18. Blythe
— ? —
Blythe
I couldn’t sleep.
I lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, Bayes snoring at my feet, replaying the evening over and over in my head like a film I couldn’t stop watching. The bar. Stan’s face when Reid broke his grip. The kiss in the parking lot.
The woman you love.
The words echoed through me, settling somewhere deep in my chest. He’d said them to Stan, not to me.
It could have been performance, the things men say when they’re marking territory, when they wanted to make a point.
Reid was awkward with words, clumsy with emotion. Maybe he’d just said what came to mind.
But it hadn’t sounded like performance. It had sounded real. It had sounded like something breaking open.
Did he mean it? Did he actually mean it?
I spiraled for hours. Tossed and turned.
Stared at the shadows moving across the ceiling while my mind ran in circles, examining every interaction, every glance, every moment we’d shared.
The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching.
The way his hand found mine without thinking.
The way he’d said my name in that hotel room, rough and desperate.
Finally, around 2 a.m., I gave up. I needed water. I needed to move. I needed something besides the echo of his voice in my head.
I crept down the stairs in the dark, not bothering with lights. I knew this house now, every step, every turn, every place where the floor creaked. It had become familiar to me in ways I hadn’t expected, this enormous cold house that had somehow started to feel like home.
I made it to the kitchen and reached for a glass.
“Can’t sleep?”
I screamed.
Actually screamed, dropping the glass, my hand flying to my chest. A voice out of the dark, low and amused, and my heart was hammering so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.
I fumbled for the small light over the stove and turned it on.
Reid was sitting at the kitchen island, a glass in his own hand. In nothing but briefs.
“Jesus Christ.” I pressed my palm over my pounding heart. “You scared me half to death.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. There was a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and he was watching me with those dark eyes that saw too much. “Couldn’t sleep either.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. The motion did things to his shoulders that made my mouth go dry, the roll of muscle under skin, the casual strength in every line of him. I’d seen him shirtless before, but never like this. Never in the middle of the night with that look on his face.
“Just thinking.”
He looked at me then. Really looked, his eyes traveling over my face, my hair, the oversized T-shirt I was wearing. His T-shirt, actually. I’d stolen it from the laundry because it smelled like him and I was too pathetic to admit that out loud.
“What about you?” he asked. “Why can’t you sleep?”
I could have lied. I could have said the baby, or the trial, or any of the seven hundred legitimate reasons a woman in my position might be awake at two in the morning.
“I just keep thinking,” I said.
“About what?” he whispered.
I paused. The parking lot. The woman you love. The five words neither of us had mentioned since, sitting in every room of this house like a third person.
“About you.”
He set down the glass and stood up, crossing to me in two long strides. His hands found my hips, warm through the thin cotton of the shirt, and I felt the heat of him everywhere we touched. Already hard. Thick and obvious against my hip through those stupid briefs.
And so was I. Heat pooling low in my belly, my skin flushing everywhere he touched, my nipples tight against the soft cotton. My hands found his chest.
“Naked,” I breathed.
He groaned, dropping his forehead to mine. “Baby, you don’t need your imagination for that. Say one word and you’ll have me naked and crawling for you.”
I looked up at him. At his dark eyes, his flushed cheeks, his mouth so close to mine.
“Do it.”
His expression shifted. Challenge accepted. A slow, filthy smirk.
He stepped back. Hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his briefs. And stripped them off in one smooth motion.
His cock sprang free, thick and heavy and already leaking at the tip, the head flushed dark. Huge. Bigger than I’d let myself properly appreciate that first night half-dead on his boat. My mouth went dry.
Then he sank to his knees in front of me. Hands and knees, actually, crawling that last foot until he was right there looking up.
The breath punched clean out of my lungs.
He knelt there on the cold kitchen floor, naked, cock hard and dripping between his thighs, looking up at me with dark, desperate eyes.
