Epilogue Happily Ever King
Asher
One Year Later
The city is quiet in that rare, Sunday-morning way—just the sigh of our radiator and the faraway rumble of a bus. Snow catches on the black iron of the fire escape, and the bedroom is lit up with amber light. The only thing I feel is King’s body wrapped around me.
And in me.
It takes me a second to figure out why I feel so turned on and… full.
Hazy memories from the middle of the night come back to me—arms and limbs tangled together, the slide of the lube he used, the low groan he let out when he came inside of me.
And then the sleepy request to fall asleep… in me.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” he says, brushing a stray piece of hair out from in front of my eyes. “I love the idea of falling asleep inside of you, but it’s your call.”
I shrug, reaching up and placing a hand on his cheek. “I’m open to trying it.”
“It’s called cockwarming. It’s… something I’ve always wanted to try,” he adds, looking at me as if he’s analyzing my reaction.
“Then we should try it.”
He’d been hard when he slid into me, and from the feel of it, he’s still hard now.
Also, every time I breath, I move juuuuust enough to send a jolt of pleasure through my whole body.
If the damp sheet underneath me is any indication, King has been teasing me in my sleep all night, because my cock is throbbing and begging for release.
King’s breath moves slow against the back of my neck. I shift my hips, and the rhythm of his breathing stutters just enough to let me know that he’s awake.
“Color?” he murmurs, voice low and sleep-rough.
“Green,” I answer, automatic, a smile tugging at my mouth.
“Such a good boy,” he responds lazily. “Now, sleep.”
“What?” I ask, my voice a huff of outrage.
Chuckling he pulls me closer, which only sends another jolt to where we’re connected. “Think of this as more of a comfort and closeness thing than a sexual thing, Asher.”
“Tell that to your cock,” I mumble, voice petulant.
“Let’s rest. It’s early. If you behave, I’ll reward you later.”
I make a sound of displeasure, knowing for sure that I won’t be doing any more sleep, but I relax nonetheless.
Several minutes go by, and my pulsing heartbeat slows as my body sinks deeper into the mattress.
It’s an odd sensation, but the more I sit with the idea of it being a comfort thing, the easier it gets to calm down.
It’s a nice feeling, being completely connected to him in this way.
His body is warm against my back, and the soft feathering of his breath against my neck makes me feel cherished.
Another hour goes by.
We don’t move much—we don’t need to. There’s a calm we both fought like hell to earn.
It’s in the clean sheets, in the collar looped lazily over the bedpost, in the notebook on my nightstand with three bullet points from yesterday’s couples therapist we still see.
The noise from outside gets a bit louder as people wake up.
Dogs bark, people shout, and the sound of tires on the snowy road below makes King shift a bit, pulling out of me slowly.
I let out a low whine, not liking the fact that I can’t stay full of him for longer.
“You did so well,” he says, getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom. A minute later, he’s back with a warm washcloth, and he cleans us both before hopping back into bed with me, spooning me from behind. “Even if you didn’t fall back to sleep.”
“Did you?” I ask, ignoring the way both of our cocks are still rock hard.
“I slept like a baby all night. Never been more cozy.”
I laugh. “I bet.”
We lay there for several more minutes in silence, neither of us wanting to leave the warm bubble of warmth. It’s a cold day again—I can tell by the way the windows have frosted over on the outside.
Eventually, my cock softens. King falls back to sleep. And I can’t help but smile—because this —the slow, lazy Sunday morning—is all I ever wanted, without even realizing it.
But the quiet starts to buzz louder, and as always, my mind reverts to work.
Turning over onto my back, I stare at the ceiling and try not to think about my email inbox.
Walter will most likely text later about golfing in Westchester.
I’ve come to really enjoy golfing, and I don’t know what that says about me.
In any case, I ignore the idea of being that guy who will be fifty in two years.
I’ll tell Walter maybe next time. I try not to work Sundays anymore.
I try not to work most Saturdays either.
The office learned—or rather, I learned. To be present in the moment. To take time off. To enjoy life again, after… decades of nonstop work.
Still, my body starts to get antsy with the notion of a full inbox tomorrow. I wonder if I can answer a few of them this morning while King sleeps, seeing as I’m taking this Thursday and Friday off. Might as well get caught up?—
“Stop planning your week,” King says into my hair, like he caught me.
“I’m not,” I lie.
He drags his nose along the nape of my neck, a quiet reprimand, and I… let go.
Being here, with King, in our new three-bedroom penthouse in the Village, is all new to me.
I constantly oscillate between regressing back into a workaholic and picking wallpaper for our powder room.
And since we’re adopting a dog next week, both of us have been getting the apartment ready for our little canine friend.
I take a deep breath. And then another. The apartment smells like coffee we haven’t made yet and the cinnamon of his body wash that sank into my skin in the shower we took last night. I haven’t told him, but I keep an extra bottle of it at Maddox’s place for when I visit Ezra.
“You’re going to be late,” King says, teasing.
“For what?”
“Your very important appointment with the couch. And pancakes. Maybe a nap between pancakes.” He presses a kiss behind my ear. “I blocked your calendar.”
I huff out a laugh. “You don’t have access to my calendar.”
“Who do you think taught you to use it?”
He’s not wrong. We share a home and a firm now, though “share” looks different than I once imagined.
