Chapter 16: The First Night

I folded the summons in half and set it on the table.

"Not tonight," I said.

Bram looked at me for a long moment.

Then he closed the front door on the man in the Ironwood coat and slid the bolt home.

Rory was still crying.

Bram lifted him out of the basket, rocked him once against his chest, and took him down the hall to the healer's room.

She had been awake the whole time, listening, and she took the baby without a word and shut her door.

He came back alone.

He stopped at the end of the hall with his hands hanging at his sides.

He looked at me.

"Come here," I said.

He crossed the kitchen in three steps.

I took his face in both hands, the straight one and the crooked one, and kissed him.

He kissed me back.

He picked me up, and I locked my legs around his waist.

He carried me down the hall to his room with his mouth never leaving mine.

He kicked the door shut.

He set me down at the foot of the bed.

The lamp was on low.

It lit the side of his face, the copper in his beard, and his huge, shaking hands.

"You're trembling," I said.

"I know."

"Why?"

"Because I want to do this right, and I've wanted to do it for three months."

"Then do it."

I caught the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head.

His breath went out of him.

I wasn't the girl I'd been before the baby.

My belly was soft and marked, my breasts were heavy and tender, and my hips were wider.

I stood in the lamplight in an old nursing bra and let him look.

"Morven." His voice was wrecked. "You're beautiful."

"I'm a size fourteen with stretch marks."

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

He dropped to his knees in front of me.

He put his mouth against the soft curve of my belly.

He kissed the silver lines there one at a time, the way he'd kissed my fingers.

My hands went into his hair.

"Bram."

"Mm."

"Take off your shirt."

He reached behind his head and pulled it off.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Alpha Chose Her, So I Let Him Bury Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.