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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

LEDGER

C ardboard boxes are scattered across the floor.

The crib, still in pieces, lies half-assembled while I squint at a confusing instruction sheet like it’s a foreign language.

It’s mostly made up of vague diagrams and two stick figures who look way too happy for people building furniture.

Marlee, wearing one of my oversized T-shirts, sits cross-legged on a blanket nearby, munching on a bowl of ice chips.

“Okay, what’s the difference between Bolt A and Bolt A-prime? They look identical.”

After examining the manual, I point to what I think is the correct answer. “Apparently one’s slightly more hopeful.’”

She raises a brow. “Did the manual actually say that?”

“Yes.” I grin. “It also says, ‘Ask a friend to assist you. Or a trained professional. Or anyone you haven’t made out with recently.’”

“Rude,” she mutters.

I glance up at the partially built crib, three sides standing, one leaning suspiciously.

“Why do all baby furniture manuals assume you have an engineering degree and three hands?” I grumble.

She chuckles, watching me, her hand lovingly caressing her growing belly. “I don’t know but you’ve been turning that Allen wrench like it personally insulted you.”

“Well, we’re on step fourteen out of twenty-three, and I’m ninety percent sure I installed one of the legs upside down.”

“I thought the slant was intentional,” she states with a cock of her head.

“It’s a baby crib, Mar, not modern art.”

“You know there was a day you referred to my body as modern art.”

I remember it all too well.

“Damn right I did, babe.” I lean over and kiss her soft lips wishing I could spend the rest of the day getting lost in them. “And look at you now.” I smooth my hand over her belly. “You’re the most beautiful piece of art I’ve ever seen.”

She sets her bowl of ice chips aside, stretching with an exaggerated sigh.

The stretch does extremely flattering things to her already glowing pregnancy curves.

Just the act of reaching back behind her pulls her t-shirt up enough that I can see the edge of her panties.

My cock twitches in my pants just looking at her…

thinking about all the things I could do with her new body.

“What are you doing?”

“Sitting. Watching,” she says innocently. “Mentally preparing to raise three humans while their father loses a cage match to crib parts.”

I chuckle. “Why does it feel like you’re enjoying this?”

“Because I am.” She flicks her tongue over her lips and I swear to God I’m suddenly feeling things I probably shouldn’t be feeling. “But also, I’m hormonal. Everything’s making me feel things. Including you. And that little sweat patch on your lower back.”

I pause, wrench in hand. “That’s very…specific.”

Holy shit.

Is my girl horny?

Marlee rolls to her hands and knees and slowly crawls closer to me like an animal hunting its prey and holy fucking shit it’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.

She is horny!

“You know what’s sexier than a hockey player?”

“ Literally nothing?”

She bites her lower lip as she smiles. “A hockey player building furniture for his babies. All sweaty and frowny and slightly murderous.” She runs a hand down my arm and I stiffen like I’m under attack. Because I kind of am.

An attack I’m so ready for.

“ Babe. You’re glowing. You’re beautiful and you’re making it very hard to focus on not impaling myself with this screw.”

“Then take a break,” she suggests softly. She straddles my lap before I can protest, my hands hovering awkwardly at her waist. I’m trying to be respectful but also I’m enjoying every goddamn second of this.

“You’re literally perched on top of hardware, you know,” I remind her with a grin.

“Oh, I’m aware.” She wiggles over my crotch and fuck, it’s all I can do to not come on the spot.

“I’m also aware of my hormones. And the fact that it’s been a long time since you’ve touched me like you mean it.

And I don’t care if the crib gets finished tonight or not, because I’m feeling things, Ledger. ”

She’s feeling things.

I want to fucking feel things too.

I want to feel a lot of things.

“Marlee, you know you cannot say ‘I’m feeling things’ while on top of me and expect me to remain a good clean respectable man.”

She kisses my cheek and then trails her tongue up my neck until she reaches my ear. Pulling my earlobe between her teeth she nibbles just enough to make me hella-hard and then murmurs, “Then be a filthy dirty bad one. For me.”

