“What then? I know you love me, or you wouldn’t have offered me a divorce.”
“Do you know how fucking wrong that sounds?”
“Yes,” I whisper, “but we’ve never been your average couple. I love you, Damian. You know. You’ve always known.”
“You wanted your freedom, and you deserve it.”
“I wanted the freedom to be independent, to make my own choices, not to be free of our marriage.”
“It was too damn hard to let you go once. I can’t do it again.”
A flicker of hope lifts from the ashes of my emotions. “I choose you. I choose us, if you’ll have me with my baggage and child.”
Pressing his hands on either side of my body, he cages me in with his arms. “You don’t understand. If I take you back, I’m never letting you go. Ever. If you make this choice, you’re stuck with me. Letting you go nearly killed me. I won’t have the strength to do it again. If you let me back into your life, you belong to me for as long as we both shall live.” His regard is fierce, angry almost. “Can you handle that?”
If his speech was supposed to put me off, it didn’t work. I know what I’m letting myself in for. “I’m not letting go, either. You’re mine, Damian. You can come back home with me, and we can learn to be a family, each with our space to grow, and you can tell those women running after you to back the hell off because you’re taken.” I flash him my wedding band and ridiculously big diamond. “This ring says so, and so does the contract we both signed on the day you married me.”
He clenches his jaw as he searches my eyes. Two seconds pass. “You better be damn well sure about this.”
Snaking my arms around his neck, I plant a kiss on his lips. “I wouldn’t have been here if I weren’t. I came to take you home.”
Emotions run through his eyes. Still he doubts me, fights me. “You waited three fucking months to tell me this?”
“I had a life to sort out. I’m not coming to you broken and needing to be fixed. I’m coming to you whole, offering you everything I have, if you’ll have it.”
He rests his forehead against mine. “Fuck, Lina.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
He grins against my lips. “Fuck, yes.”
“That’s better.”
He cups my ass, jerking me to the edge of the desk and against his hardness. “There’s something else that’ll be even better.”
“Wait.” I push on his chest. “There’s more I need to say.”
He growls. “Can you say it quickly? It’s been a while.”
“I’m pregnant.”
He releases me so fast he stumbles a step back. “What?”
My hope dwindles again. Maybe he doesn’t want this, but he’s the one who refused me birth control. “We didn’t use protection, Damian.”
“I know that. Say it again.”
“I’m pregnant.”
He looks shell-shocked, but also something else. He looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time, and when his gaze drops to my stomach, there’s reverence in his eyes.
He lifts those dark, haunted eyes to my face. “How long?”
“Three months.”
His jaw locks. “You should’ve told me.”
“I wanted to sort out my life, first. I needed that time alone, and I knew you wouldn’t grant it to me if we got together again.”
He drags a hand over his face, staring at me with that stunned look.
“If this isn’t what you want,” I continue, “I’ll understand.”
“If this isn’t what I want.” He raises his head to the ceiling and closes his eyes. When he looks back at me, he appears upset. “I knew exactly what I was doing fucking you without a condom.”
“Then we’re okay?”
“No, Lina. We’re not okay. We’re better than okay.”
“You mean you’re happy?”
He lets out a long breath. “Ecstatic.” Grabbing me to him, he crushes me in his arms. “But if you ever hold back information of this proportion from me again, anything that concerns you, me, or us, there’ll be consequences, and you’re not going to like them.”
“You burnt your whips and paddles.”
“There are other ways,” he says in a low voice, his lips ghosting over mine.
“Denying me orgasms is a hard limit.”
“Fine. We can go shopping for toys.”
“Toys?”
“I’m a semi-sadist, and you enjoy the pain.”
“Semi-pain,” I correct.
“Semi,” he agrees, “but from now on, I want to know everything. I want to know when you have a menstrual cramp and when you bump your toe.” He taps my temple. “I want to know when you’re sad or have a doubt. Can you do that for me?”
“Can you give me space?”
After a couple of seconds, he asks, “How much space?”
“Enough to be me.”
“Yeah.” He frames my face between his hands. “That’s doable, because I want all of you, everything you are, and everything you’re yet to become.”
Biting my lip, I give him a sultry look. “I think this can work.”