Chapter 39
VAUGHN
I come out of the bathroom. Wet hair, shirtless, barefoot. I sit down next to her on the bed. She leans her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her.
“Vaughn?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re going to be terrible parents.”
“Probably.”
“The kid is going to need a therapist.”
“At least two.”
“And a cat.”
“And a cat.”
I sit next to her. Shoulder to shoulder. She leans her head against me and we sit like that for a while, and the silence is good.
Then Riley turns her head and kisses my neck.
No foreplay, no question, no permission. Her lips on my skin, and something primitive and uncontrollable surges through my body like an electric shock.
“Riley—”
“Shut up,” she says against my neck. “You’ve been talking for three days—to yourself, to Cayden, to whoever. Now, you stop talking.”
She pushes me back onto the mattress. Riley climbs over me, a knee on each side of my hips, and looks down at me. Her red hair falls like a curtain around her face. Her eyes are dark and determined and angry and tender and everything at once.
“Three days,” she says. “Three days I sat in this room thinking you weren't coming back. Three days during which I took a pregnancy test alone on a bathroom floor. Three days during which your damn pillow stopped smelling like you.”
She pulls her T-shirt over her head. No bra underneath. Her breasts, more sensitive than usual—because of the pregnancy, it flashes through my mind, and the thought hits me with a force that takes my breath away.
“You owe me,” she says.
“Everything,” I say.
“Then start.”
I straighten up. My hands grab her hips, and I pull her toward me. My mouth finds her breast, and as my lips close around her nipple, she moans, and her fingers claw into my wet hair.
Three days of separation have changed something. The sex in the safehouse was tender, exploratory. The sex in the garden shed was gentle and slow. This is neither. This is the relief after an emotional roller coaster.
I flip her over. On her back, my body over hers.
She reaches for the waistband of my sweatpants and tugs it down, impatient, her feet pushing the fabric over my knees.
I take off her pants, and there is nothing underneath, and the realization that she’s been waiting for me without underwear this whole time makes my cock so hard it hurts.
“Now,” she says. Not a whisper. A command.
I enter her hard and deep and without warning, and she cries out—not from surprise, but from satisfaction, as if her body had been waiting three days for exactly this and is finally getting what it needs.
My hands find her wrists. I pin them to the mattress beside her head. Not roughly, but firmly. She looks into my eyes as I thrust into her, and her gaze is a challenge and a surrender all at once.
“You didn’t run away,” she says between thrusts. Every word clipped, interrupted by my movements. “You—came back.”
“I came back.”
“Tell me—why.”
I speed up. My hips hit hers with an intensity that makes the bed knock against the wall. Rhythmic. Thumping. The neighbor will complain. I don't care. I care about Riley. Nothing else exists.
“Because I love you,” I say.
She moans at every word as if the words were physical, as if every single one touched something in her that sits deeper than my cock.
“And because something is growing inside you that is half you and half me,” I say, “and it’s the best damn chance the universe has ever given me.”
Her eyes grow wet. At the same time, I feel her internal muscles tightening, her body reacting to my words as if they were a touch.
I let go of her wrists. Instantly her hands fly to my back, her nails digging into my skin, and the pain mixes with the pleasure into something that is neither one nor the other.
Then I pull out of her, stand up, and lift her. Her legs wrap around my hips. I carry her the few steps to the floor-to-ceiling window that spreads the entire Strip beneath us like a glittering, living sea of light.
I turn her around and press her against the cool glass.
Her bare breasts press flat against the pane.
The contrast is breathtaking—the cold surface against her hot skin.
From below, the neon light of the Strip shines up, bathing her body in shifting colors: red, blue, gold, violet.
The lights of the casinos, the hotels, the endless advertisements reflect on her skin as if the whole city were touching her.
“Look down,” I whisper in her ear as I press against her from behind. “Look at how all of Las Vegas is watching us.”
Riley moans softly. Her cheek and her breasts are pressed firmly against the glass.
I see her nipples hardening from the cold of the window.
Beneath us, the Strip pulses—thousands of people who have no idea, while we stand up here, naked, connected, the city lying beneath us like a giant, glowing bed.
I grab her hips, pull her back a bit, and enter her again—deep, hard, in a single thrust. She gasps, her breath fogging the glass.
I begin to move, slowly at first, then firmer and firmer.
Every thrust presses her breasts harder against the pane, making her body tremble.
The glass is cold, our sweat hot; the contrast drives us both insane.
“They can see us,” I whisper hoarsely into her ear as I thrust deeper into her. “All those people down there. The tourists, the players, the lights. They look up and don’t know that I’m fucking you right now while all of Vegas watches us.”
Riley moans louder. Her hands are flat against the glass as if she wanted to embrace the city. Her hips press back against me, taking every thrust, demanding more.
“Harder,” she gasps. “Let them watch.”
I give her what she wants. My thrusts become faster, deeper, more primal.
The glass vibrates slightly under the force.
Her breasts rub over the cold surface with every thrust, her nipples hard and sensitive.
I reach around her, find her clitoris, and rub it in the same rhythm as I fuck her against the window.
The Strip beneath us flickers. The lights dance over her body, over her face, which is distorted with pleasure. She looks down, eyes half-closed, lips parted, and the sight—her, naked, pressed against the glass while the whole city lies beneath us—is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.
“Vaughn—fuck—I’m coming—”
Her climax hits her hard. Her body tenses, her muscles contract rhythmically around my cock, and she screams my name against the window. Her breath paints white patches on the glass. I keep thrusting, driving her through the peak until her legs tremble and she can barely hold herself up.
Then I come myself. Deep inside her, with a long, raw groan that breaks from my chest. I press her tighter against the window, releasing into her while the lights of the Strip pulse below us as if they were applauding.
We stay standing like that. My body against hers, her breasts still pressed against the cold glass, my cock deep inside her. Our breath fogs the pane. Below us, Las Vegas lives on, clueless and glittering.
I kiss her neck, slowly, tenderly.
“You’re crazy,” she whispers.
“Crazy about you,” I reply.
I pull out of her slowly and turn her around to face me. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes shining. I kiss her, gently this time, and lift her up. She wraps her legs around me, and I carry her back to the bed.
We sink down onto it, sweaty, exhausted, tightly entwined.
“Vaughn?”
“Hm?”
“That was make-up sex.”
“I know.”
“It’s the best kind of sex.”
“True.”
“If you bolt again, the make-up sex is cancelled. Then it’s just a lecture and the sofa.”
“Understood.”
She draws circles on my skin.
“Vaughn?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re having a baby.”
I place my hand on hers. Our fingers interlace on my stomach, right about where something will soon grow inside her that will change us both.
“We’re having a baby,” I say.
And for the first time, the words don't sound like a threat. They sound like a promise.
Riley falls asleep. Within minutes, as if her body had decided that three days of sleep deprivation had to be made up in a single night. Her breathing becomes regular. Her fingers loosen from mine and slide onto the mattress.
In a few hours, the sun will rise. We’ll drink coffee and make plans and call Valentino and drive to Oregon. We’ll tell Loraine and Howard they’re going to be grandparents. We’ll look for a house and compare cribs and argue about what color the nursery should be.
But that is tomorrow.
Tonight, I hold the woman I love in my arms and think of a future I thought impossible for thirty years. And of a little person who doesn't have a name yet, but who is already the bravest thing I’ve ever done.