His hand fists in my hair as he jerks once beneath me and groans through gritted teeth. He presses his mouth to my temple, grounding himself there while he rides it out.
My forehead drops to his shoulder, and his hand slides to the back of my neck, holding me close.
“You okay?” he murmurs.
I nod against his shoulder, still shaking. “You?”
A breathy huff of a laugh.
“I just came in my pants in a public park.”
My grin is dazed and satisfied. “Must be the hormones.”
He hums his agreement, then tips my chin up and presses a soft, lingering kiss to my mouth.
“Later,” he says quietly, forehead resting against mine, “I’m taking my time with you.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
His chuckle rumbles through me. “Good. But next time, it won’t be in my fucking car.”
Chapter twenty-one
You don’t just invite a woman to brunch
Reid
“Don’t even think about clawing the couch!” I point my spatula at Gremlin like she knows what the fuck that means.
She blinks at me, tail twitching once in defiance. Sun slants through the glass and turns her gray fur to velvet, making her look like some spoiled housecat who hasn’t spent the last three years trying to kill every human who’s ever walked into this house.
I glance at the clock again.
“She said she’s coming,” I say out loud, mostly to myself. Maybe a little to Gremlin. “You don’t need to look so skeptical.”
I’m not nervous, not really.
Okay, fine. I’m circling the kitchen island in a pair of sweats and socks, flipping bacon while checking the time every eight seconds and arguing with my cat as though she’s going to offer insight into whether Carina is going to ghost me.
She won’t, I know that, because she was the one who decided to come. She was the one who leaned into me in the dark after the scan on Friday, her voice hoarse from the way I’d made her come apart in my bed three more times.
Her hand had trailed lazy circles across my ribs while I played with her hair, then she looked up at me and murmured, “I think I wanna come to your Sunday brunch thing.”
And then she fell asleep on my chest.
I can’t stop thinking about the scan. The shape of her hand gripping mine. The sound. That first hard thud of our kid’s heartbeat echoing through a dim, sterile room while she blinked too fast, and I couldn’t breathe.
It’s been two days, and I still can’t shake it.
The front door opens with a bang.
“Brunch bitchesssss,” Zoe calls out as she walks in. “Hope you’ve kept the cat away from the mimosas, Hutchy!”
“And also, keep her away fromme,” adds Chase, grinning as he opens my fridge. “Got any juice?”
“Noah’s got some juice boxes,” Jake mutters as he appears next, herding in the chaos.
My kitchen explodes in a matter of seconds, with Theo at the forefront, making a beeline for me like a heat-seeking missile.
