Chapter 40 Zatanna #2
“So you’re okay with me turning you down right now?”
“Of course,” he says
I laugh weakly. “You are not supposed to be reasonable right now. It’s very unsettling.”
That does get a small smile out of him. Brief, but real.
I step into him then, because I can’t stand the distance after all that, and press my forehead to his chest. “I’m not turning you down because I don’t want you,” I murmur.
His hand comes to the back of my head immediately. “I know.”
“I’m turning you down because I do.”
He’s quiet for a second. Then I hear it. A soft exhale. Almost a laugh. “That is deeply inconvenient.”
I smile against his shirt. “For once, yes.”
He tilts my face up and kisses me. Not like the hallway. Not like the bed. Just slow and tired and full of things that no longer need to be forced into the wrong shape.
When he pulls back, he says, “I’ll ask again.”
I believe him completely. “I know,” I say.
And strangely, instead of terrifying me, that feels like relief.
Behind us, in the bassinet, our son makes a tiny cranky sound like he already disapproves of how much time we’re spending on each other instead of him.
We both look over at once.
Aleksei lets out a low breath through his nose. “He’s loud.”
“He’s your son.”
That earns me a look.
Then, finally, he takes my hand and says, “Come on. Let’s survive the first night home before we make any more life decisions.”
That, for once, sounds exactly right.
There are things no one really explains about having a baby.
Not the practical things. People love explaining those. They’ll tell you about feeding schedules and burping and sleep regression and diaper brands like they’re briefing you before war.
They do not explain how intimate exhaustion becomes.
How love starts looking like very boring things.
Aleksei warming bottles at three in the morning with his hair sticking up and his shirt buttoned wrong.
Me half-asleep on the nursery floor because I sat down “for one second” after a feeding and never made it back to bed.
The two of us learning our son’s different cries the way other people learn languages.
His hungry cry. His angry cry. His dramatic fake cry, which he already uses when he feels neglected for more than ten seconds.
He’s a very good father. That still catches me off guard sometimes.
Not because I doubted he would protect our son. That part I never doubted.
I just didn’t know he’d be so patient. So careful. So ridiculous about the little things. He checks the baby monitor like it’s a security feed for a world leader. He memorized the pediatrician’s notes. He knows which stuffed animal Ari likes best, though he pretends not to.
And every now and then, when he thinks no one is looking, he presses his mouth to our son’s hair with this expression that makes my chest ache.
Six months. That’s how long it’s been since the hospital.
Six months of healing and feeding and surviving the first wild stretch of parenthood. Six months of my body becoming mine again in pieces. Six months of wanting him and not quite trusting myself to reach for it fully, not with stitches and fear and sleep deprivation still hanging over everything.
He never pushed. That somehow made it worse.
Because the patience was kind. And kindness is its own kind of seduction.
One night, after a day that felt three years long, I come out of the shower and find the nursery empty.
For a second I tense. Then I spot the line of light under the sitting room door.
I walk in quietly. And stop.
Aleksei is asleep on the sofa with Ari on his chest.
Both of them are fully out.
Ari is curled into him in a little milk-drunk sprawl, one tiny fist hooked in the open collar of Aleksei’s shirt.
Aleksei’s head is tipped back against the cushion, mouth slightly open in a way that would be funny if it weren’t so disarmingly human.
One hand is still braced protectively over our son’s back even in sleep.
The sight of them hits me straight in the heart.
I stand there for a second and just look.
This. This is the part no one could have explained to me.
How your whole life can rearrange itself around a couch and a sleeping man and a baby drooling on his chest.
I move closer and carefully, very carefully, lift Ari off him.
It takes some effort. Our son makes one deeply offended little noise, then settles again against my shoulder while I carry him to the nursery and lower him into his crib.
He stretches. Sighs. Sleeps on.
Good. I stand over the crib for a moment, smoothing the blanket with pointless care.
Then I go back.
Aleksei is still asleep where I left him, one hand now resting over the place where Ari had been. His shirt is still open at the throat. His belt is still on. He looks exhausted.
And suddenly I have a very bad idea. Or a very good one.
Depends who you ask.
I move quietly to the sofa and kneel between his knees.
Even now, even after everything, there’s still a little thrill in it. The secrecy. The fact that I’m about to do something wicked while the house sleeps around us and our son is down the hall dreaming baby dreams.
I slide my fingers to his belt. Undo it slowly. Then the button. Then the zipper. He stirs but doesn’t wake, and my pulse skips hard.
When I reach in and wrap my hand around his thick, veiny cock, he groans in his sleep. That almost undoes me before I’ve even started.
I lean down and take him into my mouth. Fuck, he’s so big he barely fits in there. I moan around him, trying to take as much as possible.
