20. Andrea
— ? —
Andrea
Kirk’s bedroom door opens under my hand, and neither of us moves. The air between us is thick, charged with a tension that has been humming like a live wire for weeks.
“Say that again.” His voice comes out low and rough, a vibration I can feel in my own chest. “I want to make sure I heard it right.”
“I’m not sleeping in the guest room tonight.”
“Since when?”
“Since I’ve been standing out here every night this week.
” My heart’s going so hard it’s almost loud, thumping against my ribs.
“Right here. Hand on the door. And then I make myself go back to that stupid little room like it means something. And I don’t even know what I’m proving anymore.
I’m tired, Kirk. I don’t want to go back down the hall. I want to be in here.”
Something in his face just gives. The restraint he’s been clinging to snaps, and his eyes darken, turning a predatory shade of near-black.
“Then come here.”
“In a second. I have to say some stuff first, and you have to just let me. Don’t try to fix it.”
“Okay.” He shuts the door behind me, slow. The little click of the latch is the loudest thing in the house, sealing us away from the rest of the world. “Go ahead.”
“Stop being so careful with me. Please.” I reach up, my fingers trembling slightly as I undo the top button of my shirt.
His eyes drop instantly, tracking the movement, locking onto the sliver of skin revealed.
“You’ve been acting like I’m going to break for weeks and I’m not going to break.
The doctor said it’s fine. It’s fine. I just want you to stop.
I’m not made of glass. I’m your wife and I’ve missed you so much it’s stupid. ”
“You’re nineteen weeks pregnant.”
“I know how pregnant I am. If you say one more thing about the doctor I’m going to lose it.
” Second button. Third. I can see his jaw clenching, the muscle leaping under his skin.
“And I want you to talk to me. Like you used to. You’ve been so careful and so sorry about everything, for months, and it’s the right thing everywhere else.
It’s not the right thing in here.” My voice drops to a needy whisper.
“In here I don’t want you sorry. I just want you.
The way you were before. You used to hold my hands down and tell me what you were going to do to me. I want that back.”
His jaw tightens. His hands curl into fists at his sides, his knuckles white.
He stays where he is, anchored by the sheer force of his will because I’m not done, and watching him fight himself - watching that raw, masculine hunger war with his protective instinct - makes a heat bloom between my thighs that is almost unbearable.
“That’s it. That’s everything.” I let the shirt slide off my shoulders, the fabric pooling at my feet. I stand before him, exposed and aching. “Except don’t say sorry. Not tonight. Not in this bed. Be sorry in the kitchen. Anywhere else. Not here.”
He crosses the room in three predatory steps.
The kiss lands hard, a collision of teeth and desperate longing. One hand tangles deep in my hair, tilting my head back to deepen the assault, while his other hand slams flat over the curve of my belly.
We both make a broken sound at the contact, a gasp of recognition. He walks me back, his body a wall of hard muscle pressing against my softness, until my knees hit the edge of the bed.
He lowers me down, his movements a chaotic blend of rough urgency and a tenderness that makes me want to cry.
“I’m breaking your one rule,” he growls into the sensitive skin of my neck, his breath hot. “I’m sorry. Right now. Once.”
“No.”
“For this.” His fingers hook into my waistband, dragging the fabric down with a sudden, forceful tug.
His mouth follows, trailing fire down my stomach, and by the time he’s settled between my thighs, I’m already shaking, my hips arching instinctively toward him.
“Because I’ve spent three weeks in that room down the hall listening for your light to click off. Every night. I’m not rushing this.”
He doesn’t rush. He takes his time, his tongue tracing the folds of my pussy with a slow, deliberate precision that makes me moan into the pillows. He tastes me, drinking me in, his breath hitching as he finds the center of my heat.
He works me with a rhythmic, agonizing patience, his tongue mapping me in slow strokes, learning the new contours of my body. Twice he brings me right to the precipice, the tension building until I’m sobbing his name, and then he stops.
He ignores my fingers clawing at his hair, ignores my pleas, until the third time. When I make a sound I’ve never made before - a high, broken keen - he finally lets me go.
The orgasm rips through me in long, violent waves, my muscles clamping tight around nothing. He stays with me through every shudder, his face pressed against my thigh. When the world stops spinning, he’s grinning against my hip, looking smug and utterly wrecked.
“Stop looking so pleased with yourself.”
“Make me.”
I move then, driven by a hunger that hasn’t been sated. I push him onto his back, my hands sliding over the hard planes of his chest. I marvel at him - the breadth of his shoulders, the ripple of his abs, the sheer power radiating off him.
