“I don’t give a damn.”
“Lenzin, I?—”
She stops when I grab my shirt and wipe between her legs, “Good enough.”
She’s wet already from need and us, heat radiating against my cheek as I kiss the inside of her thigh. She’s trembling, not from nerves but from the anticipation she tries so hard to mask, and when I finally put my mouth on her, she cries out, a bright, unguarded sound that makes my whole body clench with need. I close my lips over her, slow at first, mapping what she likes by the way her fingers tangle in my hair, by every stuttered gasp she tries and fails to suppress. She tastes like salt and electricity and something sweeter underneath, and I lose myself in the careful ruin of her, tongue and lips and teeth until she’s arching so hard her heels dig into my shoulders.
I want to make her come again, to see how many times she’ll let me do this to her before she begs me to stop, but mostly I want her to know—prove to her in every way I can—that wanting is not something she has to ration or justify. I hold her open, gentle but insistent, and when I slide a finger inside, her hips buck and she chokes out my name, shattering on the syllables. I keep my mouth on her, relentless, licking through her pleasure as she climbs higher. She spasms around my finger.
I don’t let up until she’s limp, boneless, laughing helplessly in disbelief at how wrecked she is, or how I didn’t give a shit, I just came in her. Only then do I crawl up her body, kissing every inch of the way, until I’m braced above her and she’s blinking up at me, dazed and gloriously ruined.
“You are insane,” she says, eyes wide.
“Insane, no, crazy about you, about us, about our future? Yeah.” I lay beside her and pull her into my arms. “Fuck yeah.”
Chapter 20
Life
Lenzin
Ileft the arena without saying a thing to anyone. Kilovac knew something was up. I’m surprised he didn’t follow me. I was early. Not polite early.Nervous early. Twenty minutes to be precise.
The waiting room is alive with soft conversation of expecting mothers, and very few fathers. A toddler across the room presses his hands against the glass of an aquarium, a real one, not the ‘boy aquarium’, squealing Nemo at the orange fish. Cute as hell.
Knee bouncing, I check the time again. Her appointment is in five minutes. I hope everything’s okay.
I have to remind myself I don’t get anxious. In my life, I’ve always played defense. I don’t sweat anything until I’m face-to-face with it, and then I deal.
Hildy steps inside, coat wrapped tight, hair loose over her shoulders. She literally brought me to my knees for the first time in years the night I met her, but right now, Hildy is absolutely glowing. She scans the room once and finds me immediately, and heads to the reception desk to check in.
I briefly debate whether I should go be by her side, but I know how independent she is because I, too, have always been. I’ve always prided myself on it, but now, now I don’t want to be. I need to go easy, so I stay seated.
“You’re early,” she says as I stand and help her take her coat off.
“Traffic was light.”
She gives me that look. “You left forty minutes ago.”
How the hell does she know this?
She exhales through her nose, amused. “Group chat. They were all concerned.”
“They are all nosey,” I correct.
“And they say women gossip.” She jokes as she sits down.
“Whoever they are have not spent enough time in locker rooms,” I admit.
When they call her name, I rise immediately.
The nurse smiles politely at me. “Are you?—”
“He’s coming,” Hildy says calmly.
We follow the nurse down the hallway, through a door and into a room, where she checks weight and vitals before leaving with instructions for her to change into a gown.
A small part of me feels like she needs a bit of privacy, but when she quickly changes, barely showing any skin, I realize I was wrong.
