Chapter 28 Daisy #3
I slide my hand between us. The dual sensation makes me cry out loud enough that he grins like a man who talked the universe into a yes. His pace stays unhurried for another minute (long slides, forehead kisses, belly worship) then tips desperate when I clench and beg.
"Harder," I demand. "Pregnancy-careful. But harder."
"Harder careful." He delivers, hips snapping, mouth open on a continuous stream of love and filth: how pretty I am flushed and pregnant and wearing his ring, how he's going to spend the honeymoon we never took learning every new thing I like, how the bookmark metaphor can wait because right now the only page that matters is the one where I'm wrapped around his cock.
"Adam, I'm—"
"Together." His voice breaks. "Come with me. Loud. Now. I love you. I love you. I love—"
We break together in a mess of sound and heat, my cry and his groan braided, the bedframe giving one last scandalized knock.
He catches himself on his elbows so his weight never taxes my belly, burying his face in my neck while he pulses through aftershocks, still whispering love like a man making up for lost inventory.
"Five years of backlog," he murmurs when he can speak again. His arm tightens. "I'm going to be verbose about it."
"Be verbose." I kiss his chest. "Be loud. Be here."
Between rounds, because of course there is a between, he brings me water and a ridiculous number of pillows, then lies on his side facing me while his fingers draw idle spirals on my hip.
"You just made me shout," he tells me. "I may owe Nell an apology for the bedframe."
"You can start by moving it away from the wall."
He shifts the bed, then comes back to kiss me. "Round two when you're ready. Unhurried first. Desperate after. Same order as our marriage, just compressed into one night."
"Poet."
"Husband." He says it like a title he finally deserves. When I nod, he rolls me carefully atop him again and we start the unhurried part properly (long kisses, slow sinks, love said into every exhale) until desperation sneaks back in and the mattress springs resume their scandalized protest.
The desperate phase arrives like weather we ordered: my nails in his shoulders, his mouth open on a continuous love-song of filth, the mattress complaining, Chaucer yowling once from the hallway like a chaperone who has seen enough.
We ignore the cat. The last voices downstairs fade as Nell locks up.
There is only the ring flashing on my hand as I brace against the headboard and the way Adam says wife like it's the filthiest, sweetest word he knows.
"Wife," he repeats, thrusting. "Mine, and staying. Loud and pregnant and perfect."
"Yours," I gasp. "Staying. Now, Adam, now—"
He drives us over the edge with a shout he doesn't bother to swallow, burying the sound in my mouth as we shake apart. Aftershocks keep rolling while he strokes my hip, then breaks into helpless laughter.
"We're going to need better insulation," he decides.
"We're going to need a bigger bed."
"Both. Budget approved." He kisses me slow, then filthy, then soft again. "I love you. That's the minutes of the meeting. Any objections?"
"None." I thread our fingers over the bump. "Meeting adjourned. Nap pending."
Later, before sleep finally catches us, I make him recount the bookmark metaphor he never got to use at the proposal. He does it naked, ring-hand on my belly, voice solemn as a lecture.
"You're the page I keep returning to," he says. "Not because I lost my place. Because the place is you."
"That's terrible."
"That's sincere." He kisses me. "Also you're dog-earing me permanently. No take-backs. Nell witnessed. Chaucer accepted bribes."
"Bribes noted." I throw a leg over his hip, already half-asleep and still greedy. "One more slow one."
"Deal." He slides into me easy, both of us sensitive and smiling, and loves me quiet this time, just breath and the soft wet sound of reunion, until we tip over one last gentle edge and melt into the new mattress like we invented it.
When we finally still for good, sweat cooling, ring warm on my finger, he traces the line of my collarbone like he's drafting the vows we'll make in invisible ink.
"Small ceremony," he murmurs. "Here. Your words. My silence on footnotes. A dress that photographs like joy."
"And a honeymoon with no signal."
"Already researching Faraday cages." His smile presses into my shoulder. "Sleep. I've got the night watch. I've got you. I've got the page you'll wake up still holding."
"Always."
Later, much later, I'm drifting somewhere between awake and asleep, wearing one of Adam's shirts and nothing else, my head pillowed on his chest. The room is dark except for the streetlight filtering through the curtains, throwing familiar shapes across unfamiliar walls.
Adam thinks I'm asleep. I can tell by the way his breathing has steadied, the way his hand has stilled in my hair. But I'm not quite there yet.
So I'm awake enough to see him reach for the nightstand. Awake enough to see him pick up the book I left there: one of my mother's paperbacks, blue ink visible even in the dim light.
And I'm awake enough to see him carefully, deliberately, dog-ear the page I'm on.
So I won't lose my place.