Sophie…
"We have to go," Michael announces the moment the jet's wheels touch the tarmac.
Everyone looks up, startled, including his father whose mouth is half open to ask another question. Still, no one objects, and Michael drags me up out of my chair as the flight attendant hastens to open the jet door.
No one had objected on the jet when Michael abandoned the recap of the battle with the rest of the family to take me to the back, putting me in the shower.
Even on a luxury private jet, no shower is big enough for two people, particularly when one of them is giant-sized like my husband.
He washed the blood, dirt, and smoke off me with gentle hands, wrapping me in a thick towel before hastily washing himself.
This new, gentle kind of care from him made tears come to my eyes.
Now that we've landed though, his ability to act like a stern, dignified future Chieftain is gone.
I at least attempt to maintain some semblance of good manners and call out, "Goodbye, good night!
Thank you!" I'm not quite sure what the appropriate phrase is for, "Thank you, entire horde of MacTavi for flying across the world to mount a full military offensive against a heavily armed Japanese yakuza!"
Maybe there's a handbook somewhere on this. I should ask Michael.
My husband bypasses our security, helping me into the front seat of his Maserati and fastening the seatbelt with a certain kind of reverence I've not seen before taking the wheel.
"You know that Torin and Kyle are quietly dying inside right now," I tell him. He shrugs, taking my hand and putting it on his thigh as he peels out of the private airfield where his family keeps their fleet. His security SUV chasing after us.
"You're pregnant." He kept saying that for the entire flight home, not loud enough for anyone to hear, but I could see his lips move, shaping the words, testing them out to make them reality.
"Maisie ran a blood test for me when I threw up a week ago. She says we're about six weeks along." I chuckle nervously. "She said it was your super sperm, breaking through the condom. And then she freaked out and said to never talk about your sperm again, even though I pointed out she was the one-"
We're stopped at a red light and he kisses me, fiercely, joyfully.
"Does that mean you're okay with us getting pregnant this fast?" I ask in a small voice.
A grin breaks across his face like dawn rising over the ocean. "My beautiful, perfect wife. We're going to have a baby. Thank ye. This is grand! The best of things that I dinnae know we had to have immediately."
Once we're home, he shuts the door in the faces of poor Ian and Kyle, sweeping me up in his arms and carrying me up the stairs with no apparent strain.
That's going to change when I'm a few more months along, I think, wrapping my arms around his neck.
Especially if this kid turns out to be as enormous as his father.
The thought should terrify me, given the concept that eventually, this potentially gigantic baby will have to leave my body.
It somehow delights me, though. Thinking of a child who looks like their father.
Maybe with his green eyes and long legs, racing across the lawn like the other MacTavish offspring.
"What are you smiling at?" Michael asks, taking me into the bedroom.
"I guess maternal sentimentality has come to me faster than I expected," I admit. "I was picturing our child tearing around the green with their cousins, laughing and shrieking." I love the idea of this square of elegant, stately homes, descending into the madness that only children can provide.
I'm not sure how Michael is going to handle it.
I know this man. He likes things precise, and orderly.
I've seen him look at my shoes lying in the hall, my purse thrown on the entryway table, contents scattered across the polished wood and flinch as if the sight physically pains him.
And yet now, he looks nothing but delighted at the concept of this level of chaos.
"If this child is to be a MacTavish," he says, "the window rattling, shrieking and shouting is guaranteed."
"Do you know what my favorite part of that flight was, aside from the fact that we were all alive to take it?" I ask.
"Aye?" he says, depositing me carefully on the bed, kneeling to take off my shoes.
"It was your father, leaning in when I was talking to Mom, telling her that they would be delighted to have her return to the home as their chef, especially given that Gustav quit in tears the other day."
Michael gently massages my feet, listening to me with a slight smile. "Go on."
"When she said, with all due respect, Chieftain, I'm not interested. I have a bake shop to run.'"
"The look on my father's face!" Michael says, laughing. "It's like he was ten again and someone took away his puppy. He will never get over your mother's cooking."
"I'm sure she'll say something prim and sweet like, Well. It's nice to be appreciated,'" I say.
