Epilogue Blast-Off
Epilogue
Blast-Off
Two years later, I sat in an office in Huntsville, Alabama, perched on the edge of my desk watching a closed-circuit TV monitor like I’d spontaneously combust if I took my eyes off the screen.
Malcolm offered me a job at SkyTech a few weeks after OFest, and I took it. Got promoted six months in. Now today was our first big test launch.
Hudson came up behind me and pressed a kiss to the crook of my neck.
“It’s going to go fine,” he breathed against my skin.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. Because you designed it.”
When I first met Hudson, I would have been terrified of failing on this scale.
But now failure didn’t scare me so much.
If this rocket blew up, I knew I wasn’t going to get kicked out of the industry again.
Malcolm would give me the space, resources, and time to diagnose the problem, fix it, and have a successful takeoff next time.
Just like in my relationship with Hudson, I finally had a soft place to land. Somewhere to make mistakes, try again, and grow into someone better.
The relief was nearly indescribable. After a lifetime of flinching and running at the slightest hint of trouble, I now belonged somewhere. I wasn’t scared of my own shadow. I was finally free to be the person I’d always been, deep down inside.
On my television screen, our rocket went through its final-stage checks.
At this point, there was nothing I could do.
The math had been run. Every bolt and weld checked.
Every ounce measured and remeasured for maximum lift.
So I sat on my hands and tried to corral the butterflies running roughshod through my belly.
“We can go join the rest of the team in Mission Control, if you want,” Hudson said. “It’s not too late.”
“I know. But…I think I want the privacy. If it blows, I want to process it before I talk to the team. If it’s a success…I don’t want to cry in front of everybody.”
“This is a big deal. Of course you’re gonna go through it when everything’s said and done. They would understand any emotion you threw at them.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” I teased.
“No, trying to distract you before you kick a hole in the carpet.”
I glanced down at my leg, which had been absent-mindedly tapping out a drumline chorus on the floor below. “Oops. Sorry.”
Removing himself from his sentry point over my shoulder, Hudson sauntered over to the television, cutting into my line of sight for the first time in hours.
Now remotely developing an app for an amusement park company (you know the one), he’d taken the day off to support me in the launch—and for his trouble, he’d done everything from holding my hand to drinking my hot chocolate when I was too nervous to finish it to listening to me ramble about The Math? for an hour and a half.
Leaning against the wall, he drank me in. I flushed under his scrutiny. Even after two years, moving in together, and adopting a mutt named Moogie, he still knew how to make me feel like the most beautiful woman in the galaxy.
“You know what? I think I have a better way to distract you.”
“Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm. Come here.”
Without further ado, he was on his knees in front of me, gently nudging my thighs apart.
Oh shit.
I giggled and tried to push him away, to no avail. “I really can’t—”
He kissed the inside of my leg and raised one challenging eyebrow. “Really can’t what?”
My cunt flexed at his intimate touch. A firm this isn’t the time or the place danced on my lips, but then his hand drifted upward, nudging my skirt up around my waist.
Fingertips taunted the edge of my panties.
“Fine,” he said when I came up short in the reply department. “If you really want to know, I think I need a distraction. I’m losing my mind. I’m so excited for you, I can hardly think straight.”
“Well, if it’s for you, then…how can I refuse?”
A chuckle and his stubble brushed against my sensitive skin. “You can keep your eyes on the screen. Just pretend I’m not even here.”
Impossible. I could never think of anything else with Hudson’s mouth around my clit.
Still, I indulged him.
He’d read me perfectly. I did need a distraction. And now, even if the launch didn’t go as planned, at least I would get an amazing orgasm out of it.
We’d made love several times this morning, and from the way Hudson gripped my hips and yanked me to the very edge of the desk, I could tell that he was not going to go easy on me now. He would not leave any quarter for my mind to wander back to the stress of the launch.
He ripped my panties off. In the reflection on the television screen, I saw him shove them in his pocket for safekeeping. Then, throwing my legs over each of his shoulders, he had me stretched and ready for him—a feast for his taking.
No teasing today. Just hunger.
Capturing my clit between his lips, he kissed me deeply, swirling and sucking just the way I liked. His pace was slow but the pressure unrelenting. The orgasm was an inevitability; I could feel it even now, planting seeds in the pit of my stomach.
Eyes still on the television set, I tried to split my attention between my need for him and my professional obligations.
But then, as he tongued my hard clit, he pressed a finger to my entrance, ready to broach me. My eyes slammed shut.
My cunt dripped for him. He slid one finger easily inside.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
I bucked my hips, demanding more. He smirked around my clit. A second finger joined the first.
That wasn’t enough either. I wanted to cum hard. I wanted him to break me apart and put me back together again.
He took the hint. A third entered my cunt.
I exhaled, hard. It was very much a careful what you wish for scenario. I was full to the brim of him.
When I was fully stretched out and relaxed around him, he curled in the depths of me, tickling my G-spot with slow, easy strokes.
My eyes fluttered back in my head. God damn, was he good at this. My entire body tingled, the warmth of pleasure stimulating every inch of me.
But it wasn’t enough. Even as I was riding higher, I needed more.
Sorry, sleeved button-up. I hardly knew ye.
Ripping at the fabric, I tore the shirt away and unhooked my front-clasp bra, exposing my tits to the overly AC-ed room. My nipples pebbled, hard and proud for me, and I moaned as soon as my own hands began to toy with them.
That was when the countdown began, crackling from the CAPCOM speaking over the live launch footage.
“Ten.”
Hudson gave my clit the smallest of nibbles. I shuddered.
“Nine.”
He picked up his pistoning pace in my pussy. I couldn’t help it—I wanted more, so I began thrusting against him.
“Eight.”
He tongued my clit, swirling and focusing his attentions on it. Yes, that’s it. Right there.
“Seven.”
Fuck, I was getting close. The muscles in my body tensed in heated anticipation of the climax to come.
“Six.”
Removing a hand from one of my nipples, I threaded it through his hair, holding him in place. I was not going to let him get away with teasing me today. My touch only encouraged him to eat me harder and faster. I tightened around his fingers.
“Five.”
It was all so much. A wet, sloppy cunt. A perfect mouth to worship it. My nipples tight in my grasp. My pussy full of perfectly pounding fingers, taking me again and again.
“Four.”
More, more, more. Right there. Don’t stop. Fuck, don’t stop…
“Three.”
I was completely riding his face now, fucking myself against his perfect fingers, dominating his mouth with my pussy.
Taking control. Using him and letting him play me all at the same time.
My orgasm was so close. The rocket boosters on the screen were fully smoking now, their flames spurting out in mad, violent waves.
I knew the feeling.
“Two.”
Full ignition. Inside me and on my television screen.
The rocket’s first-stage engines caught, and suddenly, the 450-ton sky-traversing contraption I’d built was flying.
Hudson hit my G-spot one final time. His teeth brushed my clit in just the right way. My nipples tweaked at just the right time.
“Hudson!”
I contracted around his hand, tightening my legs around his neck and holding him in place.
A voice from Mission Control crackled through the speakers. “We have liftoff.”
We collapsed against each other. His head against my thigh, me curled against him so my head could lie along the curve of his shoulders. Our eyes drifted to the footage. The rocket was gliding off against the clear, blue summer sky, and I was still riding the last aftershocks of Hudson’s making.
A perfect launch. A perfect orgasm.
The perfect happy ending.