Chapter 78: The Waddle and the Want
The marble floor of Luxe Baby was cool beneath her feet, a welcome contrast to the low, persistent fire in her lower back. Amber walked with a deliberate, wide-legged waddle, one hand pressed into the small of her spine as if holding herself together. In her other hand, she clutched a tiny, impossibly soft linen romper, its price tag discreetly hidden.
“Look at this,” she said, her voice carrying a mix of awe and practical horror. She held the garment up for Kash, who trailed a step behind, a patient shadow loaded with shopping bags already brimming with organic cotton and cashmere.“Eighty-five dollars. For something he’s going to spit up on in twelve minutes.”
Kash didn’t look at the romper.His eyes were fixed on her. Specifically, on the way her hips moved.It wasn’t just the waddle. It was a deep, oceanic sway, a pendulum of profound gravity. Her lavender maxi dress flowed around her, but it couldn’t disguise the sheer, magnificent amplitude of her body carrying their children. Each step was a declaration. His breath hitched, a small, almost inaudible sound swallowed by the boutique’s gentle jazz.
“So don’t buy it,” he said, his voice slightly thicker than usual.She shot him a look, her gold hoops catching the light. “Of course I’m buying it.It’s got little avocado prints. Avocados.” She added it to his pile with a sigh, then turned, surveying the forest of pristine white cribs.“Okay. The Georgia or the Huntington? The Georgia converts to a toddler bed, but the Huntington has the better airflow.Your thoughts?”
He finally dragged his gaze from her hips to the cribs. They looked identical to him.White, wooden, harmless.He shrugged. “Whichever one doesn’t collapse.”
“Helpful.” She shook her head, her long blonde bundles—a recent impulsive purchase she’d dubbed her “final pre-baby hurrah”—swinging with the motion. That motion, the hair swinging in time with the hip-sway, did something irreversible to his equilibrium. It was a hypnotic rhythm. His blood pulsed, a hard, sudden beat that had nothing to do with cribs.
She was about to speak again, to dissect the merits of organic mattresses, when she caught his expression.Her eyes narrowed, then softened with understanding. A faint, knowing smile touched her lips. “Kash.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not looking at the crib.”
“No.”
The air between them, already scented with vanilla and new fabric, seemed to thicken.The soft music receded.Her smile widened, just a fraction, a private, vulnerable curve. She placed a hand on her belly, a self-conscious gesture he rarely saw. “I’m the size of a small planet. And you’re looking at me like that.”
“Because you’re a planet I want to land on,” he murmured, the words rough.
She laughed, a low, warm sound that tightened his gut.Then she winced, shifting her weight. “Okay, romantic, but my back is staging a full-scale revolt.I need to sit. Let’s… let’s just go into one of those fitting rooms for a second. The benches look padded.”
He followed her as she led the way toward a curtained alcove in the back, a spacious dressing room meant for mothers-to-be to ponder over maternity wear. She pushed the heavy curtain aside and he followed her in, his hand reaching back to flip the little hook latch on the door, locking it with a definitive click.The room was quiet, plush. A wide, velvet-upholstered ottoman sat in the center. A full-length mirror reflected her, magnificent and weary.
“Just need a minute,” she breathed, lowering herself onto the ottoman with a groan of relief.She leaned back, eyes closed. “God, that’s better.”
He stood over her, watching the line of her throat, the swell of her breasts above the dress’s neckline.The lavender fabric clung to the hard curve of her belly. He could see the faint, shifting movements beneath it.He knelt suddenly, his hands going to her knees.
Her eyes flew open. “Kash, what—”
He pushed the soft layers of her dress up, gathering them around her waist. He hooked his thumbs in the sides of her maternity panties, a practical cotton brief, and drew them down her legs.The air in the room was cool against her skin.
“I need to taste you,” he said, his voice leaving no room for argument. It was raw, stripped of its usual teasing edge.It was pure need.She didn’t protest. She leaned back on her hands, her breath coming quicker. “Someone could—”
“No.” He spread her thighs, his large hands holding her open. He leaned forward and buried his face in the warm, sweet heat of her.The scent was different. Richer, deeper, uniquely her but amplified by the pregnancy.It was intoxicating. He licked a slow, firm stripe through her folds, and she gasped, her hips jerking lightly.He held her steady, his grip firm but gentle. He focused on her clit, circling it with the flat of his tongue, then sucking it gently into his mouth.“Oh, God,” she whispered, her head falling back. One hand tangled in his hair, not guiding, just holding on.He worshipped her with a desperate, focused hunger. He drank her in, licking and stroking, feeling her body tense and soften under his mouth. Her little noises, the stifled cries she bit back, fueled him. He could feel her orgasm building, a gathering storm. He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, finding that perfect spot, and her inner walls clenched around him.
