Despite the fact that I’ve been running for thirty minutes to an hour every day, my morning jog never gets easier. I keep trying to convince myself that it’s the cold, that once spring finally comes I’ll be able to enjoy running through the neighborhood again, but I know that, in reality, it’s only going to continue becoming more and more difficult the further into my pregnancy that I progress.

“Okay, little girl,” I pant, reaching down to rest a hand on my belly as I round the corner that will take me back to my house, “Let’s keep this belly high and tight so I can keep this up, okay?”

There’s a small movement inside of me that feels like a response and it makes me smile. It gives me the last bit of motivation I need to keep up the pace to get me home, but that determination soon vanishes when I look up again and see the bourbon eyes and brown hair of the girl waiting for me at the end of the street.

I stop instantly.

“Always watching,” she says. “Always waiting.”

Suddenly, a hand appears from behind me and closes over my mouth to muffle my scream. I feel whoever it is wrap an arm around me, too strong for me to break away from, and begin pulling me back towards the street. I try to kick, I try to struggle, but as I fight I feel another set of hands on me.

“Ana!”

I try to scream again but the sound is muffled. No one is going to hear me. No one is coming for me.

“Baby, wake up!”

I’m jolted awake by a very concerned looking Christian, but I’m not immediately comforted by him hovering over me. If anything, I’m disoriented.

My eyes move wildly around the room, taking in my surroundings, and, as the previous night slowly seeps into my consciousness, my body finally begins to relax.

I’m not in Cambridge.

I’m in a hotel in Seattle.

Leila is 3,000 miles away.

No one will get to me here.

“Are you okay?” Christian asks, sliding into bed next to me, despite the fact that he’s still wearing a suit, and wrapping me in his arms.

“It’s just a nightmare,” I tell him, and he presses his lips into my hair.

“It’s the pregnancy hormones. The books say some pregnant women experience lucid dreams…”

“I keep dreaming about Leila,” I tell him. “That she’s waiting for me. She stands there, staring at me, and then someone grabs me.”

I hear him swallow. “That’s not going to happen. You’re very well protected, no one will get to you.”

“She was outside my house when I left. It was four o’clock in the morning and she was just sitting there. They said that she’s been there every night. She’s looking for a weakness, Christian.”

“And she’s not going to find one. I promise you, Ana. I won’t let anything happen to you. It was just a dream, baby.”

I take a deep breath, inhaling his familiar and comforting scent as I nestle into him, but when my cheek rubs against one of the buttons on his jacket, reminding me that he’s still in a suit, I pull away and look up at him.

“What time is it?”

“Almost two,” he says, and I frown.

“And you’re just getting home?”

“I’m sorry, I really tried. I’ve got three new contracts out right now, two companies in transition from acquisition, eight others that I’m chasing and are waiting on a response to their RFP, and at least six board members from PixC that I have to convince to vote for a merger with GEH rather than hire Ros.”

“Wait, you’re still chasing PixC?”

“Of course I am. You think I’d let her have it after she tried to sabotage me? After she turned her back on all of the work that we’ve done together with a second thought of the damage she’d leave behind? She’s not getting anywhere near PixC. I’m going to take it and then I’m going to turn it into something astronomically successful, the way only I know how to do. She can watch GEH thrive and grow… without her.”

I frown. “I just can’t believe she’d do something like this. I mean, Ros isn’t the kind of person who’s ever been shy about confronting you, so I don’t know why she’d do all this behind your back and act so shady. Besides, she’s ALWAYS been there for you. Through everything. Why would she leave now when you’re both so successful?”

“People get greedy,” he says. “No one is ever satisfied being second. Everyone wants to be on top. Everyone wants the big job. Everyone. People use you to get what they want and then they toss you aside the second they get a better offer. Elena was right all along, I shouldn’t trust anyone.”

I sit up and turn back to look at him, suddenly furious. “What did you just say?”

