Chapter 7: The Surgeon's Bargain
The machines breathed for him in rhythmic sighs, a mechanical lullaby that had become the soundtrack to her existence. Layla had memorized every beep, every whir, every soft click of the IV pump dispensing antibiotics into the catheter threaded into the back of Yusuf's hand. Three days. Seventy-two hours of sitting in this chair, her spine fused to the vinyl, her fingers tangled with his, her thumb tracing the same small circle on his palm until the skin there had grown warm and slick with her constant touch.
She hadn't showered.
The nurses had stopped asking if she wanted food. They'd stopped suggesting she take a walk, get some air, call someone. They simply brought her water and looked at her with a pity that made her want to scream. She drank the water because her body demanded it, but she tasted nothing. She ate the crackers from the vending machine because if she didn't, she would collapse, and she couldn't collapse, not yet, not until he opened his eyes and she could tell him everything.
The guilt was a creature that lived in her chest now. It had claws. It had teeth. It gnawed at her from the inside, a constant, grinding presence that made it hard to breathe. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the knife. She saw the blood. She saw the thing she had done, the unforgivable thing, the thing that had turned her from a wife into a monster in the space of a single heartbeat.
But she had fixed it. She had gone back. She had dug through the trash, her hands shaking, her stomach heaving, until she found what she was looking for. She had packed it in ice. She had called every surgeon in the country until she found the one who could do the impossible. She had spent her family's savings, the money her parents had set aside for their retirement, the money that was supposed to be for a house, for a future, for a child.
And now she sat here, waiting.
The afternoon light filtered through the blinds, casting pale stripes across the floor. The private room was quiet, the kind of quiet that felt heavy, suffocating. The flowers her mother had brought sat wilting on the windowsill, their petals curling inward, dropping one by one onto the linoleum. Her mother had come. Her mother had helped her clean up the suite, had held her while she sobbed, had told her that everything would be okay even though they both knew it wouldn't.
The police had come too. Layla had told them her story, the lie that tasted like copper, and they had nodded and written things down and told her they would be in touch. Self-defense, they called it. A domestic disturbance. A wife who had defended herself against a husband who had come home drunk and violent.
None of it was true.
Yusuf had never been drunk in his life. He had never raised a hand to her. He had been gentle, patient, reverent. He had whispered filthy things in her ear that made her blush and ache and want, but he had never hurt her. He had only loved her, and she had rewarded that love by cutting off a piece of him and throwing it in the trash like garbage.
She squeezed his hand tighter, her eyes burning with tears she had long since run out of.
And then she felt it. A twitch. A small, almost imperceptible movement of his fingers against hers.
Layla's breath caught in her throat. She leaned forward, her heart hammering against her ribs, her vision blurring. "Yusuf?" Her voice was a rasp, barely audible. "Yusuf, can you hear me?"
His eyelids fluttered. The movement was slow, agonizing, like watching a butterfly struggle to emerge from its cocoon. She held her breath, her whole body trembling, as his eyes opened.
They were unfocused at first, clouded with pain and whatever drugs were pumping through his system. They drifted across the ceiling, the walls, the window, and then they found her.
Layla.
He blinked. Once.Twice. His lips moved, but no sound came out. His throat worked, dry and cracked, and she reached for the cup of water on the bedside table, bringing the straw to his lips.
"Drink," she whispered. "Please. Just a little."
He took a sip, then another, the water dribbling down his chin. She wiped it away with her sleeve, her hands shaking so badly she could barely manage the simple motion. His eyes never left her face.
She set the cup down and took his hand again, pressing it to her cheek. The warmth of his palm against her skin was the most beautiful thing she had ever felt. She closed her eyes, letting the tears fall, and then she opened them and forced herself to speak.
"I found a surgeon," she said. Her voice cracked on the words, splintered like glass."The best. His name is Dr.Vale. He specializes in—in reattachment. Microsurgery. He's the one who did your—he's the one who fixed you."
