40. Zane
ZANE
The amended guardianship document sits on my desk with her handwriting in the margins, three full pages of notes in her careful, slanted script, clauses she’s rewritten entirely and others she’s left untouched with a check mark beside them indicating approval rather than oversight.
I read through it again before I leave for the evening, not because I need to confirm the language, Alexei’s team finalized it two days ago, but because I want to look at the proof of what actually changed between us this month.
Not a promise made once in an office and forgotten by the next crisis.
A document with both our names woven through every clause, hers in pen, mine typed beneath it, equal weight given to both.
I fold it into the drawer and go to find her.
Orlov’s annual gathering runs larger than most events on the calendar, the full breadth of the organization’s adjacent circle present rather than the tighter council functions we’ve managed most of this year.
Celine is seven months along now. She draws attention whether she wants it or not, and her doctor has been clear that travel and long evenings will need to stop soon. This is, by every practical measure, the last function she’ll manage before the child arrives.
I watch her dress for it from the doorway of her room, deep blue this time, the fabric cut to accommodate rather than disguise, and she catches my eye in the mirror.
“Last one for a while,” she says.
“I know.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
I don’t make it weird. I help her with the clasp on her necklace instead, my hands steadier at the task than they have any right to be, given how unsteady the rest of me feels watching her in that mirror.
The house is full by the time we arrive, voices and music and the hum of a gathering large enough that no single conversation dominates the room.
Celine moves through it without needing me beside her the way she once did, greeting people by name, asking after a daughter’s wedding here, a business venture there.
Henrik finds her near the bar an hour in.
I watch from across the room, close enough to intervene if the conversation turns the way every previous interaction with Henrik has turned, distant and unacknowledging. It doesn’t.
He says something to her I can’t hear, and she laughs, genuinely, her hand briefly resting against her stomach the way it does now without her seeming to notice, and Henrik’s expression shifts into something I haven’t seen from him in the entire time I’ve known him.
I cross the room afterward, curious despite myself.
“What did he say to you?” I ask once Henrik has moved on to another conversation.
“He apologized,” she says, still looking faintly surprised by it herself.
“Said his opposition was never about me personally, that he’d misjudged how this would play out, and that watching me hold a room like this for months convinced him he was wrong about more than he expected to be wrong about.
” She shrugs. “He also asked if we’d considered a name yet.
Apparently, that’s his version of an olive branch. ”
“Henrik asking about names is a genuine event.”
“I gathered.”
A young man I don’t recognize approaches a moment later, junior enough in the organization’s wider structure that I’ve never had reason to learn his name, and he introduces himself to Celine.
He asks intelligent questions about the foundation work she’s been quietly involved in through Orlov’s wife. She answers all of them, sharp and warm in equal measure, and the young man leaves the conversation looking like he’s just had several assumptions corrected at once.
I watch this happen four more times over the course of the evening. Different people, different conversations, the same recalibration each time, a woman dismissed before they met her, becoming someone they leave the conversation respecting.
I find myself no longer working the room the way I usually do at functions like this.
I find myself simply watching her instead.
Petra catches me at it near the terrace doors, amusement clear on her face.
“You’ve been standing in the same spot for twenty minutes,” she says.
“Have I.”
“Watching your wife hold court with half this gathering.” She follows my gaze toward Celine, currently deep in conversation with three women I know to be notoriously difficult to impress, all three of them visibly charmed despite themselves.
“Orlov says you used to work a room like a man closing deals. Tonight, you look like a man who’s forgotten the room exists. ”
I don’t have a response to that. She isn’t wrong.
I think about the woman in the lobby all those months ago, hair down, walking past me without performing anything for a building built specifically to make people perform.
I think about every room since, every council dinner, every gala, every moment I watched her with the calculating attention of a man assessing an asset’s performance.
Tonight isn’t that. Tonight I’m not assessing anything.
I’m simply watching the woman I chose for reasons that started strategic and stopped being strategic somewhere along the way.
She’s carrying my child, commanding a room full of people who would have dismissed her on sight a year ago, and the weight in my chest sits differently than it has at any function before this one.
I cross the room to her side, not to manage the conversation, just to stand near her.
She glances at me, a question in her expression. “You don’t need to rescue me,” she says quietly. “I’ve got this.”
“I know. I just wanted to be near you.”
Her face softens at that, soft in a way I rarely see from her in public, and she leans slightly into my side without breaking stride in the conversation she’s holding with the three women beside us.
