He didn’t stop. His mouth went soft. He coaxed the aftershocks out of me one by one until I was gasping, trembling, liquid.
He kissed my hip. Looked up.
“Good?” He barely had a voice left.
“I need — give me a second. Also, everything is sticky.”
“It’s going to get stickier.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.”
I pulled him up and kissed him, tasting myself and honey on his mouth. I ran my hands down his chest, his stomach, and reached for his belt. “Last time, you told me your self-control wouldn’t survive my mouth on you.” I worked the buckle loose. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Flora —”
“My turn.”
I pushed his jeans down. Closed my fist around his cock, hard and heavy, the pulse of him against my palm, and slid down the bed. I kissed his hip, the groove of muscle at his groin, and took him in my mouth.
He groaned. The sound resonated in my spine. I took my time, tasting salt, giving back what he’d given me. His fingers found my hair. Not guiding. Resting, tangled in my curls, his hips rolling once with visible effort. The sound he made when I took him deeper, ragged and torn, my name snapping in half, sent a bolt of heat through me that had nothing to do with being touched.
“Stop.” He was breathing hard. “Flora. I need to be inside you.”
I lifted my mouth off him. Grinned up at him. “Confirmed.”
“Get up here.”
I crawled up his body and he rolled over me, his weight settling between my thighs. He reached between us. His thumb circled my clit, still slick, and the afterglow from the first orgasm bloomed into fresh urgency. I rocked against his hand.
“Now,” I said. “I mean it.”
He pushed into me. Inch by inch, with a patience that made me grip his shoulders and drop my forehead to his collarbone. This was nothing like the counter. That had been frantic and half-mad. This was intentional. He pulled almost out. Sank back in. I felt him everywhere — the stretch, the fullness, the heat where his hips pressed mine.
He set a rhythm. Slow, deep, his forehead touching mine. His eyes were open and on mine, and the intimacy of being looked at that directly while he moved inside me cracked me open somewhere I’d been holding shut.
“You ruined my whole life,” he said against my lips. “You showed up on my mountain and talked to my plants and ruined everything I had figured out.”
I laughed and it broke into a moan as he hit a depth that dissolved my peripheral vision. “I ruined your coffee pot. Your life just got caught in the blast radius.”
His lips found my throat. His hand slid from my hip to my stomach, spread wide. He stroked the skin below my navel, and he spoke against my ear.
“I want to put a baby in you.” Barely a whisper. His hips rolling deep, his palm firm on my belly. “I want to fill you up. I want —” His voice fractured. “I want you to carry my baby, Flora.”
The orgasm hit me before I was ready. His words, his hand over our child, the vast impossible irony. I shattered. Clenching around him, crying out, nails raking his back. He followed with a groan that moved through both of us, his face in my neck, fingersstill splayed on my stomach, over the place where what he was asking for already existed.
We lay still. Breathing. Honey on the sheets, in my hair, smeared across both of us in warm amber evidence. Afternoon light slanted through the window. Outside, the bees hummed on.
“We destroyed your sheets,” I said.
“I have others.”
“We’ll ruin those too.”
“I’ll buy more.”
I pressed my face to his shoulder and laughed. He kissed my temple. We lay there while the creek murmured through the open window. The secret sat heavy on my ribs, heavier than ever, because the man whose hand still rested on my belly had just whispered what he wanted. I was the only person in this cabin who knew he already had it.