“No, not you,” he says quickly. “I meant in business…”

“I don’t care what you meant,” I snap. “Don’t you ever say that Elena Lincoln was right to me. About anything. The only thing that she is, is a pedophile and I don’t even want you to speak her name.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “I’m just tired. It’s late, we should go to sleep.”

I take a deep breath, nod, and then turn my cheek to him as he leans over to kiss me. He sighs at my less than warm reaction to his kiss, but when he gets out of bed and begins stripping out of his clothes, my irritation with his mention of Elena quickly fades away. Watching each tantalizing inch of the well defined ab muscles he reveals with every button he undoes reminds me of the silk nightgown I put back on after Luke left and the pantyless surprise waiting for Christian underneath, but when I hear him groan slightly as he climbs back into bed with me, the hope I had of maybe finally getting into the plans I had for this weekend fades away. He really looks wrecked, more so than I’ve ever seen him before.

“Come here,” he says softly while settling down into the pillows. He lifts his arm and I nestle into him, resting my head on his chest and curling my arm and legs around him. His lips press into my hair, but it’s only a few more seconds before I feel his entire body relax and his breathing slows and grows more steady.

“I love you, Christian,” I whisper, then close my eyes and allow his warmth to lull me back to sleep.

I wake up the next morning to the sound of rain rapping furiously against the windows and the low rumble of thunder. Most people find a storm brewing overhead to be ominous, a sign of trouble or something to fear, but I’ve always found a certain calm to the turbulence. The muted light through the dark clouds, the smell of rain in the air, even the thunder sounds therapeutic to me. I sit up in bed to gaze through the large windows that look out over the city to the sound, but when I’m not met with any kind or resistance from the blankets, I turn and look down at the space next to me only to find it empty.

A quick glance at the clock tells me it’s just after 7:30, but, even though he was out past two, I guess Christian is already awake, and since he let me sleep, I have a bad feeling he’s thrown himself into work again. There is a vain hope though that he’s just waiting for me to wake up on my own, or that he’s already finished whatever he’d left for this morning, but with the storm roaring through the windows, I can’t hear well enough to listen for any indication of what he may be doing, so I have to crawl out of bed to investigate.

I find him pacing back and forth in front of the windows in the dining room talking on the phone, his laptop and a few files open on the table behind him.

“GEH has the ability not only to sustain what PixC is, but to make it grow,” he says. “Our servers are already capable of handling an active user volume of over four times greater than what was detailed in your most recent subscription report and since the technology is all in house, we’ll operate at less than half the cost of what you’re currently spending in overhead. My developers are some of the greatest technological minds in the country and they understand the market. I’m fully confident that we could change the game here, do to Instagram what Facebook did to MySpace, but only if you agree to come on board.” He laughs. “Believe me, I can’t run everything on my own. I need people, people who understand the business, and people who are invested in the company’s success. I have no intention of firing anyone who can prove their worth. Excellent, then we’ll talk more after the paperwork is signed. Thank you, Holland.”

He hangs up the phone and lets out a long sigh of relief before turning back for his computer, but when he sees me standing in the doorway to the bedroom, he stops.

“Good morning.”

“You’re working again today?”

“Not all day,” he assures me. “I just a have a few more things to get settled and then I’m all yours.”

“Okay, then I’m going to take a shower. Breakfast afterwards?” He gives me a closed lip smile so I cross the room, kiss him quickly on the lips, and then turn back to the bedroom. By the time I close the door behind me, I can already hear him answering another call.

When I get out of the shower, I take extra time to dry and straighten my hair so that hopefully Christian will indeed be finished by the time I make it out to the sitting room, but when I’m finished, and I emerge from the bedroom, I find him on the phone again, schmoozing what sounds like another PixC board member while his fingers move over the keys on his laptop.

“Yes, I’m very excited about what the future is going to bring to PixC,” he says. “We’re going to accomplish great things together. Thank you again for your support.” He hangs up the phone and turns his full attention to whatever he’s typing until I come up and close the screen of his laptop on his fingers.

