by Amy Brent
“I need to feel you inside me,” she begged, a note of pleading to her voice, as though this was the only thing in the world that mattered to her at that moment. I knew how she felt; despite what had just happened, or maybe because of it, I couldn’t fight this feeling that I needed her, that we needed to confirm whatever it was between us once and for all. She gripped the back of my head, her nails digging into my scalp, as I pulled down her pants and pressed kisses across the soft skin of her lower belly, exposing her tiny bump. Somehow, the reminder of that, that she was carrying my baby, made the moment even more intense, and I realized my hands were shaking a little as the desire and adrenalin mingled in my system to wipe any thought but her out of my head.
I stripped down just enough and pushed her legs apart, sliding between them with my cock in my hand and then guiding it inside of her. She groaned loudly as I pushed into her for the first time, and tried to remember the last time we had done this – but I couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was happening now, here, in this moment, that her slick, tight pussy was already clenched around my cock, and before I knew it I had utterly lost myself to her for the first time in a long time.
She wrapped her legs around me, slipping her arms around my neck, and pressed her head against my chest as she rocked her hips back to meet mine. The feeling was unlike anything I’d ever had before, even with her – more intense, deeper, darker, spinning me out of control. She was mine. Even though that asshole had come here and tried to take her away from me, she was mine, and she wanted to be mine, and that was all I needed to wipe away the last doubts of insecurity from my mind. She clung to me like I was the only thing keeping her safe, keeping her afloat, and I fucked her as hard as I could, as though I was trying to bond our bodies together for good.
The pleasure came in waves, so intense that it took me a moment to realize how close I was to coming. I would have held myself back any other time, but I could tell from the way her breath was coming quick against my chest that she was ready as well. I pushed her head away from my chest, kissing her lightly, just brushing my lips against hers, and without a sound she came – her pussy clenching helplessly around my cock, her hands digging into my back as she guided me into her, again and again, and I took that as all the permission I needed to lose myself inside of her too. I thrust deep, one last time, burying myself in her up to the hilt, and then finally my cock filled her up as I came inside her once more.
We were both panting – that was the first thing I noticed when I came back down to Earth after what the two of us had just shared. Panting as though we’d just finished running a marathon. I didn’t move for a long time and neither did she, until I was sure that our limbs would never fully unwrap from one another after this, but eventually and reluctantly I pulled out of her, and then slid down on the bed beside her and pulled her against my chest. She closed her eyes, her breath still coming a little ragged, and let herself relax against me. It was like all the tension she’d been carefully storing up these last couple of weeks had come pouring out of her all at once, and I knew precisely how she felt.
“Was it him?” She asked finally, tilting her head up to look at me and peeling her eyes open. I nodded, and a shadow crossed over her face.
“But I made sure he knew what the situation was,” I promised her, pushing a strand of hair that had become stuck to her head back from her face. “He won’t come back here.”
“How do you know that?” She chewed her lip, and just like before, I reached out and brushed my thumb over her mouth to still her racing thoughts.
“Because I’m going to call the cops as soon as I can be bothered to get out of bed,” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “And I’m going to make sure he gets fucking busted and never bothers us or anyone else again.”
“Seriously?” She raised her eyebrows at me.
“Seriously,” I replied firmly. “Nobody comes to my house and tries to take my woman from me. That asshole’s going to pay for this.”
“Your woman?” She looked up at me, a genuine smile curling up the corners of her mouth. I realized, with a slight shock, that we had never actually talked out whether or not we were back together. After what had happened, it felt like a no-brainer, but still.
“I think we both need to get some sleep,” I slipped out from underneath her, and planted a kiss on the side of her temple. “I need to call the cops and make sure they pick up that sorry excuse for a man who just came by here.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, and she watched me as I made my way out of the room. I paused for a moment and looked back, and couldn’t resist heading back over to tuck her into bed, wrapping the covers around her carefully. It was a cold night, but it was warm in here with her, especially with the way she was looking at me at that moment. I leaned down and kissed her again, this time on the mouth.
“We’ll talk it all out in the morning,” I promised her. “You need to get some rest now. It’s been a stressful day.”
“Yup,” she yawned once more, and then covered her mouth. “I…I’ll see you tomorrow, Cormac.”
“See you tomorrow, Laurie,” I smiled at her, and watched as her eyes drifted shut and sleep came for her at once. And then, I decided that the call could wait for a little longer, as I sat on the end of the bed and watched my woman drift off to sleep.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke up the next morning, and blinked in the bright of the morning light. The way it lit up everything around it, almost gleefully, was enough to put a smile on my face, as I realized that I was in Cormac’s bed. Everything that had happened the night before came flooding back to me, and I twisted and turned to stretch myself out and beamed at the world at large.
He wasn’t in bed with me, but that was pretty normal. He would be out early, making breakfast or chopping wood or something like that, and I would just have to hang around to catch up with him later. I was more than happy to lay in this bed, this place that the two of us shared, and wait for him to return.
