Displaced, Desired

We returned home from our babymoon tanned, relaxed, and full of quiet dreams. My belly had rounded further during the trip, a visible symbol of everything we were building together—our love, our future, our family. But nothing could have prepared us for the moment we unlocked the front door of Ethan’s house and were met with the sharp, pungent scent of mold and ruin.

The floors were soaked, warped. Walls dark with water damage. The ceiling in the nursery had partially collapsed, and the entire back of the house looked like it had been breathing water for days.

I stood in the doorway, stunned, one hand on my stomach, the other clasped tightly in Ethan’s. He squeezed it, hard, as if trying to anchor us both.

A burst pipe. Weeks of no one noticing. Everything—gone.

The bassinet. The tiny clothes I had picked out while he wasn’t looking. The sonogram prints pinned to the wall in the nursery. Every book, every soft toy, every gift from family and friends—ruined.

We didn’t say much as we moved carefully through the wreckage. We salvaged what we could: a few framed photos, some keepsakes untouched in higher cabinets, the shell charm he’d given me. The rest was boxed and carried to a storage unit with heavy hearts and dust-covered fingers.

Ethan was quiet that night, quiet in a way I had never seen. Not defeated, but shaken. I could see the way he looked around my smaller apartment, assessing it—safe, dry, familiar. And maybe, in that moment, perfect.

“We’ll make it work,” I said, placing a gentle hand on his chest. “It’s not the house that matters. It’s us.”

He looked at me like I’d just reminded him how to breathe.

That first night in my bed, the one that suddenly seemed too small for our growing family and our even bigger feelings, he kissed me with a desperation that felt like both an apology and a promise.

“I need you,” he murmured, voice rough and low. “Right now. All of you.”

My body responded instantly—aching, electric. I was already swollen with life, but the way he touched me made me feel swollen with need too. My breasts had grown noticeably in the past few weeks—fuller, heavier, more sensitive—and he noticed. Every time.

He undressed me slowly, reverently, savoring every curve, every change.

“I love how your body is changing,” he whispered, pressing kisses down the slope of my belly, then cupping my breasts with both hands, thumbing gently over my nipples until my breath caught. “These,” he murmured, “God, you drive me insane.”

That night, the air in the room was thick with lust and comfort, need and reassurance. He took me against the wall, hands gripping my hips, careful but possessive. I moaned into his shoulder, nails dragging along his back. Then again on the couch, with my legs wrapped tightly around him, his pace slow and deep and consuming.

Later, in bed, he pushed me gently onto my side, one hand cradling my belly, the other between my legs, exploring me until I was trembling. His mouth found my breasts again, licking and sucking slowly, as I arched under him with pleasure. When he pushed into me, the connection felt soul-deep—like everything lost had brought us to this moment.

We kept going, night after night.

Every morning, he’d bring me something—a bouquet of peonies, a velvet box with earrings shaped like stars, tiny onesies in gender-neutral prints. He'd drop them at my feet like offerings, then peel me out of my clothes and worship me until I could barely remember what we’d lost.

Ethan couldn’t get enough of me, and I couldn’t get enough of him. His hunger was insatiable, primal, but always anchored in love.

Some nights, he tied my wrists again with the same silk from our trip, coaxing moans from my throat with his mouth on my breasts, his tongue teasing and sucking until I writhed beneath him. He’d whisper how much he needed me, how obsessed he was with the way I tasted, sounded, looked—pregnant and powerful and all his.

We didn’t need the perfect nursery. We didn’t need the sprawling house. In that tiny bedroom, lit by nothing but moonlight and our shared fire, we built something far more permanent.

We were home.