She came with a shuddering, silent cry, her body bowing up off the ottoman for a second before collapsing back. He licked her through it, gentling his touch until she was limp and panting.
Before she could recover, he was on his feet, fumbling with his belt.He freed himself, hard and aching. He positioned himself at her entrance, nudging her open.She was wet and yielding from her climax.
“Easy,” she breathed, her eyes hazy but alert. “Just… go slow.”
He entered her with a single, deep, excruciatingly slow thrust, filling her completely. The position, the angle, the incredible tightness around him—it was almost too much. He braced one hand on the ottoman beside her hip, the other finding its way between their bodies, his thumb circling her slick clit again.
“You’re so fucking beautiful like this,” he grunted, beginning to move. He kept his strokes deep and measured, a careful, rocking rhythm that avoided putting pressure on her belly.It wasn’t about frenzy. It was about connection, about claiming this moment of fierce life amidst the pastel chaos. He watched her face, the play of awe and pleasure and a deep, abiding tenderness.His thumb worked her in small, persistent circles. Her breath hitched.Her nails dug into his shoulders through his shirt. “Again,” she moaned, disbelief and desire warring in her voice. “Kash, I think… I’m gonna…”
Her second climax was softer, a rolling wave rather than a crash. It pulsed through her, and he felt the rhythmic milking of her inner walls around him.That undulating pressure was his undoing. With a guttural groan he muffled against her shoulder, he spilled into her, his own release dragged from him by the sweet, relentless grip of her body.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, joined, breathing in ragged unison. The scent of sex and her lavender-scented lotion filled the plush room.Finally, with infinite care, he withdrew. He helped her sit up, fetched a box of tissues from a discreet shelf, and cleaned her with a tenderness that made her throat tight.He straightened her underwear, smoothed her dress down. He tucked himself away, fastened his belt.In the mirror, she looked flushed, thoroughly loved, and slightly rumpled. She met his eyes in the reflection and a slow, radiant smile spread across her face. He leaned down and kissed her shoulder, then the side of her neck.
“So,” he said, his voice back to its normal timbre. “The Georgia or the Huntington?”
She laughed, the sound rich and full, the one that filled rooms.She stood, testing her back. The pain was a distant murmur.“The Huntington.Better airflow.” She took his hand. “Let’s go pay for the world’s most expensive avocado.”
They unlocked the door and slipped back into the boutique. The same sales associate, a woman with a serene smile, glided over. “Find everything okay in there?”
“Perfect,” Amber said, her voice only slightly husky. She handed the woman the linen romper. “We’ll take this, and we’ve decided on the Huntington crib in white. With the organic mattress.”
“Excellent choice.” The woman’s eyes flicked between them, noticing nothing but a happy couple. “Would you like it delivered?”
“Please,” Kash said, pulling out his wallet. As the associate went to ring up the order, he leaned close to Amber’s ear, his breath warm. “You’ve got a little…” He gestured subtly to a stray blonde hair clinging to the collar of his shirt.
She plucked it off with her sharp, burgundy nails and flicked it away, her eyes sparkling. “Evidence.”
He grinned, a real, easy grin. The graph, the settlement, the broken door—it all fell away under the golden mall light. There was just this: her hand in his, a tiny avocado romper, and the overwhelming, ordinary thrill of what came next.
The transaction was a blur of effortless platinum card swipes and soft-spoken delivery confirmations. As they stepped out of the boutique’s lavender-scented haze into the mall’s vast, echoing atrium, the real world filtered back in—the distant shriek of a child, the rumble of a nearby escalator, the cool kiss of conditioned air.
Kash’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at it, his easy posture shifting into something more alert. “Security company. The repair tech finished at the suite.”
Amber’s hand, still in his, tightened briefly. “And?”
“New steel-core door, reinforced frame, upgraded lock. Alarm’s live.” He slid the phone away, his thumb brushing over her knuckles. “It’s a fortress again.”
“Good.” She said it with finality, looking straight ahead at the glittering storefronts. The avocado romper in its tissue-thin bag swung from her other hand. “Then it’s over. A blip.”
He heard the will in her voice, the conscious decision to downgrade the violation. He didn’t argue. He just raised their joined hands and kissed the back of hers, a silent pact. They walked in sync, her waddle a slow, powerful metronome beside his stride.
“We should swing by the manor,” he said, as they neared the mall exit. The afternoon sun beyond the glass doors was a blinding white rectangle. “The project manager said the primary bathroom tile was going in today. You should see it before they grout. Make sure you hate it.”
