Page 25

Before he could start stripping the crib and emptying the drawers of the baby clothes he’d meticulously folded, I took his hand and drew him against me, wrapping my arms around his waist like we were going to dance.

“Not tonight, hot stuff. You seem to keep forgetting how late it is. It will get done. We won’t forget, and if it doesn’t, I’m sure the detergent you used the first six times will be sufficient. ”

“But—”

I pressed a finger to his lips. “Not tonight.”

Quaid and I swayed to the soft tinkling song of the mobile. The look in his eyes spoke of unending love, longing, and happiness.

I smirked, adopting a mischievous grin. “I’ve got it.”

Quaid quirked a brow. “Got what?”

“Onyx.”

His expression suggested he didn’t understand.

“If we have a boy. We can call him Onyx.”

Quaid’s eyes glimmered with amusement. “That’s… a big fat no. How about you leave the naming to me.”

“Nuh-uh. You said I could pick the girl’s name.”

“Again. I never agreed to that.”

“I picked Moonbeam, by the way. It’s catchy, don’t you think? We could call her Moon for short. Or Beam.”

“I think you’re overtired. ”

“My second choice is Sunny. It’s pretty, too. Dainty. Her middle name would be Delight, obviously.”

I squawked when Quaid jabbed my ribs, digging his fingers into the tender flesh. He wouldn’t let up, and we wrestled and laughed until we almost lost our footing.

“Okay, mercy, mercy. It was a joke.”

He squeezed my face between his palms. “No more names. You are officially fired.”

“One more.”

His smile was my undoing. It radiated from his baby blue eyes, twinkling with life and love. “Fine, but I already hate it.”

“You won’t. This is the best one yet, and if you do hate it, you aren’t the Quaid Valor I thought I knew.”

He narrowed his eyes and pressed his forehead to mine, our hips still moving of their own accord even though the mobile had gone quiet. “What?”

I braced for impact, knowing he would take me out. “Java. Or Mocha Java, but we can call her Java.”

The man was quick and cunning. I somehow ended up on the nursery floor, howling with laughter until tears filled my eyes.

Quaid straddled me, pinning my arms above my head and restraining me with his knees digging into my sides.

To be fair, I had more weight and strength than him and could have moved him easily, but I didn’t try.

He hit me with a bruising kiss that officially shut me up. It started playful and rough, aggressive in the loving way Quaid sometimes had when taking a dominant role in the bedroom. I pretended to fight him off, and he pretended he was successfully curtailing my escape.

The kiss quickly changed to something soft and tender. His hold relaxed, no longer locking me in place as his body molded with mine. Soon, we were stretched out on the floor, a tangle of limbs and twisted clothes, lost in one another.

“You promised me a massage,” he said into our kiss several minutes later.

I hummed. “I didn’t forget. I planned to deliver once you finished in the shower, but you didn’t make it that far. Then this happened.” I arched my hips, rutting against his interested cock straining his trousers. “Not that I’m complaining. It’s hot when you get rough.”

Quaid made a soft noise in his throat and ground against me the same way. “I’ll shower in the morning.”

Another lingering kiss followed. He released my hands and fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. When he tried to remove his tie without breaking contact, he nearly choked himself, and we dissolved into laughter once again.

“Damn thing is stuck.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“I want to be naked with you. Can you help?”

“How about we take this to the much more comfortable bed in the next room? I don’t know about you, but my middle-aged ass is not a fan of fucking on the floor. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and I’ll give myself a sore back for a week.”

“Agreed. Remember last time?”

I snorted, recalling the time I’d taken Quaid doggy style on the living room carpet several months ago.

He’d cursed me for six days straight until the rug burn on both his knees heeled.

Mostly, it was because Jordyn had noticed the thick scabs during one of their gym sessions and teased him relentlessly.

Quaid helped me to my feet and took one last wistful glance around the room before shutting off the small lamp. He closed the door behind us, pressed his palm to its surface, and didn’t immediately follow me to the bedroom.

“Soon, hot stuff. Very soon.”

A faint smile touched his lips. “Soon.”

Married life had given us routines and bedtime rituals we adhered to most nights when crawling into bed at the same time. I used the bathroom first since I was less meticulous and didn’t need long to pee and brush my teeth.

Quaid, however, honored a long-standing skin routine he claimed kept him young, which included special soaps and expensive moisturizers.

He groomed his eyebrows, brushed and flossed his teeth, trimmed his nails, and used the toilet.

It never took less than fifteen or twenty minutes.

