Chapter 15: Moving In
The colonial house smelled of new paint and cut flowers. Mara had insisted on filling every vase with peonies from the garden, their heavy, sweet scent drifting through sun-drenched rooms. Julian set her down on the polished oak floor of the foyer, her laughter echoing against the bare walls. She kept her arms around his neck, pulling him close, her small, firm belly pressing against him.
“Welcome home,” he whispered, and the words felt solid, real, in a way nothing had for years.
“I want to christen every room,” she murmured against his lips, her voice a warm, promising hum. Her fingers went to the buttons of his shirt, working them open with a practiced ease she’d never shown in the office. Her cool hands slid over his chest, down to the buckle of his belt. The metal clicked open. The sound was obscenely loud in the empty house.
He didn’t wait. He lifted her, her legs wrapping around his waist, and carried her into the kitchen. The afternoon sun streamed through the bay window, painting the new marble countertop in bars of gold. He set her on the edge, the stone cold through her thin summer dress. He pushed the fabric up her thighs, past her hips, revealing the simple white cotton of her underwear. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband and pulled them down, letting them fall to the floor.
She leaned back on her elbows, watching him, her dark hair fanning out. Her expression was one of pure, open hunger. No games, no spite. It still stunned him.
Julian dropped to his knees on the hardwood. He spread her legs wider, his hands on the inside of her thighs. He buried his face between them. Her taste was clean, sharp, familiar. He licked a slow, flat stripe from her entrance to her clit. She gasped, her hips jerking. He held her firmly, his grip possessive. He licked her again, then focused on her clit, circling the tight bud with the tip of his tongue, then sucking it gently into his mouth.
“Oh, god, Julian,” she moaned, her fingers tangling in his hair, not guiding, just holding on.
He worked her with his mouth, reading every hitch in her breath, every twitch of her muscles. He slid two fingers inside her, finding her wet and ready, her inner walls clenching around him. He curled them, stroking that soft, spongy spot inside her as his tongue kept its relentless rhythm on her clit. Her moans grew louder, less coherent. Her thighs began to tremble against his ears. He felt the tension coiling in her, tightening like a spring.
“I’m… I’m gonna…” she choked out.
He didn’t let up. He drove her over the edge, his mouth sealed to her, drinking in her climax as she cried out, her body bowing off the cold marble. He stayed there, gentling his touch, until the last shudders subsided.
He stood, his knees protesting. His cock strained against his trousers, painfully hard. He freed himself, his gaze locked on hers. Her eyes were hazy, sated, but they sharpened with new want as she looked at his length. She reached for him, her hand wrapping around his shaft, giving him a slow, firm stroke.
“Fuck me,” she said, the words simple and direct. “Right here. I want to feel you.”
He stepped between her spread legs. He guided himself to her entrance, slick with her release and his saliva, and pushed in. He sank into her wet, welcoming heat in one long, slow glide until he was fully seated inside her. She was so tight, so perfect. She wrapped her legs around his hips, locking her ankles at the small of his back, pulling him deeper.
He set a slow, deep rhythm, each thrust measured, profound. The only sounds were their ragged breathing, the soft, wet slap of their joining, and the distant call of a bird outside. He watched her face, the flutter of her eyelids, the part of her lips. This was belonging. This was home. Not the sterile showroom he’d shared with Evelyn, but this warm, living woman taking him into her body, carrying his child.
“I love you,” he whispered, the words leaving him in a ragged breath as he pressed his forehead to hers.
She came again then, a softer, deeper unraveling that pulsed around his cock, milking him. It pulled his own orgasm from him. He drove into her one last, deep time, groaning as he spilled inside her, his release hot and endless. He stayed there, buried in her, for a long moment, his body shaking with the force of it.
Later, tangled together in the bed that was finally, truly theirs, the late sun bathing the room in amber, his phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was a text from his lawyer. A final update. He read it, the screen glowing in the dimming light.
The test had shown the child was not his. Some artist, a stranger from one of her gallery holes. Marcus had vanished, his obsession evaporating the moment her usefulness as a weapon was spent. The divorce was final, the financial dissection complete. With the pitiful alimony the judge had granted—a reflection of her proven infidelity and his own buried assets—Evelyn had been forced to sell the remaining shards of her gilded life. She had moved back in with her parents in Connecticut two days ago.
Julian placed the phone face down. He felt Mara’s hand on his chest, over his heart.
“Everything okay?” she murmured, her voice thick with near-sleep.
He looked at her, at the gentle curve of her stomach under the sheet, at the peace on her face. He thought of the cold blue light of a pregnancy test in a dark, empty bedroom. He thought of a silk robe, damp and abandoned.
“Everything’s perfect,” he said, and for the first time, it wasn’t a lie he told to get through the day. It was a fact, solid as the foundations of this house. He pulled his wife closer, breathing in the scent of peonies and her skin, and let the past, at last, recede into the silence it deserved.