“Nine weeks, the doctor says.”
“The cottage,” he said.
“On purpose this time,” she said, struggling with crying and talking at the same time.
He reached with his other hand and captured the back of her head, pulled her face close and fitted her tear-wet lips to his. That was when, amid the churning happiness and grief, a raw, basic lust came roaring up in her blood, making itself known, reminding her how many weeks it had been since they’d had one another.
She opened her mouth against his, flicked the tip of her tongue against his lips. She wanted her husband, needed him desperately.
His hand that rested against her belly shoved roughly down into her jeans, cupped her sex through her panties.
She pulled back with a little gasp. “Oh, Merc, do you think you can with your knee?”
He tangled his hand in her hair, pulled her into a crushing kiss, forced her down into his lap so she straddled the thigh of his good leg.
God, yes, she thought, as his other hand came out of her jeans and he used both to attack her sweater.Thank Jesus.
He made a growling sound of protest as their lips came apart long enough for her sweater to lift over her head. And then after, as her hair fanned back into place against her shoulders, his eyes went to her breasts, the white lace of her bra, the exposed stretch of stomach, still flat this early in her first trimester.
His eyes looked huge and ferocious in his thin, pale face; he breathed through his mouth, tendons in his neck straining, chest heaving as he took one tortured moment to drink her in.
Then, with leashed frenzy and extreme tenderness, he circled her throat with one massive hand and bent her back over his arm, pressing his mouth to the delicate skin above her breastbone, where her pulse fluttered in her chest.
Ava speared her fingers through the tight sheets of his pulled-back hair, loosening the knot, pressing her fingertips against his skull. Clinging to him as he buried his face in the hollow between her breasts and the fingers at her back sprang the bra clasp with one efficient movement. She felt the band go slack, the straps sliding down her arms. He nudged the cups aside with his nose, kissed her breasts, sucked briefly at each tightly drawn nipple.
She wanted hours of this. She wanted days and days in bed with him, nothing to do but get reacquainted.
But he pulled away and lifted her, kissed her mouth again, his tongue shoving roughly between her lips. “Later,” he murmured, between kisses. “Later…I’ll take real good care of you.” He cupped her breasts, squeezed them. They were tender and swollen with the pregnancy and the pressure of his fingers made her neck weak. “Jesus, I just…” He bit her lip gently. Teased her nipples with his thumbs. “I don’t know…”
“It’s fine,” she assured. “I know what you mean. I know, sweetie.”
It was too overwhelming.
She shoved up his shirt, smoothed her hands across the warm skin of his chest, fingers skipping lightly over the surgical scars where the bullets had done their damage. It was too much. She wanted to put her mouth on his chest, suck delicately at his flat brown nipples until he rolled her onto her back and paid her back in kind. But there was this urgency driving them. Too long apart, too much distance, too much emotion.
She reached into the drawstring waistband of his sweatpants and his cock fitted against her palm. She felt the strain in him, the acute pain of this sudden, super-intense need.
“Shit,” he said through his teeth. “Come on, we have to get on the floor.”
She curled her fingers around him and gave a hard tug. “I can take care of you right here.”
“No,” he gasped. “I need on top.”
He needed to be the man again. It was one thing to pull her astride him when it was his choice, another when he was an invalid.
With a silent, internal chuckle, she agreed, and in a clumsy, fevered rush, she pulled him down on top of her on the cold tile of the kitchen floor. Her skin was too flushed for her to feel the chill. And he slid an arm beneath her bare back, sheltering and shielding, while he supported his weight with the other.
Ava lifted her hips, shoved down her jeans, managed to kick them off. The panties she left on, sweeping the lace to the side as she guided him to her entrance.
He couldn’t be delicate, and she didn’t want him to be. He came into her with one powerful downward thrust, filling her, driving her hips down against the tile.
And then he held very still, and nuzzled the side of her face, and whispered to her in French. Relief. Joy. The dazzling return of this physical closeness.
Ava pressed upward against him, a surge like a wave, lifting hips, rolling spine, breasts thrusting into his chest.
And then his hips began to move, a ferocious driving rhythm, his breath striking hard against her ear. She helped him, danced with him, gasping and straining as she felt the spiral begin, the dizzy weakness pulsing through her blood as the pleasure wound tighter.
He held deep inside her as he came, crushing her hips to his, letting the small, involuntary flexing of his back move through both of them. The tears tracked down her cheeks. Her fast, fierce orgasm set the room to spinning. She clung to his shoulders, murmuring nonsense as the luxuriant pulses rippled through her again and again.
