Chapter The 32: 3:47 Activation

Leigh woke at 3:47 AM. Again. The same godforsaken timestamp her body had apparently hardcoded into its operating system, like a recurring meeting she couldn't cancel. The ceiling was still blue-dark. The sheets were clean—Jason had changed them while she dozed, because he was that kind of man, the kind who ruined you sexually and then changed your sheets while you slept—and the baby was doing something that felt like a full-body stretch against the interior of her ribcage.

Jason was beside her. Not touching. He'd started doing this thing where he slept on his side, facing her, one hand on the mattress between them like a promise he was waiting for her to accept. She could see the outline of him in the dark. The broad shoulders. The jaw. The chest she'd dug her nails into seven hours ago.

Seven hours. She'd been clean and dry and fed and hydrated and rested for seven hours and she was already ready again. Her body was a traitor. Her body had no concept of recovery periods or pacing or sensible intervals between sessions. Her body was running its own agenda and the agenda was Jason Whitfield, specifically the parts of him that had been inside her, specifically the way those parts had felt, specifically the fact that she could still feel the ghost of him between her legs if she shifted her thighs.

She shifted her thighs.

Yep. Still there. A low, persistent ache that was less "I've been overused" and more "I've been activated and I refuse to go back to standby mode."

She looked at him. His breathing was even. Asleep, probably. His hand on the mattress, palm up, fingers slightly curled. She thought about that hand. She thought about what those fingers had done to her in the shower—washing her hair, running down her spine, cupping her belly with a gentleness that made her want to scream—and what they'd done before the shower, and what they'd done before that, and her body produced another wave of wetness that was frankly insulting at this hour.

"Stop thinking so loud," he said.

She flinched. "You're awake."

"I've been awake since you started radiating heat like a reactor core." His eyes opened. Dark in the blue-dark room. "What time is it?"

"Three forty-seven."

"Of course it is."

"My body clock is broken. It's your fault. You broke it."

"I broke your body clock."

"You broke everything. My body clock. My sleep schedule. My ability to think about anything except—" She stopped. Because he was rolling toward her, and the sheet was sliding down his chest, and the moonlight from the gap in the curtains caught the line of his stomach and the trail of hair below his navel and she lost her sentence somewhere in her throat.

"Except what." Not a question. A prompt. He knew. He was making her say it because he was a bastard who liked to hear her say it.

"Except your hands on me."

His hand moved. Found her hip. She was wearing one of his shirts—stolen, oversized, the hem hitting mid-thigh—and his fingers found the bare skin below the hem and rested there, not moving, just present, and the warmth of his palm against her hip sent a signal to her central nervous system that was the equivalent of a fire alarm in a library.

"Jason."

"Leigh."

"If you're going to touch me, touch me. Don't do the patient thing again. I can't handle the patient thing at three in the morning. My defenses are down. My filters are offline. I will say things that are embarrassing and anatomically specific."

"I'm counting on that."

His hand moved. Up, under the shirt, along her side, and she felt his fingertips trace the curve of her waist and the ridge of her ribs and the underside of her breast, and she was not wearing a bra because she was seven months pregnant and bras were a construction she'd abandoned weeks ago, and his palm cupped her breast and she felt the weight of it settle into his hand and the nipple harden against his skin and she made a sound that was exactly as embarrassing as she'd warned him it would be.

"God, you're responsive."

"I'm seven months pregnant and you're touching me. Responsiveness is the correct biological output. Don't act surprised. You have the data."

"I have the data." His thumb swept over her nipple and she bit her lip. "The data is compelling."

"Jason, I swear to God—"

He rolled on top of her. Careful. Always careful. He bracketed her body with his arms, his knees outside hers, his weight held off her belly, and she felt him—hard, already hard, against her thigh—and the contact sent a jolt through her that was not subtle and not slow and not patient.

"I've been hard since you started shifting your legs," he said. "Every time you moved, I felt the sheet move, and I thought about your thighs, and that was enough. That's all it takes with you. You move and I'm done."

"Then stop being done and start doing something about it."

