Epilogue #2
Not the frantic scramble of the early reconciliation, not the booth urgency or the back-seat joy - something slower.
Something that has learned, over a year of mornings with espresso and Matteo’s terrible chord progressions and Senna’s hand on my shoulder in the studio, how to pay attention.
I walk her backward toward our bed with my mouth on hers, unhurried, tasting the wine from dinner and the particular sweetness that is just her, and she laughs against my lips when the backs of her knees hit the mattress.
“Smooth,” she teases.
“I’ve had a year of practice.” I peel her sweater up and off, slow enough to watch the fabric drag over her breasts, slow enough to see her nipples tighten in the cool air of the bedroom.
“A year of learning what you sound like when I do this-” I bend and take one into my mouth, sucking gently, and she gasps.
“-versus this.” I switch to the other, firmer, teeth grazing, and her hands fist in my hair.
“Rocco-”
“I’m paying attention,” I say against her skin. “That’s what you asked for. That’s what the song was about. That’s what I’ve been practicing every night you’ll let me.”
“Filthy soft academic.”
“You married a musician. We take our craft seriously.”
She laughs again - that real laugh, the one from somewhere deep - and I feel it under my mouth like a second heartbeat.
I work her jeans open, push them down her hips, kneel to peel them off her ankles.
She’s in plain underwear, soft worn cotton, and I press my mouth to the damp fabric between her thighs and breathe her in like a man who used to write about his marriage and then stopped and has spent a year remembering why he ever started.
“These,” I murmur, hooking my fingers in the waistband. “Off.”
“Bossy.”
“Attentive. There’s a difference.”
“We’ve covered this.”
“We keep covering it.” I peel the underwear down and off, and then she’s bare in front of me on our bed, in our room, in the house full of music we’ve rebuilt together, and I sit back on my heels and just look at her for a moment - flushed, smiling, wet for me, wearing the ring she put back on a year ago and has never taken off since.
“Fuck. Look at you. My wife. Still the most interesting woman I’ve ever met. Still the only song worth writing.”
“Skip the verse,” she says, but her voice is soft. “Start the chorus with your mouth.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I put my mouth on her.
Not rushed. Not proving anything. I open her with my thumbs and taste her the way I’ve learned she likes best on a weeknight - slow at the start, building, listening to every shift in her breathing, every small sound that tells me when to press harder and when to ease off.
Her hand finds my hair. Her thighs settle around my shoulders.
Outside, Florence is doing whatever Florence does at nine o’clock; inside, I’m learning my wife all over again the way I learn a melody - by attention, by repetition, by love.
I catalog the salt of her, the way her breath catches when I flatten my tongue, the tiny broken sound she makes when I go soft and teasing instead of firm.
Every detail is a note. Every note is hers.
“There-” she gasps when my tongue finds the right pressure on her clit. “Right there. Hold that. Don’t wander.”
“I won’t.” I slide two fingers into her, curl them against that place that makes her hips lift, and keep my mouth working while I talk against her cunt like the filthy soft husband I’ve become.
“You’re so wet for me. After dinner. After Matteo’s funeral-dirge chord progressions.
After a year of me trying not to fuck this up.
Look at you. Taking my fingers like you were made for this. ”
“I was made for this.” Her voice cracks. “I was made for you. Don’t stop - Rocco - I’m-”
“Give it to me.” I suck on her clit, fingers working. “Come on my tongue. Let me hear you. Let me feel you. I’ve got nowhere to be except here.”
She comes with a broken sound that still, after a year of hearing it regularly again, makes something in my chest crack open.
Her thighs shake. Her cunt flutters around my fingers.
I work her through it until she’s tugging at my hair, laughing breathlessly, saying *enough, you smug bastard*, and I kiss the inside of her thigh and look up at her with what I’m sure is an extremely smug expression.
“Smug,” she confirms.
“Ecstatic. There’s a difference. We’ve covered this too.”
I stand. Strip - shirt, trousers, briefs - while she watches with the hungry attention of a woman who no longer has to wonder if I’ll be here in the morning.
My cock is hard, aching, and when she reaches for me I step into her hand and let her stroke me once, twice, watching her face, watching the ring flash on her finger.
“Inside me,” she says. “Slow. I want the unhurried version. I want the husband who has nowhere else to be.”
“You have him.”
I climb over her. Settle between her thighs.
Guide myself to where she’s soaked and open and push in - slow, deliberate, one long slide that seats me deep and makes both of us exhale like we’ve been holding our breath.
I drop my forehead to hers. Stay still for a moment.
Just feel her around me. Just feel the miracle of ordinary weeknight sex with the woman I almost lost. Her pulse flutters where our chests meet.
Mine answers it. For a second I am nothing but gratitude and heat and the dumb stunned joy of still being allowed this.
“You’re shaking,” she whispers, thumb stroking my jaw.
“Good shaking. The kind that means I know what I have.”
“Okay?” I ask.
“Move,” she whispers. “But stay. While you move. Stay with me.”
“Always.”
I move.
Slow. Deep. The rhythm of settled love - not the desperation of almost-lost, not the celebration of windows-down, just the attentive fucking of a man who has learned that paying attention is the whole craft.
I watch her face. I listen to her breathing.
When she makes a small sound I adjust the angle; when her nails dig into my back I go deeper; when she says my name like a question I answer with my hips and my mouth on hers.
“I love you,” I tell her, because it’s true and because I’ve learned to say it while I’m inside her instead of only in songs. “I love the way you produce. I love the way you laugh at Matteo. I love the way your cunt takes me like it remembers every year and forgives them anyway.”