23. Az #2
He lays me back against the quilt nest and spreads my thighs with careful hands, mindful of the belly that makes every angle a negotiation with gravity.
Pillows of folded blanket go under my hips until I’m comfortable.
His mouth is devastating, slow broad licks first, then focused suction on my clit while two fingers curl the way that makes my toes point in midair like I’m trying to reach the rafters.
The rain drums the metal roof like vulgar applause.
I come with the back of my hand jammed to my mouth and his name muffled into my knuckles, free hand gripping his wet hair hard enough to sting.
“Good?” he asks, chin shiny, eyes hopeful.
“Good is a weak word for what your tongue just did. Get on your back before I invent a stronger vocabulary and waste it on praise.”
He stretches out, shoving a quilt under his own head, grinning like a man who won something he didn’t ask to win.
I straddle him carefully, belly resting against his abdomen, and curl my fingers around his cock and stroke him once, twice, watching his face go helpless and fond and wrecked. “You’re looking at my stomach again.”
“I’m staring at my whole wife. The stomach is the headline.
The rest is the investigative feature with color photos.
” He palms my hips, thumbs stroking the stretch marks like they’re awards.
“Sink down when you’re ready. I’ll hold still.
I’ll hold anything you need. I’ll hold the rain up if you ask. ”
I notch him at my entrance and sink slow, the stretch familiar and new at once, tighter somehow, fuller, pregnancy making everything more sensitive and more urgent.
He groans through his teeth and keeps his hips obediently still while I take him to the root and sit there shaking, full to the limit, rain whispering secrets on metal overhead.
“Fuck. Az. You’re gripping me like a fist wrapped in silk. Tell me if I need to pull out. Tell me anything and I’ll obey it.”
“You need to shut up for one second and let me find the angle.” I roll my hips experimentally. The shift sends sparks rocketing up my spine and down into my heels. “And then you need to talk dirty about this belly while I fuck you. Can you manage multitasking, or did fame erase that skill?”
“Watch me. Multitasking is my penance.” His hands slide up to support my belly from below as I start to ride him in careful rocking thrusts, short, deep, controlled.
“Look at you. Thirty-three weeks gone and taking my cock in a barn loft like you own the weather system. Your tits bouncing every time you seat yourself. Your cunt soaked and loud. This belly between us like a promise I don’t deserve yet. ”
“Eli-”
“I love you,” he says again, mid-thrust, eyes locked on mine, rain punctuating the confession like italics.
“I love you while you’re using my body. I love you while you won’t say it back.
I love the way your pussy flutters when I say filthy shit about how full and pregnant and mine you feel right now. ”
I don’t say it back. I kiss him instead, hard enough to bruise, and pick up the pace as much as the belly allows, short rolls, deep seats, his hands supporting my weight so my thighs don’t burn out before I’m done taking what I came for.
The loft smells like hay and wet wool and sex and the mineral tang of rain blown through gaps in the old wood.
Thunder mutters somewhere over Ventura County.
I brace one palm on his chest, right over a tattoo I used to trace in cheaper apartments, and rub my clit with the other hand until I’m gasping open-mouthed into the storm noise.
“Come on me,” he begs, voice cracking. “Come on your husband’s cock in the rain. Let me feel it milk me. Let me have this even if I can’t have the words yet. Please, Az. Give me your orgasm if you can’t give me the sentence.”
I break with a cry the rain mostly swallows, pulsing around him in waves that make him curse filthy and fond and follow, hips jerking up once, twice, spilling into me with a long groan and my name shaped like the last word of a hymn he doesn’t ask me to answer out loud.
I stay seated on him while we both shake, forehead dropped to his, belly a warm heavy weight between our hammering hearts.
He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t fill the silence with hope shaped like a question mark.
He just breathes and strokes my spine and lets the unsaid thing be unsaid without turning it into a punishment.
“Hi,” I whisper eventually, ridiculous and necessary.
“Hi.” His smile is soft enough to hurt. “You okay? Legs holding up?”
“We’re spectacular. My thighs may never forgive me. The rain can stay forever. You can stay exactly like this.”
He laughs, careful not to jostle me, and helps me ease off him so we can collapse sideways into the quilt nest. A gush of wet follows; we both pretend to be mature about it and fail.
I tuck my face into his throat. His fingers find my shoulder and start those idle patterns he always draws after, shapes without names, promises without invoices.
He pulls a second quilt over us when my skin pebbles in the cooling air. Outside, water gutters off the barn eaves in silver ropes. Inside, his palm rests on June like a benediction he doesn’t speak aloud.
“Truck would’ve killed my back,” I murmur into his pulse.
“Truck would’ve killed my dignity. Stick shift plus a thirty-three-week belly is a physics problem, not a seduction strategy.”
“You still wanted it for a second in the cab.”
“I want you in every stupid location on this property. I have a list. Most of them are liability nightmares. The loft made the shortlist of survivable filthy ideas.”
I smile into his throat. “Add the loft to the wins column in permanent ink.”
“Permanent, non-negotiable, frameable. I’ll hang it next to the Doorstep lyric sheet.”
“We should get inside,” I say, not moving. “Before someone comes looking.”
“I told Dez where we are. He’ll radio if he needs us.” His voice rumbles under my ear. “Lupe knows too.”
“Mmm.” I close my eyes. His heartbeat is steady beneath my cheek. The baby is still, probably sleeping, settled for the moment. “This is nice.”
“Yeah.” He pulls the quilt higher over my shoulder. “It is.”
We lie there as the rain fades, as the gray light shifts toward what might eventually be sunset, as the world outside continues to turn without us.
I don’t know what comes next, with Brynn, with Cody, with all the broken things still waiting to be fixed.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say the words he deserves to hear.
But for right now, in this loft, with his arms around me and our daughter between us and the rain on the roof…
For right now, this is enough.
I fall asleep to the sound of his breathing.