CASPER
“If you knock me up one more time, Casper Gladstone, I’m likely to—”
I slam the breath out of her lungs with a hard thrust, cutting off her empty threat brusquely. We both know that we’re not done yet. Fleur loves being pregnant, and I love everything about it too. From the way her body blooms, to the sensation of our child wiggling around between us when I hold her close.
Fuck, there’s nothing sexier than the thought of putting a baby in my wife as we fuck on New Year’s morning. In fact, it’s the best way to start the year.
Her garbled moan fills the air when I slap her arse with brute force. Just the way she likes it. “Fuck, yes…”
Fleur chases my thrusts, lifting up onto her hands and bracing herself when I grip her shoulders and fuck her in earnest. Harder, deeper, and so fast that she can’t catch her breath to mewl.
“Jesus…fuck,” I grit my teeth when her pussy clamps around me, “this is heaven. You know that, Trouble? My fucking heaven.”
A loud, guttural moan pushes from deep in her core as I slam home in one merciless thrust and hold myself buried so far inside her that her orgasm chokes my cock. The greedy grip sends a white-hot bolt of exuberant pain up my spine. When I lean down to press a kiss to Fleur’s shoulder, I wrap my arms around her and lift her up onto her knees, keeping myself as deep inside her as I can with the shift in position.
“Casper,” she cries hoarsely, still out of breath when she rests her head back onto my chest and tips her face up to mine. “Big man…holy crap…”
Big brown eyes flutter open to mine, pulling me closer until I’m leaning over her quaking form. My lips stroking over hers while she drags the breath from my lungs into hers.
I had no idea that the desperation I felt that first time I fucked her at the hospital all those years ago would only grow stronger. So bold that every day I wake up beside her, that first second she opens her beautiful eyes and grumbles at me for watching her, my insides bite at themselves with the unrelenting yearning to have her. To kiss her. To fuck her. To love her. Worship her.
“You didn’t finish,” Fleur whispers into my mouth, her arm curling around my neck as she gyrates her hips over my cock. “I need you to come for me. I want you to come inside me.”
Her pussy clenches around me, punctuating her words.
“Are you going to give me your arse?”
“When do you ever ask?” That lip-bitten grin on her face is the most beautiful sight. It’s impossible to look away as she undulates her hips, teasing my urge to thrust deeper into her and fill her with my cum. “What? Like what you see?”
Stroking her disarray of short waves from her face, I trace my thumb across her cheek, “I love what I see.”
I always have and I always will. My forever has always belonged to this woman. There isn’t one without her and her sass. She’s not just my wife or mother of my children, she’s my everything. My life.
Fleur smiles with a hum. “Come inside me.”
“That’s how you get knocked up.”
She grinds her hips into my groin, her wet cunt pumping my cock like a fucking dream.
“Yeah, I know, Big Man,” she says with a drawn-out moan when I counter the shallow stroke of her pussy with a deep thrust. “Fuck. Fuck, that’s good.”
I pause, holding myself all the way inside her. The sensation of her body tightening for me is almost too good to bear. Almost too good to last through as I palm the side of her face and caress my thumb over her gaping mouth.
“Still the most perfect girl,” I breathe out a trembling groan, “even after all this time.”
“I love you, soldier,” Fleur responds with a nip to my thumb before she sucks it into her mouth and slowly begins pumping her hips again.
With the quickening of her moves, she sucks harder on my thumb. Every pulse of her cunt around my cock pulls on this endless need inside me to give her more. To be more for her. Have more with her.
If I could live inside her forever, I would. Every second of every goddamn day. I would live permanently in her endless joy, surrounded by her all-consuming fire.
Leaning over her, I thread my fingers into her hair and tug her face up to mine. My pulse is pounding into my ribs with a ferocity I can’t contain when I rut into her. Over and over, harder and harder, while I suck her desperate pleas straight from her lungs.
Every cell of my existence is burning with one purpose, one end goal— “I’m going to fill you up so good, baby.”
“Mhmm…” Fleur nods frantically, desperation coating her raspy breaths with every bounce of her body. “God, yes…”
Another few thrusts and she’s crying out with the buildup of her orgasm again. Her voice breaks while I slam into her repeatedly, lowering my hand pressed to her belly down to her slick slit. With my guttural growls rumbling through the sound of our flesh slapping together, I work her clit with the rough circles of my fingertips.
“Be a good girl for me, Trouble.”
“Yes,” she pants.
“Be a good fucking girl and…come. Come with me, baby.”
“Fuck,” she screams, stumbling over my name as her cunt sucks my cock deeper, choking my orgasm right out of me while she thrashes and writhes in the throe of her pleasure.
Every clench of her hot pussy pulls me under the heated haze of our fucking. I can catch my breath. I can’t do anything but kiss and suck and bite at her lips when we collapse on the bed. Me on top of her. My front on her back and my cock still buried inside her.
