Reason Enough (6 page)

I did, without letting go of his hand. We didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Morty looked as though he wanted to say something important, and my heart beat faster as I anticipated some sort of last words. It wasn’t my place to hear them, if this were his final speech.

“You’re good for my boy.”

“He’s good for me.”

Morty smiled. His fingers twitched in mine, not quite a squeeze but a valiant effort. “Me and Dot, we always wanted a girl. She couldn’t have another, you know. After Sam. We tried, but she lost ‘em. Finally, the doctor just said, no more. You’ll kill yourself. So that was that.”

I hadn’t known. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Morty shook his head a little again. His grin was a ghost of its normal brightness, but still there. I could so easily see how Dan would look in another thirty years. “We got our daughter, didn’t we?”

I smiled. “Thanks.”

“Our Sam, now, he might not ever settle down. But Danny, he’s a smart one.” Morty shifted in the bed and looked a little pained. Alarmed, I made to move, but he shook his head again. “Now, it’s not my way to push.”

Not compared to my mother, that was for sure.

“But it surely would make me happy…me and Dotty both, you know…”

“If we had a baby?” I said quietly, leaning forward though there was nobody to overhear us.

“Yes.” Morty’s eyes gleamed.

I leaned even closer, conspiring. “I think we’re working on it.”

He laughed, and the laugh trailed away into a weak cough. “Good. Does Danny know that?”

“He was there,” I said, which wasn’t quite the right answer but made him laugh again. I’d never have said such a ribald thing to my mother, but Dan’s dad was different.

“Good,” he said again and closed his eyes for so long I was afraid he wouldn’t open them. Then, “Good.”

“C’mon. You’ve had a very long day.” I bent over the bath and turned on the faucets. We had a nice, big bathtub put in by the previous owners. They’d obviously been obsessed with the bathroom, since it was the only room in the house to have been completely renovated. I added some lavender-scented oil. “You need this.”

“I need to get to bed….” But he was only protesting for show as I unbuckled his belt and helped him out of his clothes.

I put him into the bath and scrubbed him with some body wash and a loofah. Water splashed over the edges of the tub and wet my clothes, but I kept at it, washing and kneading him until he closed his eyes and gave himself up to my ministrations. When I was done, I helped him out, dried him off and took him to bed.

I slid in, naked, beside him. He was warm from the hot water and my skin was a little cool, but he didn’t object when I put my arm over his chest and my leg over his thighs. I kissed his shoulder.

Sometimes we said more with silence than with all our words.

When I kissed my way down his arm and across to his belly, he sighed. When I kissed lower, Dan’s belly vibrated under my lips. My hand found his cock and I stroked him erect in a minute. He put his hand on top of my head, though, when I went to move lower.

“Elle.”

I looked up at him. “Shh. I love you. Let me do this.”

He smiled a little. “I need this, too?”

I nodded. “You want me to do this.”

He’d said those same words to me, in the past, and he’d been right. The way I was right now. Sex has many uses I would never pretend to know or want to know, but I did know the comfort losing oneself in pleasure could bring.

I made love to him with my hands and tongue for a while until he shivered. Then I climbed on top of him. He groaned as he slid inside me; that simple sound sent a pulse of arousal through me. I always got turned on at the sounds he made.

I’d meant to do this for him, not for me, but he slid a hand between us and I wasn’t going to complain. We moved together, slow at first then faster. I thought he might come right away, and that would have been fine, but Dan looked at me, watching my face as he used his thumb to provide steady pressure on my clit. When I gasped, he smiled.

“I want to watch you come,” he whispered. “Let me see it.”

I did a minute after that.

He thrust inside me a few more times before his face tightened and he gasped out my name. Then he gathered me to him and held me tight. He kissed me.

“I love you,” he said. “God, I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” I whispered, holding him as hard as I could. I didn’t want to let go, not when he needed me to hold on.

I thought he might cry, but he didn’t. His breathing slowed. Our bodies cooled. I pulled the blankets over us and snuggled into his side. I didn’t sleep, but I listened to him sleeping.

I knew I should get up, take a shower. Brush my teeth.

Take my pill.

Instead I lay there listening to the sound of my husband breathing, and I held on to him with all I had inside me. I’d worried I didn’t have enough for him, but time had shown me I was wrong.

I didn’t get out of bed.

It wasn’t my conversation with Morty that had changed my mind about having a child, or watching my mother with my niece, or my niece herself. It wasn’t watching the miracle of Marcy’s son being born, either.

All of those were reasons. Good reasons. But it was the man beside me who’d proven to me that love was worth everything. That my life, my heart, had room in it for more love than I ever thought possible.

There were dozens of reasons to agree to have a child, but as far as I was concerned, just then, with his breath on my face and the warmth of his skin on mine, there was only one that mattered. Love.

That was reason enough.