Chapter 17: The Inducement
The water ran hot enough to pink their shoulders and neither of them reached for the dial. Steam climbed the tiles in slow ribbons. Astrid had one palm flat to the wall and her forehead tipped against it, hair soaked and sticking to her neck, and Dina stood behind her with a soapy washcloth working small, lazy circles down the small of her back.
Lower, Astrid said. Under the belly. In the fold.
Dina laughed low against her shoulder. You want me to hold it up first? I've got two hands. I can do it. I've been lifting mine for a month.
One hand's enough. The other one has somewhere better to be.
The washcloth slid around the underside of Astrid's belly, under the heavy hang of it, into the damp crease where the weight pressed down on her thighs when she sat. Soap made everything slick and easy. Astrid let out a long breath that turned into something closer to a moan when Dina's fingers followed the cloth, bare, spreading the lather along the seam where her belly met her cunt.
You're leaking, Dina said. She said it without heat, like a weather report. Water's hot, it lets down.
So are you. Turn around.
Dina turned. Her belly was lower than Astrid's, wider at the base, dark line running from navel to pubic hair. Her nipples were dark and long and a thin white bead sat on the left one, fattening as Astrid watched. Astrid took her by the hips, pulled her in until the two bellies met, and they laughed at the ridiculousness of it, two walls of taut skin kissing each other, and then Astrid bent her head and licked the bead off Dina's nipple.
Dina's hand came up into Astrid's wet hair and held. Fuck, she said. Do that again.
Astrid did it again, then closed her mouth over the whole nipple and sucked, and got a hot mouthful for her trouble that she spat down between their breasts. The taste was thin and sweet. She did it on the other side and Dina's knee came up, foot sliding on the wet tile, and they had to grab the rail together to stay upright.
The kissing after that was all tongue and no finesse. Astrid had one hand in Dina's hair and the other down between her legs, fingers sliding through the soap, and Dina was making that sound she made, the one with the breath held underneath it. Astrid got two fingers in her and Dina's whole body curved forward, belly squashing into Astrid's, and Astrid could feel her cunt from the inside, hot and swollen and soft as ripe fruit.
Wait, Astrid gasped. Wait, wait.
Dina's head came up. Her eyes were black and unfocused. What.
Not here. I'll fall.
I'll catch you.
You'll fall on top of me and then we'll both be on the floor of a shower at thirty-eight weeks and Rosa will hear about it from the paramedics.
Dina laughed so hard she had to press her forehead to Astrid's collarbone. Fair, she said. Fair. She turned the water off. The sudden absence of sound left the room ringing.
They got out and stood dripping on the bathmat, and Astrid reached for a towel and then didn't. She was looking at Dina's body, water running in lines over all of it. Dina let her look. That was the thing about her. She never flinched.
You know what Bethany said, Dina said.
Which thing.
About the last month. She said semen does something to the cervix. Softens it. Prostaglandins. She said if I wanted to try and move things along, that was one of the ones that isn't a myth.
Astrid pushed her wet hair back off her face. She said that at the interview.
She said a lot of things at the interview. I kept the good ones.
And you think four in the morning the other night was what, a coincidence?
I think we've been sitting around waiting with our hands folded, Dina said. And I think I'd rather do something than wait.
Astrid stood there with the water cooling on her skin and felt it land. She was a woman who made arguments for a living. This one was already made. Her whole body had been making it for weeks, that loose heavy ache low in her pelvis, the way every orgasm left her contracting, hard, rhythmic, for a minute afterward. She had felt it. She had felt her body answer.
She reached past Dina and took two towels off the hook. Fine, she said. But we do it their way first, and I want to be in the big bed, and I want you where I can see you.
Dina took her towel. You want to watch me get fucked.
I want to watch you come, Astrid said. There's a difference. She wrapped the towel around herself and walked out into the bedroom with her heart going like a hammer.
