Chapter 24 Abbie #2
"Slowly." I hold his gaze. "We take this slowly.
Yes, I'm pregnant, and yes, that complicates the timeline.
But I'm not ready to move back in together or announce some triumphant reunion.
We're still... we're stuck, Gray. In the middle of something.
And I need us to find our way out of it properly, not just paper over the cracks because there's a baby coming. "
He nods, and there's relief in his face. "Slowly. I can do slowly."
"And when work gets messy, tell me before it eats the evening," I say. "No finished solutions sprung on me."
He meets my eyes. "We decide what can move together. And if I start slipping, I take it to therapy instead of waiting for you to reach breaking point."
"And the slowly part? Because historically—"
"I know." He almost smiles. "Patience hasn't been my strong suit. But I've had a year to practice. A year of staying away, trying not to call, trying not to show up at your door and beg. If I can survive that, I can survive slowly."
"It wasn't easy for me either." The admission costs me something. "I almost called you so many times. Especially at the beginning. I'd pick up the phone and get halfway through your number before I remembered I was supposed to be healing."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I was afraid if I heard your voice, I'd forgive you before I understood what I was forgiving. And I needed to understand first. I needed to know what went wrong so I could believe it wouldn't happen again."
"And now?"
"Now I—" I hesitate. "I'm not there yet. Forgiveness, I mean. But I believe you want to be different. I believe you're trying. And that's enough to build on."
Gray picks up the test and stares at the two pink lines.
"We made this," he says. "You and me. Whatever else happened between us, we made this."
"Yeah." The word catches in my throat. "We did."
"Can I—" He stops, swallowing. "Can I hold you? Just for a minute?"
I move into his arms before he finishes asking. He sits beside me on the swing and wraps his arms around me. I press my cheek to his chest.
"Thank you," he murmurs. "For telling me. For wanting to try. For giving me another chance when I don't deserve one."
"You might deserve one." I pull back enough to look at him. "The jury's still out."
"I'll take that." His smile is small and real. "I'll take anything you're willing to give."
I kiss him. His lips touch mine. I taste the salt of his tears before his hand slides into my hair and the kiss deepens. When we break apart, we're both breathing hard.
When I kiss him again, my fingers fist in the front of his henley, the two pink lines of the pregnancy test lying on the side table like a third witness. Somewhere far below, a car winds up Topanga Canyon Boulevard. The chains of the swing creak. Wind moves through the oaks.
"Slowly," I remind him, even as I swing a leg over his lap and straddle him right there in the open air.
"Slowly," he agrees, already undone. Then: "Define slowly."
"Not... this." But I'm laughing against his mouth, and my hips have already found how hard he is beneath the denim, and slowly is a theory we are failing in real time.
His hands slide under my dress. Up my thighs. Thumbs brushing the edges of my underwear with a reverence that does not match the filth in his eyes.
"Abs." His voice drops. "If I get on my knees right now, on this porch, with the road down there and the wind doing whatever it wants, are you going to stop me?"
I look at him. Pale blue eyes. Black wavy hair mussed by my hands. The man who just promised family first while holding evidence of what we made.
"I'm not going to stop you," I whisper. "I'm going to need you to be quiet about it."
"I can be quiet." His grin turns wicked. "You're the one who gets loud."
"Gray—"
He lifts me off his lap like gravity’s a suggestion, sets me back on the swing, and sinks to his knees on the porch boards between my spread thighs.
He takes his time with me. Before the dress goes up he kisses the inside of my knee, then higher, then the soft skin where thigh meets hip, and each press of his mouth feels like a vow he's making with his body because words have already been used up on conditions and slowly and family first.
"You're shaking," he notices.
"Wind," I lie.
"Liar." He smiles against my skin. "It's me. It's the road. It's the fact that anyone could drive past the bottom of this driveway and look up at the wrong second."
"Are you trying to talk me out of it or into it?"
"Into it." His teeth scrape lightly. "Definitely into it. I just want you to know I know what we're risking. And I want it anyway."
"Romantic criminal."
"Your romantic criminal." He glances up. "Still? Even with—" His gaze flicks, briefly, to my still-flat stomach.
"Especially with." I thread my fingers through his hair. "Don't treat me like I'll break. Treat me like I'm yours."
"You are." The words land heavy. True. "You've always been. I was just too stupid to act like it every day."
My dress pools at my hips. He hooks my underwear aside, doesn't even take them off, and the first stroke of his tongue makes me clap a hand over my own mouth.
The swing chains rattle. He hums approval into me.
"Hand," he murmurs against my clit, and when my hand starts to slip he catches my wrist and presses my palm firmly over my lips.
"Keep it there. Cars. Neighbors. Canyon acoustics.
I'm going to eat this pretty pussy until you forget the word slowly, and you are going to muffle every sound you make or I stop. "
It's the most ridiculous threat I've ever heard. It's also the hottest. I nod, palm sealed over my mouth, and he returns to his work with the focused hunger of a man who's been given a holy assignment in public.
His tongue is filthy and precise. He licks through my folds like he's mapping territory he already owns, then seals his mouth over my clit and sucks in a rhythm that makes my heels dig into the porch boards.
One of his big hands holds my dress up. The other spreads me open so he can get deeper, tongue fucking into me in short thrusts that have me gasping against my own palm.
A truck growls somewhere on the canyon road. We both freeze for half a second, his mouth still on me, my eyes wide, and then the sound fades and he doubles down, as if the risk itself is an aphrodisiac.
"Mmm—" The sound leaks around my fingers. He glances up, pale eyes dark, and the look alone almost finishes me.
"Quiet, Abs," he reminds me, voice ragged and low at once. "Or I take this inside and make you wait. And I don't think you want to wait."
I shake my head. I don't want to wait. I want his mouth.
I want the open air. I want the creak of the chains and the taste of salt from his earlier tears still ghosting my lips and the insane, specific intimacy of being eaten out on a porch while pregnant with his child and still technically taking things slowly.
He slides one finger into me, then two, curling while his tongue works, and my free hand flies to his hair. I pull. He groans into me, loud enough that I almost panic, and then muffles himself against my thigh for a second, laughing silently, forehead pressed to my skin.
"Sorry," he whispers. "You taste like every good decision I've failed to make until now. God, this cunt. I could stay down here for a week."
"That's—" I move my hand just enough to speak, voice shaking. "That's terrible. Keep going."