Yusuf stared at her. His expression was unreadable, a mask of stoic silence that made her stomach clench with fear.
"The surgery took twelve hours," she continued, the words tumbling out of her now, a flood she couldn't stop. "They reattached it. Everything. The nerves, the vessels, the—everything. Dr. Vale said it was successful. He said you're going to heal. You're going to be okay."
Still, he said nothing. His eyes were fixed on her, dark and deep, and she couldn't tell if he was angry or confused or something else entirely.
She swallowed hard, her throat constricting. "You're going to be okay, Yusuf. Do you hear me? You're going to recover. It's going to be—it's not going to be the same, but you're going to be whole."
The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. The machines beeped. The IV dripped. Outside the window, a bird sang a few tentative notes, then fell silent.
And then Yusuf spoke.
"Why?"
His voice was a ruin, hoarse and broken, barely more than a whisper. But the word cut through her like a blade.
"Why would you do that?" he asked. "After what I did to you?"
Layla's chin trembled. The tears she had been holding back broke free, streaming down her cheeks, hot and relentless. She shook her head, unable to form words, unable to breathe.
"You should have let me die," he said. "You should have left me there. I deserved it. I deserved worse."
"No." The word tore from her throat, raw and desperate. "No, Yusuf, you didn't. You don't understand."
"I understand everything." His hand tightened around hers, his grip weak but insistent. "I hurt you. I took you when you weren't ready. I was a monster. I was—"
"You were my husband." She cut him off, her voice breaking. "You were my husband, and I loved you, and I—I wanted to kill you. I wanted you dead. I looked at you bleeding on the floor and I felt nothing but satisfaction, and that—that's the truth, Yusuf. That's what I am. That's what I did."
She pulled her hand away from his, pressing both palms to her face, her shoulders shaking with sobs.
"I'm guilty," she choked out. "I'm so guilty.I was wrong. I wanted to kill you, and I almost did, and the thought of you living the rest of your life as less than whole because of me—because of what I did—"
She couldn't finish. The words dissolved into incoherent sobs, ugly and raw, the kind of crying that came from somewhere deep and primal. She felt like she was falling apart, like her body was splitting at the seams, like everything she had ever believed about herself was crumbling to dust.
"I'm sorry," she gasped. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
She said it over and over, a mantra, a prayer, a plea for absolution that she knew she didn't deserve. She couldn't look at him. She couldn't bear to see the hatred in his eyes, the disgust, the contempt.
But then she felt his hand on her wrist, pulling her hands away from her face.
"Layla."
His voice was still broken, but there was something else in it now. Something soft. Something tender."Look at me."
She shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut.
"Look at me," he repeated.
Slowly, reluctantly, she opened her eyes.
He was looking at her with an expression she couldn't name. His eyes were glistening, wet with tears that tracked slowly down his cheeks. His lips were pressed together, trembling, and his hand was still wrapped around her wrist, holding her like she was something precious.
"I forgive you," he said.
The words hit her like a physical blow. She stared at him, her mouth open, her heart stopped.
"Do you hear me, Layla?" His voice cracked. "I forgive you."
"No." She shook her head, pulling away from him. "No, you can't. You can't forgive me. You don't know what I did. You don't know what I—"
"I know exactly what you did." His grip on her wrist tightened. "And I forgive you. I forgive you because I love you. I love you, Layla. I've loved you since the moment I saw you. And I know—" He paused, swallowing hard. "I know I hurt you. I know I pushed too hard. I know I was wrong. And I'm sorry too."
She was sobbing now, unable to speak, unable to breathe. The guilt was still there, still gnawing at her, but something else was blooming in her chest now. Something warm. Something that felt almost like hope.
"Come here," he whispered.
She climbed onto the bed beside him, careful of the bandages, careful of the IV, careful of all the fragile, broken pieces of him. She curled into his side, her head resting on his shoulder, her arm draped across his chest. She could feel his heartbeat beneath her palm, steady and strong.