The apartment was dim. The candles from earlier had burned down to wicks and the rose petals were crushed into the floorboards where the four of them had walked over them. Shane was on the couch with his reading glasses on and a tablet balanced on his knee. Leo was in the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder, drying a pot that did not need drying.
Astrid stood in the archway in her towel. Gentlemen, she said.
Shane looked up. His glasses caught the light and his mouth did the thing where it tried not to smile. That's the tone, he said. That's your closing-argument tone.
Dina came up beside her, also in a towel, hair dripping on the hardwood. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. She just stood there with her belly out and her chin up, water running down her calves, and Astrid watched Leo set the pot down on the counter without looking away from her.
Leo said, You two have been in there forty minutes.
It takes forty minutes to wash a body like this, Dina said.
Astrid went to Shane and took the tablet out of his hands and set it on the floor. We're going to bed, she said. All four of us. And I'm going to tell you what we're doing before we do it, so nobody's surprised.
Shane's eyebrows went up. He took his glasses off and folded them. Okay, counselor.
Sex brings on labor, Astrid said. Prostaglandins in semen, oxytocin from orgasm, contractions you can feel. Bethany told Dina. Dina told me. We both want this baby out and we both want it tonight, so we're going to fuck until something happens. And then we're going to fuck some more.
The kitchen was very quiet. The tap dripped once.
Leo said, That's the plan.
That's the plan.
Dina said, You don't have to. Both of you. Say no and I'll take Astrid back in there and we'll manage.
Shane stood up off the couch. He was in sweatpants and an old t-shirt with a hole at the collar, and he was already hard, the soft grey fabric tenting. He looked at Astrid the way he looked at her when he came off the ice after a bad shift, all the noise gone out of him.
I've been reading the same articles since midnight, he said. I wasn't going to be the one to say it.
Leo crossed the floor. He took Dina's face in both hands and kissed her on the mouth, slow, and when he pulled back he said, You're going to be so loud.
You're going to be louder, Dina said.
They went through the archway to the big bed. Astrid dropped her towel and got on the mattress, and the sheets were clean and cool and smelled like lavender, and she lay back against the pillows with her knees up and her low belly spreading across her thighs. Dina got up on the other side, on her side, facing her. Between them the mattress dipped. They reached across and took hands.
Then the men came in.
Shane went to Astrid because that was the shape the four of them made, husband to wife, and Leo went to Dina. Astrid watched Leo kneel over her and put his mouth on her throat, and she watched Dina's legs open along the sheets. She kept her eyes on Dina's face while Shane's hand came up her inner thigh, up into the wet that the shower had started, and opened her the rest of the way.
You're soaked, Shane said into her ear.
I've been in a shower with her for forty minutes and then I stood in the doorway and told you what I wanted. Of course I'm soaked.
He pushed in. She was slick enough that he went in one long stroke, and her whole body arched off the mattress and her hand clenched on Dina's. Astrid put her head back and let it come out of her, a long ugly groan, no restraint in it at all.
Across the bed Dina was saying, That's it, that's it, yes, in a fast breathy voice, hips working up into Leo's. Leo had one hand spread over the underside of her belly, holding it, taking the weight off her back, and his other arm was braced on the mattress and he was going into her in short, hard, economical strokes.
Astrid turned her head and looked at the two of them, and something in her chest pulled tight.
God, she said. God, look at her.
Shane's hips didn't slow. What.
Look at her. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Look at her belly. Look at what he's doing to her.
Dina heard. Of course she heard. She rolled her head toward Astrid and her mouth was open and she was smiling around nothing at all. You want to see the best part, she said. Watch.
She put her own hand down on the top of her belly, and Astrid watched the skin pull and tighten, the whole mound of it tightening like a drumhead, the shape of something pressing out from inside, a knee or a foot or a shoulder, sliding under the surface. Then it went slack.
She does that for you, Astrid said. When you come. Both of them do.
