Epilogue #2
I carry Mia up the stairs. Past the library with the reading table that I never did restack with books because every time I look at it, I think about her on the edge of it in the lamplight, and I prefer the memory to the organisation.
I carry her into my room. Our room. It became ours somewhere around night three when she stopped pretending she was going to sleep in the guest room and I stopped pretending I wanted her to.
I set her down on the bed. She looks up at me.
"Hi," she says.
"Hi."
I lie down beside her. She turns into me.
My hand finds her stomach. Flat. Nothing to feel yet.
But it's there. Something we made. Something that exists because she walked to my club on a Friday night with blood in her hair, and I decided to open a door I told myself I wouldn't open, and she told me to stop deciding for her.
She puts her hand over mine.
"Scared?" she asks.
"No."
"Liar."
I look at her. She looks at me.
"Terrified," I admit.
She smiles. Presses closer.
"Good," she says. "Me too."
Outside, the early summer sun is still rising over the grounds. The lake is silver in the morning light.
The mandate is met. The deadline is passed. The family is intact. The empire continues.
And the woman in my arms shifts against me, presses her cold feet against my shins the way she does every morning, and says, "How nice is the ring?"
"It's nice."
"How nice?"
"Obscenely nice."
"Good," she says. "I've earned obscene and obscene suits me." She begins unbuttoning my shirt.
Mia
I work the buttons open slowly. Not because I'm being seductive.
I'm being seductive by accident. Mostly I'm just enjoying the way his stomach tightens under my fingers as I reach the lower ones, the way his breathing changes, the way his jaw sets like he's trying very hard to let me lead when every instinct in his body wants to take over.
Five months, and that hasn't changed. The control. The restraint. The way he holds himself back until I give him permission not to.
I like giving him permission.
I push the shirt off his shoulders. It falls behind him on the bed. He's propped up on the pillows, watching me with those dark eyes, and I'm straddling his thighs in nothing but another of his shirts that I'm now pulling over my head.
His gaze drops. It always does. Every time I undress in front of this man, his eyes do the same thing, they track downward with a kind of focused hunger that still makes my skin prickle, even after all these months. Like he's seeing me for the first time. Like the novelty hasn't worn off.
It hasn't worn off for me either.
"Come here," he says. Low.
"I'm already here."
"Closer."
I lean forward. His hand slides into my hair and he kisses me. Deep. Unhurried. The kind of kiss that's a conversation, that says things neither of us has put into words yet because we've been too busy with pregnancy tests and uncles and proposals.
I pull back. Press my forehead to his.
"I want to try something," I say.
His thumb traces my jaw. "Tell me."
"I want to sit on your face."
His hand stills.
I watch his pupils blow wide. Watch the muscle in his jaw twitch.
He looks at me with an expression that is caught somewhere between surprise and the very specific intensity he gets when I say something filthy.
Which isn't often. Mia Lawson, who is helpful and quiet, has become significantly less quiet in this bed over the last five months, but direct requests still cost me something. Still make me blush.
I'm blushing now. I can feel it climbing my chest.
"Yes," he says. One word. No hesitation. He shifts down the bed, settling flat on his back, and looks up at me. "Get up here."
My heart is hammering. It's ridiculous. I've had this man in every room of this house. I've done things with him I didn't know I was capable of wanting, let alone doing. But this feels new. This feels like an edge I haven't stepped off yet.
I move up his body. Knees either side of his chest. Then higher. His hands find my thighs. Big. Warm. Steadying.
"You control this," he says. Looking up at me. "You set the pace. If it's too much, you lift up. Understood?"
I nod.
"Words, Mia."
"Understood."
His hands slide up to my hips. He guides me forward. I grip the headboard.
And then his mouth is on me and my brain whites out.
It shouldn't still surprise me. After everything. After the library and the table and the bedroom and that time against the bathroom wall when we were supposed to be getting ready for dinner at the main house. His mouth shouldn't still take me apart this efficiently.
It does.
He starts slow. Long, flat strokes that make my thighs shake. His hands on my hips are firm but not controlling, holding me steady, letting me move, letting me find the angle that works. I rock forward. His tongue presses harder. I gasp and grip the headboard tighter.
"Oh—" My head drops between my arms. "Iosif."
He makes a sound against me. A low hum that vibrates through my entire body.
He's enjoying this. I can tell from the grip on my hips, from the way his fingers dig in slightly, from the sounds he's making.
He likes this. He likes me above him, likes looking up at me, likes the fact that I asked for it.
I start to move. Tentative at first. A slow grind forward and back, finding the rhythm, finding the pressure. His tongue adjusts to match me. Wherever I go, he follows. Whatever angle I find, he meets it.
This is what he does. In bed and out of it.
He pays attention. He reads the situation.
He adjusts. The same man who mapped the Vinzlee vacuum in an afternoon and restructured a power dynamic over a phone call applies that same focused intelligence to the movement of my hips, and the result is devastating.
I move faster. His hands tighten. I feel the edge building, the familiar hot pull low in my belly, and I chase it. No self-consciousness. No performance. Just me and his mouth and the headboard under my hands and the sound of my own breathing, loud and ragged in the quiet room.
"Right there," I pant. "Don't move, don't change anything—"
He doesn't. He stays exactly where he is, tongue flat, pressure constant, and I grind down against him. The orgasm breaks over me in a rush that makes me cry out and curl forward, my forehead pressed against the headboard, my thighs clamping around his head, my whole body shaking.
He holds me through it. Hands firm on my hips. Mouth soft now, gentling, easing me down. Small, light passes of his tongue that make me twitch and shiver with each aftershock.
I lift up on trembling legs and slide down his body. My skin is oversensitive. Every point of contact sparks. His chest against mine. His hands on my back. His mouth finding mine, and I taste myself on him. The intimacy of it makes something ache behind my ribs.
"Good?" he asks against my lips.
"You know it was good. Don't fish."