by Hart, Staci
And I wanted it with her.
Everything I’d ever wanted was sitting across from me, smiling only for me.
“What do you say we get out of here?” I asked, echoing the phrase from the first night, that night.
Recognition lit her smile. “I’d say, lead the way.”
❖
Katherine
As I watched Theo’s broad fingers slip the knot out of his tie, a thought crossed my mind that I couldn’t shake and didn’t want to.
Maybe magic is real.
In his way, Theo was magic. It was in everything he did, every touch, every word, every action. And the real magic was in how I’d been affected. Because the way I felt and the depth I felt it was beyond my understanding, a foreign flicker in my chest, my attachment to him a hook in my heart. The thought of being parted from him gave me physical pain, an ache and longing so deep, I couldn’t fathom its meaning.
Not unless magic was real.
Which meant I’d been wrong all along.
He turned, pulling his shirt out of his waistband, hands moving for the buttons, but when he saw me standing there, in the middle of the room, staring at him while I tried my best not to cry, he stepped into me and framed my face with his hands.
“What’s the matter, Kate? Is something wrong?”
I shook my head, overcome. “No, everything’s right. I…” I swallowed the stone in my throat, forcing admissions and truths down. I’d deal with them later. Right now, I only wanted one thing. “Kiss me, Theo.”
But for a breath, he watched me. His own admissions hummed through him, but he didn’t speak.
And then he gave me what I wanted.
His lips.
The surge of emotions in my chest didn’t ebb like I’d hoped. It wasn’t a distraction. It was an amplifier. I felt the change in me, felt the stir of it against my skin, felt the thrum of it in my pulse.
I was not myself. But I was more myself than I’d ever been.
I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t want to fight it. I’d been fighting myself for far too long, and I could feel the release of my grip on who I’d thought I was, what I’d thought I wanted.
And it was all because of him.
He held my face like I was a precious thing, kissed me as if he’d never kiss another woman, touched me like I was a treasure he’d searched for his whole life.
With deft hands, he undressed me, never breaking the kiss. My dress slid to the floor, our languid lips slow and deliberate as he slipped his hands into my panties and pushed them over the curve of my ass. My bra, unfastened with a neat snap of his fingers, joined the pile, and when his hand was free, he palmed my heavy breast, testing the weight with tender reverence.
My fingers weren’t still either. They made quick work of his shirt buttons, his belt, his zipper. He kicked out of his shoes, stepped out of his pants, pulled my hips toward his when I slid my hand down his back and into his underwear. My intent was to remove them, but my hungry fingertips wanted to taste his skin, the soft curve of his hard ass a wonder of musculature.
I turned us around in a slow sway like we were dancing, putting his back to the bed, stepping him into it, pressing him to sit. His arms curled around my waist, bringing me close, my body between his thighs and his face buried in my burgeoning breasts. And I watched him, tracing the smooth plane of his forehead with my eyes, marveling at the thick crescents of his lashes, the lush swell of his lips as they closed over my nipple. The pink of his tongue. The angular bridge of his Roman nose. The silky black strands of his hair against the white of my fingers.
He was beautiful, devoted in ways that were unfathomable in depth and beyond my understanding. I’d once thought it was perhaps only the baby that had triggered this in him. But if I combed back through the months, analyzed every touch, if I went back to the beginning, nothing had changed. From the first time he’d touched me, I had known. I had known he was different, that what we shared was other. It was why I’d run from him.
I’d known he would change me. And I would never willingly step into change.
It was a fault of mine, born from a desire to protect myself. But there was a level of protection I could never fully provide, discovered in him. In the way he gave and gave, in every moment of patience, in every word he spoke. He would do anything for me, my partner, lover, friend.
This was the pinnacle, the height of my understanding, the closest to love I could imagine.
I shifted, sliding one knee outside his thigh and into the bed, climbing into his lap. The other knee mirrored its twin, my hand cupping his neck and my lips finding his. Broad hands squeezed my ass, our height difference erased as I brought my hips to his, sought the hard length of his cock. The smooth crown brushed the aching center of me, drawing a deep moan from him, a moan I swallowed. His hands flexed, spreading my ass, shifting my hips until he breached me.
The kiss finally broke, our eyes locked and lust-drunk, lips parted and breaths mingling, the tip of my nose brushing the bridge of his as I lowered my hips, filling myself with him.
A fluttering of his black lashes, a deep, heavy sigh, the click of our bodies as we fit together, unmoving but for a pulse of his cock inside of me and an echoing flex of my core.
Words sat weighted on my tongue, foreign but for the feeling they evoked. Words that paled next to the fathomless, nebulous emotions I felt, but they were the best I had.
I couldn’t say them. But I could show him. So I did.
First with my fingertips on the smooth line of his jaw, with my eyes that searched the depths of his, eyes that could see the tether between us as clearly as if it were a tangible thing. Then, with the rock of my hips, I took my pleasure and gave it back in a wave. It was an exchange, a dance we knew every step to, one that had become second nature, a latent instinct.
He drew a breath that drew me into him and captured my mouth with a press of his lips, a sweep of his tongue. And with every motion, every breath, every heartbeat, I heard the words of my heart echoed back to me through him.
