Page 182 of Slapshot Baby

His pace stays slow. His hand cups my belly while he moves inside me, thumb stroking the skin where our baby turns and shifts beneath his touch.

Nobody has ever touched me like this. Like my body is something to be studied and memorized and kept. Like the parts of me that have changed are not flaws to work around but evidence of something sacred happening inside me.

I arch into him. Wrap my legs around his hips. Pull him deeper.

"Harder," I breathe.

"No." He presses his mouth to my neck, swallowing the plea. "Tonight I want to feel all of you. Every part."

He grinds into me, slow and deep, and the friction builds a pressure so intense my fingers dig into his shoulders. My hips roll up to meet him and he lets out a low groan that vibrates through my chest.

"You feel different," he says. "Fuller. Warmer."

"Better or worse?"

He answers by sliding deeper, angling his hips so the next stroke hits the place that makes my spine arch off the floor.

"That's not an answer," I gasp.

"Better." He traces his tongue along my ear. "Everything about you is better than what I remember."

He builds me up with a patience that borders on cruelty. Every time I get close, he slows down, holds me on the edge, his dark eyes watching my face like my expressions are instructions he's memorizing.

"Please." The word falls out of me without pride or performance. "Kai, please."

He picks up the rhythm. Steady and relentless and aimed with precision. His hand presses flat on my belly, holding our baby between us while he brings me to the edge again.

This time he doesn't stop.

I come apart screaming, my whole body clenching around him, my voice breaking on his name.

Not muffled. Not stifled. Not bitten back or swallowed or hidden behind a closed mouth.

Full and loud and completely uncontrolled.

He follows seconds later with a deep groan, his rhythm stuttering, his body going tight against mine before he empties himself inside me with his face buried in my neck and his hand still spread wide across the swell of our child.

We lie there breathing.

The nursery smells like pine and sweat and the faint trace of cedar that always clings to his skin.

"I love you, Kai," I say. “Stay tonight.”

He smiles, arm tightening around me.

"I'm staying every night, Ava." His lips brush my cheeks. "All of them."

The baby rolls beneath his hand, a slow, deliberate turn.

And for the first time since I found out about the pregnancy, I feel completely fulfilled.

32

KAI

Back Where I Belong

We're running neutral-zone transition drills, three lines rotating through the center lane. Wyatt falls in beside me, his mouth guard dangling from his teeth.