This will never get old. Catching our breaths while the sweat from our lovemaking sticks our bodies together. This right here is pure, unadulterated joy and possession, and belonging.
It’s us—something I will never get enough of.
***
FLEUR
After spending Christmas in Windermere, it’s nice being home where there’s no snow to freeze my nipples off during our family’s customary New Year’s Day ramble through the woods surrounding our house. The girls are running ahead, Grace and Beatrix coaxing Estella to catch-up to them with her funny waddle.
“You’re sure you want another one?” Casper asks, walking slower to keep in step with me.
“Just one more.”
When I glance up, he’s giving me a half-cocked grin that never fails to get me in my feels. “That’s what you said last time.”
“What can I say, Big Man? I like making babies with you.”
A full-beam smile stretches across his face. It’s dazzling and should be all kinds of illegal because it fries all my cognitive ability in an instant. Casper isn’t naturally smiley, even after three kids he’s the same silent, brooding man I fell in love with years ago. I wouldn’t change it for world peace.
“Who knows…” he muses, pulling me into his as he coils his arm around my shoulder, “Maybe we’ll have a boy this time?”
Not likely. After three girls, I’m pretty certain that we’re a girl making machine. But I don’t have the heart to tell him otherwise, so I nuzzle deeper into his side and go along with his wishful thinking.
“Maybe.”
“I have a feeling about this one.”
“You had a feeling about Bea and Este, too. Look at you full of cutesy feelings,” I tease, stretching my arm up so I can boop his nose.
Before I can pull away, he swings up onto his shoulder like a sack of feathers. Swatting my arse as he leisurely jogs up to our girls and yells, “Last ones to the lake are rotten potato head.”
“That’s not fair,” Grace snaps back, ready to whizz ahead, “your legs are longer.”
“Remember, it’s everyone or no one. If Este doesn’t make it there with you, you’re all smelly mash heads.”
“You’re terrible,” I giggle, bouncing along to his super slow power walk.
“This is stupid,” Bea grumbles to Grace, “we can’t even carry her.”
“Stop being a crybaby—”
“I’m not a crybaby, idiot.”
“Just hold Este’s hand.” Grace grabs each of her sisters’ hands and squeezes them tightly together before they start a wobbly race past us.
Casper pauses for a few seconds, giving them a chance to build a steady rhythm as he maneuvers me into his arms.
“Este’s going through a growth spurt again,” he tells me with a proud laugh while we watch our daughters work together to get to the lake down the footworn path. “I don’t recall Grace or Beatrix being that tall at eighteen months.”
“Seems impossible that she came out of me.”
“Even more impossible that we have a six-year-old.”
Casper starts a lazy jog towards the girls as they’re about to become out of sight at the curve in the path. These woods aren’t just safe, they’re impenetrable. There’s an electric fence around the perimeter of our property that’s high enough no-one can scale it before the sensors or cameras catch them. Still, we like to keep the girls in sight out here. We’ve been through enough to know that nothing is a given.
As we get to the lake, Grace and Beatrix help Este down the steps before heading straight for the porch of the small cabin we built out here. It means we don’t have to run back and forth to the house every time one of the girls needs a wee, and sometimes, it’s nice to getaway from the chaos in the house and work here. Some of our best date nights in the last couple of years have been in the cabin.
Which brings me to the topic Casper has been dismissing since I brought it up at Christmas.
“So, you never told me what you want to do for your fortieth,” I start, and instantly he stiffens. “I know you don’t want a fuss—”
“I don’t.”
“Maybe we could do a little getaway to the fisherman’s cottage. Just us for a couple of nights, and then maybe we could invite everyone down for a nice dinner at that little pub in the village you like?”
I’m running this past him like I haven’t arranged it all already. It was one of the last things I ticked off my to-do list last year. If my plan goes through without a hitch, starting off the conversation in a big way and then scaling it down should make it seem like a lesser deal.
Over the years I’ve learnt that with Casper, I have to show him how crazy something could be to put into perspective how reasonable I’m being. Which is daft, because I should be able to be as lavish and grand as I like when it comes to celebrating him. Casper is always in the background, always doing something for someone, and looking over everyone, making sure they’re okay and safe. So if anyone deserves a big hoo-hah, it’s my very stoic husband.
“I like the idea of just the two of us,” he says with a sigh.
“Me too.”
“And I suppose if we don’t do something, Mum and Arabella will.”
He has no idea of the party Mercia and Bella had already planned out and were venue hunting for. It’s part of what made his birthday a thing on my list. Otherwise, I would only be planning it a month beforehand with Cassie’s help.
“Does that mean you’re okay with my suggestion?” I ask while we approach the steps to the lake and he puts me on my feet for the last wander to the porch where the girls are doing their victory dance.
