Epilogue #2
“You should be proud of yourself too.”
“I am.” She leans back enough to look up at me. “So proud I may become unbearable.”
“You passed that threshold years ago.”
Her smile becomes dangerous. “You know, I just won a case involving a restraining order. I have contacts now.”
“Your girlfriend is threatening you with the legal system,” Daniel calls from halfway down the hallway.
Neither of us realized he was still there.
Julia twists around. “Why are you still here?”
“I forgot my phone.”
“Go away.”
He disappears around the corner with a laugh that makes us break into one too.
I look down at her. “Your friends are exhausting.”
“You love him.”
She reaches for her folder, but I take it before she can.
“I’ve got it.”
“I can carry my own files.”
“I know.”
She studies me for half a second, then lets me. Another thing we learned. There is a difference between helping Julia because I think she can't do something and doing something for her because I love her. She knows the difference now too.
We walk toward the elevators, and she slides her hand into mine without interrupting the story she has already started telling me about opposing counsel’s face when the judge asked why his client’s sister somehow texted Julia’s client within fifteen minutes of every denied visitation request. I listen.
Part of my attention is on her voice, part is on her hand in mine, and part is already imagining what I am going to do to her when I get her home.
That portion of my brain has never been particularly subtle.
The second the front door shuts behind us, I drop her folder on the console table and pick her up.
Julia yelps, both arms flying around my neck as I take the stairs two at a time.
Her folder is forgotten. Her laugh catches halfway into something breathless.
She smells like the courthouse still, faint coffee and cold air clinging to her hair, and underneath it the warm vanilla of her skin that I have spent nine months learning by heart.
“Kai… what are you doing?” Her voice sounds way too breathy for someone who needs clarification.
“My woman deserves to be worshiped the way she loves the most.”
The tiny gasp that leaves her throat tells me she knows exactly what that means. Her thighs tighten around my waist. Her forehead drops against my neck, breath hot through my shirt, and by the time I reach the bedroom I am already hard from that sound alone.
I set her down at the foot of the bed and take her face in my hands first. Her cheeks are still flushed from the win.
I kiss her the way I really wanted to in that hallway, although that one was far from PG-13 rated version to be respectable.
There is nothing fucking respectable in it now.
My mouth claims hers slowly at first, then deeper, my tongue sliding against hers like I have been waiting all morning just to taste the victory on her.
She makes a small sound into the kiss and I swallow it, angling her head so I can have more of her.
Her lipstick is mostly gone. She tastes like mint and every bit of her mine.
I start with the cream blouse next. Each button opens under my fingers while my mouth follows the skin I uncover.
Her collarbone is warm. The hollow at the base of her throat jumps under my lips.
The soft place between her breasts holds her pulse, too fast, fluttering against my mouth.
I slide the blouse off her shoulders and let it fall, silk whispering to the floor, then kiss my way down her stomach as I open the navy trousers and draw them down her legs.
She steps out of them already shaking, and I take my time with the rest of it, unhooking her bra, drawing her underwear down her thighs.
She is already wet. I can feel the heat of her before I even put my hand between her legs.
I kiss the inside of one knee, then the other, then higher, until she is shaking in front of me in the late afternoon light and I can look at every inch of the woman who just won her first case.
“Beautiful,” I murmur against her hip. “Fucking beautiful and all mine.”
I put her on the bed and worship her properly.
My mouth finds her throat, then her breasts, lingering on the underside of each one before I take a nipple into my mouth and suck until her back arches off the mattress.
She is salt and warmth under my tongue. I kiss the scar near her eye.
The two small beauty marks in her brows.
The place on her ribs that always makes her twitch and try not to laugh.
I drag my tongue along the crease of her thigh and settle between her legs, but I don’t give her my mouth yet.
I give her my hand first. Two fingers slide into her pussy slow enough that she feels every inch of them, slick and tight, then curling, my thumb circling her clit while I kiss her stomach and tell her how proud I am of my good girl.
How good she looked standing in that courtroom.
How I have been thinking about this since she walked out of it with that look on her face.
She comes on my fingers with her hands in my hair and my name broken in her throat, her body tightening around me in warm, helpless pulses. I feel every flutter. I keep my mouth on her skin until the last of it leaves her shaking. But I don’t let her recover for long.
I turn her onto her stomach and take her wrists, guiding them up to the headboard.
The soft tie we keep there slides around them easily, familiar against her skin.
I check the give with my thumb, then kiss the inside of each wrist before I move down her body again, because I need her to feel that she is held, not trapped.
My mouth opens against the back of her neck.
She smells like her shampoo and my soap from this morning.
Down her spine, vertebra by vertebra and over the dimples at the small of her back until I reach that gorgeous ass of hers.
The room is quiet except for her breathing and the faint sound of the house settling around us.
I slide my hand between her thighs from behind and find her still soaked, still fluttering from the first orgasm, and I work her again, two fingers sinking into her pussy while my other hand holds her hip still.
She is hotter now. Wetter. She tries to push back onto them.
I let her, just enough, then curl and press until she comes a second time, muffling the sound in the pillow, her tied hands flexing against the headboard.
She is still shaking when I grip her hips and pull them up high.
One hand slides up the length of her back and presses her shoulders down into the mattress, keeping her exactly where I want her, ass lifted, cheek against the sheets, completely open to me.
The late light cuts across her skin. I can see the flush down her spine. I can feel her pulse under my palm.