Thomas holds my legs open, lifting his blue eyes as they spark with longing. Desire drips from his lips as he descends downward between my legs, down to where I covet the sanction of his lips most. His tongue teases between my folds, before latching onto me where he proceeds to taste every last drop. He hums while he works.

I dig my nails into the sheets to contain the influx of pleasure flooding through my nerves. "Thomas—"

His mouth annihilates me with such aggression and fervor, pounding his tongue deep inside my core. I grind my hips a little deeper to meet him.

"Daffodil," he manages to moan before dipping in for another taste. He can never get enough.

My back arches as he pulls my hips closer in need. My thighs tremble at the desire for a release.

"Thomas, I don't think I can—"

Pleasure tips over within me, a wave of orgasmic relief.

As it finishes, Thomas' glistening lips trail up my six months pregnant stomach. The baby kicks Thomas as his lips travel over them, to which he breaks out into the widest grin.

"We got a fucking fighter in there."

I comb back his dirty blonde hair. "Already a piece of work, just like their father."

He crawls over my physique, stretching his naked muscular torso above me. I set my hands on his abs, tracing them as he kisses my lips. I taste the remnants of myself against him. His mouth invades mine, his tongue searching the seams of my own. At once, we're a mess.

I part my legs around him as he nudges his hardening length against my entrance. If I weren't so pregnant, I know Thomas would be rougher with me.

Our love just seems to never have an end. It feels limitless. Unstoppable—

A light tapping on our bedroom door halts any attempt to make love. We move fast—Thomas throws a sheet over my bare body, as well as pulling a quilt up to cover his lower half. He adjusts a pillow on his lap to avoid revealing his erection.

"Momma? Dada?"

The door cracks open. I pretend to sleep, but Thomas remains upright, not daring to move from underneath the covers.

Thomas' low coarse voice hums through the air. "What's my little daffodil doing out of bed?"

The patter of footsteps nears the edge of our bed on Thomas' side. Our daughter.

"There's something in my closet."

"I thought I told the closet monster to go away."

"It came back," she sniffles and climbs onto the bed next to Thomas. "Dada, can you tell it to leave again?"

Thomas kisses her cheek. "Anything for you, daffodil."

"And can you read me a story?"

"You're lucky you're so damn cute," he chuckles and places her down on the ground. "Go and pick a book. I'll be there in a minute."

Our daughter scampers out of the room, and Thomas? He's scrambling to get dressed, while also cursing as he rushes to the bathroom to ease his raging erection. I giggle when he comes out in just a pair of sweats and no shirt.

"We'll find a time," I murmur as he wanders over to the edge of my bed.

He places a kiss on my lips. "I'll convince Uncle Levi to babysit her for a night."

The patter of footsteps returns to our room.

"Dada, you're being slow."

He chuckles. "I'm coming, daffodil." Thomas picks her up in his arms and carries her back to her bed.

Our daughter. Well, biologically she belongs to Cato, but Thomas adores her more than anything in this world. Even me. The moment I gave birth to her, she became his daffodil, and I became "momma".

Yet, she's the spitting image of the astronaut I laid with so long ago. Chestnut waves in her hair. Forest green eyes. Even at the young age of four, she has an infatuation with the world and stars. She knows nothing of Cato, and yet she's heading straight into his footsteps.

I thought Thomas would try to suppress her vast curiosity, but instead, he nurtures it. She's always asking dada to go outside with her. Only a few nights ago, she came to our room and said she couldn't sleep. Instead of putting her back to bed, dada had the great idea of laying in the meadow outside the house and watching the stars.

It's already been four years. Four perfect years.

And our family is already expanding.

A year and a bit after our daughter's birth, Thomas and I began trying for another. Thomas feared telling me that he was ready for another one, considering we already had our hands full with one. He bounced at the opportunity when I brought up the possibility of trying for our second.

We began trying. Night after night. Our love bloomed passionately, our minds locked on the idea of creating a beautiful child together. We love our daughter, but I know Thomas wants a child that's truly his offspring.

Except, we struggled.

What seemed so easy for Cato and I became a challenge with Thomas. A year passed by, and every pregnancy test came back negative.

Thomas kept assuring me that I'd be pregnant again. We had a daughter, and if that's all the world had to offer us, so be it. Yet, Thomas started to keep his mouth shut about his feelings in the matter. Mentally, he couldn't fathom his inability to make me fall pregnant by his doing. When we were alone, he'd become silent, and the love that once blossomed between us at night turned into an exhausted chore.

We sought counseling and help a year later. The doctors conducted tests on the both of us, and signs showed a healthy and extreme level of compatibility.