"I'm sorry," she whispered again, her lips brushing against his hospital gown. "I'm so sorry."
"Shh." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "It's okay. We're going to be okay."
They lay there for a long time, wrapped in each other, the machines beeping their steady rhythm. Layla's sobs slowly subsided, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that made her limbs heavy and her eyelids droop. She hadn't slept in three days. She hadn't eaten. She had been running on adrenaline and guilt and fear, and now, finally, the weight of it all was crashing down on her.
But there was something she needed to tell him first. Something important.
"Yusuf," she murmured.
"Hmm?"
She lifted her head, looking into his eyes. They were red-rimmed and tired, but they were full of something that made her heart ache.Love. Forgiveness.
"I have good news," she said.
His brow furrowed. "Good news?"
"I'm pregnant."
The words hung in the air between them, suspended in the sterile light of the hospital room, and for a moment, neither of them breathed.
Layla watched his face, searching for his reaction, terrified of what she might find. And then she saw it.
The tears spilled over, but they weren't tears of sadness. They were tears of joy, of wonder, of something so profound it stole her breath away."Pregnant?" he repeated, his voice barely a whisper.
She nodded, her own tears spilling down her cheeks. "From before. From our wedding night. That's why I—that's why I had to fix you. Because I couldn't let you miss this. I couldn't let you miss being a father."
He stared at her, his mouth opening and closing, and then he laughed. It was a broken sound, hoarse and weak, but it was a laugh, and it was beautiful.
"A baby," he said. "We're going to have a baby."
She nodded, burying her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry I messed that up. I'm sorry I took it away from you. But we're going to have a child. One child. And it's your chance—your chance at being a father."
He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close, holding her like he would never let her go.
"I don't deserve this," he said. "I don't deserve you."
"Neither do I." She lifted her head, meeting his eyes. "But we can try. We can try to be better. Together."
He nodded, a small, tentative smile crossing his lips. "Together."
The word was a promise.A vow. A new beginning.
Layla settled back against him, her hand resting on her still-flat stomach. There was a life growing inside her, a tiny spark of possibility. A child who would be born into a world of pain and forgiveness, of brokenness and healing. A child who would never know the violence that had come before.
She would make sure of that.
The machines beeped. The IV dripped. The birds sang outside the window, their notes tentative at first, then growing bolder.
And in the quiet of the hospital room, Yusuf pressed his lips to her forehead and whispered, "Thank you."
She didn't ask what for. She already knew.
For giving him a reason to live.
For giving him a second chance.
For giving him a child.
She closed her eyes, letting the exhaustion finally pull her under. And for the first time in three days, she slept.
The first time they made him stand, his whole body shook like a leaf in a storm. Layla hooked her arm under his shoulder, bracing herself, her feet planted wide on the cold hospital tile. His hospital gown gaped open at the back, exposing the pale curve of his spine, the bandage taped across his groin. He looked at her, eyes wide with humiliation, and she just tightened her grip.
"Three steps," she said. "Come on. Three steps to the chair."
He took one. Then another. His knuckles whitened on the rail she'd positioned beside the bed, his jaw clenched so hard she heard his teeth grind. The third step nearly buckled him, his leg giving way, and she caught him, pressing her body against his side to hold him upright.
"I'm fine," he rasped. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine," she said gently. "But you're getting there."
He made it to the chair and collapsed into it, head hanging, chest heaving. Sweat beaded on his hairline. Layla knelt in front of him, her hands on his knees, and waited for his breathing to steady.
"Again tomorrow," she said. "A little further."
He nodded without looking at her.
The days blurred together. Each morning, a nurse helped her walk him to the window and back, a distance that grew by a few feet each time. His grip loosened. His steps steadied. He started lifting his own weight, holding her for balance instead of survival, and she felt the shift in the muscles of his back, the returning strength.
But the hardest moment came on the sixth day, when the nurse arrived with a small tray.