Mine's been doing it for an hour, Dina said. Every time my hips move. Like he's trying to get out and join in.
Shane's thumb found Astrid's clit and she lost the thread. He knew exactly where it was now, and he knew the pressure that didn't make her jump, the flat of it, slow circles that matched how deep he was. Her cunt had gone tight and hot around him and every time he bottomed out she felt that cramping low down, the real kind, the kind that started in her back and rolled around to the front.
Trade with me, she said.
Shane stopped. His hips stilled. He was breathing hard. Right now.
Right now. I want to see what he does to her and I want her to see what you do to me.
You're something else, he said. He pulled out and the absence was so immediate her hips followed him. He laughed and kissed her knee and got off the bed.
Leo looked up. Dina's legs were wrapped around his waist. He said, She asking?
She's asking, Shane said.
Dina pushed Leo back with the flat of her hand on his chest. Go on, she said. He needs a minute anyway.
The two men crossed in the middle of the room, slick and hard and both of them looking like they'd been running. Leo got up on the mattress beside Astrid and Dina sat up, swung her legs around, and went to Shane, and she did it the way a woman with a dropped belly moves, hand on the frame, one careful turn.
Then Leo was over Astrid, and she was looking at him, and he was not Shane. He was broader and slower and his hands never knew quite where to go, so they went everywhere, her hair, her shoulders, the underside of her belly, the wet insides of her thighs.
I'm not going to last, he said.
You don't have to last. Get in me.
He got in her. He filled her differently, fatter and shorter and pressed up against the front wall, and Astrid said something filthy out loud that made him laugh into her neck. Across the room Shane had Dina on her side with a pillow under her hip and one hand lifting her belly, and he was sliding into her from behind at an angle, and Dina was clawing the sheets and swearing.
Is he in you, Astrid called across the room.
He's in me.
Tell me how it is.
Dina turned her face on the pillow. Her eyes found Astrid and stayed. It's like he's made for me, she said. It's like he knows there's a place in there I can't reach and he's going right to it. Astrid, I can feel it all the way into my back.
I know. I know, I can see it.
You look so good like that. Your belly on his. Your tits are wrecked, do you know that. They're swinging.
Astrid looked down at herself. They were, full and heavy and moving with every thrust, the nipples dark and thick and smeared with soap and milk.
Come over here and look at them yourself, she said.
Later, Dina said.
Shane turned her on the bed, rolled Dina onto her back, and hooked both her knees up over his forearms and went into her from the front so she was looking straight up at him. Dina got her hand down between them and worked her own clit, fast and ruthless, and her voice went up and broke.
Astrid felt her own body answering, the tight cramping in the low part of her, and Leo pushed in and held there, deep, grinding, and she felt it start from the bottom and rise.
Don't stop, she said. Do not stop.
He didn't stop. He fucked her through it and she came with her heels jammed into the mattress and both hands fisted in the sheets, and it was the kind that came in three waves with her whole cunt bearing down on him like a fist, so strong that the top of her belly went hard under his hand.
Across the room Dina came too. She came with her mouth open and her eyes on Astrid, and she said Astrid's name twice, and Shane put his forehead on her belly and held it out.
The room smelled like four bodies and lavender and the flat mineral smell of the candles.
Trade back, Dina said. When she could talk. Trade back and let me see him do you.
They traded back. Leo to Dina, Shane to Astrid. Astrid got up on her hands and knees and Shane came in from behind, and Leo laid Dina down on her back beside them with her head on the pillow and went into her from the front, and the two of them were close enough to kiss.
Astrid's hair hung down in her face. She could see Dina sideways, Dina's throat, Dina's chin tipped back, Leo's hand spread over the top of her belly holding it steady while he fucked up into her.
You're gorgeous, Astrid said. You're so gorgeous it's stupid.
You're so full of shit.
I'm a lawyer, I don't say things I can't defend. I've been wanting to say it since the deli. Since before the deli. Since you handed me a jar of pickles and I went home and put my hand down my pants in the car.
