“God, I’ve missed you.” His hands delved into my hair, stroking against it in a way that said it was one of his favorite things.
My body was saying it missed him, too, even if in many ways this felt like the first time. I kissed his jaw, tense with his rigid self-control. “I need you,” I murmured, and found his mouth with mine for a long, deep kiss.
He accommodated me, lining the broad, blunt head of his cock up with my entrance and pushing slowly into me until he was seated completely in me. A hiss escaped him, and he held perfectly still, the tendons in his neck standing out and nostrils flaring with the effort. I closed my eyes and just felt him, a thick, heavy weight filling me. Completing me.
“You okay?” He gave a tentative roll of his hips and light erupted along my nerve endings, my inner muscles clamping down on him.
“So okay,” I answered. “Don’t you dare stop.”
A tiny grin curled his lip, and he withdrew almost completely before fucking back into me with a surety that was missing before. In and out he stroked, deeper and harder with each roll of his hips. We were climbing together. I could feel it in the coil of sensation tightening in the low part of my belly, hear it in his guttural growl. One of his hands covered my breast, his thumb brushing against the nipple. The other held my hip high and open to him, even as my leg wound around him.
He whispered to me, sweet and dirty. You’re so pretty, baby. You like me fucking you? Say my name.
“Hayes…” The word was a low keen, carried on a taut curl of feeling that was drawing tighter, a sweet agony I bit my lip against. “I’m so close.”
He reached between us to touch me and just that easy, I came. Hard. Fast. My body drew up like the string of a bow and then snapped, releasing in wave on wave of pleasure that vibrated through me and left me limp and hypersensitive, shuddering as he found his own release moments later.
And then we were just two bodies, covered in sweat and each other, gripping each other tightly through the aftershocks of reunion.
│Hayes
She didn’t leave the bed this time.
She lay, instead, on her side, her back curled against my chest. She wasn’t asleep. Her lips were curved in contentment, her fingers tracing my forearm and hand as it rested on her belly. There was a gentle swell now, evidence of the child sheltered there.
My child.
It was still hard to fathom. This time next year, I’d be helping Birdie assemble toys for this munchkin. Would he, or she, be sitting up? Walking? I laughed at myself. Nah. They didn’t walk until they were around two. My forehead wrinkled. At least, that’s what I thought.
“Penny for ‘em.” Her voice was husky.
“When do babies start to walk?”
She half-turned to look at me incredulously. “That’s what you were thinking about?”
I stuck my tongue out at her. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Not a thing.” She turned until she was on her back. “I love you, Big.”
My hand tracked the flutter of the pulse at her neck, her heartbeat beneath her breast. It got sidetracked there and lingered, teasing until her nipple was stiff and she squirmed beside me. It had been too long since I’d been able to touch her like this.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” she panted.
“What makes you think I can’t finish?”
“There was just an awful lot of wood out there…that needed…chopping —”
“Wench.” I bent to kiss her, moving leisurely to bite at her throat before continuing my southward journey. “I have no intention of chopping more wood today.”
“Oh…yes. Why —”
I grinned against her breast at her responses. She was arching against my mouth, her hands in my hair. “I was frustrated.”
“Umm.”
“Sexually.”
“Oh…not anymore…”
I sucked at the side of her breast and a yelp escaped. “Too much?”
“No! Don’t stop. They’re just tender.”
I laved the spot with my tongue in apology. “I’m sorry, Birdie’s Boob.”
She snorted and laughed. “Way to ruin the mood.”
“We do need to get moving, in all seriousness.” I gave the other breast a farewell kiss and sat up. “Tomorrow is my mom’s annual holiday party. I thought we’d go out and get their gift if you feel up to it?”
“You’re kidding, right? My man is denying me sex in favor of going shopping?” She tilted her head in mock wonder.
“Get up, babe.” I gave her my best leer, which was admittedly quite good. “I said we needed to get moving, not that we weren’t getting frisky. There’s always the shower.”
She smiled, slow and sexy. “I like the way you think.”
“You are exactly
Precisely and perfectly
What I waited for.”
Tyler Knott Gregson
December 16 │Birdie
ACCORDING TO HAYES, HIS MOTHER’S CROWNING ACCOMPLISHMENT, OTHER THAN HER FIVE GROWN CHILDREN, WAS HER ANNUAL HOLIDAY PARTY EACH DECEMBER. Hayes’ family, I learned, was wealthy. As in old southern wealth that had been around for generations and would be around for countless more. The party was held on their estate in Sequoyah Hills, which Hayes had told me I’d visited several times but of course had no memory of.
I tried not to gape as we drove up the winding drive lined with shrubbery and strung with fairy lights. It was snowing, the drifting flakes enveloping everything in a magical atmosphere. In the distance the house rose on a slight swell, white with classic black trim, light spilling forth from every window to the lawn.
As we parked, I caught sight of a woman in a glittering green sheath, visible briefly before the door closed behind her. My hands twisted in my lap. I didn’t remember a lot about previous me, but I knew: this was not my scene.
“Hey.” Hayes had parked and was looking at me with concern. “Don’t be nervous. It’s just my folks.”
“Right.” I released a half-laugh, half-groan. “Meeting the parents, take two.”
“And you can relax, because we already know how it turns out. They love you. And you look beautiful.” His eyes trailed over me, taking in the spill of my hair over the wine-colored dress I’d found yesterday while shopping. A snug band of velvet cupped my breasts, enhancing their new plumpness, and then a soft tulle flared out from just beneath, ending inches above my knees. With a tender motion, he brushed my hair back from my cheek.
“Right. Okay.” I blew out a breath. “Let’s do this.”
I opened my door and Hayes was there in seconds to place his hands at my waist and help me from the truck. I think he purposefully had not installed running boards so he would have an excuse to do that. I didn’t mind, though. He no longer needed an excuse to put his hands on me, but I was happy to provide one.
A thought struck me. “Is this what the elf in the champagne glass meant? This party?”
He nodded. “Annual tradition.”
I didn’t know why I was so nervous. Hayes had told me about his family yesterday while we were shopping. In spite of their wealth, he had said they were friendly, down-to-earth people for whom family had always been the highest consideration. He had two older brothers and two younger sisters. After three boys, his parents had decided to try one last time for a girl and had wound up with two — twins. One of his older brothers was married, with a two year-old baby.