Epilogue
The door creaks when it opens.
Not ominously—just the soft, uncertain kind of sound new things make when they haven’t been used yet. Lucian holds it open for me, balancing our last two bags on one shoulder. The moment I step inside, I take a minute to appreciate it all.
The flat is small.
Nothing like the palatial estate his family owns in Sussex, or the Lockhart estate that I grew up in.
It’s modern with two bedrooms, one bathroom, an open living space with a couch that still smells like the plastic it was wrapped in, and a kitchen barely big enough for two people to dance in—though I already know we’ll try.
But it’s ours.
We both agreed that we wanted to try living a normal life—far from the wealth and stuffy high-society drama that neither of us liked.
This flat represents that beginning. It’s still in a safe area and modern.
But our neighbors don’t have peerages or shop exclusively on High Street.
They work jobs. They don’t have drivers so they drive themselves around in cars that don’t cost half a million pounds.
The ceilings are high enough to feel airy.
The walls are freshly painted, warm-toned white.
There’s a window over the sink that faces a narrow side street with crooked brick buildings and chimneys that puff out gentle curls of smoke.
And even though we’ve barely unpacked, and it doesn’t have the faintest trace of us in it yet, it feels like home.
Lucian drops the bags and steps in behind me, crouching down to wrap his arms around my waist. His chin rests on my shoulder, his big hands splayed across my midriff.
“Well?” he murmurs. “Do we hate it?”
“No,” I whisper. “We love it.”
We haven’t said it out loud yet—what this move really means.
We’re not just changing cities.
We’re not just enrolling in a normal sixth form.
We’re starting over.
No blood. No rituals. No family names dragging behind us like iron chains.
Just two people in love. Lucian nuzzles into the crook of my neck. “I gave you the top drawer in the dresser, and I’ll unpack for you”
I turn, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t even fold your clothes.”
“No,” he admits, lips twitching, “but I plan on throwing yours in there with great care and enthusiasm.”
I laugh, lightheaded from the strangeness of it all. If a few months ago you gave me a million guesses, I would’ve never imagined I would be doing this with the ‘sinner’ I saw smoking in a dark corner at that cursed school.
It’s early afternoon. We’ve been up since dawn. My legs ache from the stairs—an apartment on the top floor sounded good until I realized there were no elevators—and I still don’t know where I packed my toothbrush.
But the way Lucian looks at me, like I’m just his future, but his present and past—like I’m his everything. The ache disappears.
Lucian wraps his arms around my waist lifting me to my tiptoes so our lips meet. He kisses me. It’s a soft kiss at first, lingering.
But then it gets deeper, and I sink into it.
He’s got me pressed against the counter, his hands sliding under my coat, tugging at the buttons of my sweater. Lucian kisses me greedily like I’m his first taste of air after a lifetime underwater. It’s like this every time and I can’t get enough of it.
We come up for air just long enough to kick off our shoes and stumble our way to the bedroom kissing through laughs, gasps as we crash into doorframes, giggles as we crash into each other.
The bed isn’t even made yet. There’s no sheet, just the mattress and two pillows we’d thrown on top in our rush to explore the flat. We fall into it, a tangle of limbs.
Lucian’s mouth finds my neck as he pushes my sweater up, his hands reverent as they roam over my bare skin.
“You’re so warm,” he breathes. “You always run warm.”
“Maybe you’re just cold,” I tease, curling my fingers into his hair.
“I was,” he says, voice low. “Until you.”
I tug at his shirt until it’s gone. He does the same to mine.
Then my jeans. Then his belt. Lucian kisses every part of me like a prayer.
All my scars, my stomach, my thighs—he even pays extra attention to the birthmark near my abdomen.
He lingers at the hollow beneath my ribs, his tongue brushing the edge of my sternum, sending chills down my spine.
Next thing I know, he’s spreading my thighs. His fingers slide into me—two, then three, slow and relentless. My body opens around him, wet and aching. Every thrust presses against a place that makes my toes curl.
