The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(67)

His smile is so small it’s barely there. “I’m fine, thanks. Go to bed.”

Except he’s not fine. I can tell he’s not fine, and how do I insist? How do I convince him that if he’d just let me in, it would all be better? That’s never been how he operates.

He goes to his room and I sit on the couch, feeling like a failure in every possible way. I just risked our child’s life. I made Graham so upset he can’t even look at me, and I have no idea what I am even supposed to dream about now that I don’t want the things I did. How am I supposed to swing for the fences when I don’t even know which fence I’m swinging toward?

I stare at Graham’s door. I can’t fix what I did tonight, and I’m not going to solve my career issues in the hour before bed, but I can at least apologize. Because none of it would have happened if I’d just listened to him.

I cross the room, tapping on his door before I enter. He’s fully dressed, and appears to be pacing.

He stares at me as if he’s furious and lost at the same time.

“Graham, I’m sorry,” I whisper.

He regards me for another moment. Probably only a second but it feels longer.

“This was all my fault and I know you’re mad, but if you’ll just tell me how to fix this, I—”

He takes two long steps, moving toward me so fast my words stop short and I instinctively step back.

And then his hands are on my face, cradling my jaw then sliding into my hair. I expected him to be mad, to punish me for this, and I have no idea what’s happening right now.

His mouth lands on mine, his kiss demanding and desperate at once, and I am no longer confused. He was scared, and this is what he needs to reassure himself.

He needed me. And I needed him too.

He groans, his hands sliding down my sides to grip my ass and pull me closer.

His mouth, his grip, his urgency...it shuts down everything in my head but the most primitive impulses. I want him so much that my hands are shaking, and my breath is coming in small pants. If there was a magic spell to undress us both, head to toe, I’d already have released it.

My palms land on his chest then slide up around his neck, and I know I’ve lived this exact moment before: the moment of realizing how much he’d been holding himself back and feeling overwhelmed by it, feeling as if there was just…too much of him, and wanting it anyway.

I untuck his shirt.

He breaks the kiss only long enough to wrench it overhead and hurl it to the floor. “Take off the dress.”

I think of my body the way it is now—the stretch marks, my swollen breasts lined with fine blue veins, the seven-month swell of a human being pushing out from beneath my skin. “I—”

Before I can think of an excuse, his hands are on my hips. “Take off the fucking dress,” he growls. “I want to see.”

That edge in his voice, that barely restrained desire, makes me bolder. Even if I’m not the girl I was last winter, I get the feeling it doesn’t matter to him. That, impossibly, the current version of me is every bit as hot to him as the previous one might have been.

I lift my dress overhead and his eyes fall to my sheer lace bra.

“Fuck,” he groans. “You didn’t return the bra.”

I glare at him. “Are you seriously bitching about my spending now?”

He holds my breasts in his hands, as if taking stock of their weight. “No.” He bends lower. “I want you to buy a hundred more.” His mouth closes around my nipple, and I let out a strangled moan.

It hurts and feels amazing in a way it never has before, and I’m not sure if it’s pregnancy or him, or the fact that I haven’t had sex in many, many months, but I’m pretty sure I could come from this alone.

“God, Graham, I want you to never stop doing that.”

He laughs against my skin. “No? You’re sure?” And then one hand is slipping between my legs.

“Oh, maybe not,” I whisper.

My skin is hot. His palm is cool and rough, drawing goose bumps as it slides up, up, up to find me wet, already close to coming.

“Jesus Christ,” he growls. “Get on the bed.”

That he isn’t being polite, that he’s simply taking the things he wants, has me clenching, desperate for his fingers…or something else. The second I sit, he’s on his knees, spreading my thighs. He pulls my panties off to the side and then there’s one slow, glorious slide up to my clit, his tongue moving in small tight circles as two fingers push inside me.

“I want you to pull my hair when you come,” he says.

Not if you come. When.

He’s got not a moment’s doubt about the outcome here, nor do I.

My palm slides into his hair. “God. Keep doing that.”

My panties are removed, and then his flickering tongue becomes harder, more pointed against my swollen clit. His fingers inside me curl inward, and I’m gripping his hair not because he asked but because I’m already close and he’s barely begun.

“I’ve come a hundred times thinking about this,” he growls against my skin.

Oh God. The idea of him coming while imagining this makes me feel like I’ve just been kicked up another gear.

“Ohhh…that,” I whisper. “With your fingers. That’s—”

He moans, the sound clearly involuntary, and I just explode, throwing my head back, the entire world disappearing. I want to tell him how good this is, how much I needed it, and how badly I want him inside me right now—but all I can do is tug at his hair. “Graham,” I groan, “fuck.”