Page 78 of Christmas With A Stranger

"Don't stop."

I get both hands into his hair because I need somewhere to put them. His thumb keeps moving over the same spot, steady and maddening, until everything that felt distant starts pulling together.

The orgasm takes its time. Then it catches. I clamp my teeth into the sheet because both babies are five feet away, and Carson keeps going until my hips lift off the mattress. My heel digs into his back.

I come apart hard enough that tears sting my eyes.

He eases off when I twitch away from his hand, but he doesn't move from between my thighs.

I lie there breathing through it. When I finally catch my breath, I whisper, “Okay.”

“Okay good or okay stop?”

I laugh, still shaky. “You know damn well which one.”

His mouth touches the inside of my knee, and my entire body jumps.

“Carson.”

“What?”

“If you start again, I will murder you.”

“Seems dramatic.”

“I’m postpartum. I’m allowed.”

He comes up the bed then, kissing his way over me while steering carefully around the incision. When he reaches the hem of his shirt, the one I’m still wearing, he catches it in both hands.

I grab it before he can lift it, holding it down to cover me. He stops immediately.

“It’s going to be a mess,” I warn him. "You’ve seen the scar. The rest isn’t any better, and my boobs leak."

His eyes stay on mine. “Mackie.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

He lifts the shirt slowly enough that I could stop him if I wanted to.

The soreness and the body I still don’t entirely recognize are all right there between us. There’s nowhere left to hide any of it. Then he puts his mouth on me like none of it changes what he sees.

He is careful about the sore places and not careful anywhere else. The soreness and the leaking and the whole postpartum catastrophe of it are not things he needs shielding from.

By the end his forehead is against my sternum, and my palm is flat on the back of his neck. We lie like that for a while

After I've finally come back down to earth, my hand finds the drawstring at his waist and gives it a tug.

He catches my wrist. "No."

There's nothing sharp in it. He lifts my hand off him and sets it back down on the mattress.

I lie still, sure I read it wrong. He's tired, or maybe the angle was bad. There's a hundred ordinary reasons that have nothing to do with the cold little thread pulling tight under my ribs.

A minute later I slide my palm flat against the front, where there is no mistaking what I find. He’s hard beneath my hand.

He moves my hand a second time, exactly as gently.