Chapter 14 #2
I drove forward hard and she stopped talking.
I built it slow, the morning unhurried around us, the light spreading warm across the floor while she came apart underneath me—once, then partway to a second, then I felt her clenching tight and desperate and I let go, buried deep, her name in my mouth.
The stillness afterward was complete.
Her legs around me. Her hands loose in my hair. Both of us breathing.
I didn't move.
"Gage," she said, after a moment.
"Mm."
"You can—"
"I know," I said. "I'm not."
She understood. I felt it in the way she relaxed underneath me, the last of the tension leaving her body, accepting the weight of me. I shifted my hips just slightly, grinding deeper, and she made a soft sound.
"Every drop," I said.
"Every drop," she agreed, breathless.
I stayed where I was and worked her slow—not thrusting, just rocking, small deliberate movements that kept me lodged deep while she twitched and sighed underneath me. Her hands had moved to my back, palms flat, holding on.
"Feel full?" I said.
"So full."
"Good." I pressed deeper, watched her eyes go glassy. "That's where it's staying."
I kept her there for a long time. Long enough that her breathing slowed and her body went loose and her eyes started to drift, the morning warmth and the weight of me doing their work. Every time she shifted I shifted with her, keeping the angle, keeping everything right where it needed to be.
Then I reached over the side of the bed.
She felt me move and opened her eyes. Looked at what I'd picked up.
"Gage." Her voice was very careful.
"Mm."
"We already did twenty minutes."
"We did," I agreed.
"And then we just—"
"We did," I said again. I turned it over in my hand. "And I'm still inside you."
Her breath hitched.
"I told Wyatt and Sawyer to handle the morning," I said. "And the afternoon."
She stared at me. "You—"
"Texted them last night." I met her eyes. "Before the bench. Figured we'd need the day."
"You planned this."
"I plan most things." I ran my thumb along her hip. "They've got the cattle. Neto's got the fence line. Nobody needs me until sundown." I held her gaze. "Which means I've got nowhere to be except right here, keeping you full and working you over until your body has taken everything I've got."
Her mouth had fallen open slightly.
"All day," she said.
"All day."
"That's—" She stopped. Her hips rolled involuntarily against mine and she bit her lip. "That's a lot."
"You can take it."
"You don't know that—"
"Millie." I looked at her steadily. "I watched you take twenty-one minutes on that bench last night after I'd already been inside you twice. I know exactly what you can take."
Her face went pink all the way to her ears.
I turned the vibrator on.
She grabbed the quilt.
"Wait—" she started.
"Still inside you," I said. "Remember that. Every time it pulls, every time you clench, every time your body does what it's supposed to do—" I pressed it against her and she arched hard, a sharp cry escaping "—I'm still right there. Deep as I can get. Nowhere for any of it to go."
"Oh god—"
"Clock's right there," I said pleasantly.
She looked at the clock. Looked back at me. Something in her expression was wrecked and wanting and completely, utterly surrendered.
"Twenty minutes," she said.
"Twenty minutes," I agreed. "And then I'll give you a little while to breathe." I held the vibe steady and watched her eyes go glassy. "And then we're going to do it again."
"Again," she said faintly.
"And again after that." I rocked my hips, just slightly, just enough, and felt her clench around me. "I told you. All day."
She dropped her head back against the pillow.
I settled in and watched her.
That was the thing I hadn't anticipated—how much I wanted to watch.
Not just the physical of it, though that was its own particular destruction, but the way she came undone.
The specific sequence of it. The way her hands first gripped the quilt, then let go, then gripped again.
The way she tried to hold still and couldn't. The way my name sounded different in her mouth every single time, each one a slightly different shade of desperate.
I was making her into a raw nerve and she was letting me and there was something in that so far past the contract, so far past the arrangement, so far past anything I'd walked into that clinic expecting—I looked at her falling apart on my quilt in the morning light and I thought: this is what I was waiting for.
This is the thing I didn't know I was waiting for.
"Gage," she said. Broken.
"Right here," I said.
"I'm going to—"
"I know."
"You're still—"
"I know." I rocked my hips again, slow and deep. "Feel that?"
She made a sound that wasn't a word.
"Every time you clench," I said, low, "every time your body pulls—that's it working.
That's your body taking what I gave you and keeping it.
" I pressed the vibe closer and she cried out.
"You're going to be pregnant, Millie. You probably already are.
And we're going to spend all day making absolutely sure. "
She came.
I watched every second of it. Watched her face and her hands and the arch of her back and the way she said my name when she went over, and I stayed deep and still and let her body do what it was supposed to do, clenching and pulling, working in exactly the way the research said.
When she came down she was shaking.
I kept the vibe where it was.
"Gage—" A warning.
"Seventeen minutes," I said.
She made a sound that was half laugh and half something much more desperate, and dropped her head back, and held on.
I watched her.
All day, I thought. I've got her all day.
Outside, Sawyer and Wyatt were doing my job.
I had never been less sorry about anything in my life.