25. Harper
HARPER
I’m curled on the couch with my feet in Viktor’s lap when I notice he’s stopped reading entirely, book forgotten, open against his knee, just watching me instead.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing. You look tired.”
“I am tired. Growing an entire human is apparently exhausting work.”
He sets the book aside and runs his thumb along the arch of my foot, slow, absent, a touch that used to feel impossible for a man like him and now just feels like Tuesday.
Ginger’s already asleep upstairs, worn out from a full day of school and the diorama sequel she’s apparently already planning for next semester, and the house has that particular quiet it gets once she’s down, settled and still, just the two of us and whatever’s left of the evening.
“You’ve gotten good at that,” I say.
“At what?”
“Noticing things before I tell you. My feet. What I’m actually hungry for versus what I say I want. The exact moment I need to sit down before I know it myself.”
“I pay attention.” He says it simply, like it’s the most obvious explanation in the world, and maybe for him it is.
“Most people don’t pay attention like this.”
“Most people aren’t watching someone they love build an entire person out of nothing.” He presses his thumb into the arch of my foot again, and I feel it everywhere, not just where he’s touching. “It’s hard not to notice everything, given what’s actually happening.”
I go quiet at that, at the easy way he said love like it’s a fact he settled on a while ago and stopped questioning, and my chest goes warm and a little unsteady.
“You don’t have to look so surprised every time I say it,” he says, watching my face. “I mean it every time.”
“I know. It still catches me off guard.”
“Good. I’d worry if it stopped.”
He shifts, gentle in the way he’s gentle with everything lately, and pulls me closer until I’m tucked against his side instead of just resting my feet in his lap, one hand settling low over the small, barely-there curve of my stomach.
“Does it feel real to you yet?” I ask. “The baby, I mean. Twelve weeks still feels abstract to me some days.”
“It felt real the second you told me.” His hand stays where it is, warm through my shirt. “I think about it more than I probably should during a normal workday. Whether it’ll have your stubbornness or mine. Whether Ginger’s going to be a good big sister or an absolute menace about it.”
“Both, probably.”
“Both, definitely.” He shifts slightly, thoughtful now. “I keep catching myself doing the math. Due date, how old Ginger will be by then, whether we’ll need a bigger crib than the one I already looked at online without telling you.”
“You’ve been looking at cribs.”
“In secret, yes. I wanted to have an idea before we actually talked about it, so I wouldn’t just be standing there nodding along uselessly when you brought it up.”
“That’s oddly sweet, for a man who spent our first conversation trying to figure out why a stranger was proposing to him.”
“I contain multitudes. We’ve established this.”
He presses a kiss to my temple, unhurried, and I feel the shift happen slowly, nothing sudden about it, just his mouth trailing lower, along my jaw, my throat, patient in a way that’s different from how he usually is with me.
“You’re being gentle tonight,” I say, half teasing, tilting my head to give him better access.
“I’m always gentle with you.”
“Not always. Sometimes you’re not gentle at all, and I’ve never once complained about it.”
He laughs against my skin, low and warm. “Tonight’s different. I want different tonight.”
“Different how?”
“Slower.” He pulls back just enough to look at me properly, something unguarded in his face that has nothing to do with restraint and everything to do with how much he’s stopped protecting himself from feeling all of this at once.
“I don’t want tonight to be about how much I want you, even though I do, always.
I want it to be about how much I actually love you, and I want to take my time proving that instead of rushing past it. ”
My throat goes tight, and I don’t trust myself to answer with words, so I answer by pulling him back down to me instead, slower this time, matching whatever pace he’s set without either of us having to say it out loud.
He stands, taking me with him, and this time there’s no urgency in the walk to our bedroom, no doorstep tension threatening to spill over before either of us is ready.
Just his hand in mine, unhurried steps, the quiet certainty of two people who’ve stopped needing to rush toward anything.
He undresses me like he’s committing it to memory, unhurried, reverent in a way I don’t have another word for, his hands mapping the changes in my body with the same attention he gives everything else about me now, the small curve of my stomach, the fuller weight of my breasts, changes I’ve barely adjusted to myself yet.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a line; it sounds like something he’s simply reporting, factual, undeniable to him.
