Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Millie
He moved me into the main house that night.
No more veneer of me living in the cottage like this was just an arrangement…no more pretending we were going to stop having sex when I got pregnant.
This was happening. Me and Gage—not just whatever me and Gage could make together.
Together, we packed up one of my duffels and I brought it into the house—the house where I was already sharing every meal with his family, where I’d already been told I was one of them. We also brought all the stuff I’d ordered online. For…reasons.
Reasons I was sure were about to become abundantly clear.
His room was at the end of the hall.
I'd walked past it a dozen times getting to the bathroom, the kitchen, the back porch—always the door half-open, always just a glimpse. I hadn't gone in. It hadn't felt like mine to go into.
He pushed it open now and stood aside and I walked past him into it.
It was large. That was the first thing—larger than I'd expected, the whole back corner of the house, two windows looking out over the east pasture and one facing the creek.
The evening light came through all three and lay in long bars across the floor, which was bare wood, dark and old and worn smooth in the paths that mattered.
A dresser. A chair in the corner with a jacket over it. Boots lined up by the door.
That was it.
No art on the walls. No accumulated clutter. Just the space, the light, the furniture that was there because it needed to be.
And the bed.
The bed was enormous. Iron frame, dark, the headboard tall and plain. The quilt on it was the same kind as the one in the cottage—heavy, worn, the kind that had been washed a hundred times and gotten better for it. Two pillows. No decorative anything.
I stood in the middle of the room and looked at all of it.
"It's very you," I said.
"That good or bad?"
"Good." I turned around. He was leaning in the doorway, watching me take it in. "I just mean—it looks like someone who doesn't need much."
“I don’t,” he said, leaning against the wall to watch me take it all in. “Well…not until now.”
“What does that mean?”
He tilted his head toward me. “Need you.”
I looked at him.
"That's the first time you've said that," I said.
"I know."
"You're not a man who says things like that."
"No." He pushed off the wall and came into the room fully, stopped a few feet away. "Which is why I'm only saying it once before I say the next thing."
I waited.
"I want to marry you," he said.
The room went very quiet.
"Gage."
"I know how long it's been."
"Three weeks."
"Four, roughly." He held my gaze. "Doesn't change it."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Looked at the bed, the windows, the last of the light on the pasture. "That's—you can't just —" I turned back to him. "People don't do that."
"My parents did."
I stared at him. "What?"
"My dad proposed to my mother eight days after they met.
" He said it matter-of-factly, the way he said everything.
"She told him he was insane. He told her he'd wait.
She made him wait six months and then said yes.
" Something moved in his expression, quiet and certain.
"He was right and she knew it and the waiting was just her making sure he was sure. "
I didn't say anything.
"I'm sure," he said.
"You've known me for four weeks."
"I knew in the parking lot."
"That's not—Gage, that's not how —"
"Millie." Not impatient. Just steady. "I'm not asking you to say yes tonight.
I'm telling you what I want so you know what this is.
So there's no ambiguity." He held my gaze.
"This isn't me keeping you around because of the contract.
This isn't me being good to you because you're carrying something for me.
I want you at that table for the next thirty years.
I want you in this room. I want to be your husband and I want that baby to have my name and then I want to do it again if you'll let me. "
My heart was doing something genuinely alarming.
"You're serious," I said.
"I don't say things I don't mean."
I knew that. Four weeks and I already knew that completely. Gage Holt did not perform sincerity. He either said a thing or he didn't, and when he said it he meant it down to the bone.
"I have to think about it," I said.
"I know."
"I'm not—it's not a no."
"I know that too."
I looked at him standing in the amber light in his spare room, boots by the door and no art on the walls and one enormous bed, and I thought about my mother lighting candles at Saint Anthony's for exactly this—not this specific situation, not a fertility clinic and a contract and an impossible inheritance law, but this feeling.
This landed, certain, terrifying feeling of a man looking at you like you are not a variable in his life but the fixed point everything else gets measured from.
"Your dad really proposed after eight days," I said.
"Eight days." He paused. "She really did make him wait six months."
"Smart woman."
"Smartest person I know." His mouth curved slightly. "Second smartest."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"Ask me again in six months," I said.
