by Amelia Wilde
I smile at her like my past isn’t slashing its way into the present. “You know what I think we need?”
“What?” Summer leans her head against my arm.
“A little vacation.”
She shakes her head. “We can’t afford that.”
“We can,” I say, repeating our word game from this morning. God, it was just this morning.
She squeezes my hand in agreement.
25
Summer
My hands tremble on the pan of garlic bread, and the corner bangs against the front of the stove.
Day is instantly in the doorway of the kitchen. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, and the garlic bread survived, too.”
He steps up behind me and kisses the back of my neck. “You sure you’re okay?”
I lean into his strong, solid body and try to shake off the nerves. “I want this to go well.”
He laughs, almost a snort. “What, you think he’s going to be happy to see me?”
“Of course he’ll be happy to see you.”
“You’re so cute when you lie.”
“Eventually. Eventually he’ll be happy to see you.”
“That’s my girl.”
Dayton’s sitting at the table in the kitchen when the knock comes on the door. Wes always knocks three times—loud and obnoxious and powerful. Today’s no different.
I take in a deep cleansing breath and open the door.
There he is, in jeans and a black hoodie, his posture as straight as if he’s in formation in the Army. It doesn’t matter that he’s trying to look relaxed. “Hi, Wes.”
His smile is crooked now, for reasons we’ve never talked about, but it seems genuine enough. “Hey, Sunny.” Wes wraps one arm around my shoulders and pulls me in for a hug. The nerves rise in my throat, suspiciously similar to morning sickness. I swallow it down.
Wes steps inside and kicks off his shoes, and the pressure in my ears can’t wait anymore.
“Nice place, sis. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before you moved in.”
“Wes, it’s not just you and me having dinner tonight.”
His eyebrows draw together and he drops his voice. “Please tell me this isn’t some bullshit blind date.”
I laugh, but the sound can’t cover how much I’m freaking out. “No. No way. It’s not a blind date. He’s here for me.”
“Who—”
Dayton chooses this moment to step out from the kitchen into the living room, into Wes’s line of sight.
“Hey, Wes.”
Wes’s green eyes darken, and he looks from Dayton to me and back again, his lip curling into a snarl, face going red, then white. Yes. This is going very well. Then he steps into the living room, going toward the source of his rage, and puts himself between me and Day. “I told you to stay away from him.” Then he rounds on Day. “I told you to stay away from her.”
“You knew about this, Wes.” I say it as quickly as I can. “You knew he was the father of my baby. Why are you—?”
“Because I still fucking hate it. Looking at you—” He looks like he could spit, and I don’t know if he means me or Day. Maybe both. “I’ve said enough.”
Dayton’s jaw has gone tense and hard. He shakes his head and steps forward, narrowing the space between them. “You said a lot of things, Wes. Times are different now.”
A vein at the side of Wes’s neck is bulging. He puts his back to Dayton, which strikes me as a mistake, but he does it anyway. “If you tell me you’re living with this guy, I don’t know what the fuck I’ll do—it’s a mistake.”
Over Wes’s shoulder I see hurt flash through Day’s eyes. Then his hard gaze returns.
The right thing to do is to stand up for Day. My boyfriend. The phrase seems ridiculously inadequate, even in my head, for what he means to me. “You know how I feel about you, Wes.”
He turns his head and crosses his arms, and I’m struck by how angry his, by how much his anger looks the same as when we were kids. “I trust you. I do. But I’ve chosen Dayton.” I give Day a little nod over Wes’s shoulder. His face is grim, but he steps closer and extends his hand. “Please, Wes. This is what’s best for everybody.”
Wes looks at Day’s hand, then up into his eyes.
Then he shakes his head.
My stomach drops. Shit. He’s going to walk out and make this hard for everyone. Shit, shit, shit.
“Wes—”
Wes puts one hand to his forehead and closes his eyes. Dayton reacts the same way I do, leaning in closer, watching. This is a moment of weakness in the middle of the tension, and my blood surges through my ears at every heartbeat.
Wes drops his hand and looks at me. “It smells good in here. Are you going to show me the kitchen?”
Day and Wes sit down on opposite sides of the table. I feel like a housewife from the 1950s with my plate of garlic bread. All I’m missing is the jaunty apron.
I wish I had an apron.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Dayton says, his arms folded on the surface of the table. “Sit down, Sunny, I’ll get it.”
I sit between them and put the plate in the center of the table.
“He’s getting the food? Did he cook it?” Wes gets a grip. “Did you cook?” He says it just as Day arrives back at the table with a serving plate full of ribs, and another one heaped with homemade potato wedges drowning in butter and seasoning. I will never breathe a word of how hard Day worked on the food. He’s normally cavalier in the kitchen. He can cook, but he labored over these ribs.
“Summer offered, but I insisted. She’s had a rough couple of days.”
Wes shoots me a look that’s half worry and half irritation. “What happened?”
“Oh…a lot has been going on.” The last thing I want to do right now is draw more attention to everything.
Dayton brandishes some serving tongs and a spoon and fills everyone’s plate, then takes his seat.
