She settled in, pushing his wound to the back of her mind. Heoften came home nicked up, bruised. This was the first time he’d needed more than one or two stitches.
“He’s going to be an MMA fighter, according to my insides.”
Ildefanso chuckled into her neck. “One less thing I’ll have to teach him.”
His chin pushed her hair out of the way, and then his lips were on her neck. She felt him press into her backside, his cock hard in the valley of her cheeks.
When she tried to turn, he held her still with his hands, which were still cradling her stomach. “Don’t move. I woke you up, but I need to be inside you. Just let me do all the work.”
Swimming up out of sleep, she saw moonlight through the windows. When she tried to shift to look at the clock, the warm body curled up behind her tightened its hold around her waist. Soft, even breaths puffed against the back of her neck.
His arrival in bed must have fed her dreams.
Unsure of how long she’d been sleeping or when he’d come to bed, she settled her hands on the forearms wrapped around her waist and burrowed deeper into the blankets, his citrus scent enveloping and soothing her with its familiarity, even after all this time. Rather than disturb him, and not wanting to consider the consequences of allowing this closeness between them when everything was so uncertain, she decided to simply enjoy being in his arms.
Unfortunately, the cocoon they were in, with its warmth and security, gave her time to think rather than allowing her to slip back into sleep.
His voice rose in the dim light as if it came up from the underworld, gravelly and slow. “How do you ever sleep when you think so hard in bed?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Don’t apologize. You know I don’t sleep heavily anyway.” He paused before suggesting, “You should go back to sleep.”
She couldn’t help but smile at the words, so like her dream. Maybe she truly had been channeling him.
“I can feel you smiling. What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, really.” The fingers on her one hand traced lazily back and forth across his forearm. “I was dreaming before I woke up.”
“About what?”
She swore she felt a kiss on her shoulder, but through the flannel material, it could have been her imagination.
“I was dreaming about the night you came home a few weeks before Tobias was born. When you got that knife wound.”
His chuckle was muffled as he nuzzled into her neck and the pillow. “And that made you smile?”
She exhaled a short laugh and gave his forearm a light slap. “Trust me. There were times I wanted to take a knife to you myself,” she teased. “But no. That knife wound scared the shit out of me. A little deeper, and you wouldn’t have been there for Tobias’ birth.”
His arms flexed, and she felt as if he’d somehow drawn her closer.
“Heaven wouldn’t have allowed it. I would have come home to you no matter how badly wounded I was. There was no way I was missing the birth of our son.”
There was a long pause as she gathered her courage to say what she wanted to say. His uneven breathing was her only clue that he was still awake. “You’ve always come back to me.”
His breathing stopped. He shifted his weight.
She turned her head to look over her shoulder at him. His head was no longer buried against her skin, so she imagined it further back on the pillow as he stared at her with his silver eyes glinting in the dark.
“Even after we put you in a grave with a headstone, you still found your way back to me. Just like you promised you would.”
“Leeza,” he uttered with surprise.
She turned her head back to face the window of the room. “That night, despite your wound, was one of my favorite memories. The happiness of having you home. The excitement of our baby arriving. There weren’t many memories that were better.”
He remained frozen, though he’d begun breathing again, albeit short, shallow breaths.
“Do you remember that night?” she asked.