Dina laughed and then Shane changed his angle and the laugh broke into something else. Oh, she said. Oh.
Is he as good as I said.
Better. He's careful. He holds the belly and he's careful and he's still going like he means it.
He's showing off, Astrid said.
He is, Shane said, and pushed harder, and Astrid put her head down.
The two of them went on like that, telling each other, across the width of a mattress, everything that was being done. Shane said his wife was taking him to the root and Dina said she could hear it and she could, wet and loud in the quiet room. Astrid said Dina's nipples were leaking down her ribs and Dina reached up and pinched one and got a line of milk across her own hand and put her fingers in Leo's mouth. Leo, who had been silent for the last ten minutes, fuck, he said, that's sweet.
It built the second time faster. Astrid felt the pressure low and broad and total, the whole pelvic floor going heavy, and her hips started moving back into Shane without her deciding to. Her back ached in the deep crampy way and she wanted it and she pushed into it.
I'm close, she said.
Then come, Dina said. Look at me and come.
She looked at her. Dina was red-faced and shining and her belly was moving with Leo inside her and her eyes were black, and Astrid came with her eyes open. It took her whole body. Her arms gave out and she went down onto her forearms and Shane caught her hips and kept going, working her through it, and the second half of it was so hard her moan turned into something like a cry.
Somewhere in it, she felt a change. Not an orgasm. Under it. A pressure, low at the top of her cunt, a fullness that had no shape, and then a sensation of something letting go, deep inside, like a band of muscle sighing open.
Dina came almost at the same moment. She came with Leo's name and Astrid's name tangled up together and her knees snapping shut around his hips, and then she went limp across the pillow, chest heaving.
Nobody moved for a while. Shane pulled out of Astrid slowly and eased her down onto her side. Leo put his forehead down on Dina's belly. The ceiling fan turned over them, slow, one long blade at a time.
Then Astrid said, Dina.
Mm.
Did yours break.
What.
Your water. When you came. Did it break.
Dina lifted her head off the pillow. Her face was doing something complicated. No, she said. Why. Did yours?
Astrid lay on her side and looked down the length of her own body. She could feel it now, warm and thin, running down the inside of her thigh, more of it coming in a slow steady seep, no way to hold it. The sheets under her hip were darkening. She reached down with two fingers and brought them up and they were clear and wet and slippery as egg white, and they strung between her fingers when she spread them apart.
I think so, she said.
The room went very still.
Shane was off the bed and on his feet before she finished the sentence, reaching for the sweats he'd dropped at the foot of the mattress, and Astrid heard herself start to laugh, low and a little wild, because her body had just done something enormous without asking her, and there was nothing to argue with, and nothing left to wait for.
Shane had his sweatpants on and one hand on the bedroom door frame when Astrid got the words out.
Rosa first. Rosa said call her first, always, no matter the hour.
He was already gone. She heard him in the hall, heard him say Rosa's name twice, low and quick, and then the low murmur of him talking while his bare feet moved around the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator open. A glass on the counter.
Dina had rolled up onto one elbow. Her hair was dried into curls at the ends and stuck flat to her skull at the roots and she was looking down the bed at Astrid with her mouth open.
Say something, Astrid said.
I'm counting.
Counting what.
How long it takes me to be jealous. Dina flopped back down. I'm jealous. I want mine to break.
Yours will. Yours is sitting lower than mine, I've been looking at it for a month.
Don't be nice to me right now. I need to be furious for at least a minute.
Astrid put her hand flat on the sheet under her hip. The wet patch had spread to the width of a dinner plate. When she sat up it ran out of her in a warm slug and she had to clamp her thighs together. Every bit of progress she had made on the pillow was gone.
She got up and walked out into the hall and it kept coming, a slow steady trickle down the inside of both legs onto the hardwood, and she stood there in the dark with her hand braced on the archway and laughed until she had to bend over.
