by Amy Brent
But he had rejected me. The sexual element of our relationship, the one that had gotten me so hooked on him in the first place. I knew that I was a little intoxicated on our physical connection, but I also knew for damn sure that there was something else there too; it wasn’t as simple as just good sex, though that was a part of it. No, being here with him was the easiest thing I’d ever done in my life, despite how weird the situation was and how anyone else might have run away screaming by now. But even with the reality of what I was here for unavoidable, even with a baby growing inside of me, I knew that this was where I belonged. At his side. Far from the rest of the world. What else would I need, as long as he was here alongside me?
He had been out most of the day, completing chores and driving to the nearby village to pick up some food. He insisted that I stay behind to get some rest, and I couldn’t much argue with him given that I was already feeling exhausted and a little sick from the baby. I had laid on the couch most of the day, watching him, urging him silently to give in to the feelings I knew were there inside of him. I could still feel the way his mouth had moved all over me, as though it was the only way he knew to seal the connection between us, to confirm it. The way he had lightly bitten on my thumb, the shock of pain contrasting with the pleasure in a way that made my head spin.
I could see it in his eyes, when he’d walked away from me, that he didn’t want to. He had even paused for a moment before he left the cabin again, like he was having to muster up every inch of self-control within him not to turn back and fuck me on that table like he owned me. Like he knew he did.
But instead, he had pulled back and left me wanting for him in a way that I had never felt before. I had desired him before the first time that we’d hooked up, of course, but that was different. Now I knew what I was missing out on, and the next eight months were stretching out in front of me endlessly, no promise of his touch or his strength wrapped around me any longer. I could still remember the first night he let me sleep in his bed, as he had done every night since, the feel of his strong arms holding me close and the way his breath felt on the back of my neck, and felt a pang knowing that that was gone, at least for now. Until he changed his mind.
Or until I changed it for him. Maybe he didn’t want to overstep the bounds of the contract for my sake, worried that I might think he was pushing things too far. Well, I wanted to be pushed, as far as I could. It had been a full month of hook-ups and I still felt as though I had so much to learn about how deep our connection ran. The thought stuck in my head as I had some toast for dinner and then slipped off to my room, taking a long shower and scrubbing the day off of me. I felt antsy, like I had been locked up in a cage and spent the afternoon pacing back and forth waiting for my keeper to come let me out. Well, now I was going to take matters into my own hands.
I waited for him to go to bed before I made my move. I felt a little twinge when I realized that he hadn’t even bothered to invite me to sleep with him – I had gotten so used to waking up in that luxurious double bed with him beside me, the one that I had to myself felt cramped by comparison, and yet sprawlingly empty at the same time. I wanted to be near him. This entire day had felt wrong, not bantering with him over breakfast or helping him wash the dishes after dinner. That little romance that had been brewing between us, slow but sure and steady, couldn’t be snuffed out just like that. I was going to make sure of it.
I pulled off the shirt that I had been lazing around in all day, leaving myself in nothing but a pair of panties, and let my hair down over my shoulders. I knew he liked it when I had my hair down; he would wrap it around his hand, tug my head back a little, when he got the chance. I remembered the first time together, when he had been nothing but tender and soft with me, and smiled and shook my head when I thought about how far we’d come from that night. Now, there was never any holding back, nothing that stopped him going as far as he wanted with me. And it was the best thing I could image.
I opened the door as quietly as I could, and listened for him moving around in the bedroom and waited for him to come to a stop; as soon as he did, I made my way over to his door, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
“Laurie?” He murmured into the darkness, sitting up where he had been laying down in bed. I could just make out the shape of him, shirtless, in the dark, and I bit my lip as I took him in. Could I just go over there and kiss him?
“Cormac,” I made my way towards him, not sure how I was meant to put into words what I wanted us to do right now but knowing I needed to find some way to do so. He didn’t move, not reaching for me, but not dismissing me, either.
I slipped under the covers on the opposite side of the bed from him, and he inhaled sharply as I drew close to him. I reached out and laid my hand on his stomach, feeling the swift rise and fall of his belly as his breathing quickened. I knew he wanted this. He turned to me, half-facing me, and I could see the conflict in his face. He reached over, tentatively, and laid a hand on my side. His fingers felt so good against my bare skin, I had to swallow and slow down before I pounced on him there and then.
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” I promised him, my voice soft, and that was when he leaned forward and kissed me.
It was the kind of kiss that told me this was all he had been thinking about since the last time we were together. I knew it wouldn’t be like it was before, when he stopped and pulled back; I knew he couldn’t resist this any more than I could. He pulled me on top of him, hands digging into my thighs, and I could already feel him growing hard. He was naked, his body softened by the darkness as he leaned up to grab my head and pull my face down towards him.
“We need to get these off,” he growled in my ear, hooking his fingers around the hips of my panties and tugging at them. I shifted and kicked them away, so that both of us were completely bare, and then snuggled back on top of him, feeling the nudge of his cock against my pussy. I could have just shifted a little, moved my hips, and taken him inside me right there, but I didn’t want that yet. I wanted to remind him just how good the two of us were together. I kissed down his throat, letting my mouth brush over those sensitive spots that I knew drove him crazy, and then further down across his chest. I could feel his heartbeat, fast and hard, and I knew that he needed this as badly as I did.
