"He'd also tell me to preserve the phone records before her lawyers can petition for destruction." I pull out my phone.
"Which is why I'm calling our attorney now."
"It's six fifty in the morning."
"Our attorney bills four hundred dollars an hour. She'll answer." I dial the number and stand.
"Dominic."
I turn to see him sitting in the hospital chair with one hand on Amos' arm.
"Thank you." His eyes hold mine. "For asking instead of just doing it."
The gratitude in his voice cracks open something I've been holding locked since my father's fist connected with Amos' ribs. My hand lowers the phone from my ear before the call connects.
"Come here." He says it quietly.
I cross the three feet between our chairs. He reaches up and pulls me down by the front of my shirt. The hospital chair creaks under the sudden weight as I land in it. Mattaniah is already climbing into my lap, his knees bracketing my hips, his hands fisting my jacket.
His mouth finds mine and the kiss is bruising. His teeth catch my lower lip and his tongue pushes past it. He tastes like hospital coffee and salt from crying, with the pregnancy sweetness underneath. I grip his hips and pull him closer and his weight settles against me, warm and solid and alive.
"I need this." He breathes it against my mouth. "I need you to be here."
"I'm here."
His hips roll against mine and the friction is immediate, his body pressing down against the hardness that the proximity and the scent and the desperation have produced without my permission. My hands slide under the back of his shirt. The skin beneath my palms is warm and his scent blooms at the contact, thickening into something richer until the air around us is so sweet my head swims.
I grip his hips harder and set the rhythm, pulling him against me in slow rolls that make his breath stutter against my neck. He buries his face there to muffle the sounds, his lips and teeth working the skin above my bond mark while his hips chase the pressure. The hospital chair groans with every movement. Three feet away Amos' monitor beeps its steady rhythm and neither of us stops.
"Quiet." I say it against his ear and my hands tighten on his hips. "Amos is right there."
"I know." His voice is wrecked against my throat. "I can't stop."
My right hand slides from his hip to the front of his pants and presses flat against him through the fabric. He shudders so hard his whole body clenches around me. I work him through the cloth with my palm, slow firm strokes timed to the grind of his hips against mine. His mouth opens against my neck in a silent gasp I feel in the damp heat of his breath.
His hand pushes between us and finds me through my pants. The contact makes my jaw lock. His fingers wrap around me through the fabric and squeeze with a pressure that borders on pain. I thrust up against his hand while my palm presses harder against him.
His hips stutter and his thighs clamp around my waist. I feel him come apart against my palm, his whole body going rigid while his mouth locks against my neck to trap the sound. His release slams through the bond and detonates in my gut. I grip his hips hard enough to bruise and come in my own pants with my teeth sunk into the collar of his shirt.
The monitor beeps. Amos doesn't wake up.
Mattaniah stays in my lap. His face is pressed into my neck and his breathing is ragged against my skin. His scent is everywhere, layered so thick that the hospital room smells like us instead of antiseptic. My hands are still under his shirt, pressed flat against the warm skin of his back, his heartbeat slowing against my chest.
"We're a mess." He says it into my neck.
"We are."
"Amos is going to smell this the second the morphine wears off."
"Amos is going to be furious he missed it." I press my mouth against his temple. "We'll make it up to him when his ribs heal."
A sound from the bed makes us both freeze. Amos' voice, groggy and thick with morphine, drifts across the three feet between us.
"I'm on painkillers, not dead." His eyes are barely open. "And you're both terrible at being quiet."
Mattaniah's face goes scarlet against my neck. I feel the laugh building in his chest before it escapes, shaking and wet and caught between mortification and relief.
"Go back to sleep," I tell Amos.
