Epilogue
Five Months Later
Hawk
Her fingers grip my hand so tight that I’m certain they’re cutting off blood circulation, but I do nothing to stop her.
I, more than anyone, understand her anxiety.
This is the moment my wife has been obsessing and stressing over for days.
Weeks, even, but it’s not just her. The courtroom air hangs thick and heavy with anxiety, and each tick of the clock on the wall only works to add to that anxiety.
Every rustle of paper, cough, or creak of a wooden chair only works to amplify the tension in the room.
My gaze flickers to my daughter. At seven months old, she’s still so tiny and every bit as beautiful, and this moment is about her.
All this fear and anxiety are because everyone in here cares about her.
I turn to look at the gallery where our family sits, a sea of worried faces that mirror my wife’s expression when I turn back to her.
Last night was especially hard for her. “What if my age raises concern?” she asked me, pacing anxiously in our bedroom.
“I mean, I’m old enough to vote, drink, and drive.
Old enough to get married and have kids, but…
I read a case about a twenty-two-year-old in another state where the judge denied adoption, stating that she lacked maturity and stability.
What if that happens tomorrow in court?”
My effort to comfort her fell flat and didn’t do much to reassure her. I can’t say I’m not worried too, as I know a defeat today would break my wife. When the judge leans forward, I hear Amelia’s breath catch so I run a hand over her arm with my free one, seeking to comfort her.
“The court finds…” The words hang in the air, each one a blow against my already frayed nerves. “…in favor of the adoption…”
A collection of gasps sweeps through the courtroom, drowning out the rest of the words.
Then a cheer erupts, exploding through the room and nearly blowing the roof off.
Amelia staggers, and I have to hold her so she doesn’t fall.
I watch as the tears fall, but there’s that smile I haven’t seen in days, often drowned by anxiety.
When it breaks across her face, it drives the dark clouds away.
“I’m not her stepmother anymore,” she says tearfully. “Legally, she’s my baby now.”
“She’s been yours from the second you lulled her to sleep with your music,” I say, kissing her brows.
She wraps her arms tightly around me before pushing back to get to Wren, who immediately extends her little arms for my wife.
I watch with pride as my two girls embrace, one caught up in the joy of the moment without even realizing how much the other has agonized over this day.
“Let’s take this party out of here,” Saint says, clapping my shoulder, and I nod, eager to finally leave this place.
The last couple of months have been a long battle of fighting to establish legal custody.
When Amelia told me she wanted to adopt Wren, neither of us were prepared for the complex process, but she was already emotionally invested and determined to see it through.
And today, it paid off.
The ride to the clubhouse is spent in chatter between my wife and daughter, Amelia talking and Wren blabbering away.
They stick together at the party, and I don’t take it to heart when my wife forgets me for a moment, choosing to keep the baby in her arms the entire time.
I catch up with her in a quiet corner of the terrace, rocking a sleeping Wren.
“I saved you some cake,” I tell her, lifting the paper plate and the slice I managed to snag before the guys could clean it out.
“Thank you,” she says, opening up her mouth when I fork some for her. “Wren is going to be so upset when she wakes up to find all the cake gone. You know how much she loves cake.”
“Well then, I guess it’s a good thing the bakery is open on weekends too.” I spoon more cake to feed her. “We’ll get her some desserts tomorrow.”
“Yeah, tomorrow,” she says, hugging the sleeping child tighter.
I watch them together and feel my heart swell with affection, but there’s also a concern that I’ve always carried.
A little guilt from how things played out between us.
With everything sorted, at least the legal bit of it, maybe this is the time to bring up my concerns.
“Would you like a do-over?” I ask her.
Amelia opens her mouth and I feed her more cake. “Hmm?”
“I mean, a real proposal. A wedding,” I explain. “Everything between us happened in a rush, and you deserve to be wooed and courted properly. It might be a bit late for the courting, but we could redo some things.”
She chews slowly, considering. “You’re right, things did happen fast between us, but I wouldn’t change a moment of any of it,” she says, her eyes filled with affection when they meet mine.
“That awkward proposal in the park, and the court wedding and then our wedding night…I wouldn’t want to change any of it.
