Epilogue I
REMINGTON
We flew Robert's body back to London the next morning on a private jet arranged through channels I didn't ask about.
Chelsea sat beside me the entire flight, her hand in mine, thumb tracing the scar across my knuckle like she was reading something written there. She didn't cry on the plane. She'd done her crying in the kitchen at The Sanctuary, and now she was carrying something steadier than grief.
I watched her profile against the window and understood that the woman I'd fallen for in a Paris flower shop had stopped becoming and had arrived. Robert had seen it first. I was here for what came next.
We landed at a private strip outside the city. Arrangements were already made—discreet, efficient, the kind that happened when the right calls had already been made.
Chelsea spoke to the funeral director in the same calm, measured voice she'd used when she told Robert she was done pretending. She chose the casket, the flowers, the wording for the notice. I stood at her shoulder and let her lead.
She didn't need carrying. She needed someone beside her while she carried what was hers.
By late afternoon, we were in a hotel in Mayfair—quiet, old, the kind of place where the walls had heard a thousand private conversations and kept every one of them.
Chelsea had booked it herself. No Sanctuary safe house.
No protective cordon. Just the two of us and a suite on the top floor with tall windows overlooking the wet London streets.
She said she wanted normal for one night. I understood what she really wanted: a room that was ours and nobody else's.
We stepped inside and the door had barely clicked shut before she turned to me.
"I need you," she said. Simple. No preamble. Her voice was low, steady, the voice that had stopped managing and started meaning. "Right now, Rem. Not later. Not after I've showered or changed or pretended I'm fine. Now."
Her coat slid off her shoulders and hit the floor. She didn't wait for me to move.
Her sweater came next—pulled over her head in one smooth motion, hair spilling down her back.
Her jeans followed, pushed down her hips, kicked aside.
She stood in nothing but a simple black bra and panties, and then those were gone, too—bra unhooked, panties stepped out of—until she was naked in the soft lamplight, skin still carrying the faint scent of The Sanctuary kitchen and the flight and the grief she refused to let break her.
She looked at me. "Sofa," she said.
I didn't argue. I never wanted to argue with her again.
I crossed the room, shedding my own clothes as I went—jacket, shirt, belt, trousers—until I was as bare as she was. She was already on the wide, low sofa, knees drawn up, watching me with dark, certain eyes.
I dropped to my knees in front of her like I'd been waiting my whole life for permission.
I started at her ankles. Kissed the inside of one, then the other, slow and deliberate, tasting the faint salt of travel and the warmer salt of her skin.
My hands slid up her calves, thumbs pressing into the muscle, feeling the tension she still carried from the patio, from the flight, from everything.
I kissed the inside of her knee, lingered there, let my tongue trace the soft skin behind it until she exhaled a shaky breath.
Higher. The tender stretch of her inner thigh. I took my time, breathing her in, letting the scent of her—warm, alive, unmistakably Chelsea—fill my lungs.
When I reached the apex of her thighs, she was already wet, glistening, the evidence of how badly she needed this shining on her skin.
I didn't dive in. I kissed the crease where thigh met body, slow open-mouthed kisses that made her hips twitch.
I licked a long, flat stripe up the other side, avoiding the place she wanted me most, and felt her fingers slide into my hair.
"Rem," she whispered. Not a plea. A statement. I'm here. You're here. This is real.
I gave her what she needed. My tongue parted her, slow and deep, tasting her fully for the first time since the world had tried to tear us apart. She tasted like salt and heat and the faint sweetness that was only ever her.
I licked into her like I was learning her all over again—long strokes, then shorter, focused ones, circling the hood of her clit without touching it yet.
My hands held her thighs open, thumbs stroking the sensitive skin just beside where my mouth worked.
When she started to rock against me I slid two fingers inside her—slow, curling gently, finding the spot that made her back arch and her breath catch.
I worshipped her there on the sofa. No rush. Just the steady, devoted rhythm of a man who had watched her hold her dead uncle and still choose to keep living.
I sucked her clit gently when she was close, then eased off, drawing it out until she was trembling and whispering my name like a prayer. When she came it was with her heels digging into my back and her fingers tight in my hair, a long, broken sound that filled the room, and I held her through it.
She didn't let me rest.
The moment the last tremor left her she sat up, eyes bright with something fiercer than grief, and pushed me back until I was sitting on the sofa. She slid down between my knees, naked and unashamed, and looked up at me.
"My turn," she said.
Her mouth was hot and perfect. She took me slow—tongue tracing the underside, lips sliding down inch by inch until I was buried in the wet heat of her throat.
No rush. She savoured it, eyes locked on mine the whole time, one hand wrapped around the base while the other cupped my balls, rolling them gently.
She hummed around me and the vibration went straight up my spine. I threaded my fingers through her hair. Watching her like this, choosing this, choosing me, was almost more than I could hold.
She worked me with devastating patience.
Long, deep strokes. Swirls of her tongue.
The occasional scrape of teeth that made my hips jerk.
When I warned her I was close, she didn't pull away.
She took me deeper, eyes steady, and swallowed every pulse as I came hard in her mouth, my groan raw and helpless.
We weren't finished.
She climbed into my lap right there on the sofa, straddling me, and sank down onto my still-hard cock in one smooth motion. The feel of her—wet, tight, still pulsing from her own orgasm—ripped a groan out of me.
She rode me slow at first, rolling her hips in that same devastating rhythm she'd used with her mouth, hands braced on my shoulders, eyes never leaving mine. The city lights through the window painted her skin gold and shadow.
I cupped her breasts, fingers circling her nipples, and she arched into the touch with a soft moan that I'd remember longer than anything else about this night.
We moved to the bed without breaking apart. I rolled us so I was on top, still buried deep, and thrust into her with long, deliberate strokes—deep enough to feel the end of her, slow enough to make her whimper my name.
Her legs wrapped around my waist, heels digging into my back, pulling me closer. I kissed her through it—messy, open-mouthed, tasting myself on her tongue—and felt her tighten around me again.
She flipped us once more.
On top now, hands planted on my chest, riding me hard—hips snapping, hair wild, everything she'd been carrying finding its way out through her body.
I sat up, arms around her, mouths fused, and let her take what she needed until she came a second time, clenching around me so perfectly I followed her over the edge, spilling deep inside her with a sound I didn't recognize as mine.
We stayed locked together afterward, her forehead against mine, our breathing slowly syncing.
The sheets were twisted around us. London rain had started against the windows—soft, steady, the kind of sound that made the room feel smaller and safer.
"I meant what I said," I told her, voice rough. "My days in the Navy are over. This is the mission now. Protect what's mine. Take down Consortium Prime. Elliot Thorne is just the face we can see. The rest of them ... we'll find them."
She kissed me once, slow and certain.
"Good," she whispered against my mouth. "Because I'm not going back either."
We lay there in the quiet London night, her body warm and alive against mine, Robert's words still sitting between us, unspoken but present.
The war was coming. It was patient. So, were we.
For the first time in my life, I wasn't facing it alone.