Chapter 5 #2
"Whatever you want," I say. "Wherever you want to be, that's where we'll be."
She turns in my arms to face me. Her eyes are wet, which startles me. She isn't crying, but she's close. Close enough that I feel a spike of alarm.
"What's wrong?" I cup her face. "Mol, what did I—"
"Nothing." She shakes her head. "You didn't do anything. I just—I needed to hear that."
"That I'd go wherever you want?" I ask.
"That you want me." She laughs, but it's not a happy sound. "That sounds stupid. I know you want me. I know you love me. I just—"
"It's not stupid." I cut her off. "I've been shit, Molly. I know I've been shit. I've been distracted and absent and I've let things get in the way that never should have gotten in the way."
"Taz—" she starts.
"No, let me say this." I take a breath. "I love you.
I've loved you since you talked to my bees like they were kindergartners, and I'm going to love you until I'm dead.
And this baby—" I put my hand back on her stomach.
"This baby is going to be the most loved kid in history.
I swear to God, Molly. I'm going to be better. "
She kisses me.
It's the first time she's initiated in weeks, and I'm so surprised I almost forget to kiss her back. Then my brain catches up and I'm pulling her closer, one hand in her hair and the other on the small of her back, and she's making this soft sound against my mouth that I've missed so much.
"Bedroom," she murmurs.
"Are you sure?" I pull back to look at her. "After the bleeding, the doctor said—"
"The follow-up cleared us on Wednesday. The bleed's almost gone, the activity restrictions are lifted, and she said we could, just to take it slow." Molly pulls back enough to meet my eyes, and her gaze is fierce. "I want this with you. To feel close to you again."
I search her face for any sign of doubt and find none. "Then I'm all yours."
"You always were," she says. "Now carry me."
I scoop her up, careful of the small new swell under her shirt, and carry her up the stairs like this house hasn't spent months feeling like a waiting room. She laughs against my neck, surprised and low, and the sound hits me square in the chest.
"Showing off," she murmurs.
"Utilizing available musculature," I tell her, and bump the bedroom door open with my shoulder. Afternoon sun pours through the curtains in thick yellow bars across the quilt. "Also I missed carrying you. Sue me."
"I'll invoice you after," she says.
I set her on the edge of the bed like she's made of blown glass and also like she might bite me, because both are true.
She tugs at the hem of my shirt, and I pull it over my head and drop it on the floor.
Her palms go straight to my chest, over the cattle brand and the crooked compass, and she kisses the compass like she's signing her name on it.
"Slow," I say, mostly to myself. "You said the doctor cleared us to take it slow. I'm going to be so slow you'll file a complaint."
"I've been daydreaming about your hands for three weeks, Tazio." She hooks a finger in my belt loop and yanks. "Don't make me sit through a lecture on pacing."
So I get on my knees.
The floorboards bite into them and I couldn't care less.
I pop the button on her jeans and peel them down her legs, kissing the inside of one knee, then the other, while she props herself on her elbows to watch me.
Pregnancy has made her smell sweeter somehow, honey and soap and warm skin, and I rest my cheek against her thigh for a second just to breathe her in.
Then I hook two fingers in the waistband of her underwear and look up.
"Yes," she says before I can open my mouth. "Still yes. Ask with your tongue this time."
I laugh into her thigh, drag the cotton down, and put my mouth on her.
She's already wet. I spread her open with my thumbs and lick one long, lazy line from her entrance to her clit, and her hips jerk off the quilt. I do it again, slower. Her hand lands in my hair and fists there.
"Taz," she chokes. "Oh, fuck."
"Language, sweetheart." I close my lips around her clit and suck, gentle, then flatten my tongue and circle until her thighs start to tremble against my ears. "You're drenched. I've barely said hello and you're dripping down my chin."
"I missed your mouth," she pants. "That's a separate account from missing you. Don't get cocky."
"Too late for that." I slide one finger into her, watching her face for any flinch.
There isn't one. Her lips part, her head falls back, and she rocks down onto my hand like she's been waiting weeks for exactly this, which she has.
I add a second finger and curl them, searching, and when I find the spot her whole body jolts.
"There," she gasps. "Right there, don't you dare move."
I don't move. I work that one spot with my fingers and suck her clit in slow pulls, and I rest my free hand over the curve of her belly, not pressing, just holding.
She covers my hand with hers and grips it hard.