I felt a little quirk of nervousness as I thought about seeing him again. I mean, what had happened the night before – it had been so much to take in, for both of us. I didn’t know what had happened with Richie the day before, but I had my fingers crossed that the cops had picked him up and that he was far away from me and Cormac and the baby for good. I assumed that he’d followed us back from the city when he’d spotted the two of us at that dinner, and had just been biding his time since then. I hadn’t heard precisely what had happened out there when Cormac had confronted him, but I had caught the raised voices, the sound of a scuffle, and that had been enough to unsettle me. It was a reminder that, while this place felt so far removed from the real world, it was still very much attached to it. The real world could still come looking for us if it wanted to, and the thought didn’t exactly thrill me.
I closed my eyes and snuggled back down into the bed, and the scent of him on the sheets reminded me of the night before. Making love to him again had been beyond anything we’d shared before. I guessed that absence had made my loins grow fonder, or maybe it was just that pregnancy-horniness kicking in, but whatever it was, I had loved fucking him once more.
But we hadn’t really spoken after that. I had been so tired that I had all but fallen asleep on the spot, and he had promised me that we could talk in the morning. I knew it had been a big deal, what had gone down, but I didn’t know if it was a big enough deal for him to renege on everything that he’d seemed so set on the night before. The conversation we’d been halfway through had seemed so significant at the time, but it had dulled in retrospect to what had happened and I wondered if he even remembered how close we had been to kissing before Richie had arrived.
I dozed for a little bit, more than happy to let myself lounge in this state of unknowing, until I heard the door open and lifted my head to see who had come in. In my half-sleepy state, I felt a jolt of panic, my brain convincing me that somehow Richie had come back and he was here to claim w
hat he thought was his once and for all. But instead, and to my great relief, I saw Cormac making his way into the room, wearing a grey t-shirt and a pair of jeans that made him look every bit the laid-back dad-to-be.
“Hey, you’re awake,” he slid down on the bed next to me, and I turned to face him.
“How can you be this functional first thing in the morning?” I whined playfully, rubbing the sleep away from my eyes.
“Because I’m not busy growing a baby in there,” he slipped his hand beneath the covers, and I realized that I was still naked from the night before. His cool hands on my bare skin sent a shiver up my spine, but he just let his hand come to rest on my belly. The little bump felt as though it was swelling by the day, and I loved the way it was starting to feel. A reminder of what was going on inside of me, of what the two of us had made together.
“That’s a fair point,” I conceded, and yawned. “Hey, are you hungry?”
“Yeah, actually,” he shook his head and blinked, as though he’d been distracted from whatever it was he’d come in here thinking on. “I made some breakfast. You want me to bring it in here?”
“Yeah, I would love that,” I stretched and sat up, propping myself up on the luxuriously thick pillows behind me and watching as he headed out of the room and then returned a moment later with a tray heaving with food. I laughed when I saw the amount of stuff he’d piled on to it.
“I didn’t know what you would want,” He shrugged by way of explanation.
“So you brought me everything?” I teased, and reached out to pluck the cup of decaf coffee from the tray and took a deep sip. “Mmm. You make it just how I like it.”
“Well, I’ve known you long enough,” He remarked, and he began to butter a piece of toast while I picked at the fruit sitting on the tray in front of me. It was all so bright and fresh, as though it had only been picked an hour or so before, but I felt my appetite was still a little stilted from not knowing where the two of us stood.
“Are you okay?” Cormac asked, and I nodded, biting my lip and eyeing him. And then, I sighed and shook my head.
“I just want to know what’s happening with us,” I admitted, my voice smaller than I had intended it to be. “Last night, it was so much, and I felt like we were so close…”
“We were,” He touched his fingers to my face, tracing the shape of my jaw. My heart dropped. Were?
“But…when your ex appeared out of the fucking ether, he tried to come in here and tell me that you were his woman and that he owned you and that I would never understand what the two of you shared,” he went on, and I rolled my eyes heartily. That kind of ridiculous, arrogant talk sounded precisely like the kind of thing that Richie would come out with, without understanding what any of it truly meant.
“And I was so mad at him for all of that,” Cormac went on, lowering his voice, as though he was trying to contain his anger. “I couldn’t believe…when he came out with all of that shit, it was just like I couldn’t handle what he was saying because I knew he was so fucking wrong and I hated him for it. I wanted to tear him apart for even thinking that he had any kind of claim over you, over us, over…you know, the baby, too.”
“He doesn’t,” I assured him, and it was the truth. Even if Cormac were to kick me out on my ear tomorrow morning, I wouldn’t go back to Richie, not for anything.
“I know,” Cormac took my hand, and a rush of adrenalin ran from my fingertips all the way up my arm at his touch. “But the way I reacted, I knew that he was just…wrong. We’re together. We’re meant to be. And I can’t deny that any more.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat as the words came out of my mouth. The scent of breakfast that he’d brought through, the sunlight picking out the details of the room, I couldn’t focus on any of it. Just him.
