He settles me on the edge, and I lie back and let him look his fill. In the last two weeks, my br**sts have grown firmer than normal with pregnancy, and they’re extra sensitive when he grazes my ni**les with his fingers.

“So f**king beautiful,” he whispers.

He trails a hand between my breasts, over my belly, and circles my navel with his thumb. I can’t believe I ever doubted his attraction to me. It’s everywhere—in his touch, in his eyes, in the way he talks to me to turn me on.

I reach for him. “Come here.”

He pulls off his shirt and unbuttons his jeans, pushing them and his briefs from his h*ps in one fluid movement. But when he’s nude, he doesn’t settle over me. He lowers to his knees and places his face between my parted thighs. I love his face between my legs, but I had an especially lonely day, and I need him close to me tonight.

I urge him up, and he kisses me one last time before climbing up my body and settling on top of me. I draw up my knees, and he slides into me with one long, hungry movement. His lips find mine as he pumps. His hands tangle in my hair.

“I’ve thought about this all day,” he whispers in my ear. “Getting inside you, feeling you wrapped around me, making you come.”

I whimper under him, and he hooks his arm under my knee and drives into me farther, deeper, harder. “Please,” I murmur.

“Please what, baby?” His mouth is on my neck, his teeth nipping at my earlobe. “This?” He finds my breast between our bodies and toys with my taut nipple. I gasp, and he groans against my ear. “You are so sexy. So amazing.”

He shifts slightly and suddenly he’s deeper, pressing into me harder, and I lose control as my h*ps dance to their own rhythm against his, desperate, hungry, demanding. I curl my fingers into the thick, corded muscles of his arms and meet him stroke for stroke.

When he slows and circles his hips, I can’t hold on anymore, and I let the orgasm tear through me and bring with it all the joy and love and regret I feel for this man.

He cleans us up after and we lie next to each other in bed—nude, fingers exploring each other.

“Did you know I used to think you didn’t like me?” he asks.

That makes me smile. “What? No. Why would you think that?”

He toys with my fingers. “Back in high school. You’d be laughing with your sister and Cally. You’ve always had the most beautiful smile, and it makes people want to be around you. Want to have that smile aimed at them. And you’d be laughing and smiling, and I’d walk up and you’d stop. Like you were just waiting for me to leave so you could have fun again.”

I laugh and bite my lip. “I didn’t want you to leave. I wanted you to notice me, and I was so nervous.”

He nods. “I noticed. I just didn’t think I could love someone like you. I didn’t think I could handle it.”

“I am pretty demanding.”

He gives me a sad smile and brushes my hair from my face. His eyes fill with tears, and he kisses me right over my heart then trails down until his lips are against my stomach. “I know I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you. But I swear to you I’m going to earn it. Our life together. Waking up next to you. I’m going to earn it, Hanna.”

“Max, I—” Someone is knocking on the front door. It’s after ten p.m. Who would be visiting me this late?

As Max climbs out of bed and pulls on his jeans, my phone buzzes on the nightstand. “I’ll go with you,” I tell Max. I shove my arms into my robe, grab my phone off the nightstand, and read the text as I follow him toward the door. “Liz says we need to turn on the news.”

Max frowns and the deadbolt clicks as he unlocks it. “Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say, but—” Whatever words I was going to speak are lost with my breath as Max opens the door.

There he is. My most desperate prayer and my life’s greatest complication.

Nate Crane.

End