Epilogue - Annabella #2
“Please.” It came out rough and furious, and I didn’t care. “Sam, please, fuck me.”
His expression changed. The smug grin softened into something else, something fierce and tender and completely undone. “Whatever you want, Moonbeam,” he said.
He surged up over me, one hand scooping under my lower back, the other gripping the headboard behind my head. Before I could react he’d lifted me—just enough, his arm strong and sure under my spine—and shifted us both back until my shoulders hit the headboard.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he said.
I did. Hooked my ankles at the small of his back, my thighs gripping his hips, and he knelt up on the mattress between them, taking my weight like it was nothing. My back pressed flat against the headboard, his body the only thing holding me up.
His hand cupped the back of my neck. Tilted my face to his. Kissed me slow and deep, and I tasted myself on his tongue—salt and heat and something that made my wolf growl approval.
“I’ve got you,” he said against my mouth. “I’ve always got you.” And then he pushed inside me.
One long, slow thrust that filled me completely. I gasped, my fingers digging into his shoulders, my head dropping back against the headboard. The angle was—howling hell—deeper than anything. He was so deep I could feel him everywhere, and when he pulled back and thrust again, my vision blurred.
“Eyes on me, Moonbeam.”
My eyes snapped to his, and he set a pace that was slow and devastating.
Deep, grinding thrusts that pulled almost all the way out and then filled me to the hilt, his hips rolling in a way that dragged against my clit on every stroke.
He held my gaze the entire time. Wouldn’t let me look away, wouldn’t let me hide behind closed eyes or my face buried in his neck.
“Stay with me,” he said.
Spirits take me. I couldn’t think anymore.
Couldn’t do anything except feel him moving inside me and the mate bond blazing between us so bright it turned the entire room silver-green.
My magic was pouring off me in waves; I could see it painting his skin.
Then his pace shifted. Faster. Harder. The headboard knocking against the wall in a rhythm that was going to be audible downstairs, and I could not bring myself to care.
His hand slid from my neck to my jaw, tipping my face back, his thumb resting on my lower lip.
“You said please for me,” he said. Rough. “You have no idea what that does to me.”
His arm tightened around my back, hitching me higher, changing the angle again, and I cried out—couldn’t stop it, the new depth hitting a place inside me that sent shockwaves through my whole body.
His free hand slid between us, found my nipple, and the pad of his thumb worked tight circles that matched the rhythm of his thrusts.
“Come for me, Annabella.” Not a request. A command. “I want to feel it. Let go.”
The orgasm hit like a detonation. My whole body seized around him; clenching, shaking, my magic blazing white-hot, and the mate bond screaming between us as I broke apart in his arms. I heard myself say his name, heard the raw, shattered sound of it, and felt him follow me, three hard thrusts that buried him to the hilt and the low, guttural groan he made against my throat as he emptied himself inside of me.
He didn’t let me go. Held me there, pinned between his body and the headboard, both of us shaking, both of us breathing like we’d just sprinted a mile. My legs were trembling around his waist. My fingernails had left crescents in his shoulders that were already starting to heal.
The silver-green light faded slowly.
He kissed my temple. My cheekbone. The corner of my mouth. Eased out of me carefully and lowered us both sideways onto the mattress, pulling me against his chest, my back to his front. His arm heavy over my waist. His mouth pressed to the back of my neck, right where the silver streak started.
“We’re going to be late for breakfast,” he said.
“Sofia’s going to kill us.”
“Worth it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Totally worth it.”
The kitchen was chaos.
The loud, messy, too-many-bodies-in-too-small-a-space kind of chaos.
“Derek, the eggs are burning—No, the other eggs. Jase, if you don’t stop sulking and set the table I swear on the Moon Goddess —”
“I’m not sulking,” Jase muttered as he grabbed plates.
Derek rescued the eggs, then caught Sofia around the waist as she passed, pressing a kiss to her temple. She swatted him with the spatula but leaned into the touch.
“Bella!” Ellie barreled into my legs before I’d made it two steps past the doorframe. Almost five and utterly fearless, my sister. “Bella, Bella, guess what!”
I scooped her up, settled her on my hip. She smelled like maple syrup and that warm-grass scent the young Shifters she always played with these days carried. “What?”
“I made the flowers glow,” she announced. Silver-blue sparks danced at her fingertips—our magic, or close enough. Same warmth, same fizz of witch-power and wolf-energy mingled together. “Mama said I shouldn’t do it at the table, but I wanted to, and they were so pretty —”
“Save the glowing flowers for after breakfast,” I said. “So Sofia doesn’t have a heart attack.”
