Eyes Wide Open

  It wasn’t in the powder room where I’d last seen it, and that made sense as this house was a working hotel most of the time. Hannah wouldn’t leave something like that out in a room where guests might find it. I hadn’t expected it to still be there anyway.

  I hit the kitchen next. I had an idea where she might have put it and went to switch on the lights. The pantry was huge, with one whole wall devoted to nonfood items and supplies for the business. I scanned each shelf, and then bingo, there it was. The box I’d purchased in the Kilve chemist’s shop earlier in the day sitting on the shelf with the soaps. I read the package again. “Over 99% accurate” and “As accurate as a doctor’s test” had to mean something, right?

  As I went back through to leave the kitchen I passed the shelf with the photograph on it of my mum with Hannah and me. I stopped and picked it up. As I studied the picture, I realized this was the way I imagined her always. Her beauty captured in this photo for the final time before she went away and became something else. I looked at image of me at four, at how I leaned into her and how she was touching me, my hand on her leg, and wondered if I’d ever told her I loved her. I had in my dreams and prayers of course, but wondered if I’d ever said the words to her so she heard them coming from me. There was nobody I could ask, though. Even if there was, I don’t think I could ask them the question. It would be cruel to make my dad or Hannah try to remember something like that.

  I thought about where I was headed and what Brynne and I would be doing a few minutes from now, and wished so badly that my mother could have known about us. That I could ring her up and say, “I have some news, Mum, and I hope you’ll be pleased to hear it.”

  I brushed my finger over the image of her lovely face and set it back on the shelf, somehow feeling the connection was there and that it was possible for her to know about me. I held that hope close to my heart as I turned out the light and went back upstairs to my girl.

  Brynne was sitting up in bed looking beautiful and anxious, and the protective urge that flowed from me was so incredibly intense, it made me pause. And I realized something important. I knew in that moment that anyone who dared to try to hurt her or our potential child would have to kill me first to get to them. Wow. I shrugged it off because it didn’t matter about me, anyway. If anything ever happened to her, I’d be finished.

  This was my truth.

  “You found it?” she asked in her sweet voice.

  I waved the package in front of me as I came forward. “One missing test.”

  “Okay, I’m ready.” She spoke quietly and held her hand out.

  I placed the package in her lap and picked up her right hand. Instead of kissing the top, I turned it and pressed my lips to her wrist. I could feel her pulse beating. Her eyes filled up and got watery, so I smiled and told her the truth. “Everything will work out the way it’s meant to, baby. I have no doubts like that.”

  “How can you not?”

  I shrugged. “I just know that we are going to be together, and if this is part of our future then we’d better go forward with it.” I pulled back the blankets and helped her out of the bed.

  “I can walk,” she told me. “And I promise that I will come out the same door I went in this time.” She looked down at the floor, ashamed.

  I could afford to be cocky at the moment, so I grabbed the chance even though it made me a bastard. “Yeah, I’m pretty confident of that, my beauty. You’d have a tough time getting down the staircase with that pole and me not noticing.”

  She lost the look of shame immediately and glared beautiful flashing eyes at me. “I can think of a good use for the pole.”

  “That’s my girl.” I led her to the bathroom, rolling the pole for her, unable to curb my smart-ass mouth. “This really is a very fine pole, you know. It probably has a good many practical uses—”

  She shut the bathroom door in my face and left me standing there on the other side for the second time, waiting for some information that I now hoped would be true. It’s weird, but from the start, I embraced the idea almost as soon as it was suggested. The idea of a baby was a daunting prospect, sure, but we were intelligent people and had to have more going for us than many people do when they start a family. Our child would just cement us more solidly together, and that was a beautiful thing in my eyes. I knew what I knew, even if I couldn’t admit it to a single other person on this earth. If I’ve gotten my girl pregnant, if we’ve made a baby together and it’s growing inside her right now, then I’ll never lose her, she’ll never leave me, nothing can ever take her away.

  I didn’t see how anything or anyone could dispute my logic. Yet again, it made perfect sense to me.

  10

  ♥ When I opened the bathroom door to come out, test in hand, Ethan was still there where I’d left him when I’d shut it on his smirking face. God love him for trying to tease me and make a stressful situation a little easier. If I had to read him, I would say he was handling the possibility of being a father very well.

  Actually, he almost seemed to be hopeful I was pregnant. I wondered why, and could certainly tell that he and I weren’t in the same place in the head about this at all. Far from it. Ethan was a lot older. Eight years older. Years that made a significant difference when faced with the imminent possibilities of marriage and a family. Life was happening much too quickly and it terrified me. The only thing keeping me from going bat-shit crazy was his attitude about the whole situation that we could do this.

  I still didn’t really see how it was possible for me to even be pregnant at all. I had some major questions for my doctor, I knew that much. Like how in the hell do birth control pills just not work when they are never missed and taken religiously for years?

  He put his arm around me and started walking me and my pole back to the bed. “You waited for me right here?” I peeked up at him.

  “Of course I did,” Ethan said, taking my chin and holding it up to meet his lips in a slow, deliberate and very wet kiss. I needed it. He always seemed to know when I needed affection and reassurance, and was very generous in doling it out.

