God, I loved that breathy tone.
So fucking satisfied with her, I kissed her belly just above her hipbone. A thought crossed my mind, making me grimace.
“Back to the condoms soon. I want inside you more than I want my next breath, but Aoife, condoms suck,” I complained with a sulky grimace.
But she tilted her head at me, and her hand cupped my jaw. “You don’t mind?”
The morning of the wedding, she’d said she’d stop taking the pill but, in the aftermath, it wasn’t like she’d stopped taking it on purpose. Contraceptive medication had taken a back step to all the stuff the doctors had pumped into her to take her pain away, to keep her infection-free, and to make her healthy.
She wasn’t ready for kids, I knew that. And after being shot? Her body wasn’t either.
I kissed her belly again. “I want this round with my child, angel, but not at a risk to you.” My eyes drifted over the special bandages she wore on the incision site. They were made of this silver shit that prevented infection, but gradually, they were decreasing in size and thickness, and I took each graduation as a positive sign. “We’ll have them when you’re ready.”
She grinned at me. “Lena was wrong.”
“She often is,” I remarked dryly, but I cocked a brow at her, willing to bite. “Why in this case?”
But Aoife didn’t say, just looked smug. “I knew you’d be like this.”
“Like what?” I asked, confused.
“Considerate.”
Clarity hit. “Ah, she thought I’d want you barefoot and pregnant ASAP, hmm?”
I wasn’t about to admit that before the shooting, yeah, I’d wanted that with every breath in my body.
“Yup. Thank you for proving her wrong.”
Aoife had goals, and I didn’t want to get in the way of them. But still… “We could always hire a nanny, you know?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Why?”
I laughed. “For any kids we have eventually.”
Her chin tipped up. “I’ll consider it.”
Amused, because those three words said it would be a cold day in hell before someone else raised her kids, I carefully rolled off her and to the side.
I knew she thought she didn’t like kids; also knew she wasn’t particularly maternal—she was probably the only woman who complained about the kids being noisy here—but I figured she’d be totally different with her own. She was a nurturer. It would be a crime against nature for her not to have my children.
I was A-Okay with committing crimes, but that one?
Tut. Tut. No way. It would happen at some point, just not as soon as I’d hoped.
“I’m going to shower.”
“Are you staying for breakfast?”
I shouldn’t, but, fuck it. “Yeah.”
“You are?” Excitement leaped in her eyes and I realized how goddamn bored she must be locked up in the damn compound.
Eleven weeks was a record, and I knew all the men were getting shit from their wives, but it wasn’t like we had much of a choice.
Just because we thought we had the Colombians on the run didn’t mean they weren’t about to pull some kind of crazy-assed stunt.
They’d targeted our council on one of the councilor’s goddamn wedding day. They were evidently fucking crazy and we weren’t about to take any risks.