His mouth finds my neck and I let him, my fingers curling into the damp cotton of his shirt as he lifts me onto the counter. The porcelain is cold through the thin fabric of my shorts, and somewhere behind the heat of his body I can still feel the wet spot where the test went down. I can smell the rust and soap on his hands as they slide up my thighs, and I don't think about the address burning in the back of my skull. I don't.
"Derek." My voice comes out rougher than I meant it. "Right now."
He makes a sound low in his throat, something between a groan and a question, and his hands are shaking as he pushes my thighs apart. That's what undoes me — the tremor in hands that can torque a bolt loose, that held me through the worst night of my life. His thumbs press into the meat of my inner thighs and he looks up at me, blue eyes gone dark, and I can see the want in him like a physical thing.
"Yeah?" he asks, and it's not a tease this time. It's a prayer.
I answer by hooking my legs around his hips and hauling him closer. The drag of his jeans against the bare skin of my ass makes me shiver, and he gets the message. His mouth is on mine before I can draw another breath, and he kisses me like he's drowning, like I'm air. I taste the coffee he had this morning and something metallic underneath — maybe adrenaline, maybe the same fear I've been swallowing all week.
He pulls my shorts down and they catch on my heels for a second before I kick them free. He doesn't bother with my shirt. He just looks at me, sitting on his sink with my legs spread around his hips, and the reverence in that look makes my pulse hammer low in my belly.
"You're so fucking beautiful," he breathes, and the words sound almost angry, like it pains him.
I get his belt undone and his jeans shoved down just enough. His cock springs free, hard and leaking, and I wrap my hand around him — the weight of him familiar now, a thing I've learned by heart. He hisses through his teeth and his hips buck into my grip.
"Maya," he pushes out, and it's a warning and a plea and a promise all in one syllable.
I guide him to my entrance and I feel the head of him press against me, a pressure that makes my whole body go tight with waiting. His hand cups the back of my neck, thumb against my jaw, tilting my head up to meet his eyes. There's something raw in his face, not just hunger but a kind of desperate faith, like he's praying this is the one that stays.
"Do it," I say. "Derek. Put it in. Make it take."
He pushes inside me, slow, inch by inch, and we both make sound out of the same breath. I clench around him before he's even fully seated and he drops his forehead to mine with a shaky exhale, his whole body trembling where we're joined.
The stretch of him is deliberate, a claiming that's part ritual — those three days where it was just us against the world — and part something brand new, still growing. When he bottoms out inside me, he holds still, both of us breathing like we just finished a race.
"Tell me again," he says, and his voice is barely above a whisper. "Say it."
"Make me pregnant," I whisper back, feeling the heat of him, the weight of our choice pressed up against the ache that lives under my ribs. "Fill me up until it takes."
He groans low and starts to move, slow drag out and grind back in, making me feel every inch of him. My hips rise to meet him, trying to pull him deeper, but he catches my rhythm with his hands on my hipbones and holds me where he wants me. The mirror behind me steams from the humidity, and I watch us in the cracked reflection — my legs wrapped around his waist, his thumbs digging prints into my skin, his uneven thickness so deep that I feel him at my already wet midpoint.
He hooks a hand between my thighs and finds the place. I twitch the moment his fingertips move. Everything hums because he hears me before I can ask: "You want me early," he says, thick, as he curls his fingers into me, "soaked my hand on cue?"
"Yes."
He gives me a stunning, deadly smile. Then he's gripping my jaw, kissing me breathless, plunging into me with a single move that fords so deep against a ridge where his fingers are pinched that everything floods to a shuddery, raw brink. I let out a ragged moan and he lets me go, the fading print of his palm at the small of my throat. "Finish. Need to feel you. Now."
"One, maybe." My teeth chatter. "Hope not too quick to hurt—"
"Don't hold."
He fucks into me under-weighted, grinding and pausing alongside the slip and surge. But my body gives anything I asked, once he gets me into the fog. He pulls my shirt off and laves my neck; his mouth works me up.
We go in motion, breath falling unison, wood and mirror clacking. Time could be minutes by the drip
His rhythm falters, the slick drag of him slowing until he's barely moving inside me, just the head of him pressing against that spot that makes my toes curl. I feel him pull back, almost out, and the loss of him makes me gasp, my hips chasing him before he stills entirely. His forehead rests against mine, sweat-slicked and warm, and his breath comes in ragged pulls against my mouth.
"Wait." The word is thick, like it costs him something to say. He holds himself there, just the tip of me still stretched around him, and I can feel the tremor running through his whole body. "I need to ask you something first."
