Beautiful Beloved (2 page)

“I think I heard what you were saying last night.”

Her brows pulled together and I could tell she wasn’t exactly sure what I was saying. “Oh?”

“I want to be the husband you need again. Photographs. Film. Knowing I’m giving you what you need.”

“What I need?”

“What
we
need.”

She licked her lips, blinking down to the baby. “You’re so much more than I could have ever hoped for. You know that.”

“I’d like to occasionally outdo myself,” I said, and she giggled, putting her hand over her mouth when the baby pulled off her breast in surprise.

“Shh, shh,” Sara murmured to her. “Come here.”

“Maybe Mum can watch little Beloved and we can start with dinner out? Slowly work our way to something else?”

She looked up again, eyes wide. “Like the club?”

I watched her holding our child in her arms and felt a protectiveness so violent lash over me I wasn’t sure how I would handle letting others see her so vulnerable, so
ripe
.

“If that’s what you want,” I managed.

She nodded, gently answering the question in my voice. “It is.”

I folded up the stroller and stowed it in the foyer closet before stripping off my shirt. Although so far it had been a mild winter, it was still January and the long-sleeved running shirt I wore to keep me from freezing outside immediately felt claustrophobic upon entering the warm apartment.

Bending, I unzipped the carrier and pulled out the extremely bundled child inside.

“Was that good, baby girl?” I murmured, kissing her pink cheek. She was warm and drooly and her enormous brown eyes crinkled exactly like her mother’s when she smiled. “Got a good run in, didn’t we?”

I sat on the couch and laid Annabel on my chest while I caught my breath.

“You’re sweaty and sitting on the couch, aren’t you?” Sara called from the master suite.

I stuck my tongue out at Anna and she tried to grab it. “Very sweaty,” I answered my wife. “Quite disgusting, actually.”

Sara’s heels clicked down the hallway and she froze when she saw us. “Max.”

“I’ll wipe it down, Pet—”

“I don’t care about that,” she said, walking closer. “You’re shirtless with the world’s sweetest baby cuddled on those muscles. Put a shirt on, you beast, or I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

I fucking loved it when Sara looked at me like that. “Imagine how I feel when you’re feeding her.”

She gave me a bright smile as she bent, kissing Anna’s chubby thigh. “She looks like a little peach on you.”

I took in her outfit and immediately wondered if we’d be able to get the baby down for a nap this early in the day. I hadn’t seen Sara in work clothes in months and didn’t realize until just then how much I missed it. Her little black skirt hit just below her knees, giving a tiny flash of skin above her soft leather boots. Her tits looked fucking unreal in the gray sweater she’d put on.

Following my attention, she looked down at her chest. “I think I need to go shopping today. Everything is too small in the chest.”

“Don’t you dare get rid of that one.”

She pulled her lip between her teeth, blinking over to me. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I murmured, and the moment grew heavy. “You look bloody beautiful, Petal.”

“Is it . . . inappropriate, though? I mean, the way you’re looking at me makes me think this sweater is no longer very professional.”

“I guess it depends on where you’re headed.”

She shrugged, sitting down next to us. “I thought I’d go into the office for a couple of hours, just so next week doesn’t feel so disorienting. I’m meeting the girls for breakfast and then heading in.”

I kissed the top of Anna’s head. “Want me to take her with me?”

“Either way. I could, too.”

What was it about her face in that moment, right there, that made me feel so many things at once it was overwhelming? With her dressed and headed out the door, it was like I was seeing this combination for the first time: my lover, my wife, and also a mother, a nurturer and . . .
fuck,
a bird with the best pair of tits I’d ever seen.

Standing, I motioned for her to follow me back down the hall. I grabbed Annabel’s musical baby seat from the nursery and put it beside the dresser in our bedroom, facing the set of framed photographs of trees that she loved, and then guided Sara to the bed.

“Max . . .”

“Just a minute.” I retrieved my camera from the shelf, stabilized it on the tripod, and set it to automatic shots every five seconds. Sara’s breath was rapid and shallow when I bent low, kissed her neck, and told her, “I won’t keep you long.”

“Anna’s fine,” she said, pulling me closer. “Keep me as long as you can.”

Laying her back, I pushed her skirt up her hips and began kissing my way up her stomach, feeling my cock tighten with each nostalgic click of the shutter, with the feel of her hands digging into my hair. I moved her sweater up her stomach, revealing smooth, bare skin. She tasted like rain, like fruit, and had the same sweet scent I’d always worshipped on her body. Reaching behind her, I unhooked her bra and pushed it up over her breasts.

