Page 65 of The Marriage Debt
“I want to feel like your wife…” Her hands splay on my shoulders. I look up into her eyes.
“You’ve always been my wife.” I let my hands grip her thighs, already getting excited to have her again. It’s been a while.
“But I want to feel like it,” she says, and a soft smile plays at her lips.
I swipe the shirt over her head, baring her to the night air. The breeze blows across her. My hand cups her breast, thumb massaging her nipples. She gasps, but she likes it. I bring her mouth close to mine and kiss her with a fierce intensity, tasting the strawberry lip gloss she still has on from earlier.
I lean into her, kisses deepening as our tongues graze each other's. My hands slide down her back, tracing the curve of her spine as she moves against me. She unbuttons my shorts, pulls my swelling dick out. Her hand wraps around it firmly and she gives it a few tugs.
“Is this how a wife would do it?” I tease before sucking her bottom lip into my mouth. The barely restrained hunger in her eyes is a turn-on itself.
“Shut up and fuck me,” she says in between messy kisses.
We don’t make it inside. I turn her around as I slide my shorts down. She settles back onto my lap as I slide into her from behind and reach around to rub her clit. The way she rises and falls on me under the moonlight is intoxicating.
“Mateo,” Lila moans, head thrown back, eyes closed. “Oh, my God, right there…”
I love the expression on her face as she tumbles over the edge. I keep going, hips thrusting hard and fast into her. As we move together, it's like nothing else exists in the world but us. When we finally both come, I bite her neck to stifle her moans.
We stay like that for a while, our heartbeats slowing down and the breeze against our heated skin. I lay my cheek against her bare back, filled with a contentment I was certain I’d never feel in my life—doubted I ever deserved to know.
She shifts in my lap and looks toward the bedroom window, where Lev’s soft breathing still carries through the glass. “Do you think you’ll walk him in that first day?”
I glance at her. “To school?”
She nods. “Kindergarten. Full days now. No more naps and early pickups.”
I exhale slowly, the thought heavier than expected. “The house will be different without him there all day. Quiet.”
Her fingers slide across my chest, thoughtful. “Too quiet.”
I don’t argue. I already feel it—the echo of his absence before it’s even real. "The kid really got to me…" I muse, letting a smile curl my lips.
She laughs softly, but there's something different in her tone. Then, without a word, she takes my hand and gently moves it across her stomach, placing it low beneath her navel and holding it there. Her skin is warm beneath my palm, steady, and the quiet weight of the gesture hits me all at once.
Her fingers tighten slightly. “I’m late,” she says quietly. “Just by a few days… but still.”
I look at her, really look. Her expression is soft, uncertain, but there’s hope written into the corners of her mouth, the line of her shoulders.
"You think it might be…?” My voice comes out low, careful.
She nods once. “I don’t know for sure. But maybe.”
The silence between us stretches, not heavy, not filled with fear—just the quiet gravity of what this might mean. I press my hand more firmly against her stomach, anchoring myself to the possibility.
“I’d want that,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. It’s not just something I say for her sake. It’s the truth.
“Me too,” she whispers. “I want something… clean. A piece of us untouched by all the rest. Something we made without violence chasing behind it.”
I don’t say anything right away. I just hold her, feeling the weight of everything she’s just given me.
In this life, there aren’t many things we get to protect from the dark. But maybe, just maybe, this time… we will.
