Chapter 6: The Taste of a Question
The golden light caught the dust motes drifting above the bed, turning them into flecks of floating fire. Izzy arched off the sheets, a broken sound escaping her as Dom’s tongue found a rhythm that threatened to unravel her completely. His question, growled against her skin, vibrated through her core.
He didn’t let her answer. He just dove back in, his mouth hot and relentless, as if he could drink the truth straight from her body. His broad hands pinned her hips to the mattress, a firm, unyielding anchor as she writhed.
“Daddy—oh, god—” she gasped, her vision speckling with the light from the window.
He pulled back just enough to let her breathe, his chin glistening. His eyes were black with a hunger that had nothing to do with appetite. “I asked you a question, Izzy.”
She laughed, breathless, the sound shaky. “You want me to take a poll? While you’re down there?” She tangled her fingers tighter in his hair, not pushing him away, but holding him to her. “I don’t know. It’s only been two weeks. I feel… different. Swollen. Everywhere.” She looked down the length of her own body at him. “And you’re not helping.”
A slow, possessive smile spread across his face. “Good.” He lowered his head again, but this time his movements were slower, savoring. A long, flat lick that made her thighs tremble. He was tasting her, studying her, like a man familiar with every note trying to detect a new strain in the melody.
He finally lifted himself up, kneeling between her legs. The honeyed light played over the scars on his knuckles, the dense muscle of his chest. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on either side of her head, caging her in. He brought his mouth to hers. She could taste herself on his lips, salty and rich, a flavor that was purely them.
“You taste like mine,” he murmured into the kiss. “Always did. But now…” He kissed her again, deeper. “Now it’s like you’re more mine. If that’s even possible.”
She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him down until the hard, hot length of him pressed against her soaked opening. “So what’s the verdict, doctor?” she teased, nipping at his lower lip. “All that research pay off?”
He didn’t smile. His expression was deadly serious, a intensity that stilled her playful mood. “The verdict is we wait.” He nudged forward, just an inch, making them both groan. “But waiting doesn’t mean stopping.”
He sank into her in one smooth, devastating stroke. It was different now. After the frantic, purposeful marathon in the motel, this was a homecoming. A reclaiming of a space that might already be changing. He moved with a brutal, hypnotic slowness that had tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Every thrust was a question. Every roll of his hips was a search.
“Feels deeper,” he grunted, his forehead against hers, his breath hot on her mouth.
“Everything feels more,” she whispered back, her nails scoring his back. The sunlight was a blanket over them, the room silent except for the slick sound of their joining and their ragged breaths. The family photos on the wall were blurred smears in her peripheral vision. Witnesses.
She came suddenly, a wave that crashed without the usual climb, wrenching a raw, surprised cry from her throat. He followed instantly, as if her climax triggered his own, his body driving into her one final, anchoring time as he spilled with a low, guttural sound that was all possession.
For a long time, they stayed like that, welded together, sweat drying in the cooling light. He was heavy on her, a weight she never wanted lifted.
Finally, he shifted, pulling out and collapsing beside her, pulling her immediately into the curve of his body. He ran a hand over her flat stomach, his touch reverent.
“We should get a test,” he said, his voice rumbling in his chest against her ear.
“Tomorrow,” she said, pressing her hand over his. The thought was a little terrifying. A line on a stick would make it real in a way the motel, the doctor, even this afternoon, hadn’t. It would exist outside of them.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed. But his hand didn’t stop moving, a slow, circular caress. “You know what this means, if it is.”
“Yeah.” She did. It meant a shift in their universe. A new anchor point. A crew member who didn’t know the rules because they were the rules.
“No more jobs with real risk,” he said, and it wasn’t a suggestion. It was law. “The garage does fine. I’m not leaving you alone with a baby.”
“You’d go nuts in six months,” she laughed softly.
“I’d live in the garage. Build cribs. Modify strollers for better torque.” He was serious. She could hear it.
She turned in his arms to face him. The setting sun lit the amber in his brown eyes. “We’re really doing this.”
He cupped her face. “We did it the minute you walked into that clinic. This is just the next mile.” He kissed her, soft and lingering. “My brave girl.”
They lay there as the room dissolved into blue twilight. The uncertainty was a living thing in the bed with them, but it wasn’t fear. It was charge, like the moment before a green light, engines screaming. A new kind of race was beginn
It was charge, like the moment before a green light, engines screaming. A new kind of race was beginning. The silence in the dim room felt heavier now, filled with the ghosts of all the roads not taken.
Izzy watched his profile against the darkening window. His hand was still on her stomach, a warm, permanent brand. She thought of the photos on the wall, of the woman with her smile in a faded picture. A question, reckless and sharp, formed on her tongue.
She didn’t blunt it. She never did with him. “Was Mom wet like this when she was pregnant with me?” The words hung there, stark and naked in the twilight.
Dom went very still. The hand on her belly didn’t move, but she felt a tremor run through his arm. He was silent for so long she wondered if she’d crossed a line even for them, breaking into a sacred vault she wasn’t meant to open.
He finally let out a long, slow breath, misting the window glass. “Izzy.” Her name was a sigh, weighted with memory. He turned his head to look at her. The pain was there, old and weathered, but so was a raw tenderness that stole her breath.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice gravel. “She was.” He shifted, pulling her closer so her head was tucked under his chin. He stared at the ceiling as if the past was projected there. “Different, though. Sweeter. Lighter.” He kissed her hair. “You’re like a storm. She was like… steady rain.”
Izzy absorbed this. She’d never asked for details before. Their intimacy had always been a sealed world of two, but now, with the potential of a third, the past felt suddenly relevant. “Did you… like it? The change?”
A low rumble, almost a laugh, vibrated in his chest. “I loved every second of her. Every change.” His fingers trailed down her spine. “But this? With you?” He paused, choosing his words like selecting tools. “It’s not about liking a change. It’s the whole world changing. The ground under the car is different.”
She understood. Her mother was a cherished memory. This was a living, shifting reality. “Are you scared?” she whispered into his skin.
“Terrified.” The admission was immediate, stark in its honesty. “Not of being a father again. Of sharing you.” His arms tightened around her. “Of anything that takes a piece of you away from me.”
“Nothing ever could,” she said, and meant it with every fiber.
He rolled onto his side again, facing her. In the near-dark, his eyes were black pools reflecting the faint streetlight from the window. “Tomorrow. We’ll know.” He traced her lower lip with his thumb. “Whatever it says, you’re mine first. You understand that? Before anything else.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a commandment written in blood and gasoline. “I know,” she said.
He kissed her, a deep, consuming kiss that tasted of her, him, and a future they were building one dangerous piece at a time. When he broke away, his voice was thick. “Get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
But sleep didn’t come easily. She lay awake for hours, feeling the phantom pressure of his hand on her belly, hearing her own question echo. Was Mom wet like this? She felt a strange, fierce jealousy for a ghost, for a version of her father she never knew. Then she felt his arm pull her tighter in his sleep, a possessive grunt murmuring from his lips, and the jealousy melted. She had all of him. Every scar, every grimace, every gentle touch.
The past was a photo. She was the living, breathing engine.