Chapter 485
Chapter 484:
“I couldn’t tolerate it,” Gaston continued, his voice still calm, still measured, but with something raw and possessive moving beneath it now. “The idea of another man’s hands on you. Even a professional. Even a medical necessity. The thought of you in pain and vulnerable, with some stranger touching your body while I sat in the next room like some useless p>
He broke off. His hands went still. When he spoke again, his voice was rougher.
“So I made it my business to understand. I’ve spent the past few months studying every relevant medical text, every anatomical chart. I consulted with Dr. Alistair, our family’s physician, on the specific muscle groups affected during pregnancy. I learned.” A beat of silence. “So I could be the one to take care of you. Completely p>
Jocelyn rolled over. She didn’t care about the sweater bunching at her waist or the hair falling across her face. She looked up at him — at this man who had studied the human body in secret so that no one else would ever need to touch hers — and felt something crack open in her chest.
“You did that?” she whispered.
Gaston’s throat worked. He reached up slowly and brushed her hair back from her face. His fingers were trembling slightly.
“I wanted to be ready,” he said. “For when you were ready. I wanted to be able to take care of you myself. In every way p>
Tears were streaming down Jocelyn’s face before she realized they had started. She reached up and grabbed fistfuls of his thermal and pulled him down to her.
Their mouths met. The kiss was desperate, grateful, overwhelmed. She tasted salt — her own tears, maybe his, she couldn’t tell — and the peppermint from her tea, and beneath it something that was purely Gaston, purely home, purely the future she hadn’t known she was allowed to want.
“I love you,” she gasped against his mouth. “I love you, I love you, I love you p>
Gaston groaned. He gathered her up, lifting her from the sofa and settling her in his lap without breaking the kiss. His hands moved across her back, her hips, her face — touching her as though memorizing her, as though claiming her, as though thanking whatever force in the universe had seen fit to bring her to him.
𝗣𝘋𝖥𝗌 oո
Outside, the Norwegian wilderness stretched away in every direction, endless and frozen and indifferent. Inside, the expedition vehicle carried them steadily forward through the dark — warm, and safe, and full of promise.
The private camp was exactly as the brochure had promised — exactly as Gaston’s team had designed it, down to the last detail.
A single glass igloo sat in the center of a snow-covered valley, its transparent walls curving upward to form a perfect dome. Inside: a king-sized bed draped in white fur, a wood-burning stove already lit and casting dancing shadows against the glass, and a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of actual snow.
The aurora forecast had promised significant activity. Gaston had checked it seventeen times in the past forty-eight hours.