Epilogue
Anton
Seven months.
Seven months since a positive pregnancy test on our bedroom floor turned me into a man I don't fully recognize. Seven months since I felt the last wall I'd ever built come down.
Seven months, and my wife is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
She doesn't believe me when I tell her. She stands sideways in front of the bathroom mirror, one hand on the swell of her belly, and frowns at her reflection like it's arguing with her.
"I'm enormous," she says.
"You're pregnant."
"I'm a planet. I have my own gravitational pull. Darya had to help me put my shoes on yesterday."
I lean against the doorframe and watch her.
She's wearing one of my shirts because half her clothes don't fit anymore, and it stretches across her belly and hangs loose off one shoulder.
Her hair is down, messy, the kind of undone she only lets me see.
Her skin has that glow everyone talks about but I didn't believe in until I saw it on her.
She looks like something out of a renaissance painting. Something sacred.
"You're staring," she says.
"I'm looking."
"You're staring and it's making me self-conscious,” she grumbles. She turns from the mirror and gives me a look. The look. The one she's been giving me more and more in the last few weeks, half exasperation, half something hotter. Something hungry.
The doctor warned us about this. Well, she warned Kira, who told me about it later with pink cheeks and a tone of clinical detachment that lasted about four seconds before she started laughing. Apparently, the hormones in the third trimester can make some women feel... heightened.
Heightened is an understatement.
My wife wants me constantly. Not in the soft, simple way of our wedding night, or the desperate, angry way of the kitchen argument.
She wants me with a shameless, unfiltered need that hits at random.
While I'm reading. While I'm cooking. While I'm on the phone with Artem and she walks past in nothing but a towel and gives me a look that makes me lose the thread of a sentence I was halfway through.
Artem hung up on me. He knew. The bastard laughed first, then hung up.
I can't keep my hands off her either. The belly does something to me I wasn't prepared for.
The sight of her, round and full with my child, trips a wire in my brain that bypasses every rational thought and goes straight to something primal.
Possessive. Mine. I made that. She's carrying what I put inside her, and every time I see the evidence of it, something territorial and fierce locks into place behind my ribs.
She knows it too. She's figured out exactly what her body does to me, and she uses it.
Last Tuesday she bent over the kitchen counter to reach something on the back shelf, and the shirt rode up over the curve of her belly and the small of her back, and I was behind her with my hands on her hips before either of us said a word.
We didn't make it out of the kitchen that time either.
Now she stands in the bathroom in my shirt with the morning light on her skin and that look on her face, and I know where this is going before she opens her mouth.
"Come here," she says.
"You just told me to stop staring."
"I changed my mind. Come here."
I push off the doorframe. Cross the bathroom.
Stand in front of her. She tilts her head back to look up at me, and the belly presses against me, warm and firm between us.
My hand goes to it automatically. Palm flat, fingers spread.
I feel the baby shift under my hand, a slow roll, an elbow or a knee pushing against my palm.
"Active this morning," I say.
"Active every morning. Your child doesn't sleep."
"My child?"
"When it kicks my bladder at three a.m., it's your child. When it does something cute on the ultrasound, it's mine. Those are the rules."
The corner of my mouth lifts. She sees it. Her eyes soften.
"There it is," she murmurs. "That almost-smile. I've been collecting those, you know."
"Collecting them."
"Mm-hm. I have a whole catalog. The almost-smile when I bring you coffee.
The almost-smile when Yevgeny says something stupid at dinner.
The almost-smile when you feel the baby move.
" She reaches up and traces my lower lip with her fingertip.
"One day I'm going to get a full one out of you and I'll probably pass out from the shock. "
"You've gotten a full one."
"Once. On the bedroom floor. It was so alarming I almost called Artem."
I catch her hand. Press my lips against her fingertips. Her breath hitches.
"I smile plenty," I say against her skin.
"You don't. But that's okay. I know what you look like when you're happy. You don't need to smile for me to see it."
She says things like that. Casual, simple things that land in my chest and stay there. Things that would have terrified me six months ago and now feel as necessary as breathing.
"What do I look like when I'm happy?" I ask.
She studies me. Those brown eyes, warm and knowing, moving over my face the way they've been moving over me since the altar. Reading me. Seeing me.
"Like this," she says. "Exactly like this."
She pulls me down and kisses me.
It starts soft. Her mouth warm and unhurried, her hand on the back of my neck, her belly between us like a reminder of everything we've built.
But it doesn't stay soft. It never stays soft with us anymore.
The heat is always there, banked and waiting, and it takes about three seconds for her to make that sound in the back of her throat, the one that tells me soft is over.
"Anton." My name, breathy and low. "I need you."
"Here?"
"I don't care where. Bathroom. Bedroom. Hallway. I literally don't care."
I pull back. Look at her. Flushed cheeks, dark eyes, chest rising fast under my shirt. She's gripping my arm with one hand and the bathroom counter with the other, and the need on her face is open and unashamed and it hits me like a fist to the gut.
"Bedroom," I say. "I want room."
I walk her backward out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. My hands steady on her waist because she's seven months pregnant and the floor is hardwood and I will die before I let her stumble.
She sits on the edge of the bed. Looks up at me. Starts unbuttoning the shirt.
"Let me," I say.
She drops her hands. Watches me as I kneel in front of her, the same way I knelt the night she told me about the baby.
