Page 128 of Heavy Crown

The panicked edge to her voice makes me slow down, and I draw back to search her face.

“Please,” she whispers.

“Nothing’s coming between us anymore, Rory. I promise.”

I lift her onto the bed, and I follow her down to worship her body in ways I’ve been denied for weeks. Having her on the royal estate and not being able to go to her, to catch glimpses of her, and to realize she’d never be mine again has been a vise around my heart. With my lips, hands, and tongue, I try to show her how much I’ve missed being with her. She’s the only woman for me, and knowing she’ll be mine forever offers a level of comfort I never believed I’d get.

I slip one hand under her head, and my other is on her hip as I ease into her. Her pupils are heavily dilated, and she breathes out a sigh of contentment once we’re locked together.

“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes.”

“I love you,” I murmur, and then I ease out to start the rhythm she needs to get where we both want her to go.

“I missed you so much,” she moans, and she arches her back. “Oh God. Why does this feel so good?”

I let out a strained chuckle. “If it didn’t feel good, we’d be doing it wrong.”

“Yeah,” she pants. “But it’s just—it’s always been so much more with you.”

Me too. For me too. To think we almost threw this away.

“A little faster,” she says, and I can tell by the way she’s tightening around me that she’s close.

I cradle her, and I increase the pace. “Oh, Rory,” I mutter. “God, you feel so good.” My orgasm is hovering around the edge of my consciousness, and I grit my teeth to keep myself from losing it.

“Alex,” she gasps, and then she lets out a moan of satisfaction, and I follow right behind.

With her tucked against me, I lay out my three plans for us once we leave Bellerive. Western Australia, Cayman Islands, or Ontario, Canada. She listens and asks questions while tracing figure eights on my chest. It’s hard to concentrate on the details when everything inside me is singing. That’s how it feels—as though my body has woken up to extreme joy. I was the Grinch in his cave, and now my heart has grown ten sizes.

“You seem happy,” she whispers.

“I am.” I chuckle. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought you’d be angry with me,” she says. “I promised we’d be okay, and we weren’t.”

I frown. “You mean the baby?” The sting of realizing she didn’t intend to tell me hasn’t quite faded. We fell pretty far from each other if she honestly thought I’d turn my back on her and our child.

“Yeah,” she says. “I swear I took my pill.”

I’m self-aware enough to understand the choices I made and their consequences. If there was one thing drilled into us as kids it was how closely those two things were tied together. Whatever choice you made, you had to be okay with any potential fallout.

“If this was anything other than an accident, you would have left with me when I asked or told me the other night.” I hesitate for a beat because what I say next might surprise her. “But more than that, I understood the risk and consequences. I was okay with them then, and I’m okay with them now.”

She props herself onto her elbow. “No. I don’t believe you. You’re fine with this?” She lets out a laugh of disbelief. “That’s a tough sell, Alex.”

“Look, if I was really that worried about you getting pregnant, I might have let the first time go, but after that? I’d have been more careful. I knew the risk, and I took it more than willingly every time.” I take a deep breath and dip into territory I’m not sure I want to go. “What about you? Are you okay with having a baby? You’re only twenty-three, and—”

She smacks my chest. “God, would you stop with the ‘you’re only twenty-three’ nonsense? Or else I’ll start leading conversations with, ‘Well, you know, you’re already thirty-three.’”

“That’s a threat? Everyone knows men get better with age.”

She grabs my nipple, and I laugh before linking her fingers with mine.

“Answer my question,” I say.

“None of this is how I would have opted for it to go, if I’m honest,” Rory says. “But I want to be with you, and I want our baby. If there’s one thing our time apart taught me, it’s how fiercely in love with you I am. I’ve been barely functioning. So unhappy and not myself.”

Our baby. I scooch down her body and kiss a line across her stomach. She runs her fingers through my hair and lets out a sigh of contentment.