I’d always loved Sara’s breasts but I’d never particularly been a breast man until recently. The weight of them, the soft smell of her skin, and the odd spike I felt in my abdomen whenever she fed our child . . . it was an odd reflex to want to look at them, touch them like this, and one I realized I’d been fighting the last few months.

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.”

“We can’t,” Bennett said, wincing in apology. “Chloe and I are headed up to the Hudson Valley.”

“This weekend?” Will asked, nodding several times in quick succession as if to talk himself into it. “I could probably do it.”

“Brilliant,” I said. “Thanks, mate.”

“I’ve never changed a diaper. Or fed a baby. Hanna jokes that the only girl I’ve ever failed to charm is Liv’s daughter, Aspen.” Shrugging, he added, “But I’m sure it’s instinct, right?” He ticked the rules off on his fingers: “Don’t scald Anna in the bath, don’t leave the milk in the microwave too long.” He paused and seemed to continue to draft a mental list. “Oh, and don’t drop her.”

I imagined walking out of the office right now and leaving Annabel in Will’s hands for even a minute; my stomach flipped over and I wanted to vomit. “Couldn’t you bring Hanna?”

“She’s got some visiting-faculty dinners this weekend.”

Rubbing my hand across my chin, I asked, “You know . . . maybe you could come over and have dinner with us tonight to watch and learn?”

He nodded, but swallowed heavily. To be fair, I knew what I was asking was a big deal. It was one thing to hang out with us when we had Annabel, and quite another to imagine being alone with this tiny little girl.

“Can’t you just take it to the restaurant with you?” Bennett asked.

“That sort of defeats the purpose. Also, Annabel isn’t an ‘it.’ ”

“I didn’t call her an ‘it.’ ”

Will and I replied in unison, “Yeah, you did.”

Scrubbing my face, I muttered, “Fuck it. Just come over for dinner and we’ll have some beers.”

We’d figure something out. We had to.

Chapter Two

Sara

I turned down Fifty-Sixth and caught sight of the Parker Meridien near the end of the block.

The gray stone façade was as bleak as the morning sky; the clouds overhead fat with snow that was certain to start falling any minute. Winter in New York after Christmas was dreary: cold and wet, dirty slush, and days at a time without a hint of blue sky. But this year had been blessedly mild compared to others, and warm enough for Max to regularly push the bundled-up stroller alongside Will and Hanna as they ran through the park.

My phone buzzed in the front pocket of my coat. I didn’t need to look to know it was Chloe, sending the third
Where are you? You are not backing out on us Sara!
message in the last hour. So maybe I’d missed a few lunches with the girls since Anna had been born, it wasn’t easy getting out of the house with a newborn who would be permanently attached to my breast if given the chance.

I ignored my phone, my head still full of my morning with Max. Chloe could wait.

But of course only two steps later I was clutched with the fear that maybe the text hadn’t been Chloe. Maybe it was Max with a message that Anna was sick or had hurt herself or—

I moved off the sidewalk to stand in the shelter of a nearby building, and pulled out my phone.

Will might come over for dinner
, Max had written.
You good with that?

I replied that it was fine and slid my phone back into my pocket. With each step, my favorite boots crunched through the salt that had been scattered along the sidewalk. Chloe wanted to take me shopping before I braved the office today, but I’d declined. I wanted the comfort of my favorite skirt and the heels that added just a little swing to my step, the sweater that rendered Max speechless and then
consumed
this morning. I needed to feel like myself.

I straightened my jacket and tightened the grip on the purse Max had bought me for my birthday. A Burberry clutch, not a diaper bag. I hadn’t been out of the house without my baby, let alone diapers, bottles, wipes, and a change of clothes, since Anna was born, and the soft leather felt too light in my hand.

Just a few hours away from her today,
I reminded myself.
Just see how it goes.

I smiled at the doorman as I stepped inside the marble lobby. The floors were gleaming white and inlaid with glossy black squares, the walls made of polished stone. People gathered on benches and sat hunched over their phones. Conversations carried through the giant space and up, echoing off stone walls. I walked under a giant arch and turned left, climbing a set of stairs that led to Norma’s. As usual, I could hear Chloe before I could see her.

“There she is,” Chloe said, standing on skyscraper-tall boots, all long legs and cascading wavy hair and an expression that said there was no way I’d get out of being late without getting a little shit for it first. “Fucking
finally
.”