“How am I supposed to eat this?” Wes gestures at the plate with both hands. “For all I know, he’s trying to poison me.”
Day’s laughter pops the tension like a balloon. He stands up partway and Wes tenses, hands on the edge of the table, but Day only leans over and plucks a rib and a potato wedge from Wes’s plate. He eats the potato wedge first, then bites into the meat. “There, asshole. See? I’m trying to man up here. I’m trying to fucking make amends.” Day eats the rest of the meat off the bone and drops it onto his plate, leaving the sauce around his lips. “Don’t be a dick.”
The corner of Wes’s mouth turns upward.
Then he picks up a potato wedge and takes a bite.
I have to stop myself from staring at Dayton.
My chest is a bright center of pride and filled with a love I’m almost embarrassed to be feeling. Not because I love him. I’ve always loved him in a puppy love, first crush kind of way. This seems deeper. Truer. He never said a word about how nervous he was about this lunch. He had to be nervous, but he never showed it. Part of me wishes he would, but my Day—he tries not to show me anything that’ll make my life harder.
I use all of my Heroes on the Homefront skills to keep both of them engaged in small talk—Day, about his new job at Global Connect, and Wes about his Army career.
“Are you happy at Drum, Wes?”
He clears his throat and looks down at his empty plate. “Drum’s fine.”
I sense that there’s more. “But?”
“I’m not sure I’ll re-up at the end of my contract.”
Dayton’s eyebrows rise almost to his hairline. “Had enough?”
“Four deployments? Yeah, that’s been enough.” He looks at Day across the table. “Not all of them go off without a hitch.”
“You’re fucking telling me.”
They lock eyes across the table, and for the first time in my life, my brother backs down. It’s an odd sort of blink, and his eyes shift toward the blank wall next to the kitchen. What was that? When he resurfaces, attention refocused on his pla
te, I use the opportunity to complain about how narrow the aisles in the bodega are getting.
The conversations winds its way through safer topics until Wes checks his watch and says he has to head out.
He’s the first to stand up from the table.
He looks at me.
He looks at Dayton.
He does not smile.
“Fuck,” he says, and my relief is sharp and strong. I see the way his shoulders slump a hairs-breadth when he says it. This is him, accepting the new shape of my life.
We walk him to the door and Day shuts it behind him after he leaves.
I wrap my arms around him and lean in, the weight of his arms around me an anchor for the last of my nerves. “Give him time,” I tell him. He rubs one hand down the side of my arm. “He’s got a lot to get over before he realizes I’m yours.”
“A lot happened before you were mine.” There’s a burst of pleasure spanning out like a firework in the center of my chest. We’re having a baby together, and still, hearing him say that—
I pull him closer. “I was always yours.”
Dayton takes in a sharp breath, and then his lips are on mine, pure and possessive and sweet, and the sound I hear myself making defines sheer pleasure on every level.
Day flips the lock on the door, lifts me up in those arms of his, and carries me to bed.
26
Dayton
Ten Weeks Later
The door swings open before I can touch the knob.
“Whoa—”
“Finally.”
Summer steps out from behind the door.
She’s naked.
I step inside the apartment in a hurry and kick the door shut behind me. “I’m sorry I made you wait.”
“Me, too.” She rises up on her toes and drops back down again, every inch of her on display, and Jesus, it’s a sight. Pregnancy suits her. I could honestly revel in this forever. Ten weeks feels like nothing at all.
To me. Not to her.
It makes me want to relax. To stop looking out for Alexei. I can’t do that, but I also can’t spend every single moment fretting about him.
I have to enjoy her.
At five and a half months, her belly is a perfect curve. I’ve heard about the pregnancy glow before, but Summer is incandescent. Her blonde hair shines, it’s even longer than before, and if she let it down, it would brush the top of her pink nipples.
And finally, finally, the morning sickness is gone.
In Summer, it’s been replaced with hunger. She’s hungry all the time, and not just for food.
She wants me.
All. The. Time.
I shove down the lingering thought that I am not worthy of this, I’ll never be worthy of this, and flip the lock on the front door. Summer smiles rapturously. “I love that sound.”
I drink her in while I unbutton my shirt. “How long have you been this way?” She’s been perfect forever, and I always knew it, but this takes it to another level.
“What way?” She puts a finger to her lips. “Naked? Waiting for you? Needing you?” Summer takes one step, and then another, toward the bedroom, and taps a finger to her cheek, pretending to think. “I’ve needed you since that day at the sledding hill.” Her smile turns sultry. “Not like this, though. And I’ve been naked since I got home from work.” She kicks at the pile of her clothes near the corner of the couch. Her belly hasn’t reached maximum size yet, but she’s already avoiding bending down to the floor. I don’t care at all.
“Damn that meeting.” I drop the shirt and my undershirt to the floor. The pants are the next to go. She’s luring me to the bedroom, and I want to be caught.
“Yes, fuck that meeting.”