I continued down until I was between his legs, sliding easily down until I could look up at him from there; I planted a kiss on the inside of his thighs, softly, smiling as I did so to let him know exactly what I had in mind. He groaned and tipped his head back, and I reached up and wrapped my fingers around his cock.
He wasn’t the first guy I’d ever gone down on, but he was the first one that I felt like really wanted me to go down on him. Richie, he had always seemed elsewhere, like he was too busy thinking about other women to really focus on what I was doing to him. But Cormac watched me, like he still couldn’t quite believe that he had me all to himself, as I hovered my mouth over his head and let my breath warm his skin. I stroked him a couple of times, tentatively, and his cock stiffened even more in my grasp. And then, at last, I took him into my mouth, and closed my eyes as the taste of him filled my senses.
I flickered my tongue over his head a couple of times before moving my mouth down, sealing my lips around him and guiding him as deep as I could in one motion; he gasped, sharply, and reached forward to brush a strand of hair back from my face; I looked up at him to find his eyes burning into mine in the darkness. God, he looked hot like that. I stroked my hand up to meet my lips and began to work him up and down, and he began to thrust back into my mouth, the two of us silently communicating until we had built up a pace that worked. I lost myself to the task, loving every moment of it, feeling at once powerful and powerless as he pushed his cock into my mouth. He balled his hand in my hair and guided my head back and forth, and I let him, finding that I could take more of him at once than I had thought I would be able to.
“You feel so fucking good like that,” he groaned, and I slowed
my pace, teasing him, reminding him of how he had left me hanging the last time the two of us had done something like this. That he had pulled back and left me frustrated. But he wasn’t going to take that – oh, no, he wanted me, and he wasn’t going to let me get away with that.
He suddenly tucked his hands beneath my arms and pulled me on top of him again, gripping his cock and pushing my legs apart.
“Lower yourself down on me,” he ordered, and I pressed my hands to his chest and did as I was told. I let my head fall back as he entered me, my pussy already soaked, as though I had been holding back on how badly I had wanted this long enough that it all came flooding out when it was given the chance. His fingers were on my hips once more, digging in so hard I was sure they would leave marks, but I didn’t care. I wanted to feel every part of him that he would let me, and those fingerprints on my body would only serve as a reminder that I was his.
He let me lower down all the way first, and then held me there, his cock buried deep inside me, for a long moment before he moved again. And then he began to thrust up into me.
The last thing I could remember thinking before the pleasure seemed to wipe my memory clear was wondering if it would always feel this good with him, if he would always be this addictive and feel this perfect inside of me, if it would always be as though we were two halves of a whole coming together in this way. And then, everything seemed to drop away – the intensity of the last few days mixed with the feeling of him inside of me was more than I could process all at once, and I simply gripped hold of his arms and let him have me.
He had taken me in this position before, but it had never felt as intense as this. His hands were moving all over my body like he was reminding himself of it, scolding himself for holding back the day before. He pinched my nipples, drew them into his mouth, slowed and went deep for a moment before he took back up with quick, shallow thrusts. He grabbed my hand and pulled it to my clit, and propped himself up so he could kiss me as I played with myself. The sensations were overloading me, the feelings I had for him threatening to take control for good. He wrapped his arms around me and buried his face into my neck and pushed himself hard into my pussy, again and again, our bodies and limbs and minds entangled in ways I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to undo. I could feel the pleasure building in me, cresting, threatening to burst – I was teetering on the edge, my body ready to find the release that I had been denied.
And then he came – his cock twitched inside of me and he came to stillness as he finished, his body slumping against mine and a deep, guttural growl escaping his lips as he did so. And knowing that I was enough to do this to him was all I needed to find my own climax. My pussy clenched and I tipped my head back and let out a long cry of pleasure, shuddering against him, my breath coming in short gasps as though I was drowning in him.
Once it had passed for both of us, we slowly unwound, unwrapping our bodies from one another slowly and carefully. He looked up at me and kissed me one more time, a hard kiss, as though he was reluctant to let me go at all. He pushed the hair back from my face as he had done before, but this time it was with more tenderness. I closed my eyes for a moment, then lifted myself off him and slid down next to him on the bed. He lay beside me, and lifted his arm so I could lie down on his chest. I tucked myself into him, staring at the pool of moonlight that had formed on the opposite wall as we had been in action. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I should say anything at all.
He held me close that night, and I knew what he was trying to tell me without words. That he had been thinking everything that I had since I had told him about the pregnancy. If this wasn’t a confirmation of the feelings he had for me then I had no idea what was; I was as sure as I could be, as I lay there in his arms in the dark of that cold night, that Cormac was falling for me the way I was falling for him. It was a dizzying feeling, as though someone had whipped the ground out from beneath me and left me spinning and grasping for something familiar and safe, but it was a good one. Sometimes, it felt good to have things go out on control. I closed my eyes and nuzzled into his chest, inhaling his scent. The father of my child. The only man I needed right now, maybe the only man I would ever need. And I knew there was nothing that I could say that could sum up how I felt for him, or how excited I was for what the future held for us.
