“I’ll be like him then.”
“You already are.” I smile.
He slips his hand into mine, and we walk back to the house.
Anna’sasleep by the time Ethan and I get back, curled in her crib upstairs with one of her stuffed wolves tucked under her chin. Linda’s already gone. Miranda’s on the couch with a book she’s not reading, her bare feet tucked under a throw pillow. She looks up when we come in, and her smile lights up the whole room.
“There you are.”
Ethan launches himself into her side, and she catches him, kissing the top of his head. “Did you have a good walk?”
“We saw the deer place. Dad pulled the weeds again.”
“Did he?”
“Dad says I remind him of Uncle Gabriel.”
I cross the room, sit on Miranda’s other side, and pull both of them against me. Ethan goes warm and pliable under my arm. He yawns into Miranda’s shoulder, and within ten minutes, he’s asleep.
“I’ll take him up,” I murmur.
I carry my son upstairs and put him to bed. Trusty ChuChu is now sleeping in his sister’s crib in the other room. I tuck the blanket up to his chin and press a kiss to his forehead.
“Sleep, buddy.”
He mumbles something I can’t make out.
I check on Anna across the hall. She’s fast asleep, one cheek pressed flat to the mattress, her tiny mouth open. I kiss two fingers and press them to her warm forehead. Just the sight of her there knocks the breath half out of me, and I head back downstairs.
Miranda’s waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.
Her hair’s down, her sweater slipped off one shoulder. The mating mark above her collarbone catches the lamplight, four soft marks that have lived on her skin for three years and that I’ve kissed more times than I can count.
She lifts one eyebrow at me.
“Both of them are out?”
“Dead asleep, both of them.”
“Are you tired, Wolfe?”
A slow grin pulls at the corner of my mouth. I take the last two steps down to where she stands.
“I’m never tired around you.”
I lift her off the floor in one motion. Her legs lock around my waist on instinct, her arm around my neck, the surprised little sound she makes against my mouth dissolving into a laugh.
“Grayson, the bump—”
“I’ve got you, sweetheart. I always have.”
I carry her up the stairs. The bedroom door clicks shut behind us, the lamp on the nightstand low and warm. Miranda’s still laughing into my throat as I lower her onto the bed, careful of the curve at her middle, careful of all of her, always.
She’s in soft cotton pants and a thin sweater, both of which I’ve helped her in and out of more times than I’d admit to. I lift the hem of the sweater, and she sits up just enough for me to draw it over her head. Her bra’s the soft one she’s been wearing more as her body changes, no underwire, and I unhook it one-handed, tossing it onto the chair where it’ll stay till morning.
Her breasts have grown fuller with the pregnancy. The skin’s warmer than it used to be. I lower my mouth to one, and she arches against me with a sigh somewhere between pleasure and contentment.
“Careful,” she murmurs.
