Page 77
I pull. He keeps it, not letting go.
His thumbs find the sore place on my instep, the one that started aching in month five and never quit. My whole leg goes loose. Then he turns my foot in his hands and puts his mouth on the inside of my ankle, and everything else disappears.
He lifts my foot higher and takes my big toe into his mouth. I get a sound out that I have never made in my life, and I have to get a knuckle between my teeth because I don't want to wake the babies. He does the next one. Then he bites the side of my foot. I say something that isn't a word.
He works up my calf to the soft place behind my knee, where nobody has ever spent one second. I try to hurry him along in three separate ways, and he ignores me just the same as if I hadn't spoken.
I catch the front of his shirt, the one I'm wearing, and drag it down over my stomach.
He catches my wrist and moves my hand off. "Don't. I'll be careful. I want to see all of you."
He works around the incision, one hip and then the other. He's going around it, and I'm grateful in a way that embarrasses me. Then he comes back and puts his mouth two inches above the line, where the skin is still numb and still the wrong color.
I start crying. Not from hurt and not from anything I could name if he asked me to. I do it silently. He doesn't ask or stop what he's doing. He stays where he is, mouth against the part of me I was certain he would pretend not to see, until I quit shaking.
Then he moves lower.
He gets both arms under me and pulls me farther down to the edge of the bed until my hips are where he wants them. He eases my thighs wider with both hands and takes his time about it.
He works higher, his mouth moving along the inside of my thigh until I know exactly where he’s headed. Then he stops just short.
“Carson.”
His mouth lands a little higher, still not where I want him. I pull on his hair. “You are being an asshole.”
He makes a sound against my skin that might be a laugh and moves to the other thigh instead. I open my legs farther, which seems unfair considering he’s the one apparently determined to make me beg.
He looks up at me. “Seventeen days.”
“I know how long it’s been.”
“Then you know I’m not doing anything Rao told us not to do.”
The fact that he has apparently memorized this instruction along with every blood-pressure number and feeding schedule should annoy me, but it doesn't.
“Fine.”
His eyebrows lift.
“That did not mean stop.”
The corner of his mouth moves before he kisses the soft skin high on my thigh again, close enough that every muscle in my stomach pulls tight. My body reacts before he has even really touched me, heat gathering fast enough that some of the worry I’ve been carrying finally loosens.
When his hand slips between my thighs, his thumb settles over my clit without going anywhere else.
“More,” I whisper urgently.
He keeps the same maddening pace, patient and exact, while I start chasing the pressure without meaning to. His other hand settles over my hip and keeps me still.
He makes slow circles over my clit with his thumb, then pauses before starting again.
Nothing about my body feels exactly the way it did before. Everything takes longer to sharpen, and for one awful second I can feel panic opening underneath it.
Carson doesn’t ask what’s wrong and he doesn’t rush me. He just keeps going, steady enough that my body eventually follows him there. My thighs start shaking.
"There," I whisper.
His eyes lift to mine.