I smooth my hands up her rib cage, my thumbs just under her swollen breasts. The breasts I’ve dreamed about diving into since the day I noticed their growth. “You’re really trying to seduce me while surrounded by plastic bolts and baby-safe wood?”

She shrugs innocently but I know she’s feeling anything but innocent right now. “What can I say? You in dad mode must be my new kink.”

Fuuuck yes.

I blink and then toss the wrench aside with a dramatic sigh before I wrap my arms around her and scoot us back against the couch.

“Okay. Crib can fucking wait. Babies aren’t sleeping in it for a few months anyway, right?”

Marlee sighs and wraps her arms around my neck. “See? You’re already thinking like a dad. Such a smart beautiful man.”

I reach up and bring her lips to mine in a slow, deep kiss, taking my time tasting her and reveling in the feel of her new curvy body against mine.

Different from the first time we were intimate but no less sexy.

Pregnant with my children and wearing nothing but one of my t-shirts, she’s a goddamn knockout.

She grinds her hips on my cock and my composure cracks like thin ice on a pond.

I palm her ass, marveling at the added softness, the redistribution of her, that shockingly turns me on even more.

I push into her, cock straining against the denim barrier, and she whimpers, a desperate little sound that has me ready to commit actual violence against the pants in my way.

Her hands are in my hair, her lips all up on my jaw, leaving wet, trailing bites right up to the corner of my mouth.

“I want you, Ledger. Need you.” She palms my cock underneath her and whispers, totally unhinged, “Show me what this baby-maker can really do.”

“Jesus, Mar,” I breathe and run a hand between her legs, over the cotton of her underwear, testing just how slick she is. She shivers and presses into my palm, her whole body a livewire. “So wet…just for me?”

“Mmm.” She smiles. “All for you.”

“Want me to carry you to the bedroom?”

She shakes her head. “Too far,” she pants.

“Can’t wait.” Her hands are already working the button of my jeans.

She’s trembling with a messy kind of urgency, the kind that I can’t help but match.

I slide my hand under her shirt, letting my palm skim her stomach, then her breasts, warm and swollen, nipples already hard for me. She gasps and arches against the touch.

This is new territory for us, the heat of passion replacing the need and desire for conception.

This is my literal dream come true. Marlee Remington in my arms asking to be pleasured.

Begging to be satisfied. Every undulation and curve of her body is etched into my memory as if it were a well-loved book.

She’s as familiar to me as the grooves and lines of an ice rink.

I use both hands carefully at first, then more insistent when she moans into my neck.

The air is thick with the scent of new furniture and sweat and her, and I’m drunk off of it.

Half the bolts for the crib are digging into my thigh, the blanket underneath us bunching up, but none of it matters.

She yanks at my boxers and laughs breathlessly when my cock springs free. “You were not kidding.”

“I never lie about anything dick-related,” I say, and she laughs again, wraps one fist around me, and God, there’s something about the way she handles my body, almost clinical, a little clumsy, delightfully new.

She could hold my cock every minute of every goddamn day and never let go and I would never tire of the hold she has over me.

She straddles me fully and I help her get my cock lined up, running my hand along the inside of her thigh, slow as a prayer. She’s so wet I think I might die just from the anticipation, and when she sinks down on me, I fight a losing battle to keep my eyes from rolling back.

“Fuck, Marlee,” I grunt.

She kisses me hard enough to leave her taste on my tongue for a week and then she rides me, unhurried but hungry.

The kind of rhythm that says she needs to drag this out and also could finish in thirty seconds if I so much as look at her the wrong way.

Her hands come up under her breasts, holding them almost reverently, and I can’t help but look at the way they move, the way her whole body is different and yet the same as every time I’ve seen her.

She’s glowing, she’s fucking radiant, and she smiles down at me with this half-wicked, half-adoring look like I’m the last dessert at the party and she’s the only one hungry enough to finish it.