Yet, no child.

The counseling allowed us to find pleasure in our love again. We found happiness with what we had. We had a daughter Thomas could call his, even if he wasn't truly the father.

Months later, I fell pregnant. Our daughter would be a big sister. Thomas would be a father.

I get to experience the joys of pregnancy all over again.

Thomas' low voice hums through the house as he reads to our child. "And they all lived happily ever after," he mumbles. "The end."

"Another story, dada?"

"You need to go to bed, daffodil."

"One more? Please?"

She loves books, just like Cato.

"Okay, one more, just because I love you so damn much."

He treasures every minute alongside her, and now we're ready to do it all over again.

When morning arrives, Thomas is out of bed and already in the barn. The renovations to the property started with the house, but then expanded further to the rest of the ranch. There's a few livestock in the barns now, and we relocated the shooting range to the back of the property as far away from our daughter as possible. Employees of Thomas come in and out often, but only few wield weapons.

Thomas changed his business operations. Now, he sticks to managing his street and real estate. He said long ago that he equalled any favours he owed to other figureheads in New Aberdeen. Whatever it is, he attempted to eliminate the danger of his old life from his new. He appointed Levi to take care of the more criminal aspects of his business, but he keeps himself out of it.

Or tries too, at least.

I ready myself for the day, leaving my blonde hair loose and slipping on a sundress. When I head downstairs, our daughter's waiting for me in the kitchen, attempting to pour herself a bowl of cereal.

"Look, momma!"

The next thing I know, there's milk and cereal all over her legs as the bowl spills over her.

The soup and cereal spilling gene runs strong in that girl.

I clean her up and pour her a 'gourmet bowl of cereal', as Thomas puts it. She finishes it at lightning speed, then bolts out the back door to help her father in the barns. It's not like she can do much, but Thomas loves having her toddle behind him, chatting his ears off about utter child nonsense.

With both of them out of the house, I turn on the latest media broadcast, only to have our daughter's biological father light up the screen.

My astronaut. Laced with words of scandal.

He just returned from the most elaborate expedition across the universe known to man. He captained the ship, coursed the route. Word said that he found more evidence of life in the great beyond, but stated that he refused to bring them back here. Instead, he proposed the idea of creating a scientific research lab in the sky. The laboratory would cost millions.

Millions that right now, Cato doesn't have.

The scandal headline tickers across the screen. Cato Leveque files for divorce from Gemma Patton hours after his return. The two have been publicly married for almost as long as our daughter has been in existence. Even I know it's not sunshine behind the scenes of their marriage, but the two are phenomenal at faking it for the camera.

The back door opens, and Thomas enters inside.

I look over my shoulder. "Is she with you?"

He chuckles. "Uncle Levi showed up unannounced. She forgot about me the moment he stepped into the fucking barn."

"Did you ask him to watch her?"

Arms lace around me from behind, his hand spreading over my pregnant stomach. "You bet I did. For the whole fucking day."

His lips meet my neck, his kisses soft as they trail down a pulsing vein. His hand slips from my stomach down to my inner thigh. He collects the fabric of my sundress, then teases the seams of my panties with his fingertip.

"In bed," he growls. "Now."

Our lips meet, but the tension brewing between us fades as the noise from the broadcast takes us out of the moment.

Thomas' blue eyes read the headline across the screen. "He finally divorced her?"

"I thought it would've happened sooner," I admit.

"Even I know all the Patton's are shits. He's probably better off this way." Thomas reaches for the remote and silences the broadcast. "Now get in bed."

In protest to the disturbance, he takes a hold of my hips, pressing the hardness beneath his pants up against me. His mouth meets my lips as he dips my body, his tongue tasting the curve of my neck until he reaches my collar.

I hum. He smells of hay and barn.

He picks me up and hauls me up the stairs towards our bedroom. Levi better have plans to watch our daughter outside of our home, because judging by the mischievous glint igniting Thomas' blue eyes, he has no intentions on staying quiet.

We hit the bed with me falling on his lap. I grind myself as best as I can against his erection, one so hard that I swear it might tear the stitches in his jeans.. He moans at the sensation, his blue eyes lidded as his fingers dig into my thighs to hold me in place.

He tugs on the sundress. "Don't know why the fuck you're still wearing this."

Rippppp. The dress tears off my body, and I stand before him in nothing but undergarments. He removes the remaining fabric that conceals me until I'm bare.

He shuffles our bodies and lies me down on the quilts, crawling over top of me. Bare, there's evidence of stretch marks from my first pregnancy and cellulite on my thighs.

Every night he reminds me that to him, I'm an angel sent down from heaven.

