“And the mash.” I sit back, defensive. “Don’t look at me like that. The baby wants it.”
His eyes glow with that obsessive reverence he always gives me when I talk about what the baby wants. “Then the baby gets it.”
“I’m pregnant and craving things. It’s disgusting, I know, but I’m not going to be able to think about anything else until I eat it.”
He lifts my hand and kisses the back of my knuckles. “Sweetheart, I would fly you all the way to Paris to feed you authentic pomme purée on the banks of the River Seine if you asked for it. I don’t care what you eat. I’m just happy you are.”
And now I’m soft for him. He handled my loss of appetite and morning sickness about as well as you’d expect from a man like him. That’s to say, he didn’t.
“You say that now, babe, but if my appetite keeps going like this, I’m going to be waddling before I’m even out of the second trimester.”
“Good. I can’t wait to watch your belly grow, and you’ll look adorable doing that sweet little waddle.”
Okay, that’s ridiculous. I’m about to fire back something sassy and hilarious when I feel it. A quiver inside my stomach, more than a flutter, more than gas bubbles—something more noticeable. My hand flies to the side of my bump.
“Mia?” Jensen’s half out of his seat already. “What’s wrong?”
I blink as I feel it again. This time, stronger. I grab his hand, pulling him closer, and press it against my belly. Nothing happens for a moment.
Did I imagine it?
Jensen’s watching me intently, like he’s not sure what is happening, and then I feel it.
A twitch against the inside of my stomach.
He sucks in a breath, his eyes flying to mine. And he presses a little harder, as if he’s trying to touch our daughter from the outside. “She kicked.”
Tears fill my eyes. “You felt that?”
He nods, his jaw tight like he’s trying to hold back a monsoon of emotion. “Barely, but yeah, I felt it. It was like a ripple under your shirt.”
“I guess she really is excited about my lunch decision.”
He drops to his knees at the side of my chair, like all the energy leaves his body, and presses his forehead to my belly. People look in our direction, and I can tell our waiter is two seconds from asking us to leave.
But Jensen doesn’t care. Because he’s feeling our daughter move inside me. My eyes are wet as I trail my fingers through his hair. “She has perfect timing.”
He lifts his head and looks at my belly like he’s logging how this moment felt. Then he kisses me like he’s not sure how to breathe without our mouths fused together. Everything tunnels to him and this moment and when he cups the back of my neck heat skitters down my spine.
If I wasn’t sitting down, my legs would be weak. As it is, he leaves me trembling, on the verge of begging for more.
Our waiter’s going to have a heart attack at his rate.
“You make me so happy,” he says.
I melt. Of course I do. How could I not?
Later that evening, Jensen fucks me in our bed like he’s trying to fuse our bodies together. His hands roam over my belly the whole time, filthy words spilling from his mouth like he can’t stop them. Like he needs to tell me who owns my body and the baby inside me.
He worships every inch of my bump, talking to our daughter until my heart is so full I’m crying.
When we go to sleep that night, his arm bands around my bump, and his cock stays buried inside me until the morning, like he can’t bear to be parted from me.
And I don’t want him to be.
TWENTY
JENSEN
