Chapter 36
LUKE
She is still in her flannel and jeans when I walk her backward toward the bedroom, my mouth at her throat, and she has both hands in my hair and is pulling rather than pushing, which tells me everything I need to know about the current state of things.
I stop at the doorway and she makes a sound of protest.
I put my lips to her ear. "You know what I've been thinking about," I say, low, "since you sat on that porch this morning and watched me cross the yard like you weren't watching?"
"I wasn't —"
"Mags."
A beat. "What have you been thinking about?"
I tell her. Low and direct, my mouth at her ear, exactly what I want and in what order and why. I feel her breath change on the first sentence and her grip tighten on the second. By the third, her head tips back against the doorframe and she says, rough: "Luke."
"Yeah?"
"Do something about it."
I do.
I undress her slowly, which she tolerates for approximately forty-five seconds before her hands move to my shirt buttons, a woman who has somewhere to be. I catch her wrists.
"I said I'd take my time," I tell her.
"You said a lot of things."
"I meant all of them."
She holds my gaze and lets her hands go still. "Then get on with it," she says, and the patience in her voice is a different kind of impatience. The kind that says she trusts what's coming and is willing to wait for it, and that trust undoes me more than urgency ever could.
I push her flannel off her shoulders and she reaches back to help, and then the thermal shirt.
I work my way through the rest with my hands and my mouth and the running commentary she's been cataloguing since July.
I tell her what I see and what it does to me.
I tell her she is the most consuming thing I have ever looked at, and she makes a sound against my shoulder that is not quite a laugh and not quite agreement and is completely her.
"You're so damn beautiful," I say, and mean it in a way I could not have found the language for in June, when beautiful would have been about the red hair and the sharp green eyes and the mouth that demolished my arguments before I finished making them.
Now it means all of that and the freckles on her shoulders and the way she holds a coffee cup and the look on her face when the collar data confirms what she already knew and the fact that her body is doing this, this, and she is still the most exacting person in any room she walks into.
"You're so damn beautiful," I say again, because once wasn't enough.
Then I put my hands on her belly.
She covers my hand with hers. I bend and kiss her belly, slow and deliberate, and when I straighten, she is watching me with her eyes bright and her lip between her teeth and I kiss her mouth the same way, unhurried, no agenda.
I walk her to the bed and she turns on me before I can do anything about it.
Her hands are at my shirt buttons, working fast, pushing it off my shoulders.
Her fingers find my belt next, unhook it, the button, the zip, and she looks up at me the whole time with those green eyes and not a single apology for the efficiency.
I step out of my jeans and she puts both palms flat on my chest and pushes.
I go down onto the mattress and she steps back.
She holds my gaze and reaches for her own waistband.
Her jeans go first, worked down her hips with the kind of unhurried patience she reserves for things she knows she has complete control over, and she does, she absolutely does, and I wrap my hand around myself and stroke once, slow, because I need something to do with it or I am going to reach for her before she is ready to be reached for.
"Christ," I say, rough. "Look at you."
She steps out of her underwear and tosses it and raises an eyebrow. "You said something about taking your time."
"I'm reconsidering."
"Don't." She climbs onto the bed, swings her leg over me, and lowers herself slow until she is hovering above, not touching. I can feel the heat of her and I tighten my grip. She watches me do it and says, low: "Tell me what you want."
I tell her. One sentence, low and direct. Her mouth curves into something slow and wicked and she walks her fingers down my stomach and follows them with her lips, dragging her mouth along my happy trail, unhurried, her hair falling forward, and I fist it in my hand and hold on.
She takes her time. She is thorough and deliberate, and she knows exactly what she is doing to me.
When she finally takes me fully into her mouth, I tip my head back and say things I do not plan.
She looks up at me once, her green eyes dark, and I say, rough and raw: "You are so fucking beautiful right now. "
She hums against me and I nearly come off the mattress.
She takes me to the edge and holds me there and when I finally haul her up by her waist she comes laughing, breathless, her red hair everywhere. I flip her onto her back and she is still laughing when I sink into her. Then she goes quiet, her back arches and her hands find my shoulders and grip.
I go still. Give her a moment. Her eyes find mine in the low grey light coming through the window and the gold in them catches what's left of the afternoon and I think, not for the first time, that I intend to spend the rest of my life kneeling at her altar.
I put my mouth to her ear.
I tell her what she does to me. What it costs me to see her every morning across the kitchen with her coffee and her collar data and her hair still loose.
What watching her body change has done to my capacity for rational thought.
Exactly what I am going to do about all of it, right now, in this order.
I feel her hands grip harder on the second sentence and her hips roll up to meet me on the third and she says, rough: "Luke. Move."
I move.
She matches me. She always matches me, her voice low and precise between breaths, telling me what she wants with no hedging, her hands and her hips doing exactly what she says they will, and the combination of what she says and the fact that it is her saying it, gets me every time.
She says my name.
I give her everything after that. She takes it.
We find the rhythm that is ours, unhurried, deep. Her leg hooked over my hip pulling me closer, my mouth at her throat, her hands in my hair, the fire low in the other room and the snow starting outside and none of it mattering at all.
She says my name again, differently this time, the way that means she is close, and I say her name back against her throat and mean everything in it. She comes apart under me with her fingers tight in my hair and her face tipped up and her eyes open.
I follow her with my own orgasm saying things I do not catalog, her name and God and I'm in love with you, in some order I couldn't report accurately because all of it arrives at once.
Afterward I lie with her tucked against my side and the room gone quiet around us and I say it then, low, my hand spread on her belly and my mouth against her hair: "I thought she was right about me.
Rachel." Mags goes still. "Turns out she was right about who I was.
She just wasn't right about who I could be. "
Mags's hand comes up to my face. Her palm is warm against my jaw and she holds it there, and I close my eyes, and that is all. That is everything. She does not say a word. She does not need to.
She tips her face up and kisses me once, soft.
"I'm in love with you," she says, quiet and certain, like data she's been sitting on long enough.
"I love being near you. I love fucking you.
" Her hand moves to my chest, over my heartbeat.
"I love growing your baby. I love what we're making here.
" She pulls back just enough to look at me. "In case that wasn't clear."
MAGS
Afterward the cabin is quiet and the fire is low and his heartbeat is settling under my ear.
His hand is on my belly. Moving in slow circles, easy and unhurried, not a performance for either of us, the gesture of a man who cannot keep his hands off a fact he still can't entirely believe is his.
He has completely ruined me. I did not see that coming. I have no complaints.
I feel him smile against my hair.
"Hey," he says. Not to me.
I go still.
His voice drops. Gets quiet and slightly ridiculous. The voice I have never heard him use with anyone else, the one with no performance in it at all.
"Your mom," he tells my stomach, "is the smartest person in the Northern Rockies.
Possibly east of the continental divide.
I'm still collecting data." A pause. "You should know that.
Also, you're going to be outargued every single day of your life and my advice is to accept this early and save everyone the trouble. "
Another pause, more serious. "I tried fighting it. Didn't work. Ask me sometime and I'll tell you about a gate in June."
I laugh. It comes out of me against his collarbone, sudden and warm, and I feel him press his lips to my hair.
Outside, small dry flakes of snow drift down.
The aspens are holding their last gold along the river.
The fire is still going.
We have plenty of warmth for the winter ahead.
My boots are by the door.