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  He smiled in agreement and slowly lowered me to the ground once we were inside the bathroom. I pulled off my T-shirt and reached in to switch on the shower while Braden undressed. Divesting myself of my bra and panties, my hungry eyes roamed my husband’s body as he slipped off his boxer briefs. My lower belly clenched with need as he pulled me gently to him, his pale eyes burning with desire as his hands stroked down my spine, to caress the curve of my bottom.

  I sighed, running my own hands over his chest, before pressing soft kisses across his pecs, stopping to tease his nipple with my tongue.

  He squeezed my ass, groaning and pressing his erection deeper into my stomach. I continued to explore him, my mouth trailing kisses across his skin, while my own hands brushed down across his hard abs, smoothed around his narrow hips, and grabbed his taut ass.

  In retaliation, Braden let go of my bottom, stroking up my sides until he cupped both of my tender breasts in his hands. A pleasant pain shot through me when he kneaded them and I gasped, arching my neck. “They’re tender,” I whispered, reminding him of my pregnant state.

  He kneaded them harder and I felt a rush of arousal shoot between my legs.

  “Braden,” I moaned, pushing deeper against him.

  To my disappointment he eased his hold on me.

  I eyed in him question and he smirked, silently answering it by arching me over his arm and lifting my breast to his hot, wet mouth. I cried out at the sensation of his teeth gently scraping my nipple and then I was holding on for dear mercy as he sucked it deep into his mouth.

  My breasts had never been this sensitive before.

  “Oh, God, I think I’m going to come,” I panted in disbelief, my hips undulating against him.

  As if to test that theory, Braden sucked harder, circling my nipple with his tongue, while he squeezed and kneaded my other breast.

  I was on fire, my whole body hot and stiff.

  And then I felt the ripple in my stomach and the slick wetness between my legs. I’d just had a mini-orgasm from Braden playing with my breasts.

  He lifted his head when he felt my body relax, his eyes questioning.

  Breathing heavily, I smiled languidly, brushing his hair from his face. “Yes.”

  Braden coasted his hand down my stomach and I shivered, my sex clenching in anticipation. He slid two fingers inside me easily and his eyes darkened.

  “You’re soaked.” He pumped his fingers and I rocked against them. “This is going to be fun, babe,” he muttered darkly.

  I held on to his shoulders, moving on his fingers. “Baby, don’t stop.” I was close again.

  “I want to taste you,” Braden said, stopping the penetration. “I want you to come on my tongue.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with that.

  In seconds I found myself inside the shower, my back against the wall, Braden on his knees. He hooked my leg over his shoulder and I dug my fingers into his hair as he lowered his mouth as the shower water sluiced down his back. Consumed with pleasure, with chasing orgasm, nothing else mattered but his tongue circling my clit, his fingers pumping inside of me. My body stiffened as the climax came rushing for me. I cried out my husband’s name as I shuddered my release against his lapping, talented tongue.

  Drowsy, languid, my hands slipped to rest on Braden’s shoulders, moving down his chest as he stood up, kissing me in a wet erotic kiss. With one hand he gripped the back of my right thigh, with the other my ass and I somehow managed to hop up, wrapping my legs around him so he could ease his hot, throbbing dick inside of me. My inner muscles quivered at the pressure of him pushing deep and Braden groaned against my lips.

  Our eyes held as he moved slowly in and out of me, our breathing growing steadily more shallow. “I missed you,” he growled, his grip on me hard as his thrusts came a little faster.

  “I missed you too.” I kissed him. I kissed him with everything I had and Braden bent his knees, his cock thrusting so deep into me as he surged up that my cry broke our lips apart.

  My fingernails dug into his skin as he continued to fuck me with a slow intensity that was sure to kill me. All my muscles were stiff as he worked me toward another climax.

  Braden’s warm breath puffed against my mouth. “Come for me, babe,” he gasped, his hips flexing faster as it approached. “I need you to come, Jocelyn.”

  As if on cue the pressure in my lower body blew out and I shattered on a muffled scream, my sex rippling around Braden. “Fuck,” he grunted, pressing his face into my neck as he fucked me harder, faster, until his own shout of climax was muffled against my skin. His hips jerked against mine, shuddering hard as his cock flooded my womb with his warm release.

  I stayed there, locked around him for a while as we tried to gain control of our breathing.

  Finally, Braden lifted his head and before I could say it he smirked and murmured, “Best. Shower. Ever.”

  ***

  Braden stared out at the view and then turned back to me with a pucker of confusion between his brow and a hint of annoyance in his eyes. “And we’re here why?”