I make a sound that's half frustration, half plea, my legs tightening around his hips to pull him back in. But he holds firm, one hand sliding up to cup my jaw, tilting my face so I can't look anywhere but at him. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, but there's something else there underneath the hunger — a question he's been carrying.
"This thing between us," he says, and his voice cracks on the last word. "It started with me taking you on that bus. With me not asking."
I go still. The heat of him at my entrance is a live wire, but the words land like cold water.
"And I need to know —" He swallows hard, his thumb tracing my lower lip. "When you beg me to fill you up, to knock you up, is it because you want me? Or because I'm the one who made you feel something that first time, and you're just chasing that again?"
The question sits between us, heavy and raw. I can feel his cock twitch against me, desperate to be buried inside, but he holds himself still, waiting. The mirror behind me fogs and clears with my breath, and I see us in the cracked reflection — him holding himself over me, barely inside, both of us balanced on the edge of something that could break us or make us.
"I felt nothing when Ethan touched me," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expect. "Nothing when he was inside me. But you —" I reach up and grip the back of his neck, pulling him closer until our foreheads touch again. "You're not the stranger on the bus anymore, Derek. You're the man who held me when I fell apart. The man who promised me no more secrets."
His breath hitches. "But that first time —"
"Was the door," I cut him off, pressing my hips forward just enough to feel him slide a fraction deeper. "You opened it. But I'm the one who walked through. I'm the one who chose to stay. I'm the one begging you right now."
Something shifts in his face — the tension in his jaw softening, the desperate question in his eyes giving way to something rawer. His hand slides from my jaw down to my throat, a light pressure that makes my pulse jump against his palm.
"And if it's the bus you're thinking about right now?" he asks, and there's a roughness in his voice I haven't heard before. "If it's the stranger you want when I'm inside you?"
I don't look away. "The stranger didn't know my name. He didn't hold me after. He didn't promise me a future." I shift my hips, feeling him slide deeper, and I see his eyes roll back for a second before he catches himself. "You're the one I'm asking to make me pregnant. You're the one I want to feel come inside me. You."
He makes a sound low in his throat, something between a growl and a sob, and I feel him push forward just an inch before he catches himself again. His hand tightens on my throat, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me who's in control.
"Say it again," he rasps. "Tell me you want me to finish inside you. Tell me it's me you want."
The question hangs between us, and I can feel the weight of everything riding on my answer — the nights we've spent, the promises we've made, the baby we're both praying for. I reach down between us and wrap my hand around the base of him, feeling the heat of him, the pulse of him, the way he throbs against my palm.
"It's you," I say, and I push him back inside me, all the way, until he's buried to the hilt and I feel him deep in my belly. "Don't you dare pull out."
He groans and starts to move, slow and deep, his forehead pressed to mine, his breath hot on my mouth. Each thrust is a promise, a prayer, a plea — and I feel the answer building in my core, the heat coiling tight as he drives into me again and again.
His rhythm turns ragged, the slow deliberation giving way to something hungrier, needier. Each thrust drives him deeper, and I feel the change in him—the way his whole body tenses, the way his grip on my hips tightens almost to bruising. He pulls back until only the head of him remains inside me, then slams home with a force that lifts me off the counter, and I gasp, nails digging into his shoulders through his shirt.
"Maya," he grunts, the word punched out of him. "Maya, I'm—"
He doesn't finish the sentence. Instead he buries his face in my neck, his mouth hot and desperate against my skin, and I feel him shudder against me. His hips stutter, losing rhythm, and I know he's close—I can feel it in the way his cock swells inside me, in the frantic pulse of him against my walls.
"Say it," he rasps against my throat. "Fuck—Maya, say my name."
I'm right there with him, the coil in my belly winding so tight I can barely breathe. But I understand what he's asking. Not a word. Not a sound. My name on his lips isn't enough—he needs to hear his own name on mine, needs to know it's him, not the ghost of the stranger who took me on that bus.
"Derek," I breathe, and the sound of it seems to crack something open in him.
He pulls back just enough to look at me, his blue eyes wild and glassy, pupils blown so wide they've nearly swallowed the color. His jaw is tight, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble, and there's something almost desperate in the way he searches my face.
"Again," he demands, his voice rough and breaking. "Say it again."
"Derek." I reach up and grip his face in both hands, forcing him to meet my eyes. "Derek, I want you to come inside me. I want to feel you fill me up. I want—"
He cuts me off with a kiss so hard it nearly steals my breath, his tongue plunging into my mouth as his hips find a brutal rhythm. Each thrust drives me up the counter, the porcelain cold against my back, and I cling to him, legs locked around his waist, taking everything he gives.