"Time to try," the nurse said, her voice brisk and cheerful. "Catheter's coming out today."
Layla watched the color drain from Yusuf's face. He stared at the tray, at the sterile equipment, at the door of the private bathroom just a few feet away, and she saw the fear gather in his eyes like storm clouds.
"I'll leave you to it," she said, starting to rise.
"No." His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. "Stay."
The nurse looked between them, then nodded. "I'll be back in thirty minutes. If there's a problem, press the call button."
She left, and the door clicked shut behind her.
Yusuf sat on the edge of the bed, his hospital gown puddled around his thighs. The catheter was a thin tube snaking from beneath the bandages, secured with tape. Layla's stomach turned, but she kept her face still.
"I can do this," he whispered, more to himself than to her. His hands shook as he reached for the tape.
"You don't have to do it alone."
He stopped. Looked at her. And for the first time since he'd woken up, his eyes held something other than pain or shame. A raw, naked vulnerability that made her chest ache.
"Help me," he said.
She moved to stand in front of him, her knees brushing against his. She peeled the tape back slowly, carefully, the adhesive pulling at the sensitive skin beneath. He hissed through his teeth but didn't move. The tube came free with a soft wet sound, and she wrapped it in the towel the nurse had left, setting it aside.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Let's try."
He stood, gripping her arm for support, and shuffled toward the bathroom. She helped him to the toilet, turned away as he sat, and listened to the silence that followed.
It stretched. One minute. Two. Three.
"Nothing's coming," he said, his voice thick with despair. "I can't... I can't go."
She turned back to face him. He was hunched forward, elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands, and he was crying. Silent, broken sobs that shook his shoulders, that made the bandage shift, that made her heart crack open.
"It's okay," she said, kneeling in front of him.
"It's not okay." He lifted his head, his face blotchy and swollen. "I'm a man, Layla. I'm supposed to be able to do this. I'm supposed to be able to give you a child, to protect you, to take care of you. And I can't even piss standing up."
She reached out and took his hands in hers. They were cold, trembling.
"You're healing," she said. "Your body is learning again. It'll take time."
"Time," he repeated, bitterness coating the word like bile. "Time won't fix this. It won't fix what you did. It won't make me whole."
She flinched, but she didn't look away. "No. It won't. But it will make you better. And I'm going to be here every step. I'm not leaving you, Yusuf."
He stared at her, his breath ragged. Then, slowly, he released one hand and pressed it to his stomach, over the bandage.
"I'm scared," he whispered.
She rose and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him against her, his face buried in her chest. She ran her fingers through his hair, feeling the fine tremors running through his body.
"I know," she said. "But you don't have to be scared alone."
The minutes passed. The water eventually came, slow and hesitant at first, then a steady stream that made him gasp with relief. When she heard the sound, she felt her own throat close with emotion.
He stood, finally, and she helped him wash his hands. He looked at himself in the mirror for a long moment, at the pale face, the dark circles, the hospital gown. Then he looked at her reflection, standing just behind his shoulder.
"Thank you," he said.
She met his eyes in the glass and nodded.
She got him back to the bed, helped him arrange the pillows, made sure the call button was within reach. His hand caught her wrist as she started to pull away.
"You're pale," he said. "You've been pale for two days."
"I'm fine." She said it automatically, the same lie she'd been telling since yesterday morning, when she'd woken up in the chair beside his bed and bolted for the bathroom with her hand clamped over her mouth.
"You're not. You barely ate dinner. You pushed the soup around the bowl and never touched it."
"I wasn't hungry."
He studied her face in that quiet way he had, the way that made her feel like he was reading a book written only for him. "Layla."
She pulled her wrist free. "I'm going to get water. Do you need anything?"
He let her go, but his eyes followed her out the door, and she felt them on her back like a weight.
