All the Sky (35 page)

A tear.

“Hav. I love you.” She went to him, crawling over the comforter, putting her arms around him and pulling his head to her shoulder. He didn’t cry more, but after a second he relaxed and let her hold him, comfort him, and they stayed like that for several minutes.

Finally, she whispered, “I love you. I’m not scared.”

“You should be scared. It’s stupid not to be scared.” He spoke against her shoulder.

She lifted his head and looked hard at him. “It’s too late for a warning label, Hav. We’re yours. We’re having a baby. We live in this world now, and there is no other.”

He turned his head and kissed her palm. “Then marry me.”

Though she’d sensed that he was heading in that direction with his big speech, the words still made her pulse pound and her eyes widen. As she was about to answer, he set her aside and reached for his backpack. He pulled a small velvet box out of the front pocket.

“I got this on Main Street, so by now the whole fuckin’ town knows I’m doin’ this. If you say yes, there’ll be no holdin’ off to tell people. Or you could put some real humiliation on me if you wanted.” He opened the box. “It’s antique, I guess. I just thought it was pretty and different and suited you.”

It was obviously antique. A gorgeous oval solitaire ringed with tiny diamonds, the band embedded with more tiny diamonds. Set in rose gold. A plain, delicately slim rose gold wedding band was bedded next to it.

“Even though it’s kinda pink, Stella said it really was gold.”

“It is. It’s perfect, Hav. Amazing.”

“You gotta answer me, honey. I’m feelin’ a little sick here.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but then she stopped. “I have to talk to Nolan first.”

Havoc grinned, his face lighting up like the sun. “I already did. Got his blessing. After he threatened to shoot me again. Maybe I shouldn’t teach the kid to shoot, after all.”

“You should teach us both to shoot, I think.” She smiled, but her statement was serious, and she looked hard at Havoc, her brows up, until he understood.

“Yeah. I will. Throw a punch, too. But not you until after the baby. You gonna answer the question, Cory?”

A sudden thrill of puckishness came over her. “I don’t think you asked a question. You’re kind of a bully that way.”

Confusion wrote itself on his face, and then erased, and he smiled again. “Shit. Chicks. Fine. You want a knee, too?” Before she could answer, he dropped to his knee at the side of the bed and held the boxed rings up. “Better? Will you marry me, Corinne Hawes?”

“Yes. Of course I will.”

He came back up onto the bed and slid the diamond on her finger. The fit was a little loose, but her fingers would be puffy soon enough, and she could get it sized after the baby. He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Now, I want to be sweet.” He set the box, still holding the wedding ring, on her nightstand and moved over her, his hand sliding around to hold her ass and pull her flat to the bed. Then he kissed her—softly, slowly, his mouth and tongue moving with hers.

He wasn’t good at sweet. He got impatient quickly, always, and then they were grunting and sweating and clawing at each other and sometimes he was spanking her, and then she was bruised or inflamed, sometimes even bleeding a little. And it was sizzling hot, always.

But she liked sweet, too, and she loved that he was trying.

She was wearing an old, soft t-shirt and a pair of loose yoga pants—her usual winter sleepwear. As he kissed her, he pushed her shirt up over her breasts. She crossed her arms between them and grabbed the bunched fabric, breaking the kiss to pull it over her head. He moved away from her mouth, lightly kissing her jaw, her neck, the full length of her collarbone, his tongue tracing the point where it rose from her shoulder, then down, down until he was at her breast. He lightly ran his tongue in a circle around her areola. Her breasts were hypersensitive and still just a little bit on the sore side, and she gasped and flinched at the intensity of his touch.

He looked up. “I hurt you?”

She put her hand on his head—he needed a shave; his scalp was covered with dark, pepper-and-salt fuzz. “No. But go light. They’re super sensitive. They really hurt at first, but that’s mostly gone now.”

“You want me to leave ‘em alone?”

“No. I want you to be sweet. Gentle.”

With his eyes on hers, he bent back down and very lightly let his beard graze the tight, erect tip of her nipple.
Oh
. Moaning quietly, she arched her back and clutched at his head.

“Like that?” His quiet chuckle made a light ripple of breeze over her sensitive skin, and she squirmed a little.

