Page 105 of Beloved Beauty
My breath punches out of my lungs in a sharp exhale. My hands move on instinct, locking around her hips. She moves, hips rolling in a rhythm that’s unhurried, intentional, devastating.
She knows what she’s doing.
I slide a hand up her spine, fingers splayed between her shoulder blades as I pull her down to kiss her.
“I want you to come inside me.”
“I always come inside you, babe.”
My head tips back against the pillow, eyes shuttering closed for half a second. I force them open because watching her this way––her body silhouetted by the light from the bathroom, hair wild, lips parted, eyes locked on mine––is its own kind of high.
When I come, it’s with her name on my lips, and her body wrapped around mine.
She collapses on top of me, breathless and boneless, her cheek against my chest, our skin slick and tangled and real in that way only the aftermath can be. My arms slide around her, pulling her closer, anchoring us both in a quiet that hums with afterglow.
Her fingers trace lazy shapes on my ribs, and I think she might be falling asleep until she blurts out, “I want a baby.”
My entire body stills beneath her, every nerve suddenly on alert.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out at first. I heard her––clear as day––but some small, stunned part of me wonders if I really did.
And then she lifts her head, looks me in the eyes. “The IUD––I want to take it out.”
A beat.
“I want to get pregnant, Alex. Soon. So the baby’s born at the start of your off-season. I know we haven’t been married long, but I’ll be thirty-two soon, and you want a big family, and I don’t want to wait.”
My heart pounds hard and hope unspools in my chest like a runaway thread.
She’s serious. She wants this.
“You know that’s what I want. If it’s what you want too, I’m all in.”
She smiles. Soft. Certain. “It’s what I want.”
I wrap my arms around her, tighter than before.
“Okay,” I whisper into her hair. “We’re gonna make a baby.”
And bam. The rest of my life and everything I’ve ever wanted tilts into place.
Chapter 31
Alex Sebring
The music’s pounding—something bass-heavy and angry—and I’m drenched in sweat, halfway through a brutal set when I sense movement in the doorway.
I glance up between reps—and there she is.
Jeans. A plain white T-shirt. Ponytail.
No makeup. No fanfare. Just Magnolia in her natural state, and somehow, it guts me every time.
She looks like Sunday mornings and forever plans. The type of woman who could knock the wind out of you without even trying.
She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. I rack the bar and tug one earbud free.
“Careful,” she says. “If you keep looking like that, I might forget what I came in here to say.”