The hallway was quiet. She made it halfway to the nurse's station before the nausea hit her, a tidal wave that came from nowhere, that turned her stomach inside out. She slapped a hand over her mouth and made it into the bathroom just in time, dropping to her knees in front of the toilet.
Nothing came up. Just bile, thin and yellow, burning her throat. She heaved until her ribs ached, until tears leaked from her eyes, until her body finally relented and let her slump against the tile wall.
She sat there for a long minute, breathing through her mouth, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin was grey. There were hollows under her eyes she'd never seen before. Her hair, unwashed for three days, hung in limp strands around her face.
She looked like a ghost.
When she came back to the room, Yusuf was sitting up straighter, his eyes sharp with worry. "You were gone a long time."
"I got talking to a nurse."
"You're lying."
The words landed like a slap. She met his eyes, and something in her chest cracked open, just a little.
"Yusuf, I..."
"What is it?" He leaned forward, wincing as the movement pulled at his bandages. "What's wrong with you? Tell me."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. The secret sat on her tongue, heavy as a stone. She'd planned to tell him later, when he was stronger, when she could manage the conversation without falling apart.
But he was looking at her with those eyes, full of fear and love and desperate hope, and she couldn't hold it back anymore.
"I'm pregnant."
The words hung in the air between them.
His face went through a series of shifts. Confusion. Disbelief. Then understanding, slow and dawning, like sunrise over a dark field.
"Pregnant," he repeated. "From the wedding night?"
She nodded, and the tears she'd been holding back spilled over. "I'm eight weeks. I found out just before... before everything happened. I was going to tell you. I was going to surprise you. And then I—" She broke off, unable to finish.
He held out his hand. She crossed the room and took it, letting him pull her down onto the edge of the bed.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I was afraid." She swallowed hard. "Afraid you'd be angry. Afraid you wouldn't want it. Afraid that after everything I did, I didn't deserve to carry your child."
"Layla." His voice was thick. "It's the only good thing left. It's the only reason I'm still breathing."
She buried her face in his chest and cried. He held her, one arm around her shoulders, the other pressed flat against her belly, over the tiny life growing inside her.
A week later, she couldn't keep anything down.
It started with the smell of the hospital cafeteria. Then the antiseptic in the hallways. Then the nurse's perfume, floral and cloying. She spent every morning on her knees in front of the toilet, heaving until her throat bled, until there was nothing left but air.
She lost five pounds in six days.
The doctor noticed. A young woman with kind eyes and a clipboard, she pulled Layla aside in the hallway and asked gently if she was eating. Layla tried to smile and said she was fine, but her stomach betrayed her an hour later, emptying itself into a wastebasket in Yusuf's room while he watched helplessly from the bed.
"She can't keep anything down," Yusuf told the doctor when she made her rounds. "She's getting worse. Do something."
The doctor's face was professional, but her eyes were concerned. She prescribed anti-nausea medication, but Layla couldn't hold the pills down either. She was prescribed ginger tea, saltines, small frequent meals. She tried all of it, and her body rejected every attempt.
Yusuf's recovery continued. He walked further each day. He could stand for minutes at a time. He took himself to the bathroom, with Layla hovering at the door, ready to catch him if he fell.
But she was fading in front of him, and he was powerless to stop it.
One evening, she came back from her nightly ritual in the bathroom, pale and shaking, and found him sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands clenched in his lap.
"You should have let me die," he said quietly.
She froze in the doorway. "What?"
"You're skin and bones. You can't eat. You can't sleep. You're pouring everything you have into keeping me alive, and you're dying in the process." He looked up at her, his eyes red-rimmed. "What kind of man am I, Layla, if I watch the mother of my child waste away while I lie here recovering?"
"Yusuf, don't."
"Don't what? Tell the truth?" He shook his head. "You're carrying our child. You're starving yourself trying to take care of me. And I can't even stand without you."
She crossed the room and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers. They were warm. Strong. Healings.
"Then get better," she said. "Get better so you can take care of me. Be my husband. Be my partner. Carry the load with me."
