31. AVA #2
"I should have told you. Every single day I should have told you. I practiced the words in the shower, in the car, in your bed while you slept. And every time I swallowed them because I was more afraid of losing you than I was of lying to you, and that's the worst thing I've ever done."
"I know."
"I don't trust easily. I may never trust the way you deserve."
"I know that too."
"Can you live with that?"
“We will find a way.”
He stands. Comes around the crib. Offers me his hand.
I take it. He pulls me to my feet and the momentum carries me into his chest. His arms close around me and I press my forehead into the space below his collarbone where his heartbeat is solid and steady and exactly where I need it to be.
His hand slides down my side and stops on my belly. He spreads his palm wide, fingers curved over the roundness, and holds it there.
The baby kicks.
Kai goes completely still.
"That's our baby," I whisper.
"I felt it." His voice cracks on the second word. He presses his forehead against mine. "Do it again."
"I can't control it," I laugh.
The baby kicks again anyway, a solid thump against his palm. Kai makes a sound that is halfway between a laugh and something much more breakable.
"I missed everything," he says.
"Not everything. We're right here."
He kisses me. Soft at first, like he's asking permission. My fingers slide into his hair and I pull him closer, giving him the answer with my whole body.
The kiss deepens. Slow and thorough, the kind that builds from the inside out. His mouth opens against mine and I taste salt.
"Here?" he asks against my lips.
I nod.
He lowers me onto the sage-green throw from the rocking chair, spread across the hardwood next to the crib we just finished building. His hands find the hem of his hoodie and pull it over my head.
I lift my arms to help. Underneath, I'm in a thin cotton tank and no bra, and the way his gaze drops to the new fullness of my breasts sends warmth spilling through me.
He peels the tank off slowly. Presses his mouth to my collarbone.
"You're bigger here," he murmurs against my skin.
"Pregnancy will do that."
His lips trail down, pressing open-mouthed kisses between my breasts, down the center of my sternum. When he reaches my belly, he stops. Places both lips against the curve and stays there, breathing.
My fingers thread through his hair. My chest aches so deeply I think I might split open.
He kisses the spot where the adhesive bandage from today's transfusion still clings to my skin, and a shudder runs through my entire body because that small gesture holds more tenderness than anything anyone has ever done to me.
"Take these off," I say, tugging at his shirt.
He pulls it over his head. I trace the tattoos on his arm. He unbuttons his jeans. I push my leggings down. We undress each other, surrounded by pine-scented crib slats and fabric swatches and a rocking chair that's waiting for someone to sit in it.
Kai goes behind me and puts us in a spoon position. He’s careful, adjusting for the belly he now knows about, his arm holding my tummy from behind.
"Keep your eyes open," he says.
He slides into me so slowly that I feel every inch of him, and the sound I make is nothing I could have controlled or contained or hidden.
His hands brush my breasts, my nipples as he slides out and in again.
"Don't hold anything back," he says.
"I'm not."
"You are. I can see it. Let go."
My breath becomes shaky.
"I'm scared that if I let go completely, I'll need you so much it will destroy me when you leave."
"I'm not leaving."
He moves. Slow, deep, deliberate strokes that pull the air from my lungs and replace it with something molten and consuming. His hand finds mine and laces our fingers together.
"I can feel you holding back," he murmurs, his lips against my throat. "Your stomach. Your sounds. Your whole body is bracing."
He's right. Even now, even here, some part of me is tense for the moment he pulls away.
I force myself to unclench. Let my hips meet his rhythm instead of fighting it. I grind against his cock as he pushes in again and again. Let the moan that's been building in my chest climb up my throat and leave my mouth without my permission.
"That's it," he says.
His pace stays slow. His hand cups my belly while he moves inside me, thumb stroking the skin where our baby turns and shifts beneath his touch.
Nobody has ever touched me like this. Like my body is something to be studied and memorized and kept. Like the parts of me that have changed are not flaws to work around but evidence of something sacred happening inside me.
I arch into him. Wrap my legs around his hips. Pull him deeper.
"Harder," I breathe.
"No." He presses his mouth to my neck, swallowing the plea. "Tonight I want to feel all of you. Every part."
He grinds into me, slow and deep, and the friction builds a pressure so intense my fingers dig into his shoulders. My hips roll up to meet him and he lets out a low groan that vibrates through my chest.
"You feel different," he says. "Fuller. Warmer."
"Better or worse?"
He answers by sliding deeper, angling his hips so the next stroke hits the place that makes my spine arch off the floor.
"That's not an answer," I gasp.
"Better." He traces his tongue along my ear. "Everything about you is better than what I remember."
He builds me up with a patience that borders on cruelty. Every time I get close, he slows down, holds me on the edge, his dark eyes watching my face like my expressions are instructions he's memorizing.
"Please." The word falls out of me without pride or performance. "Kai, please."
He picks up the rhythm. Steady and relentless and aimed with precision. His hand presses flat on my belly, holding our baby between us while he brings me to the edge again.
This time he doesn't stop.
I come apart screaming, my whole body clenching around him, my voice breaking on his name.
Not muffled. Not stifled. Not bitten back or swallowed or hidden behind a closed mouth.
Full and loud and completely uncontrolled.
He follows seconds later with a deep groan, his rhythm stuttering, his body going tight against mine before he empties himself inside me with his face buried in my neck and his hand still spread wide across the swell of our child.
We lie there breathing.
The nursery smells like pine and sweat and the faint trace of cedar that always clings to his skin.
"I love you, Kai," I say. “Stay tonight.”
He smiles, arm tightening around me.
"I'm staying every night, Ava." His lips brush my cheeks. "All of them."
The baby rolls beneath his hand, a slow, deliberate turn.
And for the first time since I found out about the pregnancy, I feel completely fulfilled.