He kissed her. Not soft. Not the forehead kiss from the shower or the temple kiss from the bed or any of the gentle, careful kisses he'd been giving her since the declaration. This was his mouth on hers with intent, his tongue sliding against hers, and she tasted sleep and toothpaste and something underneath that was just him, and she bit his lower lip because she could and because she wanted to and because the sound he made when she bit him was worth every consequence.

"Again," he said against her mouth.

She bit again. Harder. He groaned and his hips pressed forward and she felt his cock slide against her, hot and rigid, the length of him pressing against her pussy through the thin barrier of her underwear—the only thing she was wearing besides his shirt—and the fabric was already wet, had been wet since 3:47, and the friction of his cock against the wet cotton was a specific kind of torture that she was not equipped to handle.

"Off," she said. "Take these off."

He didn't take them off. He pushed them aside. His fingers hooked the cotton and pulled it to the right and she felt the air hit her and then his fingers, two of them, sliding through the wetness and pressing into her and she was so ready that they went in without resistance, her body opening for him the way it had learned to do, and she clenched around his fingers and his breath caught.

"Fuck, Leigh."

"That's the idea. That's the whole idea. That's the only idea I've had for seven hours."

His fingers moved. In and out, slow, curling on the withdrawal, and his thumb found her clit at the same time and she grabbed his wrist—not to stop him, to hold him there, to keep him exactly where he was—and her hips rolled against his hand and the baby shifted and she didn't care, she didn't care about anything except the pressure building in her pelvis, the tight hot coil that his fingers were winding tighter with every stroke.

"More," she said.

"Tell me."

"You know what I want."

"Say it."

She hated him. She loved him. She wanted to kill him and she wanted his cock inside her and these two desires were not contradictory. "I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me hard. I want you to stop treating me like I'm fragile. I'm not fragile. I'm pregnant, not porcelain. I have a file from my doctor that explicitly permits—" He added a third finger and she lost the thread of her own briefing. "Oh, God."

"You were saying."

"I was saying—fuck—I was saying that I need you inside me and I need you to stop being gentle and I need it now, right now, Jason, I'm going to come if you keep doing that and I want to come on your dick, not your fingers, there's a hierarchy and you're violating protocol—"

He pulled his fingers out. She almost screamed. He replaced them with his cock in one thrust—not slow, not inch by inch, not the measured patience of earlier—and the fullness hit her like a detonation and she did scream, a raw sound that came from her diaphragm and filled the blue-dark room and probably carried to the kitchen and possibly to the beach.

He stopped. Buried inside her. His face above hers, jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck visible. "Okay?"

"Okay is a massive understatement. Move. Move now. Don't you dare ask me if I'm okay again. I will literally combust."

He moved. He pulled back and drove in and the pace was not gentle and not measured and not patient. It was what she'd asked for—hard, deep, each thrust pushing her into the mattress, and she met him with her hips, angling up, taking him as deep as her body allowed, and the sound of it—wet, sharp, the slap of his hips against her thighs—was filthy and perfect and she wanted it louder.

"Harder."

He gave her harder. His hand gripped her hip, tilting her, changing the angle, and the new angle meant he was hitting something inside her that made her vision blur and her mouth open and words come out that weren't words, just vowels and consonants arranged in no meaningful order.

"There," she managed. "Right there. Don't stop. Don't you fucking stop."

"I'm not stopping."

"If you stop I will file a complaint. I will document it. I will create a subcategory."

His rhythm stuttered—laughing, he was laughing while he fucked her, the vibration traveling through his hips into hers—and she wanted to be annoyed but the laughter made his cock shift inside her and the shift hit the same spot and she clenched around him and he stopped laughing.

"Jesus Christ, Leigh."

"Less talking. More thrusting."

He obeyed. His hand came up and closed around her breast, rougher than before, his thumb grinding against her nipple, and the dual sensation—his cock inside her, his hand on her breast, the pressure on her clit from the angle of his pelvis—was too much input and not enough input at the same time, and she felt the orgasm building, not slow this time, fast, urgent, like a wave that had been gathering since 3:47 and was about to break.

"Jason. I'm close. I'm really close. Don't change anything. Don't you dare change anything."

"Not changing anything."