Her breath goes ragged, then choppy, then stops altogether, and she comes on my tongue with my name cracked down the middle and her heels hammering my back.
I stay right there and lick her through it until she twitches and swats at my head.
"Too much," she whimpers. "Too much, you menace, come up here."
I wipe my mouth on her inner thigh and crawl up the bed, kissing her hip, her navel, the underside of one breast. When I take her nipple between my lips she arches and hisses, because everything is more sensitive now, so I gentle my mouth and she curses me fondly.
My jeans are the last thing between us. I shove them off, kick them into the dresser, and she reaches down and wraps her fingers around my cock before I've even finished climbing over her.
I nearly fold in half.
"Look at that," she says, stroking me slowly from root to tip, watching my face. "Hard as a fence post and you haven't even touched me with it."
"You've got your hand on it," I manage. "That counts."
She squeezes, just to watch me suffer. "If you apologize to me in the middle of this," she warns, "I'm going to laugh, and then you'll turn red, and then we'll never finish."
"No apologies," I promise. "Filthy compliments and reasonable pacing. That's the whole program."
She snorts. "That's the most romantic thing a man has ever said to me with his cock in my hand."
"You're the one holding it," I point out, and she tightens her grip until I lose the thread of the argument entirely.
"Then put it in me," she whispers. "I need you inside me. Slow, like you promised."
"Yes, ma'am," I tell her, and I mean it like a vow.
I brace on my forearms so none of my weight lands on her stomach and fit the head of my cock against her. She's so slick I slide right in the first inch, and I have to stop there and press my face into her neck and breathe, because the feel of her after this long nearly ends me on the spot.
"Okay?" I rasp.
"More," she says. "Don't you dare freeze on me now, cowboy."
I ease into her an inch at a time, watching her mouth fall open wider with every inch, until I'm all the way inside and her pussy is gripping me so tight my arms shake. I hold still. My palm stays curved over her belly between us.
"You feel like home," I tell her, and my voice breaks on it. "You feel like every good thing I let myself forget. Tell me if anything twinges. Anything."
"The only thing twinging is my patience." She rolls her hips up into me, and we both groan. "Move. Please. I've waited long enough."
So I move.
I keep it deep and slow, pulling almost all the way out and sliding back home until she's chasing me with her hips.
Sweat gathers at the small of my back. The quilt rucks up under her shoulder.
I hitch her knee over my hip and the change pulls a cry out of her that I want to hear every day for the rest of my life.
"Yes," she gasps. "Taz, just like that."
"I can feel you squeezing me." I drop my forehead against her temple, rocking into her like a tide coming in. "Like you're trying to keep me. You can keep me. I'm not going anywhere. God, look at you, taking me so sweet with our baby right here under my hand."
She pants a laugh against my jaw. "Don't get sentimental mid-stroke. It's distracting."
"I can't help it." I grind in deeper on the next thrust and her nails bite my shoulder. "You're so wet it's obscene. I've jerked off in the shower thinking about this exact light on your skin, and it was a sad little rerun."
She laughs, breathless, then gasps when I work my thumb down between us and find her clit, slow circles timed with every push.
"Talk dirtier," she demands, her eyes half closed. "I can hear you holding back. Don't. I didn't clear my whole afternoon for the polite version."
"You want the real me?" I hook her other leg up, careful, and sink so deep her breath stutters.
"The real me wants you right here all afternoon, legs spread, pussy full of my cock, while I tell you how pretty you look stuffed full of your husband.
The real me wants to eat you clean afterward and start over until you forget every night I came home too late. "
"God, yes," she moans. "Keep going."
"I love you," I tell her, because I said it in the kitchen and I need to say it again while I'm inside her with no place to hide it. "I've loved you since you lectured my bees like a kindergarten teacher. Come for me again. Let me feel it."
"Then don't stop," she begs. "Please don't stop."
I don't. I keep the same patient rhythm, thumb working, swallowing her whimpers with my mouth, until she breaks a second time and clamps down around my cock in hard, rolling pulses that drag a groan up out of my chest. I fuck her through every one of them, murmuring into her hair, that's it, that's my girl, take it, until she shoves weakly at my shoulder and laughs.
"You're going to wreck me," I whisper.
"That's the plan," she says, still catching her breath. "But I need you conscious for round two."
I lift my head off the pillow. "There's a round two?"