The Skin She's In by Margo Collins (online e book reader .txt) 📕

When he finally pulled out, he withdrew almost completely, leaving only the tip still in place until I was shaking and begging him not to go. At that, he plunged into me even harder than before, until he was slamming himself into me thrust after thrust and I pushed back every bit as hard to meet him.

At the last minute, he slid one hand around me, dropping it from my stomach to my clit, pressing the heel of his hand into my abdomen as his fingers danced over me and he ground his hips against my ass.

He pulsed inside me as he started to come, and I followed him over the edge, pressing my mouth against the table as my own orgasm lifted my toes up off the floor.

Chapter 20

I HADN’T REALIZED HOW much holding back from Kade about Jeremiah and Shadow had impacted our relationship. But after our kitchen-sex, we moved to the bedroom for something much more leisurely. Sometime later, as we lay snuggled under the covers, Kade’s muscular arms wrapped around me from behind as he kissed the tops of my shoulders, he said, “Aren’t couples supposed to go on some kind of baby-moon before the baby comes home?”

I tilted my head without looking at him. “I think that’s for couples who are both involved in the baby. Not one where half the couple is simply a supportive whatever.”

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

I could feel him smile against the skin on the nape of my neck. “Can I upgrade?”

“Depends on what you’re considering upgrading to,” I said. “We might have an opening at sort of supportive something or other. And there might still be room in the kind of helpful random guy—though there’s some discussion recently of downgrading that to one step below supportive something.”

He banged his forehead lightly against my back.

“I didn’t mean I didn’t want to be involved. I only meant that it had to be your decision.”

“Why?” I turned in his arms and put my hands up between us to rest on his chest, pushing back just enough so I could look him in the eye. “If we are together, and this is something I’m doing, you don’t have to be a part of it. I mean, you don’t have to... This is something I feel like I have to do. I want to be more than a caretaker or a counselor. I want to be something closer to a foster parent. If you don’t want to do that with me, that’s fine. I don’t expect you to. But...”

“But it means things are going to be different between us.” As usual, he knew how to finish my sentences. That didn’t change the fact that I was only now beginning to figure out that Kade’s decision to stay out of fostering the lamia children had bothered me more than I had let on, or even realized myself.

I propped my head on my hand, leaning over on one elbow and continued staring at him. “The thing is, relationships change. They are always in flux. If they’re not, if they’re too stagnant, then that becomes a problem. It also becomes a problem if they change so much that the people involved don’t want to continue it.”

“Is that your counselor voice?” Kade was smiling, but his usual golden-flecked eyes were turning dark.

“It’s the closest thing I have to the truth. I don’t know where we are on that continuum. I do know that, yes, me taking on these babies is going to change something between us. I hope it changes for the better. But I’m not willing to stand aside and not do it simply for fear of losing what we have.” I paused, gazing into his eyes and trying to read what I saw there. I couldn’t—but that didn’t change anything, either. “The one thing I cannot give up for the sake of us is me. And a huge part of who I am is a children’s counselor. I don’t have it in me to walk away from these children. I can’t.”

Kade reached out and brushed my hair away from my face. “And all of that is part of why I love you,” he said.

I froze in place. For all that we had clearly become a couple, we rarely said out loud that we loved each other. Not for lack of feeling it, I suspected, but because our lives had been so insanely unpredictable that it seemed almost as if saying the words would curse us somehow.

While I was framing my response, Kade continued, “I don’t want you to give up any part of who you are. And I only want you to change in the ways that you think make you more who you are. I am one hundred percent behind you taking on an expanded role with these children. And I will be right there beside you if you’ll have me. I simply want you to know—no matter how badly I said it before—that I want you to take the lead in how they are cared for. I want you to be the one who develops the relationship with them that you need. In that sense, I want to be supportive of what you and those children need. And I don’t know that either human or shifter language has a word for what I want to be to you.” By this point, tears had welled up in my eyes and it was all I could do to blink them back.

“So if I am your supportive whatever, I want you to know that it’s not in the sense of someone who is likely to take off at the first sign of trouble. I am in this with you, if you’ll have me.”

At that, the tears trembling on the ends of my lashes fell slipping down across my face and onto the sheets. Kade reached out and gently wiped one off the tip of