  I pressed the test into his hand and watched his eyes widen. “I want you to look at it first. You look and then tell me. It takes a few minutes to give a result.” My voice sounded about as fluttery as I felt.

  He smiled down at me. “Okay. I can do that. But first, it’s back to bed for my girl.”

  Ethan kissed me on the forehead first and then set the test on the bedside table and left it there. He put me in the bed, ditched his jeans again and crawled in next to me. He drew me close and arranged us just as we’d been before. I rested my head back on his chest and laid a palm over the hard muscles. I had a lot to say, but hardly knew where to start. Best to start with the most important piece of my speech.

  “Ethan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you so much.”

  The instant I whispered the words, his whole body relaxed. I felt the hardness in him soften and I knew he had been waiting for that declaration from me, probably for a while, throughout the many hours of this day-slash-nightmare. I knew I couldn’t say the words as often and as easily as Ethan could, and did, and even though I tried to show him, I realized that I did hold out on him a little, and it wasn’t right for me to do that. I could try to make an effort for his sake.

  “I love you t—”

  I shushed him with my fingers over his lips and lifted my head up. “I know you do. You tell me all the time. You’re better than me at expressing your feelings, and I want you to know that I see it. I see it in how you take care of me and how you touch me and how you show me by being so solid and just . . . there for me.” I took in a deep breath.

  “Brynne . . . it’s the only way I—”

  “Please let me finish.” I pressed my fingers back over his lips. “I need to say this before we look at the test and I lose it completely, because I?
??m sure I will either way it reads.”

  His blue eyes said so much, even though his mouth stayed closed. He kissed my fingers, which were still covering his lips, and waited for me to continue.

  I took another big breath. “I ran away from you for the last time. I won’t hit you with a ‘Waterloo’ again. It was terrible to just take off like that and I’m very ashamed I was so weak and selfish. I acted like a child and I cannot even imagine what your family thinks of me right now. They must be praying I’m not pregnant, just sick with some horrible flu, because I’m sure they see me as a crazy American freak who is trying to trap you—”

  “No. No, no, no, no, they don’t think that,” he interrupted, his lips finding mine and silencing my speech for good. He rolled me under him, very careful of my left wrist, stretching my arm up and out of reach of getting bumped. So very Ethan-ish of him. Taking charge of me in the only way he knew, and in the way that I needed him to. How did he always know?

  He kissed me thoroughly, pinning beneath him and finding his way deep inside with his tongue, sweeping in a wide circle over and over around mine. I felt that glorious sensation of being invaded that came whenever we were together. His need to be inside me coupled with my need to have him there.

  He lifted his head and held me under him, one hand propping his body up and the other holding my cheek. He had his serious face on now. “I know the truth, Brynne. I was there from day one with you, remember? I know how hard I had to work to get you.” He dipped his head and dragged his stubble up my neck to lick below my ear. “I wanted you then, just like I want you now, like I’ll always want you,” he whispered through nibbles and lip bites up my neck and across my throat, working his way back to my mouth so he could swallow me again.

  I blossomed under his intimate caresses, finding my way to where I needed to be.

  He pulled back, his beautiful, hard features over me, reflected in the shadows of the one lamp in the room. And right there in the early hours of the night, buried in the middle of an experience that had the power to change our lives forever, my Ethan spoke the most perfect words.

  “I wish I could make love to you right now. Now. Before we know what it says . . . because it will change nothing that I feel in here . . . for you.” He picked up my right hand and laid it flat over his heart.

  “Yes, please,” I managed before falling into a place somewhere so far into love with him it laid me bare. This thing with him and me was truly irreversible.

  He rose up from me and sat back on his knees. His eyes were piercing blue, asking for permission because he was like that with me. Ethan knew what he wanted and would take it from me, but he needed to know I was willing.

  I was. No words were exchanged because they weren’t necessary. Not really.

  I slowly raised my other arm to match my left one and arched my back, offering myself to him in a way I know he loved. Submitting myself to his care and knowing he would take us to a place where we could be like that together in the way we understood so well.

  He pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it. My eyes soaked in the cut abdominals and solid curves of his deltoids and biceps. I could stare at him for hours, but usually didn’t get nearly my fill of looking.

  He pushed my shirt up and over my head, leaving it bunched around my left arm. It would have to stay there, because I was still connected to the IV. He drew his hands down, hovering just above my skin, not touching as he swept his eyes over me. It reminded me of a pianist poised just before beginning to play a piece. It was beautiful to watch him.

  He bowed over me, starting at the hollow of my throat, and drew downward with his tongue as far as he could go. He dragged it achingly slow over my sternum, down my stomach and to my navel, where he gave some special attention to the indentation. He never got near my breasts and the obvious evasion got me undulating for him, my body already on fire, craving his touch.

  He looked up from my navel just before reaching for the waistband of my leggings. He drew down with his tongue as his hands drew down the leggings, right over the center of me, to lick at my sex. His tongue pushed between the folds and found my clit swollen and aching for him. I bowed off the bed and moaned as he devoured me to the brink of orgasm with his lips and tongue.

