Epilogue
NOVA
Texts flew across my screen, one after the other.
Delilah
Lorelei
You did itttt! I’ve been refreshing the page all day long!
Ruby
Yayyy go Nova!
Ella
LET’S FUCKING GOOOOO
Hudson
Looks like dinner’s on YOU Saturday.
I rapidly texted Hudson back.
Hey hey hey. is on a two-month payment delay. Dinner is on me 60 days from now.
Hudson
Putting it in my Google calendar. I am so fucking proud of you. You better celebrate tonight!!
I tossed my phone on the bed—our bed—and burst into Wes’s office. He hung up his call with a few words. Before I could apologize for interrupting him, he’d closed the distance, grabbed my face, and kissed me.
He pulled back with a grin. “I heard your squeal. Does it mean what I think it means?”
I nodded, my eyes filling with happy tears as I bounced up and down. “I’m in the Top One-Hundred! Ninety-seven!”
Wes peppered my face with kisses. “I told you it was only a matter of time.”
It was August, six months after release, and a book influencer’s video praising my book went viral five days ago.
I had already been making more money than I’d ever made with my last books, but my sales dashboard the past few days showed numbers that made me dizzy. I’d earned more today than I used to in an entire month.
“How does it feel?” Wes asked.
“Surreal,” I whispered. “Like it can’t possibly be happening to me, even if it’s everything I’ve wanted for so many years.” Two agents, several foreign publishers, and one U.S. publisher had already reached out to me.
“You did this, Nova. You.” He waited until I nodded before continuing. “What are you thinking about the traditional path now?”
My smile didn’t waver as I lost myself in the certainty and pride in Wes’s hazel eyes. “I’ll hear them out.” I shrugged. “But an offer would have to impress me.”
Wes chuckled. “That’s my fucking girl.”
He cleared space and lifted me onto his desk. I wasn’t wearing panties, just as he’d instructed this morning. He buried his head between my legs, and my head fell back on a breathy moan. He sucked my sensitive flesh, devouring me until my legs shook and a cry fell from my lips.
“Now you see why you weren’t allowed to wear panties today, baby? I needed you available to me at all times, so I could reward you exactly the way you deserve.”
I panted, staring down at his beautiful face between my thighs. “Please, may I come?”
“Yes. You’re going to be coming all night long.”
He tugged on my clit ever-so-gently with his teeth as I cried out. Then he returned to sucking and pulsing at the exact tempo and pressure he knew I needed.
Because Wes knew everything about me. He studied me, watched me, obsessed over me, pried me apart until I was bared to him, right down to my very core.
I’d never been known like this before. And I had never known another so deeply. Living with Wes made me feel like I had a home again. A family.
And this time, I was safe.
Our communities of friends and neighbors were lush and supportive. We’d built entire worlds together within our relationship and outside in the city. And in every world, I belonged to Wes.
And he belonged to me.
I came on his tongue.
“Stand up. Take off your dress.”
I obeyed. My dress fell in a navy pool of fabric on the floor.
Wes sat down on the loveseat across from his desk. “Now crawl to me.”
I dropped down to my hands and knees. As I crawled to him, my mind settled. The joy and excitement from my book’s milestone still hummed in my body, but I was more present now, focused and blissfully relaxed.
Wes pointed to his knee. “Kneel. Head here.”
I kneeled at his feet, resting my head on his black pants. He gently stroked my hair, and I sighed in contentment. “Do you want to choose what we do tonight, or would you rather I chose?”
“Do you really need to ask that question?” I murmured.
I couldn’t see his face, but I somehow knew he was smiling.
“No, but I like hearing you answer it anyway.” He paused. “Who knows what’s best for you, baby?”
“You do.”
“Who else?”
I smiled, my chest still warm and vibrating. “Me. I know what’s best for me.”
“Good girl.” Wes inhaled deeply, continuing to stroke my hair like I was his human pet, waiting at his feet for his next command.
I reflected on the past six months. I’d started to make a good living from my author business two months after my release.
Lorelei relapsed around the same time. I went to my first Al-Anon meeting—which was a twelve-step program for family and friends of addicts, which was where I learned my neurosis was beautifully un-special.
As it turned out, everyone else in that meeting struggled with the exact same control issues and people-pleasing I did.
Which meant that, like them, I could get better.
Lorelei was four months sober, and she went to a meeting almost every day. Now, she wouldn’t shut the hell up about the Big Book and the fellowship of AA, much to Wes’s amusement and my surprise.
He called her a Big Book thumper, which was an AA fanatic. At the end of the day, all Lorelei had ever wanted was to belong somewhere, to dedicate herself to something higher.
So, she did, and the AA community had embraced her with open arms.
I smiled.
“What are you smiling about, baby?”
“Cults,” I said. “I think there’s one for everyone.”
“What’s yours?”
“You, probably,” I whispered.
Wes laughed.
“You tell me what to do, what to worship, how to behave, what to think. But unlike a malicious cult leader, you only ever command me to be me.”
“Mmm, I’m enjoying where this roleplay is headed…”
I giggled. “Can I look at you please?”
“Yes.”
I lifted my head, still kneeling. Wes’s eyes were bright and adoring. Gazing at his beautiful face still made my stomach flutter, and I had no doubt he would elicit these reactions from me forever.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “I’m my best self when I’m following you.”
He gestured for me to sit in his lap. “And I’m my best self when I’m caring for you.”
I melted into his kiss as his hands roamed my body—his body, to do with as he pleased. I thought about how we met, and I wondered if it was the Universe’s algorithm or PicWave’s that was responsible for our crossed paths.
We’d found each other in a city of millions, and maybe that was the greatest evidence of magic I’d witnessed so far.
“Your cult leader is taking you to his dungeon now,” Wes whispered, tickling my ear with his warm breath until he lightly tugged at my lobe with his teeth. “I built something new, and I need a willing victim to test it out for me.”
“What is it?”
He laughed. “Nice try.”
My lips twitched. I’m not sure why I’d bothered with an insufferable sadist.
“I’m going to hypnotize you first so you’re nice and pliable,” he taunted. He gripped my neck, where my eternity collar rested, a sleek silver reminder of Wes’s ownership. “What do we say to that, baby?”
“Yes, Sir,” I whispered. “Thank you, Sir.”
We stared at each other like this for a moment, a current of intensity electrifying the air.
Wes smiled. “I love you endlessly.”
I smiled back. I quoted my love letter, the one Wes kept in a box on his desk like some precious artifact. “You’re my favorite person.”
Wes’s eyes filled with emotion as he thumbed my silver collar, appreciating my nude form in his lap while he released a long breath. His lips curved, glancing at the copy of my book on the side table. Next to it was his tarot deck, a single card face-up with the roman numerals XXI.
“You are mine, Nova. But the world is yours.”
Thank you so much for reading The Circle!