Sara pulled me down over her and slid her mouth down my neck. “Is it weird that I want to stay like this?” she asked as I spread my hand over her hip. “To fill this home of ours with little ankle biters?”

I laughed into her shoulder. “Sleep deprivation is eating your brain.”

“I know you want a big family,” she said. “And I’ve never been more in love with you than when I’ve seen you be a daddy . . .” She noticed where my attention had gone, to the firm swell of her breast again, my mouth closing over her nipple. “They get full like this . . .”

I kissed my way up to her neck. “They provide me with a rather spiritual experience.”

“So you do like my body right now?” she whispered.

There was a delicate edge to her voice, a vulnerability that shocked me. Sara knew I loved her body, every inch of her perfect, soft skin.

Didn’t she?

I pulled back to look at her. “I fucking love your body. And I love how happy motherhood has made you. I like how you seem rather blissful lately.” Bending, I spoke into the warm space between her breasts: “I also like how ripe your tits are.”

She took a handful of my hair and pulled me back, laughing. “Finally, he admits it!”

“What does that mean?”

Her brow furrowed a little as she studied my face, warm brown eyes moving to take in every aspect of my expression. Sara often studied me like this: quietly, earnestly. She ran a fingertip across my chin, her eyes trained on my lips. “I want you to not worry so much,” she whispered. “I want more babies—maybe not right away, but someday—and when I say that, I see terror in your eyes.”

I swallowed around the heavy lump in my throat. “It’s not as hard on my body.”

“My body seems to be weathering it fine. I’m going back to work soon. Look at us. We did it.”

I bent, tasting her skin again. Kissing her stomach.

She pulled me up, whispered in my ear, “Tell me you didn’t love having your baby in here.”

Laughing, I admitted, “She was certainly easier to take care of all tucked away in there.”

She looked back up at my face as I shifted over her, spreading her thighs with my knee and settling there, growing tighter at the feel of her, soft and warm, beneath me. “All right, love?”

Her breaths were already coming faster, short bursts against my neck, her hands sliding lower over my back to push my boxers down my hips. “Yeah.”

I slipped my finger into her mouth, wetting it against her tongue before bringing it between us to touch her. I hummed, rubbing myself on her thigh. “You sure? You’re not sore?”

She stared up at me, expression shifting into one I couldn’t quite read. “I’m sure.”

“We made love last night, too. I don’t want to hurt you,” I explained.

She closed her eyes, pulling my head into her neck. “I know, baby.”

I slid in, slow, and pressed my mouth to her jaw, groaning. Each time . . . each fucking time I was sure I would never get used to the feel of her. Her nails dug into my back as she let out a relieved moan.

“Christ, Petal. You’re heaven beneath me.” Cupping her breast in one hand, I squeezed, relishing the slide of milk on my palm. “Fuck,” I managed. “Fucking hell . . .”

“This is a new thing,” she whispered, scratching her nails down my back.

I clenched my jaw, fighting the admission that wanted to burst free. “I bloody love them like this. I’m sorry—I know they’re mostly a drag for you—but fuck, Petal. I love your tits like this.”

I felt her still beneath me and stopped moving so I could pull back and look at her face.

“What?” I asked. “What did I say?”

She didn’t look upset, just a funny mix of disappointed and amused. Sliding her legs up my sides, she whispered, “Since when do you have to give me a disclaimer?”

Smiling, I bent and kissed her sweet, full lips. My heart was beating a little too fast; I still wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong.

“You don’t have to apologize for being turned on by that,” she whispered into my mouth. “I miss seeing you lost in me, and unapologetic about it.”

My immediate instinct was to show her how lost I really was: to lift her arms over her head, pound into her, and relish the sight of her breasts moving below me, relish their weight and the spike of lust I felt when they leaked onto my skin. But instead, I began to slowly move above her, making sure to ease her pleasure from her with every draw of my body inside hers.

She grabbed my ass, urged me faster and harder, and I tried to give her more but it was almost like something newly hardwired in me with every shift forward:

Take it easy.

Take it slow.

Take it easy.

Take it slow.

We’d had sex many times in the months since the baby was born, but it hadn’t yet returned to the wild days of before, with fucking on the kitchen table or the floor, or sweaty and reckless play in the club. Those days we’d had spanking and bondage. Those days I’d taken her in every manner imaginable, sometimes with strangers watching, sometimes with only my video camera as witness. Once I’d bit her shoulder so hard she’d bled and it nearly made her savage with excitement.

Before—and during—her pregnancy, it never occurred to me how fragile she was.

And then she’d had my baby: nearly nine pounds and over twenty-four hours of hard labor. For two months after Annabel came, we’d stumbled our way through new parenting, fallen in love with our daughter, fallen in love all over again with each other, and found tiny winks of sleep whenever we could. Eventually, we’d also found ways to be carefully intimate with hands and mouths, playful with words and toys.