I don’t need to rewrite or replace any of those memories with new ones. ”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m legally yours, and you are legally mine.” Her eyes drop to our sleeping child. “And now, she is legally ours. It’s perfect. We’re perfect.”
My concern falls away at her words and I realize that she’s right. We are perfect.
When her arms get sore from carrying Wren for so long, I take her and we head to the guest apartment in the clubhouse. Together, we lay Wren in a borrowed crib, then stand together to watch her. “She’s so big now,” I muse. “Kids grow up so fast.”
“I know,” she mutters. “Do you think she’s big enough for a sibling?”
My head whips around and I stare at my wife in surprise. “What?”
“I…I’ve been thinking,” she starts. “Watching our baby grow out of her little clothes and get so big has given me baby fever.”
“You want another baby?”
She nods. “As long as it’s okay with you.”
“Then it sounds like we have a lot of work to do,” I say, a wicked gleam settling in my eyes.
I grab the baby monitor and wrap my arm around her middle, and she gasps when I haul her onto my shoulder.
I carry her caveman style out of Wren’s room and to the master bedroom. “How about we get started on that?”
“Hawk!” She giggles when I toss her onto the bed. “I didn’t mean we need to make the baby right now.”
“Why not?” I ask, placing the baby monitor on the nightstand and turning to her. Christ, it’s been five months of marriage, a year and a half since I met her, and I still want her just as desperately, if not more.
She looks so sexy in that dress, her tits straining over the neckline, and suddenly, I can’t help but picture her pregnant. Those tits swollen and sensitive. Desperate for my touch, for me to tease and suck them into relief.
“Hawk?”
“Strip!”
She must spot the dangerous glint flashing in my eyes, because she gets on her knees and tugs the dress up and over her shoulders before dropping it on the foot of the bed.
My aching cock throbs fiercely as articles of clothing drop one after the other until she’s naked, perfect from head to toe.
I take my time scaling her body, eyes lingering on those beaded buds begging to be touched, and down to the narrow curve of her waist and hips and that pussy I’ve spent considerable time worshipping.
“Your turn,” she says.
I keep my eyes locked on my wife as I shrug off my jacket, and despite the roaring in my head, the racing of my pulse, and the pounding in my balls, I don’t rush to tear off my clothes. I take my time, savoring the vision of my lovely wife…drinking in the moment.
I couldn’t have dreamed up a better life than the one I share with her.
“So beautiful,” growl, approaching her. I can feel my control grow thinner and thinner, and it practically snaps when I climb onto the bed. I take her mouth in a feral snarl, voices in my head yelling for me to take her.
Get her pregnant.
She’s planted the seed in there, but it’s already taken root and sprouted, and now I can think of nothing else but my wife with her belly swollen—carrying our child. Our second baby.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” I rasp against her lips, swallowing her moans as I scale my hands fervently up her body. I touch her everywhere, fondling a body that I’ve spent months exploring but never quite getting enough. I kiss her like a drowning man, her pleasured moans fueling my hunger.
I watch her as I kiss my way down her body, licking a path down her stomach and between her hips.
She cries out when I bury my hungry tongue in her sex, lapping at her pussy like an animal seeking to mark its mate.
And when she’s trembling, her sex pulsing and aching against my tongue, I pull back and replace my tongue and fingers with my cock.
There’s something primal as I hammer into her, the bed creaking with every slam. I lose my mind as I take her. Pouring everything I feel for her into the moment and drowning all else. I don’t allow myself release until I feel her teetering close to the edge.
It’s my name on her lips like a prayer when I rock into her, slowly tugging her to the edge, to the pleasure that only I have ever offered her.
Her nails scratch down my back as I glide into her, marking me as I do her.
And when she comes apart, her entire world shifting right before my eyes, then and only then do I allow myself to follow.
“I love you, Hawk,” she pants as I pour the last of my seed into her womb. Her eyes well with tears that glisten in the light. “I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
“You’ll never have to,” I rasp, kissing her brows, cheeks, and then those luscious lips. “I’m not going anywhere, baby. I promise to love you in this life and into the next.”
~The End
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