36. Erik #3
I put my hands at her waist where the skin is unmarked. "Tell me if anything hurts."
"I will."
She steps closer and kisses me again.
The first time we were together, every touch had an argument under it. Other times carried jealousy, uncertainty, danger, or the knowledge that one of us would eventually ask the question we were avoiding. None of that follows us into bed tonight.
Rowan unfastens my belt while I ease the sweatpants over her hips. She laughs when the brace catches briefly in my shirt, then curses when laughing pulls at her ribs. I stop, but she shakes her head before I can ask.
"Ribs. Not babies." She waits until the discomfort passes, then touches my mouth with two fingers. "You don't have to stop existing every time I make a face."
"I may need several months to learn that."
"You have about five."
"That isn't enough."
She smiles and pushes me back onto the mattress.
I help her lie down with pillows supporting her shoulder. Rowan pulls me beside her instead of beneath me, then guides my hand down her stomach without letting me hover over the bruises.
Her skin is warm under my palm. The slight curve of her abdomen is more obvious now that I know what I'm seeing.
Three children.
I still haven't adjusted to the number.
Rowan watches me, and the tenderness in her expression makes the thought harder to contain. "You're doing math again."
"Three remains a large number."
"You said you wanted two or three."
"I was speaking hypothetically."
"That was your first mistake."
I laugh and kiss her.
My hand moves lower. She parts her thighs without needing another question, and I touch her slowly until her body softens against the pillows. Rowan shifts her hips closer, asking for more without turning the moment into instructions.
I slide two fingers into her, keeping the pace easy while my thumb circles her clit. She closes her left hand around my shoulder and kisses me harder.
"Don't disappear into being careful," she says when I slow after she winces.
I stop moving long enough to look at her. "What hurt?"
"My shoulder when I reached." Rowan adjusts the pillow beneath it, then settles again. "Not you."
I wait until she's comfortable.
She takes my hand and guides it back between her legs. "There."
I trust her.
She gets wetter around my fingers while I work her clit, and the familiar sounds she makes have nothing frightened or uncertain underneath them. When she comes, she pulls me down into another kiss instead of turning away to recover.
I stay beside her until her grip loosens.
Rowan reaches for me next. She strokes my cock slowly, watching my reaction with enough satisfaction that I nearly laugh.
"You're enjoying this."
"I'm a law student." Her hand moves again. "Control is recreational."
"That isn't how law school works."
"You've never been."
"I hired enough lawyers to have opinions."
She kisses me before I can add anything worse.
When Rowan draws me over her, I keep my weight on my forearms and knees, well away from her abdomen. She reaches between us and guides me to her entrance.
I enter slowly.
She takes me without tension, her body opening around me until I'm fully inside her. I stop there, waiting because I need the second even if she doesn't.
Rowan runs her left hand down my back. "I'm okay."
I kiss her temple, then start moving.
The pace stays slow because neither of us needs anything else. She rolls her hips to meet me when she wants more, and I change the angle when she shifts away from pressure on her bruised side. No anger pushes us forward. There isn't any fear to outrun.
Rowan reaches between us and touches her clit while I keep a steady rhythm. Her lips part when I move deeper, and she catches my shoulder to pull me closer.
"I want you here."
"I am."
She shakes her head and moves her hand from my shoulder to the back of my neck. "Not half of you because you're afraid I'll break."
The words get through.
I stop measuring every stroke and trust the woman beneath me to tell me what she needs. I give her more without putting weight on her abdomen, and she responds immediately, drawing me deeper with her leg around mine.
Rowan comes again with my name against my mouth.
The contraction of her pussy around my cock takes the last of my control. I push deep and come inside her, holding myself above her until the tremors pass through both of us.
Afterward, I lie beside her instead of on her and pull the blanket over us. Rowan turns carefully onto her uninjured side, then settles against my shoulder with one leg over mine.
For a while, the room stays quiet. Wind moves faintly beyond the windows, the old heating system clicks somewhere inside the wall, and Rowan traces an absent pattern against my stomach.
Nothing requires an immediate answer.
Eventually, I reach toward the nightstand.
The sealed envelope has been there since we came home.
I take it out and put it on the sheet between us, untouched after eleven days.
Rowan looks down at the seal, then up at me.
I rest my hand beside the envelope without reaching for it.
"Are you ready?"