Then she came. “Deacon…” Her hands slid down my back and gripped my ass, tugging me inside at a quicker pace, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes as she released a moan and a whimper.
I could feel her tightness around me, feel her squeeze me so hard she might bruise me.
“Fuck.” Her lips moved against mine as she spoke. “Deacon, I want to have your babies…” She spoke against my mouth as she bucked against me, finishing her high with a kick, as if she hadn’t already come fifteen minutes ago.
I released a moment later, filling her with another load, filling her so many times that I’d lost track. My cock was coated with her cream, and now it was covered with my own seed, our connected bodies soaked with each other. My thrusts stopped, and I stayed inside, softening, her contents starting to spill all over the sheets.
She breathed against me, her hands moving up my back and into my hair.
I was hot and sweaty, but none of that stuff mattered until I finished. The high made me forget the discomfort. Once the fun was over, I ached everywhere, my muscles tired, my back sore. But it was all worth it—every time. I breathed against her and didn’t move, thinking about the words she’d just whispered to me.
When she came down from her high, her eyes filled with meaning, like she realized what she’d blurted out.
Valerie had tricked me into knocking her up, anchoring me to her until our son was an independent adult. Cleo’s confession made me tense, made me think of a past I didn’t want to think about. I felt cold, violated. But then I looked into her eyes and remembered the woman I was with, the woman who healed my soul, not the one that ripped it apart in the first place. It was different. We were different.
I released the breath I’d been holding, let the weight leave my shoulders.
“I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s okay.”
“It just came out.” Her fingers dug into my hair, her eyes showing her insecurity.
That was what she felt in the moment, and there was nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t let fear ruin the best relationship I’d ever had. Fear was the reason I’d waited so long to be with her, wasted that time when I could have been happy much sooner. “It’s okay. Really.” I kissed one corner of her mouth then the other, my eyes on hers.
“Because I meant it.” She continued to hold me close, her fingertips in my damp hair. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed irregularly, like she was scared, afraid she’d ruined this by being honest with me.
I could never lose her. I could never lose this feeling, this joy. So instead of being afraid of the future, of her feelings, I decided to accept them, to trust her implicitly. “That’s okay too.”
We sat together at the table outside, the fireplace hot with flames.
She sat across from me and ate the dinner I’d prepared, barbecue chicken and asparagus. If she didn’t like my diet, she never showed it, always eating whatever I made and being grateful. She probably preferred something different once in a while, but she never voiced it.
We hadn’t talked about what she’d said in bed since it happened. Now it was a day later, and everything felt normal. I told her I wasn’t bothered by what she said, so her insecurity had been driven away.
But if someone else had said that, we’d be done.
I tried not to think about the future. Sometimes it made me anxious, for a lot of reasons. Sometimes I was scared I would die before I had time to finish everything I started. Sometimes when I thought about marriage, it made me sick. But I remembered I was comparing it to the only marriage I knew, and it would never be like that. Sometimes I thought about Derek as a man, one who would outgrow me and move elsewhere to live a life with his family…and I would never see him.
I chose to live in the moment—and appreciate it to the fullest.
She finished her food and stared at me. “Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything, baby.” I had nothing to hide—not from her. She was the one person in the world I could be completely myself with. She accepted me in the same package I came in. I could handle anything she wanted to share.
She glanced at her empty plate for a moment before she looked at me again. “Do you…ever think about having more children?”
I stared at her blankly because it took me some time to process what she’d asked. It was a heavy question. It was a question I didn’t really want to address. “No.”