The slow burn

 It started with the laundry.

I was folding Anthony’s tiny shirts—half of them already stained with spaghetti or sidewalk chalk—when Doc came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder.

“You’ve been glowing lately,” he murmured, kissing the spot where my neck met my jaw.

I rolled my eyes, smirking. “That’s just sweat. Your son insists the air conditioner is too cold for his nap.”

Doc chuckled, low and warm. “Still. Glowing.”

His hands didn’t wander, not at first. They just rested on my growing bump, his thumbs tracing small circles through the soft cotton of my dress. But there was something in the air—familiar and charged. That soft buzz that only came when the world felt still enough to notice it.

“You smell like oranges,” he said, voice lower now.

“I dropped a slice down my bra earlier,” I whispered. “I blame the baby.”

He laughed again, but this time it was breathy, closer. His lips brushed behind my ear, and I felt it in my toes. My hands stopped folding. The entire room seemed to hush.

“Come with me,” he said, and there was no teasing in his tone. Just a promise.

I followed him upstairs without saying a word.

In our bedroom, the light filtered in through half-drawn curtains. Everything looked golden—like a slow afternoon painting. Doc turned to face me; his hands gentle as he lifted the hem of my dress.

“Still okay?” he asked, eyes searching mine.

“Yes,” I breathed. “God, yes.”

He kissed me like he meant it. Like he remembered me. Every version of me. The girl who showed up broken. The woman who fought to come back. The mother, the lover, the almost-wife.

I melted into it.

His hands moved with reverence. Not careful like I might break—but like I deserved to be worshiped. And in his touch, I could feel it—that quiet craving he kept just beneath the surface. The desire that wasn’t just physical, but rooted in us.

“I missed this,” he whispered against my skin. “Missed you.”

“I’m right here,” I said, slipping my fingers into his shirt and dragging it over his head.

He laid me down, slow and deliberate, his body molding to mine like he was trying to memorize every curve, every shift. I arched into him as his mouth explored the new softness of my belly, the fullness of my breasts, everything different, everything divine.

There was no rush. Just rhythm. That slow burn that only happens when you already know the endgame is love.

And when he finally moved inside me, I gasped—not from the stretch, or even the pleasure, but from the rightness of it.

We moved together like a tide. Like we’d done this in a hundred lifetimes.

And when I came—shaking, whispering his name like it was the only thing I had left—he followed with a groan that curled through my spine like smoke.

We collapsed together in a tangle of limbs and quiet laughter, my head tucked under his chin, his hand lazily tracing circles on my lower back.

“You still glow,” he said again, lips against my forehead.

“And you still talk too much after sex,” I teased.

He laughed, but there was softness in it. Stillness.

“Next time,” he said, “I want to make love to you in the nursery.”

I blinked up at him, amused and confused. “The nursery?”

“Mmhmm. On the rocking chair. Just to say we broke it in before the baby gets here.”

I snorted. “That’s evil.”

“That’s romance, darling.”

And as I drifted into the safest sleep I’d ever known, I thought—

Maybe it really is.