Epilogue
Talia
Three years later
The baby monitor crackles on the nightstand.
I stop folding Gigi’s tiny yellow onesie and hold my breath.
Motherhood has turned me into the kind of woman who can identify three different kinds of baby sighs from across a room. This one is not the dangerous one.
Still, Jayce goes still beside the dresser.
A soft rustle comes through the monitor. Then a tiny grunt. Then silence.
Our six-month-old daughter settles again.
I exhale. “False alarm.”
Jayce keeps his eyes on the monitor for another few seconds. “She kicked the blanket off.”
“You cannot know that from a grunt.”
“She does the same pissed-off sound when her feet get cold.”
I stare at him.
He looks back, completely serious.
This man has taken bullets, broken cartel routes, and once walked through a cabin door like vengeance in leather.
He also knows our daughter’s cold-feet noise.
My heart does something ridiculous.
“You’re very scary,” I tell him.
His mouth twitches. “Terrifying.”
“She has you wrapped around her tiny hand.”
“Yeah.”
He crosses the room and brushes his thumb over the onesie in my hands. Gigi has already spit up on it twice today, because she is beautiful, perfect, and deeply committed to laundry-based warfare.
“She smiled at me this morning,” he says.
“She smiles at the ceiling fan too.”
His eyes narrow. “Different smile.”
“Of course.”
“It was.”
I bite my lip because if I smile too hard, I might cry, and I have learned that postpartum hormones do not care if a woman has dignity.
Jayce notices. His thumb brushes my wrist, right over the faint scar from the night we met.
The one from the villa.
The one he still touches like a vow.
Three years, and he still does that to me.
Three years since he tore through a cabin door and carried me out of the worst day of my life.
Three years since Brianna went to prison, Landon followed, and Salazar’s pretty little empire started collapsing under the weight of every girl the Saints and Sinners dragged into daylight.
Dad and Brianna’s mother called once, mostly to ask if this would “reflect badly” on them, then disappeared again like neglect was a family tradition.
We married one month after we met. The wedding was held in the clubhouse backyard, under string lights and pine trees, with every Damned Saint and every old lady there to witness it.
Nya, Ghost’s wife, made my bouquet, and Sage, Havoc’s wife, baked the cake.
Viper cried and threatened two prospects for noticing. It’s his thing, or so I heard.
Havoc walked me halfway down the aisle because Dad didn’t deserve the job, and Shadow met me at the end like he’d been waiting his whole life with his hands clenched and his eyes burning.
Now we have a baby asleep across the hall, a house tucked on the edge of Saint territory, and a marriage that still feels like he kissed a claim into my soul and dared the world to touch it.
Jayce takes the onesie from my hands and sets it on the dresser.
“Jayce,” I say, mostly because his name is the only defense I have.
His hand slides to my waist. “Love.”
My stomach dips.
“What?”
His mouth brushes my ear. “The house is quiet.”
“For now.”
“Then we use for now.”
“That is very romantic.”
“I’m not feeling romantic.”
Oh.
Well.
That answers that.
He turns me toward the bed with sure hands.
I look up at him, trying for serious. Failing because my husband is all hard muscle, dark hunger, and silver at his temples, with gray eyes hot enough to turn my bones liquid.
His hand slides up my back, strong and rough, then closes around the nape of my neck.
“Love.”
He kisses me hard.
The kind of kiss that reminds me he was never civilized, only controlled. His mouth takes mine, his beard scraping my skin, his hand at my neck keeping me exactly where he wants me.
I melt for about two seconds.
Then I bite his lower lip.
He growls.
That sound still hits me everywhere.
“Careful,” he says.
I smile against his mouth. “You always say that.”
“You still never listen.”
“Yet you married me.”
“Best mistake I ever made.”
My chest goes soft.
My body goes hot.
Terrible combination.
He walks me backward until my knees hit the mattress. Then he turns me, bends me forward, and presses one broad hand between my shoulder blades.
My breath catches.
“Jayce.”
“You started this,” he says, voice rough against my ear.
“I did not.”
His hand slides over my hip. “Liar.”
The word scrapes over me.
I brace my hands on the bed as he moves behind me. His fingers catch the waistband of my leggings and drag them down my thighs, taking my panties with them.
Cool air brushes my skin.
His hand follows.
Hot.
Possessive.
Familiar.
He palms my hip, then my ass, squeezing hard enough to make me gasp.
“You still like that,” he mutters.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
His hand comes down with a sharp smack.
My whole body jolts.
“Liar.”
I bite my lip, fighting a sound.
He bends over me, chest against my back, mouth at my ear.
“Quiet, love,” he rasps. “Unless you want me to make you beg louder.”
I turn my face into the comforter. “Bossy menace.”
“Husband.”
That one still gets me.
Every time.
I hear his zipper.
My pulse turns wild.
His hand slides between my thighs, finding me already wet, because apparently my body has no pride where this man is concerned.
A rough sound leaves him.
“Always ready for me.”
“Smug,” I whisper.
“Accurate.”
He pushes two fingers inside me, slow and deep, and my knees nearly forget their purpose.
“Jayce.”
“What do you need?”
“You.”
“You have me.”
“Then move.”
His fingers leave me. A second later, he grips my hips and pushes into me in one hard, deep thrust that steals the air from my lungs.
The sound I make disappears into the bedding.
He goes still behind me, buried all the way, breathing rough against my shoulder.
“Mine,” he says.
Three years ago, that word would have scared me.
Now it steadies me.
Now it is home.
“Yours,” I whisper.
That breaks whatever patience he had left.
He pulls back and drives into me again, rougher this time, his grip hard on my hips as he sets a rhythm that makes my hands twist in the comforter.
Every thrust fills me deep. Every drag of him through me sends heat sparking low and sharp until my whole body feels like it belongs to his hands, his mouth, his voice.
I grip the bedding.
He grips me.
And even like this, even with his control fraying and his body powerful behind mine, he holds me like something precious.
Rough, yes.
Careless, never.
His hand slides up my back, wraps around my throat, and tips my head just enough for his mouth to find mine.
The angle is impossible.
The kiss is filthy.
Perfect.
“Look at me,” he orders against my mouth.
I manage it, barely, turning enough to catch his eyes over my shoulder.
Dark.
Wrecked.
Mine.
“You know what you are?” he asks.
My breath breaks. “What?”
“My wife.”
A shiver tears through me.
“My woman.”
Another thrust.
Another spark.
“My home.”
That one undoes me.
“My little hellcat.”
The pleasure hits hard, bright and consuming. I bury my face in the comforter, shaking through it while he follows me over with a low, broken sound and his hand locked around my hip.
For a while, neither of us moves.
Then he eases us down onto the bed, pulling me against his chest. His hand finds mine and lifts it to his mouth, kissing the faint scar on my palm.
My throat tightens.
“Don’t make me cry after sex,” I whisper. “That’s unfair.”
His mouth lingers against my skin.
“Love you.”
Two words.
Simple.
Still rare enough to feel like treasure.
I smile, soft and sleepy and completely lost.
“Love you too, Shadow.”
THE END