I take him in my hand, feeling the velvet heat of his cock, and I watch three weeks of “good behavior” vanish from his eyes in four seconds.
As I sink down onto him, taking him in one slow, deep slide, we both go still. Forehead to forehead, our breaths mingling, the sensation of being filled by him blanks out every thought I had left. I feel the stretch, the fullness, the way he fits perfectly inside me.
“Andrea.” My name comes out of him wrecked, a prayer and a plea.
“I know.”
“You feel like-”
“Home. I know.” I kiss the side of his mouth, my voice trembling. “Keep talking. I changed my mind. Say all of it.”
And he does. His hands are everywhere - gripping my hips, kneading the flesh of my thighs, splaying wide over my belly.
“You are so beautiful,” he groans, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
“God, look at you. You’re glowing. I can’t get over how perfect you are - how perfect we are.
” He presses a reverent kiss to the peak of my stomach.
“I love you. I love this baby. I love every single inch of you.”
The praise sends a fresh surge of heat through me. I ride him with a desperate rhythm, my breasts swaying, my skin slick with sweat. His face is stripped bare beneath me, nothing held back, the focus of a man who knows exactly what he almost lost.
Then he rolls us onto our sides, his movements powerful and fluid. He pulls me against him, one arm locking me tight, and takes me deep from behind. The angle is perfect, pressing him hard against my womb, hitting spots that make my vision blur.
His mouth is on the back of my neck, his teeth grazing my skin, his voice whispering filthy, loving things into my ear.
When the second climax hits, it’s a violent explosion. I feel him stiffen, a low roar ripping from his throat as he fills me, his body shuddering with the force of his release.
Afterward, we’re tangled in the damp sheets, the silence of the room filled only by our synchronized breathing.
The sweat cools on our skin, but the warmth between us remains. He doesn’t pull away; he stays buried deep inside me, holding me protectively.
His hand moves in a slow, rhythmic circle over my belly, where our child slept through the storm.
I close my eyes, listening to the beat of his heart against my back, feeling completely, utterly home.
And then, low under his palm, a flutter - firmer this time, undeniable, nothing I can argue myself out of.
My breath catches. I press his hand flat to the spot.
“There. Did you feel that?” “No.” His whole body goes alert, chasing it.
“Not yet. I can’t feel her yet.” The disappointment in his voice undoes me.
“Soon,” I promise. “She’s just getting started. ”
“So.” He’s talking to the ceiling. “The guest room.”
“What about it.”
“Am I done earning it back? Or is that a nightly thing.”
I put my chin on his chest so he can see my face. “Nightly.” Then, because I’m too worn out to hide it: “But I didn’t want to sleep without you. Not once. I was just being stubborn about it.”
His arm tightens around me. He’s quiet a second, and when he talks his voice has gone thick.
“I missed you in here the most. Is that dumb? Not the kitchen. Not your chair or whatever. The bed. I couldn’t sleep in it.”
“It’s not dumb.” I press my mouth to the middle of his chest. “It’s the least dumb thing you’ve said all night.”
“You said some things tonight too.”
“Yeah. I did. And I’m not going to be embarrassed about any of it.” I settle into the spot on his chest that’s shaped for my head. “I’m trying something new. Saying what I want and then just living with it.”
“I like the new thing.”
“Course you do.”
He laughs, low, and I feel it more than hear it, and his breathing goes slow and even under my ear, and I go down with it, and for the first time in three months I fall asleep in my own bed, in my own house, in my own marriage.
His phone buzzes on the nightstand at 2 AM.
I come halfway up, feel him reach for it, feel him go stiff underneath me.
“Kirk?”
“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“Kirk.”
He turns the screen to me, because we don’t do the other thing anymore, the hiding. It glows in the dark.
Missed call: Unknown. Palm Beach, FL.
Under it, the stack. Same number, over and over. Tuesday. Wednesday. Twice on Thursday alone.
“Eleven calls since Tuesday,” he says, quiet.
“I haven’t picked up. I wasn’t going to tell you till after the shower.
You’ve been so happy. I didn’t want her in the room with us.
” He puts the phone face down. In the dark his heart’s picked up under my ear.
“She wants back in, Andrea. She’s down there somewhere wanting back in. ”
The house is quiet around us. The good kind now.
I put my hand flat over his heart and hold it there till it slows down.
“Then we keep the doors locked,” I say. “All of them.”
But I lie there a long time after he’s out, watching the phone on the nightstand, waiting to see if it lights up again.