Epilogue #2
She mumbles something about needing flour and heads out of the back door shouting for Gregor to take her to the store.
I carry Mia up the stairs. Past the library with the reading table that I never did restack with books because every time I look at it, I think about her on the edge of it in the lamplight, and I prefer the memory to the organisation.
I carry her into my room. Our room. It became ours somewhere around night three when she stopped pretending she was going to sleep in the guest room and I stopped pretending I wanted her to.
I set her down on the bed. She looks up at me.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
I lie down beside her. She turns into me.
My hand finds her stomach. Flat. Nothing to feel yet.
But it's there. Something we made. Something that exists because she walked to my club on a Friday night with blood in her hair, and I decided to open a door I told myself I wouldn't open, and she told me to stop deciding for her.
She puts her hand over mine.
"Scared?" she asks.
"No."
"Liar."
I look at her. She looks at me.
"Terrified," I admit.
She smiles. Presses closer.
"Good," she says. "Me too."
Outside, the early summer sun is still rising over the grounds. The lake is silver in the morning light.
The mandate is met. The deadline is passed. The family is intact. The empire continues.
And the woman in my arms shifts against me, presses her cold feet against my shins the way she does every morning, and says, "How nice is the ring?"
"It's nice."
"How nice?"
"Obscenely nice."
"Good," she says. "I've earned obscene and obscene suits me." She begins unbuttoning my shirt.
Mia
I work the buttons open slowly. Not because I'm being seductive.
I'm being seductive by accident. Mostly I'm just enjoying the way his stomach tightens under my fingers as I reach the lower ones, the way his breathing changes, the way his jaw sets like he's trying very hard to let me lead when every instinct in his body wants to take over.
Five months, and that hasn't changed. The control. The restraint. The way he holds himself back until I give him permission not to.
I like giving him permission.
I push the shirt off his shoulders. It falls behind him on the bed. He's propped up on the pillows, watching me with those dark eyes, and I'm straddling his thighs in nothing but another of his shirts that I'm now pulling over my head.
His gaze drops. It always does. Every time I undress in front of this man, his eyes do the same thing, they track downward with a kind of focused hunger that still makes my skin prickle, even after all these months. Like he's seeing me for the first time. Like the novelty hasn't worn off.
It hasn't worn off for me either.
"Come here," he says. Low.
"I'm already here."
"Closer."
I lean forward. His hand slides into my hair and he kisses me. Deep. Unhurried. The kind of kiss that's a conversation, that says things neither of us has put into words yet because we've been too busy with pregnancy tests and uncles and proposals.
I pull back. Press my forehead to his.
"I want to try something," I say.
His thumb traces my jaw. "Tell me."
"I want to sit on your face."
His hand stills.
I watch his pupils blow wide. Watch the muscle in his jaw twitch.
He looks at me with an expression that is caught somewhere between surprise and the very specific intensity he gets when I say something filthy.
Which isn't often. Mia Lawson, who is helpful and quiet, has become significantly less quiet in this bed over the last five months, but direct requests still cost me something. Still make me blush.
I'm blushing now. I can feel it climbing my chest.
"Yes," he says. One word. No hesitation. He shifts down the bed, settling flat on his back, and looks up at me. "Get up here."
My heart is hammering. It's ridiculous. I've had this man in every room of this house. I've done things with him I didn't know I was capable of wanting, let alone doing. But this feels new. This feels like an edge I haven't stepped off yet.
I move up his body. Knees either side of his chest. Then higher. His hands find my thighs. Big. Warm. Steadying.
"You control this," he says. Looking up at me. "You set the pace. If it's too much, you lift up. Understood?"
I nod.
"Words, Mia."
"Understood."
His hands slide up to my hips. He guides me forward. I grip the headboard.
And then his mouth is on me and my brain whites out.
It shouldn't still surprise me. After everything. After the library and the table and the bedroom and that time against the bathroom wall when we were supposed to be getting ready for dinner at the main house. His mouth shouldn't still take me apart this efficiently.
It does.
He starts slow. Long, flat strokes that make my thighs shake. His hands on my hips are firm but not controlling, holding me steady, letting me move, letting me find the angle that works. I rock forward. His tongue presses harder. I gasp and grip the headboard tighter.
"Oh—" My head drops between my arms. "Iosif."
He makes a sound against me. A low hum that vibrates through my entire body.
He's enjoying this. I can tell from the grip on my hips, from the way his fingers dig in slightly, from the sounds he's making.
He likes this. He likes me above him, likes looking up at me, likes the fact that I asked for it.
I start to move. Tentative at first. A slow grind forward and back, finding the rhythm, finding the pressure. His tongue adjusts to match me. Wherever I go, he follows. Whatever angle I find, he meets it.
This is what he does. In bed and out of it.
He pays attention. He reads the situation.
