Chapter 7 The Proof #2
“Better answer.” She rolled, slowly, onto her back, and looked up at me, the gold hair fanned out, the belly a high taut curve under the sheet, her blue eyes warm and frank and certain.
“Then I’d like the off-chart kind. I came back for the waters and the safety and, if I’m honest, a little for curiosity about the man they found to replace Henrik.
And the curiosity has been answered enough to want more of it. Yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “You?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling, and drew my hand to her.
What followed was the slowest, warmest thing I’d done in that house.
I let my eyes travel her as the body deserved, in no rush: the bare feet, the long soft calves, the wide soft sweep of her hips, and then the curve of the belly carried high and proud, and above it the heavy fullness of her breasts, the dark nipples, the flushed throat, the gold hair fanned across the pillow catching the low light.
Every part of her said the same word, and the word was full.
I worshipped her on her own unhurried terms, side-lying, her body a thing to be honored rather than rushed.
I started at her throat with my mouth, then the slope of one breast, slow, and she made a sound deep in her chest and her hand came up to the back of my head, not pulling, just resting, telling me yes without words.
Her breasts were heavy and swollen and warm, fuller than they’d ever been, the dark areolae spread wide and tight, and she guided my mouth to one stiff nipple, and I closed my lips around it and sucked, gentle, gentler than I’d been with anyone, rolling it with my tongue, and she sighed and arched into it, pressing more of herself into my mouth.
And then a bead of milk surprised us both, warm and faintly sweet against my lips, and she laughed, low and easy, not embarrassed, never embarrassed.
“That happens now,” she said, smiling, drawing my head back down, offering it rather than letting me take it, her fingers spreading in my hair. “Don’t be shy of it. Nothing in this body is shameful. It’s all just full. There’s so much of everything now. Take some.”
I closed my mouth over her and drew, careful, and the milk came warm and faintly sweet on my tongue, offered like that, her hand cradling my head to her breast, her breath going long and slow above me.
Something about the reverence of it, the trust, how she fed me before she asked for anything, undid a thing in me I hadn’t known was wound up.
She made a low pleased sound that I felt build in her chest, a warmth that ran all the way down her, and I understood that this wasn’t only giving for her; the offering itself was a pleasure she sank into.
I moved down and honored the curve of her belly with my mouth, kissed the taut warm skin of it, slow, all the way around the high crown of it, and she watched me do it with an expression so open it almost hurt to see.
“I had Henrik, twice,” she said softly, to the ceiling. “Lovely man. His hands always asked my body’s permission first, every single time, like a guest wiping his feet at a door before he’d let himself come in. Yours move like they already live here.”
“It is yours,” I said, against her belly.
“Mm.” Her fingers tightened in my hair. “Lower, then. While you’re being clever.”
She guided my hand between her legs and I worked her slow, slow as she wanted, finding her swollen and slick and ready and listening to her body tell me where, no hurry anywhere in it, the heel of my palm pressed to her clit while two fingers slid into her soft and deep and curled.
She was wet and hot and gave around my fingers easily, her hips rocking into my hand in a slow lazy roll.
She kept one of my hands cupped to her heavy breast all the while, the nipple slick from my mouth, kept feeding herself my touch and my fingers all at once, and she came arched against me in a long unhurried wave, near-silent as all her pleasure was, her cunt clenching soft around my fingers, her hand tightening in my hair, her belly rising and falling, a low hum of satisfaction rolling out of her at the end like the last note of a lullaby.
Then she returned the kindness, rolling toward me, her own hand wrapping around my cock, languid and expert, taking her time, stroking me slow and full with a loose wet grip, narrating in that low sing-song of hers about second-trimester appetite, about how hungry the body got for everything, food and warmth and weight and this, how nice it was to want something simple and just have it, smiling all the while, her thumb swiping the precum from the head and working it down the shaft in slow circles, until I finished thick across the soft skin of her hip and the warm curve of her belly, and she hummed her approval and dragged one finger idly through the mess of it, spreading it into her skin, like I’d done something nice for her instead of the other way around.
We lay in the warm room afterward, her gold hair against my arm.
“Henrik never once let himself have this part,” she said, quietly, her hand resting on her belly.
“Not really. He gave and gave and never let anyone give back, and he ate at the family table for twenty-two years like a guest who’d been told he could stay.
” She turned her head to look at me, and the warm eyes were serious now.
“He never understood he was the cure, Adam. He thought he was the instrument. Don’t make his mistake.
The instrument goes home alone. The cure gets to belong to people.
” She smiled, the heaviness lifting off her face as easily as it had arrived.
“You burn fuel like the boiler, Ute says. Let people feed you back.”
She didn’t explain more than that. I didn’t ask. But I lay there with the proof of the guarantee breathing slow beside me and thought about a kind man with a sad smile, alone at a full table.
In the corridor, the schedule board had a new note in Yuki’s precise hand.
Devereux, S. Window opens in 7 days.
And under it, a second note, smaller, almost a private remark to herself: Waiting list active again. 4 calls today.
Poppy came past with an armful of files and saw me reading it.
“Four calls,” she said, lowering her voice, a little awed despite herself.
“The wealthy world’s got a nose for it, Adam.
They can smell when this place works. Eight months of nothing and now the phone won’t stop.
” She shook her head. “Word’s out up here. Silberquell’s back.”
The desk phone started up again as she said it, the fifth call since lunch, and she gathered her files and went to answer it, leaving me alone in the corridor with Yuki’s two notes and the sound of the house beginning, quietly, to fill back up.