“Say you’ll stay. Say you’ll let us take care of you.” Dylan touched her belly. “Both of you.”
She frowned. “Take care of?”
“We have more money than we can spend in ten lifetimes. Quit your job. Be a full-time mom. Start a business or a charity or whatever your heart desires, Laura. Hang with us. Help me run the ski resort. Become a gym bunny. Open a bakery. Hell, buy Jeddy’s and fire Madge,” Mike laughed, his face wide and open, body tense but eyes serene and raw all at once.
“In other words, let us take care of you, because we need you to take care of us,” Dylan said, getting to the point.
Oh, guys, she thought. Her heart should be racing, temples pounding, face flushing and heart swelling, right? Instead, all she could feel was a diffuse calm. An acceptance. An understanding.
And the baby did a somersault right then, her little foot practically poking a hole in Laura’s belly. “Holy shit!” Mike shouted. “I could see the outline of her toes on your shirt!” She’d chosen a fairly tight, “slimming” light pink maternity shirt, with a little spandex, and it was pulled snugly over her belly.
“I saw it, too!” Dylan joined in.
“Maybe she was answering for me?”
“Was she?” they asked in unison. Laura closed her eyes, shoulders dropping, her breath even and mature. Yes. Yes yes yes yes.
In later years Laura would try to remember the exact moment she leaned down and took Mike’s face into her hands, kissing him gently and with great passion, but try as she might she could never pinpoint it, would never find her recollection precise enough to discern when she made the decision. Like so many other moments in her years with Dylan and Mike it just was, a delicious shift of molecules and energy that moved her body, compelling her toward what her heart wanted.
Regardless, Mike’s response was keen and matched, lips connecting, arms wrapping about her waist, sliding up her back as he stood, pulling her to standing, the belly making an awkward chaperone that separated them. Dylan stood back and watched, smiling. He wasn’t left out for long, as Laura pulled back from Mike, breathless, and reached out.
The little, doubting voice inside her, the one that whispered insecure comments in her ear at inappropriate times, the saboteur of all that was good and whole in her life, tried desperately to wiggle its way to the surface as Dylan’s arms wrapped around her, as his lips touched hers, as his mouth explored hungrily and apologized with little movements and sighs, hands saying “I’m sorry” in ways words and looks could never convey. Laura found herself not only not caring what that voice said, not actively pushing it away, but instead just not listening. Tuning it out like static, like traffic, like the sound of something so insignificant it becomes white noise after a while. You know it’s there but it blends in with the rest of the world and takes its rightful place as something you don’t need to attend to.
What she needed to give her attention was, in fact, right here, standing before her, both men here, now, for her. And she was here for them, all three together and hopeful and trying to find their way to a new truth. A new honesty. A new vow.
As she warmed to Dylan’s caresses, their bodies awkward and accommodating, the reality of their earlier coming together very real—regardless of whose baby she carried— desire roared forth, a huge ball of need and hormones rushing to the surface, her mouth aggressive, hands not backing down. Wanting them both, needing time and pleasure, her skin’s memory of the fear of nearly dying now straining for an expression of life, to conjoin and co-mingle with Mike and Dylan, to renew something deep and unspoken as they unveiled a commencement. A beginning of something unspoken but cherished.#p#分页标题#e#
Dylan’s touch became tentative, hesitant. She pulled back and asked, “You OK?”
Mike’s eyes held the same conflict that Dylan’s reflected as she looked at them both. “Can we...are you...is this -- ” Dylan stumbled.
“Oh, God, yes!” she nearly cried out. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve missed this?” She stroked his arm. “Both of you.” A sigh. “All of this.”
“No, I mean, the doctors—can you, you know?” Mike jumped in, hands clearly itching to touch her, but keeping a respectful distance as she was in Dylan’s space.
She blushed. “I’m cleared for ‘intimate relations,’ as the nurse put it, but I don’t think they were thinking of what we do,” she laughed. Pointing to her belly and hips, she added, “And I think we just have to do this the old fashioned way this time. No room for two at the inn.”