“Oh, yes.”

“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful to me.” With that, he kissed her nipple, drawing it slowly, gently into his mouth to suckle just slightly. The feelings his touch was generating confused her—almost too sensitive in one respect but not quite enough in another. Whimpering with every exhale, she brought her other hand to his head and held him to her breast, pushing herself against his mouth.

Letting her go and pushing up against her grip on his head, he looked down at her. His eyes were dark, his breath was heavy. “I thought you wanted sweet, honey. You’re getting me worked up, all that squirmin’—and those little noises you’re makin’.”

“I do want sweet.” She felt too fragile, emotionally and physically, to be taken over the way he did, no matter how wonderful that was. “Please be sweet.”

“Then be still.” He pushed his hand into her pants and between her legs. When his hard fingers slid over her clit and into her folds, she couldn’t suppress the gasp or the flex of her hips.

“Fuck, you’re wet. I missed this. You need to be still, woman, or I’ll go outta my head. Don’t think I ever went so long without before.”

That pulled her out of her building reverie, and she put her hands on his shoulders. “You didn’t…at the clubhouse?” She’d been sure he would have availed himself—he was Havoc, after all. Now that she was a town resident, she’d heard some of the gossip about him, even if the women clammed up when she came around the end of the aisle at the market. His reputation for voraciousness in the clubhouse was practically legend.

He took his hand away and rose up, looming over her on his extended arms. He was angry. “No! ‘Course not. And fuck you for askin’.”

“It’d be okay, Hav. I guess. If you thought you were done with us. I thought you were done with us.”

His expression softened. “I’ll never be done with you, Cory. It’s been nobody but you since that first night in Hemsburg. I told you then. You’re mine.”

Before she could respond to that, he sat back on his knees at her side, hooked his hands into her pants, and pulled them down. She brought her legs up to help him get them off her. Then he pulled his hooded sweatshirt over his head, exposing the wide, hard expanse of his amazing chest. She reached out to touch him, but he caught her hand.

“Be still, woman. Be still.” He moved between her spread legs and stretched out, sliding his hands under her ass and around to hold her hips. At first, for a long time, he simply nuzzled and kissed her belly, from hip to hip and back again. It was almost like he was getting to know the baby inside her. The thought made Cory smile. And then he moved lower, kissing a trail from her navel downward, over her mound. When he got to her clit, she felt him open his mouth, and then his tongue was on her, flicking lightly, slowly over the bud of bunched nerves.

He wanted her to be still, and she tried hard to be. But he was tending to her in ways he had never before. He had touched and kissed and suckled every part of her, but never with this profound, focused attention. Knowing how aroused he was himself, his patience meant all the more. The emotion she felt, the love, intensified every firing of every nerve. She felt his mouth and tongue on her, his beard brushing against her thighs, and then his hands moved up from her hips and gently cupped her breasts, his thumbs moving lightly over her nipples, and she couldn’t be still. She couldn’t. The pleasure was too much. The love was too much. It was all crashing inside her.

“Oh God! Hav, oh God! Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop!” No longer capable of stillness, she let her hips loose to move as they would, and they flailed hard, rubbing her clit against his tongue until the crash became an explosion and she lost the power of speech or movement.

While she was still stunned and throbbing, he pushed himself off the bed and stripped. She watched him through eyes she couldn’t raise above half-mast. But then he was naked and lying between her legs, and she could feel his hot, hard, heavy length between them, pressed into her belly.

He kissed her, deeply, his tongue searching all of her mouth, his hands tangled in her hair. Then he pulled away and stared down at her. “Fuck, woman. You make me feel crazy.” He took one hand from her hair and brought it down, between them, and then she felt his cock pressing into her. “You’re gonna be still, so I can be sweet, right?”

“Wait, Hav. Condom.”

He laughed. “Horse’s out on that one, honey. Don’t think I can knock you up twice. Not at the same time, anyway.”

“What about…” Was she really going to talk about disease while they were naked and panting, and he was pressing his cock between her legs? “Never mind.”

But he pulled back and propped himself up on his forearms. “You askin’ me if I got something you can catch? A man could take offense.”

