal with laughter and try to get away from him, but he holds me close, silencing my laughter with his tongue in my mouth.
We make out in the tub for ages, until all the bubbles are gone and our fingers are wrinkled from the bathwater. He fucks me again slowly, and the orgasm breaks over me like dawn over the mountains. The sun has almost completely set by the time we come up for air.
My stomach grumbles and, of course, Ilarion catches it. “I promised you dinner. I should’ve known you wouldn’t let me forget.”
“It’s my fault. I’m the one who changed the plan.”
“Get dressed and relax,” he orders with a wry smirk. “I’ll go cook.”
“Need any help?”
He looks at me with an arched brow. “Do you really want to help?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Laughing, he hauls himself out of the tub. I admire his sculpted ass while he towels himself dry and pulls on a pair of sweatpants. Bare-chested and sexy as hell,, he leans down and kisses me one more time as I rise to meet his tempting mouth. He takes the opportunity to grab me around my waist and pull me out of the now-cold water, wrapping a fluffy towel around me with another warm kiss.
Then he saunters off to the kitchen, leaving me to pat myself dry and figure out something to wear.
The mirrors in the walk-in closet connecting the bathroom to the master bedroom are almost as big as the windows they’re facing. There’s no way to hide from my reflection.
I cast a critical eye over my body. It has changed somewhat since the pregnancy…and, to my surprise, I’m not hating it.
My breasts are fuller, and there’s a roundness to my belly that’s new, too. I turn to the side and examine my stomach. I let my hand run over the almost-imperceptible swell and I imagine our baby inside.
Ourbaby.
Most women have dreams of this moment. I don’t. I suppose it was too unplanned, and I was too young to have longed for it. It just came upon me suddenly and violently and beautifully. Like a devil driving a car too fast down the street when you aren’t looking.
I rifle through the suitcase we brought and pull out one of Ilarion’s t-shirts. I add a button-down sweater over it, but I leave it undone.
I emerge from the closet and examine the bedroom in the twilight. The bed is a pastiche of varnished wooden panels. Aspen and birch glow white and bands of pine are black where they run in between. Just above it hangs a Coronado wagon wheel chandelier, dripping with lit candles. I run my bare toes through the thick, earthy carpet.
On the far side of the room, I notice a series of staggered floating shelves. They hold books, mostly, but in between are tchotchkes and knickknacks. Antlers, a music box, a chunk of crystal, a snow globe.
The snow globe catches my eye. It’s just big enough to fit snug in the palm of my hand. Inside, snowflakes swirl down around a mountain range that matches the one outside the window. At the foot of the mountain is a herd of deer grazing in snow-covered grass.
And in the very heart of the shadows clustered behind them, where the sun can’t reach, is a pair of predator’s eyes.
I feel my stomach twist suddenly, and I’m filled with a strange sense of foreboding. We can’t stay up here forever. I have a feeling that the real world will catch up to us sooner than we want.
As much as I want to stay…our snow globe will eventually shatter.
I put it back on the shelf and go downstairs to join Ilarion.