The acquisition happened. The sky didn’t fall.
We wrote a charter, carved out separate lanes, and gave each other veto power over all decisions having to do with the firm.
I still get to win sometimes. He still gets to be in charge sometimes. It’s almost like we grew up.
Almost .
The seconds drag into minutes, and my mind is fully awake. I’m trying really hard to relax, but it’s a learning curve. Instead, the sound of my phone vibrating tugs me back into the present. I already know who it is—because aside from King, there’s only one person I text this much.
“Thinking?” he asks.
“You caught me.”
“About what?”
“Ava.” I’m almost positive she’s the one who texted me. “She and Spencer are coming to town next month. She wants to drag us to a 6am yoga class and then feed us pastries. I guess she’s in her baking era.”
“Hard pass on the first thing. Strong yes on the second.”
I grin. “Also, Annabelle sent the proofs. The black-and-white set from the park. The one where you’re actually smiling with your eyes.”
“Frame them all,” he says, and there’s a softness in his voice I didn’t hear a year ago. He speaks to his sister every Sunday now. It’s one of the rules he made for himself once we got settled into our new apartment.
I try to make one call to Maddox each week, too.
Sometimes he picks up. Sometimes I read Ezra a book over FaceTime and pretend my chest doesn’t ache when his little voice asks when we’re coming to visit again.
Ari and I are friendly, and we even have a text chain just the two of us where we send funny internet videos to each other.
The radiator pops. King’s hand slides lower, wrapping around my cock. Not to push, not to take—just to hold. To remind. To say mine without saying mine. I feel the warmth spark as his grip stays firm, and I get hard again.
“Green?” he checks again, out of habit more than necessity.
I nod. “Stay,” I say, and even I can hear what I mean under what I say.
Stay here. Just like this. Forever.
“I am,” he answers, adoration shining in his eyes.
The snow decides to fall harder, faint and hushed against the window. Time stretches, and I do actually doze off a bit. When I wake up, King is snoring lightly beside me, and his hand is still wrapped around my half-hard shaft.
I close my eyes, and my mind automatically shifts to work. Client decks and travel and a stray email from Walter from Friday with a subject line that reads “HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, YOU SAPPY BASTARDS”.
I pull the thoughts back, doing my damn best to be present.
I turn to face King. He always looks younger in the morning, dark curls a little wild, the edge filed down to something human, something softer.
The scar on his knee—a faint, pale half-moon from last winter—peeks out from the sheet.
I touch it because I can, because he lets me.
Because now, a year into this relationship, I don’t think I’ve ever felt closer to anyone before.
And I know it’s the same for him.
“Still mad at me for falling off a mountain?” he asks, a light smile tugging at his lips.
“Every day,” I say solemnly.
He kisses the corner of my mouth. “Good. Keeps me humble.”
“You’re many things,” I murmur. “Humble is… aspirational.”
He laughs into the kiss that follows, and that’s the other thing we got better at—kissing without trying to win a battle. Letting it be a conversation instead of a contest. When we break, he rests his forehead to mine.
“Pancakes?” he offers again, hopeful. “I’m starving. I’m going to wither away soon if I don’t eat.”
“In a minute.”
His eyes widen just a fraction. “Asher Harrison, have you finally learned what it’s like to be… relaxed?” he asks, feigning shock.
“Fuck off,” I murmur, wrapping an arm around his chest.
We settle back into that easy, wordless place. If the past was all edges and tests, the present is built of softer things: an unhurried yes or no, boundaries, apologies that land the first time, safe words we rarely need but always respect.
We’re not saints.
We still bicker over who left the spreadsheet open and who stole the last of the coffee beans.
But when it matters, we choose each other on purpose.
King
I start the coffee. He’d stolen one of my sweaters and made a habitual point of not asking. It doesn’t matter, because I love seeing him in my clothes. The snow keeps falling. The city keeps breathing.
A year ago, I would’ve mistook this stillness for weakness.
Now I know better.
And as Asher hums a song while he stirs pancake batter, I can’t help but be grateful for this life.
Even if I had to wait ten years for him to come around.
My phone pings. There’s a text on my phone from Jacques—a toast to your first year of not murdering each other.
We’d come clean to him and Walter about everything pretty shortly after the merger a year ago.
Jacques swears to anyone who will listen that he knew we were faking it at the retreat all along, but that he “knew” we were destined to be together despite our rocky start.
There’s a reminder to send flowers to Ava’s new yoga studio.
There’s a draft email to Walter that starts with No and ends with we’re taking Q1 off from any new investments; hold me to it .
If you’d told me eighteen months ago I’d be the one building buffers into our lives, I’d have laughed you out of the room.
We eat while we watch funny puppy videos.
The dog we’re adopting is an eight-week-old retriever mix from the local shelter.
I never would’ve said yes to a dog a year ago, but I know how much Asher wants one.
We’ve even come up with a work-from-home schedule so that we can be here to keep him company for the first few months of his little life.
And later, he’ll have his own official bed in my office.
And despite neither of us wanting kids or marriage, this feels like the final step in our relationship. The missing puzzle piece. The life I waited so long to have.
I wouldn’t change it for the world.
And now, being here with him, I know we’ll choose each other. Slowly. On purpose.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Thank you for reading Asher and King’s book!