“I know, I know,” I said, crossing the wood floors to reach them. “Sorry. Just trust me that time warps when you have a kid, and you think you’re getting out of the house on time and then suddenly you’re half an hour late.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t because Max saw you in that outfit and got a little handsy?” Hanna asked from beside Chloe.

“Spoken like a woman who’s with a boob man,” I said, laughing. “And . . . maybe.”

I adored Hanna, but Max in particular had grown especially fond of her in the past year, saying that anyone who could keep Will Sumner by the balls was aces in his book.

“Just ignore Attila the Hun over here,” my assistant and good friend George said, motioning to Chloe. “The woman isn’t happy unless she’s bossing someone around.”

“Hell yes,” Chloe said.

I hugged them all and hung my coat on the back of my chair before taking my seat.

“How’s the princess?” Chloe said, blowing over the top of her mug. “
Where’s
the princess?”

“Perfect. She’s with Daddy today.” A proud smile spread across my face. “How’s the Bennett?”

“A nightmare,” she answered, equally proud.

“And what’s new with you and Will?” I asked, turning to Hanna. “I feel like I hardly see you, even if Max has taken it upon himself to crash your runs lately. Sorry about that.”

Hanna leaned an elbow on the table and smiled. “I love when he comes along. And judging by the goofy look Will gets on his face when he sees that running stroller heading down the path, I can assure you he doesn’t mind, either.”

“Good, because as bad as I feel, the extra hour of sleep I get makes me feel a
lot
better.”

“Maybe I should join those runs,” George offered. “Does Will run shirtless in the spring?”

“George,” Hanna said, ignoring this, “are you going to tell Sara about the little dreamboat you’ve been seeing?”

“
Was
seeing,” he corrected. “As in past tense. Ugh, it was a stage-one breakup. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“A stage what?” Chloe asked.

“
A stage
one
,” he clarified. “I swear, do I always have to be the gay urban dictionary for you people? Stage one is where you break up via text message trying to come off not looking like a total douche bag. Stage two is where you tell the person, ‘Look, you’re not ringing my bell and I’m clearly not ringing yours. Let’s move this train along to grander stations.’ Stage three is where it’s not working and you sort of fade the person out over time. It’s painful because by then the other person has become sort of a habit. They know how you take your coffee and what days you can have carbs and just . . . it can be sad.”

“Of course it can,” I said, stirring my coffee. “Bonding over dietary restrictions can be very romantic.”

George gave me a playful jab to the shoulder. “You get a sarcasm pass because you’re lactating and it’s clearly eating your brain. Where was I? Oh, stage four. Well . . . stage four is where one person is totally invested and the other is just . . . over it. Awful, right? So, stage one doesn’t sound so bad, but in my opinion it’s the worst after stage four. If someone feels comfortable breaking up via text message, you clearly haven’t gotten to a place where you can ask a lot of questions, and you definitely can’t call them up and be all
Oh hi, it’s me, the guy you wore the Lion Tamer outfit with? Can you tell me what happened?
”

We all nodded sympathetically, and George glared at the bowl of muffins in the center of the table before reaching for one. “Now I’m eating my feelings.”

“Aww, George. Were you totally infatuated with him?” Hanna asked.

“Oh, girl, no,” George said with a laugh. “I don’t do infatuation unless his name is Sumner.”

The waiter stopped by our table, filling my coffee before taking each of our orders. “I’ll have the crispy waffle with berries and Devonshire cream,” I told him.

“I have no idea how you look like this,” Chloe said, motioning to my body, “and still eat like that. You don’t run with Hanna, and I know I haven’t seen you at the office gym in months.”

“One of the joys of breastfeeding,” I said. “I have to eat more calories to keep up my milk.”

Which was true. I still worked out when I could, but pregnancy and motherhood had left me with this new body I was only now getting used to: a slightly wider waist, but curves that had never been so full. I’d always been a bit on the skinny side, but I felt softer now, with rounded hips and boobs that surprised even me. It didn’t hurt that sometimes I’d turn around and see Max flat-out staring at my chest, completely unable to look away. I’d be lying if I didn’t say those moments made me feel like a fucking queen.

“What’s the plan when you go back to work?” Hanna asked, and taking in my outfit, added, “I’m assuming that’s where you’re headed now?”

I nodded as I took a sip of my coffee. “I don’t officially go back until next week, but thought it might be easier to ease myself into it.”

“Are you actually going to walk into your office and sit at your desk today?” George asked.