“What would you like for breakfast?” I ask, but instead of answering he looks up at me with almost a little shame reflected in his eyes. “No,” I complain. “You said you just had a few last things.”

“I do, I’m just… going to need a few hours.”

“A few hours?!”

“And then I’m yours for the rest of the weekend.”

“You mean until I leave tomorrow? I came early to spend an extra day with you’re giving me less than half of the time I get on a normal weekend.”

“Ana, do you think this is what I want?” he snaps. “Do you think I like being in my office until two o’clock in the morning when I know you’re here waiting for me? Do you think it makes me feel good to know you’re here enjoying one of the very few nights you spend in Seattle with Sawyer instead of me?”

“Well, no…”

“I want to stop working,” he interrupts me. “I want to be able to put all of this way, take you into that bedroom, and spend the rest of the weekend in bed making love to you, but I can’t. I am running this company completely on my own now and I have over 30,000 employees relying on me to keep us functioning. I’m sorry but I don’t have time to come home for dinner or go out to breakfast right now. I don’t even have time to fucking breathe…” He pauses to quell the frustration growing more and more apparent in his voice and when he speaks again, his tone is conciliatory. “Call Mia. Take her out to breakfast and go shopping. She’d love to spend the day with you and by the time you get back, hopefully I’ll be finished.”

I take a breath, weighing his words until I eventually shake my head. “No, I’m not going anywhere.”

I turn away from him and head back into the bedroom for my suitcase, looking for my laptop, and after I’ve retrieved it, I return to the sitting room and set up next to him on the dining room table.

“What can I do?” I ask him.

“What?”

“You don’t have to do this alone. You can’t do this alone. So, give me something to do and I’ll do it. Let me help you.”

He stands there, motionless, considering me for a moment, but eventually nods.

“Alright,” he says. He pulls out my chair for me at the table and waits until I’m able VPN into the GEH server through the app that is still on the desktop from my internship over the summer. Once I’m logged in, he drags several things into my secure user file and then moves his chair over next to mine to walk me through what to do.

It’s mostly contracts with changes made by his legal time that I’m supposed to review, but there are also a few requests from clients he’s currently chasing, asking for details about whichever GEH service Christian has entered in a bid to provide for them. I’m actually surprised, as I being responding to those requests, that Christian would trust me to take on this task, but once I start digging through old proposals that Ros had drafted and sent to clients, using them as examples but customizing them to the specific needs the client has listed in the RFP, I actually find that I’m not only kind of good at this, but that I’m enjoying it. Not just the feeling of accomplishment I get when I’m able to complete each request with no help from Christian, or the satisfaction of getting to write something with no academic purpose for the first time in so long, but sitting here with Christian while he’s in his element and feeling as though I’m a part of it, that we’re once again conquering something together, that’s the real gratification.

I look up at him, sitting at the head of the table next to me, and smile at the look of focused concentration on his face as his fingers fly over the keys on his laptop. Even without the suit and tie, and despite the stubble still splattered across his cheek, he looks every bit the CEO. Calm, confident, and in control, like he was born for this.

“Can I help you?” he asks, glancing up from his laptop when he realizes I’m staring at him, and giving me a sardonic look.

“No,” I reply with a smile. “You just look kinda cute over there, that’s all.”

“Kind of cute?” he asks, as though the vague qualifier has hurt his feelings, and I laugh.

“Very cute,” I correct myself. “Extremely cute. Handsome. Sexy. Like the man I love more than anything else in the world.”

He smiles. “Well, you’re not so bad yourself.”

I place my elbow on the table and rest my chin in the palm of my hand so that my fingers cover the grin that the playful tone in his voice elicits, and then unfold my leg out from under me and reach it under the table between us so that my foot is in his lap. He sits back in his chair and turns his focus back to his screen, but his hands come down and massage my foot under the table. When I let out a low, appreciative moan, his eyes flit back up to me and he smiles.

“How’s it going over there?”

“Good, this is my last one.”

