Beautiful Beloved

You don’t have to apologize for being turned on by that.

My mouth closed over the peak, tongue pulling her deeper into my mouth, and I groaned at the feel of it. She was warm and firm, so full—

I did this . . .

I made her this way

—and when she reached for my track pants and pushed them down my hips to take me in her hand, the moment dissolved into frenzy.

I could imagine her looking through the pictures later, seeing how much I relished the feel of her in my mouth, the taste of her on my tongue. She would know, then, just by looking at my face, how I loved the slide of milk on my hand, the way her hips looked spread around mine. I worshipped her.

I bloody worshipped this woman.

I rocked into her fist, groaning at the feel of her mouth sucking at my neck, her desperate, sweet little cries into my skin. Shoving her panties aside, I licked my hand and used it to make her slick so I could push deep inside with one sharp stab of my hips.

She gasped, eyes wide with thrill and relieved—fuck, she was relieved, as if I’d been missing and maybe I had. I pulled out and shifted forward, fucking her so hard and fast that within the span of a minute I knew I was coming; coming before I had time to get her there, before I even had time to consider whether she wanted me to spill inside her before leaving for work. I just . . . wanted with such intensity, with a kind of jagged need I hadn’t felt in so long that I couldn’t seem to slow myself down.

The tenderness and protectiveness had been pushed aside, just for the moment, by something older and familiar: a heavy need to claim her.

I reached between us, playing with her with my fingertips until she was bucking into my hand, gasping and squeezing around my cock. She cried out, three sharp pleas to drag her through her pleasure, and then she fell quiet, pulling me fully on top of her and exhaling heavily into my neck.

She’d seen me every day; we’d cuddled, talked, laughed, fallen asleep at the dinner table together, and done all manner of intimate things. But the relief in this moment was profound. I knew exactly what she meant when she whispered, “I missed you.”

And all I could say back was “I missed you, too.”

Mum was already at her desk when I arrived at the office wearing Annabel in the carrier. She jumped up, ran around the desk, and reached for her granddaughter without even looking at my face.

“Mum,” I hissed, laughing as I reached for her shoulders so she wouldn’t jostle the baby. “She’s asleep. Settle down, woman. You’ll get her in a bit when I’ve got a meeting with Levinson.”

My mother looked up at me and replaced her mild scowl with a sweet smile. “Mornin’, love.”

I’d never seen myself as a mum’s boy growing up but having her with us at Stella & Sumner for the past several years was one of my favorite things about coming to work. Especially since we’d had Annabel, I appreciated the proximity of family and their ability to tell us when we were acting like neurotic idiots.

And although Mum had raised ten of us quite capably, I registered I was due for a sizable heap of shit when I asked her—for the first time—to watch the baby so we could go out. We’d always taken the baby with us, but this was . . . well, this was entirely different.

“Mum,” I started as she walked back around her desk to sit down. “I was hoping to take Sara out this coming Friday. Would you mind heading over and watching Annabel?”

Her face fell. “Max, you forgot.”

I groaned. Fuck. This was the second time a woman had said this to me in less than twenty-four hours. “Forgot what?”

“I leave for Leeds tomorrow, dove. I’m going to stay with Karen for three weeks.”

“Aw, bugger.”

“I can watch her tonight?”

“No, you’ve got to pack and we don’t have any sort of plan in place. I get the sense we’ll both need this to be a military operation.”

“You’re mental. I’ve been telling you for weeks: just take the wife out and have some dinner, for crying out loud. By the time you and Niall and Rebecca came along, we were letting the dog watch you for a night out.”

Laughing, I agreed, “I don’t doubt it.”

“The fuck are you wearing?”

I looked down at Annabel still asleep in the carrier and replied to Will, “It’s called an Ergo.”

He followed me into my office and sat on my couch. “It looks like you went tandem skydiving and forgot to unlatch.”

Bennett walked up behind him. “You look like a marsupial.”

“It’s called baby wearing, you twats.” I laughed, and then whispered to the baby, “Is that right? Are you my little joey?” I looked up at my mates and only then did I do the mental calculation. “Bennett, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Will and I had a meeting with Gross and Barrett at eight. Did you forget?”

“Bloody hell will you lot cut me some slack! I’ve not slept in four fucking months!”

They both stared at me, wide-eyed, for several silent seconds.

“Are your nipples sore?” Will asked.

I shook my head, laughing. “Tosser.”

As carefully as I could, I unhooked the carrier behind my neck and let it fall so I could lay Anna down on the couch beside Will. She startled—both arms and both legs flying out in a spasm—but then immediately fell back asleep.

For his part, Will looked like I’d just put a giant hollow eggshell near him. His hands were clasped in his lap and his eyes were trained on the baby as if she might suddenly roll and explode. He’d been around Anna nearly every weekend since she’d been born and still looked at her like breathing too heavily near her might cause her to shatter.

“Since when are you an idiot around children?” I asked.

“I love kids,” he said, looking up at me. “But she’s just so little.”

“She’s not,” I assured him. “She’s enormous.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Look,” I said, sitting down in a chair near my desk. “I need to ask a favor. I want to take Sare out for dinner this Friday—”

Bennett interrupted: “You’re finally going to let someone watch Anna?”

Scowling, I explained, “It’s a lot easier said than done, right? Anyway, Mum is leaving for Leeds tomorrow so she can’t watch her this weekend. Can one of you . . . ?”

They both stared at me with terrified eyes.

“Aw come on, it’s not that hard. We’d only go out for a few hours. You and your better half give her a couple of bottles, change a couple of diapers, she sleeps, we get home.”