Sugar on the Edge (39 page)

I lean forward and touch my mouth to his, continuing to whisper. “I forgive you. I understand. It’s okay.”

When I pull back, his face is disbelieving of my words. I can see he’s still too disgusted with himself to believe the truth of them. I cup his face with my hands and give him a little shake. Leaning in closer, I look straight through his eyes… I look straight into his heart. “Hear me… I forgive you. We’ll start again… all of us… together.”

I wait for it… watching closely, and finally, I see his dark eyes lighten. I see him accept what I’m saying, and I watch… all within the depths of his beautiful gray eyes, as he finally understands that his sins have been forgiven.

Gavin’s arms come around me… one around my lower back and the other with his hand gripping the back of my head. He pulls me in close and holds me tight as I bury my face in the crook of his neck and inhale him deep.

“Thank you,” he whispers simply. “Thank you.”

We stay like that… for minutes, for hours… I have no clue. All I know is that this very moment, I’ve wiped the slate clean and I’m not going to think another moment on the hurt he caused me. I’m only going to think about our future together and building it strong.

Gripping me by the back of the hair, Gavin pulls my head away from his shoulder and stares at me. “I love you, Sweet. So fucking much it hurts.” His other hand comes to rest over my stomach. “And I love our daughter, too. With the last breath in my body, I love her and I can’t wait to meet her. And I’m scared, Sweet. You know that’s why I ran, right? Because of Charlie… I’m just so scared.”

“It’s okay, baby,” I croon to him as I lay my own hand over his while he strokes our baby through my skin. “It will all be fine. I promise.”

“I believe you,” he says, leaning forward to kiss me. It’s a tentative kiss and utterly lacking Gavin’s confidence. He’s hesitant, not sure of where the boundaries lay.

I open my mouth to him… I slip my tongue inside his, and that tells him it’s okay. That I want him the way I know that he wants me. The way that he craves me, as I crave him.

Pulling me in tighter and tighter still, his mouth angles and he delves for a better connection. His tongue is so warm, and sweet, and I’ve missed it so much. His mouth moves from mine, skims my cheek, my jaw… he whispers in my ear how much he loves me, and then he kisses me again.

His hands stroke my belly, up to my breasts, which are sensitive. My nipples pucker hard between his hand and the silk of my bra. Magically… smoothly… with only the way that Gavin can do, he removes all of my clothes and pushes me down onto the living room rug. Kneeling between my legs, he places his hands on my stomach and gently rubs the swell there. He watches his hands, mesmerized, as he cradles his daughter for the very first time.

Lifting his eyes to mine, he says, “You know she’s going to be spoiled rotten.”

I smile at him, a true smile for the first time in weeks, and it causes his breath to hitch.

“Oh, Sweet,” he says reverently, returning a grateful smile to me. “I missed that smile.”

“That smile missed you,” I tell him. “
I
missed you, but you’re back now.”

His hands slide up my stomach and cup my breasts, but his eyes never leave mine. “Do you love me, Sweet?”

“I love you, Filthy,” I assure him. “No matter what… I never stopped.”

“I missed hearing you call me that,” he admits, plucking at my nipples and finally letting his gaze drop to my breasts. “I missed a lot of things.”

“Time to make up for it, don’t you think?” I ask boldly.

He turns his hot gaze back to me. “What did you have in mind?”

“I want you to dirty me up a bit,” I tell him honestly, and I’m rewarded by his hand going between my legs.

Oh, yes… I missed this a lot.

“Something like this?” he says as he pushes a finger inside of me, groaning at the ease with which he slides in.

“A lot like that,” I breathe out harshly.

His eyes burn into me. “Or maybe you want my tongue here?” he asks as he pushes and pulls his finger against me.

“Filthy,” I pant with burning need. “No more words. Just show me.”

Gavin scoots backward and brings his face between my legs. He takes a hand and strokes it over my stomach while he lowers his mouth to me.

“I love you, Savannah,” he says softly just before he covers me.

“I love you, Gavin,” I gasp, and then I’m lost to the man I love.

“Seriously, Gavin… is a blindfold really necessary?” I ask, trying to figure out where he’s driving me by the turns that he’s making. I’m completely lost.

“You don’t seem to mind when I make you wear one in bed,” he says smartly… with that crisp, British accent that is just one of the many things I adore about him.

I blush at the reminder, because yes… I do love when he blindfolds me so I can’t see what he’s doing to my body. It removes that precious sense of sight, and only lets me hear and feel. It heightens everything.

My legs squeeze together in yearning.

I feel his hand on my stomach, rubbing it lightly. He calls it my baby bump, but I call it my baby boulder. I feel like a whale. Look like one too, I imagine.

My life is still measured in weeks, but they are infinitely better than what they used to be.

At seventeen weeks, Gavin insisted I move in with him permanently and carted all of my stuff over himself. Casey was okay with it, because she made a shit pile full of money when she sold Gavin the house and didn’t have to depend on splitting the rent with me anymore.