Now she felt small and stupid—stupid for bringing it up at all, and stupid for not pursuing it. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m clean, hon. We make the girls get tested. We’re not stupid.” He grinned and cocked an eyebrow. “You?”

“Yeah. Clean, now. I’m sorry to kill the mood, but Matt…” God, this was awkward and awful, and he’d been so perfect and sweet.

“That bastard bring something home to you?”

“Yeah—I’m sorry for bringing it up. God, I suck.” Mortified, she tried to wriggle out from under him.

He stopped her. “Where you goin’? We’re good, honey. Take a lot more than that to kill what I got goin’ on tonight.” As proof, he flexed his hips, and the scalding steel rod that was his cock pushed hard against her, into her. She gasped and brought her legs up, folding them along his hips, and he pushed all the way in with a long, pained groan. “Oh, fuck, Cory. Fuck, this feels…fuck.”

He was right. He felt totally different inside her. When they’d gone at it on the kitchen floor, the reason she was pregnant now, that had been a frenzied, incoherent fuck, and she barely remembered any details about it—just a blur of emotional and physical need overwhelming them both. But now, she relished the heat of his skin sliding against the wet of her. He felt even bigger, too, somehow. And more real. She felt more connected to him without that slim barrier of latex. As he stared into her eyes, driving into her slowly but deeply, letting her feel every ridge and vein as he moved inside her, she clutched his shoulders and squeezed her thighs against his hips. She tried to be still.

But then he shocked her. He gathered her up in his arms and rolled to his back, bringing her with him and settling her astride his hips.

They’d never done this position before. Havoc didn’t give over—except to get head, and then, too, he set the rhythm. He was a man who liked control. Who needed it.

“Hav?”

Letting his hands curl lightly around her hips, he grinned up at her. “You go, honey. Show me what you got.” So she rode him, glorying in the freedom to move and in the sight of him, his surprised awe as he let her make him feel the way he so often made her feel. His hands began to tighten on her hips, and she could feel the muscles in his legs going taut under her as she swiveled and rocked and flexed and arched, her hands kneading into the dense muscles of his chest.

And then his brows drew tightly together, and he sat up. She thought he’d take over, roll her to her back, but he didn’t. He just held her close and stared into her eyes as she continued to move, feeling the intensity inside her own body increasing to the point that she knew she’d not be able to focus on him for much longer; soon her need would dictate her body’s response.

It was there, it was on her, and she cried out, dragging her teeth over her lower lip as her body clenched around him. He grabbed her face in both hands and held her fast, forcing her to look at him. She saw confusion and anxiety in his eyes. Then she saw understanding, and she wondered what it was he’d learned just then.

Her climax reached, she doubled down and focused again on him, riding him all the harder, not sweet, not now, and when she brought him to his release, he clasped her close, locking her to his chest with his large, strong arms, and bit down on her shoulder, letting her flesh take his howl.

Panting heavily, his chest heaving against hers, Havoc pulled back and looked at her, his eyes searching her face. “The way you fuck with my head—don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”

“What? What’d I do?”

He brushed her hair back from her face. “Nothin’. Just…it’s like everything I ever knew is wrong. Turns me ‘round some.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s okay. I just love you.” He brought her head to his.

They sat in the middle of the bed, forehead to forehead, until their breaths found their normal pace. Then he laid her gently down, her head on her pillow, and lay behind her, pulling her close, his hand on her belly, and they slept.

~oOo~

They buried Sophie in the middle of January, nearly a month after her death, on a darkly overcast Saturday, the sky heavy and swollen with snow. The service was held at St. John’s Methodist Church, the only church in Signal Bend. A pretty rosewood casket sat in front of the altar. Cory knew that there was very little of Sophie in that box, that most of her body had not been found and would never be found, but Havoc’s parents knew no such thing. That was one of the few Horde secrets Havoc had told her, and that he’d done unwittingly, the night before, in a drunken fervor of grief. Someone had sent him his sister’s head.

That was the world Cory lived in now. The world she’d brought her children into. The thought sobered her, but did not scare her as Havoc thought it should. Instead, it strengthened her, somehow. Made her feel a need to be more than she’d been. More active. More fierce.