Page 51 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

I draw a deep breath, thanks to him. “I’ll have you, then.”

I expect a smile, but instead, he kisses me with the thoroughness of a man who has been restraining himself for weeks and has just been told there’s no more restraint required.

He pulls me into his lap on the couch, and I go, because I’m done pretending I don’t want to be there. His arms close around me, and I feel it the way I always feel it—that specific exhale my body does when he holds me, like it’s been waiting.

I press my face into his neck. He smells like cedar and something warmer underneath, and his pulse is steady against my cheek, and I think, absurdly, that I’ve never felt safer in my life.

“Luna.”

“I know.” I do know. I don’t need him to finish it.

His hand moves up my back, his mouth finds my temple, and it’s that—something that small—that undoes me, because it’s so careful. Ivan Fedorov, careful with me. I turn my face up to his, and he kisses me like he has all the time in the world, like there is nothing outside this room, like I’m not terrifying him as much as he’s terrifying me.

We make it to the bedroom eventually. I’m not entirely sure how. I remember the drag of the hallway wall against my shoulder blades and his hands framing my face, his thumbs brushing my jaw like I’m something he’s afraid to drop.

In his bedroom, he reaches over and clicks on the lamp on the nightstand, and I blink at him in the warm low light. He gazes at me for a few beats longer than normal.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.” He brushes the white streak back from my face. “Come here.”

He undresses me slowly. His scarred hands moving over my skin leave trails of warmth I feel long after he’s moved on. When he finally lays me back against his sheets, I feel the cool linen against my spine and his eyes on my face, and I’m not self-conscious, which is new.

He takes his time.

He’s always attentive, but tonight there is something different in it. His mouth moves down my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my breast. I’m apparently more sensitive than I was a month ago, because everything registers at a higher volume—his lips, the faint scratch of stubble, the weight of his palm against my ribs.

I exhale at the ceiling and feel him smile against my skin.

“You’re okay?” he murmurs.

“Very,” I manage.

His body over mine is heavy in all the right ways. All that mass, all that damage, and he uses none of it to overwhelm. He braces himself. He watches my face. He is, somehow, gentle, and it strikes me every time, like it’s the first time, that this man who could simply take instead gives.

When he moves into me, and I make a sound I don’t recognize. He stills for a moment, forehead dropped to mine, and just breathes. I feel the full weight of where we are, what we’ve said tonight, and the fact that his child is a secret we are keeping together inside my body right now. It’s enormous and terrifying and I am, underneath all of it, so happy I can barely stand it.

We move together slowly. His cock thrusts deep inside of me, and my body opens for more. His hand finds mine against the pillow. He laces our fingers together. One more place for us to connect. To feel each other.

I hadn’t expected that, and somehow, I can hardly breathe.

The slow turns less slow. My free hand finds his back, the terrain of it familiar now, and pulls. He reads it immediately and gives me more, and the warmth that has been building low in my body crests and breaks. I gasp his name into his shoulder right when I feel him swell inside of me. He follows a breath later, and the sound he makes is just as ragged as my own.

After, he pulls me into him. His hand rests over my stomach, and I don’t know if he means to or if it’s instinct, but I decide it doesn’t matter. I press my hand over his.

Outside, the city goes on being the city.

In here, something has changed, and we both know it, though neither of us says so. No words are needed.

“Ask me something,” I say.

“What would you name her?”

I go very still. “Her?”

“A guess. I could be wrong.”

“Could you?” I look up at him. “Could you actually be wrong, or are you humoring me?”