Chapter 29 Abbie #2
"I know why we needed it. I know I had to become someone different, someone better, and I know you needed space to figure out who you were without me.
I understand all of that." His voice roughens.
"But I still hate that we lost a year. I hate that I wasted so much time before you left, and then I wasted more time after.
I hate that there are three hundred and sixty-five days I could have been holding you, and I wasn't."
I reach up, touch his face. "I needed that year."
"I know."
"I learned things. About myself, about what I want, about who I am when I'm not trying to fit into someone else's life." I smooth my thumb across his cheekbone. "I wouldn't be standing here choosing you if I hadn't spent those months learning how to stand on my own."
"I know that too." He turns his head, presses a kiss to my palm. "It doesn't make me miss it less. Doesn't make me stop wishing we could have gotten here without losing that time."
"We have the rest of our lives," I say softly.
"Then I intend to use every day of them."
"Careful. That's starting to sound like a promise."
"It is a promise." He pulls me closer, and I let him, let myself sink into the warmth of him. "Laminated."
I groan. "I never should have laughed at that."
"Too late. It's locked in now. Preserved for all eternity."
"Shut up."
"Make me."
So I do.
We don't reach the bedroom.
I kiss him to shut him up the way he dared me to, and the kiss turns feral in three seconds flat, teeth, laughter, the ring newly heavy on my finger catching in his shirt as I fist the fabric. Seven months round and unbothered, I walk him backward until his calves hit the couch and we tip.
Cushions. Floor. The living-room rug that has never deserved what it's about to survive.
"Abs—" he starts, breathless already, hands hovering like he's still learning the new physics of my body.
"Against the couch." I shove his shoulders down so he's sitting on the floor with his back to the sofa, and I climb into his lap, careful of the bump between us, dress rucked up, knees bracketing his hips. "Here. Now. I put my own ring on. I get to choose the furniture we ruin."
"Tyrant." His grin is pure delight. "Happy tyrant."
"The happiest." I grind down against the thick ridge of him trapped in denim and watch his head thump back against a cushion. "Hands up. On the couch. Pin them... no. I pin them. You keep them there because I say so."
His pale eyes flash. He lifts both arms and sets his wrists along the couch cushions above his shoulders, offering. The tattoos at his wrists flex. I wrap my fingers around them, my hands smaller, ring flashing, and press down.
"Keep them there," I order.
"Yes." Simple. Ruined already. "Anything else Her Majesty requires?"
"Throat." I take one of his hands, permission to move that one, and place his palm at the front of my throat. Not squeezing. Just there. Warm. Huge. "Because I ask. Not because you assume. Hold. Light. If I tap twice you let go."
"If you tap twice I let go," he repeats, solemn as laminated vows. His fingers rest against my pulse. "Green?"
"Green," I tell him. First I make him watch. I free his belt one-handed and shove denim and underwear down enough to get him out.
I shove my underwear aside, take his cock in my hand, and rub the head through my wetness without letting him in, slow, mean circles that make his free wrist flex uselessly against the couch cushions where I parked it.
"Abbie—" His voice cracks. "You're killing me."
"Excellent." I notch him at my entrance and hold still, just the tip, enough pressure to make us both shake. "You spent years killing me with absence. Consider this interest."
"Unfair."
"Accurate." I sink an inch. Pull off. Sink two. His head thumps the cushion again. The hand I allowed at my throat flexes carefully, thumb stroking my pulse like a metronome. "Color?"
"Green, neon, blinding." He swallows. "Please."
Only then do I take all of him, one long filthy slide that punches the air out of the room.
The stretch at seven months is different, deeper pressure, different angle, belly heavy between us, and he goes still beneath me like he's afraid of breaking something sacred.
"I'm not glass," I remind him, rocking. "I'm round and loud and I want you to fuck me on our living-room floor like we're celebrating. Because we are."
"We are." His hand stays at my throat, careful, while the other stays on the couch cushion where I put it. "God, Abbie. Look at you. Ring on. Belly out. Riding me like the year never happened."
"The year happened." I lift and drop, finding a rhythm that makes the rug complain. "That's why this feels like winning."
I ride him with his hands pinned by obedience and my request, one at my throat, one above his head, and the power of it floods me hotter than the sex itself. His hips twitch up to meet me. His mouth falls open. Every downstroke drags a broken sound out of him.
Between positions, before the flip, I lean forward as far as the belly allows and bite his lower lip hard enough to make him hiss.
"You're staring at the ring," I notice.
"I'm staring at everything." His gaze drops to where we're joined, then to my stomach, then back to my eyes. "You. Us. The fact that you're seven months pregnant and still the most dangerous person in any room I walk into."
"Keep talking and I'll go harder."
"That's the hope."
I give him harder. The couch behind him squeaks.
A throw pillow escapes and tumbles into the hallway.
Neither of us cares. His obedience to the pinned-hands rule is so complete it becomes its own kink, this huge tattooed man holding still because I told him to, pale eyes gone dark, cock buried in me while afternoon sun turns the living room gold.
"Mouth," I demand, and he surges up to meet me in a kiss that is all teeth and celebration.
"Louder," I tell him. "I want the neighbors to file a complaint. I want this rug ruined. I want—"
"Let me turn us," he begs suddenly. "Please. I need... Abs, I need to hold you down for thirty seconds before I die politely. You can take the power straight back after. Just... please—"
I laugh, feral and fond, and let him. He surges up, turns us with ridiculous care for the belly, and then I'm on my back on the cushions with my wrists gathered in one of his big hands above my head.
The other hand returns to my throat because I tip my chin and ask without words.
He thrusts into me deep and steady, seven-months-aware and still filthy, and the living room fills with the slap of skin and my shameless moans.
While he has my wrists in one hand he uses the other, still at my throat, to tip my chin up so I have to look at him. The eye contact while he thrusts is almost more intimate than the sex.
"Tell me you're sure," he says, not slowing. "Not about the sex. About the ring. About staying. Tell me while I'm inside you so I can feel the truth."
"I'm sure." The words come out punched by every stroke. "I'm sure. I put it on. I choose you. I choose this house and this floor and this ridiculous laminated forever. Gray... I'm sure."
He loosens and tightens at once. He drops his forehead to mine, still fucking me, still holding me down, and the sound he makes is so raw I feel it in my teeth.
"Thank you," he whispers. "Thank you. Thank you—"
"Don't thank me. Ruin me."
"Both," he says, and does.
"More," I demand.
"You sure—"
"More, Gray. I asked for your hand on my throat and your cock in me on the floor. Do not go gentle now."
He doesn't. He fucks me like happiness is a sport and he's finally allowed on the field, deep strokes, wrist-pin firm, throat-hold light and perfect, pale eyes locked on mine like the elevator and the sticky notes and the year apart were all just roads to this exact rug.
"I put it back on," I gasp, ring flashing above my head where he holds me. "I put it back on myself. You don't get to forget that."
"Never." Thrust. "Never, Abs. It's yours. You're mine. We're, fuck, we're home."
"Say laminated," I dare him, mean and laughing.