46. EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
H e woke to the sound of her humming and found Vivienne at the window. The curtains were open, and the morning light poured in. She stood in his shirt with her hair falling down her back and her bare feet sinking on the carpet, humming to no one.
Six months since the warehouse and the fire. Six months of this: of waking in a bed that was not empty, of hearing her move through rooms that had been silent for seven years.
He lay still and watched her. Not the way he had watched her in those first weeks — cataloging, calculating, reading her face for signs of recognition or retreat. Now he looked without strategy. Without fear that it would stop.
The wonder of having her by his side had not faded one bit.
She turned and caught him looking.
"You are awake."
"I have been awake for some time."
She laughed. Six months, and the sound still spread warmth across his chest. It was one of his favorite sounds in the world — competing for first place with her sigh of pleasure when he was deep in her, or the way she moaned his name in the throes of passion.
She came back to bed, climbed in, and settled against him with the absolute entitlement of a cat in the sun. Her cold feet found his calves, and he flinched.
"Your feet are like ice. "
"Your problem now."
"They have always been my problem. It would be easier to put some wool stockings on them, but I love the brush of your bare feet against my legs."
He pulled her closer. Her cold feet pressed against his shins, and he let them. "Clearly I am a man of poor judgment and excellent taste."
She propped herself on his chest and looked down at him. The laughter was still on her face, in the softness around her eyes, the curve of her mouth. The ease.
He reached up and tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear.
She had gained weight in the last few months — not much, but he had noticed.
He noticed everything. Her face had filled out.
The hollows at her collarbones had softened.
There was a warmth to her skin that had not been there before, a flush beneath the surface that made her look like a woman lit from within.
He knew why. He had known for weeks.
He kissed her. Slow, unhurried, as though they had nowhere to be.
They did not. And even if they had, there was no place on earth better than here, in their bed, in each other's arms. His hand found the hem of his shirt where it rode up her thigh, and he tugged it higher, and she made a low sound against his mouth — that little sigh of pleasure that undid something in his chest — and the morning tipped from tender into intent.
He rolled to bring her under him, holding his weight on his arms, careful not to crush her.
She pulled his shirt over her head, and he looked at her.
Her shoulder had healed months ago, and she said it did not bother her in the least. Her body had healed itself, and what remained was simply her — the freckles across her shoulders, the small white scar on her collarbone, the curve of her waist into her hip that his hands had relearned so thoroughly he could have drawn it blind.
He kissed the scar. He kissed her collarbone, her throat, the place beneath her ear where the right pressure made her breath catch. She arched into him. He moved down her body with his mouth. Over her ribs. Her belly.
He paused there .
Her belly was different. Not dramatically — not yet. But where she had been soft, there was now a firmness. A low, gentle swell that was only visible when she lay on her back, and only noticeable if you were a man who had been paying very close attention for a very long time.
He pressed his lips to the skin just below her navel and closed his eyes.
"How do you feel?"
She went still beneath him.
"Wonderful." The brightness in her voice was too bright. "Why do you ask?"
He lifted his head. Her eyes were on his — wide, searching, a little guarded.
"It has lasted longer than the previous times." He kept his voice even, but his hand tightened where it rested on her hip. "Do you think it will hold?"
She caught her breath. The guard dropped. What replaced it was raw hope mixed with terror. The ghosts of three lost pregnancies that still haunted her.
"You knew?"
"Your last monthly was four months ago. Of course I noticed." He swallowed. "I have been watching. Praying. Afraid to say anything. Afraid to hope. Waiting, perhaps, for you to tell me."
She put her hand over his where it rested on her belly. "I did not want to tell you until I was sure it had a real chance. The other times — " She stopped. Drew a breath. "I could not watch you go through that again. Losing them nearly destroyed you before."
"I understand. I was equally reluctant to speak of it." He turned his hand beneath hers and laced their fingers together. "We have been conducting parallel campaigns of silence. It is, I suppose, a marital tradition."
