“Lamaze,” I say, leaning back, folding one leg under me, feigning nonchalance. “I’ll go with you two.” I lean forward, staring into her glittering green eyes, and smile. “I’m not losing that bet. Ah now, I’m definitely going to be the most suffocating presence inyour life.” I spear another tomato, covering the way my chest is thudding, and add, “As long as Cheyenne doesn’t come.”
The truth is, I’d take any excuse to sit beside Willow. Even if it means panting like an idiot in a room full of strangers. Just being near her is enough for me.
She narrows her eyes, but her lips twitch like she can’t help herself, and she hides her smile by finally taking a bite. Her eyebrows shoot up and she laughs. “Okay, Sean, that’s good.”
“Aye?Deadly,” I say proudly, sitting on the floor at her feet in front of my own plate. “Say it again, slower.”
“Don’t push your luck.” She snickers, slurping a noodle into her mouth noisily. The end of it snaps against her cheek, leaving a small dot of sauce that I lean forward and wipe away. She blushes, looking away from me, and then grabs her stomach and grimaces.
“What?” I ask sharply, dropping my fork. “What is it? Describe the pain. Is it a cramping pain? Do you feel any dizziness with it?”
She giggles a little, her face softening, her wide smile giving way to another slurp of noodles. She shakes her head and grabs my hand, guiding it low against her soft belly.
At first, I don’t feel anything, and I wrinkle my nose in confusion, blinking at her. But then, there it is. A thump against my palm. Quick, certain, impossible to mistake.
My throat closes with the same certain quickness. Willow’s hand is clammy against the back of mine. When I look back up at her, she’s holding her fork still, a bite of pasta speared on it, and she’swatching me carefully, like she’s trying to figure something out. “Do you feel them?” she asks.
I nod at her and look back down at her belly, at the protruding shape of a baby’s body part—hand, leg, part of a head, I can’t be sure. “Aye,” I murmur. I can’t joke. Not with that tiny life pressing against my hand. Not with the realization that some part of me could be written in that heartbeat. My chest aches. All the charm I’ve carried like armor feels thin. “There you are,a stór,” I whisper.
She studies me. “Sean?”
“Jaysus, I didn’t expect it to feel like that,” I admit, voice rough.
Her thumb rubs the back of my hand and she leans closer to me, saying, “I didn’t either.”
“It’s really three little people in there.”
“I know.” She giggles, but her eyes are serious.
My heart trips. “And they might be…half me.”
Suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, I lean forward and press a quick kiss against Willow’s forehead. From the couch, she looks at me, her eyes serious but her mouth smiling, and her gaze drops to my mouth, then back to my eyes.
I move her plate of pasta to a safer location, and then I lean in. The kiss is soft at first, exploring, and it feels like walking up the steps to a home I’ve been gone from for a long time. She kisses me back just as gently, the press of her mouth more warmth than weight.
Her fingers slip into my hair, and my hands find her waist under the blanket, pulling her closer to me, my body language shiftingtoward her. I nibble at her bottom lip, and she gasps against my mouth, her hands clasping my hair harder.
I trail kisses along her jaw, her throat, the curve of her shoulder. She arches, blanket slipping. Her hands clutch at me, warm and insistent, and I move to my knees, leaning over the edge of the couch, kissing her harder. I stand and spread out across her, pressing my hips to hers.
Willow’s grasp becomes more insistent, and she leans up to let me pull her shirt up over her head. I toss it on the floor and move to kiss where the edge of her bra cuts into her breasts, plumper than her normal size, spilling out over the cups. She pets my hair, her fingers trailing down to my back, lightly scratching me.
I kiss down to her stomach and pepper the bump, my hands soft on her waist, and I whisper, “Sliabh mo chroí.”
She shivers and cups my chin to look up at her. “What did you say? Don’t go telling my babies things I don’t understand.”
“I said ‘mountain of my heart,’” I tell her. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“No.” She giggles as I continue kissing all over her stomach and down the sides of it.
“Would you rather it be ‘hill of my heart’?Cnoc mo chroí? Or summit?Mullach?”
“No,” she gasps, more serious as I slide down her body further, pulling her sweatpants off her legs and over her feet, tossing them with her shirt. I end up halfway over the arm of the couch, halfway still on it, and I take a moment to admire her—the stark white of her skin, the freckles on parts of her body that I wouldn’t think had ever seen sun, the curves of her hipsand breasts where they were only slight before. She starts to look uncomfortable with my gaze, her legs rubbing each other, squirming. “What are you looking at?”
“You,” I tell her, staring openly. “You look gorgeous like this.”
“I’m huge,” she laughs, looking away from me.
“You’re carrying life. And you’re beautiful. I just want to take a moment to admire my dessert…” I kiss her ankles, then kiss up her legs and whisper against the hot, wet spot on her panties, “Before I eat it.”