She laughed, a short, genuine puff of air. “I won’t hate it. I picked it.” But she nodded. “Yeah, let’s go. I want to feel the progress.”
The drive to the manor was a quiet transition from commercial glitter to secluded, tree-lined opulence. The house, a modern monolith of glass and pale stone, sat on a knoll at the end of a winding driveway, wrapped in scaffolding and bustling with the skeletal energy of construction. The air smelled of sawdust and fresh-cut pine.
Kash helped her out of the SUV, his hand a firm bracket under her elbow as she navigated the temporary plywood path laid over the mud. The foreman, a man named Ross with a perpetual sunburn, met them at the grand foyer, his voice booming in the empty space. “Mrs. King! Glad you’re here. Tile’s going down perfect.”
The master bath was a cathedral of unfinished potential. Subfloor gleamed raw in some sections, while in others, large slabs of veined, storm-gray porcelain were laid out like a puzzle coming together. Two tilers knelt, their knees padded, focused on their spacers and levels. The room echoed with the wet schick of trowels and the tap-tap of rubber mallets.
Amber stood in the doorway, one hand automatically resting on her belly. She took it in—the scale, the light pouring through the uncovered window wall that would eventually overlook their private woods. This was the sanctuary they were building, room by room, far from the memory of leaked videos and courtrooms. It was solid. It was real.
“It’s the right gray,” she said, more to herself than to anyone. “Not too blue. Not too cold.”
“Told you,” Kash murmured behind her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. He kneaded the tension there gently. “You have a good eye.”
She leaned back into him, absorbing the certainty of his touch, the smell of dust and his cologne. For a minute, they just watched the tilers work, the methodical creation of something permanent. The twins stirred, a slow roll, as if settling into the idea of this vast new space.
Ross cleared his throat. “We’re on schedule for the nursery walls next week. That lime wash paint you specified finally landed.”
“Good,” Kash said, his voice taking on a different tone, the one he used when moving from observation to instruction. “But I want the security rough-in for the whole second floor finalized before drywall goes up. Every sensor, every camera wire. I don’t want it tucked in after. I want it buried in the bones.”
The foreman nodded, scribbling on his tablet. “Already on the schedule, Mr. King.”
Amber listened, the warmth of the moment cooling slightly. The fortress again. Not just a door, but a whole integrated system woven into the walls of their children’s nursery. She understood it. After the break-in, she wanted it. But the thought still left a metallic taste at the back of her tongue—the price of their peace, measured in wiring conduits and motion sensors.
“Show me the conduit runs for the nursery,” Kash said, already moving with Ross toward the hallway blueprints taped to a temporary wall.
Amber stayed by the bathroom doorway. She ran a finger over the cool, smooth surface of a porcelain tile. It was unyielding. It would last a century. She looked down at her stomach, at the living, shifting forms beneath her dress. They were so much more fragile than this stone.
From the hallway, she heard Kash’s voice, low and precise. “...and I want the feed from the perimeter cameras on a separate, encrypted loop. Not just the standard system.”
She took a deep breath, the air tasting of concrete and ambition. She turned from the beautiful, hard tile and walked toward the sound of his voice, her footsteps sure on the raw subfloor.
She turned from the beautiful, hard tile and walked toward the sound of his voice, her footsteps sure on the raw subfloor. Kash and Ross were bent over the tablet, a blueprint glowing between them. He pointed at a specific junction on the schematic. “This needs a secondary power source. A dedicated line, independent of the house grid.”
Ross scratched his temple with a pencil. “That’s a hospital-level spec, Mr.King. For a nursery.”
“That’s exactly the spec.” Kash didn’t look up. His finger tapped the screen. “I want it to function like a standalone unit if it has to. Climate control, monitors, everything. For seventy-two hours minimum.”
Amber stopped a few feet away, the dust motes dancing in a shaft of sunlight between them. She cleared her throat. “Seventy-two hours?”
He glanced at her, his expression unreadable for a second before it softened. “Just contingency planning, baby. Belt and suspenders.” He turned back to Ross. “Make it happen.”
The drive home was quieter. The late afternoon sun bled orange across the dashboard. Amber stared out the window at the blur of oak trees and iron gates. “Seventy-two hours,” she said again, the words flat in the quiet car.
Kash’s hand left the gear shift and found her knee. He gave it a squeeze. “After the break-in… and everything before it. I just need to know, in my bones, that their space is secure. That it has its own heartbeat. Can you understand that?”
She looked at his profile, at the tight line of his jaw. She saw the ghost of the man who’d stared at the security feed from her suite, the man who’d carried the silent, simmering fury of Peter’s lawsuit for months. The fortress wasn’t just for them. It was an exorcism. “Yeah,” she sighed, covering his hand with hers. “I can. But Kash… it’s still just a room. The safety is us. You and me.”