His eyes are locked on mine, watching me the kind of amusement that only a man who knows how to make me fall apart would. He licks his lips, watching as the strangled moans fall from my lips. He stops right as I’m on the edge.
“I’m not letting you get away so easily, Edie,” Lucian whispers. “I’m going to enjoy every inch of you.” His hands move to my knees and with a jerk, he spreads my legs as wide as they can go, his green eyes looking over me like a hungry man at a feast.
He leans down and licks a slow line up my inner thigh. I moan, thighs shaking. His hands spread me as wide as my legs will go, hands underneath me to pull me closer to him, and then his mouth is on me—worshipping, devouring me like it’s ritual.
I’m losing control of myself, of my grip on reality.
All I can feel is the pleasure rippling through every inch of my body.
His mouth seals over my cunt, tongue plunging deep, licking up every pulse of arousal with greedy, unholy delight.
He moans into me like it tastes divine, like I was made for this, for him.
My thighs tremble against his face and my whole body arches on its own, hips bucking to match the rhythm of his tongue.
“Fuck,” I gasp, one hand clawing into the bed beneath us, the other tangled in his hair. “Lucian—oh god—”
He growls in response, and the sound vibrates through my clit like electricity in my blood. My whole body clenches, nerves singing, drenched in heat and need. “There are no gods here, Edie. Only me.”
He suckles me.
Tongue circling, lips dragging, pressure building.
I can’t hold back. My thighs tighten around his head, a desperate, instinctive plea to keep going. I feel myself spiraling—too much, too soon, too intense—and I don’t want to stop it.
“I’m—I’m going to—”
“Do it,” he rasps, breath hot against my wetness. “I give you permission.”
He flicks his tongue over my clit once more, then presses it flat and sucks.
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me like lightning through water. My whole body bows off the bed, mouth open in a silent scream, my pussy pulsing around nothing and everything. Stars bloom behind my eyelids. My skin feels lit from within, water splashing out of me like a faucet.
And Lucian keeps going.
Lapping through my climax, drinking every drop of me like it’s his reward.
By the time he finally lifts his head, his mouth is slick with me, and with glistening lips he says, “You came like you were made for me.” He licks his lips. “And you know what? Maybe you were. I don’t believe in a god, but you do make me question it.”
Lucian smiles like he didn’t just wreck my whole world. He’s making jokes and I can barely move from the pleasure. He rises from between my legs, towering above me. His cock—I swear, I don’t know how that thing fits inside me—is hard between us, dripping with precum.
My breath catches.
He watches me with feral devotion, hands braced on either side of my spread thighs. “Do you want more?” he asks.
I nod, throat dry. “Yes.”
“More what?”
“Of you,” I whisper. “All of you.”
His gaze burns. “Say it again.”
“I want you to fuck me, Lucian.”
That tears the last thread of restraint.
He grabs me by the hips and pulls me forward until I’m on the edge of the bed, his thick cock dragging through my slick folds. And then—he thrusts. One brutal, claiming push.
I scream.
Electricity skitters over my skin—and I feel it in my bones, feel it in my cunt as he fucks into me, slow and deep, stretching me around his cock with a satisfying burn. Each thrust slams into something deep inside me .
“Fuck, Edie. You’re so tight,” he whispers through gritted teeth. “So fucking wet.”
Tension coils in the air, thick and hot. I feel it gathering in my spine, pooling in my core, an orgasm building faster than I can process it. There’s no slow build-up, just everything slamming into me all at once.
He leans forward, one hand sliding to my throat. “You take me so well. You’re mine,” he says, voice soft and cruel and beautiful. His thrusts grow harder. “Say it.”
“I’m yours,” I pant. “Lucian, I’m yours.”
