Page 62 of His Daughter

Thea was quiet. Lena's breathing was slowing. The rocking chair creaked softly. "Do you trust the people around you?" Thea asked.

I shook my head. I was sure of Nolan and Julian, but there was one person I wasn't so sure of anymore. "I don’t know."

“Hmm…” she said simply. Thea stood carefully. She walked to the crib, lowered Lena in, adjusted the blanket, and checked the monitor.

She turned around. I was behind her, closer than she expected. I'd moved while she was at the crib, and when she turned, my chest was there. Her hands came up against it, and she looked up at me.

"I've been meaning to tell you something," she said.

My hands found her waist.

"I'm going to have to go back soon. To my house." Her body leaned into mine, contradicting every word. "The nonprofit needs me there full-time, and I can't keep — "

I kissed her neck, below her ear, the spot I discovered the other night. It always made her sentence dissolve and drew a sound from her throat she didn't know she was making. She exhaled. Her eyes closed.

"Declan, seriously. I need to — "

"Let's not talk about that now." My arms tightened around her waist. My mouth moved along the line of her neck, and she tilted her head to give me room.

My hand slowly traveled down over her hip, along the outside of her thigh, then inward. She gasped, and her hand gripped my forearm, her fingers pressing into the muscle hard enough to leave marks.

"Not here," she whispered. "Lena's…"

I pulled her toward the hallway. She came. We moved past the nursery, past the night nurse's room. Her back found the wall of the corridor. My hand was still where it was. She arched into me, and her mouth found mine.

The kiss was hard, urgent, tasting like the entire day compressed into a single point of contact. She turned in my arms, took my hand, and pulled me down the hallway to my bedroom. The door closed behind us.

I walked to the dresser, took off my watch, and set it on the wood. I turned to her.

She was standing by the bed. Her hair was loose. I walked to her. I reached behind her and found the zipper at the base of her neck. I drew it down slowly, my fingers tracing the path of her spine through the fabric. The dress opened. I slid it off her shoulders. It fell.

I kissed her collarbone. Her hands came up to my chest. She unbuttoned my shirt — one button, then the next, then the next — and pushed it off my shoulders. Her palms were warm and flat against my skin. I closed my eyes because the tenderness of it was something I didn't have defenses for.

I laid her down. She pulled me with her. I took my time. With my mouth. With my hands. The sound she made when I found the right place, her back arched, her fingers dug into my shoulders when I slowed down instead of speeding up.

She let me. She let me take my time, let me look at her, and let me be gentle in a way I didn't know I was capable of.

After.

My bed. Her head on my chest. My hand in her hair, the curls winding around my fingers. She was drawing slow circles on my skin with her fingertip.

"I still have to go home eventually."

I didn't answer.

SEVENTEEN

THEA

The penthouse didn't look like it used to.

A burp cloth was draped over the arm of the couch. Two of Lena's teething rings sat on the coffee table next to a stack of case files I was reviewing last night. The bouncer was in the kitchen, wedged between the island and the window.

My laptop was open on the counter beside a mug with a cold tea bag still in it and a romance novel I'd set face down to hold my page.

The place looked like people lived here. Like a family lived here.

Lena was in the bouncer, working through a piece of banana I'd mashed onto the tray. She picked up a chunk, examined it, squeezed it through her fingers, and then offered the remains to the empty air beside her with a generous, open-palmed gesture.