On nights he showered before bed, he could be in there for an hour.

By the time he finished, I had the bed turned down, the lights low, the blinds closed, and I had donned a fresh pair of boxers for sleeping.

Quaid changed and crawled in beside me, setting an alarm on his phone.

“What time are you getting up?”

“Five.”

“Good lord. Make it seven.”

“No. I want to be at the house at seven.”

“Quaid. Tomorrow’s Sunday. The holiest of holy days. For the love of God in heaven and his son Jesus Christ, let those poor souls sleep in.”

“Your mother would be so proud of that observance. Should I call and tell her we’ll join her for morning mass?”

“No! Fuck my life. Five it is. What was I thinking? The Davises probably won’t sleep anyhow. Their kid’s missing. ”

Quaid snorted but slapped a hand over his mouth to cover it. “You’re going straight to hell.”

“I accepted that a long time ago. Will you be my plus-one?”

He plugged his phone in and set it on the bedside table. “I think they have a party room saved for our kind, don’t they?”

“Oh, stop. You don’t believe that shit.” I dragged him down into my arms and continued where we left off in the nursery, kissing and touching his warm skin. We could get into wild debates about the afterlife another time. Tonight, I wanted Quaid. His body, but most of all, his heart.

I rolled him to his back and straddled him. “Stay.” Leaning over, I dug through the supply drawer, finding the bottle of scented massage oil I’d bought a while back for exactly these moments. “Did someone mention a massage?”

“Yes, please.” He gnawed his lower lip, a sparkle in his eyes.

Considering the oil was messy, often got on the sheets, and was hell to wash out, I assumed after the first time I used it, Quaid would have thrown it away, but he hadn’t. It turned out the massage was worth the headache of cleanup. We’d gone through half a bottle.

I coated my hands, warming the oil with a brisk rubbing of my palms. “Where should I start?”

“Back and shoulders.”

I rose to my knees, allowing him to roll over.

Quaid folded his hands under his head and sighed the moment I pressed the heels of my palms into the tight muscles along his spine, gently at first, then adding pressure as the tension loosened.

Out of respect for the late hour and my husband’s need for sleep, I didn’t spend as much time as usual on each area, but I still gave him the attention he needed.

His shoulders and neck were always the worst, and I dug my thumbs into the taut muscles, working out the hard knots of stress that had accumulated throughout the day.

He groaned each time I hit an especially tight spot, melting deeper into the mattress.

“I don’t want anything stupid,” he mumbled against the pillow after I’d moved my focus to his spine and lower back, savoring the silky glide of his skin under my oiled hands.

“What do you mean?”

“For a baby name. How many cases have we worked where the names were so outrageous we couldn’t help making fun of them?”

I chuckled. “There’ve been a few. Remember Basil?”

“How could I forget? You called him Herb Boy. I don’t want something crazy and out there. I want something… normal. Ordinary. Is that dumb?”

“No. We both know what it’s like growing up with names that are outside the box.”

He hummed in agreement as I shifted lower, massaging the taut globes of his ass with their pale blond, peach-fuzz hair.

Quaid had the most delectable ass on the planet, and it was all due to killer genetics.

The man didn’t do any superior glute exercises to earn them, they were simply a gift from god, and I thanked the big man upstairs daily because his ass was my undoing.

Bending, I kissed the pair of dimples that bracketed the base of his spine.

Starting at his crease, I drew a path with my tongue, riding each vertebra as I coasted up the valley and curve of his back.

He tasted like Quaid and perfumed oil, but I didn’t care.

My body hummed with desire. My cock ached with need. When he shivered, I shivered in turn.

At the base of his neck, his hair, already sun-bleached from the summer, tickled my nose.

I kissed along the curvature of his shoulder as I slowly dragged my erection along the crack of his ass, wedging it as snug as I could and reveling at the sensation.

The oil I’d massaged into his skin facilitated the glide and radiated electricity through every cell of my body, making me feel more alive than ever.

I moved his hands above his head and threaded our fingers together as I nipped his ear and scraped my teeth along the five o’clock shadow of his jaw, seeking his mouth.

He turned his head, and I kissed him. Our tongues collided in a familiar, silky glide. Teeth clashed with the urgency of our connection. I rode the crease of his ass crack as he groaned into my mouth, moving with me, rutting his erection against the bedspread.

I broke the kiss, and he fluttered his eyes open, panting. Lust and dazed euphoria stared back at me. “Az…” His voice rasped, thick with need. “Need you.”

