Page 36 of No First Kisses

My hands fist around her curls, and the smile on Poppy’s face when I pull her up my body sends a surge of possession through my veins.

“Mine,” I growl against her lips right before I let go of her hair and flip our bodies, careful not to be too jarring on her stomach.

“I had to get started without you.” She reaches up, resting her palm on my chest. “But I can’t seem to finish anything without you, either.”

She’s wearing my shirt again like she has almost every night for bed for the last month, except it is now stretched against her growing stomach. As I slide into her body, taking advantage of the fact that she’s ready for me, all I can think about is that I finally made it home.

Every thrust is just another reminder that she is everything I’ve ever wanted or needed in my entire life. All the happy, the crazy, the anger, and the regret. All of it is right there on the edge of my mind, and it makes the release I can feel on the horizon flash through my body even more intense.

“Hurry,” I grunt. “I need you to finish with me because there’s no chance I’m lasting.”

Poppy, already one step ahead of me, has her hand sliding through her juices. “Need more,” she whispers brokenly.

Ignoring the building sensation in my stomach and lower, I reach down and lift my shirt so that I can see her breasts, then lean forward, latching on to one of her nipples.

Poppy arches her back and moans, so I add a little bit of pressure, biting down as I keep moving.

Her scream echoes the uncontrolled way her orgasm tears through her body, from the tips of her toes clenching into my back where she’s wrapped her legs around my waist to her hands clawing at the back of my shoulders.

Finally.

I let go, the last thin cords of my control snapping as I slam into her body in uneven strokes.

“Perfect.” I gasp for air, pulling out of her body, and lie down next to her on the bed. “So fuckin’ perfect.”

Poppy moves her curls out of her face and smiles impishly at me. “I needed that. Good game. You should call in sick today, and we can do it all over again in ten.”

I kiss her before rolling away and walking toward the bathroom. “If I could, I’d stay in bed with you all day and ignore reality. But duty calls, and after our baby gets here, I’m gonna need all those vacation hours I’ve been hoarding.”

“Well.” Poppy appears in the bathroom doorway after I’ve turned on the shower. “I’m gonna sleep all day and enjoy my time off.” She stretches her arms over her head, and the shirt rises up, revealing her stomach.

Like I do every single morning before shift, I drop to my knee and bring both hands up to feel our child move.

“Any names yet?” I look up at the love of my life with a smile on my face. “Or are you still thinking of winging it when he’s born?”

Poppy shrugs. “I don’t want to jinx it. What if we find the perfect name and then someone steals it? Or it doesn’t fit him? I don’t want to name him something like Blaze or Robert, and then he comes out and he’s a Lincoln. I just want to get it right.”

That vulnerability, her inability to come up with the perfect name for our child, has me smiling. It’s either that or the fact that our boy shoves his entire ass against my hand at that moment. Or maybe it is his head. Either way, my entire day feels complete when I get to reassure myself that they are both fine. They’re both safe.

“Only a few more weeks to go.” I get up off the floor and brush my teeth while Poppy gets in the shower I’ve warmed up for her because she has to step into an inferno of water. “You ready for that?”

“Not even close,” Poppy admits with a laugh. “Our mothers are planning the baby shower, and they’re going beyond overboard when it comes to buying him things. But that’s to be expected, I guess. First grandbaby and all that.”

I finish my morning routine, thinking about shaving my beard, but dismissing the thought as soon as it enters my mind. Poppy? Well, she’s in the shower and doing all the things that I should be doing, like washing her body and caressing her skin.

“I gotta go.” I pull the shower curtain aside, waiting for Poppy to wash the shampoo off her face, and then kiss her until I’m just about ready to climb into that shower with her.

“Come home tonight.” That’s as close as she gets to telling me to be safe, and I love it. Poppy pulls the curtain closed and goes back to the heat of the shower. “And bring me tacos.”

I laugh. “Not pizza?”

“Both,” she orders as I walk out of the bathroom and slip into the clean uniform that she must have laid out when she got home from work, because I sure as shit didn’t. “Oh, and I pulled some shell casings out of the laundry. Remember to check your pockets after the range.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Chief Townsend is waiting for me when I pull into the PD parking lot ten minutes later. Standing in front of the building with his arms crossed over his chest and an indecipherable look on his face, I immediately start cataloguing what I could have done to piss him off. The list is long, and I give up after the tenth item.

“Sir,” I greet, grabbing my duffel bag from the back seat of my truck. “What’s up?”

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