Weak light filters through a gap in the drawn drapes, illuminating a sliver in our darkened bedroom. Dawn bathes the room in gray. There’s no color in the sky yet, no brightness. Hundreds of mornings like this already stretch behind me, with Grip asleep at my back, folded around my body in protection, in possession, and I can only hope for a million like it to come. Some of those mornings, I’ll hear banging on our bedroom door. I’ll see little legs flying across the room and feel little bodies sliding between us under the covers. Having Grip’s children and sharing his life is a privilege that, years ago, I never imagined I could have, and now every morning I wake up envisioning it.

“You awake?” Lingering slumber roughens Grip’s voice, deepening the timber.

“Yeah, a little,” I slur sleepily.

His chuckling breath skitters over my neck, waking up parts of my body moments ago at rest.

“What’s ‘a little’ awake?”

“I’m awake, but I’m trying not to be.”

“Oh.” Disappointment coats his whisper. “Go back to sleep then.”

I roll over to face him, picking out the planes of his handsome face hidden in the shadows of half-light.

“What is it?” I ask. “You wanna talk?”

“No.” The smile I can’t see is easily heard, and a warm hand traverses the curve of my hip. “I wanna fuck.”

I’m immediately ready, my nipples tightening and my toes curling at the crude answer. I wrap my hand around the stiff length between his legs.

“Is that a yes?” He feathers kisses over my shoulder, licking at the ink he can’t see but knows by heart is there.

“Whatever you want,” I whisper, my hand setting a steady, tugging pace.

“Oooooooh.” Grip’s breath mists my nipples. “Even anal?”

My hand stops abruptly, apparently striking into him fear that I will abandon the mission.

“Just kidding, just kidding,” he says hastily, laughing over a nipple. He suckles vigorously then languorously, the varied pace driving me wet and crazy. “You’re gonna breastfeed, right?”

I gasp when his teeth lightly graze the sensitive underside of my breast.

“Is that really what you want to talk about right now?” I ask breathlessly. “My breasts as a source of nourishment?”

“I’m down to talk about these breasts twenty-four seven.”

His tongue flicks over my ribs, and he slides lower until all I can make out is the shape of his head under the covers. He licks into and then blows over my belly button, and I feel his breath whispering over my stomach. He’s having a conversation with the baby again, but before I can demand to know what he’s saying, he lavishes open-mouth kisses over the small mound above my pelvis. He scoots even farther down, gently lifting my legs over his shoulders and opening me up, pressing his face into the weeping center of my body.

I hear him draw a long sniff. I stopped being self-conscious about that a long time ago. Now it just turns me on that he loves the way I smell. His big hands cup my ass and he brings me to his mouth, tasting me with lazy laps of his tongue like a big cat and I’m his sugar-rimmed saucer. My hands wander up to my breasts, circling my palms, massaging them the way he does. The darts of pleasure radiating from my nipples in harmony with the unbearable pleasure of my pussy make me drip. The stubble coating his jaw, an erotic scrape, leaves an illicit burn. He moans against me, hastening the pace of my hips. He flattens his tongue on my clit, spreading the wetness all along the slit, dipping lower to lick that tiny puckered hole. His tongue there sets fire to nerve endings that have been cloistered away, sensations I’ve never felt. One thick thumb slides in and I lock up, unsure of what he’s about to do.

“Relax,” he whispers, raining kisses across the lips. “I got you.”

Before I can think more of it, his thumb starts moving in tandem with his lips and teeth feeding on my clit.

“God!” All the air whooshes from my body and I buck, my torso and hips lifting under the covers. He ruthlessly lays an arm over my waist, keeping me in place while his thumb and mouth conspire, driving me to madness, a mindless creature gnawing on her fist, clawing at the sheets, and wailing into the dawn. His thumb works its way into some heretofore undiscovered inner sanctum, and the pleasure is pyrotechnic. It explodes, its wick burning through my belly, up my back, and lighting up the muscles of my thighs. Just like a firework, once ignited, I streak across the sky, bright and flaring, then land motionless . . . still . . . spent.

He handles me tenderly, turning me to my side, enveloping me, chest pressed to my back. He palms the shallow valley between my breasts, sandwiching us together until there’s room for nothing. Only love could slip into a space this small. He lifts my leg and passes his dick between the cheeks of my ass and over my pussy repeatedly, a sensuous prelude that elicits moans from my throat, tight with unshed ears.

“Grip, please.” I’m literally panting, begging, reaching behind me, grasping at his neck and head, desperately reaching for something to anchor me. I don’t care which hole he’s about to fuck, I just need him inside. The space between us throbs with need. My nerves are stretched to gossamer, the anticipation blazing through my patience, and I’m pressing my ass into him. I thrust back in a rolling rhythm meant to tempt him, meant to hurry him, but when he finally slides inside, it’s slow and measured. He’s feeding himself to my body in stiff inches, in short pumps, agitating me.