His whole body jolts. His eyes snap open. “Jesus,” he breathes, voice wrecked instantly.
I smile wickedly up at him. That’s what I wanted.
He grips the back of the sofa with one hand and my hair with the other, not hard enough to control, just enough to feel me there. I keep going, slow at first, then deeper when I hear the way his breathing changes.
He looks absolutely destroyed in under ten seconds.
I’m not above enjoying that. It’s been too long.
Too long since I felt like this, wanted like this, reckless enough to act on it before overthinking could get involved. I suck harder, take him deeper, and he lets out a low sound that goes straight through me.
“Zatanna…”
I glance up through my lashes. That was a mistake.
Because the look on his face nearly sends me over the edge all by itself. Half awake, fully hard, already losing control.
His grip in my hair tightens just a little. Then, right when I feel the telltale tension in his body, right when I know he’s close, his cock throbbing and growing hotter by the second, he curses and pulls me up.
I make an annoyed sound.
He catches my mouth in a kiss before I can complain.
I can taste him on my tongue and apparently so can he, because the kiss gets filthy immediately.
When he finally pulls back, he presses his forehead to mine and asks, voice rough, “Are you sure?”
I stare at him. Then laugh once, breathless. “It’s been six months.”
His eyes darken.
I brush my mouth against his and whisper, “Too long.”
That does it.
He kisses me again, harder now, one hand sliding up my back, the other hauling me fully onto his lap. I’m in one of his shirts, of course. Nothing under it. At some point this became our version of domesticity.
His hand slips between my thighs and he groans into my mouth the second he feels how wet I already am.
“God.”
“Yes,” I murmur, kissing his jaw. “Exactly.”
He laughs once against my skin, low and ruined, and then his hand is pushing the shirt up, his mouth finding my breast, his fingers stroking through me with the exact kind of pressure that makes my whole body tense.
I gasp and grind down onto his hand.
“That’s my girl,” he murmurs.
I should probably object to how much I love when he says that. I do not.
He gets my shirt over my head and throws it somewhere behind us, then sits back just enough to look at me.
His gaze goes over my body slowly.
I missed that look. I missed him.
He slides two fingers into me and I bite down on a cry against his shoulder. He kisses my throat while he works me open, steady and sure, and I can feel how badly he wants to go faster. How hard it is for him not to.
I lift my hips and whisper, “Aleksei.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean now.”
That gets his full attention.
He looks at me for one beat, making sure. Then he stands up with me in his arms like I weigh nothing, carries me the three steps to the wall, and pins me there with one hand under my thigh while he lines himself up with the other.
My pulse is pounding so hard I can hear it.
“Quiet,” he says.
“You first.”
His mouth curves. Then he slowly pushes his cock inside me.
Slow enough to make me feel every inch.
Deep enough to make me lose the rest of my sentence entirely.
I cling to his shoulders, one leg wrapped around his waist, the other braced on the floor until he lifts that one too, holding me up fully now. The wall is cool at my back. He’s hot everywhere else.
“Tell me if this is too much,” he says.
It is. In the best possible way.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper.
So he doesn’t.
He starts moving, measured at first, then harder when he feels how my body answers him.
Every thrust knocks a sound out of me I have to bury in his neck.
His mouth is at my jaw, my throat, my lips whenever he can reach them.
One hand stays at my thigh, the other at the small of my back, holding me exactly where he wants me.
The angle is devastating. The urgency is worse.
There’s something about doing this here, in the middle of the house, with our baby sleeping nearby and six months of restraint finally burning off, that makes every nerve feel sharper.
He knows it too.
I can hear it in his breathing. Feel it in the way he loses rhythm for one second when I clench around him.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
“Quiet,” I whisper back.
That gets me a dark, hungry look.
Then he carries me to the sofa again without breaking contact and sits down hard, pulling me onto his lap facing him.
Now I can move with him. Control the angle. Grind down where I need it. Kiss him while he watches me take what I’ve been wanting for months.
His hands settle on my hips, my tits bounce in front of his face. He tries to catch my sensitive nipples every time I do, and I hiss.
He doesn’t use his hands, lets me guide the rhythm. Mine go to his hair.
I ride him while he kisses me like he has no interest in ever being patient again, and when I start to shake, he slides a hand between us and finds my clit immediately.
“That’s it,” he says against my mouth.
I come with his name caught in my throat and my forehead pressed to his. He follows right after, groaning into my shoulder, holding me down on him as release takes us both apart.
For a long moment after, neither of us moves. Then, from down the hall, the baby monitor crackles.
We both freeze. There’s one small rustle. Then silence again.
Aleksei exhales slowly. “That was a warning.”
I start laughing so hard I nearly fall off his lap.
He catches me automatically.