He adjusts. The same man who mapped the Vinzlee vacuum in an afternoon and restructured a power dynamic over a phone call applies that same focused intelligence to the movement of my hips, and the result is devastating.
I move faster. His hands tighten. I feel the edge building, the familiar hot pull low in my belly, and I chase it. No self-consciousness. No performance. Just me and his mouth and the headboard under my hands and the sound of my own breathing, loud and ragged in the quiet room.
"Right there," I pant. "Don't move, don't change anything—"
He doesn't. He stays exactly where he is, tongue flat, pressure constant, and I grind down against him. The orgasm breaks over me in a rush that makes me cry out and curl forward, my forehead pressed against the headboard, my thighs clamping around his head, my whole body shaking.
He holds me through it. Hands firm on my hips. Mouth soft now, gentling, easing me down. Small, light passes of his tongue that make me twitch and shiver with each aftershock.
I lift up on trembling legs and slide down his body. My skin is oversensitive. Every point of contact sparks. His chest against mine. His hands on my back. His mouth finding mine, and I taste myself on him. The intimacy of it makes something ache behind my ribs.
"Good?" he asks against my lips.
"You know it was good. Don't fish."
The corner of his mouth lifts. The almost-smile. The one that still does things to my chest after all this time.
I can feel him hard beneath me. Pressing against my thigh. I shift my hips and he makes a sound. Low. Strained.
"I want to watch you come on me," I say. The words feel bold and new. Everything between us still feels like a frontier, even now. Even engaged. Even pregnant. "Not inside me. On me."
His eyes darken. "Mia—"
"You've been filling me since we met, but you said on that first night, how you wanted to claim my pussy." I trace a finger down his chest. Down his stomach. His muscles contract under my touch. "You've already done your job. Now I want to watch."
Something flickers in his expression. Something that's half amusement and half raw want. "My job?"
I pull open his slacks, slide my hand beneath them. "Your very important reproductive duties." I wrap my hand around him and he inhales sharp through his teeth. "Consider yourself relieved of active duty."
"You're hilarious."
"I'm hilarious and I'm holding your cock. Multitasking."
He laughs. Short. Real. The sound cuts off when I start to move my hand. His head presses back into the pillow. His jaw tightens. His hips flex up into my grip.
I shift down. Settle between his thighs. This part I've learned. This part I've practiced on him with the same dedication he brings to everything he does to me. I’ve studied his reactions, learned what makes him groan, what makes his hands fist in the sheets, what makes his breathing go ragged.
His hand comes to my hair.
I use my mouth first. Take him in slowly, as much as I can, and his groan is deep and guttural and makes something hot pulse between my legs. I work him with my hand and my mouth together, the way he taught me, the way that makes his thighs tense and his stomach flex.
"Mia." His voice is wrecked. "If you keep—I'm going to—"
I pull off. Look up at him. He's a wreck. This man who controls empires and runs operations and handles everything. His chest is heaving. His pupils are blown. His hand is shaking in my hair.
"Come on me," I say. "I want to feel it."
I move back up his body and straddle his hips. Take him in my hand and press him flat against me, against the slick heat of me, not inside, just there, the length of him sliding against my folds, and I rock.
His hands slam onto my hips.
“Show me who owns my pussy,” I say with a pout as I pinch my nipples.
"Fuck." The word tears out of him. His head drops back. I rock again, sliding against him, coating him with how wet I still am, and his grip turns bruising.
He flips me over in one swift movement, then takes his cock in his hand.
“Spread,” he says between pants and I know what his is asking. I bring my legs as far apart as I can, stretching them sideways and up in a wide ‘V.’
“Fuck,” he says again as he jerks himself relentlessly, never taking his eyes from my pussy. Every stroke has the head sliding through my center, bumping against my clit until I’m mewling with the sensitivity of it.
His cock pulses against me. I feel the first rush of warmth hit my skin, and I look down and watch it happen, watch him come on me, on my pussy, on my stomach, and the sight of it, the visual of this man losing himself against my body, tips me over an edge I didn't know I was close to.
I come again. Quieter this time. A rolling, deep thing that pulses through my core while he's still spilling against me. My hand goes to my center, presses against my cum slicked clit as I shudder through the last of my orgasm and the final drops of his cum land on my parted lips.
I look down at the mess between us, his cum on my skin, glistening in the light, and I feel something that isn't just satisfaction. It's possession. Mine. This man, this body, this life. Mine.
"Don't move," he says. His voice is rough as he lowers one of my legs, then the other.
"I wasn't planning to."
He reaches for the nightstand. Pulls a handful of tissues free.
“No,” I say. “Leave it a little longer.”
He growls a little but leans back and looks at the mess we’ve made.
“Well, now you’re mine in every way,” he says, watching me move his cum through my folds and into my entrance.
“Always was,” I reply.