Chapter 14: A Private Ultrasound
The morning sun cut through the gaps in the heavy drapes, painting bars of warm gold across the rumpled velvet of the bed. Izzy lay on her back, the soft swell of her abdomen exposed where her t-shirt was rucked up. The air still carried the faint, metallic ghost of last night—sex and sweat and salt—but over it now was a new, electric tension.
Dom sat on the edge of the mattress, his weight making her body tilt toward him. In his large, calloused hands, the small black-and-white ultrasound monitor looked like a child’s toy. He’d bought it cash from a sketchy medical supply site downtown, no questions asked. For family.
“Cold,” Izzy whispered, flinching as he squeezed the clear gel onto her skin.
He grunted in acknowledgment, his focus absolute. He pressed the wand against her lower belly, his movements uncharacteristically gentle. His eyes were fixed on the screen, a grainy, shifting landscape of grey shadows. He moved the wand slowly, searching.
Izzy watched his face. She saw the concentration, the slight pinch between his brows that usually appeared when he was tuning an engine or studying a race route. This was his new map. Her breath caught.
“There,” he said, his voice low and rough.
He stopped moving. On the screen, a small, blurred oval shape floated. And within it, a tiny, rapid flutter. A flickering light, a frantic, miraculous drumbeat.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
The sound filled the quiet room, tinny from the small speaker, louder than a cathedral bell. Izzy’s hand flew to her mouth. Tears welled, spilling over and tracing hot paths down her temples into her dark hair. She didn’t make a sound.
Dom’s thumb stroked her skin just beside the wand. His jaw was clenched tight, a muscle jumping. He stared at the flicker, at the proof of their brutal, perfect love made flesh. His eyes grew bright.
“Daddy,” Izzy breathed, the word wet and broken. “When do we see our little one again?”
He set the wand aside carefully, ignoring the gel smearing the sheets. He didn’t answer with words. He moved over her, caging her body with his, and pulled her into his arms. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, his breath hot and shuddering against her skin. His big hand settled possessively over her belly, covering the cooling gel.
“Right now, babygirl,” he murmured into her neck, his voice thick with an emotion too vast for any other name. “We’re seeing it right now. And I’ll see you both every single fucking day for the rest of my life.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a seal. His tongue swept into her mouth, tasting her tears, her sleep, her essential Izzy-ness. She kissed him back with equal hunger, her fingers digging into the thick muscles of his back, pulling him down onto her.
The carefulness evaporated, burned away by a surging, primal heat. This was celebration. This was consecration.
He yanked her cotton shorts down her legs, the fabric tearing at the seam. She kicked them away. He pushed his own sweatpants down just enough to free his cock, already thick and heavy, the veins standing in relief. He was wet at the tip, leaking for her.
“Need you,” Izzy panted, arching her back. “Need you in me. Now.”
He guided himself to her entrance, but didn’t push. He rubbed the broad head through her slick folds, smearing her wetness, teasing her clit. “This cunt,” he growled, his eyes on hers. “This perfect, tight cunt made my baby. My baby’s in there.”
“Yours,” she gasped, hooking her legs around his waist. “Everything’s yours. Fucking give it to me, Dad. Give me everything.”
He drove in. One deep, inexorable thrust that buried him to the root. She cried out, a sharp sound of pure satisfaction. He filled her completely, a familiar, grounding pressure that was now different. Sacred and filthy all at once.
He fucked her with a slow, devastating intensity. Each withdrawal was almost complete, each plunge a profound re-possession. The wet, slapping rhythm was obscene in the sunlit room. Her breasts swayed with the force of his movements. He dropped his head, sucking a dark mark onto the pale skin above her left nipple, a brand beside the subtle curve of her pregnancy.
“You feel that?” he grunted, his hips grinding in a deep circle. “You feel how deep I am? That’s how deep my seed went. That’s how deep my love is.”
“I feel it!” she chanted, her heels driving into his ass. “I feel you in my soul, Daddy. I feel our baby right there with you. Fuck! Fuck, right there!”
Her orgasm built not as a screaming peak, but as a deep, rolling wave. It started in her core, where his thickness stretched her, and radiated out, making her thighs shake and her toes curl. She came with a low, continuous moan, her inner walls clutching and milking his cock in slow, rhythmic pulses.
The sensation tore his control apart. With a final, brutal thrust, he slammed home and held. A raw, animal sound ripped from his chest as he emptied himself inside her, jet after hot jet painting her already-occupied womb. It was an act of profound, pointless, and beautiful redundancy. A reaffirmation written in the most basic fluid.
He collapsed onto her, careful to keep his weight on his elbows. Their sweat mingled. The smell of sex was rich and new in the sunlight. Beneath his hand on her belly, their child—a cluster of cells with a flickering heartbeat—was awash in the fresh flood of its father.
A long time later, he softened and slipped out of her. He didn’t move away. He lay beside her, pulling her into the shelter of his body, his hand never leaving her stomach.
Izzy traced the faded ink of the crucifix on his bicep. “Letty,” she said quietly, the name a stone dropped into their private pool.
Dom’s arm tightened around her. “She’s in. She made her choice.”
“She tasted you in me,” Izzy said, a note of dark pride in her voice. “She’s part of the family now. For real.”
Dom stared at the ceiling. The chandelier caught the light. Family was everything. But family was a complicated engine. It needed all its parts to run, even the newly forged, dangerously sharp ones. Letty was in the garage now, part of the crew. And a crew protected its own.
He kissed the top of Izzy’s head. “Nobody touches what’s mine,” he murmured, a vow that encompassed the woman in his arms, the life inside her, and the newly-bound third who slept down the hall. “Nobody.”