"Derek," I gasp against his mouth. "Derek, please—"
He groans, a sound torn from somewhere deep in his chest, and I feel his rhythm falter again. His hand slides down between us, his thumb finding my clit, pressing in tight circles that make my whole body clench around him.
"Come with me," he grits out. "I need you to come with me. Need to feel you squeeze me while I—"
His words dissolve into a shuddering exhale, and I feel him swell even harder inside me. The pressure builds behind my eyes, in my chest, low in my belly where he's buried so deep I can feel him in my throat.
"Derek," I sob, the word breaking apart as the coil finally snaps.
My orgasm crashes through me, white-hot and blinding, and I feel my cunt clench around him in wave after wave. He makes a sound like he's been struck, his hips slamming into me one last time as he buries himself to the hilt, and I feel it—the hot pulse of him emptying inside me, filling me, claiming me in a way that has nothing to do with the stranger on the bus.
"Maya—" His voice cracks, and he drops his forehead to mine, his whole body shuddering as he comes. "Maya, Maya, Maya—"
He chants my name like a prayer, like a desperate man finally finding water, and I hold him through it, my legs still locked around him, my hands buried in his hair. I feel every pulse of him inside me, feel the warmth spreading through me, and I know—I know—this is what we've been working toward.
When he finally stills, we're both breathing like we've run a marathon. His weight settles against me, his face still buried in my neck, and I feel his lips press a soft, almost reverent kiss to my collarbone.
"Derek," I whisper, and he makes a small sound against my skin.
He lifts his head, and I see it—the raw, unguarded look in his eyes, the one he only lets me see. His hand comes up to cup my face, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, and there's something in his expression I can't quite name. Wonder, maybe. Or disbelief that this is real.
"Say it one more time," he murmurs, and his voice is wrecked, tender, entirely his.
I hold his gaze, feeling him still half-hard inside me, feeling the warmth of him slowly cooling on my thighs. The cracked mirror behind me reflects us both—him braced over me, me wrapped around him, the bathroom thick with the smell of sex and sweat and something that feels almost like hope.
"Derek," I say, and the word lands like a vow.
The air leaves my body in a rush when he pulls out. The emptiness is sudden, almost violent — one heartbeat he's buried to the hilt inside me, the next I'm clenching around nothing, the cool air of the bathroom finding the slick heat he left behind. I gasp, my hips chasing him instinctively, and my legs tighten around his waist to pull him back.
"Derek —" His name comes out as a question, a complaint, a plea.
But he's already moving. His hands slide down my thighs, grip my hips, and he drops. Just sinks to his knees on the cold concrete floor like the weight of everything finally got too heavy to stand under. The bare bulb catches the sandy mess of his hair, and I see the rise and fall of his shoulders, the way his hands tremble where they hold me.
"Derek. What are you —"
He presses his mouth to the inside of my thigh. Not a kiss — a press, a brand, his lips parting against the skin still damp from where he was just inside me. The stubble on his jaw scrapes against my sensitive flesh and I shiver, my hand coming down to tangle in his hair without asking permission.
He works his way up my thigh in slow, deliberate presses of his mouth, his breath hot and uneven against my skin. I feel the tremor in his shoulders, the way his grip on my hips tightens and loosens like he's holding on to keep himself from shaking apart. The cracked mirror shows me his back, the muscles shifting under his shirt, the way he kneels there like an offering.
"I need to taste you," he says, and his voice is wrecked, raw, nothing like the cocky mechanic who watches me from across the street. "Need to know what you feel like when you're this close. When you're asking me to —" He stops, his forehead pressing against my inner thigh, his breath stuttering.
I feel the word he doesn't say vibrate through his mouth into my skin. Baby. The thing we're both praying for, the thing we lost, the thing we're trying again to make.
His mouth moves higher, and I feel the heat of him through the slickness on my skin, the wet trail he leaves with his tongue. He's not teasing. This isn't the playful, teasing Derek who makes me chase him. This is something else — something quieter, more desperate, like he's trying to memorize me with his mouth.
"Derek." I tug at his hair, trying to pull him up, but he resists. His hands slide up my thighs, thumbs pressing into the crease where my legs meet my hips, and he looks up at me from between my knees.
His blue eyes are wet. Not crying — not quite — but glassy, bright, like he's been holding something in his chest for so long it's started to leak out through his gaze. The harsh yellow light catches the grease still ground into the lines of his knuckles, the calluses on his palms, and I see the contrast of him — the man who can torque a bolt loose, kneeling on a bathroom floor like I'm something holy.
