After we leave Gabe’s, we park Bernadette in her regular spot by my toolshed. I cut the engine, turn to look at Mari, and find her looking back at me in the dark.
I can still see her in Gabe’s living room, Willow in her arms, her face tipped down to press her cheek against the baby’s. I can still hear her saying, She can stay here as long as she wants, and those words and the way I felt, looking at her, are all mixed up with how I feel about her and what I want from her.
Right now, I just want to be as close to her as I can.
“Would you… want to sleep in the house tonight?”
There’s a full moon, and her smile gleams in the dark. “Yeah. I would. Let me just grab a few things.”
“Take your time,” I tell her. “Bring anything you want. Stay as long as you want. Like you told Willow.”
Her smile gets a little bigger. “Go on up. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I haul my camping stuff to the house. Unpacking takes just a few minutes, and I’m left at loose ends, standing in my kitchen, hoping like hell she won’t get cold feet.
In the meantime, I make us both mugs of hot chocolate with marshmallows. I may not be the most alpha Wilder, but I know how to woo a woman with chocolate.
Her knock comes just as I’m dropping the mini marshmallows into her mug.
I open the door to find her standing there with a small duffle, looking… shy. There’s a little twist to her shoulders, like a kid who isn’t completely sure of herself. And I think, honestly, it’s the first time I’ve seen that, seen her look like she doesn’t know what she wants or what she’s doing.
Between seeing her with Willow on her chest, hearing her say Willow could stay there as long as she needed to, and the way she looks right now—I’m wrecked. But then, I never really stood a chance.
“Hot cocoa on the kitchen counter,” I say.
I didn’t clear a drawer in the bathroom or my dresser. I didn’t empty hangers. I’m not going to make a big thing about the duffel bag or a house key. Because even though I know we’re walking towards something big together, I also meant what I said to her about not caging her.
She has to come to it—if she does—and stay—if she can—on her own terms.
She drops her duffel on the kitchen floor with a whoop and picks up her cocoa mug. “I love hot chocolate with marshmallows,” she says.
“And this is really good cocoa.”
She tastes it. “Oh, man, that is.”
“Made locally,” I say, eyebrows up. “Lotta good things in Rush Creek.”
She grins. “I’m getting that.” She licks her lips but misses a small swath of cocoa mustache.
I wipe away the mustache with my finger, lingering on her lower lip. Then I lick the remaining drop off my finger. Her eyes get that dazed look. She sets her cocoa down.
“You know what’s really good in Rush Creek?” she asks.
“Mmm?”
“The sex.” She comes close and kisses me, chocolate and warm and deliciously her. Her mouth is already open, her arms twining around me, and I tug her close. We pause to laugh at her belly between us. “So frustrating,” she says, and I can hear it in her voice.
“I love your pregnancy hormones,” I tell her.
“It might be that or it might be you,” she says. “It was like this in Vegas, too.”
“I know,” I groan, and then I groan again because she’s taken my hand and pulled it between her legs, where she’s hot and swollen and a little damp through her leggings.
“Please make me come like you did on the road,” she says. “I’m so close already.”
I groan, my cock surging. “I have a better idea.”
I scoop her up and carry her to my bedroom, gently deposit her on the bed.
“I like this idea,” she tells me. Her eyes are hazy with lust, her lower lip soft. I bend to kiss her, and she moans and tries to pull me down. But I am on a mission now. I slide her shoes and socks off, tug her leggings down. Then her panties. I need her help to get her shirt off, and she’s uncoordinated now, so we struggle a little, laughing.
I stop laughing, though, when I see her.
“God,” I say. “Look at you.”
I show her, tracing over the taut skin of breasts and belly, lingering on her big, sensitive nipples, until she’s panting.
“Kane. Please. Hurry.”
I tug my own clothes off while she watches. I’m ridiculously hard, my cock bouncing off my own stomach when I free it.