  “Not yet, my beauty,” he rasped against my pussy, slowing down the flick of his tongue to keep me on the edge of climax without crashing over. He pressed a palm over my stomach and with the other hand managed to pull the leggings straight down and off my legs completely with a little lifting help from my raised hips.

  He opened one of my legs wide and high and growled a sound of pure carnal lust, staring down at me spread for him, his other palm still planted on my belly. Ethan had me totally exposed and bared, pinned by his hands when he descended again and inserted his tongue, penetrating me as far as he could go. He worked magic with that tongue of his, and I felt myself falling as everything within my body was pulled toward a release. I might die if he didn’t give it to me.

  “Say it to me now,” he commanded with a harsh breath at my center.

  Again, I understood him. I knew precisely what he wanted to hear.

  “I love you, Ethan! I love you. I love you so much . . .” I sobbed my declaration, barely able to form audible words.

  He heard me, though.

  Ethan wrapped his perfect tongue around my pearl and sucked it hard. I went off like a nuclear explosion, slow at first, and then a rolling pause just before the incendiary blast that broke me apart into countless fragments. Pieces of me that could only be collected and reassembled by one man. Only Ethan could do that. This truth I understood implicitly. The one who had the power to take me apart was also the only one with the power to put me back together again.

  Ethan’s blue eyes were hovering over me when I opened mine. He’d moved back up my body, his hand where his mouth had just been, long fingers sliding slowly up inside me, his thumb just pressing on the bundle of nerves in a decadent sensation of pleasure.

  I floated there, still breathing hard, looking up at him, accepting his kiss and his intimate touches. The taste of me on his lips always made me feel cherished for some reason. Like he wanted to share his experience with me. He brought his fingers up from where they’d been buried deep and pressed them, curved, into my mouth, sliding them in and out along my tongue. It was intimacy on top of more intimacy. Ethan whispered erotic things to me about how I felt and looked and tasted and smelled, and what he was going to do to me next.

  I was impatient for more, though, especially feeling his cock hard and huge against my leg, realizing he had pulled off his boxers at some point. I tried to get closer by circling my hips against his stiff length. He chuckled and whispered something about giving it to me in his own sweet time.

  I returned to the thought that I might be dead by then.

  “My Ethan . . .” I tried to touch him with my hand, but he just dragged my arm back up over my head and gave me a look that needed no translation. I rolled my head from side to side, needing more and feeling desperate.

  “Tell me what you want,” he crooned against my neck.

  I arched again, trying to meld us together, but Ethan controlled the speed. “I want—I want to feel you inside me,” I begged him.

  “Mmmm . . . you will, baby,” he chanted huskily. “Now you will. I’m going to give you my cock—very . . . very . . . slowly. So slow and so far up in you you’ll feel every molecule of me . . . inside you.”

  I would die.

  I felt him shift into position between my legs, widening me, his hard length tipped already and slowly rocking against my soaked flesh, but he didn’t enter me yet. I knew what he was doing. He was savoring, drawing out the anticipation, treating me to every small sensation of touch and pleasure, so slowly, as if we had forever. I had a gentle and very patient Ethan loving me tonight.

  He propped up on his hands and rocked his hips a little
more each time, still slow and controlled as he moved in infinitesimal strokes with just the tip of his penis kissing the hot flesh of my pussy over and over and over again. His body pulsed above me, our eyes locked and burning at each other, when he dipped his head down to touch his forehead to mine. Only once that connection was made did he thrust into me all the way, finally giving in to the completion of the act, burying himself to his balls as the most erotic wheeze came out of his throat.

  I cried out from the glory of it.

  Ethan found my lips again and thrust his tongue into me in tandem with the elegant sliding thrusts of his cock, taking his time to bring me along. I knew he would hold off until either I came again or was about to.

  His pace increased steadily and I squeezed my inner walls as hard as I could around him, trying to get every bit of him I could. I knew it was working when he swelled even tighter and began to make those harsh breaths with every thrust. The sounds he made were beautiful to me, building in my head along with the gripping pulses at my core barreling me toward another climax.

  When he covered one nipple with his mouth and tugged on the other one in a gentle pinch I was suddenly there, crashing uncontrollably along like a tidal wave does, bringing everything with it. Ethan stared me down as he blew apart with a shuddering roar and filled me up with hot bursts, the last few strokes furiously fast before slowing to gentle rotations that drew the last bit of pleasure out between us until falling into a hovering stillness.

  I was full of him now and I didn’t want the feeling to go. I wanted to stay like this with him forever. In this moment, it felt like forever was a glorious possibility.

  But he rolled onto his back and took me along with him until I was on top, my left wrist completely unbothered by all that we’d just accomplished. Now he allowed me to use my hands to touch him. I brought them to his chest and splayed them there, feeling the pounding of his heart against my palms.

  He cupped my face and kissed me for a while, whispering more words about how much he loved me and that I was his no matter what happened in our lives, that he would never stop loving me. He drew a hand along the length of my back, following my spine slowly up and down.