“If you hadn’t been there when I came into the hospital,” she admits. “I don’t know what I would have done. Even just knowing you’re out there, when things get tough, it’s…it’s made it easier to handle the difficult stuff, you know? Easier to take it on.”
“And you know I’m here for whatever you need,” I promise her. “You don’t have to hold back. This is their future we’re talking about. I don’t need you to prove anything about how easily you can handle it on your own, okay?”
“I get it,” she replies. “I mean, I’m starting to. Going to take a while to convince myself, you know?”
“I know,” I agree. For a moment, she just looks at me, as though there’s something else on her mind, something she wants to tell me, but whatever it is, she thinks better of it and returns her attention to the food.
We finish up, and she insists on doing the dishes. I follow her to the kitchen so I can dry and put them away, and soon we’re standing practically side by side at the sink as she sets about cleaning up.
“You did the cooking, so you don’t have to clean,” she tells me, trying to shoo me back through to the living room.
“And you did the pregnancy and childbirth, so you don’t have to do anything again as long as you live,” I retort.
She laughs, shaking her head at me. “You’re impossible.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever known someone to be so stubborn about washing the dishes themselves,” I tease her, as she hands me another plate.
“Like I said, force of habit,” she replies. “Hard to remember that anyone else is there for you when you’ve spent so much time doing everything yourself.”
We clean up together, the only sound that of the running water and the plates clinking as I carefully stack them back in the cupboard. Now that we’re so near to each other again, all I can think of is what we started in that alleyway over the weekend—and just how much I want more, more, more of her.
The scent of her skin, clean like fresh laundry and a little sweet, squirms into every part of me till there’s nothing else I can think of. Is she oblivious to it, the effect she has on me? As she turns her back to reach for the last of the plates, my eyes straydown to her jeans, the way her generous ass fills out the denim. My fingers flex, and I can almost make out how she would feel beneath my fingertips.
“I think that’s us nearly—oh!”
She lets out a slightly surprised noise as she goes to hand me the last plate, only to find me just an inch or two away from her. I take it from her without breaking eye contact, slipping it into the open cupboard door before I close it pointedly.
We’re standing so near to each other now that I can almost feel the warmth of her body coursing off of her in waves, the heat of her practically burning through my system.
Slowly, her gaze traces down my body, until it lands on the firmness stirring behind my jeans. When she looks back up at me, I can see the desire flickering in her eyes, the same kind that burned there when we were alone in that alley together. But now, we have all the privacy in the world, and I intend to do everything I can to make the most of it.
“Martin…” she murmurs. But before she can say another word, I loop my arms around her waist, pull her against me, and kiss her hard.
15
LILA
The breath is knockedfrom my lungs as soon as he kisses me, sweeping me off the ground and planting me on the counter behind us. He parts my legs with his knee roughly, opening me up like he wants access to every inch of me.
It isn’t like before, back in the alleyway, when all that tension and emotion boiled over into something neither of us could deny any longer. No, this is spontaneous, shocking, and utterly, utterly consuming.
His tongue meets mine, and I grasp for his shoulders, pulling him against me like a woman starved. I feel, in some ways, like I have been. He couldn’t fuck me before, not so soon after I gave birth, but now I’m sure I can take him. No, more than that—I need him. I need to feel him inside of me. It’s like some deep, primal urge that has risen from some place I didn’t even know existed, a demanding hunger that I know he can feel too.
His cock is already hard as he presses himself against me. Even through his jeans, I can feel him throbbing, his body aching for mine in every way that matters. I slide my hand down the front of his body, wrapping my fingers clumsily around the bulgethat emerges from his pants, but he brushes me aside at once, grinning against my mouth.
“If you think I’m going to go another second without tasting you properly,” he murmurs. “You’ve got another thing coming. I’ve wanted to go down on you since I tasted your sweet pussy on my fingers the other night.”
I whimper as he sinks down to his knees, not breaking my gaze for an instant as he pulls down my jeans and lifts my hips so I can wriggle out of my panties. My head is spinning with arousal, those words so fucking hot that I can hardly wrap my head around them. The notion of him wanting me that badly, thinking of me in the days since we last saw each other, imagining taking a taste of me right from the source…
He presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh, letting out a growl that defies his usually sweet nature. I don’t know how this version of him can exist alongside the caring, gentle man that I’ve come to know, but God, I’m glad it does. He coaxes his tongue along the crease of my thigh, closer and closer to my aching pussy, and it takes every bit of restraint I have not to grasp his head and thrust it against my aching clit.
Mercifully, he doesn’t seem interested in keeping me waiting, as he trails his tongue between my legs, nestling it into the slick warmth of my folds as he searches for the swollen nub of my clit. I groan, my hands balling into fists in his hair as I hold him in place, the pleasure pulsing out from between my legs to rush through my whole body at once.
He circles his tongue a few times around my clit before he draws it into his mouth, applying a light sucking pressure to it that’s almost unbearable. My thighs are starting to clamp at either side of his head, and he’s watching me intently, as though drinkingin every reaction I have so he knows how to pleasure me just as intensely sometime down the line. But right now, there is no future, no past, no nothing except the delicious, delirious present.
My hips are soon rising to meet him as he rolls my clit between his lips. I notice his hand has slid down to his cock, and he’s stroking himself as he eats me out. The notion that I’m enough alone for him to get off to, that just tasting me is enough to turn him on beyond the point of controlling himself, sends another lance of pleasure through me, and I grip his head tighter, rocking myself against him over and over again.
He slips one hand behind the small of my back, pulling me further onto him, gorging himself on me like he wants to taste every inch of me and then some. My vision is blurring, my breath coming fast, belly rising and falling swiftly as I watch him trace his tongue along my most sensitive parts.
