Series Epilogue #2
I’d decided to surprise them by returning home a few days early and was excited to see their faces.
I loved my job and I tried my best to take work that would keep me close.
However, this film opportunity was one I couldn’t pass up, even if it meant filming between LA and Europe for the last four months.
The role was that of a government assassin pulled out of retirement and was the most physically demanding part I’d ever played.
Before it, I’d been in training for six months to get my body where it needed to be to do some of the stunts.
I’d promised Aria not all of them, considering I was closer to fifty than forty now.
However, I’d never been in better shape in my life.
Still, I didn’t like my wife worrying about me, so I did what I could to assuage her concerns by leaving the bigger stunts to the professionals.
Now that we’d finished filming, I’d have some time at home until the press tour started for a movie I’d filmed last year.
School had just started back, so I knew Maddox would be in class by the time I returned to our home on Ardnoch Estate.
We had a beautiful coastal home, and it meant Aria was literally a five-minute drive from work.
It also had the benefit of being one of the safest places on the planet for my family to live, and it gave me comfort knowing they were safe when I was out of the country filming.
Deciding to stop in at the castle to surprise Aria first, I asked them not to say anything at the gates as they let my car through.
That meant no one was there to greet me at the main entrance like usual.
The head butler Wakefield had retired last year, replaced by Stephen, who now went by his surname Miller.
It didn’t quite have the same ring to it.
I’d suggested to Aria she insist on him taking on a fake surname, but she’d just laughed like she thought I was joking.
I was in fact quite serious.
Miller was a rubbish name for a head butler.
Pushing open one of the double doors at the grand entrance of the castle, I stepped inside to find the great hall empty.
My feet echoed off the parquet flooring as I crossed the large expanse and disappeared under one of the arches at the rear.
I followed the wide corridor to the left, heading toward my wife’s office.
Aria was the estate manager now. She’d taken over most of Lachlan Adair’s duties, freeing him up for his other business ventures.
It kept Aria busier than I’d like when I was home, but it wasn’t fair for me to expect her to adjust her schedule just because I was home for a bit.
Weariness crawled through me at the thought. I missed my family. We’d fought so hard to create our family, and I sometimes feared I might look back at my life and regret all the moments I’d missed in favor of my career.
For years, Aria and I had tried to have a child.
It didn’t happen. Turned out we both had issues in that department, which made us extremely incompatible as procreators.
It broke my fucking heart not to be able to give Aria what she wanted.
In the darkest moments of our grief, I’d thought I might lose her, even when she assured me I was enough.
Eventually, we got to a place where we could talk about adoption.
Once we started the process, it took a while, but we eventually got Maddox.
He came to us at three years old. His mother overdosed when he was two and he’d been in care ever since.
Those first few months were difficult. As to be expected, Mad was a very mixed-up wee boy.
It was distressing to see that in a toddler, but it also didn’t take long for him to start trusting our permanency.
Now he had no memory of that time, and Aria and I were just Mum and Dad.
He was eight years old.
Five years had flown by.
I missed his birthday this year.
I fucking hated that.
Desperate to see my family, I hurried my steps toward Aria. I wondered if I could convince her to take Mad out of school for the day. I threw open the door without knocking and abruptly halted at the sight before me.
Aria sat with her arse against the edge of her desk, her hands braced at either side of her curvy thighs, laughing up at the security guard who stood way too close to her for my comfort.
Perhaps it was just the way I’d been feeling lately, but anger and jealousy flushed through me before I could stop it. “What the fuck?”
Aria’s gorgeous eyes flew to me and widened. She straightened up off the desk and her body brushed the arsehole looming over her.
I glowered at the bloke I didn’t recognize. “Do you want to step away from my wife.” It wasn’t a question.
The security guard raised an eyebrow and stepped back from Aria.
I could feel her glaring at me, but I didn’t take my eyes off the fucker who thought it was appropriate to be in his boss’s personal space.
He was younger than me. Both of us. At least twenty years younger than me.
“I was just relaying some information to Mrs. Hunter,” the security guard explained calmly.
“Awful cozy relaying.”