He stared at her for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly, a fire kindling in his eyes that she hadn't seen since before the attack.
Three months folded into the rhythm of the hospital. Morning walks down the third-floor corridor, his hand resting light on her elbow now instead of gripping it. Afternoon physiotherapy. Evening card games on his bed, the IV pole gone, replaced by a bag of supplements and a stubborn, quiet strength rebuilding itself in his body.
He was walking unaided now. The surgeon had said the word "remarkable" twice at his last review. Yusuf hated the word. It reminded him what had been remarkable about the damage.
Layla came in on a Thursday afternoon, the autumn light slanting gold across the floor. Her bump was unmistakable now, a firm curve pressing against the stretch of her green maternity dress. She was eating again, keeping things down, her cheeks rounded back to something soft and living. Fourteen weeks. The baby was the size of a lemon, the pamphlet said.
Yusuf was sitting on the edge of the bed, towel draped over his lap, fresh from the shower. His shoulders had filled out again, the muscles of his arms hard under his skin. But his face was turned down toward his lap, and there was something strained in the set of his mouth.
"Sit," he said, patting the chair.
She lowered herself carefully into it. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." He hesitated. The hesitation was new. Three months ago he would have hidden behind a joke. Now he just looked at her with a kind of tired honesty. "The nurse changed the dressing this morning. She said the scar looks good. Healthy. She used the word mature, whatever that means for skin."
"That's good."
"I couldn't see it." His jaw worked. "I tried. With the mirror, after she left. I twisted around like an idiot and all I got was a blur. I haven't seen it once, Layla. Not once since the surgery. I don't know what I look like down there."
The room went quiet. Somewhere down the hall a cart rattled, wheels squeaking on tile.
"So I need you to look," he said. "And tell me the truth. Even if it's bad. Especially if it's bad."
Layla nodded. She rose, and he shifted the towel aside, and she looked.
The scar ran across him in a jagged seam, the surgeon's stitches long since dissolved, leaving a ridge of raised tissue, pink at the center and fading toward brown at the edges. The skin around it was healthy, smooth, no redness, no weeping. It was impossible to see without seeing what had been done to him, and she had made herself look at it every dressing change for three months, so she could look at it now without flinching.
"It's healed well," she said. "There's no swelling. No discharge. The edges are closing flat."
"But it's ugly."
"It's a scar. It's supposed to look like one." She crouched a little, studying the lower edge. "The line here is smoother. Dr. Vale said the graft took better than expected, remember?"
He was silent. Then, in a voice smaller than she'd heard from him in weeks: "Does it look like it works?"
Layla understood the question. It wasn't about urine or blood flow. It was about the nights he'd grown hard against her in the dark of the honeymoon suite, the voice he'd lost, the shape of the man he'd been for two days.
"Yusuf."
"Answer it."
"It looks like it will work," she said. "Maybe not the same. But it looks alive. It looks like part of you, not something sewn on."
He let out a breath that had been sitting in his chest for three months, it seemed. His hand found the back of her neck, thumb stroking the skin below her hairline.
"Come here," he said. "Both of you."
She leaned in carefully, her bump resting against the edge of the bed, and he pressed his mouth to her forehead. Then he pulled back and looked down at her, and his eyes were wet but his mouth was almost smiling.
"Do you want to feel something?" he asked.
Her breath caught. "Yusuf, the doctor said-"
"I know what he said. Months. Maybe never. Maybe partial." He took her hand and guided it, slow, over the towel, over the seam of the scar, and held it there against the faint, unsteady throb beneath her palm. Not much. Not what it had been. But there.
"That's from you being in the room," he whispered. "Just from you walking in."
Layla's throat closed. She didn't say anything. She just kept her hand where it was and let the small, impossible pulse answer for both of them.
His hand stayed over hers for a moment, and then he moved it. Slowly, so slowly, down over the ridge of the scar, down the shaft that was thickening under her palm, until her fingers curled around him through the towel.