“I want to look at you too,” she says. “You’re beautiful.” She rises to her knees and strokes a hand over my stomach, up my chest. Both palms on my pecs, her eyes closed like she’s memorizing the feel of me. I bend and kiss her, and she whimpers.
“You said hurry.”
“I know, but I haven’t gotten to look and touch before, and—” She licks my nipple, then makes her way down, down, downward, licking once, maddeningly, tantalizingly, around the head of my cock. She pulls back and surveys me again. “Even your cock is beautiful.”
“I’ll take the compliment, but… penises aren’t beautiful.”
“No, they are, they really are, and I would really like this one inside me. Like, now.”
“Uh. Yeah. I can do that. Do you want me to wear a condom?” I ask. “I’m clean. I had a checkup a week before you arrived, and no sex since then.”
She shakes her head. “I’m clean too.”
“How—what’s best for you?”
“Maybe me on top?”
“Not fighting you on that.”
I lie down and she throws a leg over me so her wet heat meets my erection. My hips jerk up. I want to bury myself in her so bad, it’s almost painful. But she’s teasing now, working herself along my length, tipping toward me to get contact on her clit, her eyes going distant each time she gets what she needs. I reach up and cup her breasts, one in each hand, thumbs playing over her nipples, and she says, “Oh, God, Kane, you’re going to make me come so fast. It’s going to be ridiculous.” She’s rocking herself back and forth on me, and she’s already pretty far gone, a mottled red flush on her chest and throat, her eyes unfocused.
“Let me in,” I tell her, and she does, sliding back, working a hand between us, and guiding me into her.
“God, Mari, that’s—”
“Kane!”
She rises and falls on me, and she’s tight and wet and it feels so fucking good I almost just let go. But I don’t. Because she’s still rocking, seeking, her breasts pressed into my hands, eyes finding some far-off spot, and I want to get her there more than I want it for myself. I sit up enough to take a nipple into my mouth, and she cries out and goes over, contracting hard around me, milking me, head thrown back, my name on her lips.
And then I’m gone, too, following her, pouring myself into her wet heat and telling her how fucking sexy she is, how much I love being inside her, how much I want to do this again and again and again.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I’m sorry.” I think about it a moment. “Mmm. Not sorry.”
“Don’t be. I like it.”
“Good. Because I don’t think I can stop.”
We’re lying on our sides, facing each other. I don’t know about her, but I don’t feel like I can move any time soon. In fact, my limbs don’t really feel like they belong to me.
They don’t, really. They belong to her, along with my heart and the whole rest of me.
And I don’t want to stop staring at her because she’s all lush curves and outrageous swoops and whorls, like those rocks in Black Magic Canyon. The big globe of her belly, bisected from the navel down with a darker line, the spectacular swells of her breasts, with their big areolae and nipples a little abraded from being lavished with my slightly scruffy affections. The bright triangle of curls between her legs where her soft, lightly freckled thighs are pressed together.
I want my camera.
She notices. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure I should say it out loud.”
“You know you should.”
“I want photos. I want to take pictures. Right now. Of you like this.”
Her lips curve, too. “You could do that.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I would never show them to anyone.”
“Don’t promise that,” she says. “You’re going to be famous one day, and I want to see my pregnant self in a gallery.”
“You do not. Not really.”
“I do. Really and truly. I’m not self-conscious. And besides, I trust you to make me look beautiful. You make everything you see beautiful.“
It probably wouldn’t have mattered what she said after I trust you, but the rest of the sentence pretty much destroys me.
I roll out of bed, naked. She watches me walk across the room, and when I look back, she’s biting her lip. My cock, which moments ago was all about the rest-and-relaxation, gets heavy again.
I collect my camera.
“How do you want me?”
“In every position on every surface of my house, several times a day, for the rest of our lives,” I say, before I can stop myself.
She just smiles.
“Oh, you mean the pose.”
She laughs.
I think about it for a minute. It’s not just her body I want to capture. It’s her whole energy, the way it feels to be in a room with her.
No. The way it feels to be on the road with her.
And then I know.
“In Bernadette,” I tell her.