“Already?” he asks, suddenly sounding dubious, and when I nod, he moves his hand away from my foot so that he can use the touchpad on his laptop. I deduce from the sounds of him clicking the mouse but not typing anything that he must be reading over the work I’ve done, so I shake my head before I continue reading through the document I have open. After a minute or so of silence, he leans back again, smiles, and lets out a small, unintelligible noise that sounds almost impressed.

“This is good, Ana. Very good. But where did you get these performance metrics for the technology development?”

“Oh… out of the R&D file. That client just seemed really concerned about performance guarantees in their Statement of Outcome Standards so I thought concrete numbers would help GEH stand out. Especially because they’re so good. They’re bidding for new service because the last company they contracted with had a security breach after all, and these metrics show that GEH can prevent that from happening again.”

“No, I know… this is great… I just wonder, how do you have access to the R&D file?”

“What?”

“Your profile should be set up under SIP, so you should only have access to the user folders that pertain to that division. That’s why I had to drag all these files into your personal folder… You shouldn’t be able to see anything for research and development.”

“Oh, well… it’s all here.”

He gets out of his chair and comes around the table, clicking back through the portals to each different division of his company and then frowning as every icon he clicks reveals several files, including ones that only he is supposed to have access to.

“Hold on,” he tells me, reaching across the table to pick up his phone. I watch as he selects a contact and begins pacing back towards the windows of the suite, staring out at the rain until whoever he’s calling picks up.

“Walker,” he says briskly. “I’m with Anastasia right now and she’s VPN’d into the GEH server on her company laptop. She should only be able to view the SIP portal but it seems like she has access to the entire server. Yes, thank you.” He pauses for a moment, and turns back to me. I raise an eyebrow at him and he pulls the phone away from his mouth, covering the microphone with his hand.

“He’s looking at the permissions on your profile,” he says, and then immediately turns back to the call. “What? No, why would her profile mirror mine? Well, then Welch made a mistake. Yes, remove her. If she loses her laptop, then whoever finds it will have access to confidential information in every single division of my company and that’s not a risk I’m willing to take. Who else has that access? Well, find out. I’m going to need an audit done on every profile on the GEH server. If there’s one mistake, there could be more. Yes, I understand how long that will take but if people are accessing things they shouldn’t be, I need to know. Thank you, Walker. Have a good weekend.”

He hangs up the phone and I turn around in my chair to face him. “So, Welch thought I was more important than I really was, huh?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way, but… I guess. I don’t know what he was thinking.”

“Maybe because I started out as kind of your PA? Does Andrea have the same permissions you do?”

“She shouldn’t,” he says. “But I suppose we’ll find out.” He takes a deep breath and then rejoins me at the table, only this time he takes the chair next to me.

“Do you have anything else you need me to do?” I ask.

“No, I think I actually may be caught up. Thank you for your help today, baby. You never cease to impress me.”

“I learned from the best.”

He smiles. “You want a job? I need a new number two.”

“Mmm, tempting… but no.”

He breathes out a soft laugh through his nose and I smile as I climb out of my chair and into his lap, straddling him so that my knees are on either side of his legs.

“Does that mean that we can get back to the Valentine’s Day weekend I had planned?” I ask.

“That depends,” he says. “What are your plans?”

“Oh, they’re very, very dirty, Mr. Grey.”

“How dirty?”

“Mmm,” I hum, pressing my lips into his for a quick but sensual kiss before I answer. “I want you to tell me about your most forbidden fantasies and then I want to act out each and every one with you.”

“I like the sound of that,” he says huskily, and then leans forward to kiss me again, deeper this time. His tongue invades my mouth as his hands come up and slide into the roots of my hair on either side of my head. My hips begin gyrating over him as he kisses me, and in return, I feel his erection growing inside his pants.

“So, start talking,” I tell him. “What are your fantasies, Christian?”

“You mean besides fucking you on this table right now?” he whispers back, but I shake my head.