"Keep going. Keep going. Keep—"

She came. It hit her in stages—first the clench, her whole body locking, then the release, a rush of heat and pleasure that rolled from her pelvis through her stomach and up her spine and down her legs, and she heard herself making sounds and didn't care, and she felt herself clenching around him in waves and felt him respond, his rhythm going ragged, his breath breaking.

"Leigh—" His voice was wrecked. "I'm—"

"Do it. Inside. Now."

He drove in deep and held and she felt him come—the pulse of it, the heat, the way his body locked above hers—and his head dropped to her shoulder and his breath was hot and ragged against her neck and she felt the warmth spreading inside her and she held him there with her legs wrapped around his hips and her arms around his back and her body around his cock and she didn't let go.

They breathed. The ceiling was still blue-dark. The baby was doing something that felt like applause. The sheets were, once again, destroyed.

"Item thirty-seven," she said. Her voice was gone. "Completed ahead of schedule. Marking the project as recurring and non-negotiable."

He laughed against her neck. The vibration went through her body and she felt it everywhere—in her chest, in her stomach, in the place where he was still inside her, in the place where the baby was doing her routine.

"Leigh."

"Jason."

"I need to tell you something."

"If it's that you love me, I have a file."

"It's not that." He lifted his head. His face was serious in a way that made her stomach do something unrelated to the baby. "Your water just broke."

She stared at him.

"What?"

"Your water. It just—I felt it. It's—"

She felt it. A gush of warmth that was not his, a different kind of warmth, and her body did something she'd never felt before—a tightening, low and deep, a cramping that wasn't cramping, a wave that was not pleasure and not pain but something in between, something ancient and involuntary.

"Oh," she said. "Oh. That's—"

"That's labor."

"I know what it is. I wrote a birth plan. I highlighted it. Someone highlighted it in yellow." Another contraction hit and she grabbed his arm and her fingers left marks and she didn't apologize. "Jason. Jason, the baby—"

"I know." He was already moving. Pulling out of her, pulling on pants, his hands steady even though his face was doing something she'd never seen—fear and wonder and a kind of fierce, focused determination that made her want to kiss him and also kill him for getting her into this situation in the first place.

"The bag," she said. "It's by the door. Item one on the birth plan. The bag has been packed for three weeks."

"I know where the bag is."

"The hospital is forty minutes away. The route is in the GPS. Alternate routes are documented in case of traffic. Contingency plans are in the folder."

"Leigh."

"What."

"The baby is coming."

"I know the baby is coming. I have a file. The file is comprehensive. The file did not account for the baby coming at four in the morning after item thirty-seven. This is a scheduling conflict. I need to file an amendment."

He was pulling her up. Careful. His hands on her waist, steadying her, and she was standing and there was fluid running down her legs and another contraction was building and she grabbed his shoulders and breathed through it the way the classes had taught her and it didn't help at all.

"Jason."

"Yeah."

"I'm scared."

His face changed. The fear softened into something else—something that looked like the way he'd looked at her when he said I love you, something that looked like the way he'd looked at her when he put his hand on her belly and felt the baby move, something that looked like everything she'd cataloged in the file she didn't actually have but kept in her head, every entry, every highlight.

"I'm right here," he said. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here for every item on the list and every item after that."

She looked at him. This man. Half-dressed, his hair wrecked, her marks on his shoulders, standing in a blue-dark room on ruined sheets at four in the morning while his child started the journey from inside her to outside her.

"Jason Whitfield."

"Leigh Ashford."

"If you highlight this birth plan correctly, I will marry you."

He stared at her. Then he laughed—the real one, the deep one, the one that came from his chest—and he kissed her forehead and her nose and her mouth and she kissed him back and the contraction hit and she broke the kiss to swear at him and he caught her hand and held it and didn't let go.

"Let's go have a baby," he said.

"Let's go have a baby," she said. "Item forty. No—item everything. The whole file. Every highlight. Every subcategory. Starting now."

He carried the bag. She carried his hand. They walked out into the Greek dark, the stars still out, the island quiet, and somewhere behind them the blue room held the ruined sheets and the ruined plans and the beginning of something that no file could contain and no highlight could mark because it was too big and too new and too much and it was theirs, every item of it, from the first look to the last contraction to whatever came next.

And if Leigh's projections were accurate—and her projections were always accurate—what came next was everything.