Rosa arrived in nineteen minutes. She came in through the shared front door in a sweatshirt and men's work pants and boots she did not take off. She had a duffel over one shoulder and a plastic-backed pad under her arm, and she looked at the wet track on the floor, then at Astrid, then at Dina standing behind her in a towel, and she said, Which one.
Astrid.
Okay. Rosa dropped the duffel and pointed at the couch. Sit. Legs apart. Pads on the floor, I don't care about your floor, I care about your balance.
She gloved up and put Astrid's feet up on the coffee table and did the exam on the couch under a lamp with the two husbands standing in the archway pretending not to watch and watching. Astrid stared at the ceiling fan and breathed through it. It did not hurt. It was strange, being entered by a stranger's hand while her own fluid kept coming, a knuckle pressing at a place she had only ever felt from the inside.
Fingertip, Rosa said. Soft as butter. Clear fluid, no meconium, no blood. She sat back on her heels. You're in early labor. Could be six hours, could be forty. It's your first, so I'm not promising you anything.
Forty.
Could be. She pulled the glove off with a snap. You want the truth or the brochure.
The truth.
The truth is you've got a long road and the best thing you can do on it is eat, drink, walk, and sleep while you still can.
Astrid looked past her into the bedroom doorway. Cass will come.
Cass comes when it's active. That's her rule, that's not mine. Rosa stood and folded her arms. Now. Who's been in here. It smells like a candle shop in a whorehouse.
We had sex.
How long ago.
Twenty minutes. Astrid said it with her chin level. We were trying to start it.
Rosa looked at her for a long beat. Then she barked a laugh, one short ugly sound, and shook her head. Water's already broken, so you're off that particular hook. But I'll tell you what, if you keep going, keep it soft. Nothing hard, nothing deep, nothing that makes you hold your breath. If it hurts more than it makes you feel good, you stop, because you're going to need every ounce of energy you have in about twelve hours.
Soft, Dina said from the archway.
Soft.
Then Rosa went into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and started unpacking her duffel onto the farm table like she owned it.
Astrid walked back into the bedroom and stood at the foot of the bed. Her contractions were already coming. She had felt two on the couch without naming them, a band of pressure that started in the small of her back and rolled around to the front like a hand wringing her out, and she had told herself it was nothing. Now the third one came and she stopped talking in the middle of a sentence and put both hands on the footboard and breathed until it passed, and she felt the front of her belly go hard, hard as a drum, hard enough that she could have knocked on it.
Dina watched her do it. Then she walked over and put her palm flat on the top of Astrid's belly and waited.
There, Dina said. Feel that.
The muscle under her hand was still tight. Dina moved her hand down lower, under the hang of it, to where the pressure balled up and pushed down, and Astrid made a low sound, something from way down in her chest, and leaned her forehead onto Dina's shoulder.
That's the noise I want, Dina said. That's the one.
Rosa called from the kitchen, Keep that up. The breathing, not the noise.
Astrid got onto the bed on her side facing Dina. Dina got on the bed on her side facing Astrid. Somewhere behind them Shane and Leo came back into the room, quiet, and the mattress dipped on both sides.
Round two, Astrid said.
You're sure.
I'm sure. Rosa said soft. I can do soft.
And I want you to see.
Dina's hand came across the space between them and took Astrid's.
Then Shane's mouth was on the back of Astrid's neck and his hand was between her legs, and Leo was doing the same to Dina on the other side, and for a while there was no other noise in the room but wet and breath and the slow turn of the fan.
Astrid's next contraction caught her mid-sigh. It came up much harder than the one before it. Her whole pelvis went hot and heavy and the pressure pushed down into her cunt like a fist opening one finger at a time, and she grabbed the sheet and moaned, and the moan was not a sex noise. It came from lower. It was long and round and it rattled in her sternum and she could feel it travel out through her throat.
Dina's eyes went wide.