Waiting. Patient. This enormous man who couldn’t make small talk to save his life, who talked about tide tables at cocktail parties, who’d built an empire out of nothing, on his knees for me like he wanted to worship.
“Come here,” I whispered, voice wrecked already.
I hauled him up by the shoulders and kissed him.
It was nothing like our other kisses. Not the soft press in the parking lot, not the desperate clash outside the bar.
This was hungry. Crude. His tongue shoved into my mouth like he wanted to own it, his hands grabbing my ass hard enough to bruise, yanking me against every hard inch of him.
I moaned into it, fingernails scraping down his bare back, and he answered with a growl that vibrated straight to my clit.
He lifted me onto the kitchen counter without breaking the kiss, shoving my thighs open to step between them. His hands went under my shirt, his shirt, pushing it up roughly, palms carving over my ribs, thumbs brushing the undersides of my tits.
“Off,” he rasped. “Need this fucking thing off right now.”
I helped, yanking it over my head and tossing it somewhere behind me. Bare. Nothing underneath. Cool air hit my skin and then his hands were there, big and hot, squeezing.
“Fuck.” He pulled back just enough to stare, eyes blown black, mouth wet. “Look at these perfect tits. Been dreaming about getting my mouth on them since the hot tub. Since before that. You’re so goddamn beautiful it hurts.”
“Then stop staring and do something about it.”
He laughed, low and dark, and dove in.
Mouth closing over one nipple, sucking hard, teeth grazing just enough to make me cry out.
His other hand worked the opposite breast, pinching, rolling, rough and perfect.
I arched into him, fingers spearing into his hair, holding him there while he switched sides, licking, biting, groaning like I tasted better than anything.
“Reid.” His name came out broken. “Please.”
He looked up at me, lips shiny, eyes wild. “Please what, menace? Use that filthy mouth and tell me how you want it.”
“I need you to stop teasing and touch me. Properly. I’m already soaked and you’re just-”
He cut me off with another hard kiss, then dropped to his knees again right there between my spread thighs on the counter.
“Christ, look at you.” His voice had gone low and gravelled. Hands shoving my knees wider. “Pussy’s glistening. Dripping down onto my counter. All this mess just from me sucking your tits?”
“Yes, you asshole, now-”
He licked a broad, filthy stripe right up my center before I could finish, and the words turned into a shameless moan.
He ate me like he was starving. No finesse at first, just raw hunger, tongue fucking into me, nose pressed to my clit, hands gripping my thighs hard enough to leave marks. The sounds were obscene, wet and greedy, and he groaned against me like he was the one getting off.
“Fuck, you taste good. Sweet and filthy. Could live down here.” He pushed two thick fingers inside without warning, curling them immediately, and my head thunked back against the cabinet. “That’s it. Squeeze my fingers. Show me how tight this pretty cunt’s gonna strangle my cock.”
“God - right there-”
“Yeah? This spot?” He rubbed harder, relentless, tongue lashing my clit in nasty little flicks. “Seven years of that prick and he never found this, did he? Never made you this wet. Never made you shake like you’re about to come all over my face.”
“Shut up and-”
“Make you come? Gladly.”
He sealed his mouth over my clit and sucked, fingers pounding into me now, and I shattered with a broken cry, thighs clamping around his head, pulsing so hard I saw stars. He didn’t stop. Worked me through it, gentling only when I shoved at his hair because it bordered on too much.
Then he stood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like some filthy barbarian, and hauled me off the counter into his arms.
“Not here,” he muttered against my mouth, already carrying me toward the stairs. “Not for our first time. Gonna fuck you properly in a bed. Wanna see you spread out and take every inch.”
I laughed, breathless, legs wrapped around his waist, feeling that hard cock bounce against my ass with every step. “Romantic.”
“You want romance or you want me to wreck you?”
“Both. Obviously.”
