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“I want another one,” Kaz exhales against the sensitive skin of her neck. He crowds her against his desk in the Slat, one arm wrapped low around her back and the other sliding up, up, up her spine to bury his bare fingers in the unraveling strands of her braid. “Please, Inej.”
She shudders lightly in his arms, overwhelmed by the way the full length of his body fits against hers, even after all these years. She peers over his messy spike of raven hair towards the object of his obsession – fast asleep on the soft, old couch tucked into the corner of his office.
When Inej turns back to him, Kaz’s lips brush the thin skin of her neck, and her shivers intensify.
“We talked about this last week, Kaz.” She tries to be firm, but it comes out breathier than she intended.
“And have you considered my offer?” he hums against her.
Inej pushes lightly at his shoulders, she can’t think with him mouthing at her collarbone like that. “You’re a ridiculous man, and the Barrel has rotted your brain. You can’t just bribe me with a new ship to have your baby.”
He only meets her eyes and pouts. “How about two ships?”
“Kaz.”
“Inej.”
“I’m serious – ”
“And so am I!”
“ – another baby is a huge deal, especially on top of a growing toddler – ”
“We can handle it, I’ll step back from the Dregs, let the merchling take over some of the lower risk operations, it’s about time he started learning anyways.”
“Stop interrupting me,” Inej swats at his chest exasperatedly, looking up to meet his eye now that Kaz has risen to full height again. “And you step back from the Dregs? Yeah right.”
His eyes harden almost imperceptibly and his hands slide across her back before settling on either side of her waist. “I can do it,” he swears to her, something fierce tinged with a hint of desperation coloring his tone.
Inej hovers her hands between them, a question in her eyes that Kaz answers with the barest of nods, and then rests them against the hard planes of his chest.
“Why now? What has changed this past month that makes you want this so much?”
Kaz’s gaze flits towards the couch. “Not just now,” he mumbles, avoiding her gaze.
“What was that?”
“It’s not just now,” he repeats, a bit steadier and louder this time. His grip tightens around her waist. “This isn’t new,” he tells her pleadingly, “I’ve known I wanted more with you since her.”
“Why?” she asks gently, her curiosity piqued.
“I never want her to be alone. Not like we were.”
“We found each other eventually,” Inej gently rubs one hand across his chest – a subtle attempt at soothing the heartbeat now racing beneath her palms, “and Jesper and Wylan and Nina and Matthias. She’ll have them too you know.”
“But what did we go through to find them, and each other? I never want it to be that hard for her.”
And yet you make it so easy to love you, Inej thinks, melting into his touch. But she knows that wasn’t always so.
Her eyes wander slowly across his face, across the sharp edges of his cheekbones, those bitter coffee eyes wide with rare vulnerability, and that stubborn upturned nose that made him once seem so unapproachable.
Her lips quirk and she slides one hand up to cup his jaw. “I was always going to say yes, you know? I want another just as much as you.”
Kaz’s shoulders drop and he breathes a shaky sigh of relief. He pulls her tight against his chest, and mumbles into her hair, “Of course you were. You’re a wicked woman for holding out on me like that.”
“I needed to be sure you could handle it!” She laughs into his chest. “I’ve seen the way Mira wears you out. Plus the Dregs act enough like children, I wasn’t sure you’d be up for another on top of all that.”
“Are you saying I couldn’t?”
“Well we’re not getting any younger.”
Kaz pulls back and frowns at the twinkle in her eye. “Are you calling me old?”
“I caught you passed out on the couch just last week! In the middle of the day no less, while Mira was downstairs trying to overthrow you!”
Kaz’s signature smirk makes Inej roll her eyes. “Of course she was, I’ve taught her well.”
“Don’t try to play this off like you planned it, Brekker, you insufferable liar.”
“I would never lie to you, my darling Inej,” he mollifies, but the glint in his eye says wholly otherwise. His voice drops low and that rock salt rasp becomes as pronounced as ever when he whispers in her ear, “In fact I’ll show you just how awake I am right now.”
He steps further into the space between her legs, and Inej discovers an incredible amount of self-control in that moment to stop from jumping him right there on his desk, and pushes meekly at his chest. “Bedroom. Now, Brekker.”
“Aye aye, Captain Ghafa.”
It’s so incredibly cheesy of him, and so unlike the stoic, stony-faced boy of her youth that Inej has to stifle the burst of full-bellied laugh that escapes her into the solid planes of his chest so as not to wake the sleeping spider sprawled on the couch in the corner.
She wraps her legs around his trim waist, and Kaz grunts lightly as he lifts her from the desk, stumbling backwards for a brief moment from her added weight, before he carries her slowly and steadily to their bedroom, bare hands enveloping her thighs all the way.
When they reach their private room, Kaz’s breathing is slightly ragged, and Inej draws an affectionate hand down his cheek to cup his jaw again. He looks at her with so much love and trust and desire in his eyes, that Inej wonders why she ever held out on him. Why she ever held out on this.
“Are you sure you can handle another child, Brekker?” She teases him one last time, poking gently at his heaving chest. “You’ll need a lot more stamina than that to chase after a toddler and take care of a newborn.”
“Stamina?” His voice turns deadly, and he drops her at the foot of their bed, a fire burning in those warm, brown eyes. He looms over her, bending to capture her lips in a searing kiss – one that still feels so new, and yet so familiar all the same. “I’ll show you stamina, Brekker.”
Later, when their limbs are bare and sweat slicked and wrapped around each other under the sheets – when Kaz is snoring softly into the crook of her neck, sated and vulnerable at her side, Inej can’t help but notice how young he looks like this. How young they both actually are, all things considered.
She decides then and there that she’ll give him as many as he wants. Whether this be the last, or only the beginning of a family as large and loud and lovely as the one they built together, Inej will give him anything, because she knows he’ll give it his everything.