Chapter 1263: Disappeared Mark

Morning found them together in the bathroom.

The enormous stone bath had already filled the room with warm mist, turning the tall windows pale with condensation while sunlight pushed through in softened golden sheets. Melissa sat between Phei’s legs in the water, completely naked, her back flush against his chest, her wet skin sliding against his with every small shift.

She looked content to let him perform the highly complicated task of washing her hair as though he had been trained for this his entire life.

He had not.

His concentration suggested otherwise.

Phei gathered her wet hair carefully over one shoulder. The dark strands clung to her nape and the upper curve of her breasts before he drew them aside. His fingers worked through the heavy silk of it with almost ridiculous patience, massaging her scalp, then guiding warm water down the length of her spine. Every now and then his knuckles brushed the sensitive skin at the back of her neck.

Each time, a small shiver ran through her. He immediately pretended not to notice.

She knew better.

The water lapped at the full, big roundness of her breasts. Her nipples had already tightened in the steam. Whenever she leaned back, the soft weight of them rested against his forearms, warm and slick, and Phei’s cock, already half-hard against the curve of her ass, thickened a little more.

"You’re enjoying this far too much," Melissa murmured, eyes closed as she leaned into him.

Phei kissed the wet curve of her shoulder, lips lingering on the heat of her skin. "I’m caring for the mother of my child. Apparently this is my occupation now."

Melissa smiled without opening her eyes. "You discovered I was pregnant yesterday and you’ve already become unbearable."

"Unbearably attentive."

"Unbearably Phei."

"That sounds complimentary."

"It wasn’t."

He laughed quietly and kissed her shoulder again, slower this time, open-mouthed, tasting the water on her skin before washing the last traces from her hair. His touch had been different all morning.

Melissa had noticed from the moment they woke.

Gentler.

Almost absurdly careful...

...and still hungry.

He helped her from bed even after she reminded him twice that she possessed functioning legs. He had watched her descend three steps as though pregnancy had transformed stairs into an assassination attempt. Now, even sitting together in a bath, his hands seemed incapable of touching her without some part of him remembering that another life rested inside her.

Phei’s palm drifted around her waist.

It settled over her lower stomach.

There it was again.

Melissa opened one eye and glanced down. "You’ve done that about twenty times this morning."

"Twenty-two."

"So you were counting?"

"No. I made that number up."

Her laugh echoed softly through the mist.

Phei smiled and lowered his mouth to the side of her neck, leaving an affectionate kiss there before his gaze dropped toward her stomach. His other hand stayed low, fingers spreading over the gentle, taut warmth of her belly as if he could feel the tiny life through skin and water.

’My child.’

That thought still produced the same impossible warmth in his chest.

He really had a child.

Some tiny little person was growing inside Melissa because of them, and Phei still hadn’t adjusted to how quickly that knowledge had rearranged pieces of him he hadn’t even known could move. He already wanted to protect someone whose face he had never seen. Already worried about them.

Already imagined them asleep against his chest.

Melissa watched his expression change in the reflection of the darkened glass ahead of them.

There was something almost embarrassingly soft about him whenever he looked at her stomach now.

She smiled.

Then remembered something.

"Phei."

"Mm?"

"There was something I didn’t bring up last night."

The warmth in his expression immediately sharpened into concern.

Melissa felt his arms tighten slightly around her. His cock, still pressed along the cleft of her ass beneath the water, twitched against her.

"What?"

She glanced downward.

"Have you noticed my Mark disappeared?"

Phei blinked.

For perhaps two seconds, nothing registered.

Then his eyes dropped..

Melissa rolled her eyes when she say the precise moment curiosity became shameless appreciation. The water had left her skin gleaming. Her breasts sat full and heavy above the surface, nipples tight, the wet curve of her waist narrowing toward the place where his Mark had once rested low on her pelvis. The smooth, unmarked skin there looked almost indecent now that he knew what was missing.

Her brow rose.

"Phei."

"What?"

"You are supposed to be checking the Mark."

"I am."

"You’ve been checking for a suspiciously long time."

"Thorough investigation."

Melissa laughed and lightly slapped his thigh beneath the water.

Phei finally behaved... his gaze focused low upon her pelvis, exactly where his Mark had once rested against her skin.

Melissa had been the first woman who had willingly accepted his Mark.

The first.

Long before its later changes, before Roxanne had become tangled with with husband life and it had changed thanks to, and just not so long ago the System started using words such as Living Soul and Melissa had carried that symbol upon herself as something private and sacred between them.

An eternal claim; an acceptance.

Evidence that however ridiculous their relationship had become, she had chosen him and allowed something belonging to Phei to remain upon her forever.

Except now it was gone.

Phei’s thumb passed carefully over the smooth place where the Mark had once rested. The skin there was warm, slick, and far too bare. He traced the empty space again, slower, as if the absence itself had become something he needed to memorize.

Melissa watched him.

"See?"

"Yeah."

His brows drew together. "It really is gone."

For some reason the absence bothered him more than expected before his hand moved upward back to her stomach where the concern vanished beneath a grin.

Melissa noticed. "What?"

Phei looked at her belly... then at her: "We upgraded."

Her eyes narrowed.

Phei’s smile widened as his palm gently covered their unborn child. "I mean, the Mark was a pretty good symbol for eternal love." He kissed her shoulder, then the side of her throat, then the wet slope of her breast just above the waterline. "But I think we have something slightly harder to compete with now."