Page 25 of Chosen By the BRATVA Grump

“I need you to look at something,” I say. “And I need you to know I only bought it yesterday.”

He takes the test out of my hand. He looks at it for a long moment, and then he picks up the box off the shelf and takes the folded leaflet out of it and reads that too, all the way down, turning it over for the diagram on the back.

“What are you doing?” I ask, because surely even men know how a pregnancy test works?

“It says the second line can be faint.” He puts the leaflet on the shelf. “That one isn’t faint.”

“No.”

“How late?”

“Two days. Which for me is unprecedented. I have never in my life been even a day late.” I hear my voice climbing and let it climb, because there’s nowhere else for it to go. “I know we said next year. And the gallery has three shows booked before April…” I drag my hands over my face. “And I have thought about approximately none of the logistics, so if you need a minute that’s fine, because I need a minute, too.”

He crouches down in front of me, putting us almost level. He takes both of my hands, and holds them in one of his with the test, and with the other he opens my robe over my stomach and lays his palm flat below my navel, keeping it there.

“Say it out loud,” he says.

I roll my eyes, which are now embarrassingly moist. “You always want it in words.”

“I do,” he agrees.

“I’m pregnant.”

His head goes down. He rests his forehead against mine and stays there long enough that I get my fingers into his hair. When he lifts his face, he’s looking at me the way he looked at me in the gallery on the day he proposed.

“Say it again.”

“We’re having a baby.”

“Yes, we are,” he says, and kisses me. It starts as a thank you and stops being one about four seconds in. His hand slides up to my ribs, his mouth is open against mine, and I make a noise into it that has no business being made in a bathroom at nine forty in the morning.

“The church,” I manage. “Delilah. Eleven o’clock. There is a woman getting married today who will hunt me through this town if I’m late.”

“Then don’t talk.” He stands, and he lifts me by the waist and sets me on the edge of the counter next to the sink, the mirror cold against my shoulder blades. “Hold on to the edge.”

“Natan.”

“How long?” He’s already pulling the tie of my robe loose. “Tell me the number.”

I look at my phone on the shelf. “Fifteen minutes.”

“That’s generous.” He gets both hands under my knees and drags me forward to the very edge of the counter, pushing them wide. “I only need five.”

He goes down onto his knees on Eduard and Sammie’s bathroom floor, and he doesn’t do anything fast. His hands come up the inside of my thighs and hold them open, thumbs pressing into the soft part where my leg meets everything else, and he looks at me for a second with an expression I don’t have a word for.

Then his mouth is on my pussy and words stop being a thing I know.

He licks me in one long flat stroke, right through the middle, and he doesn’t go near my clit. He goes back and does it again, slower, causing my hips to lift off the counter and he lets them, holding me open with his thumbs. On the third pass he pushes his tongue into me, and I hear myself say his name in a way that is very close to begging.

“Please. Natan.” It comes out quietly, thank god, because the last thing I need is everyone knowing what’s happening in here.

He puts his mouth over my clit and sucks, and then works me with the flat of his tongue while his hand comes up and two fingers slide into me, thick and slow and completely unhurried. He curls them, and my hand goes into his hair and grips.

“There. Right there, don’t move,” I whisper.

He hums against me, and keeps his tongue exactly where I told him. His fingers work in that same steady rhythm, and I look down the length of myself at the top of his head between my thighs, his shoulders taking up the whole space between the counter and the tub, and the muscle in his forearm moving.

“You’re going to ruin your shirt,” I say.