She gave a wet laugh. "I should have known you would notice. You don't miss a thing. Once a spymaster — "
"That is not spying. That is paying attention to my wife. It is called being a husband."
She pulled him up, and he went, settling his weight beside her, and she pressed her forehead to his.
Their breathing aligned. For a long time neither of them spoke.
His hand stayed on her belly — over the small, firm curve of the thing he had wanted so badly he had amputated the want in order to survive.
Almost four months. Past the point where they had lost the others. Still fragile. Still uncertain. But still here.
"Is that why you have been so careful?" she asked. Her voice had shifted. Lighter. The corner of her mouth did something he recognized as trouble. "When you make love to me?"
"Careful." He raised an eyebrow.
"So very conventional. No ropes. No games." She paused. "Not even a little spank."
He gave a surprised huff of laughter, startled out of him before he could catch it. "Do I detect a complaint? Because I don't recall you complaining during the orgasms. And there have been several. I have been keeping count."
"No complaints." Her eyes were bright. "But there is no need to limit ourselves. I am pregnant, Val. Not made of glass."
"The only reason I'm still daring to make love to you at all is because I asked Finlay, and he assured me it was entirely safe." He kissed the bridge of her nose. "That, and the fact that I am mad about you, and my self-restraint, as you may have noticed over the past year, has its limits."
"I had noticed."
He moved back down her body. Kissed her belly again — deliberately, with his eyes open, pressing his mouth to the place where their child was growing. The word sat in his chest like a coal. Child.
"If I thought it was dangerous," he said against her skin, "for you or for the baby, I would have stopped."
"And deprived yourself."
"And you. Yes." He looked up at her. "But I would have done it. You know that."
"I do." She touched his hair. "But Finlay says I am well, Val. I saw him last week. He says the pregnancy is progressing as it should. He says there is no medical reason to fear this time will be like the others. "
He closed his eyes. The relief moved through him like something physical — not dramatic, like a wave or a flood, but a slow unclenching of muscles he had not known were locked.
"Say it again."
"He says I am well. The pregnancy is going well."
He breathed out. Then he continued down her body, past her belly, to the inside of her thigh, and she gasped and her fingers tightened in his hair.
This. This was what happiness was made of.
A wonderful, ordinary morning. This woman.
His wife. His love. The life they had clawed back from the wreckage.
He proceeded with unhurried caresses. Because they had nowhere else to be.
Morning light and bare skin and the knowledge that they had time.
That no one was going to take this away.
He explored her body, tasted her skin. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He kissed the small red birthmark on the inside of her knee — the one he had used to prove his intimate knowledge of her body that day in the vestry almost a year ago.
That moment seemed to belong to another lifetime.
They had come a long way in these past months. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. If they had loved before, now they loved more fully. Without barriers. Without fears. Life had made them confront the worst of themselves, and they had come out stronger and more together than ever.
He kissed his way up the inside of her thigh, working his way to his favorite place in the world. She made a sound of contentment. A woman who knew she was going to be loved well and did not need to hurry toward it.
Some devilish instinct made him want to tease her.
To make her wait, so that her pleasure would be all the more intense when it arrived.
Instead of going straight to the place where she was already sleek and molten, he detoured to the curve of her hip where she was softest. He gave it a little nip, and she squealed, laughing.
"That tickles."
"I know."
"So you admit you are doing it on purpose. "
"I'm a strategist. Everything I do is on purpose."
"Liar." She pulled him up by his hair and kissed him, still laughing.
"Come in," she breathed, taking hold of his cock and positioning it at her entrance.
"I wanted to worship you properly. To kiss your sweet pussy until you came on my tongue."
She moaned at his words, arching upward and into his possession. The tip of his cock entered her, and they both held their breath.
She opened for him and he slid all the way in without performance. Then they both went still — the recognition of something so right that stillness was the only answer.
She held his face in her hands.