“Sofia has survived worse than glowing flowers,” Sofia called from the stove. “But yes, please, let’s keep the magic to a minimum until I’ve had coffee.”
I carried Ellie to the table. Ryan sat at the head, Mai beside him, pushing eggs around her plate and looking vaguely green. The twins, Oakley and Victoria, were locked in some kind of complex negotiation over a piece of toast, even though there were at least twenty pieces of toast on the table.
My mother sat across from them.
My chest did a thing. I ignored it.
Three months ago, she couldn’t stand without help. Simon’s poison had been rotting her from the inside out. Esme and Thomas spent weeks pulling it apart, identifying the spellwork woven through the toxins. Longer reversing the damage. Touch and go for a while. Too fucking close.
But she was here. Thinner, yeah. But color in her cheeks. Laughing at something Aunt Jo said while Uncle Fred poured her more juice. Laughing.
She caught my eye across the table and smiled. Mouthed I love you.
I looked away before I did something embarrassing. Like cry.
“Bella.” Ellie tugged my shirt. “Bella, I want to sit with Mama.”
I deposited her in our mother’s lap and found my own seat. Sam slid in beside me, his hand finding my knee under the table. I let it stay.
Sofia set the last platter down and dropped into the chair Derek had pulled out for her. “I thought you two were going to sleep through the whole morning.”
“We were conducting a threat assessment,” Sam said. Straight-faced. “Very important strategic work.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now?” Derek didn’t look up from his eggs, but I could hear the smirk.
“Children present,” Mai said, though she was smiling. Then she pushed her plate away and pressed a hand to her mouth. “Damn it—”
Ryan was already on his feet. “Do you need—?”
“If you ask me one more time if I need to lie down, I will end you.” Mai’s voice was pleasant. Her eyes were not. “I will do it slowly. I will enjoy it.”
Ryan sat back down. Smart man.
Mai was pregnant again and due in six months. This one was not going as easily as the last one, and apparently, that had been nerve-wracking for the whole Pack.
Victoria chose that moment to launch a piece of egg at her brother’s head. Oakley retaliated with a chunk of toast. Negotiations had definitely broken down.
“Three of them,” Mai sighed, watching the carnage. “We’re going to have three of them. What were we thinking?”
“You were thinking about how much you love me,” Ryan said.
“I was thinking I should have pushed you off a cliff when I had the chance.”
But she was leaning into his side. His hand on her stomach. The look between them…I didn’t have a word for it. Didn’t need one.
Sam’s thumb traced a circle on my knee.
Breakfast continued in its chaotic way. Conversations overlapping, food disappearing, the twins eventually corralled into their chairs where they could only cause localized destruction.
Jase remained at the end of the table, contributing monosyllables and pointed silences.
“Don’t,” Sofia murmured when I glanced at him. She’d slid into the seat beside me, nursing a coffee, while Derek helped Aunt Jo clear plates. “Don’t ask about Amara. They had a massive fight yesterday. He’s been like this ever since.”
“Huh,” I said.
Sofia raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing. Just…huh.”
“You’re as bad as Derek. He keeps making that noise, too.”
After breakfast, I found myself on the back porch with another cup of coffee and a four-year-old shadow who refused to leave my side.
“Bella.” Ellie had claimed my lap, small body warm against my chest. “Bella, are you going away again?”
“Just for a little while. I have to help build something important.”
“Like a house?”
“Like a…set of rules. For how different people can live together without trying to kill each other.”
Ellie considered this with the gravity only small children could manage. “That sounds boring.”
I laughed. It surprised me. “It probably will be. Lots of talking. Lots of arguing. Lots of people who think they know best.”
Ellie scrunched her nose. “Why don’t you just zap them? Like —” She waved her hands, silver-blue sparks scattering across the porch. “And then they have to agree.”
“That’s not how politics works, Ellie.”
“Or Sam could do the big, loud roar thing.” She puffed out her chest and made a sound that was approximately one percent as intimidating as she thought it was. “And then everyone goes quiet and does what you say.”
“That’s also not how politics works.”
“It works when Uncle Ryan does it.”
Hmmm. She had me there.
“But you’ll come back?”
I looked at my sister. At the silver-blue sparks still playing at her fingertips. At the way she talked about magic like it was as normal as breathing, and thought about how she was going to grow up in Three Rivers surrounded by people who would never once call her an abomination.