15
AVERY
He carries me likeI weigh nothing at all, down the hallway and into our bedroom. The urgency from the living room has shifted into something slower, more deliberate. This won't be frantic. This will be savored.
He slowly sets my feet down on the rug near the bed, and the way he's looking at me makes my breath go shallow. As though I'm the only woman in the world. As though he's already planning exactly what he's going to do to me and wants me to see it written in his eyes.
Awareness spreads heat across my skin, my body responding to that dark promise before he's even touched me. I can feel arousal coiling low and deep just from his gaze, just from the hunger I see in every line of his face.
He kisses me deeply, his tongue sweeping into my mouth. I groan when he pulls back, missing the contact already. He holds my gaze as his hands move to the buttons of his shirt. He undresses with aching slowness, and I don't try to help. I just watch, letting myself want him the way I've wanted him since the very first night he touched me.
The shirt parts to reveal his chest, all hard planes and defined muscle that I know by touch, by taste. The dusting of dark hair I've traced with my fingers in the dark. He shrugs the fabric from his shoulders and lets it fall to the floor.
My eyes track down the ridges of his abdomen to the sharp cut of his hips, following that hint of dark hair as it disappears beneath the waistband of his suit pants. My mouth goes dry. My pulse kicks harder. His hands move to his belt, and the clink of the buckle sends a pulse of want straight between my thighs. Raw, aching anticipation courses through me, stoking a hunger only he can fill in me.
He's not rushing. He knows exactly what this slow revelation does to me, and he wants me to feel every second of it. There's something devastating about his confidence, the way he stands there utterly sure of himself, utterly sure of us.
He finishes undressing and stands before me naked and unashamed, his cock thick and hard. The sight of him makes my core clench with want, makes me desperate to touch, to taste, to have him inside me so deep I’ll feel him for days.
My fingers find the hem of my shirt and start to lift, but his hand catches my wrist and stops me.
"Let me."
Moving closer, his hands replace mine. He undresses me with the same deliberate slowness, each piece of clothing removed like he's unwrapping something precious. My shirt first, lifted over my head and tossed aside. His eyes move over me and I feel it, actually feel his gaze like heat trailing across my skin as he takes in my breasts, my stomach, the way my chest rises and falls with quickening breath. His jaw tightens with barely leashed hunger.
He unclasps my bra and draws the straps down with aching care before letting it fall. His thumb brushes the underside of mybreast and the sensation radiates outward, warmth spreading through my chest and tightening my nipples into aching points.
Then his mouth is on me, pressing hungry kisses to my shoulder, my collarbone, the swell of my breast. I feel the edge of his teeth against my nipple and I gasp, arching into him without deciding to. My body is already answering his, already aching for more.
He sinks to his knees before me.
This powerful man. On his knees. For me.
My breath catches at the sight of him there. He commands boardrooms and terrifies rivals, yet here he is, kneeling before me like I'm something sacred. His fingers work the button and zipper of my jeans, drawing them down along with my panties. Then he helps me step free until there's nothing between us, no more barriers to what we both need.
He stays there on his knees, looking up at me. Looking at all of me.
"Beautiful." The word comes out rough, reverent. "So fucking beautiful, Avery."
Before he can move, I reach down and take his right hand. The scarred one.
He goes still.
I lift it to my mouth and turn it so the damaged flesh faces me. The ridged scar tissue running across his knuckles, his palm, his wrist. The marks his father left when he threw an eighteen-year-old boy through plate glass. The ones that ended his painting. The map of everything he survived to become this man kneeling before me.
I press my lips to each scar, slow and reverent. This is my ritual, my way of saying what words can't carry. I see you. All of you. The damage and the survival and everything between. I love you because of who you became, because these scars made you, and you are magnificent.
A breath shudders out of him and his eyes fall closed. The hard line of his jaw softens. His lips part. The vulnerability he shows no one else surfaces in the way his whole body seems to exhale, the steel giving way to something tender that belongs only to me.
"I love these hands," I whisper against his skin. "I love everything they do to me."
A sound escapes him, rough and wrecked and undone by tenderness, and his hand turns in my grip. He rises in one fluid motion, and before I can draw breath he's guiding me backward until the edge of the mattress hits the backs of my knees. His palm cradles the back of my head as he eases me down against the pillows, and then he's following me, his body covering mine as I sink into the sheets.
His mouth traces down my body with deliberate care. My collarbone. The space between my breasts. The curve of my ribs. Every kiss draws warmth to the surface of my skin until I'm flushed and wanting everywhere he touches.
He pauses at my belly, his palm spreading across the soft skin there. Warm, broad, impossibly gentle. His expression shifts as he looks at me, the hunger giving way to something quieter. The lines around his eyes soften. His lips part with something like wonder. He looks at my stomach like he's seeing something holy, something miraculous, and the tenderness in his face makes my throat tight.
"My wife," he breathes against my skin. "Mother of my child."
