“So you want to learn to drive?”
“Yes! I want to be able to take Daniel to school, or soccer practice, or a friend’s or . . . or . . . or wherever! And when this baby arrives, I’d like to go to the store if I need to. Or take him to the park. Or have coffee with a friend.” What the fuck am I saying? I expect none of those things can happen, but I pray one day they can. Then, when they do, at least I can drive myself around.
“Him?” Danny asks.
“What?” I yell, impatient, scowling at him.
“You said him.” He gets up, tilting his head. “When you referred to the baby, you said him.”
I recoil, thinking. “Did I?”
“Yes.” On narrowed eyes, he starts stalking slowly toward me. “Do you know something I should know?”
“No.”
“You’ve not asked Doc if he knows the sex?”
“No.” I laugh. “I don’t want to know. I want it to be a surprise.”
I’m seized and thrown on the bed, and he’s on me in a shot, pushing my dress up my body to expose my belly. “So, your mother thinks you’re a boy.” His big palms splay over my bump and stroke, and I exhale, settling again. “This is bad, bad news.”
“Why?” I ask.
He bites my hip, and I yelp. “Because I already have an heir for my mafia empire.”
I look down at him in horror, seeing him smirking. “That’s not funny.”
“Neither is your incessant need to rile me.” Crawling up my body, he cages me in. “I’ll teach you to drive.”
“You’ll teach me?” I ask, looking up at his delighted face. I’m not sure I like the sound of this.
“Yes. It’ll give us something else to do together other that fight and fuck.” He reaches down to his pants, biting his lip, hesitant. I know what he’s thinking.
“Yes,” I say, and he breathes out his relief, starting to work his fly. He rolls his hips and he’s quickly inside me. I grab his biceps and we both inhale sharply. “Do you think you have the patience to teach me?”
He starts moving, and I follow his rhythm perfectly, relishing the depth he’s achieving, loving the look of blinding pleasure on his handsome, scarred face. “You think I don’t?” He thrusts suddenly, and I groan.
“I thought you’d be too busy smuggling guns, laundering money, and murdering many enemies to bother yourself with the mundane chore of teaching your wife how to drive.” Especially when he doesn’t really want to. I know what’s happening here. Control.
“I’m never too busy for you, baby.” He dips and kisses me while maintaining his dizzying drives, and, of course, I’m a slave to his attentiveness. “We’ll start as soon as we’re back in Miami.” His pace increases, and I moan around his mouth, feeling my veins starting to heat.
“I could just learn with a professional instructor.”
“I’m professional.”
“At car chases, perhaps. Oh God.”
“You coming, baby?”
“Yes!” My head starts to swim with heat, my legs shifting on the bed, stretching, tensing, my mouth ravenous for his as the pressure builds between my legs. Danny’s pace increases, urgency overcoming him, and he presses his fists into the mattress, lifting, getting more leverage, his hips moving like pistons. “Danny!”
His head drops back, sweat pours, and he roars to the ceiling, thrusting hard and pushing me over the edge. The explosion between my thighs sends shockwaves through me, and I shake beneath him as he trembles above me, his hips now pulsing, his cock surging, his muscles rippling.
“Fuck.” He drops, blanketing me, and our rushed, labored breathing fills the room. “Thank you,” he pants. Thank you for trusting him with my body again.
He pulls out of me and falls to his back, his face cut, his jaw tight, his jeans halfway down his legs. “God, we fight and fuck like pros,” he wheezes, and I laugh as I pull my dress down and get to my knees, removing them the rest of the way for him, taking his boxers with them.
“So you’ll teach me?” I ask, my eyes unable to avoid the fact that even though he’s naked, he’s not naked. His bandages.
“Yes,” he breathes. “Is Madam satisfied?”
I push away my guilt and crawl up his body, showing my appreciation—and sorrow—with a long, slow kiss that he accepts and contributes to, but his hands remain useless on the bed. “I need to pee.” I get up, smiling at his moan of annoyance. “Back in a m—” A horrific pain bolts through my stomach, and I bend over, grabbing my belly. “Shit,” I hiss, immediately short of breath.
“Rose?”
Pain. It radiates through me, making every muscle constrict tightly, an instinctive attempt to curb the unbearable agony. I cry out, dropping to my knees by the bed.
“Rose!” He appears before me, a blur of a man, and I feel his frantic hands grabbing at my arms, my shoulders, my face. “Rose, baby, talk to me, please.”
I blink rapidly, trying to turn the blob in front of me into my husband, needing to see his face. “I—” I retch, the pain so intense, it’s making my stomach turn.
“Fuck,” Danny hisses, and I’m moving, feeling my body being shifted. I recognize the warmth of his body pushed into my back, his hands wrapped around my upper chest, his face in my neck. I sit between his bent legs as he leans back against the side of the bed, and I swallow, struggling to clear my foggy vision, my tummy tight, but . . . the pain subsides a little. It lifts, and I hold my breath in anticipation for its return. Scared. I’m so fucking scared. “Rose, baby, I beg you, please talk to me.”
I can’t even find the breath I need to speak and tell him I’m okay. Perhaps because I don’t know if I am. Am I okay? Is the baby okay? “Danny.” I exhale, beginning to panic, the pain still there but nowhere near as excruciating. “Danny, the baby.” My eyes dart frantically as I claw at his forearms wrapped around me, like I might find the reassurance I need somewhere in the room.
“Fuck, Rose, I can’t leave you.” The agony, the conflict in his voice is real. “Can you stand? Do you think you can stand?”
“No.” I feel utterly wiped out.
“Fuck it.” He maneuvers, and my back is quickly propped up against the bed. He appears before me, still a little blurred, so I fight furiously to win back some clarity. I find his face. The torture. The agony. His scar is wicked and jagged and deep. His eyes haunted. “Are you in labor?” he asks. “Fuck, no, what the hell am I saying? What’s happening, Rose?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. I have no idea what the fuck is happening. I’m certainly not in labor at sixteen weeks.
“I need to get my phone.” He gets up. Comes back down. Up. Down. “Fuck!”
“Go,” I tell him, starting to take deep, controlled breaths. “I’m okay.”
“Fuck’s sake.” He runs out of the room and is back moments later, his phone at his ear. “She’s conscious,” he says, falling to his knees before me, feeling my thigh, stroking and squeezing. “In the bedroom. Come straight through.” He hangs up and makes another call, and I fear I know to who.