  Standing beyond Mons Meg at Edinburgh Castle, I wrapped my arms around my husband’s waist and pressed in close, tilting my head back to meet his eyes. “Somewhere you got the impression that I only come here when I’m in despair. I think that’s why you shut me out. You were angry that I came here when I found out about our baby.”

  He nodded, his grip on my hips tightening. “We don’t need to rehash this, Jocelyn.”

  It was a week after our reconciliation and things since then had been tentative, a little fragile, but good. We were finding our feet again but this time as a pregnant couple. Braden was so excited to be a dad that he was really helping me work through my fears. I also talked to him about seeing Dr. Pritchard again and we’d agreed to see her together, so he’d understand what I was going through even better. Seeing a therapist was not on the list of things Braden ever wanted to do, but he was doing it for our family.

  “I’m not rehashing,” I promised him. “I need you to know that I don’t come here when I’m in despair.”

  He frowned. “You don’t?”

  “No.” I smiled, shaking my head. “I come here whenever I need quiet. Some peace and quiet to process stuff. When I found out I was pregnant everything just filled my head. My mom and dad. Beth. You. Ellie. Elodie. Clark. Everyone I love. And the baby, our baby. I didn’t know if I was scared or happy or sad or excited. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to have all that crap colliding without focus. I came here to focus it so I could work out what I was feeling. But you showed up before I could.”

  “And jumped to conclusions.”

  “Yup. Then I wanted to talk it out with you. I really did. I wanted your help.”

  “And I was a complete bastard.”

  I laughed. “That’s not why I brought you here. I brought you here so you’d know that this isn’t three years ago. When I need to work something out I won’t run from you. But if I come here I need you to know that it’s just a place I like to come for peace and quiet. I’m not shutting you out of it. I want to share it with you.”

  He bent his head to speak quietly against my mouth. “This is your place. You don’t need to share it with me. Just as long as you share what’s going on with you, I’m happy.”

  “I can definitely do that.”

  Smiling, Braden ducked his head as he opened his coat and pulled a small package out of the inside pocket. It was a weird shape and very badly gift-wrapped. “For you.”

  Bemused, I took the present. “What is it?”

  He shrugged, still smiling. “Just something to remind you of who you are and what a great mum you’re going to be.”

  Grateful that he thought so, I quickly unwrapped the gift, my heart flipping over in my chest when I recognized it. It was a silver baby’s rattle and if I turned it I’d find my name engra
ved on one side and my little sister Beth’s engraved on the other. It had been my rattle and when Beth came along I had my mom get Beth’s name engraved on the other side so I could give it to my little sister. My mom had kept it in a silk-lined box, in the hopes that we’d started a new tradition of passing it down through the family. It wasn’t a story I’d told Braden, even when I’d rescued it from the storage facility in Virginia when we’d gone there to clear out my family’s belongings.

  Even without knowing the story, he’d known it meant a lot to me.

  “I got it out of the box with all the things you’ve kept from your family, had it polished up.” He turned it in my hand so Beth’s name was facing upward. “I was thinking if we have a wee girl, we could name her Beth.”

  Swallowing past the lump of emotion clogging my throat, I nodded. “I’d like that. Thank you.” I threw my arms around his neck, the rattle clenched tight in my fist, as I kissed him.

  We kissed, sweet brushes of our lips that grew quickly heated. My breathing was heavy as I pulled back, my forehead pressing against his. “Do you think we’ve finally made it through?”

  “Made it through?”

  “All the crap.” I grinned cheekily. “Do you think we finally get everything about each other?”

  Braden shook his head, pressing another kiss to my lips as I clung to him. “No, babe. We’re going to spend every day growing up. We’ll learn new things about ourselves, never mind each other.”

  I pulled back. “Did anyone ever tell you that when your fear doesn’t get in the way of your perceptiveness, you are an incredibly wise man, Mr. Carmichael?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Am I ever going to live this down?”

  I snorted, threading my arm through his as we started to stroll back down the castle hill. “When I fucked up you joked about it inappropriately for months and then pulled it out every now and then when you wanted to make a point.”

  He grunted. “I’ll allow you to emotionally manipulate me with it for a week.”

  “A year.”

  “A month.”

  “A year.”

  “Six months.”

  I thought about it. That was a fairly lengthy period of torture and it probably fit in better with our pregnancy time frame. “Okay, six months. But I should warn you that it’ll include more than emotional manipulation.”

  “Elaborate.”

  I smiled up at him. “I’m pregnant. My requests, cravings, they may get a little outrageous.”

  His body shook with laughter. “You’re carrying my child. I’d probably take the blame if you murdered someone.”