George had been a godsend while I was on leave. I was out for sixteen weeks, but I’d never wanted to feel disconnected from my career at Ryan Media Group, so I’d stop in on a pretty regular basis even though anything I needed to look at could have easily been couriered over to the apartment. Without really talking about it, we’d built up a system: Anna and I would meet George at his desk in the outer office, he’d hand me the stack of files and any messages that required my attention, and I’d leave him whatever I’d been working on at home.

I never went inside my office and he never questioned why.

Which was ridiculous, when you thought about it. I was Sara Stella, capable of managing multimillion-dollar campaigns and overseeing an entire finance department.

But I hadn’t quite figured out how to do all that and be mommy, too.

“You haven’t gone into your office yet?” Hanna asked. “Is it going to be weird to go back?”

“I don’t think so? I mean, I want to go back to work. I
need
to. It’s such a part of who I am and I need that part of my life. But Anna . . . the idea of leaving her for eight hours a day still fills me with this guilt like I’m ruining her somehow or I’m missing some vital mommy muscle that makes me want to stay home. Plus, I know I want more at some point and how will we make all that work? Is it fair of me to want more children when I’m pretty sure I’ll always need
that
side of me, too?”

“Bullshit,” Chloe said. “You think men ever have this conversation with themselves? Of course they don’t. You’ve killed yourself to get where you are. If you can have both, have both. It might take some adjustment but who cares? You figure it out as you go.” She tilted her head and added, “You don’t see Max wanting to stay home.”

“Actually,” I started, and it was enough to get Chloe’s attention. She put down her mug and sat back in her chair, waiting. “I don’t really know what’s going on with him right now. I know he wants me every bit as much as he did before Anna, but I think it’s been more of an adjustment for him than he thought it would be, the idea of my being a wife
and
a
mother. He’s so careful, like he’s not sure how to treat me.”

“Can you blame the man?” George said, and we all turned to him. “Have you seen what childbirth does to a vagina?” He did a full-body shudder.

“
George
,” Chloe said, shaking her head.

“What!” he shouted.

“Shut up!” she shouted back.

“As horrible a flashback as that was,” I said, “George has a point. I think Max is worried he’ll do something to hurt me, and I’m not really sure how to show him I’m the same Sara I was before. That I
want
the same things I did before.”

Chloe shrugged and picked up her coffee. “I don’t know, Sara. He went from having you all to himself to watching you learn how to be a mama. Doesn’t surprise me his brain is having to rewrite that code a little.”

“I don’t think it’s about having to share me . . .” I hedged, but Chloe held up a hand.

“I mean it’s about shifting how he sees you,” she said, lifting an arched brow. “First you were the lust of his life, and now you’re the mother of his daughter.”

I chewed my lip, nodding. “He worries that I’m delicate now.”

“Exactly,” she said, a bit more gently. “Having Anna was traumatic. It wasn’t as easy a birth as you both expected. You’ve already forgotten it, but maybe he hasn’t and still needs to get over it.”

Chloe was right. Sex this morning had been wild and hard, as if wanting me took over the part of Max’s brain that told him to slow down.
That
’
s what I wanted.

“When was the last time just the two of you went out?” George asked.

“Since Anna? We haven’t.”

It was his turn for a little eyebrow snark. “Well there’s part of your problem right there, babycakes.”

“Are we just talking wild sex here?” Chloe asked. “Because it’s not like Annabel would have a clue what’s going on.”

“True,” George said, “but it’s probably a lot harder to fuck like wild animals with a baby asleep two doors down. You need a little space.”

He had a point. “I love my baby more than anything in the world, but I want hours and hours. I want to bang my husband until he can’t remember his name.”

Silence bounced around the table for a few breaths.

“Too blunt?” I asked, laughing.

“Never,” George said quickly. “I think we’re all just working on that mental image.”

“God, I sound desperate,” I say, resting my chin on my fist. “Maybe we should just start with dinner out? I think Max is asking his mom if she can watch Anna this weekend.”

“Otherwise next weekend Bennett and I can help,” Chloe said.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” George cut in. “What am I here for? My subtle charm? My pretty face? What about me?”

Chloe whipped her head around dramatically. “
You?
”

“I’ll have you know that my mother ran a day care, and I taught preschool all through college. Hell, I worked in the infant room when I was in high school to pay for majorette class.” Chloe went to respond but he held up a hand: “Shut it, Mills.” He turned to me. “I’ll watch Anna. I can even watch her tonight.”