21. Delphine
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Delphine
We barely made it through the bedroom door.
Heath’s mouth was on mine before I could catch my breath, his hands working at the zipper of my dress while I fumbled with the buttons of his shirt.
We had already torn half our clothes off on the stairs, leaving a trail of fabric through the house, and now we were down to the bare essentials.
My heart was racing, my skin flushed, every muscle I had humming with the events of the evening.
He pulled back just long enough to look at me, his eyes dark in the pale light from the windows. His chest was heaving, his lips swollen from our kisses, and I could see the effort it took for him to slow down.
“Wait,” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” His hands came up to cup my face, gentle now, reverent. “I just want to do this differently tonight.”
“Differently how?”
“We’ve been desperate and fast and frantic every time since you came back.
” His thumb traced my cheekbone, wiping away a smudge of mascara I hadn’t realized was there.
“The storm at the lodge. The car on the highway. All of it rushed, like we were afraid it might disappear if we didn’t grab it with both hands. ”
“Weren’t we?”
“Maybe.” He smiled, soft and sad. “But tonight I want slow. Tonight I want to take my time with you. I want to worship you, Del. I want to touch every inch of you and tell you how beautiful you are. I want to make love to my wife in our bed, in our home, the way I should have been doing all along.”
The tenderness in his voice made my eyes sting with tears I refused to let fall.
I had spent so many months feeling unloved, unwanted, invisible in my own marriage.
Hearing him say these things, seeing the sincerity in his eyes, it cracked open a chamber in my chest that I had been trying to keep protected.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”
He guided me toward the bed, his hands steady on my waist, his touch firm but gentle.
I sat on the edge of the mattress and looked up at him, watching as he finished unbuttoning his shirt and let it fall to the floor.
The light from the window caught the planes of his chest, the muscles I had memorized over nine years, the body I knew better than my own.
He knelt in front of me.
The sight of him there, this proud, powerful man on his knees before me, made my breath catch. He reached for my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm, then to the inside of my wrist where my pulse was fluttering.
“I’ve been thinking about this all night,” he said. “Watching you at that dinner, listening to you take that pompous ass apart with nothing but your words. You were magnificent, Del. You’ve always been magnificent, and I was too blind to see it.”
“You saw it. You just forgot for a while.”
“I’ll never forget again.” He reached around me and found the clasp of my bra, unhooking it with the ease of long practice. He slid the straps down my shoulders, his eyes never leaving mine, and let the fabric fall away. “God, you’re beautiful.”
“I’m getting bigger every day.”
“I know.” His hand came up to rest low on my belly, his palm warm against the small hard curve that had not been there at Christmas. “I love it. I love watching you change. I love knowing our baby is growing inside you, that we made this child together, that our family is expanding.”
“Even after everything?”
“Especially after everything.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my stomach, just above my navel, his lips soft and reverent.
“This baby is proof that we survived. That we found our way back to each other. I’m going to love this child so much, Del.
I’m going to love both of you so much that you’ll never doubt it again. ”
The tears spilled over despite my best efforts. He looked up at me, concern flickering across his features.
“Don’t cry,” he murmured against my skin. “Unless they’re happy tears.”
“They’re happy tears.”
He smiled and kissed his way up my body, his mouth tracing a slow path over my ribs, over the curve of each breast, along the column of my throat.
Each press of his lips sent shivers through me, built the heat in my belly, made me want more even as he deliberately held back.
By the time he reached my mouth, I was trembling.
“Lie back,” he said.
I did, settling against the pillows, watching him through heavy lidded eyes.
He stood and stripped off the rest of his clothes, and then he was beside me on the bed, his body warm and solid against mine.
He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at me, his free hand tracing lazy patterns on my stomach.
“I’ve been rehearsing what I want to say to you,” he said. “I know that sounds ridiculous. Rehearsing words for my own wife.”
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous.”
“I just want to get it right. I’ve gotten so many things wrong, Del. I don’t want to get this wrong too.”
I put my palm flat against his cheek. “You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be honest.”
He nodded, took a breath, and began.
“I never stopped.” He said it into my collarbone, and I felt him say it more than heard it.
