Epilogue #2
Bree
One Week Later...
Sunday mornings used to mean Mac n’ Cheese eaten over my smart phone while doom-scrolling job boards in my Astoria apartment.
Now they mean Egyptian cotton sheets, a view of the Hudson, and a six-foot-one billionaire who apparently thinks newspapers are still a thing.
Look at you, Bree.
Living your best life.
I’m propped against roughly seventeen pillows, because Nico doesn’t do anything by halves, including pillow counts.
He’s beside me, shirtless, reading the physical Wall Street Journal like some kind of gorgeous financial dinosaur.
He turns a page with that particular crispness only Nico can manage. Like even newspaper reading is a power move.
“Your coffee’s getting cold,” he comments.
I glance at the mug on my nightstand. My side of the bed now. My nightstand. My mug.
Three months married and I’m still not fully used to the ours of it all.
“Your face is getting cold,” I mutter, which makes zero sense, but he snorts anyway.
God, I love making him laugh.
I return to my own reading material. A foundation proposal from one of our hospital partners, laptop beside me, because apparently I’m the kind of person who edits on Sunday mornings now.
The kind of person who runs a foundation.
Who has an office not far from her husband’s.
Who took her power back and built something real.
Also the kind of person whose husband has just slid under the blanket.
“Um.” I keep my eyes on the laptop. “What are you doing?”
“Reading,” he replies.
“You’re under the blanket...” I point out.
“Am I?” His hand skims up my thigh, pushing the oversized t-shirt I slept in.
Well, slept in for about three hours before he woke me up for round one.
And then round two at about four AM.
We’re disgusting.
I love it.
“Nico, I’m trying to work,” I plead.
“Work faster.” His mouth finds my hip bone. Then lower.
Okay, this is fine.
I can multitask.
I’m the Executive Director of a foundation.
I can—
His tongue traces a path that makes my toes curl.
I cannot multitask.
“You’re... that’s...” I lose the sentence somewhere between his mouth and my brain’s complete evacuation of higher thought. I shove the laptop aside.
He hooks his fingers in my underwear and pulls them down and oh god his tongue is doing that thing. The man has had a lot of practice at this point. Like, several months of practice. And the learning curve was steep in all the best ways.
“Nico.”
“Hmm?” The vibration against sensitive skin makes me gasp.
“I’m going to cum.”
“Then cum.”
The orgasm hits me like a wave I wasn’t bracing for. I slap a hand over my mouth, not wanting to make it overly obvious how fast he climaxed me.
As if my clenching pussy and arching back wouldn’t give me away...
He emerges from the blanket looking insufferably pleased with himself. Hair mussed, eyes dark, that smile that used to be so rare.
“Good morning,” he says.
I pout. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
No. I really don’t.
He crawls up my body, all lean muscle and warm skin, and kisses me deeply enough that I taste myself on his lips.
My fingers find his hair and grip.
“We should talk about the board meeting,” I murmur against his mouth.
“Fuck the board meeting.”
“And Tatiana’s announcement. She’s going to kill me if I haven’t planned a proper reaction.”
“Fuck her. And fuck you.”
“Oh yes, fuck me,” I moan, finally giving up.
But then an urgent thought cuts through the pleasure.
“We should probably discuss the whole...” I trail off. We’ve been dancing around this for weeks. The trying-for-a-baby conversation that somehow feels bigger than marriage, bigger than building a foundation, bigger than everything.
He pulls back to look at me. Those dark eyes that used to be weapons are now something gentler.
“You’re nervous,” he says.
“I’m not nervous. I’m... cautiously contemplative.”
“You’re nervous.”
Damn him for knowing me so well.
“Maybe a little nervous. It’s just... big. You know? Like, we can barely keep plants alive and now we’re talking about an actual human person.”
He shrugs. “The plants are thriving. Thessaly waters them.”
“That’s my point! What if our hypothetical baby needs a Thessaly? What if I’m terrible at it? What if I turn into my mother? What if you turn into your father?” I’m rambling now, anxiety bubbling up through the domestic bliss like it always does.
What if I’m not enough?
Nico cups my face in his hands. “Bree.”
“What?”
“Shut up.” And he kisses me again, slower this time, like he’s trying to transfer confidence through his lips. When he pulls back, his thumb traces my cheekbone.
“We’ll figure it out,” he says. “Like we figured out everything else.”
“By nearly destroying each other first?”
He presses his lips together dismissively. “If necessary.”
I laugh despite myself. “That’s not reassuring.”
“You want reassuring, talk to Thessaly. You want honest, you’ve got me.
” He reaches over to the nightstand on his side.
Opens the drawer. Pulls out the small purple vibrator we’d purchased together a few months back during a spontaneous trip to the sex shop.
His eyebrow arches. “Now. Do you want to keep worrying, or do you want to play?”