Chapter Ten
I woke early the morning after. It took me a moment to remember what had happened the night before; all I could really recall was a blur of limbs and her body in the darkness, moving on top of me and riding me and coming with me inside of her. I thought it might have been a dream, but then I turned and saw her sleeping soundly in the bed next to me and I knew that it had been real.
I reached out to touch her, skimming my hands over her head and her neck. Her skin was so soft that it almost didn’t feel real, and I nearly pinched myself to see if I was actually dreaming. But she squirmed slightly against the sheets, let out a small moan, and I knew that she was there beside me. I lay back down and wrapped myself around her, letting my hand come to rest on her stomach once more. It was still hard for me to get my head around the fact that this woman was carrying my baby, but she was, and it seemed as though we were finally actually accepting the fact that there was something more than that between us as well. As though that wasn’t enough all by itself.
I wasn’t sure how long I was laying there, all wrapped around her and holding her close like I was worried she might somehow run away from me, but the sun had fully risen by the time that she lifted her head blearily and turned to face me.
“Morning,” she greeted me shyly as she flipped over in bed, running her hand up my side; it was hard for me not to just roll on top of her right then and there and go for it all over again, but I knew I had to wait and tell her what I’d been holding back on all this time.
“Morning,” I replied, tucking a strand of her long hair behind her ear and smiling back at her. She was so beautiful, even just woken up, and I knew from the swell of my heart when I looked at her that this was something bigger than I’d ever anticipated.
She was still looking at me, a slightly nervous expression on her face, as though she wasn’t quite sure what to expect from us now that last night had gone down. My gaze trailed down to her lips and I remembered vividly how it had felt the night before when they had been wrapped around my cock, and I could see from the look in her eyes that that was exactly what she was thinking about too.
“So,” she began, biting her lip and examining my face for any hint of what I was thinking. I could have happily stayed in bed with her the rest of the day, but my stomach was growling and I knew I needed to get something nutritious into her – she would need lots of looking after these next few months, that was for sure, and I figured I should get on that now.
“So, I think we should have some breakfast,” I suggested, and she smiled at me again. Her smile made me so happy that sometimes it felt as though it was filling me from the bottom of my toes upward with joy. I couldn’t think of much that I wouldn’t do to put that smile on her face, which was dangerous and exciting all in the same breath.
“Yeah, me too,” she yawned, stretching and sitting up. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah, you were pretty active,” I teased her, and she slapped my arm lightly.
“That’s enough out of you,” she shot back, and she giggled. “I’m going to go for a shower, okay?”
“Use my bathroom,” I nodded to the door that led off the bedroom. “I’ll make us something to eat while you’re in there.”
“You don’t want a hand?” She suggested, but I shook my head.
“No, I want you well-rested,” I replied. “You’re pregnant, remember?”
“Shit,” she shook her head and ran her hands over her face, as though trying to keep all her thoughts in. “It’s just…fuck, that’s so much, you know?”
“Yeah, it is,” I replied, and leaned forward to plant a kiss on her cheek; she leaned against me and I nuzzled into her neck
again, the sunlight picking her out in the most perfect way. I wrapped my arms around her and just revelled in that moment, in how good it felt to be near her like this. I had never felt this kind of connection to someone before; sure, I had been attracted to people plenty before I had come across Laurie, but rarely did that physical link seem to last much beyond the first time we had sex. With her, it felt like it was never going to end. There was a power she had over me that I wasn’t sure she fully understood, and it was terrifying to hand that kind of control to someone again after what had happened last time.
“Okay, shower,” she lightly tapped on my hands with a sigh, as though she didn’t want to pull away from me, and reluctantly unpeeled herself from my body. “I’ll be done in ten minutes, okay?”
“Take your time,” I waved her off, and watched the sway of her ass and her hips as she made her way out of the room once more. Damn, but if she didn’t look hot as hell when she was just hanging around. She seemed to be comfortable with her naked body in a way that really got me hard, even when I knew I should be thinking about something less carnal.
I rolled out of bed and pulled on some clothes, and headed through to the kitchen to make something – nothing fancy, just some fruit and bruschetta, something that would fill me up but not leave me feeling too heavy. I had a feeling we would be active again pretty soon and I didn’t want to feel weighed down by what I had eaten.
As I laid out something for us to eat, my mind was lingering on what I had been doing my best to avoid all this time. What had happened between my ex and me, between Julia and Jeb and I. I had thought it just wasn’t relevant till now, but if we were actually going to do this, then she deserved to know. I knew I would want to know if there was something big in her past that she was keeping from me. In fact, I wasn’t sure I could stay with her if that was the case; I needed honesty after what had happened to me, and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less. And that meant that I owed the same thing to her.