20. Gracie #2
“Here?” he asks against my throat, like he’s checking the ground for rot.
“Here,” I say, and reach between us, find him through the wet fabric, and squeeze. “Unless you need an engraved invitation.”
He laughs, startled and genuine, and then his mouth is on mine, hungry and cold and tasting like rain, and I’m working his briefs down his hips while he’s shoving my jacket off my shoulders, and it’s nothing like last night.
Last night was slow, careful, freighted with eight years of grief.
This is fast and laughing and a little bit insane, both of us soaked and shivering, hay scratching against my back when he lifts me.
“Wait-” He pulls back, breathing hard, and his hand finds my belly. “The babies. Is this-”
“I’m pregnant, not fragile. Just don’t crush me.”
“Turn around,” he says, and his voice has dropped into a rough, commanding register that makes my knees go liquid.
I turn. He guides me forward until my hands are braced against a hay bale, and then his palm is running down my spine, over my hip, between my thighs from behind, and I’m still wearing my jeans, which he seems to find completely unacceptable.
“These need to go.” He tugs at my waistband. “Help me, or I’m ripping them.”
“They’re my good jeans-”
“I’ll buy you new ones.” But he doesn’t rip them, just works them down my hips with a reverence that undermines the urgency, and when I step out of them his mouth finds the base of my spine and kisses there, soft and wet.
“God, Gracie.” His hands are on my hips, steadying me. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this.”
“Bent over a hay bale in a barn? Very glamorous.”
“Beautiful,” he repeats, and then his hand slides around my belly, cradling the swell of it, and I feel him press against me from behind, hard and thick and hot now, warming up under my skin, and I push back against him because I need-
“Please,” I hear myself say.
“Use your words, sweetheart.”
“Mal-”
“Tell me.” He’s teasing me now, the head of him sliding through the wet heat of me but not pressing in, and I want to kill him. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you to fuck me.” I turn my head, catch his eye over my shoulder. “Now. Hard. Before I change my mind.”
He groans like I’ve wounded him. And then he pushes inside me in one slow, relentless stroke, and I stop thinking about anything at all.
He’s careful with me. Careful of my belly, one hand always there, cradling it, and of my balance, his other hand gripping my hip to keep me steady.
But he’s not gentle, not after I tell him I don’t want gentle, I want to feel it, I want to feel him, and the sound our bodies make together is obscene and perfect, wet skin slapping in the rain-soaked barn.
“Fuck, you feel-” He breaks off, thrusting harder. “You feel so good. So perfect. Missed this, missed you-”
“Less talking.” But I’m lying, I don’t want less talking, I want exactly this, his voice rough in my ear, his hands on my body, his cock stretching me open, and when he reaches around to find my clit I almost scream.
“There?” He circles once, slow, teasing. “Right there?”
“Yes-”
“Tell me when you’re close. Want to feel it.” He presses harder, rubbing in time with his thrusts, and the pressure builds fast, too fast, and I’m shaking my head even as my body tightens around him.
“I’m-” I gasp. “Already-”
“Don’t stop now.” He sounds wrecked, barely holding on. “Say it, sweetheart.”
“Close. I’m close, don’t stop, don’t you dare-”
He doesn’t stop. He speeds up, his hips snapping against me, his fingers relentless, his mouth pressing kisses to my shoulder between ragged breaths, and when I fall it’s headlong, my whole body clenching around him, and I hear myself cry out his name into the hay-scented air.
He follows a second later. I feel it when he lets go, the stutter of his hips, the groan against my back, the heat of him spilling inside me, and then he’s pulling me upright, pulling me against his chest, his heart slamming into my shoulder blade.
“Christ.” He’s still breathing hard. “That was-”
“Stupid,” I supply. “Impulsive. Irresponsible.”
“I was going to say incredible.”
I laugh despite myself. “That too.”
Afterward, he wraps me in the old horse blanket that hangs on the stall door, dry and rough and smelling like leather, and before I can protest he scoops me up like I weigh nothing at all.
“Mal, I have legs-”
“I’ve seen them.” He’s already heading for the barn door, stepping over the still-running hose, out into the rain that’s softened now to a steady drizzle. “Let me anyway.”
I want to argue, to say that I’ve been carrying myself for four months and I don’t need him to literally sweep me off my feet, that this doesn’t change anything, that I’m still not sure and I’m still scared and I’m still-
But he’s warm now. His chest is warm against my side, and his arms are steady underneath me, and the rain is cool on my face, and somewhere in the pasture Meatball is mooing contentedly like she didn’t just cause an international incident.
“Fine,” I say into his shoulder. “But this doesn’t mean anything.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I mean it. This was a lapse in judgment. Adrenaline and proximity.”
“Absolutely.” He steps onto the porch, adjusts his grip, and pushes open the door with his shoulder. “Won’t happen again.”
“It won’t.”
“No.” He carries me through the kitchen, past the cold eggs still sitting on the table, toward the stairs. “Definitely not.”
I should make him put me down and establish boundaries, rebuild walls, protect whatever’s left of my carefully constructed independence.
Instead, I let him carry me all the way.