“Your plan sounds…great.”
I glance up to find his cocked-grin again. “Nothing escapes you.”
He chuckles. “I’m a military trained assassin. Details are my forte. You know this.”
“I do,” I groan, rolling my eyes at his cocky confidence.
“So you know when you’re being covert about calls and emails and conversations with Cassandra that I’m going to clock that you’re up to something?”
“Well, I wasn’t being covert. I was simply taking care of something that needed to be handled quickly before Mercia and Bella got ahead of themselves.”
“Good thinking, Batgirl,” he tugs me into his side and showers me with an onslaught of kisses to the top of my head while our girls chant at us, “We won! We won! You’re the rotten potatoes!”
“At some point you might have to teach them the art of being graceful winners, not just sticking together.”
“Art is your area of specialty.” Casper laughs at my remark, grabbing Grace and Beatrix each by a hand and tugging them into his chest while I fuss over Estella.
She’s already got her shoes and socks off, ready to go in the water for our New Year’s swim. It’s a good thing I put the girls in their thermal surf suits because the mist coming off the surface of the lake tells me the water must be freezing.
I’m not sure Este will do more than dip her feet in, but when she saw Grace and Bea get their suits on, she wanted to do it, too. Given she’s the master strop-thrower in our family, saying no isn’t something we do unless we have to.
“Make sure you have your water shoes and swimming caps on,” Casper tells the older two while he opens the door to the cabin and disappears inside to start the fire so we can all get warm afterwards.
After checking the girls over and sitting them on the porch to wait for Casper and me, I head inside and strip down to my long sleeve swimming costume before I set up the towels in front of the fire for when we’re done. Along with the hot chocolate cauldron on the hearth to warm up.
“Are you procrastinating by any chance?” Casper asks when I stand back to admire my handy work of pillows and blankets on the floor ready for our picnic brunch and lazy morning. “Need I remind you that you started this crazy tradition?”
“I don’t think it’s ever been this cold out there.”
“You say that every year.”
“Do I?” Of course, I know I say this every year, and every year it’s true—it feels a helluva lot colder than the last, until I get in the water and the spike of adrenaline hits me. Then, just like our girls, I don’t want to get out.
“What is it you told me the first time we did this crazy shit?” Casper comes closer, standing in front of me with his hands holding my face up to his while he leans down slowly to hover his lips over mine. “Just get in there. Jump right in, wussy-pants.”
“Why do we do it again?”
“Because you said you wanted to.”
“Do you always go along with my crazy ideas?”
“You mean like interrupting a perfectly great getaway with nothing but fucking on the to-do list with a big family dinner?”
“That’s not—”
“Yes, Trouble, I always go along with your crazy ideas.”
“Why? You’re a man. Be unreasonable and pigheaded. Put your foot down.”
He gives me a really? look before he presses a kiss to my lips and murmurs, “Where would the fun be in that? Besides, you’re my wife and my only must in life is to make you happy. Give you what you want and be what you need.”
While I swoon, speechless by his statement, he grips my arse and lifts me up his body. I think he’d carry me everywhere if he could. Whether I’m heavily pregnant and can’t move anymore or simply refusing to move—like now—he picks me up like I weigh nothing and does the walking for me.
“What are you doing?” I panic when he marches us out of the cabin and down the porch steps, straight to the edge of the misty water.
“Getting in, wussy-pants,” he chuckles, holding me to him as he leaps in while I’m mid-shriek and pointlessly trying to escape him.
The water hits so cold that its sting burns like a thousand hot knives slicing through my body. Then, almost instantly, the adrenaline kicks in and every single cell of my body comes to life as he brings me back up to the surface, still glued to his body.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asks, sounding breathless.
“Still…” I glower at him. “I would’ve gotten in on my own.”
“You don’t get to be mad at me after that whole unreasonable, pigheaded, foot down spiel you gave me in there.”
Before he can say anything else, I splash him in the face, and keep splashing as the girls laugh on the sidelines. Grace is sitting on the edge with Este on her lap as she adjusts to the temperature of the water by dipping her feet in along with Beatrix.
By the time I’m winded from my efforts, they’re desperate to get in with us. So while Casper puts Este on his shoulders so only her feet are in the water, I keep Grace and Beatrix glued to me. We paddle for a short time, until the girls’ lips start changing colour, and then we run inside the cabin to get warm and fill our bellies with more chocolate than anyone should ever eat and the best sausage rolls in the planet—the only thing Casper has learnt to cook.
Settled in front of the fire, Casper and I cuddle with our girls while we watch The Velveteen Rabbit, Este’s current favourite film.
As much as I love spending time with our family and friends, this is really where I’m happiest. Me, our girls, and the best man I will ever know.