My cunt clenches hard around him, and he groans. He slams into me harder, faster, rutting like a beast, his eyes locked on mine.“I’m going to come inside you,” he snarls. “I’m going to fill you until you drip with me. Until your body remembers.”
My orgasm hits like a tidal wave, slamming through me, locking my muscles around his cock as he drives in one final time, and comes.
I feel it—thick, coating my insides, painting me with him. His roar echoes through the empty flat. When he pulls out, slow and reverent, cum that leaks from me. He gathers it with his fingers and pushes it back inside, gently, possessively. “Keep it,” he murmurs. “All of it.”
I tremble.
Sweat slicks my skin.
My thighs are shaking.
I’m sore.
But I’m not spent—there’s one more thing that I want.
My legs are unsteady as I slide off the bed, pushing Lucian back with my hands flat against his hard chest. I kneel before him.
His cock is hard still—huge and heavy, flushed pink with need. The head glistens, slick with both our releases. I stare up at him, lips parted, chest rising and falling with shallow, reverent breaths. I look up at him.
He knows what I want.
But he knows I want him to take it.
“Open your mouth,” Lucian commands.
I obey with a smile.
His hand cradles the back of my head as he guides his cock forward, smearing it across my lips, over my tongue. He spends time watching how I take him in. The taste is heady and addictive—salt and musk. My tongue curls instinctively around him and my throat relaxes as he pushes deeper.
“Good girl,” he mutters under his breath.
That’s when he starts to move.
His cock slides over my tongue, into my throat, and I relax for him. His fingers tighten in my hair. His hips begin to roll. Each thrust is smoother. More possessive.
“You’re not just kneeling,” he rasps. “You’re surrendering.”
I moan around him, tears slipping from the corners of my eyes, but I don’t stop. I want him deeper. I want him to use me. He thrusts harder now. His cock filling my throat again and again, each stroke a prayer, a promise, a claim.
“I’m going to come,” he says. “Be a good girl for me and finish your plate.”
I moan, throat tightening around him, tongue stroking the underside of his cock as he fucks my mouth even harder. Then he shudders, throwing back his head as he roars my name. The whole thing.
Eden Grace Lockhart.
Hot, thick liquid floods my mouth—over my tongue and down my throat. I drink it greedily, swallowing every warm, salty drop. Because I want to, and because it’s his. When Lucian finally pulls back, his eyes are dazed and my body…I’m all used up.
He hoists me on the bed, and moments later he collapses beside me, burying his face in my neck. We lie there for a long time, tangled in sweat and silence. I roll onto his chest, pressing my ear over his heart. His hand drapes across my waist.
The room is quiet. Just our breathing, soft and synced. The occasional hum of a radiator switching on somewhere in the wall. The smell of us settling into the air—salt, skin, cinnamon from the latte he spilled on his hoodie an hour ago.
Lucian kisses the top of my head.
“I meant what I said,” he murmurs.
“Which part?”
“That I was cold. Before you.”
I trace lazy circles over his chest with my fingertip. “I was drowning before you. But I didn’t know it.”
He lifts my chin so he can look at me.
“There’s no going back,” he says.
“I don’t want to.”
His gaze flicks to my wrist, to my tattoo. My eyes flick to his, then back at mine.
I stare down at the thin black letters just above the inside of my wrist, curved like a brand: DAMNATION. His word is SALVATION.
Same place. Opposite arm.
Same pain. Different truth.
The words couldn’t have been more true.
To the old Eden, Lucian means damnation. But the new Eden, the one who went through hell and back, well, she knows the truth. He’s my salvation.
We’re two souls who refused to burn alone.
He pulls me tighter into his arms.
“Welcome home,” he says.
Tears well in the corner of my eyes because I realize just how much I believe it. And it’s not because someone told me I should. No, it’s because I actually feel it.
Home isn’t an estate, or even a flat.
No, my home is a person.
It’s him.
And tonight, in this little flat with nothing but bookshelves, a mattress, and our bruised bodies—I finally belong.