Something settled in his face. Not disappointment—the opposite of disappointment, the expression of a man who'd just gotten the answer he was expecting and was satisfied by it.
"Six months," he said.
"And I'm not—I'm not making you wait for any other reason than I want to be sure. That I'm sure. Not just that you are."
"Millie." His voice was low. "Take all the time you need. But for now…”
He looked at my duffel, along with the big box we’d brought in from the cottage. The box of…things. Accessories.
Breeding tools.
The bench—maybe the thing that made me feel the weirdest, hot and embarrassed and…excited—was still in its box. Gage pulled it out himself, checking it out with a sly smile.
I blushed.
I'd assembled it in the cottage two days ago, looked at it for a long time, put it in the closet facing the wall. It had felt like too much, alone in there. Like something that required a witness.
He turned it over in his hands. Ran his thumb along the edge of the padded rest, the dark wood, the iron pipe handles where the cuffs were attached.
"Tell me how it works," he said.
“Um…the lower pad is for your hips," I said. "The upper one is for your chest. The angle keeps everything tilted." I cleared my throat. "So gravity works with us instead of against."
He looked at the cuffs.
"And these."
"Wrists." I said it evenly. "So you can—so I'm not holding myself up. So I can just—" I stopped.
"Just what."
"Stay still," I said. "Receive it."
Something moved in his jaw.
He set the bench down on the floor at the foot of the bed, adjusting the angle, taking his time with it.
I sat on the edge of the quilt and watched him.
The room had gone quiet in that specific way—no goats, no cattle, just the ceiling fan and the two of us and the last pale edge of light at the window.
He straightened up. Looked at the bench. Looked at me.
"Take everything off," he said.
Butterflies erupted in my chest and stomach.
And I did as he said.
He watched. Didn't touch, just watched, and I stood in the middle of his room and let him look the way I'd learned to let him look—without crossing my arms, without turning away, without doing anything except standing in it.
"Come here," he said.
He helped me onto the bench, hands steady at my waist, and I understood immediately why the angle was what it was.
My chest settled against the upper pad, my hips against the lower one, and the pitch of it tilted everything just so—hips high, back arched gently, completely open.
The cuffs closed around my wrists, soft and firm.
I wasn't restrained, exactly. I just had nowhere to go.
I didn't want anywhere to go.
"Okay?" he said.
"Yes," I said.
His hand ran down my spine, slow, heel to tailbone, and I felt my whole body exhale.
"Tell me the order," he said.
"Preseed first," I said. "Then—" his hand moved and I lost a word. "Then you. Then the cap goes in after, to keep it in place while—"
He was rubbing my back and it felt so, so good…I lost track of my thoughts.
"While?" he said, a smile in his voice.
"While you use the other thing on me. The uh…the vibrator?”
He made a low sound. "You researched all this."
"I did."
"Read every word."
"Yes."
"So you've been thinking about this…" His hand hadn't moved from my spine. "About me putting a baby in you. About doing it right."
"Yes," I said. My voice was reedy, breathless. “Of course. All the time.”
He was quiet for a moment. His thumb moved at the base of my spine.
"Arlo's not getting this land," he said.
"You understand that. He doesn't get to walk in here and look at you like you're a variable in his case.
You're not." His hands tightened on my hips. "You're a fixture. Whatever we make…maybe it helps us keep our land. But even if it doesn’t, we fight it together. You and me, keepin’ this land for our babies…for our grandbabies one day.”
"Gage—"
"Tell me you understand that."
"I understand," I said.
"Good." He pressed a kiss to the back of my neck, brief and deliberate. "Now tell me the order again. From the beginning."
I swallowed. "Preseed first. Then you. Deep as you can." My face was on fire. "Then the vibrator for twenty minutes—it causes contractions. Moves everything in the right direction."
"Toward your cervix."
"Yes."
"So every drop gets exactly where it needs to be."
"Yes."
Another low sound from him, something satisfied and hungry all at once. I heard the tube. Looked over my shoulder to see him stroking his cock, covering himself with it. He was…he was so big it made me gasp.
His voice was low and rich as he let out a hoarse laugh. “Christ, Millie…your pussy’s so fuckin’ pretty like this. All spread out and open for me.”
I gripped the edge of the bench.