My fingers work the buttons one at a time, slow, parting the fabric as I go.
Her skin appears inch by inch. The swell of her breasts, fuller now, the nipples dark and sensitive.
The round, taut curve of her belly. The soft skin below it.
I push the shirt off her shoulders. She's wearing nothing underneath. Just her. All of her.
I press my mouth against the top of her belly. Feel the baby shift beneath my lips. Then I move lower, trailing my mouth down the curve, over the soft skin beneath, and she leans back on her hands and lets her thighs fall open.
"You're beautiful," I tell her. Not for the first time. Not for the last.
"You keep saying that."
"Because you keep not believing me."
I look up at her from between her thighs. Her hair is falling in her face. Her lips are parted. Her chest is heaving. She looks like a goddess.
"Believe me," I say as I slide my palms up the insides of her legs, thumbs brushing the slick crease where thigh meets core. She’s soaked.
Swollen. The lips of her pussy are flushed dark pink and parted just enough to show the glistening entrance.
Pregnancy has made her even more sensitive here; the lightest touch makes her hips twitch.
I lean in and drag the flat of my tongue from beneath her entrance all the way up to her clit in one slow, deliberate stroke.
Her whole body jolts. A sharp, needy sound escapes her throat.
I blow cool air across her wet flesh just to watch her shiver. “You taste amazing.”
I cover her with my mouth.
No teasing today. No slow build. I’ve been half-hard since the moment I walked in and saw her like this. Round and ripe, and I’m not in the mood to be patient.
I suck her clit between my lips, firm and steady, flicking the underside with the tip of my tongue in the fast little rhythm I know makes her thighs shake. At the same time, I slide two fingers inside her slow enough to feel every flutter of her walls as they try to pull me deeper.
She cries out. One hand flies to my hair, gripping hard. The other fists the sheet.
“Fuck—Artem—right there—”
I growl against her so she feels the vibration. Curl my fingers, find that rough patch inside, and rub it in tight circles while my tongue works her clit without mercy.
Her hips start rolling, small, helpless thrusts she can’t control. Her belly rises and falls faster.
She’s close already. I can tell by the way her thighs tremble, by the broken little whimpers she’s trying to swallow, by how slippery she’s getting, coating my chin, my palm.
I pull my mouth away just long enough to rasp against her soaked flesh:
“Come for me, Kira. Drench my tongue. Show me how much this pretty pussy loves being owned.”
Then I seal my lips around her clit again and suck hard while I pump my fingers faster, curling on every stroke.
She breaks with a sob that’s half my name, half pure pleasure.
Her walls clamp down so tight I can barely move my fingers. A fresh gush of wetness floods my hand as I try to drink her down, licking through every pulsing wave until she’s shaking, gasping, tugging at my hair like she doesn’t know whether to pull me closer or push me away.
When the hardest of the spasms ease I don’t stop. I soften my tongue, lap gently at her oversensitive clit, coaxing out the sweet aftershocks while she whimpers and twitches.
Finally I lift my head.
Her eyes are glassy. Cheeks flushed. Lips parted.
I rise to my feet, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and look down at her spread open, dripping, flushed from breasts to thighs, belly round and perfect between us.
My cock is throbbing painfully behind my zipper. Has been since the second I put my mouth on her.
I unbuckle my belt. Undo my trousers. Shove them down just enough.
My cock springs free, thick, dark and throbbing for her. I wrap my fist around it and give one slow stroke, spreading the precum.
Kira’s gaze drops to it. Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip.
I step closer. Brace one knee on the mattress beside her hip so I’m hovering over her lower body. My free hand goes to her tit, palm flat and possessive, while I work my cock faster.
“Look at me,” I order.
Her eyes snap back to mine.
“This—” I drag the head of my cock through her soaked folds, coating myself in her release, nudging her still-throbbing clit on every pass, “this belongs to me.”
She nods. Small, frantic.
“Say it.”
“Yours,” she breathes. “It’s yours.”
I line myself up, resting the swollen head against her entrance so she can feel how hard I am, how ready.
“Every inch of this cunt,” I growl, stroking myself harder, faster. “Every drop I put in it. Every time it comes for me. Mine.”
Her hips lift instinctively, trying to take me. I pull away slightly, breaking the contact for a second before pressing against her again.
“Not today,” I rasp. “Today I’m going to mark what’s already mine.”
I angle myself lower. Rub the head against her clit then slide down until I’m notched right at her opening again.
My balls draw up tight.
I come with a low, guttural sound, as thick ropes of cum spill over her pussy, painting the swollen lips, dripping down her slit, pooling against her entrance. Some of it lands on the soft skin below her belly; some runs down her thighs.
I keep stroking through it, milking every pulse until I’m empty, until the last drop falls onto her clit and she whimpers at the hot contact.
When the orgasm finally passes, I drag the head of my cock through the mess I made, smearing it, rubbing it into her skin like I’m branding her.
Then I lean down and kiss her.
“Mine,” I say quietly. Not a question.
She reaches up. Cups my jaw. Her thumb brushes the corner of my mouth where I’m still wet from her.
“Yours,” she whispers back.
And the way she says it makes something in my chest crack wide open all over again.
I lower myself carefully beside her. Pull her into my arms. Rest my hand over the swell of her stomach and feel our baby kick once, hard, as if in agreement.
We stay like that while the light fades.