Every wave of our bodies brought us closer, my body opening up, my hips settling deeper, the grind of my clit against him spurring me, the pressure hot and building, seeking a vent, an escape, a release. Slow we moved, achingly slow, painfully slow, the intent to hold out, hold off, but the effect was the opposite—the throb of his cock, the pulse of his desire brought me closer, close enough to forsake my plan strictly for want of my pleasure.
Deeper was the grind of my hips, harder was the flex of his. Faster came the wave, tighter his fingers squeezed.
A throaty moan, rumbling and low. He took control of my hips, buried his face in my neck, buried himself in me to the sting of my thighs against his, the swell of his cock inside me. My orgasm was stayed, my attention wholly on him. The thick, ropy cords of muscle tight under my hands. The noisy rush of his breath. The pinch of his brows and the painful grab of his hands. With a hard thrust, he stopped us both for a single protracted moment of complete abandon. And he came with a deep throb and a silent cry before he raised me up and slammed into me to the beat of his heart.
And still, in the mindless stretch of his release, as he took what he needed, he gave me what I did, his body meeting mine without intent to press that delicate flesh between my thighs in the rhythm I desired, the angle and pressure I sought. But he did, that attunement of our bodies and the sight of his pleasure triggering a chain reaction that shuddered down my spine.
The orgasm first commandeered me. I was a creature of feeling and nothing more, my body its own and my mind lost. I was aware only on the very fringes, only in the places we touched. My sight was gone with a flash and a burst, my will dissolved.
I rode the feeling, drifting back to the ground like a cottonwood bloom, spinning and floating in the eddies of my desire. But before I made landfall, he kissed me.
Possession. It was a kiss of possession, bruising and deep, volumes and volumes of words spoken without sound. It was transcribed, transferred in the
most elemental of ways, impressing upon my heart all the ways in which I was his and he was mine.
A warm, salty tear slid over the curve of my cheek and into the seam of our lips. His hand cupped my jaw, his thumb brushing the track.
The kiss broke. My eyes closed, my face turning into his palm so I could press a kiss to its soft center. I didn’t want him to see me cry, didn’t want to speak. I hoped he wouldn’t ask, because if he asked if I was all right, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself together.
But he didn’t. He knew without knowing. He saw without seeing. It was his way, the simple understanding, the intuitive grace with which he handled me.
He tucked me under his chin and wrapped me in his arms. Twisted to lay us down. I burrowed into his chest, my tears coming steady, my breath coming deep, filling my lungs with the clean scent of him.
I was a stranger to myself. But I didn’t want to go back to who I had been.
I couldn’t if I tried.
His fingertips grazed the curve of my shoulder, sparking fire.
And magic, for a moment, was real.
19
A Wing and a Prayer
Theo
20 weeks, 3 days
Without a word, everything changed.
She told me in the way she kissed me, the truth of her heart alive in every teardrop, riding her shallow breath. And I basked in the knowledge that I’d found what I’d wanted for so long.
For her to lean in to us. For her to choose me.
For her to love me.
It was her trust in me, finally deep enough to unclench the fist around what she’d once believed was true.
I kissed her then, kissed her until her tears were dry and her body wound around mine, eager for more. So down I moved, taking her with my lips until I tasted another orgasm on my tongue. I sheathed myself in her, loved her like I loved her—with deliberate care, with calculated patience. With all of me, I loved her.
And we fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms, heartbeats synced and breaths measured and evenly matched.
Just like us.
Morning came too soon, the day promising to be hectic. But in that quiet moment, before the clock began to tick, it was just her and me and the creeping sunlight.
A sigh dragged in and out of her lungs, one of her arms slung around my middle, her head resting on the curve of my shoulder and her hair spilling onto the bed. Her belly pressed into my side, lamentably keeping her hips from me.
“Good morning,” she said, her voice husky from disuse.
“Morning,” I echoed. My arm snaked around her waist, and my hand splayed across the curve of her stomach.
Her leg slipped between mine. “I’ve never called in sick, but I’m tempted to this morning.”
I chuckled. “I know. Tommy and Amelia are at a fundraiser for children’s literacy this morning, and afterward, we have a meeting with the USA Times. I’m not going to be back until after dinner.”
I couldn’t see her face, but I swore I heard her frown.
“Don’t worry. I’ll have dinner in a Crock downstairs for you and Ma.”
“Oh, I wasn’t worried about that. I’ve been successfully feeding myself for twenty-six years. I just dislike being apart from you.”
“I dislike it, too.” I kissed the top of her head.
Another sigh, this one forlorn. “I wish we could at least meet for lunch.”
“Why? Is Eagan not behaving himself?”
She made a derisive noise. “Yesterday, he checked a bunch of books in and changed the return dates so they wouldn’t have fees. Under my login. Stephanie was furious with me. And he had the nerve to tell me he’d done it. Stephanie didn’t believe me, and he lied to her and said he hadn’t. Stupid cretin.”
“I’ll kill him,” I said flatly.
“Not if I kill him first,” she countered.
“Well, tonight we’ll stay in. The finale of Love Cabana is on.”