“Oh no, you’re not getting off that easy. This game isn’t just about sex… it’s about intimacy and trust. I want us both to be open enough and comfortable enough to share our deepest desires with each other.”

“So you’ll be sharing too?”

“Should I start?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

I smile and then place one last kiss on his lips before leaning back and looking into his eyes. He waits expectantly, but even though this was my idea and just kissing him and touching him already has me unbelievably turned on, I’m suddenly a little trigger shy. But I meant what I said about building trust between us, and in order to do that, I have to allow myself to be vulnerable with him. So, after a bracing breath, I force myself to maintain eye contact with him and begin.

“Well, lately I’ve been thinking about being with you at a party or an event, like a wedding or something. Somewhere public, but also somewhere where no one really knows who we are. Where we’re just two people in a crowd.” I bite down on my lip as the memory of this particular fantasy begins swirling around in my mind, and then reach down into his pants to begin stroking my hand softly over his erection. He moans slightly, but doesn’t break eye contact.

“And what happens at this event, Anastasia?”

“We’re dancing,” I tell him. “And you’re being a little brazen with your hands on my body for having so many people around us. Your gripping onto my ass, reaching around me to hold each of my breasts in your hands… you kiss my neck in that way that immediately gets me wet.” I moan. “You’re torturing me, getting me so hot and ready for you that we both know there’s no way that we’re going to make it home.”

“Oh, baby,” he whispers as my hand tightens around him. He reaches down to undo his fly and releases his erection, allowing me full access to pleasure him while I continue.

“When it becomes too much for either of us to take anymore, you pull me off the dance floor and into a little room off to the side. There’s only a thin wall between us and hundreds of other people, but we’re too lost to care. All we can think about it tearing into each other, and that’s exactly what we do. You rip my clothes away from my body because you’re too impatient to undress me properly and, once I’m naked, I wrap my body around you and you carry me to a couch that is the only thing in the room for us to fuck on.”

“Keep going,” he says. His hands move up my bare thighs and under the shorts I’m wearing, and his fingers start teasing me through my panties while I continue to work him over with my hand. It takes all the strength I possess, but somehow I manage to stop myself from giving in and ravaging him right here and now so that I can go on.

“You start by going down on me and, oh god, it’s amazing. In fact, now I might have to add some stubble to your face when I imagine it because it feels so incredible.” I lean forward and lightly run my tongue through the coarse hair on his chin, and he groans.

“Let me do it now,” he breathes, but I shake my head.

“Not yet.” I swallow the lust building up inside of me and continue. “Once you make me come, I can’t get you out of your pants fast enough, but while I fumble with your belt and the buttons and zipper, you start sucking my nipples. Pulling at them with your lips and your teeth, fuck!” I yell out, as the fingers on his free hand move up under my t-shirt, under my bra, and begin pinching my nipple hard. After a few panting breaths while he toys with my breast and my clit, I start again, stroking him faster now and trying to mirror what I’m describing to him with my hand.

“I finally get you out of your pants and I drop to my knees and start sucking you like my life depended on it. Your hands twist in my hair, forcing me to take you deep in my throat, even holding me in place while you fuck my mouth, until you’re just about to come.”

“Baby,” he says in a slightly shaking voice. “Let me fuck you now.”

“Not yet,” I reply. “When you pull out of my mouth, you throw me onto the couch and your hands grab each of my thighs really hard and force my legs apart. You stroke your cock against my clit for minute, bringing me right back to the edge before you plunge inside of me and the second you break through my lips, I come hard around you, but you don’t stop fucking me as hard as you can. You have me screaming for you and so, just as I start to come down from my orgasm, the door opens and several people come inside.”

“So you want be caught?” he asks, but I shake my head.

“Not just caught…” His brow furrows for a moment, so I lean forward and kiss him again, tangling my tongue with his while my thumb drags the bead of precum leaking out of him around the head of his cock. “Once they come into the room,” I continue, “You stop for a moment, but you haven’t come yet and you can’t stop now. They gape at us for a moment but, after the initial shock of finding us wears off, they just shut the door and you start fucking me again. You’re like an animal uncaged, taking me hard and rough, like you’re trying to prove something to our audience, and it makes me come again. I call out your name, making sure they all know that you’re making me come and then you explode inside of me, filling me to the brim until you’re completely spent.”