“Ledger,” she squeals, her voice winding up higher than I’m used to, and she rocks her hips in a circle that makes me see literal constellations. “You good?”

“Not even a little bit,” I gasp. She laughs, slow and throaty, and leans in so her forehead is pressed to mine.

We move together, my hands on her ass, her hands on my face, every inch of us trying to get closer than skin allows.

There’s a newness to it, a difference, like every nerve is being rewired for the reality of us now, and it’s making me fucking feral.

The sound of our breathing fills the room, heavy and erratic.

The soft rustling of the blanket beneath us echoes our movements, a sensual background to our desperate gasps and moans.

I watch her with a crazed hunger as she creates the beautiful work of art that she is right in front of me.

Her flushed cheeks, her hair falling wild, lips parted with the most honest of sounds I’ve ever heard her make.

I brush her hands away so I can take her breasts in my palms, feel the heat and weight of them, the way her heartbeat thrums through the soft skin.

I suck one nipple into my mouth and she shudders violently, nails digging into my shoulders, back arching so her belly presses tightly to my chest.

I let her ride me however she wants, let her find her own tempo, and it’s absolutely filthy the way she chases it, rolling her hips, lifting and dropping, clenching around me like she never wants to let me go.

She bites my lower lip when she’s close, almost angry with it, and I can feel her pulsing on my cock, feel it building inside her, all hot and frantic.

“Ledger,” she gasps, and I almost lose it at the sound of my own name coming from her mouth, all tangled up with need and love and that same bone-deep hunger I have for her.

I throttle myself down, grip her hips hard enough to leave marks, and thrust once, twice, three times, deep inside her until my balls tighten and I can’t hold back any longer.

“Mother fuck, Mar,” I pant as I begin to shake. “So, fucking good.”

“Oh…God!”

“Yes! Fuck, babe. I’m going to come. Right fucking now,” I say and then I let go inside her, filling her until we both shake.

She sobs out a broken sound, half laugh, half something holy, and her body tightens around me, every muscle locked up, every ounce of her concentration on fracturing right there in my arms. I hold her through it, let her ride it out, let her leave scratches down my back and sounds in my ears that I’ll want to remember until I die.

We collapse together, her damp forehead in my neck, my arms wrapped around her so tight she could easily let go and melt right into my bones. The aftershocks ripple through both of us, the room full of spent energy, half-assembled furniture, and something softer I can’t even name.

After a while, she starts laughing, breathless and exhausted, her whole body rocking in my lap.

“What?” I ask, grinning against her temple.

She wipes her nose on the back of her hand, then gestures loosely to the chaos all around us. “We just had sex on an IKEA manual. I’m not sure if that’s a new high or a new low.”

I peer over her shoulder and realize there’s a perfect impression of her knee in the soft padding of the folded instructions, right where the cartoon dude is giving a hearty thumbs-up.

“I think you improved the design,” I say. “Manuals should always come pre-broken in by hot sexy parents-to-be.”

She presses a kiss to my collarbone and sighs, blissed out. “These babies are going to inherit our utter disregard for instructions.”

“Or our ability to improvise,” I offer.

Marlee snorts, nuzzling her face deeper into my chest. “You, me, and a battered blanket in a sea of baby stuff. This is the life I always wanted and I didn’t even know it.”

I smooth her hair, sticky with sweat and static, and kiss the crown of her head.

I think about how I used to measure my life by ice time, by points on the board, and numbers on a jersey.

Now it’s measured by the minutes she laughs in a day, by the way she sighs when she’s happy, by the miracles growing inside her.

“I always wanted you,” I say, and it’s sappy as hell but I mean it with every cell in my body.

She doesn’t reply, but the way she fits herself into me says enough.

Eventually she goes quiet, her breathing soft and slow, lashes trembling until she’s almost asleep.

I’m content just to hold her, this girl who wanted nothing and then everything, this girl about to be the mother of my triplets.

The woman who will hopefully love me through every fear I have about becoming a father.

The woman I love with every fiber of my being.