I stay there for the rest of the evening.
The drive home is quiet, her hand resting in mine across the seat, the city lit and indifferent around us, the way it always is. I stroke my thumb gently over her ring.
“Henrik asked about names,” she says again, almost to herself.
“What did you tell him?”
“That we hadn’t decided yet.” She looks at me. “Have you thought about it? Names.”
“A few.”
“Tell me.”
I don’t, not yet, some private superstition urging me to keeping the names close until we’re certain, but I tell her I’ll show her the short list this week, and she accepts that with a small smile that stays with me the rest of the ride.
The elevator ride up is quieter still, both of us tired in the good way.
Inside, the penthouse dark and settled around us, I help her out of her clothes with hands that are no longer steady the way they were with the necklace earlier, something charged building between us that has nothing to do with fear or argument or proximity this time.
It’s simply this. A man who spent an entire evening watching his wife, and a woman who let herself be watched without needing to perform anything beyond exactly who she already is, a current building between them that has nothing to do with fear or argument or proximity this time.
I remove the deep blue dress slowly, my fingers tracing the zipper down her back. The fabric pools at her feet, and she steps out of it, left in only a lace bra and panties that sit low beneath the full, heavy curve of her belly.
Seven months. She looks breathtaking like this—round and glowing and undeniably mine.
I turn her gently to face me. My hands slide over her hips, then move to her stomach. I spread my palms wide across the swell, feeling the firmness, the warmth, the subtle shift beneath her skin. A low sound escapes my throat.
“Fuck, Celine,” I murmur, voice rough. “Look at you.”
I drop to my knees in front of her and press my mouth to her belly, kissing the tight skin reverently. She threads her fingers through my hair as I worship every inch of it, lips brushing, tongue tasting, hands holding her like something sacred and filthy at the same time.
“You’re so full of my baby,” I say against her skin, voice low. “So fucking beautiful carrying my child. I can’t get enough of how you look now.”
She lets out a shaky breath. I hook my fingers into her panties and slide them down her legs, then rise and unhook her bra.
Her breasts are fuller and heavier, with darker nipples. I cup them gently, thumbs brushing over the sensitive peaks until she moans softly. I lean in and take one into my mouth, sucking slowly, savoring the way her body responds.
I guide her to the bed and help her lie on her side, facing me. I strip off the rest of my clothes and settle behind her, pulling her back against my chest. One arm wraps around her, hand resting possessively over her round belly, while the other slides between her thighs.
She’s already wet. I groan against her neck as I stroke her, circling her clit before pushing two fingers inside her. She arches back into me with a soft moan.
“Zane…”
“I’ve been watching you all night,” I rasp, kissing the side of her neck as I fuck her slowly with my fingers. “Seeing how they look at you now. Seeing you like this—heavy with my baby, still commanding every room you walk into. It drives me fucking crazy.”
I line myself up and push into her from behind, slow and deep. The angle lets me stay close, one hand on her belly, the other holding her thigh. She feels incredible—tighter, wetter, more sensitive. I groan deeply as I sink all the way in.
“God, you feel perfect,” I breathe against her ear. “So full of me in every way.”
I start moving, deep, rolling thrusts that let me stay wrapped around her. Every stroke is deliberate. I keep my hand spread wide over her belly, feeling it move slightly with each thrust.
The sight and feel of her like this, round, glowing, carrying my child, pushes me closer to the edge faster than I want.
She moans louder, pushing back against me. “Harder… please.”
I give her what she needs, fucking her deeper, my hips snapping forward while I keep her anchored against me. My hand slides down to rub her clit in firm circles. Her breathing grows ragged, her fingers gripping my forearm tightly.
“Come for me, baby,” I growl against her neck. “Let me feel this pretty pregnant pussy come around my cock.”
She shatters with a broken cry, clenching hard around me, her whole body trembling in my arms. The feeling is too much. I thrust deep and follow her, coming hard inside her with a low, guttural groan, pulsing as I fill her.
We stay locked together afterward, my cock still buried inside her, my hand resting protectively over her belly. I press soft kisses along her shoulder and the back of her neck, breathing her in.
She sighs contentedly and relaxes against me.
“I meant what I said earlier,” she whispers. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I tighten my arm around her, palm still warm on the curve of our child.
“Good,” I murmur. “Because I’m never letting you go.”