“Exhibitionism, huh?” he asks, and I nod slowly. A slow smile creeps across his lips as his finger moves through my lower lips and sinks inside of me, making me moan. “That’s kind of hot.”

“Just the tip of the iceberg,” I admit.

“Then do go on.”

“Okay, well… sometimes when I go to sleep at night when I’m in Cambridge, I’ll close my eyes and then imagine that you show up in the middle of the night. I’m asleep, but I wake up to you touching me. I try to open my eyes but you’ve blindfolded me so the only way that I know it’s you is by your breathing, your smell, and the way you touch me, the way that only you can. You take my hand in yours and try to tie it to my headboard, but I yank it out of your grip and try to struggle away from you. You’re on top of me though and your body is holding me down, pressing me into the mattress, and you lean down and whisper in my ear, telling me not to fucking move.”

“Mmm, but I’d love to have you try and resist me. To fight back. Force me to overpower you.” His voice is rough now, like gravel, as he bucks his hips up into my hand, trying to draw more friction from my fingers still gripped tightly around him.

“And I do, for as long as I can, until you have me tied to the bed. Once I’m subdued, you’re not gentle with me. You take everything you can from me and still demand more. You use my body in any and every way you find pleasurable, even if it hurts me a little. Oh, and your dirty talk… god I love it when you talk dirty to me when you’re really fucking me. You spank me, you pull my hair, your hand wraps around my throat… you do whatever you want to me, because you can.”

“Because you’re mine,” he growls.

“Because I’m yours,” I agree.

“You want me to treat you like a whore, baby?”

“Yes,” I breathe in reply, and he sinks a finger inside of me and begins swirling it around.  

“What else do you fantasize about?”

“Well…” I pause, tightening and loosening my grip around his erection while I attempt to work my way through the lust filled haze clouding my mind with his fingers hitting that important place inside of me with every tantalizing stroke. “I’ve um… I’ve never been with a girl before…”

A harsh, visceral growl erupts from deep inside his chest and suddenly we’re not in the chair anymore. He practically throws me onto the table before he begins attacking my clothes with the fervent hunger of a starving, wild animal. I lift my hips for him to remove my bottoms, and once he’s flung my shorts and panties across the room, he’s inside of me. It’s sudden and unexpected, and the lack of any kind of preamble actually makes me cry out in surprise, but the high pitched noise gives way almost immediately to a well satisfied, feral moan that comes from deep inside of me.

“That’s it, baby,” I encourage him. “Fuck me harder. Oh god!” My nails dig into his forearms, which are rock hard from the strain his putting into holding me as tightly as he can. His fingers dig into my hips while he holds me above the table and pulls me back into him with each, hard thrust. It almost feels as though he’s trying to drill through my pelvis, and in this moment I want him to. I want him to give me everything he’s got, to satisfy every one of my darkest, most forbidden desires, and to get off while he’s doing it.

“You’re so wet,” he says through his labored breathing. “God, I love you like this. I love seeing in your eyes how much you need my fucking cock.”

“Please, Christian,” I whimper. “I need to come, please make me come.”

He growls again and then flips me around on the table, more carefully this time so that I can catch myself on my hands and keep my belly from slamming into the table, but once he’s sure that I’m steady his hand disappears from my hips and comes down hard on my ass. I cry out in pain as the force of the blow reverberates through me and then whimper when I feel his tongue brush over my hot skin.

“You said you wanted it rough,” he says.

“I do.”

“Then, you’re going to get it rough. Tell me if it’s too much.” He hits me again, with the same force, and while it’s almost enough for me to stop him, I don’t have to because he thrusts inside of me again, and his hand moves back to my hips. I press my palms into the table and push back on him, greedily taking everything I can from him until I feel the stirrings of an orgasm building inside of me.

