I blink a couple times. What if I’m interpreting him wrong? What if he’s not suggesting sex right now? “Wait…what does this mean?”
Lo hovers over me. “Lily Hale.” His eyes never leaving mine, he plants a burning kiss to my collarbone. Another on my neck. I try to buck forward, but the weight of my stomach keeps me grounded. “I…” He pulls my shirt off, my breasts in view. “Want…” His lips skim my nipples. I shiver. Oh my God. “To…” His tongue laps the stiff flesh. “Fuck…”
Inside me. Come inside me.
His hand dives down my leggings and panties. He cups my heat. “You…” He pushes two fingers inside of me.
I gasp, my head rocking back, my muscles tightening. Yesyesyes. He pulses his fingers, and my toes curl. “OhmyGod.” I dizzy.
His lips catch mine. I sink against his affection that deepens, that originates from the pit of his soul. We kiss like we’ve been told this will be our last. We show each other why it couldn’t be the end. Even if other people said it should be.
He breaks apart, just to pull off my leggings and panties with one hand, his lips right against mine, our eyes glued to one another. In my ragged breath, I ask, “Are you hornier than me? That’s not…”
“Not what?” His edged voice makes me quake in want.
By the time I respond, we’re both naked. “Not…possible.” I writhe as his fingers find the most pleasurable spot. He pulses them faster, over and over, and my back arches.
I cry upwards, my fingers digging into his shoulders. “Yesyesyes!”
Lips back to my ear, he whispers, “You’re about to feel how horny I am, love.”
Oh my…my hands skim his abs as his hardness nears me. “Closer,” I beg.
“How close?” he teases, waiting and waiting.
Sweat coats my skin. “All the way…in.”
Lo has one protective hand on my abdomen. As though reminding himself to take this easy for our baby. Then he fills me so full.
It sets me on edge. I tense up, and the way he stares at me does me in. Our eyes connect while he rocks against me, his muscles flexing.
“Closer, closer,” I keep begging, even if he’s as close as he can go. I want to be completely consumed by Loren Hale.
A grunt in his throat, he moves slower but deeper. I feel each shift inside of me. I want to sit on him. I want to blow him. I want to do a thousand different things to him, and I want him to do a thousand different things to me.
My world rotates at the next thrust. “Lo…”
His fingers graze my nipple. He pinches. I shudder and moan, hugging onto him.
“Lo.”
His hand runs down my leg, towards my thigh.
“I want to sit on you,” I suddenly blurt out. I also tell him four more positions that are impossible pregnant. “…and come in my mouth.”
I’m high-maintenance in bed. He told me so last week. In a loving kind of way.
Lo kisses me on the lips while he rocks forward. I clutch his sides, still full of him. We’re one. We’ve always been one.
And when our bodies meld, the need feels beyond need and more like survival. We’re surviving this world together.
I reach a peak and only look at Lo, my body shaking in euphoria.
His amber eyes flood with profound, deep-seated love, and I’m anchored to him.
*
8:47 p.m.
Lo rejected most of my positions, but he let me blow him. He knelt on the couch while I sat up, and I took him in my mouth. His expression is one of the best parts. Infatuation and lust coats his eyes, and he’ll hold my hair out of my face. When he comes, his whole jaw tenses. He’ll tilt his head back, and his glare murders the ceiling before his eyes roll.
Lo climaxing turns me on, and he knows it. So he had to help me again.
“No more,” he reminds me.
“I know.” I tuck my towel out around my pregnant frame. We just took a shower, and I must have this horny look while I think about our sex-capades. It’s much easier to fall into compulsions when I’m pregnant. I’m not allowed to seek hundreds of orgasms.
My phone suddenly buzzes on the bathroom counter. I waddle because the floor is slippery. Lo uses his towel to dry his hair before his body, but I’m not complaining. I like a naked Loren Hale.
“Who is it?” he asks just as I grab the phone. Lo comes up behind me, the screen illuminated.
My heart twists. The notifications say Ryke and then the partial text. I quickly click in. We haven’t heard anything besides the occasional we’re here and everything’s fine since he left for the camping trip.
My worry mounts for a brief second.
Then I let out a breath.
He sent a photo. Ryke, Jane, and Moffy sit around a campfire and roast marshmallows. They both have huge goofy smiles. Priceless.
Ryke, who even has a hard time lifting his lips, smiles too. I bet one of the bodyguards snapped the photo for them.
“He looks happy,” Lo says, a smile to his voice.
“Your brother or our son?” I wonder.
“Both.”
I click off the phone and spin towards him. “I’m glad we did this.” I nod. “We chose well.” Moffy spending quality time with his uncle. Lo and I having quality time alone.
It’s all positive.
And it has nothing to do with sex, even if the sex is so good.
Lo’s hand falls to my abdomen. “Luna,” he says her name much more gently than he says most. “Are you going to be into camping? Or are you going to be scared of bears like Mommy?”
I slug his shoulder.
“It’s a good fear,” I defend.
“The best fear there ever was.” Then he kisses the outside of my lips, teasing.
I grow serious in a quick second. “Are you worried?” I’ve admitted that having a girl would be more frightening than having a boy. Lo even said that raising a girl would be different, maybe even tougher beneath the limelight.
“I’m not scared of any goddamn bears,” he quips, but he knows what I’m really asking.
“Lo—”
“I’m going to protect her,” he says strongly and certainly. I must still look concerned because he repeats it. “I’m going to protect her, Lil. And you know what, she might not even need me.” He cups my cheeks. “If she has even a fraction of your strength, she’ll be okay.”
He kisses my lips, cementing this truth.
Lily & Loren Hale welcome the birth of their baby girl
LUNA HALE
November 30th, 2019
{ 16 }
December 2019
The Lake House
Smoky Mountains
LOREN HALE
“This is all your goddamn fault,” I tell my brother as I zip my snow jacket higher. We hike through the dense woods in search of a fir or spruce tree to replace the last one. Temperatures dropped overnight, and my breath smokes the six a.m. air.
Ryke hikes ahead of me. “You think I fucking knew the tree had bugs in it?” That’s right. My brother had one job. One goddamn job and he blew it. He picked a Christmas tree that had a nest of spiders in it. We set up the tree, decorated the thing, and two days later, spiders started crawling on presents.
We’re lucky none traveled to the kid’s bedrooms.
On top of that horror show, I still hear Rose’s laugh in my right ear. Last year, the girls found, chopped, and wheeled an eight-foot spruce tree home, all on their own. This year was our turn, and I get it. This was a shit display, but I’ve been over tree hunting before it even started.
Connor scrolls through his phone and successfully avoids colliding into trunks while simultaneously landscaping the area for a fir. The guy can multitask better than some people can take a shit.
Sam and Garrison bring up the rear.
I yawn into my arm, falling behind even them. “Goddammit, why’d we wake up this early?” The sky is a dim blue color, the sun rising but still hidden.
Sam stuffs his fists in his dark red snow jacket. “Shouldn’t you be used to the morning by now?”
Right. Samuel Stokes is the one who told me I’d be a “morning person” after I had one kid. Well, now I have two, and my feelings are the same. I wake up early to run with my brother; I yawn for five straight minutes while stretching. I wake up early to feed my kids; I yawn for ten straight minutes while wandering up and down the hallway.