“You don’t have to keep saying that.”
“I’m not saying it because I have to. I’m saying it because it’s true, and because I don’t think you actually believe it yet, and I intend to keep saying it until you do.”
I don’t have an answer for that, so I pull him closer instead, and he lets himself be pulled, unhurried, patient, like we have every minute in the world and no reason to spend any of them rushing.
He closes the bedroom door behind us, and the quiet settles differently than it used to.
I stand near the foot of the bed while he moves toward me.
There’s no hurry in the way he reaches for the hem of my shirt.
He lifts it slowly, waiting for me to raise my arms, then draws it up and over my head.
The air feels cooler against my skin. He sets the shirt aside instead of letting it fall.
Then his hands go to the clasp of my bra.
“Turn around,” he says softly.
I do. His fingers work the clasp open with care, and he slides the straps down my arms. When the bra is gone, he rests both palms on my bare shoulders for a moment, just holding them there. I feel the warmth of his hands and the slight roughness of his palms. He turns me back to face him.
His eyes move over me without rushing. They pause on my breasts, which have grown fuller these past weeks, then lower to the small curve of my stomach that is only just beginning to show. I feel a flicker of self-consciousness and almost cross my arms.
He notices. “Don’t,” he says. “I want to look.”
“It still feels strange,” I admit. “Like my body belongs to someone else half the time.”
“It belongs to you. And to the baby. And to me, in the ways you’ll let me have it.” He steps closer. His hands settle at my waist, thumbs brushing the soft skin just above the waistband of my leggings. “I like every change so far. I like knowing I get to watch the rest of them happen.”
He eases the leggings down my hips along with my underwear.
I step out of them. Now I’m completely bare, and he’s still dressed.
He does not seem in any rush to change that.
He walks me the last few steps to the bed and guides me to sit on the edge.
Then he kneels in front of me, so we’re closer to eye level.
His hands rest on my thighs. He looks up at my face first, then lets his gaze travel down again, slower this time. “You’re warmer,” he says, almost to himself. “Your skin. I noticed it last week too.”
“Is that a pregnancy thing?”
“I think so.” He leans in and presses a kiss just below my collarbone. “I like it.”
He stays kneeling and begins to touch me with the same unhurried attention.
One hand slides up my side. The other cups the underside of my breast, testing its new weight.
His thumb brushes over my nipple, and I draw a quiet breath.
Everything feels more sensitive than it used to.
He notices that, too, and keeps the touch light.
“Tell me if anything feels like too much,” he says.
“It’s not too much. It’s just… more.”
He nods and continues. His mouth follows the path his hands have taken, kissing along the upper curve of my breast, then lower, taking his time.
When he draws my nipple into his mouth, the sensation is sharper than I expect. A soft sound leaves me. He makes a low answering sound in his throat and stays there, unhurried, learning the new responses of my body.
After a while he eases me further back onto the bed, so I am lying down. He stretches out beside me, still mostly dressed, and continues the slow mapping with his hands and mouth.
He spends long minutes on my breasts, then moves lower. When his palm settles over the small curve of my stomach, he goes still for a moment.
“Hi,” he says quietly, speaking more to the baby than to me. The absurdity of it makes me smile even as my throat tightens.
“You’re talking to it already.”
“I’ve been talking to it in my head since we found out.” His hand stays warm and steady over the slight swell. “Feels different doing it out loud.”
He leans down and presses a slow kiss to the same place his hand had been.
Then another. The tenderness of it is almost harder to take than anything more urgent would have been.
I slide my fingers into his hair and hold on while he stays there, breathing against my skin, as if he has nowhere else he needs to be.
When he finally lifts his head, his eyes are darker. He looks at me for a long second.
“I could do this for hours,” he says. “Just this. Learning how you feel now.”
“I want you to.” My voice comes out softer than I expect. “I want you to take as long as you need.”
He nods once, then returns to the slow exploration of my body, hands and mouth moving with the same patient focus, drawing out every moment instead of pushing toward anything else.