“I know what you need.” His mouth slides to the place under my ear, where my pulse is rabbiting. “I always know what you need.”
The arrogance of that. Truly. I should kick him off me on principle.
Instead…
“Show me, then.”
He stands with me in his arms and carries me to the bed. After settling me gently on the duvet, he stands at the foot of the four-poster and looks at me, justlooks, with that calm, deep blue, and starts taking off his clothes.
The coat first, dropped over the chair.
The jacket.
The shirt, button by button, slow enough that I almost start drooling.
Underneath, his torso is a map I keep wanting to explore and never have time to. The rose tattoo. The dagger. The Cyrillic along the forearm. The wide, raised pucker on his side where the oyster-shucking blade went into him, and where, in another timeline, if things had gone just slightly different, he died in the backseat of my Audi.
When he’s shirtless and beltless, he kneels at the foot of the bed and takes off my boots one at a time, easing the zipper down the calf of my left and then my right with maddening care. He sets them aside, then comes back to peel off my socks.
He runs his thumb along the arch of my foot, watching my face when I gasp, then sets it gently down. He repeats the gesture with the other one.
Once my feet are bare, he climbs onto the bed, moving up over me on his hands and knees, slow as melted honey, until his face is hovering above mine. He kisses me again, softer this time, and his hands start their work.
The hem of my sweater first. He slips two fingers underneath it, just two, and drags them in a single unhurried line from the waistband of my pants up to the bottom of my ribs. Goosebumpsfollow his fingers like he’s calling them forward. He lets the fabric bunch in his fist, peels it up an inch, kisses the strip of skin he’s uncovered, peels another, kisses again. By the time the sweater is off my arms and tossed somewhere over his shoulder, I’m breathless.
He sits back on his heels to look at me.
“It’s a miracle that something like you even exists in this world,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me.
He undoes the button of my pants with one hand, unzips them, and hooks the waistband. He lifts my hips a careful inch off the bed and slides them down my thighs an inch at a time.
Past the knee. Past the calf. Off.
He turns away to lay them down with the other discarded items. When he comes back to me, he leaves the underwear for last. He runs the backs of his knuckles up my shin, my thigh, the soft inside of my hip. He reaches behind my back and finds the bra clasp, pops it one-handed, and slides the straps down my arms with two fingers, kissing the dent each strap left on my shoulder.
Then, finally, the last thin scrap of cotton. He hooks his fingers in either side, glances up to check my eyes, and waits for me to nod.
I do.
The next part is the slowest journey yet. Slowly, slowly, so unbelievably, agonizingly, beautifully slowly, he takes away the last barrier between me and him. Then his hands settle on my thighs, fingertips digging in just enough to be noticed, and he says, “Spread for me, pretty girl.”
I do.
He bends his head between my legs and kisses, once, the crease where my thigh meets the rest of me. Then the other one. Then he says, against the skin of my hipbone, “I can’t believe I almost lost you today.”
I stutter out, “Wh-wha?—”
“Don’t ever do that again.” His mouth moves to the soft of my belly. The baby is in there. He kisses the spot, very gently, then again. “If he ever tries to take you from me again, swear you’ll come find me. Come hell or high water, you’ll find me. Yes?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Say it again.”
“I’ll find you.”
“Good girl.”
He says it without thinking, and this time, for the first time, I don’t flinch. I just close my eyes and let the sweetness of his kisses transport me to somewhere else entirely.