At nineteen weeks, my parents came to visit so they could meet Gavin. They loved him and while quietly making love to me so they wouldn’t hear us in the next room over, he said, “I adore your parents. I have a new family now.”

At twenty weeks, we had my next prenatal visit. We both cried when we saw the ultrasound and Gavin kissed my belly, despite the gel they had squirted all over it. “You’re a beauty, little Clare,” he had said with a thick voice. I cried again.

At twenty-two weeks, Gavin’s parents came to visit. That first night, I sat astride Gavin and rode him slowly. This is his favorite position now, so he can see my swollen stomach and watch my eyes. “I adore your parents, too,” I had told him.

He told me, “Less talk, Sweet. More fucking.”

At twenty-six weeks, Gavin insisted I stop working at The Haven. This resulted in a fight of epic proportions and only after he called Brody and got his assurances that I wouldn’t do anything too strenuous, did he finally relent on letting me stay.

As if he really had a say-so in what I do.

And here we are now… at twenty-nine weeks, and he has my fat ass in a car with a blindfold over my eyes, driving me to who knows where.

God, I love my Filthy.

Finally, the car comes to a stop. I wait patiently for him to open my door and lead me out. He holds one of my hands with his and keeps his other on my lower back to carefully guide me.

“Step up, Sweet,” he says when we reach a curb, and I blindly follow with trust in his voice.

We take a few more steps, and he releases me. “Just a second.”

I hear keys rattling in a lock, and then the squeak of a door swinging open. He takes ahold of my hand again, the other on my back, and leads me inside of a cool room. Walking me several paces inward, he turns me back around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and finally removes the blindfold.

When he peels the black material away, I blink into the bright light, and realize I’m looking at a clear glass door that looks out onto the street where his Maserati is parked. I start to turn around, but his hands grip my shoulders and he says, “Just wait.”

Then he turns me just ninety degrees to my right. I see a long, blank wall, painted in bright white. I can see gray, industrial carpet underneath my feet, but the room we are in appears to be empty. He turns me around again, another ninety degrees, and I see the back wall with a closed door that leads to God knows what.

Finally, he turns me the last ninety degrees to my right, and I inhale a deep breath of surprise. The entire wall is a painted mural… and not just any mural. It’s a replica of the picture I had taken of the baby Corolla horse frolicking in the surf.

My heart immediately clenches in guilt for destroying the pictures I had taken and hung in Gavin’s house. But I had rectified that situation. I made more prints and had Gabby replicate the frames. The replacements now hang over our fireplace once again.

I pull away from Gavin’s hands and walk closer to the mural. The tiny horse takes up the entire wall, and whoever painted it wasted not one single detail to the fine hairs on his mane as they bounce with his movements, to the spray of the salt water that flies off his back hooves as he kicks out.

Turning back to Gavin, I murmur, “This is incredible. Who did this?”

“An artist that I flew in from Miami. Pretty awesome, right?”

“Awesome doesn’t even do it justice,” I say with disbelief as I look at the mural again.

“Come on,” Gavin says, taking my hand. “I want to show you the rest.”

“The rest of what?” I ask as I pull back against him. “What is this place?”

He beams at me brightly. “It’s your new photography studio.”

I blink at him, confused, and totally not understanding a word he says to me. “But I don’t have a photography studio.”

“You do now, Sweet,” he says as he tugs on my hand and leads me to the door on the back wall. “You can use this space out here for a lobby area, or it’s large enough we can partition it and create some additional space for you to do portrait work if you want.”

Pulling me through the back door, he says, “Wait until you see this.”

He leads me through another room, and I gasp. “How did you do all of this?”

“Had to hire someone to tell me everything I’d need,” he says, and I spin around to look at the darkroom he created for me. “But you can develop all of your stuff here when you get back to doing your wildlife photography.”

Custom-built shelving holds everything I’d ever need to process a print. I wouldn’t have to go to the local community college to borrow their equipment ever again. It has everything… an enlarger, a safelight. Supplies galore… easel, tongs, processing trays. Bottles to hold the processing fluid, funnels, paper… even a little print squeegee.

“I don’t know what to say,” I whisper as my fingers glide across the enlarger.

Gavin walks up behind me and he puts his hands around my overly large waist, linking them over my huge girth. “This is where you say thank you.”

Turning in his arms, I say, “Thank you, my sweet, filthy boy. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he murmurs before he kisses me. “Do you like?”

“I love,” I assure him. “But why now? What brought this on?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “I just figured if you had your own place, you could do more photography and because you love it so much… you really need to do more photography, love.”

“But I have a job. I help you with all of your stuff.”

“But that’s not your passion, Sweet. You need to go after your passion.”

“You’re my passion,” I tell him and kiss him again. He kisses me back and pushes me backward into the table.

“Speaking of passion,” he says against my lips. His hand comes up and grazes against my breast. So freakin’ sensitive nowadays that I can’t help but arch into him. “I’m thinking we could make use of this table right now.”