He kicked his bedroom door shut behind us, laid me down on cool sheets, and covered me with all that heat and muscle. I got my hand around him immediately, stroking the thick length, thumb smearing the wetness at the tip, and his whole body shuddered.
“I’m clean,” I said, voice wrecked. “And I’m already pregnant. So-”
“I know.” He kissed my forehead, my cheek, the corner of my mouth, then bit my lower lip. “Had myself tested the same morning. Clean. Hoping like hell we’d get here.”
I smiled, squeezed him tighter, stroked harder. “Planning ahead, Navarro?”
“Desperate.” His hips punched forward into my fist. “If you keep jerking me like that this is going to be embarrassingly fast.”
“Then get inside me before I finish you with my hand and make you watch.”
He cursed, lined himself up, and pushed in.
Slow. One long, thick glide that stole the air from both of us.
The stretch burned perfect, my body forced to open around him, every ridge and vein dragging against sensitive walls.
He bottomed out with a sound like the air being knocked out of him and stayed there, buried to the hilt, forehead to mine, trembling.
“Move,” I demanded, heels digging into his ass. “I won’t break.”
“I know exactly what you are.” He drew back and drove home again, harder, the headboard knocking the wall. “Christ. So tight. So wet. You were made for my cock, Blythe. Made to take me like this.” Another deep thrust. “Say it’s mine.”
“Cocky for a man who almost came in my fist two seconds ago.”
He laughed, the sound turning into a filthy moan as he set a rhythm, deep, rolling, devastating. Each stroke dragged over that spot inside me until my nails were scoring down his back. “Say it anyway, menace. Tell me who this pussy belongs to now.”
“It’s yours,” I gasped, arching up to meet him. “Fuck - it’s yours. Your cock, your hands, all of it. Now stop teasing and fuck me like you mean it.”
Something snapped.
He hooked one of my knees over his elbow, opened me wider, and started pounding. Hard, raw, the slap of skin loud in the quiet room. The filthy litany started then, low and rough in my ear while he split me open.
“Been dying for this. Every fucking night. Jerking off to the memory of you in that hot tub, those perfect tits, the way you looked at my cock like you wanted to choke on it. Gonna fill this cunt so full you’ll feel me tomorrow.
Every time you sit down. Every time you move. Gonna ruin you for anyone else.”
“Yes - God, yes-”
He got his hand between us, thumb finding my swollen clit, rubbing nasty tight circles in time with his thrusts. “Come on my cock. Soak me. Let me feel this greedy pussy milking me dry.”
I came hard, clenching around him so tight he cursed and lost the rhythm for a second.
He fucked me straight through it, chasing his own, hips snapping erratic and deep until he buried himself one last time and spilled with my name torn from his throat like a prayer and a curse all at once.
Hot pulses filling me, his whole massive body shaking apart on top of me.
He slumped, catching most of his weight on his forearms, still inside me, both of us wrecked and breathing like we’d sprinted.
“I’m crazy about you,” he said against my neck, voice hoarse. “Dreamed about this. About you. Beautiful, perfect, mine.”
For the first time in years, wrung out and shaking and full of him, I let myself believe it.
Afterward we lay tangled in the dark. His arm around my waist, my head on his chest, both of us cooling off while his heartbeat thudded steady under my ear.
“Reid,” I said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happens next. Whatever comes out about the pills, or the pregnancy, or any of it.” I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at him. His face was soft in the darkness, more relaxed than I’d ever seen it. “I need you to promise me something.”
His eyes searched my face. “Anything.”
“No more secrets.” I traced a finger along his jaw, feeling the stubble there. “From now on, we tell each other everything. No lies. No omissions. No protecting each other from the truth. Can you promise me that?”
He was quiet for a long moment.
I watched his face, waiting. This man who’d saved my life and married me and just fucked me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
Then: “I promise.”
He said it firmly. Certainly.
But his eyes flickered with a thought he didn’t say, and it was still there when he pulled me back down against his chest and held me tight.