  “You’d probably do that anyway, pregnant or not.”

  Braden smiled softly down at me. “No probably about it.”

  Chuckling, I held on tighter. “I’m going to make you come shopping with me for maternity clothes.”

  “I can handle it. In fact, I’m rather looking forward to you having a bump.” He smoothed a hand across my stomach, something he’d taken to doing a lot.

  “My bump? Why?”

  “It’s a caveman thing,” he joked.

  “Elaborate.” I repeated his word back at him.

  “I’m not sure you want to know. You’ve just recently stopped being pissed off at me.”

  “Braden . . .”

  He stopped just as we were about to walk outside the castle entrance onto the esplanade. I let him pull me against him as he bent to whisper his answer in my ear. “When every man sees our bump, they’ll know I was the one you let inside you, they’ll know you’re mine and I’m yours, and that growing inside you is our kid.”

  My lips parted as I pulled back to meet his eyes. “The idea of the bump turns you on,” I said more succinctly.

  He grinned unrepentantly.

  I shrugged. “That’s fine with me. I start showing during my second trimester, and I’ve heard that’s also when I’ll get horny as hell.”

  Braden grabbed my hand as we began walking down the esplanade. “I’ll do my best to accommodate you.”

  “I’m expecting a lot,” I teased. “Filthy comments in restaurants, sex in bathrooms, cars, elevators, the changing rooms of maternity clothes shops . . .”

  My husband laughed, letting go of my hand to wrap his arm around my shoulders and draw me into his side. “You missed the couch, the kitchen table, the shower, the bathtub—and the bed could work, too, you know.”

  “We need to get a cab.” I began walking faster down the Mile.

  I felt Braden grinning at me. “Pregnancy hormones?”

  “Braden-induced hormones,” I grumbled, flagging down an oncoming black cab. I turned to him, my eyes glittering with anticipation. “Since you fucked up last week, I’m in charge. And on top. We’ll see how it goes from there.”

  He sighed heavily, as if it was such a hardship. “Ah, and so it begins.”

  For more information about Samantha Young and her novels, visit www.ondublinstreet.com.

  Samantha Young, the New York Times bestselling author of On Dublin Street, Down London Road and Before Jamaica Lane returns with a story about letting go of the past and learning to trust in the future.

  FALL FROM INDIA PLACE

  Coming soon from Piatkus!

  In the meantime, turn the page for more exciting New Adult reads . . .

  COME TO ME QUIETLY

  By A.L. Jackson

  From the acclaimed bestselling author of Lost to You and When We Collide comes a New Adult novel of one woman's obsession: a man who's as passionate as he is elusive – and as tempting as he is trouble . . .

  Aleena Moore is haunted by Jared Holt. It's been six years since she's seen her brother's best friend, the self-destructive bad boy she secretly loved in high school. As the years pass, she knows it's time to move on. Time to decide between a practical nursing degree and her true dream as an artist. Time to get over Jared and give another guy a chance . . .

  Just when she opens her heart to her friend, Gabe, Aly returns home to find Jared sleeping on her couch. The teenage boy she loved has grown into a man she can't resist. Covered in tattoos and lost in rage, he's begging to be saved from his demons – the memories of the day he destroyed his family. As the two reconnect, their passion is hot enough to torch Aly's judgment. But can she risk her future for a man who lives on the edge of destruction?

  Out in January 2014 from Piatkus Books!

  DEEPER

  By Robin York

  In this New Adult debut by Robin York, a college student is attacked online and must restore her name – and stay clear of a man who's wrong for her, but feels so right.

  When Caroline Piasecki's ex-boyfriend posts their sex pictures on the Internet, it destroys her reputation as a nice college girl. Suddenly her once-promising future doesn't look so bright. Caroline tries to make the pictures disappear; hoping time will bury her shame. Then a guy she barely knows rises to her defence and punches her ex to the ground.

  West Leavitt is the last person Caroline needs in her life. Everyone knows he's shady. Still, Caroline is drawn to his confidence and swagger – even after promising her dad she'll keep her distance. On late, sleepless nights, Caroline starts wandering into the bakery where West works.

  They hang out, they talk, they listen. Though Caroline and West tell each other they're 'just friends,' their feelings intensify until it becomes impossible to pretend. The more complicated her relationship with West gets, the harder Caroline has to struggle to discover what she wants for herself – and the easier it becomes to find the courage she needs to fight back against the people who would judge her.

  When all seems lost, sometimes the only place to go is deeper.

  Out on Piatkus Entice in January 2014 and paperback March 2014.

 

 

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