Epilogue 2
Allister
Bonus Epilogue Eighteen Months and One Day Later
The day after Christmas, and I've got my girl all to myself.
Snow's been coming down since before the sun, fat and lazy, turning the whole world soft.
Back at the mansion it's chaos. May and my mom and Leah's old nanny are in a standoff over whose turn it is to hold the twins, Decker's hiding in the den with a plate of leftover ham, and Henrietta's already started a second roast like the first one didn't feed an army.
Nobody's going to miss us for an hour. Maybe two.
I told Leah I was stealing her. Pressed my mouth to the spot under her ear and said it low, the voice that makes her go quiet and pink. She didn't argue. She never argues when I use that voice.
So now we're forty minutes down a county road in the Suburban, the heater roaring, her sock feet up on the dash, and she's humming along to some song I don't know the words to.
Her hair's loose. There's a smear of blue frosting at the corner of her mouth from the cookies she swiped on the way out the door, and I want to lick it off so bad my jaw aches.
A year of marriage. A year of those clubs running themselves so I can stay home and keep my hands on her. Two babies asleep in matching cribs, and the woman who gave them to me singing in my passenger seat.
I didn't know a man could be this lucky. I didn't know I'd get to keep her.
"There." She points through the wipers at a low building set back off the road, neon humming pink in the gray. PIE in the window. OPEN. A diner, the kind with cracked vinyl booths and a counter, the kind that's been here longer than either of us.
"Hungry, baby?"
"Always." She's already got her boots half on. "I want to look. Henrietta only makes apple, and I'm a blueberry woman, Allister, you know this about me."
I do. I keep an entire shelf of the pantry stocked with blueberry Pop-Tarts for a reason.
I cut the engine and round the hood before she's got her door open, because she'll forget and try to step down on her own, and her left knee still doesn't trust the cold. I lift her out and set her on her feet on the salted lot, hands on her waist until her balance settles under my palms.
"I can walk, you big brute."
"I know you can." I don't let go. "Doesn't mean I have to like watching, precious."
She rolls her eyes and tows me through the door by two fingers hooked in my belt.
The bell over the door rings as we step inside, where it's warm and loud, with grease and coffee.
A waitress calls us hon as she welcomes us, and Leah makes a beeline for the glass case at the counter, hands clasped behind her back, leaning in to study every shelf like she's at the Louvre.
I take the stool nearest and let myself look at her.
Wide brown eyes, that bottom lip caught in her teeth, the little crease of concentration between her brows.
She's mine. Still gets me, the simple fact of it.
I don't notice the two of them until one starts talking.
Booth by the window. College age, maybe, or close enough to think they're slick. The taller one slides out and props an elbow on the counter beside my girl like he owns it.
"Whoa. Hey. You come here a lot?"
The cold drops over me. It's instant and familiar, the same rage that used to live in me before I found her.
My hand flattens on the counter.
"Because I've never seen you before." The second one's up now too, crowding her other side. "And I'd remember."
Leah doesn't look up from the pie case.
I'm halfway off the stool. Then she speaks, and I go still to listen.
"That's so sweet." Her voice is bright, friendly, the voice she uses on door-to-door salesmen and people she's about to ruin. "But I really can't talk to you."
"Aw, come on. Just a name."
She finally turns and gives them the full force of those eyes, all wide and apologetic, one hand pressed flat to her chest.
"I can't. My daddy doesn't let me talk to strangers."
Silence. The taller one's mouth opens and nothing comes out. The other one laughs, uncertain, scanning the diner for the punchline.
I let them find me.
I'm a big man. I know what I look like when I stand all the way up and let my face do the rest. Both of them go a particular shade of gray, the shade men go when their lizard brain catches up to their mouth.
"Found him," I say.
"We were just talking," the tall one starts.
"You were talking to my wife." I lay a hand flat on the counter between him and her, big enough that he leans away from it on instinct.
"So here's how this goes. You sit back down.
You eat your eggs. And you don't put your eyes on her again, not once, or they'll be wiring your jaw shut before New Year's. We clear?"
He nods so fast it's almost funny. The other one's already folding himself back into the booth.