He pinched his lips together in displeasure and looked at Aria. “If that’s all?”
“Of course, Evan. And apologies for my husband’s behavior.”
I bristled as he strolled by me, almost daring me to punch him in the face.
As soon as the door closed behind him, I shook my head. “Don’t ever fucking apologize for me.”
“Don’t come barging in here after months of being away and accuse me of … of … what exactly?” she hissed, throwing her arms up in disbelief.
“You were flirting with him.”
Her outrage should have warned me I was crossing the line.
But I was exhausted, lonely, and I missed my fucking family more than anything in the world, and the truth was …
I wasn’t even sure they missed me that much when I was gone.
Aria never asked me to stay. Whenever I spoke to Maddox on video chat, he filled my ears about days spent with his uncle Jared on the farm or Uncle Walker at the estate or how cool fucking Uncle Lewis’s motorbike was and how funny Uncle Theo was.
“I was not flirting with him. He was telling me about an issue with a member and it was kind of funny. That’s what you walked in on and the fact that you could even accuse me of flirting with another man pisses me off more than I can say right now because I’m at work and I can’t scream at you like I want to,” she whisper-shouted, beautiful face flushed with indignation.
“Well, I’m sorry,” I whisper-shouted back. “But I missed my fucking wife, and I didn’t expect some twenty-year-old to be drooling over her behind my back.”
“He’s not twenty and he wasn’t drooling. Contrary to your belief, North, not every man finds me attractive.”
“Then they’re fucking blind!”
Her eyes flashed. “Why do I want to rip your clothes off when I’m this mad at you!”
“Because you missed me too!” I crossed the room and pulled her into my arms, crushing whatever angry thing she’d semi-yell at me next.
The taste and feel and smell of her filled my senses, and I remembered the months of lonely nights without her.
How I’d imagined her in my arms. And having her now, even like this, made me lose my ever-loving mind with want.
Aria didn’t stop me as I tugged and pulled at her mouth, my hands roaming her luscious curves. When she moaned at the feel of my erection, everything blanked but the need to be inside her. It had been so long. Too long.
I spun her around, shoving her things off her desk to clear the way to bend her over it.
“North!” She gasped as I yanked her tight skirt up and over her plump arse. “Oh my god.”
“No, gorgeous, it’s just me.” I tested her, pushing my fingers inside her wet, tight heat. “You did miss me.” I scrambled to unzip my jeans and release the raging erection straining to get inside my wife.
“Don’t—oh, yes—think this—uhhh—means—ah—I’m not stillmadatyouohhhh!” Her back arched as I thrust my cock into her.
“Oh fuck.” I squeezed my eyes closed as I held her hips in place and enjoyed the sensation of her tight heat wrapped around me.
Then the memory of her laughing up at the security guard clouded my mind.
It wasn’t that I believed my wife was flirting with someone else.
Or that she’d ever even think of betraying me.
It was that I wasn’t the one here on a daily basis making her laugh like that.
Longing scored through me and possessiveness had me clasping her nape in one hand and her hip in my other as I pulled almost all the way out and slammed back into her.
Aria let out a little cry and her fingers bit into the edge of her desk.
“Okay?” I grunted, squeezing her neck.
She nodded. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. I missed you. I’m really mad at you, but I missed you so much.”
Euphoria scored through me and I tightened my grip on her as I drove in and out of her body. Her whimpers and low moans, along with the clutch of her wet heat, had my balls drawing up faster than I liked.
“I missed you. I missed this. I miss us.” I slammed harder into her. “Do you need me like I need you?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” she huffed. “North, please …”
I slipped a hand between her legs and found her clit.
Just one touch and she went off like a rocket, clamping down around my cock, sucking me deep as her orgasm undulated through her. That’s all it took to send me over the edge. I came so fucking hard, I forgot to stifle my shout of release.
My hands caressed Aria’s round arse as I slowly pulled out. Watching my cum drip from my wife’s body would always and forever be one of my favorite viewing pleasures. I reached across her to the tissues on her desk.
She shivered, her arms shaking, holding her up as I wiped between her legs and then cleaned myself before tucking my cock back in my underwear and jeans.