“That’s the first thing. Everything else I have to tell you is underneath that one.
Not for an hour, Del. Not for one hour of those three months did I stop wanting you or loving you, and I know what it looked like from your side of the table, and I know I have no right to be believed, and I’m telling you anyway because it’s true and you’re going to have to live with me being true at you for the rest of your life. ”
He lifted his head.
“I love you, Delphine. I’ve loved you since a cold cup of coffee in an engineering lab.
I’ve loved you through every argument we’ve ever had, through every celebration, through every ordinary Tuesday that blurred into the next.
I loved you when I was too stupid to show it, and I loved you when you walked away from me, and I’ll love you until the day I die. ”
“Heath...”
“I’m not done.” He pressed a finger to my lips.
“I need you to understand this. I know you now, better than I let you believe these past months. The brilliant engineer who gave up her career to support mine. The woman who held our family together when I was falling apart. The mother of my child, who deserves so much more than what I’ve given her. ”
“You’ve given me everything.”
“I’ve given you silence and distance and months of wondering if I still cared. That’s not everything. That’s nothing.” His voice cracked, and I saw moisture gathering in his eyes. “But I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Every single day. I swear it.”
I pulled him down and kissed him, pouring everything I couldn’t say into the press of my lips against his. He responded in kind, his mouth moving over mine with a sweetness that made all of me ache with longing.
His hand slid down my stomach, over the curve of my hip, tracing the edge of my underwear before slipping beneath the fabric. He touched me gently, carefully, his fingers moving in slow circles that built the heat without rushing it. I gasped against his mouth and felt him smile.
“Tell me what you need,” he murmured.
“You. Just you. All of you.”
He pulled back long enough to remove the last barrier between us, then settled himself between my thighs.
I felt him nudge against me, hard and ready, poised right where I wanted him.
But he didn’t push forward. He just looked at me, his eyes full of a promise I was finally letting myself believe in.
“I’m going to go slow,” he said. “Tell me if anything hurts. Tell me if you need me to stop.”
“It won’t hurt. You’ve never hurt me.”
“Tell me anyway. I need to know you’re okay. Both of you.”
He pressed forward, inch by careful inch, filling me with a gentleness that made my breath catch.
My body welcomed him, adjusting to the familiar stretch, the sensation of being complete in a way I only ever felt with him.
A sound came out of me, low and helpless, as he seated himself the last inch.
“Okay?” he asked.
“More than okay. Perfect.”
He began to move, so slow it was almost unbearable, more sensation than friction. Each stroke was deliberate and unhurried, designed to build pleasure without overwhelming it. His mouth found my neck, kissing and nibbling at the sensitive skin there, and I felt myself melting into the mattress.
“There it is,” he breathed against my throat. “God, I forget every time how well you take me. Like you were built for it. Like there was never going to be anyone else who fit.”
“Don’t stop.”
“Never. I’m never going to stop touching you, Del. I’m never going to stop wanting you.”
His hand found mine, our fingers intertwining, and he pinned our joined hands to the pillow beside my head. The gesture was possessive and tender all at once, a claim and a promise wrapped into a single touch. I arched up into him, meeting his thrusts, matching his rhythm.
“Eyes on me,” he said.
I opened my eyes and found his, dark and intense and full of love.
“I want to see you when you let go,” he said. “I want to watch your face. I want to remember this moment forever.”
“Then make me.”
He shifted his angle, hitting a spot deep inside me that made my body clench.
I cried out, my free hand gripping his shoulder, my nails digging into his skin.
He kept the rhythm steady, never speeding up, never letting the urgency take over.
His thumb traced circles on the back of my hand.
His lips brushed against mine between whispered words.
“Look at you. So brave, the whole way through. Carrying our child and still the most stubborn woman in Newport. I don’t deserve you, Del. I’ve never deserved you. But I’m going to earn you anyway. Every day I’ve got.”
“You already have.” My voice was breaking, everything in me drawing to a knot with each slow drive of his hips. “Heath, I’m close. Please.”
“I know, sweetheart. I can feel it. Let it happen. I’ve got you.”