"But I love the idea of this new enterprise being something for her, something she can control. Plus, once the bake shop is up and running, she can set her own hours and go on those cruises like she's always wanted to. "
"I'm glad," he says, smile warm. "She's earned it."
Then, the time for tenderness is apparently over.
Michael stands, unbuttoning his shirt, staring down at me as my eyes follow the movement of his elegant fingers, eagerly watching as each movement opens his shirt wider, showing more of his gorgeous, sculpted chest. The movement of his muscles makes his ink ripple, the vicious, snarling face of the wolf across his chest and shoulder so vivid that it looks like it's ready to pounce.
When I look up and see his expression, it's just the same as the tattoo of the wolf.
"Take off your shirt, wife," he says huskily. My fingers aren't quite as steady as his, but I do, sliding off the bed. He drops his pants, pulling them off along with his shoes and socks. Then, as I watch like I'm in the front row of the world's hottest strip show, his boxer briefs.
He steps back, sitting in a chair across the room.
His legs spread, and his cock is already thick and hard against his abdomen, the red tip leaking and my God, the sight is sinful.
"Now, your pants," he says, and I do. "Now the bra and your knickers."
He steeples his fingers in some sort of lordly gesture that both turns me on and pisses me off. The arrogance of this man.
God, it's hot.
When I'm naked, his gaze drops to my abdomen. It's still flat, but there's a spark of warmth and tenderness when he looks at me. Then it's gone and his eyes are dark and greedy.
"Crawl."
One word, and it's enough to send a full-body shiver over me as I drop to my knees. The oriental rug is soft against my hands as I crawl across the room to him, forcing myself to keep his gaze, even though it's harder to do than I expect.
I know this man inside and out at this point, but there's something there about how he sits there, all Laird of the Manor, the Laird of the MacTavishes, that transforms him.
Someone from an older time, maybe. A wilder one.
The stern lines of his face are sculpted in shadow and the effect is both disconcerting and arousing as hell.
When I finally reach his knees, he spreads them wider.
"Suck."
Running my hands along the inside of his thighs, I take the tip in my mouth, swirling my tongue around the red and sensitive crown before bending down and sinking more of him in my throat.
The feel of him, thick and throbbing, is blazingly hot in my mouth.
His cock has always been warmer than the rest of him, feeling like fire down my throat, and I rest my cheek against his thigh as I bob up and down, moaning happily.
The vibrations make him groan, and I close my eyes in pleasure until he strokes my cheek.
"Eyes on mine."
Arching my neck, I try to take more of him down, breathing through my nose and watching his eyes, pupils flaring his gaze almost black.
"Sugar sweet, aren't ye?" he says. "Until my cock is in your mouth and then you are the filthiest, greedy wee thing." He pulls me off him and lifts me up into his arms as I yelp, startled from the sudden transition, and we're back on the bed as he flips me around.
"Hands and knees," he orders, spreading my thighs.
Resting on my elbows, I turn my head to watch him.
Across the room there's a mirror next to the door and I can see his reflection as he strokes his hands down my ass, looking at me, bare and completely open, and the view is both filthy and unspeakably hot.
I'm fighting my embarrassment and wanting to close my eyes, but I arch my back more and he growls, dropping to his knees and licking me front to back and down again, pinching my clit, tugging on my nipples.
I'd expected tender sex, gentle, Oh, you're pregnant sex,' but this is nothing like that.
This is arrogant, masterful, from a man who knows he's just won a decisive battle, and intends to conquer me too.
He licks me over and over, toying and tugging with my nipples until they're red and a little raw before he pushes me further on the bed and thrusts inside me from behind.
Relief is shocking and instantaneous. The surge of heat inside me. The hard throb of his piercing, pushing hard at the top of me and starting an electrical surge that spreads through my lower half.
"Fecking beautiful," he murmurs. "Ye valiant, courageous, maddening woman.
Launching into danger." He gives me a particularly punishing thrust then nearly knocks me halfway across the bed and his knees straddle mine, pushing my legs together tight and making the feel of him even bigger, more invasive. "Fighting like a savage."