My flippant response ticks him off. “You been sick?”
I shake my head, my hands slipping under his shirt. “I’m okay, Casey. Don’t worry so much.”
“I don’t worry enough,” he mutters. “You’re out here, carrying my kid inside you. I hate that I can’t do more to protect you.”
Okay, that melts my heart just a little. “You’re doing plenty. I don’t need you to burn yourself to keep me warm.”
He wraps his arms around me, crushing me to his chest, his lips in my hair, his heart pounding against my cheek. “I’d burn the entire world to keep you warm, Lex.”
“Romantic,” I tease.
But my chest tightens in the best way. I’ve never doubted the way he loves me, and now that I’m pregnant, that love seems to have multiplied.
He stares at my bowl on the counter. “Cravings?”
“I think I made Nitro sick.”
He brushes my hair back from my face. “He’s seen worse.”
I have doubts about that.
Later that night, Casey takes me home. I’m lying in our bed, curled on my side when he comes out of the bathroom. Steam curls around him, a towel slung so low around his hips it’s almost indecent. I take a moment—okay, I take several moments—to just admire him.
Hard muscles, that V dip that disappears beneath the material, and the tattoo over his heart that he got for me. He’s fucking beautiful. Like he was carved from stone and fire.
“You done ogling me?” He sounds amused.
“We’re married,” I say. “I bought and paid for the goods. Let me look. Besides, you’re the only one of us that looks pretty right now.”
He freezes. “What?”
“I look like a walking corpse. I have that close to death pallor and the bags under my eyes could be checked in at the airport.”
He stands at the edge of the bed, his jaw tight. “On your back.”
Oh no.I know that look in his eyes. It’s the one where he is determined to prove me wrong. “Casey.”
“Now, Lexi.Back.”
I do as he asks, and he peels the covers away from my body. I stole one of his T-shirts to sleep in, mostly because it’s comfortable, but the way he’s looking at me now, like I’ve pulled on his brand, makes me want to live in his clothes.
He slides the hem of the shirt up until it’s bunched beneath my breasts. Then his hand spans over my stomach. “You have no idea how fucking beautiful you are, baby. Knowing you’re growing something that’s ours in this body unravels me.” His hand moves to the slight swell that could be our baby, but could also be dinner. It’s as if he’s touching something sacred. “I want you fat and round, and unmistakably mine.”
My lips part, my thoughts dazed and wild, but he’s not done.
“I want every man to know what I did to you. I want this baby to grow big and heavy inside you, so that every time you move you remember who put it there.”
I’m not sure I’m breathing anymore. Casey has always had a filthy mouth, but this… This is another level. It should scare me, but it doesn’t. It anchors me. He’s in this with me, building a future for us brick by brick, and I’m the foundation.
His fingers slide under the waistband of my panties and into the wetness between my legs. I let out a needy whimper, not even trying to hide it. My body is ready for him, as it always is.
“Fuck, you have no idea what you do to me, do you?” He pushes two fingers inside me, and my thighs fall open automatically. “This pretty little cunt was made to carry my seed. And if you weren’t pregnant now, I’d fill you up until you were dripping with me. I still might do that, just so you remember not to talk shit about my beautiful, pregnant wife.” With each of those last words, he presses a kiss to me. One to the inside of my thigh, one to the bottom of my belly, and the last over my clit.
My breath hitches, my hips lifting in invitation. I dig my fingers into the sheets, as if they can stop me from catapulting off the mattress.
“It’s cute now,” I say between whimpers and gasps as his fingers lazily stroke in and out of me. There’s two of Casey for just a second before he merges back into one.Death by my husband’s fingers… What a way to go.“But it’s not going to be cute in a few months’ time when my belly is huge and I have stretch marks and heartburn and I can’t see my feet or my vagina. When you’re shaving my legs because I can’t bend over, you’ll trade me in for a younger model.”
I’m joking. Kind of. I know Casey loves me. He shows that every day in every single fucking way imaginable, but he isalso a red-blooded man, and I’m about to go through some metamorphic changes.
