Chapter 26 #3
Maddy leaned back into her and laced her fingers through Aspen’s where they sat against her stomach.”Yeah.” She said quietly. “I think you’re right.” She turned her head and kissed Aspen’s temple, letting her lips linger. “I love you, Aspen St. Claire.”
Aspen smiled. “I love you, Maddy Sterling.” She pulled back and gave Maddy a light tap on the butt. “Okay, come on, tell me your vision. I know you already have this whole place mapped out in your mind.”
Maddy grinned. “You know me so well.” She took a few steps toward the living room and held both hands up, framing the space.
“Okay. Couch goes there, facing the TV. Big sectional. I think we should get a massive 75” flat screen right before Shark Week and surprise Maisie with a party.
We can invite her friends, and Noa, and make it a whole thing.
” She pivoted. “Long farmhouse table there in the dining room. Long enough for your whole family plus Bunny and Jake, so we can move game nights here and I can kick everyone out when I want my house back.”
Aspen followed Maddy’s pointing around their empty house and watched every imaginary thing land exactly where Maddy put it.
She pointed at the corner by the front window.
“Tree will go there at Christmas. And we’re getting a real one this year, none of that fake shit you put up last year,” she held up an index finger, “And I don’t want to hear a word about the needles.
I will personally vacuum them up every day.
” Another pivot, toward the short hallway.
“Maisie can have the small room for sleepovers, we’ll let her pick out the wallpaper and everything. ”
Aspen came up beside her. “You know she’s going to pick sharks, right?”
“Yes, but we’ll do the peel and stick kind so we can change it if she grows out of her shark phase, or when we need to take the bedroom back for our own kids, whichever comes first.” Maddy shrugged and turned towards the large windows leading to the back patio.
”We’ll drink coffee out there in the mornings… ”
Maddy kept going but Aspen was still stuck on the very casual mention of their future children.
They’d talked, briefly, about how they both wanted kids in the future.
Early on their relationship, too early for the concept of those future children to be something they discussed doing together. And it hadn’t come up again since then.
Aspen, of course, had fantasized about having children with Maddy many times. But this was the first she’d ever heard Maddy openly express interest in having kids with Aspen. And she’d said it like it was just the most natural, obvious, inevitable thing in the world. Which, maybe it was.
But hearing those words come from Maddy’s lips, knowing that she had envisioned it too, the life and family they were going to build together, right here in their home, felt like some final piece of a puzzle locking into place that she hadn’t even known was missing.
She knew that Maddy loved her, she never doubted that, hell, they’d bought a house together.
But until that very moment, Aspen hadn’t realized that some part of her, deep down, was still bracing for the other shoe to drop.
She only knew it now because she felt it release, and in its place, a sense of complete safety filled the space, along with the certainty that Maddy was never going to leave her.
And her chest ached in the best possible way because Maddy Sterling, who had spent fifteen years running from this island and everything on it, was standing in an empty house planning, out loud, in vivid detail, a whole future she meant to build here. With Aspen.
Maddy spun and faced her, with that gorgeous smile and bright blue eyes. “So what do you think?”
Aspen stepped in close and wrapped her arms around Maddy’s waist. “I think…it’s perfect.”
Maddy ran her hands up Aspen’s arms until they came to rest on the sides of her neck. “Anything you want to contribute? Or change?”
Aspen shook her head. “Nope. I want everything you just described.”
Maddy narrowed her eyes. “Do you mean that or are you just trying to get laid?”
Aspen burst into laughter. “Both?”
Maddy grinned. “That can be arranged.” And then she kissed her.
* * *
The problem with christening the new house was that it did not yet contain a single piece of furniture.
Which was how they ended up back at Aspen’s bungalow ten minutes later—the one she’d be moving out of in a matter of days, boxes already stacked up in the hall— falling through the front door with their mouths fused together.
Maddy had her hands under Aspen’s shirt before the deadbolt was even turned.
Ninety-three days of missing each other collapsed into about forty seconds of frantically ripping each other’s clothes off.
They got Aspen’s shirt off in the entryway and Maddy’s somewhere down the hall.
And Aspen walked Maddy backward toward the bedroom, while Maddy yanked at the button of her jeans.
By the time the backs of Maddy’s knees hit the mattress, they were both bare, and Aspen pressed her down into the sheets and just looked at her for a second, because she’d been picturing this exact image for three months, and the real thing was so much better, and God, her girlfriend was beautiful.
Then she got her mouth on her.
She kissed her mouth, her jaw, the soft spot under her ear that always made Maddy’s breath catch.
The side of her neck. The hollow of her throat.
Her collarbone. She took her time at Maddy’s breasts, until Maddy’s hands were fisted in her hair and her hips were lifting off the mattress, searching for friction.
She kissed down her stomach, which jumped under Aspen’s mouth.
The crease of her hip. The inside of one thigh, then the other, mapping her with her tongue, tasting every inch of her.
“Aspen.” Maddy’s voice was already thin and wrecked. “Please. It’s been three months, I will not survive you being a tease tonight—”
Aspen wouldn’t survive it either; she settled between Maddy’s thighs and licked into her, slow and flat and thorough, and Maddy’s whole body bowed off the bed. And Aspen let out a moan at the same time as Maddy did at finally, finally tasting Maddy again after three long months of starving for her.
Maddy came apart in under a minute, one hand clamped in Aspen’s hair and the other twisted in the sheets, Aspen’s name on her lips, shaking through it while Aspen held her in place and drew every last wave out of her.
When Maddy finally went boneless, one arm flung over her eyes, chest heaving, Aspen pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh, grinning like a fool, and watching Maddy try to remember how lungs worked.
“Holy shit,” Maddy breathed at the ceiling. “That was—yeah.”
“Mm-hm.” Aspen was unbearably pleased with herself and made no effort whatsoever to hide it. She pressed one more kiss to her hip and rolled off the bed. “Don’t move. I have a surprise for you.”
“A surprise?” Maddy lifted her head. “What kind of surprise requires you to leave this bed, because I have notes.”
“Patience, my love. Two minutes.” Aspen slipped into the bathroom and shut the door.
She’d been planning this for three months.
She opened the cabinet under the sink where she’d stashed the bag this morning for this very moment. She stepped into the harness, settled the straps at her hips, and fit the dildo into place. And then she pulled the shirt out of the bag and tugged it on over her head.
“Babe,” Maddy’s muffled voice called through the door a minute in, openly suspicious. “What are you doing in there?”
Aspen looked at herself in the mirror. She took a breath and then pulled the door open, leaning one shoulder against the frame, hand tucked behind her back.