"Maya." He says my name like it costs him something. "When I was on that bus — when I took you like that — I didn't know your name. Didn't know anything except that I'd been watching you for three years and I couldn't watch you fade anymore." His thumb traces a slow circle on my inner thigh. "I thought I was saving you. I thought if I made you feel something, you'd wake up."
His mouth presses a kiss just above my mound, and my whole body goes tight. His breath is hot against the slick skin there, and I feel the ghost of his tongue, the promise of more, but he holds still.
"But I didn't save you," he says, and his voice cracks on the last word. "I took you. And I've been trying to make up for that ever since."
"Derek —"
"Tell me what you need me to be." He looks up at me, and the question in his eyes is raw, unguarded, every wall he's ever built laid flat on the concrete floor between his knees. "The man who took you on that bus? The man who held you when you fell apart? The man who's begging you right now to let him make this right?"
I yank his hair. Hard enough that his head snaps back, the tendons in his neck going taut, and his breath catches on a half-gasp. The question dies in his throat, replaced by something rawer — surprise, maybe, or relief that I'm done letting him kneel in his own guilt.
"Get up." My voice doesn't sound like mine. It sounds like the woman who walked through the door he opened.
He rises. Slow, deliberate, his eyes never leaving mine, and I feel the shift in him — the weight of his confession still hanging in the air, but something else surfacing underneath. Something hungrier. His hands find my hips, and I feel the tremor still running through them, but his grip is sure.
I kiss him before he can speak. I taste myself on his lips — the salt and musk of where he was just buried — and I feel his groan vibrate through my chest. His tongue slides against mine, and it's not gentle. It's claiming, desperate, like he's trying to convince himself I'm real.
"You're the man I need you to be," I breathe against his mouth. "The one who's inside me when I come. The one who stays after."
His hands slide down, gripping my ass, lifting me off the counter. I wrap my legs around his waist and feel him hard against my belly, still slick from where I took him. He carries me the two steps to the wall, pressing my back against the cool tile, and I feel the shudder run through him.
"Maya." My name on his lips is a broken thing. "I need to hear you say it. Just once more. That it's me. That you're not —"
I cut him off by reaching between us, wrapping my hand around his cock, feeling the heat and pulse of him. He's already leaking, and I guide him to my entrance, holding his gaze as the head of him presses against me.
"It's you," I say. "It's always been you."
He pushes inside me in one slow, shuddering motion, and we both gasp at the fullness of it. The tile is cold against my back, but he's so hot inside me that I feel the contrast like a live wire, my whole body clenching around him as he bottoms out.
"Fuck," he breathes, his forehead dropping to mine. "Maya. Fuck."
He holds still for a heartbeat, two, and I feel his pulse through his cock, the way he throbs inside me. His hands grip my hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh, and I feel the question still lurking in the set of his jaw — the one he couldn't finish asking.
I answer it with my body. I roll my hips, grinding against him, feeling him slide deeper, and I watch his eyes roll back before he catches himself. "You feel that?" I ask, my voice low. "That's me. Choosing you. Every time."
He groans and starts to move, slow and deep, the tile scraping my spine with each thrust. The bathroom is thick with the smell of us — sex and sweat and the faint ghost of motor oil that clings to him even here. The bare bulb buzzes overhead, and I hear the drip of the faucet keeping time with his rhythm.
His mouth finds my throat, teeth grazing the pulse point, and I feel the sting of it — a mark I'll find tomorrow. He fucks me against the wall like he's trying to crawl inside me, each thrust driving him deeper, and I feel the coil in my belly winding tight again.
"Look at me," I demand, and his eyes snap to mine. "When you come. I want to see your face when you fill me up."
He makes a sound like I've wounded him, and his rhythm falters, his hips stuttering. But he doesn't look away. His eyes hold mine, wild and glassy, and I feel the swell of him, the desperate pulse that tells me he's close.
"Maya—" His voice cracks, and he buries himself to the hilt, holding there, trembling. "Maya, I'm gonna —"
"Do it," I say, and I clench around him, pulling him deeper. "Come inside me. Make it take."
He comes with a sound that's half sob, half groan, his hips grinding against me as he empties himself inside me. I feel every pulse of him, the hot flood of it, the way his whole body shakes with the force of it. And I hold him there, legs locked around his waist, feeling him fill me until I feel it dripping down my thighs.
When he finally stills, he's breathing like he's been running. His forehead rests against mine, his eyes closed, and I feel the tremor still running through him. I reach up and grip the back of his neck, pulling him closer.
"Derek." His name is a breath, a prayer, a vow. "Look at me."