“Faster.” I twine my fingers with his between my breasts. “Please go fast. I need it fast.”

He doesn’t answer, just maintains the steady pace, and my body clamps around him with each withdrawal, afraid he won’t come back. I’m a seaside fire he’s methodically building, taking his time with. Soon I’m a roaring bonfire, flames tossed by the wind and licking high into the air. My moans and whimpers dance with his grunts and groans in the early morning quiet.

His lips coast over my nape as his other hand cups my small belly.

“Bris, you have no idea,” he whispers into my hair. “The thought of you, the sight of you pregnant . . . I’m hard all the time. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to be rough, but—”

“You can be,” I insist, pressing back into him, luring him deeper into my body. I contract my inner muscles around him, a deliberate provocation.

“Shit, Bris.” His forehead pushes into the base of my skull.

I’ve pulled a lever within him and he turns fast, his tempo feverish. Every time I think he must be almost done, he changes the angle, setting off another constellation of stars behind my eyelids. He’s in full heat, full rut, the instincts of his body dictating every thrust and moan. Light creeps through the drapes, and the vibrant colors of sunrise quietly invade our room while sweat runs freely over our skin, adorning his chest and my back, a wet, sensuous slide that our bodies lap up. I’ve lost count of my orgasms. I’m limp, my muscles and bones loose and liquid even as he still hammers into me.

“Are you okay?” His words are staccato, punctuating between heavy breaths.

“Yes. Baby, don’t stop.” My words are sloppy in my mouth. I’m pillaged.

“I’m close . . . I’m gonna . . . dammit, Bris.”

His growl quakes through my back as he releases. I work my hips, struggling to keep up with the heavy, frenetic piston of his body until he stiffens behind me, rigid as pleasure conquers him. Our breaths fill the air in symphony, his and mine. We come down slowly, his possessive grip on my hip easing, our heartbeats pounding in unison, neither of us wanting to stop. Our bodies still rock as the tumult of the waves gradually gentle. By the time our breathing regulates, light fully intrudes, introducing another morning.

“I really did want to talk,” he says with a husky laugh, walking his fingers down my arm to caress my fingers.

“Hmmmm?” The day is fully lit, but my alarm must have another hour left. Our lovemaking has left me speechless and exhausted before the day has begun.

“I had something to ask you.”

“Ask,” I mutter, eyes half-closed.

“Are you nervous?” he asks. “About today, I mean? Finding out.”

“Are we finding out?” Even half-dead and listless, I manage a wicked smile. Grip wouldn’t be able to hold out. He told me from the beginning, even if I didn’t want to know if we’re having a boy or girl, he would have to.

“Bris, we already talked about—”

“Just kidding,” I cut in with a wisp of a laugh. “No, I’m not nervous. Excited, but not nervous.”

He rests his hand on my hip, fingers twined with mine, and presses kisses between my shoulder blades.

“Dwell in possibility,” he says between kisses.

“Hmmmm?” I turn my head the slightest bit, not enough to see him, just enough to hear him better.

“That’s what I whisper to our baby, to your belly. It’s from a poem.”

“Neruda?”

“Dickinson. It’s a poem called ” He pauses, giving me space to ask questions that I don’t pose because I know he’ll keep going. “I want our kids to grow up believing in possibilities, not because we have money or the advantages that come with it, but because of themselves. They can chase possibilities with nothing stopping them. If my mom hadn’t made me feel that way, like if I could dream it and would work hard, it could be mine, there’s no telling where I’d be today. I don’t want other people’s biases and this country’s broken systems and roadblocks to get in their way.”

Passion, conviction, and cynicism mingle in his voice.

“Hell, it didn’t get in my way, and I had nothing. I want them to be way-makers, Bris, people who explore this world, never thinking it can’t be theirs. That’s what I tell him . . . or her.”

I close my eyes, not to sleep, but to relish this man, this wonderful man who is the epicenter of my world.

“You’re gonna be an amazing father.” I drop my head back to rest in the curve of his neck and shoulder.

“I want to be,” he says. “My dad sucked.”

I don’t hear any pain or bitterness. I’ve never seen holes in Grip that his father should have filled.

“When I was little, I did wonder sometimes why my father didn’t stick around,” he continues, as if answering a question he heard my mind forming. “But my mom didn’t give me time to personalize it. She didn’t keep it a secret or avoid talking about it. She just always made it about him, not a reflection of me. She used to say, ‘Poor thing. That damn fool is missing out on you. Oh well, his loss. More Marlon for me.’”

I lift our hands to my lips, smiling and kissing them.

“She’d say he was gonna look up one day and see a star in the sky that was so far out of his reach, and he’d know that was his son, that could have been his. She assumed from the beginning I’d be something great.”

His takes our hands, still linked, and rests them over the small protrusion of my belly.

“Dwell in possibility,” I whisper, understanding it better now.

Grip’s mouth curves into a smile against my neck as he speaks.

“There was never any doubt.”