He brought their joined hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “I know,” he said, the words muffled against her skin. “I’m just building the best damn room I can.”
They arrived back at the Myers Park estate as the sky deepened to twilight. The familiar, clean lines of their current home felt both comforting and temporary, a beautiful waiting room. Amber moved through the kitchen, her body craving simplicity. She poured a glass of water, then shuffled toward the bedroom, shedding the lavender dress like a second skin. It pooled on the floor. She opened Kash’s side of the walnut dresser and pulled out one of his plain black t-shirts. The soft, worn cotton swallowed her, falling to mid-thigh, stretching taut over the monumental curve of her stomach.
She lowered herself onto the edge of the bed with a grunt, then carefully leaned back, arranging pillows behind her. The sheets were cool. She let her hands roam her belly, feeling the hard, rounded surface. A knee or an elbow skated beneath her palm, a slow, dragging pressure. “Hey, you,” she whispered. “Long day, huh? Mommy bought you a stupidly expensive avocado.”
The door clicked open. Kash stood in the doorway, having shed his own jacket. He paused, his keys dangling from his fingers. The sight of her—awash in his clothes, glowing in the lamplight, her hands cradling the life they’d made—struck him with a physical force. All the coiled tension from the construction site, the hard calculations about power grids and encrypted feeds, unraveled.
He walked in, dropping his keys on the dresser with a soft clatter. He came around to her side of the bed, his eyes never leaving her stomach. Without a word, he toed off his shoes and climbed onto the mattress, stretching out on his side beside her. He propped his head on his hand, his face level with her navel.
“What’s the word in there?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.
“Chaos, mostly.” She smiled, watching him. “Some light calisthenics.”
He placed his palm flat against the highest point of her bump. He waited. A second later, a firm push answered his touch from the inside. He laughed, a soft, breathy sound she hadn’t heard in weeks. “Yeah? You got something to say?”
He leaned closer, his lips nearly brushing the fabric. “This is your dad,” he said, his tone shifting into something deliberately clear and earnest, as if speaking through a closed door. “We’re out here. We’re waiting for you. It’s pretty good out here. You’re gonna like it.”
Amber’s breath caught. She watched his face, the intense focus, the way his eyes tracked every minute shift beneath the black cotton. This was a side of him so raw and unguarded it made her chest ache. It was softer than he’d been with her, even in their most tender moments. This was pure, unfiltered anticipation.
He pressed a kiss to her belly where a foot seemed to be lodged. “I’m gonna teach you both how to ride bikes. Not on this hill, though. This hill is a death trap.” Another kiss, lower. “We’re gonna go to the beach. Your mom hates the sand, but she’ll go because she loves us. She’ll complain the whole time, though. It’s part of the fun.”
He was talking to them like they were already people who could understand. He’d pause, his lips still touching her, as if waiting for a reply. The room felt sacred, hushed.
“We got you this wild avocado outfit today,” he continued, his smile audible. “It’s ridiculous. You’ll probably love it.” His hand rubbed a slow circle. “I can’t wait to see who you are.”
A major movement rippled through her then, a slow, seismic roll that made her whole abdomen contort. The black cotton stretched and moved as if something inside was turning over, settling into a new position. Kash watched, enthralled, as the landscape of her body reformed. He laughed again, in pure wonder, and bent to kiss the new apex of the curve.
“I love you,” he whispered, the words directly into her skin, a secret for the three of them. “So much.”
As he said it, a small, distinct shape pressed out against the fabric just below his cheek. It wasn’t a random kick. It was precise. The perfect, tiny outline of a hand, fingers splayed, pressed against the inner wall as if reaching to touch the sound of his voice.
Kash went perfectly still. His eyes widened. Amber held her breath.
The handprint held its shape for five long seconds, a silent hello. Slowly, reverently, he raised his own hand and laid his palm over the spot, his fingertips aligning with where the tiny fingers pushed. He didn’t press back. He just covered it, a promise. The imprint lingered under his touch, a fleeting sculpture of connection.
Then, as slowly as it had appeared, it faded away, dissolving back into the general, restless movement. A final, gentle kick pulsed against his palm, and then another lower down, as if the other twin was joining in.
Kash let out a shaky breath he seemed to have been holding for years. He rested his forehead against her, his eyes closed. Amber ran her fingers through his hair, her own vision blurry. No security system, no amount of money, no fortified door could ever manufacture a moment like this. This was the only safety that truly mattered, and it was already here, living and kicking between them.