I tug on the belt of his trousers, shrugging it off and unzipping his pants. He groans in relief as I free his hardened length from its confines. His shirt goes next, flying across the room and landing somewhere.

Here we are. Husband and wife. Bare and vulnerable and in love.

A finger eases inside of my dripping core, and Thomas smirks in satisfaction. "I thought I'd have to work harder to get you so wet."

I blush. "I can get turned on by watching you change a diaper," I wrap a hand around his neck and bring him towards my skin. My pregnant belly flushes against his abs, and his fingers continue to plunge in and out of me at a steady rhythm. "You're just so adorable."

"Every time you walk by me with that pregnancy waddle, I just wanna fuck you senseless," he mutters as he removes his finger from me. He tantalizes his magnificent size outside of my entrance. "Just like I'm about to do right now."

I gasp as he enters inside of me—not giving me a moment to comprehend how magnificent that size truly is. I wince, but soon adjust.

"You good?" he hums. I nod.

He slams back into me, causing the bed to hit the wall with full turbulence.

"Fuck," he curses before finding his ground.

Each thrust he gives me seems to quake the entire room. The pace increases, and so does the noise—our needy kisses, our begs for more, our skin connecting and disconnecting time and time again. Picture frames fall from the wall, shattering the glass.

I grip onto him for life. He should be gentle for the baby, but bloody hell, I miss how rough he can be. I miss how unstrained his movements can become. There's a wildness beneath his love, and I haven't seen it in so long.

His endurance begins to fade. "Finish," he hisses.

My climax breaches, and I fall into the abyss of bliss. Thomas falls a second later, releasing deep inside of me until it drips down my thighs.

We take a moment to catch our breath.

"I love you," he admits.

"I love you too."

We entwine our fingers together, him fiddling with my wedding band. Our life is perfect, a fairytale from a children's story book. All of this—our history and mistakes—was written in our cards. I wouldn't change any of it for the world if it meant bringing me to this moment.

We spend the day like that, entwined. When the dinner hour approaches, Thomas and I leave the bed. I wobble for a few steps, needing him at my side until I regain my balance. We redress ourselves and prepare dinner, only to have Levi return with our daughter shortly after.

Dinner comes and goes, and Thomas takes our little girl for a walk in the wilderness while I clean up. I watch them from the kitchen window, catching Thomas pick her up and spin her around. She holds a wild goldenrod flower between her little fingers. She presses it to Thomas' nose, forcing him to smell it.

I run a hand over my stomach. Simply perfect.

Slam.

A car door shuts from outside, and I frown.

We're not supposed to be expecting visitors.

There's a knock on the front door, and I walk over to answer it.

My eyes widen at the stranger standing on the other end. "Cato? What are you doing here?"

He opens his mouth to speak, but shuts it soon after in order to analyze my appearance. I'm clearly pregnant and about to enter into my third trimester, and it can't be what he's expecting. I'm not even sure what he expects of me.

Meanwhile, Cato appears just as I remembered him, aside from being more rugged around the edges. He dresses in professional attire, the buttons still half undone on his collared shirt. The stubble on his jaw needs to be shaved, and his chestnut curls are a little unkempt.

Cato shoves his hands into his trouser pockets, his green eyes revealing a hint of a twinkle. "I divorced her."

Gemma. He should've done that months ago, but he was trying to protect his family, to keep them afloat.

"I know, it's all over the media, but why did you come here?"

He chuckles. "I'm not here to try and win you back. I'm here to make amends."

Amends?

"I relied on you when we were children as a comfort," he says, "and I just need to find comfort again in knowing that we're on good terms."

"I'm not angry with you, Cato. I never was."

"I just... I just want to know why you left. There has to be more—"

"Momma!"

A small girl barrels into the back of my legs. She embraces them in her little arms as she peeks around them at the stranger at our front door.

But this man is no stranger to her.

It's then, my worlds begin to collide. When those green eyes lift up to their match, my heart begins to flutter from within. Their appearance between the two is almost immaculate—a perfect replication of Cato's beloved genes.

The colour drains from Cato's face, and he looks up at me with a demand for answers.

Thomas rushes up from behind me, cursing under his breath about how our daughter needs to 'not run everywhere'. When he catches sight of Cato on our doorstep, Thomas shuts up, his jaw clenching.

But I know what I have to do.

I shuffle behind our daughter and smile at a sight so beautiful. "Cato, I want you to meet someone."

His forest eyes fall down to her, the most precious being in his world. His daughter. His bloodline. His genetics.

"This is my daughter," I hesitate to say her name, but I know he'll melt when he realizes what I've done. "Evelyn."

-----

The End.