That was a contraction, she said.
That was a contraction.
That's what they sound like.
They sound like that when the pain's underneath the good. It was different when it was just the two of us in the other room.
Shane's hand had gone still between her legs. She pushed her hips back into it and he took the hint and started again, slow circles on her clit, two fingers in her, and she was slick enough that when his palm pressed down there was a wet click every time.
Contraction number five came while he was inside her. She felt it start in her back and roll around and she moaned into Dina's mouth, because Dina had leaned in and put her mouth on hers, and the moan went straight down Dina's throat.
Dina pulled back an inch. Do that again.
I can't do it on command.
Do it when it comes. Open your mouth when it comes.
Leo had Dina's leg up over his hip and was moving in her slow and shallow, the way Rosa told them, and every time Astrid's belly tightened, Dina's tightened too, and the two of them lay there with their foreheads touching and their mouths open and moaned together. Astrid could hear her own voice in Dina's mouth. She could hear Dina's voice coming out of her own chest.
Do you feel that, Astrid said.
I feel it.
Yours is coming too.
Mine has been coming for an hour. Dina's breath was unsteady. Mine's been coming since the shower and I thought it was the water.
Shane slid his fingers out and put his cock against her and she said, Slow.
Slow.
He pushed in and held. That was all. She lay on her side with him filling her and her belly going tight and hard under his hand and the two things happening at once, the fullness and the squeezing, and the sound she made was nothing she had ever made before. It was a deep open moan, no shape to it, going on longer than any breath she had.
That's it, Dina said. That's it. That's the one.
It hurts.
Is it good.
It's both. It's the same place.
Then it's good. Keep it. Keep it exactly like that.
Shane stayed in her without moving through the whole thing, and she came out the other side of the contraction with her hand clawed into his thigh and her mouth wet and open, and the moment it let go, the pressure fell away and the fullness was just fullness again, thick and good.
Again, she said.
He moved. Slow, long, all the way out and all the way back in, and each stroke ended with the head of him right up against that raw spot at her front wall and she moaned on every one of them.
Across the bed, Leo had Dina on her side facing away and had her belly in his hand, cupping the whole underside of it, and Dina's mouth was open and her eyes were on Astrid.
Talk to me, Dina said.
What do you want.
Tell me what he's doing.
He's slow. He's going all the way in and holding it and he's got his hand flat on my clit and he's not moving it, he's just letting me fuck his hand.
That's what I want.
You've got him.
Not like that. I want what you have.
Astrid got her arm across the gap on the mattress and put her hand flat on Dina's clit while Leo was still moving in her. Dina's whole body jackknifed.
Oh, she said. Oh, you.
Shh.
Don't you dare.
Astrid worked her slow with two fingers, matching the pace of her own hips, and Leo kept going behind her, and Dina's moans got deeper and came closer together, and above them Rosa's kettle whistled in the kitchen and nobody moved to get it.
Then the next contraction came and it came for both of them.
Astrid felt it first, the band of pressure in her back, and she watched Dina's face change a half second later as hers started, and they held onto each other's wrists and moaned at the same time, a doubled sound, two low voices braided, and the men stopped moving because there was nothing to do but hold on.
That was a hard one, Dina panted.
That was a hard one.
Are they getting closer.
Astrid looked at the clock on the nightstand. Seven minutes.
Six for mine.
Then it's working.
Their husbands had not pulled out. That was the thing Astrid noticed, lying there with Shane still buried in her, that both men had stayed inside their wives through the contraction and were hard and waiting and breathing against the backs of their necks, and neither of them had said a word.
Suck on me, Astrid said.
Shane pulled out and turned her onto her back and got between her legs and put his mouth on her left nipple. She had been leaking since the shower and there was a bead standing on it and he took the whole thing into his mouth and pulled, and the letdown went through her like a shot of heat, a rush from her armpit down through the nipple and out, and she cried out.
Fuck.