"Good." I gentle my voice for the last part, because the threat already landed, and there's no need to shout. "Smart boys."
They sit. They study their plates like the meaning of life is written in the hash browns.
And my girl, my sweet, smug, terrible girl, turns back to the pie case like nothing happened, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"They have blueberry pie," she says. "And a blueberry crumble. I think I want the crumble."
I cross the last three feet between us. Slide both arms around her from behind, lock my hands low on her belly, and fit my mouth to the top of her head where her hair smells like cinnamon, snow, and the lemon stuff she puts in it.
"Daddy doesn't let you talk to strangers." I drag the words slow along the shell of her ear, and her shiver runs all the way down. "That's right, precious. Good girl."
"It worked, didn't it?" She tips her head back against my chest, smug as a cat. "You should be thanking me. I saved those poor boys from getting murdered in a pie diner."
"You like winding me up." My mouth's at her throat now, my hands splayed wide and possessive over her belly. "You like knowing exactly what it does to me. What I'm going to do about it."
"Maybe." Breathless. Not smug anymore.
"No maybe. I'm taking you out to that truck, and I'm going to remind you who that smart little mouth belongs to. Then I'm going to remind the rest of you."
She laughs, then it cuts off into a small gasp. Her knee goes. I catch the drop in her weight the beat before it happens, and my arm's already a band across her hips, taking all of her so her boots barely scuff the floor.
"I've got you." Right in her ear, only for her. "I'll never let you fall, precious girl. You know that."
"I know."
She turns in my arms until her face is against my throat, her breath coming fast and warm, and the heat roars up in me, mean and sudden and impossible to put down.
I should buy her the crumble, sit her in a booth with a fork in her hand, and save everything else for later.
"Crumble to go," I tell the waitress, and drop two twenties on the counter without looking away from my wife.
The lot's a sheet of white and salt and pink neon.
I've got the box of blueberry crumble in one hand and Leah tucked under my other arm, and I get the back door of the Suburban open and her up onto the bench seat before the cold can sink its teeth in.
Then I climb in after her and pull the door shut on the whole quiet world.
She's already reaching for me.
"Brutus." There it is. The name she only pulls out when she wants something, or when something's wrong. Nothing's wrong. So I know exactly what she wants.
"Yeah, precious." I get her under me, flat on the wide leather, my knee wedged between hers, both her wrists gathered up in one of my hands above her head, because she likes it, likes being held down. "You started something in there. You know that, don't you?"
"I don’t know what you mean,” she laughs. “I was very well behaved."
"You called me Daddy in front of two strangers and got my whole body lit up in a pie diner." I push her dress up her thighs with my free hand. "Bad girls who do that get taken care of. Right here. You ready to take what you started?"
"It's different when it's the truth." Her eyes go dark and dancing, and then her breath snags as my hand finds her bare. "Oh."
She's not wearing a thing under that dress. I threw out every pair she owned the week after our wedding and kept it that way. My fingers slide straight into slick, scalding heat.
"Look at this." My voice drops to gravel. "Soaked clean through. All this from running your smart mouth at me?"
"From you." Her hips are already chasing my hand. "It's always you, Allister."
"Damn right it's me." I push two fingers into her, slowly, and she flutters and clamps. "Nobody else gets to make you this wet. Nobody else gets to so much as think about it. Say it again for me. Whose is this?"
"Yours."
"Whose?"
"Yours. Only yours. Always yours."
"That's my good girl." I let go of her wrists, shove the bench back as far as it'll roll, and drop down between her thighs in the cramped dark, hooking her knees over my shoulders the way I've done a thousand times.
"Brutus, someone could see," she gasps.
"Let them, baby." I drag my tongue up the center of her cunt, and her whole body bows off the seat on a low howl.
She tastes like nothing else on this earth, the most delicious fucking flavor on any menu.
"Let the whole lot stand at the glass and watch who you belong to.
You're not shy about it. Now be a good girl and give it to me.
All of it. That's your only job in this world right now, precious. Cum in my mouth."