He opens his eyes, and I see it — the raw, unguarded wonder of a man who can't quite believe he gets to have this. The question is still there, lurking in the dark of his pupils, but it's quieter now. Silenced, not answered.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say. "And neither are you."
He kisses me, soft and slow, and I feel him soften inside me, the warmth of him still seeping into my thighs. The cracked mirror behind us catches the reflection — him pressed against me, me wrapped around him, both of us still trembling on the edge of something that keeps threatening to break us open.
And for a moment, we just breathe. The bathroom is close and damp, the air thick with the smell of us, and somewhere beyond the walls, the world is still waiting — Ethan, Vince's brother, Mer, all of it. But right now, there's only this. Only him, still inside me, still holding on.
His hand finds mine in the tangle of sweat-slick skin, and he brings it to his chest. His heart hammers against my palm through the damp cotton of his shirt, a wild thing caged in bone. He's still on his knees, still looking up at me like I'm the only light in this close, yellow room, and the weight of his gaze makes my throat tight.
"I need you to promise me something." His voice is rough, scraped raw. "Not about us. Not about the garage or Mer or any of it." He presses my hand harder against his sternum, like he's trying to push my fingers through his ribs and into the muscle beneath. "If it takes. If you get pregnant — if we make this baby — I need you to promise me you'll let me be there."
I open my mouth to answer, but he shakes his head, cutting me off. His thumb traces the lines of my knuckles, the calluses on his hand catching against my skin.
"Not just for the conception," he says, and the words come out like they're being dragged from somewhere deep. "Not just for the part where I get to feel you come around me. I need to be there for the rest of it. The doctor's appointments. The middle-of-the-night cravings. The part where you're sick and miserable and you hate me for doing this to you." He swallows hard, his blue eyes glassy in the harsh light. "The part where you're holding our baby for the first time. I need to be there for that. I need to be his father. Or hers. I need to be —"
His voice breaks, and he drops his forehead to my thigh, his breath hot and shaky against my skin. I feel the tremor run through his shoulders, and my hand comes down to tangle in his hair without thinking, my fingers curling into the sandy mess of it.
"Derek." My voice comes out softer than I meant it to. "Look at me."
He lifts his head, and I see it — the raw, unguarded fear in his eyes. Not fear of Vince's brother or Ethan or Mer. Fear of this. Of the thing we're trying to make. Of the chance that he'll lose it again, the way he lost the first one. The way he lost me, in a way, before he ever had me.
"I promise," I say, and the words feel like they're carved from something solid. "If it takes, you're going to be there for every single part of it. You're going to be the one who holds my hair back when I'm throwing up at three in the morning. You're going to be the one who argues with me about baby names. You're going to be the one who cries at the ultrasound because I know you will, Derek, I know you —"
He makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob, and his hand tightens around mine.
"And when they put the baby in my arms," I continue, my voice steady even as my heart hammers, "you're going to be right there beside me. You're going to cut the cord. You're going to hold our child against your chest and pretend you're not crying while you absolutely are."
"Maya —"
"And you're going to be there for the hard parts too," I push on, because I need him to hear it. "The parts where we're both exhausted and the baby won't stop crying and we're snapping at each other because we're so tired we can't think straight. The parts where we're terrified we're doing it wrong. The parts where we're so in love with this tiny person that it hurts to breathe." I grip his hair tighter, pulling his head back so he has to meet my eyes. "All of it, Derek. I'm promising you all of it."
His breath shudders out of him, and I feel the tremor in his hands as he brings them up to cup my face. His thumbs trace the line of my cheekbones, the soft skin under my eyes, like he's memorizing me all over again.
"You mean it." It's not a question. It's a desperate, hopeful thing, a man reaching for a handhold in the dark.
"I mean it." I hold his gaze, letting him see the truth of it. "I'm not going anywhere, Derek. And neither are you. That's the deal."
He kisses me then, slow and deep, and I taste the salt of his tears on his lips before I feel the wetness on his cheeks against mine. His hands slide into my hair, cradling my skull like I'm something precious, and I feel the weight of the promise settle between us like a stone dropped into still water.
When he pulls back, his eyes are red-rimmed but steady. He presses his forehead to mine, his breath warm on my mouth, and I feel the smile in his voice when he speaks.
"Okay," he says, and the word is a vow. "Okay."
He rises, pulling me with him, and his mouth finds mine again before my feet are fully on the floor. The bathroom is still close and damp, the smell of us still thick in the air, and somewhere beyond the walls the world is still waiting. But right now, there's only his hands in my hair and his heart beating against my chest and the promise we just made, warm and alive between us.