“That’s it, baby,” he groans. “Give it to me. I want you to come.”

“I’m so c-close. Don’t stop.”

I feel a sharp bite of pain as his fingers really start digging into my skin, and when his hand moves up my back, twists through my hair, and yanks roughly so that my head falls backwards, I let out a primal kind of yell and then come hard around him.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he hisses through bare teeth. “You’re so fucking tight when you’re coming, baby. Oh fuck, you’re going to make me…”

“Come for me, Christian,” I whine as the pleasure continues to overwhelm me. “Come with me.”

“Not yet. I’m not… fuck!” I hear him grunt as he moves in and out of me, keeping me flying while trying to delay his own release, but when I come down and stop convulsing around him, the increasing urgency inside of him doesn’t recede.

“Fuck, I can’t stop,” he pants. “You want to give me your mouth, baby?”

“What?”

“Get on your knees. Oh, fuck…” He pulls out of me and yanks me up off the table. I turn quickly and sink to the floor, and the second my mouth closes around him, he thrusts into the back of the throat and explodes. The warm liquid of his release fills my mouth and drips down my throat, but I don’t shy away from the bitter taste. The temporary discomfort of swallowing the thick liquid is overshadowed by the satisfaction I take from the look of complete and utter euphoria on his face. The way his mouth drops open, the way all the tension in his muscles releases at once, and the deep, gratified sound that rattles in his throat.

“Holy shit, baby,” he breathes. “Fuck, you’re incredible.”

“Mmm,” I hum in response, dragging my tongue over his length as I slowly pull him out of my mouth. “Right back at you, Grey.”

I drag my hands up his thighs, but he reaches down and entwines his fingers with mine and pulls me up to kiss me. My body presses into his as he reaches for my hips and lifts me so that my legs wrap around his waist and I have to hold myself tightly around him to keep from falling backwards.

“I’m not ready to be done with you yet,” he tells me. I smile against his lips as he turns and leads me back into the bedroom, caressing my tongue with his until we’re standing before the bed. He kneels down on the edge of the mattress and slowly lowers me onto the bedding without breaking our kiss, but once I’m flat on the bed, his hands begin to roam around my body.

“Your breasts are bigger,” he notes as he kneads them purposefully.

“Everything is starting to feel bigger,” I reply ruefully.

“I love your body, Anastasia,” he says. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

I smile and then pull his mouth down to mine again, pushing my tongue past his lips and tangling it with his. He matches my enthusiasm, pouring his love into the connection created through our lips, until he eventually begins moving down my body. He leaves a trail of soft kisses against every inch of my skin on his way south, stopping only when his face moves between my legs and only then to admire the sight before him.

“Oh, baby,” he whispers, and then leans forward to place a gentle kiss against my clitoris. A shudder runs up my body as I feel his tongue, and then his lips again. He moves deliberately, carefully, allowing the pleasure to build slowly until it’s burning in my skin.

“You taste so sweet, Anastasia,” he says.

I moan. “Don’t stop, Christian. Oh god, you’re so, so good.”

He groans and the sound sends vibrations through me, heightening the already euphoric sensation that drags me, inch by inch, closer to the edge. My body begins writhing over the bed, moving independently of any thought or ounce of control I possess, but Christian’s strong hands hold my hips to his face so that I can’t escape his mouth. I grind against him, growing greedier and more audacious with each passing second, until eventually the heat boils over and creeps through my bloodstream with such intensity it’s like physical, molten pleasure.

“Christian!” I scream as it begins to overwhelm me.

“Yes,” he hisses. “That’s it, give it to me. Come on my tongue. Fuck, baby.”

His mouth seems to envelop me, sucking, licking, teasing, even nibbling at me, until he’s seen me all the way through. I pant harshly as I come down and then moan as I feel him brush the tip of his erection against my opening.

“Again?”

“Yes. Fuck me again, Christian.”

