Page 127 of The Honest Affair

She groaned as I bent to take one nipple, then the other into my mouth and suckled them straight through the satin. God, she was so lush. So perfect. So mine.

Then her hands slipped down to free me from my boxer briefs, press me between her legs, and then urge me forward so I could slip deep inside her. Right where I belonged.

Her teeth bit hard into my shoulder, and I bit right back into hers. Our bodies ground into one another as I thrust deeper, I didn’t have long. She didn’t seem to need much more either as I slipped a hand between us and pressed my thumb in concentric circles over her clit.

Her nails clawed my back. I growled at the sudden bite of pain.

“Fuck,” I uttered again and again as I pounded into her, demanding that she take every bit of me she could.

But before a wail could escape her like a siren, I covered her mouth with mine, taking her ecstasy with a furious kiss of my own. Tasting her as I came. As we both fell apart together.

I’d give her everything I had. It would never be enough. But I would always keep trying, and I’d be a happier man for it.

* * *

“So, that was...unexpected,”I said a few minutes later as we recovered our breaths, standing side by side against the counters.

Nina smiled through a waterfall of hair before she pushed it out of her face. She wore no makeup in the night, her hair tousled still from the late summer humidity, cheeks flushed from the heat and my attentions.

She had never looked more beautiful.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “I just saw you…and I needed you.”

“Been happening a lot lately, hasn’t it?” I asked, picking up her left hand and raising it to my lips. “You haven’t been able to keep your hands off me for the last month, doll.”

Nina smiled shyly. “I suppose I haven’t. Though you haven’t been arguing.”

“And I never will, baby.”

“I was thinking,” she murmured as I continued to pepper her hand with kisses, “that we should elope.”

I lowered her hand. “Come again?”

“I know we talked about a large church wedding next spring, but I…”

She took both my hands, flatted them palms up, and pressed her hands on top of them, as if measuring the area she could cover with her slender fingers. Then she took my hands, rotated them down, and pressed them into her body. Flat over her belly through the sleek silk fabric.

I looked up. “Wait…are you…”

“You can’t be truly that surprised. We have used protection sporadically at best the entire time I’ve known you.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Matthew,” she interrupted. “I’m pregnant. Are you…are you okay with that?”

“Am I okay…” I drifted off, unable to do much more than repeat her words. “Am I okay…” I exhaled, long and low. “Yes, I’m okay. I’m…”

Suddenly, I didn’t want any more distance between us than was strictly necessary. I pulled her tight against me, wrapping one hand around her waist, the other around the nape of her neck, to cradle her close.

“I’m so fucking happy I can hardly breathe,” I whispered as I rocked her gently back and forth. “And I love you so goddamn much.”

Nina sighed with clear relief. “Oh, Matthew. I’m so happy too. You have no idea.”

Then she pressed her hands on my chest so she could lean back and look at me.

“Please,” she said. “I want to start our family whole. We’re going to Tuscany next month anyway so Olivia can meet her sisters. Let’s do it then. Maybe in that little church in Vernazza. We can take your sisters and your grandmother and invite Eric and Jane. A few friends. Simple. Small. What do you think?”

It wasn’t how I originally pictured it. I saw Nina in a big white dress, maybe at Our Redeemer, or if she wanted it, St. Patrick’s in midtown. A damn big affair, a way of announcing to the city that seemed to try to thwart us at every move: this woman is mine.

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