Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Her body is fuller since the last pregnancy. Her breasts rounder, heavier. I test the weight of them in my hands and thumb her nipples reverently.
“Jesus, baby. Yes.”
Those are the only words I can manage because this is all I’ve wanted and haven’t been able to make myself ask for. Not when she’s been so sad. Not when the world has been on fire and every ship sinking. I knew sex couldn’t be the most important thing. Her getting better, feeling better—that was paramount. But I was wrong because this feels urgent. The scrape of her teeth across my lip—essential. The sweep of her tongue inside my mouth—necessary. Every breath feels like a gasp before dying and my heart races, speeds to catch up with the desperation of her hands caressing my chest, of her fingers, sure and steady at my zipper. I drag the silky gown up her thigh, envisioning the firm naked legs wrapped around my waist. I hesitate, knowing where I want to touch her, but still unsure that she wants it. It’s been so long and this is the first time she’s been interested in sex.
“Yes,” she breathes, scattering kisses over my jaw, sucking at my neck. “Touch me there.”
I slip my fingers over her and then inside. I pause. I know how she feels when she wants this. She’s wet and slippery and slick when she wants me. And suddenly, the heat drains away. The new negligee. The way she is freshly waxed and smooth between her legs. Even the mint of her breath at midnight. It all feels calculated. Deliberate, not desperate. Wrong, not raw.
She pulls back just the smallest bit to study my face in the dim light, a frown pulling between her brows. “Come on.”
“Why?” I demand, even though I know. I dread her answer, have avoided this conversation, but knew we’d have to have it. One more fight.
“Why?” She laughs, and it’s breathless, nervous. She looks down at the floor, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. “I want another baby.”
“No.” The word torpedoes from me, startling us both. Her wide eyes meet mine. “No more babies.”
No more losses. No more death. No more risk. No more grief.
“Yasmen, the doctor said—”
“What?” She inserts another inch, two between us, her frown morphing to scorn. “That it’s a risk? That I might—”
“Die?” It’s ejected from my soul, bounces off Henry’s nursery walls. “Yeah, is that what you want this family to go through? Another death?”
She ignores that, presses back into me. In the set of her mouth, in the sureness of her hand reaching between us to grab my dick, there is a confidence that my desire, the way I always want her, will override everything else, will obliterate my objections. And there was a time when the soft femininity, the perfect weight of her against me, would have been enough, but when she reaches between us, I know what she’ll find.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, the smooth, beautiful face lined by consternation. “You want this.”
I haven’t been hard this whole time. Haven’t been hard in a long time. The hungry kisses and searching tongues and ragged breaths—all real. All a cry for closeness, for intimacy, for contact we haven’t had since the day she returned from the hospital with empty arms. I wanted to want it, but my body didn’t respond. We’ve always had this, the fire that ignites at the slightest touch. At a glance. We’ve lost even that.
We are a disaster. Her, plotting to seduce me to get a baby we can never have. Me, reaching for the fire that used to spark between us, and finding only ashes. Whatever exists between us now is dry and flaccid.
“Why would you want another?” she asks, her voice climbing. “You didn’t even want Henry.”
“That’s a lie.” My anger flares at the injustice, at her well-aimed arrow. “What the hell, Yas?”
“What am I supposed to think? You weren’t even there.”
“That’s not fair. You—” I cut myself off, draw a deep breath. “You told me to go to that convention, and you know it. You weren’t due. We couldn’t have known—”
“That I would almost die alone? That I would lose him on the floor?” Hysteria colors her voice in shades of sorrow. “That I would—”
I pull her close, hold her the way I wasn’t there to do when it counted. She hates me for not being there when she needed me? Not as much as I hate myself.
She jerks in my arms, struggling like I’m constraining her, not comforting.
“Let me go. I don’t want you to touch me.”
My arms abruptly fall away. “That was fast. A minute ago you were begging me to fuck you.”
“I want a baby, Si.” Tears water her words even as they grow louder. “Just give me another baby and we—”
“And so I’m what? Your stud horse or your husband?”