Their Reign (The Rite Trilogy 3)

Her eyes mist. She picks up her coffee as a distraction, and sips, then sets it back down. When she turns back to me again, those eyes have turned angry.

“Are you sorry for the babies then?” she spits and swings her legs off the bed.

I catch her, hold on to her because if I let go, I’m afraid she’s just going to slip right through my fingers.

“Lois found the sonogram images. You’d hidden them, understandably. When I first saw them, what I felt was...” I pause, searching for the right words. “What I felt was hope. Joy maybe. Just the faintest suggestion of it.”

She smiles a real smile, one that’s unsure, but it, too, is hopeful. A tear slips from her eye, and I brush it away with my thumb, then slide my hand around the back of her neck to draw her to me and kiss her. She doesn’t fight me. She kisses me back, and I feel more wet tears smear from her face to mine. I taste the salt of them as our kiss deepens. I’ve missed her so much. Jesus. So fucking much.

I draw away, and she’s flushed, eyes that shiny black they get when she’s aroused. I pull her nightie off and lay her down. Strip off her panties. And I look at her for a long, long time. See how her body is changing and even more beautiful for it with her swollen breasts and protruding belly. I kiss her mouth, the space on her throat between her collarbones, her chest, and her breasts. I kiss her belly and lick the dark line that leads to her sex, where I open her legs and taste her as she moans. I note the subtle difference in her scent—pregnancy hormones, I guess—and I dip my tongue inside her, then return to her swollen clit.

She sounds the same when she comes. She grips my hair and pulls me to her, thighs closing on either side of my head, squeezing as she moans my name. When her body goes limp, I climb on top of her and make slow love to her. And I can’t stop kissing her. I can’t stop.

It’s when we’re lying in bed afterward that I see something I’ve never seen before. Mercedes giggling. It’s such a foreign sight that I find myself staring. Then I see why. And I watch in awe as her stomach moves.

“They’re kicking. Probably hungry,” she says, looking at me. When I don’t move, she takes my hand and lays it over her bump, and I feel it. I feel the pressing of a hand or a foot. Contact. The babies are making contact.

Mercedes watches me, but I am mute.

“Is the great Lawson Montgomery finally dumbstruck?”

“I’ve been dumbstruck for a long time now, little monster.” I have no idea why I say it, and clearly, she is taken aback and confused.

The baby stops moving then, and I clear my throat. Mercedes looks away first, slips her nightie on, and climbs out of bed.

“I need breakfast,” she says and hurries from the room.

I sit there for a minute, wondering what the fuck just happened. What I just admitted. Wonder what I’m doing.

I get up to pull on yesterday’s clothes, stiff from drying on the radiator. I pick up my phone from on top of the dresser where she must have set it, and I see several notifications but ignore them. They can wait. I wash my face and work my fingers through my hair.

She’s in the kitchen scrambling eggs and toasting bread when I get there. I set our mugs on the counter and pour us more coffee while I watch her, this strange, new Mercedes standing at the stove scrambling what looks to be a dozen eggs.

“I didn’t realize you knew how to cook.”

“It’s eggs.” She rolls her eyes. “But there’s a lot you don’t know about me, Judge. You’ve never bothered.”

“That’s neither true nor fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

The toaster pops.

“Can you put more bread in?”

I take the two pieces out and put two more in.

“There’s juice in the fridge.”

The dynamic between us is strange. Different. Domestic. But off. I remind myself that Mercedes and I do better when we fight, but I find I don’t want to fight. Not now.

So I set the juice and the toast on the small table, and when the eggs are ready, I take the frying pan from her to serve us.

“Sit down,” I tell her.

“I can do it.”

“I know you can. I just want to. Please let me.”

She agrees but only after a long minute, and I wonder if we can ever get back on the right track. What that track is. I wonder if she can forgive me because I have made mistakes with her. I applied the rules of The Society to us, to our lives at home, and I forgot that she’s human. That we’re both human. And that humans feel and have their hearts broken far too easily. And only when they're broken do we realize how hard it is to put the pieces back together again.

“The doors and the locks, was that you?” she asks as we eat.

I nod. I had them upgraded. “Your house was too easy to break into.”