I work her clit with my tongue, talking to her between passes. How good she is. How perfect. How she's the one woman who'll ever get me on my knees in a cold truck like a starving man. Her fingers fist in my hair. Her thighs start to quake against my ears.
"That's it. I feel you tightening up on me. Don't fight it." I seal my mouth over her clit and growl the next part into her. "Cum for me. Show me who you are."
She breaks apart on a cry that fogs every window in the truck, flooding my mouth, and I drink down every last bit because it's mine, because she's mine, because I'd live right here between her legs if she'd let me.
Then I'm up and over her, freeing my cock, so hard it aches with every heartbeat.
"Allister, please." She's reaching, wild, grabbing fistfuls of my shirt. "I need you inside me. Now."
"There she is." I notch the head of me against her and hold there, shaking with how bad I want to drive home. "You've made a monster out of me, you know that, precious? There's only one thing on earth that puts him down. Tell me again whose pussy this is."
"Yours." Broken now. "Yours, please, Allister."
I sink into her slow, and her body opens to take me, inch by greedy inch, until I'm seated to the root. We go still. Both of us breathing hard in the dark with the snow ticking on the roof.
"That's my girl. That's my best girl." My forehead drops to hers. "Feel how deep I am? Right there. That's where I live now."
Then I move.
It's not slow for long. It never is with us, with the way she clutches and pulls and digs her weakened heels into the small of my back like she's afraid I'll get away, like I'd ever go anywhere.
The Suburban rocks. The windows go white.
Her cries climb and climb, and I swallow some while I let the rest fill the cab, because nobody's out here, and she can be as loud as she needs to be.
"Take it," I grunt against her throat, hips driving home. "Take all of me. You always can, that's it. Christ, you're so tight, squeezing me like you'll die if I pull out. So don't make me. Ever."
"Don't." She sobs it into my shoulder. "Don't ever leave."
"Never. Not in this life or the next one." I get a hand between us and roll the swollen knot of her under my thumb, and she breaks apart for me again, body clamping down so hard the edges of everything go white.
The sounds she makes. Knowing I'm the one tearing them out of her. The way she soaks me, the way she shakes, the way she screams my name into the cold air.
"One more." I grind it out against her throat. "You've got one more in you, and I'm not leaving here without it. Give it to me, baby. Don't you dare hold out."
"I can't. I can't."
"You can. Look at me." I wait until those drowning brown eyes climb up to mine. "Cum for me, precious. Let me fill you up the way I'm dying to."
That’s what tips her over the edge, another climax rolling through her on a long shudder that pulls me right down with her.
I empty into her with a groan, holding her hips flush to mine, pouring every drop into her because the animal part of me wants to plant another baby in there, still wants her full of me, so anyone who looks at her knows she’s owned, claimed.
Mine.
"That's it," I rasp against her temple, hips still pulsing, wringing the last out of us both. "That's where it stays. Good girl. My good girl."
After that, the only sound is our breathing and the snow.
She's boneless under me, one hand tangled into my hair like she dare not let go, her heartbeat slamming against my chest as she slowly, slowly comes down. I press a kiss to her temple. To the temporary unicorn tattoo on her hip. To the curve of her shoulder where the dress slid down.
I gather her up against me and pull the blanket I keep in the back over the two of us, because I know my girl, and I know her legs are jelly and there's no walking happening for a while.
She tilts her chin up, sleepy and pleased with herself, and there's that look she gets, the one I've never found a word for, the one that's been undoing me since the courthouse.
"I love you, Brutus."
"I love you too, precious girl." I kiss the blue frosting somehow still clinging to the corner of her mouth, finally, the way I wanted to forty minutes and one diner ago. "Now eat your pie. You earned it."
The box has gotten crushed somewhere in all of it. The crumble's a wreck. She eats it anyway, sitting in my lap with the fork, feeding me bites between her own, both of us warm and wrecked and in no hurry at all.
Worth the wait. Every single day of it.
Woot! Want to read the 2nd Gen!?? YES! Emily (Deck and May’s little girl gets tangled up with Leah and Allister’s boy twin…Cain. Decker doesn’t want anyone around his little girl so it’s secrets and sin and a little tension! Grab it next! HERE