Chapter 7 #2
I pull at his shirt. Buttons give way under my fingers.
He helps me, shrugging it off, and then his chest is under my palms. Warm and familiar.
The dark hair there catches against my fingertips.
I press my mouth to his sternum, to the place where his heart beats hard and fast, and his breath leaves him in a rough sound.
“Mallory.”
I love the way he says it.
I hate how much I love it.
He lays me on the bed as if he has all the time in the world. His hands are deliberate, his touch unhurried as he follows, bracing himself above me, letting his weight settle over me by degrees. Enough to feel the heat of him, the press of muscle and bone.
Not enough to trap me.
“Still with me?” His voice is rough, already thick with want.
“Yes.”
His mouth finds mine, slow and deep, and his hand drifts down my stomach. His fingers trace the curve of my hip before slipping lower, over the place where I hold the secret that will change us forever.
Rourke, I’m pregnant.
The words rise so fast I feel them against his kiss.
Then his fingers brush between my thighs, and thought scatters.
There's no rush. He touches me as if he's learning me all over again, like we're back there in my creaky apartment bed, giggling and fumbling. But he's not fumbling this time. He knows me well enough to know how to make me gasp. How to make me beg.
"That's it," he coaxes, as my hips rise from the bed. "Let me in."
When pleasure catches too sharply, he slows.
When I whisper his name, he gives me more.
The room narrows to skin, to breath, to the old, familiar rhythm of us.
His mouth at my breast, teeth grazing my nipple before his tongue soothes the sting.
My heel slides up the back of his thigh, pulling him closer.
His fingers work between my legs, patient and sure, until my body opens for him and I stop guarding anything.
For a while, there is no Ridgeline.
No Jocelyn.
No gala.
No service corridor with cold coffee and a headset mark pressed into my hair.
There's only Rourke looking down at me as if I'm the only thing in the world that matters.
When he finally moves over me, his forearm beside my head, his mouth a breath from mine, he asks again. Not with words, but with stillness. With restraint that costs him. His body presses against mine, and I feel the tremor in his arms as he holds back.
I touch his face. “Yes.”
He enters me slowly, and my eyes flutter shut. A sound breaks in my throat. Not because it hurts, but because it's him. Because my body knows him, has missed him, and accepts him with a relief so sharp it borders on pain.
Rourke goes still, jaw tight, eyes locked on mine.
“God,” he breathes. “Mallory.”
I wrap my arms around his shoulders and pull him down, needing the weight of him, the heat of him.
He moves like he means to remember every second.
I feel him everywhere: in the stretch of my body around him, in the way his fingers dig into my thigh, in the way he watches me like he's memorizing every inch of me.
I'm not being reassured.
I'm being wanted.
His pace changes when I arch beneath him, my nails scraping down his back. He lowers his mouth to my ear, his breath hot against my skin.
“Mallory,” he says again, rougher now.
I turn my face into his neck, tasting salt on his skin, breathing him in while the pressure builds until I can't hold still under it.
“Look at me,” he whispers.
I do.
His eyes are on mine, dark and hungry. He doesn't look away. His hand slides between us to touch me exactly where I need him, and pleasure coils tight, then snaps, pulling a cry from me that he catches with his mouth.
He follows a moment later, his control breaking with my name pressed against my lips. His body shudders against mine. His breath is ragged, his forehead pressed to mine as we both try to remember how breathing works.
For a long time, neither of us moves.
His weight rests over me, careful even in exhaustion. My hands drift over his back. The city keeps shining beyond the curtains. The penthouse feels different around us. Not like a showroom. Not like a place designed for other people to admire.
For a few minutes, it feels like a home.
Rourke shifts onto his side and draws me against him. He doesn't reach for his phone. He doesn't fall into the immediate sleep of a man who has taken comfort and gone elsewhere in his head. He tucks me close, one hand moving slowly up and down my spine.
I press my face to his chest.
“There’s something I’m arranging,” he says after a while.
My eyes are heavy, but the words pull them open. “What?”
“A trip.” His hand moves through my hair. “Coastal property. The one where we met.”
I lift my head.
He smiles faintly in the dark. “Not the whole resort. Not the public pieces. Just the beach. Dinner without anyone handing us a schedule. Maybe a scavenger hunt list if I can find one humiliating enough.”
My chest fills so fast it hurts. “Rourke.”
“After Ridgeline closes,” he says. “I want to take you away. No calls. No investors. Just us.”
After Ridgeline.
The phrase touches the room like a cold draft under a door.
Ridgeline still waits beyond this bed. Beyond his good intentions. Beyond the phone sitting obediently in the drawer.
Jocelyn’s name sits somewhere inside that word too, even if he doesn't say it.
But his arm is around me. His heartbeat is under my cheek. His mouth is in my hair, and for the first time in months, the future he describes includes me as more than the woman who makes it run.
“Okay,” I whisper.
His hand stills. “Okay?”
“Yes.”
He holds me tighter. “I love you.”
The words enter softly and go deep.
I close my eyes. “I love you too.”
I’ll tell him in the morning, I decide.
In daylight, with his hair messy from sleep and his face unguarded. I’ll bring him coffee, which is a terrible idea if coffee still smells wrong, and I’ll put the box in his hands before the day starts taking pieces of him. I’ll watch him open it. I’ll watch the news transform his face.
Our child will arrive inside a repaired marriage.
Not perfect. Not magically healed because of one dinner and one night.
But repaired enough to begin.
Rourke’s breathing deepens beneath my ear, his arm staying heavy across my body.
I let myself smile into the dark.
I wake without knowing I've slept.
The bedroom is quiet, warm under the blankets. Rourke lies on his back, one arm around me, his hand resting against my side as if he held on even after dreaming took him. My head is on his chest. His heartbeat moves under my ear, steady and slow.
For a moment, I don't move.
I don't want this to end.
I want to stretch out inside it and not let go.
So I stay still and listen to him breathe, counting each inhale until my body believes he's truly here.
My throat is dry. The water glass on the nightstand is just beyond reach.
I slide my hand from beneath the sheet, careful not to wake him. My fingers search blindly across the top of the nightstand. They find my reading glasses first, one temple folded wrong. Then the cool side of the glass.
Then metal.
My knuckles strike something solid enough to make a soft sound.
I freeze.
Rourke’s breathing doesn't change.
Slowly, I lift my head.
The room is dim, but my eyes adjust. The watch lies beside my glasses, face down at the edge of the nightstand. For a second, I only stare at it, sleepy and blank.
A recent purchase, maybe. A company gift. Rourke has so many things that enter this home without making an announcement. Cuff links. Folios. Bottles of wine from people hoping he remembers their names favorably. Objects expensive enough to arrive quietly.
I reach for it.
The watch is heavy in my palm, too heavy for a casual gift. The metal is polished but understated, the face dark blue, the band smooth under my thumb.
It suits him.
That thought comes first, before suspicion.
Whoever chose it understood his taste. Not flashy. Not obvious.
I've never seen it before.
That is the thought that comes through as my mind wakes fully.