“I’d rather fuck you.” I’m hard as a rock when I catch up to her at the doorway to the bedroom and run my hands over her breasts—glorious, holy shit, they’re glorious—over her belly and between her legs. She’s already slick. “And you’re ready to be fucked.”
Summer looks up at me, pink darkening her cheeks, and says the word she knows will start everything. “Please?”
She wants my hands on her.
Begs for it.
How am I going to say no?
I’m not.
The most comfortable position for pregnant Summer is on her hands and knees on the bed, ass raised up in the air, her glistening pink pussy totally exposed.
It’s a miracle I don’t come from the sight of it.
“Please, Day, touch me—”
I do.
I touch every inch of her. The small of her back. The curve at the top of her hips. The back of her knees. She loves it when I wrap my hands around her ankles, throws her head back and moans at the pressure there. That’s the most startling discovery I’ve made about Summer. She’s not a whips and chains kind of girl, but she likes a little restraint. She likes to feel me holding her down.
Twist my arm.
I release her ankles and climb onto the bed behind her, bending down to speak into her ear while I thread my fingers through the loose bun at the back of her neck and tug. “You need more from me.”
She’s already panting, and her blue eyes search mine. “I need—”
“Ropes.”
Summer’s lips drop open and her eyes light up. “You want to tie me up?” I slide one hand back to her ankle and hold her there. She breathes out in a little sigh. “I might want you to tie me up.” She bites her lip. “But right now, I want—”
“I know what you want.” I bend my head and kiss her at the small of her back, inches away from a place that makes her shiver to brush against. “And to get it, all you need to do…”
“Anything.” Her fingers curl around the comforter.
“Hold very, very still.”
Summer grips the headboard, up on her knees. It’s a fantastic rhythm, my cock buried deep in her sweet, sweet pussy every stroke, her hips rocking back against me. She wants me all the way inside of her.
She likes to be fucked.
If I ever thought about her this way before, I imagined that she’d like it gentle. Slow. Soft.
And she does, about once every month.
Today is not one of those days.
She spreads her legs wider, giving me more room, and presses back harder against me. I can feel her tightening against me. I can feel her on the edge, and I know just what she likes.
On the next stroke, I pin her by the hips. I’m so deep inside that every move she makes is a wonderful torture. Then I pull her back from the headboard against my chest, drawing one arm up, and then the other, so her breasts rise as her arms settle around my neck.
“You—” She struggles for words. “You—”
“It’s time for you to come.”
“Pinned down like this?” Her voice is low, pleading.
“Pinned down like this, my cock buried inside you. You can’t get away.” She trembles against me, and I circle one nipple with the pad of my fingers, then drag them all the way down her body to her clit.
Summer arcs upward with a little cry, but I hold her against me. She’s so close. So close.
The slightest pressure on her clit starts the rolling thunder of her release, and she bucks against my arms, against my hands. It doesn’t matter. I am stronger, and I am relentless, and her arms go tight around my neck as she comes. I get my hand to her mouth just in time to catch a howl of pleasure that’s almost a scream. Her muscles are wound so tight around me that she very nearly takes me with her.
But instead…
Instead, when the orgasm subsides, she uncurls my arm from her chest and crawls forward.
I’m still inside her when she arches her back, sticking her ass in the air, and says, “More.”
Summer watches me as I sprawl back against the pillows. She’s pulled her hair into a slightly less disheveled bun on the top of her head and lays on her side.
I close my eyes.
“I like seeing you this way.” She puts the back of her hand against my chee
k and runs it down to my chin, resting it on my chest.
“What way?”
“Basking.”
Through the warmth of the afterglow, a pain yawns at the end of my stump. The sheet against the skin wasn’t an issue until now—against a raw spot? I don’t know—and the burning travels down through the foot that isn’t there, causing non-existent toes to curl into a cramp. I try to keep my face neutral. Summer sees the struggle.
“Are you going to your appointments?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
“Most of them.”
“When’s the next one?”
“Next week.” I open my eyes and bask again in the concern on her face. “Next week I have a fitting for the new prosthesis.”
Her mouth drops into a round O. “Already? That came up fast.”
I think about the years I’ve spent with this shitty temporary one, and close my eyes again. All those steps I took. Why did I wait so long? Why did I wait so long to be a decent fucking human? I could have started that process a long time ago, after what happened. It’s better this way. I’m doing work that actually matters. I have Summer, who is ravenous for me in a way I never could have predicted. Never. “Not nearly fast enough.”
She sighs happily. “One week and you’ll have your new leg. I’m so excited for you.”
“Me, too.”
“Although—” There’s a wicked tone in her voice that makes me open my eyes again. Summer grins, a glint in those blues I’d recognize anywhere. I’m hard. Instantly. “When it comes to legs, you have an average of two…” She takes my cock in her hand and squeezes.
“You want more already?”
She bites her lip. “I need more.”
“Jesus.”
“Pregnancy makes me horny,” she says with a pout. “I can’t help it.”
“I know it,” I tell her, and put my hands on her waist. Pregnant or not, she’s nothing to lift, to bring down on top of me. “I love it.”
