Bonus Epilogue #2
I start moving, finding a rhythm that has her gasping into the leather. My hands grip her hips, pulling her back to meet each thrust, and the sounds filling the room are obscene—skin against skin, her breathless cries, my own ragged breathing.
“More,” she demands, and I oblige—harder, deeper.
But I want to see her face.
I pull out—ignoring her sound of protest—and turn her over. Back on the chaise, legs spread, flushed and beautiful and mine.
“I need to see you,” I tell her, positioning myself between her thighs again. “Need to watch you come apart.”
I push back inside and her legs wrap around my hips immediately, pulling me deeper. This angle is different—intimate, facing each other, her eyes locked on mine as I move.
The chaise is the perfect height, the leather giving just enough beneath us. Paris glitters beyond the windows but I barely see it. There’s only this: her body beneath mine, the wet slide of our joining, the way she says my name like a prayer.
“Harder.”
I acquiesce, giving her my all while angling my hips to hit that spot that makes her see stars.
She tightens around me, close again—impossibly, after everything. I drop my head to her throat. “You’re so beautiful like this,” I murmur. “Taking me. Taking everything I give you.”
She feels perfect. Hot and tight. Mine. Always mine.
“Don’t stop.” Her nails dig into my shoulders. “Please don’t stop.”
I don’t. I withdraw almost completely, then drive back in—hard enough that she gasps, her back arching. I set a punishing rhythm, one she matches perfectly, her hips rising to meet every thrust. My hand slides between us to circle her clit. “That’s it. Let me feel you.”
She comes—violently, beautifully—her internal muscles clenching around me in waves, her nails scoring my back hard enough to leave marks I’ll feel tomorrow. The sensation of her coming apart pulls me over the edge.
I thrust deep—once, twice more—then still, burying myself as far as I can go. My orgasm tears through me, pulsing into her in hot waves while she trembles beneath me.
“Brie—” Her name is all I can manage.
For a fleeting second, it’s complete surrender—not the careful control I’ve cultivated, but raw, honest need. This is what the suite was always meant to hold. Not transient pleasure, but this: earned intimacy. Chosen love. Real desire stripped of everything else.
I bury my face in her throat, and for a moment the world narrows to her heartbeat, her scent, and the warmth of her skin.
After, we don’t move. She’s still beneath me, our bodies slick with sweat and satisfaction, her legs still wrapped around my hips. I can feel her heartbeat against my chest—fast, then gradually slowing to match mine.
Her hands gentle in my hair, fingernails scraping lightly against my scalp. I lift my head to look at her, and her eyes are soft, satisfied, utterly content.
“Well,” she says, slightly breathless. “That’s one way to christen the space.”
I laugh—surprised by it, by the ease of it. “Not what you expected?”
“Better.” Her hand cups my face. “Because it wasn’t about the room at all.”
When I lower my head and kiss her, it’s not the way I used to—desperate, claiming, needing to prove something. It’s slow. Reverent. The kind of kiss that says I see you. I know you. I choose you.
Eventually, I shift just enough to reach for the warmed towels, careful not to break the spell.
I clean her slowly, reverently, the way I’ve learned to do everything with her—without hurry, without assumption.
She sighs as I brush damp strands from her forehead, her body pliant now, open in a way that still catches me off guard, so unlike the woman who moves through weekdays armored and alert.
When we finally move to the bed, it’s not with urgency but with ease. She curls into my side, her head fitting beneath my chin as if it’s always known the shape of me. I draw the sheets up around us, the city still glowing beyond the glass, distant and unimportant.
Her fingers trace idle patterns on my chest. Not seductive or demanding. Just present.
“This feels different,” she murmurs.
“It is,” I say. And for once, I don’t feel the need to explain myself further.
She shifts slightly, propping herself up on one elbow to look at me. Her eyes are soft, unguarded in a way they rarely are. “Do you ever think about our future?”
I don’t hesitate. “All the time.”
A small smile curves her lips. “Not tomorrow. Or next year. Just… later.”
I run my thumb along her shoulder, following the slow rise and fall of her breath and her thoughts. “I think our children will be dangerous,” I say mildly. “Observant. Stubborn. Far too clever for their own good.”
She laughs quietly, the sound warm against my skin. “They’ll have your intensity.”
“And your instincts,” I counter. “And our daughters, your beauty, which worries me far more.”
“Plural?”
“At least two.” We’ve talked about this. She wants sons, I want daughters, but they do say to be careful what you wish for.
She settles back against me, thoughtful. “We haven’t yet been married a year.”
“I’m well aware. There’s no rush.”
“One day. I don’t know when,” she says. “Or where.”
Where is a fair question. My father would love for us to make France our permanent residence, but my priorities have shifted. My highest priority is Brie’s happiness.
“But I’m thinking about it more and more. I want you to know that.”
I brush my lips across her temple, appreciation and love for what she’s just said. “I just like knowing it’s possible.”
Her hand stills on my chest, fingers splaying as if she’s anchoring herself there. “Me too.”
“Sometimes I dream of a baby girl, well, not a baby, a toddler. Blonde, blue eyes, a mini-you, toddling on the shore. I like to think she’s our baby girl, my little Brie…telling me that one day she’ll be here with us.”
She lifts up, smiling. “Really? You’ve had that dream?”
“More than once,” I admit, and she presses a kiss over my heart before settling back down against me.
We fall quiet again, the kind of quiet that doesn’t demand filling. Outside, Paris continues its endless motion—bridges lit, cars tracing lines of gold across the water. In here, everything is unhurried.
Her breathing deepens as sleep edges closer. I hold her there, the weight of her trust, her love, our dreams more profound than anything I’ve ever owned.
This is what I’ve been chasing all along—not the illusion of beauty that can be bottled and sold.
It’s this.
The quiet between two heartbeats, the simple truth of a shared future left deliberately unwritten.
The world will always worship what glitters.
But me?
I’ve learned that what is truly lovely, endures.