“Laurie, I want us to be together,” he finally finished up. “I know I’ve been…I know this hasn’t run the smoothest, but I know for fucking certain that the only thing that matters to me in the world is you and the baby and keeping you safe.”
He fell silent for a long moment, and I realized he was looking at me, waiting for me to respond to what he had just said. My head was still processing, but it didn’t take long for me to take it all in and come up with an answer.
“I want to be with you, too,” I blurted out at last, and the smile that broke across my face felt as though it was going to split it in two. “I..I always have, Cormac. And I know I kept stuff from you, but you have to know that I’m never going to do that again. With Richie gone, there’s…there’s nothing more of my old life that’s going to come looking for me. I get to start over. With you.”
I realized that I was tearing up, and quickly dashed away the tears forming at the corners of my eyes with the back of my hand, giggling at myself.
“I’m sorry,” I shook my head. “This is just…I’ve been waiting to hear you say that for so long. I’m just happy you’re where I am.”
“No, I feel it too,” he promised me, squeezing my hand. I looked up at him, expecting to see tears in his eyes too, but he was still Cormac through and through – which meant he wasn’t likely to start bawling just because we had gotten back together. I giggled again, the giddiness running through me and feeling as though it had set me on fire. He wanted to be with me. No secrets, no second-guessing, no mystery, no playing. He wanted to be with me and I wanted to be with him and it was hard to imagine anything in the world more important that that.
He leaned forward and kissed my temple, and I leaned my head up against his for a moment. It felt as though everything had been moving so fast since I had met him. From the first moment we met in that diner, everything had been running on fast-forward, because both of us were so keen to just get there and seal the deal and escape from the lives that we had built for ourselves; for me, I was desperate to get away from Richie and the involvement I had with that nightmare world, and for Cormac, he was hiding from his own loneliness, starting a new life that he could use to escape from the past that he was doing everything he could to leave behind. And in that running, we had found each other. We had come to a standstill, stopping for the first time in a long time, and finding each other. And now, we were actually going to be together. I reached for some of that fruit, and bit into the sweet, giving flesh of a strawberry, letting the juices run down my chin, and closed my eyes. The taste of it was sweet, but nothing on how sweet these moments with him were.
We ate breakfast and talked about this and that; when we were next going into the city to see the doctor, when we would tell his family, when I would meet his parents, when we would decorate the nursery. Every time he talked about his future with a “we” I felt as though my heart was going to swell and burst with excitement. How could it not? This was the most perfect thing I’d had in my life, and it was all laid out in front of me, only really just beginning.
As we finished up and he took the tray back through to the kitchen, I got out of bed and went to pull on some clothes, before remembering with a start that this wasn’t my room and that none of my clothes were in here. I grabbed one of his shirts, pulling it to my face and inhaling deeply and hoping to goodness that he wouldn’t-
“What are you doing?”
His voice came from behind me, clearly amused at catching me in the act. I turned, flushing bright red, caught out unarguably.
“I was just borrowing one of your shirts,” I replied, as innocently as I could, and he grinned and made his way towards me. He pulled the shirt out of my hands and dropped it to the floor, and stood behind me in front of the enormous mirror that dominated most of his wardrobe door. He slipped his arms around me, and pressed his face into my neck.
“Mmm,” he sighed, satisfied. “How do you smell this good first thing in the morning?”
“No idea,” I admitted, and smiled as I ran my hands over the top of his. I was still naked, and the feel of his clothes against my naked skin was doing something weird to me. Something I didn’t mind one little bit.
His hands moved down, to form a diamond shape around the little bump that was forming on my stomach. He looked down at it over my shoulder, and just watched him in the mirror; a smile formed on his face, slowly, as though something was dawning on him.
“I can’t believe how much you’re showing already,” he murmured, holding me close. “I can’t believe our baby is actually in there.”
“We should get a printout of the ultrasound,” I suggested. “Hang it up somewhere. I’d like the reminder.”
“As if I could forget,” He teased, still holding his hands there in front of my bump. I was still unclothed and normally I would have been feeling a little self-concious about being so exposed for so long, about letting him see this much of my body, but I found myself surprisingly relaxed despite myself. There was something about the way my pregnant body was changing that I found totally fascinating, and I liked the chance to take it in.
“I can’t believe we’re going to be having a baby,” he murmured again, and I closed my eyes and leaned my head against his. I couldn’t believe it either. The moment hung in the air, as though it was holding us there, and I knew at once what he was going to say. What I’d dreamed of him saying for so long. And the moment couldn’t have been more perfect.
“I love you,” he murmured, looking at me in the mirror. It was so strange, the two of us reflected back at each other like that, but we looked so right together. We looked so good, so obvious.
“I love you too,” I replied, and my breath caught in my throat again and I felt a tear leak out the corner of my eye. I smiled and shook my head.
“Damn, I’m emotional this morning,” I laughed at myself. “Guess you just bring it out in me.”