Is that good.
Do it harder. Get the rest.
He pulled again and got a mouthful and it ran down his chin and onto her chest, and she watched him swallow it and come back for more, and the moaning she was doing now was different, higher and more broken, but the contractions kept coming underneath it and every time one did, she went back down deep and low in her chest.
Dina was on her back now too. Leo had his mouth on her right nipple and his hand under her belly holding it up off her ribs, and Dina was making a sound like a door opening, a long sustained groan, and she had one hand in Leo's hair and one hand out across the sheets toward Astrid.
Astrid took it and squeezed.
When I come, Dina said, I want your hand on me.
You already had that.
I want it again. I want it when the contraction comes.
Shane worked down her body and put his mouth back on her nipple and then his hand went back between her legs and he started on her clit with the flat of two fingers, fast, exactly the pressure she needed, and she arched up off the mattress and her moan came out as a single long vowel with no consonants in it.
Six minutes apart, she heard Rosa say from the doorway.
Nobody answered her.
Then Astrid felt it start, the deep dragging cramp that began under her ribs and rolled down through her whole pelvis, and the orgasm came up behind it and hit her from underneath. She came with the contraction, and the two of them went through her together, the squeeze and the release, and she could feel her cunt pulsing around nothing, around the air, around the whole length of Shane's fingers, and her moan broke into pieces.
Dina came a second behind her. Leo had two fingers in her and his thumb on her clit and he was working her like he was trying to make her yell, and she yelled. She came with her back bowed off the bed and her belly standing straight up and one hand crushing Astrid's fingers and she said oh god oh god oh god in a fast flat voice and then went silent and then came back with a long low groan that Astrid felt in her own ribs.
Breathe, Rosa said. Both of you. Out through the mouth.
They breathed. Two ragged breaths, doubled.
That one changed something, Dina said, when she could speak.
For me too.
The pressure is different.
It's lower.
Astrid lay there and felt it. Under the sex and the wet and the sweat she could feel a new thing, a broad dull weight sitting down low behind her pubic bone, and when she put her own hand there it was warm and full and the whole area felt swollen and open, like the inside of her had widened out by an inch and stayed that way.
Something's moving down, she said.
That's supposed to happen, Rosa said from the doorway. That's exactly what's supposed to happen.
Astrid looked at Dina. Dina's hand was on her own belly, low, pressing, feeling for the same thing.
Yours too, Astrid said.
Mine too. Dina laughed, and it turned into a groan halfway through. I feel like a door that's been kicked in.
Shane lifted his head from her breast. His chin was wet. His mouth was wet. He looked wrecked and he had not come.
Neither of them had.
Astrid put her hand on his cheek and turned his face up to hers.
Don't hold back for me, she said.
I'm not holding back.
You are. You've been holding since the shower because you keep checking my face.
Yeah.
I want you loud too.
He laughed against her palm.
Then she rolled onto her side and got her knee up and pulled him in behind her, and he pushed back into her and the angle was different again, deeper, and every contraction from here on could she feel him inside it, a hard thickness in the middle of a hard squeeze. She started to moan before he even moved.
Dina, she said.
Right here.
Get on your front. Get on your front and let him hold the weight.
Dina turned onto her hands and knees, and then Leo got a hand under her belly and took the whole hang of it off her back and she dropped down onto her forearms with a sound of pure relief.
Oh, she said. Oh, that's better. Why didn't we do that an hour ago.
Because an hour ago I was coming on your face.
We can do that again later.
Astrid laughed and the laugh turned into a moan because Shane moved. Then the next contraction came and it was the hardest one yet. It started in her sacrum and wrapped around both hips and clamped, and she felt her whole low body go tight like a fist and her moan went down into the pillow and came back up out of her chest, long and round and loud enough that Rosa set her mug down in the kitchen.
Six minutes.
Six minutes, Astrid moaned.
Good, Rosa said. Keep it right there.