“Roll over.”

I gave him space to move, and he complied. I kissed him again, and he arched his hips, seeking a connection. Friction. I chuckled and pulled free of his mouth.

Straddling him, I found the oil and drizzled some over his chest, letting it pool in his navel. He shivered, with pleasure or the chill of the liquid, I wasn’t sure.

“This bed is going to be a mess,” he said.

“Don’t care.”

“That’s because you’ve never tried to get oil out of cotton sheets. It’s a nightmare.”

I recapped the bottle and leaned over him, letting our cocks brush together. “Are you asking me to stop?”

“Hell no. Keep going.”

I tossed the bottle aside and glided my hands over his chest, moving the oil to coat his skin .

It was less of a massage and more of a fondling sort of foreplay. I focused on his pecs, initially working the muscles loose but more or less teasing his nipples and enjoying his every gasp and whimper.

Quaid’s flushed cheeks and quivering lips encourage me to continue. His pupils dilated with pleasure, drowning out the blue of his irises.

When he couldn’t keep his hips planted and repeatedly hiked them off the bed, seeking friction, I moved lower, grazing his ribs so lightly with my fingertips that he squirmed. Quaid was ticklish, and his ribs were a hot spot.

I used some of the oil on myself, stroking my cock as a fire burned in Quaid’s eyes.

“Az.” He reached for me.

I caught his hand and held it. “I’m getting there.”

He whimpered an objection, conveying that I was getting there too slowly for his liking.

I shuffled lower, releasing his hand so I could focus on massaging the tops of his thighs, purposefully avoiding his swollen cock, and earning a level-ten sneer. I smirked at its presence. “That will get you nowhere.”

“Please fuck me. I want you inside me.”

“Patience.”

But Quaid didn’t have patience. Ever. Not in the bedroom. He was needy when it came to sex. He let me work on his thighs but found the oil and dumped more onto his belly. Too much. It instantly ran rivers down his sides and onto the mattress.

“Oh shit.”

I laughed. “I was being careful. Now look what you did.”

Quaid didn’t care. He was done messing around.

Done with the massage. He snagged my wrists and tugged me down on top of him.

I slid on his slick body, but he caught me, wrapped his legs around my waist, and wouldn’t let me free.

He spread his oily hands across my back and rutted, our cocks sliding against one another in the confines of our greasy bodies, gliding easily and luxuriously together.

“Oh my fucking god. This is insanely good. I could come like this.” I growled against his mouth as he kissed me, digging his nails into my skin and lashing out with his demanding tongue.

We were slippery and wet with oil, skin blistering and burning with pleasure. I couldn’t think beyond the moment at hand. The friction. Quaid’s glorious mouth on mine. The noises escaping his throat.

Hands explored, touched, groped, and clung.

“Don’t stop,” Quaid breathed into our kiss. Panting. Trembling. “Az. Az… Oh god… Az… I’m…” The frantic pitch in his tone told me he was right there.

I picked up my pace, and on a strangled cry, the warmth of Quaid’s release pooled between our bodies, mixed with the oil and our sweat.

He shuddered in my arms, hands grasping for purchase, nails leaving stinging welts over my ass cheeks as he guided my movements, controlling each thrust as he rode out his orgasm. I didn’t stop moving as coiling pleasure took root in my core and spread to my limbs.

I came a minute later, spilling between us, forgetting how to kiss as I pressed my forehead to his shoulder and rocked against him. “Fuck, Quaid… Jesus… so… fucking… good.”

Out of breath, we collapsed in a pile of sated limbs, bodies slick and glued together. After a time, Quaid’s soft laugh by my ear encouraged me to lift my head.

I peered down at him, seeing contentment. Happiness. Bliss.

“We are such a mess,” he said, still chuckling.

“So, about that morning shower.”

“It’s happening right now. Join me? ”

“I think I have to.”

We stripped the bed, showered together—soaping each other and trying not to get frisky again—and found clean sheets before crawling under them. It was long past two in the morning, and Quaid’s five o’clock alarm taunted us both.

“We’re going to be sorry in the morning,” I said, spooning him against my chest and nuzzling my nose against the back of his neck.

“Consider it practice for when the baby comes.”

“Quaid Valor, your sleep habits were awful when I met you, and that was long before we were planning a family. I don’t think it’s a viable excuse.”

He shrugged and wiggled closer, lacing his fingers with mine and resting our hands together against his abdomen. “Maybe I was made for sleepless nights and babies.”

And wasn’t that the truth.