Page 147 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

His face went somber, and sad, and a few tears spilled over. He brushed hers away, with careful fingers. “We always knew it wouldn’t be easy, didn’t we?” he asked, aiming for light, but heavy with truth.

She nodded, tracing the edges of his chest tattoo with a fingertip. Sometimes, when they were in bed, she fit her teeth to the marks to see if it was still a perfect match. It was. But she didn’t test it now. Worked instead on swallowing down her tears and clearing her throat to get her voice back.

When she felt properly stern, she lifted her gaze to meet his again, and said, “We did know it wouldn’t be easy. It’s never been easy. But don’t wish to take it away. Because that would mean…” The lump in her throat swelled, and she swallowed helplessly against it. “Don’t wish that. We made it out the other side.”

“We did.” He cupped her jaw and drew her in close for another kiss. This one was sweet in the way his lips clung to hers, and salty to taste with tears. After, his thumb traced slow patterns across her cheek, breath shared in the close space between them, his eyes a dark blur at this distance. There was no mistaking the reverence in his voice when he said, “Do you know how proud of you I am?”

“Yeah.” And she did know; had seen it shining, radiant, in his face, had felt it emanating from him like a physical heat: onthe dock, after he’d pitched Boyle’s gutted body into the water; in the hospital, when the sedation wore off and he found her hovering over him; and during all the years before that, before he’d ever even touched her with intent, when he asked her about her grades, and she showed him the tidy row of As on her report card. He’d been proud of her before she’d ever done anything important, and was proud of her still. “Back atcha.”

She kissed him again, marveling that shecould. That they’d both survived the relentless hurricane of Harlan Boyle’s attention, that their babies were safe, and sleeping soundly, so that this stolen moment alone together could exist in the first place.

His hand slid back to sift through her hair, and take a gentle fistful of it. His other hand settled on her chest, right over her breastbone, where her heart throbbed slow and deep for him. Always him. Only him.

She put her hand over his heart in turn, and leaned in closer, lips parting against the slick press of his tongue. His touch trailed down, between her breasts, to her belly, where his hand splayed open over the softness below her navel. She wasn’t showing yet, but his palm spanned the place where the baby curled, tiny and growing.

She pulled back, their lips parting with a wet smack.

Mercy was panting. His gaze, when she caught it, was wide, and awed, his pupils blown huge. “Ava.”

She covered his hand with hers. “I know, baby.” She’d told him she was pregnant in the thick of the action, both of them slick with stress sweat on the lawn of a cabin deep in the swamp, the night before she went to torture his half-sister for information.So muchhad happened, and they hadn’t begun to unpack any of it.

But this, the expansion of their family, was what he cared about. What she cared about, too. They’d both learned long ago how best to compartmentalize the bad shit.

“I know,” she murmured again, and urged his hand farther down.

His gaze dropped down to between her legs, where his fingers slid through the gathering wetness there, and then parted her, so that two could hook up inside of her.

Ava spread her legs wider on a shaky exhale. Clutched at his chest with both hands and pressed down on his fingers, the delicious stretch of them, only a tease for what she really wanted.

He worked her open, thrusting up again and again with his fingers, spreading them, teasing a third, the wet noise of it getting louder, and more obscene in the quiet of their bedroom. Ava rocked her hips, chasing the rhythm he built. Watched her fingers dent the sun-bronzed skin of his chest, and, even as pleasure coiled like a spring in the pit of her belly, couldn’t help but think about all the ways she might have lost him.

Her eyes burned and welled with fresh tears. She closed her eyes against their sting and bore down on his hand, three fingers now, pushing in firm and steady on each drop of her hips. Motherhood had turned her into a multitasker, and she had the capacity to feel all sorts of ways during sex. Or the lead-up to it, anyway. Right now, she wanted him so acutely that it hurt, and yet the sweeping tides of relief, and gratitude, and post-adrenaline-rush crash wouldn’t leave her.

He settled his free hand on the small of her back, down low, and urged her hips down, and down, and down. “You okay?” he asked, and his voice had gone deep and gravel-rough; he knew exactly the state she was in, because his eyes, when she cracked her own open, were damp, too. “You wanna stop?”

“No. No, just–” She shifted back, and regretted the press of his fingers immediately. But she wriggled back across his hipsand took his cock in hand. It twitched in her grip, and she swore under her breath when she looked down and saw how flushed and hard he was. Dripping at the tip, ready for her.

She was never going to get over the size of him. Would never grow jaded of the physical proof of just how much he wanted her. She was pregnant with her fourth child, but looking down at him in her hand, she felt seventeen again, skin hot and too-tight with want, dizzy with the knowledge thathewantedher.

The only man she’d ever wanted, and he wanted her back, just as badly. It made her feel like she was flying – or maybe flying apart.

Mercy sat up straight, and kissed her slack mouth, her cheek. Mouthed wetly at the edge of her jaw, and then her earlobe, until she was shivering with overstimulation. His voice was dark velvet when he murmured, right against her cheek, “You need it, baby? You need it inside?”

Had he asked that at random, in the middle of the day, or thrown out a similar cheesy porn line, she would have burst into helpless giggles. But right now, she stroked him root to tip until she felt more than heard his low grunt, and panted, “Yeah. Yeah, I need it.”

“Okay. I know you do, fillette. Hold on.” Then he gripped her hips, and flipped them.

“Merc, no! Your shoulder–” He pressed her down to the mattress, caged her in with his arms, and cut her off with a kiss.

His tongue pressed hot and slick into her mouth, pressed deep, in imitation of a good fuck. Against her lips, he murmured, “If I’m not dead, then I’m not hurt too bad to give you what you need.”

That was demonstrably untrue. In general. But it hadn’t proved true, yet, and Ava’s whole body was pulsing with want. If he felt strong enough to spread her thighs with his broad, hotpalms, and push her legs up and out; felt steady enough to settle there against her, cock dragging along her wet folds, then she wasn’t going to protest anymore.

“Please.”

Time slowed when he slid inside of her. Her whole world narrowed down to the place where they were joined, the hard stretch, and the branding heat of him; his weight denting the mattress beneath her; the sure stroke of his hands up her thighs, and across her hips, her ribs. Every worry, every responsibility faded. She was no one and nothing but one-half of a familiar, feverish need, a want made loving by long-practice and the kind of transcendent understanding that had nothing to do with the physical act itself.

It was always so good. So clarifying. But this morning, back in their own bed, draped in forgiving yellow lamplight, home again, after an ugly ordeal, the way he filled her on that first relentless press inward feltnecessary.

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