10. Zuri #2
We were laughing when I kissed him. Still laughing when his hands slid up my back and unhooked my bra with a dexterity that was muscle memory from May.
Still almost laughing when his mouth found the space below my ear and the laughter became something else — lower, warmer, the sound of two people remembering what their bodies already knew.
He touched me like he had all the time in the world.
Like there wasn't a company to run or a board to manage or a baby about to arrive within the month.
His hands moved over my body with a specificity that said he'd been paying attention — not just at the summit, but every day since.
He knew where I was sensitive now. Knew the places pregnancy had rewired — the sides of my belly where even a light touch sent sparks, the inside of my wrist where my pulse had tripled, the base of my spine where pressure turned into relief turned into need.
I stopped trying to be in control somewhere around the moment his mouth found my breast. The gasp that came out of me was not professional.
It was not measured. It was the sound of a woman who'd spent eight months performing self-sufficiency and had finally let someone past the perimeter.
His tongue circled, slow and deliberate, then his teeth grazed just enough to make my hips jerk against him, and my back arched above him.
"There," I breathed. Then, because I had no filter left: "Right there, don't stop, don't you dare?—"
He didn't stop. He braced one hand at my back and helped me roll off him, arranging the pregnancy pillow until I was safely reclined on my side. "Still good?" he asked.
"Very. Keep going."
Only then did he move lower, kissing a slow line down my sternum and over the curve of my belly before settling between my thighs. He looked up once — a question — and I threaded my fingers into his hair to answer it.
His mouth on me was unhurried and devastating.
He explored like he had all night to learn exactly what made my breath catch, what made my thighs shake, what made me forget every sentence I'd ever constructed in a boardroom.
His tongue found a rhythm and held it, steady and relentless, while two fingers slid inside me, curling forward with a patience that undid me faster than any urgency could have.
My fingers dug into his hair. My breathing shattered into pieces.
The first wave hit me like something structural giving way — not sharp but deep, radiating from my center outward, pulling a sound from my throat that I didn't recognize and couldn't have held back.
My whole body clenched around his fingers and then released, and he didn't stop, didn't slow, just kept his mouth and hand moving through it, drawing it out, extending the aftershock until I was trembling and gasping and fisting the sheets.
"Okay," I managed, when I could speak. "Your turn."
"I'm not done with yours."
"I said—" But then his tongue moved again, different angle, deeper pressure, and the argument evaporated.
The second build was faster, sharper, built on the wreckage of the first. I rode his mouth with my hand still in his hair, watching what I could see of his face — the concentration, the dark intensity, the way his shoulders flexed like he was holding himself back through pure force of will.
When I came again, harder this time, my whole body bowing off the bed, I said his name like it was the only word I had left.
He crawled back up my body, lips slick, and kissed me deep enough that I could taste myself on his mouth. His eyes were full — not tears, just full, overflowing with something I wasn't ready to name but couldn't pretend I didn't recognize.
I reached between us and found him — hard, heavy, already leaking against my palm.
The sound he made — low, broken, almost pained — was the most honest sound I'd ever heard from a man who'd built his life on control.
I stroked him slowly, watching his composure disintegrate, running my thumb over the head until his hips stuttered forward into my hand.
"Zuri—"
"Don't talk. Feel."
He felt. I could see it in the tension of his jaw, the tendons in his neck, the way his hands gripped my thighs hard enough to leave marks.
I adjusted our positions — carefully, the bump requiring creative geometry, me on my side with one leg hooked over his hip — and guided him inside me, inch by aching inch, with a control that was entirely mine. My choice. My pace. My terms.
The feeling of him — full, thick, stretching me open — was different than the summit.
That night had been urgent and anonymous and fueled by champagne and the thrill of being no one.
This was specific. This was Liam Cavanaugh in my bed, in my body, in my life, with my daughter between us and the whole complicated future we were building stretching out ahead.
I moved slowly at first. Finding the angle that worked with the belly, the position that let me set the depth.
His hands were on my hips, not directing — steadying.
His eyes stayed on mine. The patience that used to infuriate me was, I realized, the same thing that made this work.
He would wait. He would let me lead. He would hold still while I figured out what I needed and then give it to me without asking for credit.
The rhythm built. Slow rolls of my hips that dragged him almost all the way out before I sank back down, taking every inch, feeling the stretch of him with every stroke.
His breathing went ragged. His hips began meeting mine, small thrusts that made both of us gasp, until slow stopped being possible and we were moving together, skin slapping skin, the headboard knocking softly against the wall.
The city outside my window was doing its usual thing — car horns and distant bass — but in here, in this room, the only sound was us.
"Zuri." My name in his mouth, wrecked and reverent.
"I know," I whispered. "I know. Harder."
He obeyed, his hips driving deeper, one hand sliding down to press slow circles against my clit in time with each thrust. The third wave was different.
It started deeper — lower, slower, building like pressure behind a dam.
His hips rose to meet mine and I let him, let the rhythm become something we made together instead of something I dictated.
My vision blurred. My hands found his face, cupped his jaw, held him where I could see him.
When I broke, I broke around him — a long, clenching release that pulled a cry from deep in my chest, my whole body shaking with it.
He followed me a heartbeat later, his rhythm stuttering, his name for me lost somewhere in a groan against my throat as he spilled inside me, his arms wrapping around me so tightly I could feel his heart slamming against me.
We stayed like that, still joined, breathing together, his heart hammering against me, the baby shifting once between us — a small, lazy roll, like she'd been waiting for us to stop making noise.
"She's judging us," I said into his neck.
His laugh was warm against my skin. "She has opinions."
"She gets that from me."
"She gets everything from you."
I lay there with my head on his chest, his heartbeat slowing under my ear, his hand tracing idle patterns on my back. The lamplight was golden. The room smelled like lavender, sex, and the tomato and smoked pepper still lingering from the kitchen. My sheets were ruined and I did not care.