“No,” he says. “No, this time, I want to make love to you.”

He sinks inside of me, stretching me slowly and allowing me to feel every inch of him until he’s buried to the hilt inside of me. Once I’m filled, he lays over the top of me, takes my hand in his, and begins pulling out with the same achingly slow rhythm. It’s maddening, and bewildering, and extraordinary all at the same time. It’s not the friction or the lust that drives me towards release this time, it’s the feel of his skin against mine. It’s the heat of his breath on my neck. It’s the sweet words of love and reassurance that he whispers into my ear. And, though it takes longer to get there, the eventual promising rise of my orgasm is stronger, more intense than before, and I revel in it as the warmth unravels and begins to spread through my body.

“You feel so good, Anastasia,” he says, his voice tight as his rhythm grows less and less controlled. “Do you think you have one more in you?”  

“Yes,” I reply. “But I want you to come with me.”

He moans and his fingers tighten around mine as he begins to really move inside of me, each hard thrust punctuated by my sharp, keening cries. As the perfect metric pace of his cadence changes and his breathing grows harsher, it’s almost as though I can feel him building towards his final release and my body instinctively paces my rise with his. He stares down into my eyes, holding my gaze as the heat envelops us both and when I watch his mouth fall open again in a silent gasp of pleasure, the quivering inside of me intensifies to the full blown shudders of an orgasm. His gasps are no longer silent as he tumbles over the edge after me and for a moment we soar together, experience the pinnacle of the physical manifestation of our love together. It’s perfect, life affirming even, and the glow of our mutual indulgence surrounds us long after the final pulse of either of our orgasms fades away.

“I love you, Anastasia,” he whispers against my lips. “You are my everything.”

“I love you, too,” I tell him. “So, so much.”

He kisses me again, softly, and brushes his fingers against my cheek. I fight the smile his touch elicits so that I can relish in his mouth and his tongue, but I’m eventually pulled away from this kiss by an entirely different distraction.

“Oh,” I gasp, and then smile as I feel the rolling movement inside of me. “I think you’ve woken your daughter up.”

“Oh, really?” Christian asks. I nod, so he moves his hand down to my belly, but the moment he touches the bare skin on my bump, he immediately yanks his away as though he’s been burned.

“Oh my god,” he says.

“What?”

“I-I felt that.”

My eyes widen. “You did?”

He nods and then slowly places his hand on my belly again, and when I feel her movements shift back across my belly once more, his eyes widen and a disbelieving kind of smile slowly begins creeping across his lips.

“I can feel her,” he whispers. “I can feel her!”

I beam at him and the excitement becoming more and more obvious in his expression the more I too feel her moving inside of me. He moves so that he can place both of his hands on my bump, and we both lay there, as still as possible, while we wait for any further shift or change. When it comes, we laugh together.

“I can’t believe it,” he says, awed. “It’s like… it’s real now. She’s really in there.”

“She’s really in there.” I giggle.

He looks up at me, grinning so widely I can practically see the joy radiating off of him, and I reach down to brush my fingers through the strands of his hair just above his forehead.

“You know, you never told me YOUR fantasies,” I tell him.

“You really want to know?” he asks, and I nod.

He takes a breath. “I fantasize about having dinner with you on a Tuesday. About waking up next to you every morning and going to bed next to you every night. I like to think about introducing you to people as my wife, not my girlfriend or my fiance, and I dream about watching you holding our daughter in your arms, singing to her as you put her to bed. I love fucking you, and I love making love to you. I love that you can be so dirty between the sheets with me, and I love indulging in every one of the things we both find pleasure in, but the thing that I fantasize about, is a life with you.”

I bite down on my lip, but as I attempt to pull him up towards me, he stops me and gives me a devilish grin.

“Although, I am fully in support of watching you live out your fantasy of being with another woman…”

“Of course you are,” I giggle, and then drag his lips to mine.

“I love you,” he says.

“And I love you. Happy Valentine’s Day, Christian.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, baby.”

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