Heat rushes to my cheeks.
Still. After everything.
He can still make me blush.
“That’s not fair,” I argue.
“Never said I was a fair man.” He clicks it on. The buzz fills the quiet room.
“Here’s the game,” he says. “You hold it. Thirty seconds. No breaks. Don’t cum.”
“That’s...” I swallow. “That’s too long.”
“Then you’d better try hard.”
He hands me the vibrator. I take it with fingers that aren’t quite steady. He watches with those dark eyes, completely in control, and I press it against myself.
“One.” He counts slowly. Deliberately. “Two.”
I can do this. I can absolutely do this. I run a foundation.
“Three.”
Oh god.
“Four.”
The pressure builds. My thighs are already trembling.
“Five.”
“Nico...”
“Did I say stop?”
“No, but...”
“Six.”
I’m clenching everything. Jaw, fists, pussy... every muscle I own.
“Seven.”
I fail.
The orgasm crashes through me at seven, and I cry out, and he’s there to watch every second of it with that satisfied expression that used to infuriate me and now just makes me want him more.
“You failed,” he observes.
“Your counting was... deliberately slow... that was... easily... thirty seconds.”
“Excuses.” He takes the vibrator from my shaking hand. “Now you wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Ten minutes. No touching. No cock. Just this.” He presses the vibrator back against me, still buzzing, and I nearly levitate off the bed.
“That’s torture!” I plead.
“That’s consequences.”
I watch him settle back against the pillows, leisurely, like he has all the time in the world. Like he’s not impossibly hard against his own sleep pants.
The minutes stretch. He watches me. I writhe. He lifts the vibrator every few seconds to avoid overstimulating me.
“Can’t have you cumming prematurely,” he comments.
“Cheater,” I counter between gritted teeth.
The vibrator keeps up its relentless buzzing against my oversensitive flesh, touching for three seconds, away for two, then touching again for three seconds. I’m making sounds I’d be probably embarrassed about if I had any pride left.
“Nico. Please.”
“Please what?” he asks.
Oh no.
This game.
“You know what,” I say, squirming.
“Say it,” he instructs.
My face flames. “I want...”
He tilts his head, looks at me hungrily. “Yes?”
“I want you inside me.” The words come out breathy and desperate.
“Where?” he asks.
“My... my pussy.” Even after all this time, saying it makes me feel exposed.
Which is probably why he makes me say it.
He smiles. “Good girl.”
And then he’s there, finally, pushing inside me with one smooth, condom-free thrust.
We move together with the ease of people who’ve memorized each other. Every rhythm, every angle, every sound the other makes. The obscene slap of skin on skin echoes throughout the bedroom.
His hand finds my hip, gripping hard enough to leave marks. I drag my nails down his back.
“Mine,” he growls against my throat.
“Yours,” I gasp.
“Say my name,” he orders.
“Nico!” I scream.
“Again.”
I’m so close.
So close.
“Nico! God, Nico, please... Nico Nico Nico!” I say his name in time to his every thrust.
“You like it?” he taunts.
Yes—
Yes—
Yes—
“Now,” he says.
I shatter.
He follows.
And for a long moment there’s nothing but the two of us, tangled together, breathing hard, shuddering against one another. My pussy clenches around his cock, milking him. I can feel the hot ropes of cum spilling inside me.
Fill me up.
After, we lie in the wreckage of sheets and pillows and scattered newspaper pages.
“We’re definitely having a baby,” I say to the ceiling.
His hand finds mine and squeezes. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean, we’re already off to a good start with all the...” I gesture vaguely at our naked, tangled state.
“Practice makes perfect,” he comments.
I turn my head to look at him. This man who stalked me and lied to me and burned down a predator for me. This man who gave me my power back and then stood beside me while I used it. This man who made me believe I was worth fighting for.
“Love you,” I tell him.
“Love you, too.” His thumb strokes my knuckles, brushing over my wedding ring. “Always and forever.”
We stay there a while longer.
Then we shower together, which turns into more sex against the tile because apparently we’re insatiable.
He ignores the gourmet muffins Thessaly baked for us, and instead makes breakfast. Eggs and toast that are only slightly burnt.
We eat on the rooftop terrace, watching the city spread out beneath us.
Later, back in bed, I’m reading another proposal. He’s on his laptop, too, doing whatever billionaires do on Sunday afternoons. Our legs are tangled together under the blanket.
“Hey,” I say.
He looks up from his screen. “Hmm?”
“Best mistake I ever made,” I finish.
He knows what I mean.
He doesn’t say anything. Just reaches over, takes my hand, and presses his lips to my wedding ring.
Then goes back to his laptop like he didn’t just destroy me with a single gesture.
Best mistake I ever made.
And I’d make it again.
Every single time.
Thanks for reading!!