"Oh, um—" The invitation took Will by surprise and he hesitated, feeling all at once like an intruder in somebody else's domain, intensely conscious of the space he was taking up. Bloody daft. Addy would hardly have asked if she wasn't comfortable with it. "Sure." Gingerly, he reached out to place a hand on her belly.
Sensory memory was a curious thing. A little flutter of movement beneath his palm; a tiny foot, or perhaps a hand, pushing against Aderyn's belly; and all at once he could smell the lavender soap that Lucy had favoured, a scent that had clung to her skin even at the end of a long night at the Arms. A long night she'd insisted on working, even visibly pregnant as she was, because she was Lucy, stubborn to the core; because she'd built that business from the debt-ridden mess her first husband had left behind and she wasn't ceding it to any man. When at last the bar had shut, she'd climbed the stairs to their bedroom, and he'd been massaging her weary feet when she'd made a small gasp. Will! He's moving again! Can you feel?
It wasn't a painful memory, not really, but the strength and the suddenness of it stole his breath away.