“And I think I’ll finish Hope’s sweater.”
I leaned back, smirking as I looked down at her. “Hope, huh?”
She shrugged, but a smile curled the very corners of her lips. “I was trying it on to see if I liked it.”
“And what do you think?”
“I wish it had more syllables, but I think I like it very much. Plus, you love it, which makes me love it more.”
The word love from her lips set a hot stir in my chest. Love. Such a fanciful word with so many meanings. I loved the way she said our baby’s name. I loved the way she loved me. I loved the child we’d made, and I’d never even seen her.
I felt the word on my tongue, the shape of it round and open. I kissed her so I wouldn’t speak it.
Mindful of the time, I let her go. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
She smiled, and I slipped away from her, getting out of bed. When I turned, she hadn’t moved.
Her body was comprised of rolling curves—cheek and chin, shoulder and elbow. Waist and hip, breasts and belly. Her eyes were swimming shades of blues just then, picked up and reflected by the white sheets, her cheeks pink and lips rosy.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, swollen with my child, radiant and fresh and smiling up at me.
So I climbed back in bed and told her so.
An hour later, we were nearly late, the two of us rushing around each other in a dance of compatibility. We’d gotten Ma set for the day, and as I took a sip of my coffee, Katherine adjusted the knot of my tie. I fiddled with the shoulder of her cardigan where it was caught under her shirt collar while she took the last bite of her toast. And just when I kissed her nose, the doorbell rang.
I frowned, checking my watch. We had to go. In fact, I was surprised Tommy hadn’t already busted in with Amelia in tow. It crossed my mind that it was him, but the thought held no logic. He’d have just walked in.
I strode to the door, and what I found nearly knocked me over.
A woman the exact duplicate of Katherine—plus twenty-five years, a healthy dose of patchouli, and maybe an alternate universe—stood on the stoop with a smile on her face and a carpetbag on her shoulder.
“Hi there,” she said, her voice musical. “Val said Katie is staying here. Is she here now?”
“Mom?” Katherine said from my elbow.
Sparrow’s eyes shifted, widened, and softened, all in a heartbeat. She moved for her daughter, and I shifted out of the way to let her by. I’d been completely forgotten.
She opened her arms, reaching for Katherine, who stood stock-still and ramrod straight, arms at her sides as her mom wrapped her up in a hug. Katherine’s eyes shot to me with the panic of an SOS.
“Oh, Katie-Bug,” she said into her daughter’s hair, rocking her where they stood. “I missed you, honey.” When she leaned back, her face was warm and admiring, emotional and a little intense.
“What are you doing here, Mom?” Katherine asked robotically.
“Well, when my journey was over in Washington, I decided to come this direction to see you.”
“You didn’t call.”
“I know, honey. But last night in Chicago, I had a dream and knew I had to get here fast.” She looked off with a wistful expression on her face, using her hands to help her explain. “I was in a meadow at night, the Milky Way splitting the sky in two. And as I looked up in wonder, a leaf fell from the stars and floated down to my hand. When I looked down, there were tiny eggs stuck to the veins, and they began to tremble and shake and split. And from their casings came sweet little ladybugs. I knew it was a sign. So here I am, and look! My little ladybug is having a baby!”
She wrapped Katherine up in her arms again as I stared, gaping. Katherine was made of stone.
“Ladybug eggs hatch larvae, not beetles,” she said flatly.
Sparrow laughed, that tinkling musical sound. It was unnerving how alike they looked and how openly different they were. “Oh, Katie. It’s been too long.”
“What are you doing here, Mom?” Katherine aske
d again.
“Well,” she started, finally releasing Katherine, who immediately relaxed with distance, “your father and I released each other again, and I thought, where better to go than to see Katie? I can’t believe you’re pregnant! Spirit wanted me to come here.” Without warning, she reached for Katherine’s belly, smoothing her hand over the curve. “Ooh, we should do a reading for the baby later. I’ll let you choose which tarot deck you want.”
I thought Katherine might actually be trying to crawl out of her skin like the pupal stage ladybug of her mother’s dreams. I resisted the urge to put myself between them.
Katie-Bug. No wonder Katherine hated nicknames.
I’d known Sparrow was out of touch with Katherine’s needs, but it seemed she was as deeply set in herself as Katherine was. I had to admit, I didn’t dislike Sparrow. I found her charming in her way, the small woman with dark hair in a kimono that smelled of sandalwood and patchouli. But I definitely wanted her to get her hands off Katherine and take three steps back.
For a second, Katherine blinked at her mother, who had turned and was inspecting me openly but without judgment, like one would look at a piece of art or a steak in a butcher’s window.
Katherine cleared her throat. “Mom, I’d like you to meet Theodore Bane.”
“I hope it’s okay that I call you Theo. I’m a sucker for nicknames. Now come here, I’m a hugger.” She reached out with slender arms and wrapped me up in a warm, pleasant hug.
I glanced at Katherine, who watched us like we were covered in Ebola.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Lawson.”
At that, she laughed. “Please, call me Sparrow.” She turned to Katherine. “Is this your boyfriend, Katie?”
