Epilogue #2
Everyone laughed, and Viktor listened quietly while the conversation went on around him — Avery teasing Josephine, Julian complaining about being outnumbered, the baby determined to steal everyone’s attention.
Through all of it, he found himself focused on exactly one thing: the woman beside him.
His wife. The center of every plan he made, the first person he wanted to see each morning, the last he wanted beside him every night.
Eventually Josephine handed the baby back and the afternoon began winding down — families saying goodbye, the studio slowly emptying. She slipped her hand into his, the simple gesture sending immediate satisfaction through him.
“Ready?”
He looked down at her. “Very.”
Her smile widened. “That sounds suspicious.”
“It should.”
A faint blush touched her cheeks, and it pleased him more than it probably should have.
Julian groaned. “We’re leaving now.”
“Good choice,” Viktor said.
“Don’t terrorize my sister,” Avery called after them.
“I make no promises.”
* * *
Josephine shook her head, laughing, as they finally stepped outside together.
The evening air was cool, the city stretching around them.
She moved closer automatically; Viktor wrapped an arm around her shoulders, his hand settling against her stomach, exactly where it belonged.
She leaned into him — comfortable, trusting, happy — and everything inside him settled.
Home wasn’t the penthouse waiting for them across the city. Home was her. And for the rest of his life, Viktor intended to keep her exactly where she belonged. At his side. Tonight included.
The penthouse door had barely closed behind them before Viktor’s hands found her waist.
“You’ve been thinking about this since the studio,” Josephine said, breath already uneven as he backed her against the door.
“I’ve been thinking about this since you laughed at Julian’s terrible joke and I watched your whole face change.
” His mouth found the curve of her neck, slow and deliberate, nothing like the urgency from before they’d had a baby on the way to be careful of.
“I’ve gotten very good at wanting you quietly in rooms full of people. ”
She laughed, the sound breaking into something softer when his hand slid up her side. “That’s a real skill.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
She tugged at his tie, working the knot loose with fingers that weren’t quite steady. “Show off.”
He let her pull him toward the bedroom instead of answering, his palm warm against the small of her back, guiding rather than rushing.
That had changed too, somewhere in the last eighteen months — the way he touched her now carried the same hunger but none of the old impatience.
He’d learned the geography of her differently since the pregnancy: where to press, where to be careful, how to want her completely without ever once making her feel breakable.
When they reached the bed, he turned her gently to face him and slid the zipper of her dress down with a patience that felt deliberate, almost reverent, his mouth following the line of bared skin as the fabric loosened. She shivered, one hand braced against his shoulder.
“You’re slow tonight.”
“I’m not in a hurry.” He pressed a kiss below her ear, then lower, at her collarbone. “I’ve spent a year chasing you, eighteen months married to you, and I still haven’t gotten tired of taking my time.”
The dress slipped to the floor. He looked at her then — really looked, the way he always did, like she was something he intended to memorize — and his hand found the curve of her stomach before it found anything else, resting there a moment before sliding lower.
“Viktor.”
“I know.” He kissed her properly this time, deep and unhurried, easing her back onto the bed.
His hands moved over her with the same certainty they always had, but gentler now, reverent in a way that made her chest ache even as her body arched into him.
He took his time with her — mouth and hands mapping every place that made her breath catch, patient enough to notice exactly when she stopped being patient herself.
“Viktor, please—”
“Say it again.”
She did, voice cracking on his name, and he finally gave her what she wanted, moving over her slow and deep, watching her face the entire time like he couldn’t stand to miss a single second of it.
She pulled him closer, legs wrapping around him, her hands in his hair, and for a long time there was nothing else — no studio, no theater, no city outside the windows — just the two of them, unhurried and certain, finding the same rhythm they’d found a hundred times before and somehow making it feel new every time.
When they finally lay tangled together afterward, her head on his chest and his hand still resting protectively low on her stomach, she pressed a soft kiss to his collarbone.
“Still staring,” she murmured, eyes closed, smiling.
“I know.” His hand tightened slightly around hers. “I don’t plan on stopping.”
Josephine didn’t argue. She simply closed the last bit of distance between them, settled into the steady sound of his heartbeat, and let herself believe — fully, finally, without a single doubt — that this was exactly where she was always meant to land.
* * *