Page 105 of Hold Him Like Gravity

“When has that ever stopped us?” Rico asked, grinding his hardness against my ass.

“That’s true,” I said, thinking of all the times we’d been just like this in the office of the meat shop. During workdays. After hours. We could never keep our hands to ourselves.

So I took a little lunch break with my husband.

Seven weeks later, when I was two weeks late, I was pretty sure we could pinpoint that little rendezvous as the moment we conceived our first child.

Rico - 3 years

“You’re not going to break her,” Renzo told me as I hesitated to lift our grumbly daughter out of the incubator in the room while Lore helped Kick in the bathroom.

“She’s fucking tiny,” I said, watching as she wriggled hard against the tight straight jacket thing she was stuffed inside of.

I’d been close to her, had run a finger down her face, had stuck my finger in her little hand. But I hadn’t held her yet.

I tried to make it sound like it was because she needed to be close to Kick for feeding and shit like that. But the truth was, I was terrified to pick her up, sure I might crush or drop her simply because I had no idea what I was doing.

“Here,” Renzo said, scooping up my newborn, giving her a little rock to settle her, then pressing her against my chest, giving me no choice but to put my arms around her.

She weighed nothing.

I was pretty sure Evander was twice her weight, easy.

“Finally,” Kick said, making me look up to see her coming out of the bathroom taking shuffling steps with Lore holding her arm. “I was starting to worry she was going to think her Uncle Bass was her daddy.”

Yeah, I had to give Bastian credit, he had no fear.

He’d walked in a few hours after Kick delivered the baby, scooped her up, and started to tell her all the ways the two of them were going to make her parents’ lives more difficult. It was a plan that began with toys that sang and ended with a drum set. And, potentially, an entire litter of puppies.

I had no idea where his ease with kids came from since he, arguably, had spent less time with them than I had. But I wasgoing to have to take a page out of his book and get comfortable with the delicateness.

Lore and Renzo excused themselves, having their own family to get back to, and I brought the baby over to the bed with Kick to nurse.

“She’s perfect,” Kick said.

“She gets that from you,” I said.

“I’m sitting here with ice panties on and two-day-old greasy hair,” she said, scrunching her nose up. “I’m far from perfect.”

That was where she was wrong.

Because lying there in the bed with our baby, I was pretty sure she’d never been more gorgeous.

Kick - 20 years

“Groin, knees, eyes, and nose,” Rico said.

“And it only takes six pounds of pressure to rip an ear clear off of the head,” Bastian piped in.

“Throat punch is always a good idea too,” Rico said.

“Mom!” Joss, our eldest daughter, yelled.

“What’s up?” I asked, pretending not to know what she was so annoyed about. Because while I empathized with her for having to deal with Rico and Bass at their most concerned, I hadto admit that their overprotectiveness toward the girls was one of my favorite things about watching them around the girls.

Sure, that was probably me projecting since I’d never had anyone to try to protect me from a literal abuser, let alone just a first date with a boy who may or may not be respectful enough.

I felt for Joss, I did.

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