"Feel that," he whispered.
She could. He was filling, not fully, a heavy, half-hard weight growing against her fingers, the skin warm and faintly textured where the graft had healed. She stroked him once, exploratory, and felt him swell harder under her touch.
"God," she breathed.
"Keep going."
She pushed the towel off his lap. His cock lay against his thigh, thicker than she'd expected it to be three months ago, the scar tissue a pale seam across the base, the veins along the shaft dark and full. She wrapped her hand around him properly and pumped, slow, feeling the blood pulse into him with every pass of her fist.
"Does it hurt?"
"No." His breath was already ragged. "It feels like you. It feels like your hand. I've dreamed about your hand."
She bent over him. Her bump pressed against the edge of the mattress, awkward, and she adjusted onto her knees beside the bed, her mouth hovering over the head. She looked up at him once, and his eyes were fixed on her, dark and hungry and wet.
"Layla."
She took him into her mouth. The taste of him, salt and skin and something faintly medicinal underneath, flooded her tongue. He groaned, low in his chest, his hand flying to the back of her head. She suckled the head, dragged her lips down the shaft as far as she could take him, and felt his hips lift off the bed.
"Fuck," he gasped. "Fuck, it works. Layla, it works."
She moaned around him, the vibration making him shudder. Her jaw ached almost immediately; she was out of practice, her body still rearranged by the baby. But she worked him with her tongue, laving the underside, tracing the ridge, bobbing until he was rigid and leaking against her palate.
"Stop, stop." He pulled her up by the shoulders, his chest heaving. "I'll finish if you keep doing that. I want to be inside you."
"I'm pregnant, Yusuf, not made of glass."
"I know." His hand slid under the hem of her dress, up her thigh, over the taut curve of her belly, and lower. He pressed his palm against the damp crotch of her maternity underwear and rubbed, once, twice. "But you're so wet already. Look at you."
She gasped as his fingers slipped beneath the fabric and found her. He stroked her slit with two fingers, parting her lips, gathering the slickness there, and she was dripping, she realized, soaked from having him in her mouth.
"Get up on the bed," he said, his voice rough. "On your side. Facing me."
She climbed up carefully, easing her body down onto the sheets beside him, and he turned toward her, lifting her top leg over his hip. His fingers found her again immediately, sliding through her folds, and then one thick finger pressed inside her, slow and deliberate, and her back arched.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, like that."
He added a second finger, curling them against the front wall of her cunt, rubbing that sponging spot until her thighs trembled. His thumb rolled over her clit in tight circles.
"I've thought about this every night," he muttered against her mouth. "Every fucking night, your pussy. Let me in, Layla."
She reached between them and guided him to her entrance. The head of his cock nudged against her, hot and blunt, and then he pushed in, inch by careful inch, stretching her open around him. The angle was different with her leg over his hip, shallow and slow, his scar dragging against her with every stroke, and she felt every ridge of the healed flesh inside her.
"Is it good?" he breathed. "Tell me it's good."
"It's good." Her voice broke. "It's you. You're inside me."
He began to move, rolling his hips, his free hand splayed over her bump to steady her. His thrusts were short and deep, grinding against her clit on every stroke, and within minutes she was clamping down around him, her orgasm ripping through her in waves, her cunt milking him.
"Layla, I'm going to..."
"Inside me. Please."
He groaned, long and broken, and thrust deep one last time, his cock pulsing inside her as he spilled, his whole body shaking with the force of it. She held him through it, her hand on the back of his neck, feeling the sweat on his skin.
He didn't pull out for a long time. He just stayed there, softening inside her, his forehead pressed to hers.
"It works," he said, and laughed, a wet, incredulous sound. "It actually works."
"It works," she echoed, and kissed him.
His hand came to rest on her belly, low, where their child slept. "I'm going to be careful," he said. "From now on. With both of you."
"I know," she said, and she believed him.