Epilogue Zach
EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER
Imay have over-promised on the honeymoon front.
I may have quoted Samuel Johnson’s definition of it to my beautiful bride, in a voice more honeyed than the ‘moon’ we’re celebrating, promising a month of nothing but tenderness and pleasure.
On the pleasure front, I’m most certainly delivering. Over-delivering, probably.
There’s also a lot of tenderness going on, both literal and figurative, if the icepack Mads was sporting between her legs in bed this morning is any indication. See my above point about overdelivering on the pleasure.
However, the nothing but part is a total fucking joke.
Because while there’s love here—a whole lot of love, I might add—there’s also…
Let’s see. Two very happy, very rowdy little girls.
My three best friends and, against all odds, their other halves.
And two unborn children, one public knowledge (Belle) and one, for now, a very new, very special secret between my wife and me.
Who am I kidding? There’s no way Belle doesn’t know, too.
This place can take the chaos, though. It’s a fucking enormous and very ancient estate, or masseria, by the coast in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy.
It was filled to the brim with our friends and family forty-eight hours ago for our gorgeous, dreamy wedding, but thankfully the majority of them have departed, leaving the hardcore massive here for an extra couple of days before they too leave and it’s just the four of us.
Five of us, I suppose.
The initial plan was to hold off on the baby making until after we were man and wife, but, as with anything my wife puts her mind to, I didn’t stand a chance.
When your impossibly beautiful, impossibly young, and impossibly fertile-looking fiancée says things like God, Zach, I want you to pump me full of babies and Please, baby, put that big fat cock in me and knock me up, it’s hard to stay strong.
I tried to do the sensible thing, to take this particular conversation outside the bedroom, but even the most practical discussions about our hopes and dreams for our family grew heated—in the best possible way—as soon as we brought up babies.
I couldn’t believe how into it she was. I mean, I supposed she might want babies of her own one day, but I didn’t expect a twenty-five-year-old to want me to impregnate her so badly. I suspect having her best friend married and pregnant has paved the way a little, though she denies that.
She claims her breeding kink—her words—has been causing havoc ever since that afternoon she first saw me with Stel and Nance on Rafe’s terrace.
Whatever’s driving this desire of hers for a baby, I’ll take it as the true gift it is. Because if losing my first wife prematurely has taught me anything, it’s this.
Life, and love, are all we can ask for.
And I can’t think of a better way to honour that philosophy than by creating new life with the woman I love. The woman who brought me and my daughters truly back to life. Who’s filled our days with healing sunshine and laughter.
The woman who’s proven to me, in her own carefree, understated way, that she’s a natural caregiver. That her endless capacity for love and joy will make her as wonderful a mother as she’s been a de facto stepmother to the girls this past eighteen months.
If I told you Nancy’s only woken a handful of times since Maddy started sleeping over, would you believe me?
Probably not.
Because it’s ridiculous.
Our bereavement counsellor doesn’t think so.
She’s suggested that the safety cues Nancy’s picked up from seeing her father happy and grounded and relaxed have been sufficient to activate her parasympathetic nervous system more easily.
That’s an explanation I can get behind, because I know I also sleep far, far better when Maddy’s in my arms.
What she’s given me is the furthest thing from oblivion.
Instead, she’s given me the gift of consciousness. Of being able to stay present and open to the abundance life has to offer.
I’ll never be able to thank her. And I’ll never stop trying.
The girls are seriously good, too. It seems Mads and I were the only ones overthinking our relationship.
There was no one moment where I had to beg the girls to accept her as a part of our lives, or where I outright asked her to step up and help me parent.
I don’t think I could ever have asked that of her.
Instead, she just slotted in. Easily. Casually. One day, she left the bulk of her skincare at my place (much to Stella’s delight). The next, she was French plaiting the girls’ hair. The next, she was picking up the pieces when Stel came home crying after an eye-opening puberty talk at school.
She came, and she stayed, and she bowled me over.
Because if I fell in love with Mads in the bedroom first, I cemented that love over every family dinner and kids’ football match and girly nail-painting session.
I’ve been the one who’s had to put boundaries in place.
Parenthood is often drudgery, and I won’t have her taking on that burden before our baby is born.
Ruth does a hell of a job, but I kick Maddy out the door a couple of times a week and make her go see her friends in impossibly glamorous places I’d never set foot in.
Her life will change enough in seven months’ time, and I don’t want her to have any regrets.
She appears in the stone doorway of our bedroom, one hand up on the doorframe.
She’s backlit against the light of the hallway, and she’s never looked more beautiful.
I look up at her from my chair by the French doors and drink in the sight of her.
Hair loose and tangled from a swim earlier.
Her dress is coral-coloured, long and fucking outrageous.
It’s held up with a little string at the back of her neck.
The front plunges almost to her navel, and it’s completely backless.
Apparently it’s called a cover-up, but it covers up far too little. Just the way I like it.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask. I may ask this far too frequently.
‘I told the others I needed a siesta,’ she says, shutting the door and coming towards me.
‘You tired?’ I ask with concern. I know how exhausting the first trimester is.
‘Nope.’ She holds my gaze and, reaching both hands up, undoes the tie of her dress. The front flaps fall right down, exposing her perfect tits, her tan lines making white triangles of them. Then she’s shoving down the dress so she’s fully, wonderfully naked.
I put my hands on the arms of my oversized armchair and prepare to stand, but she stops me. ‘Stay there.’
Fine by me. I settle back down with a smirk as she sashays towards me. This woman is so confident in her body and her sexuality and of my love for her that she undoes me every time, instantly.
And the idea that she’s carrying our child right now?
Fucking mind-blowing.
She climbs into the armchair so she’s straddling me. I gaze up at her adoringly as I slide my hands up her thighs and over her arse, giving it a good squeeze.
There is nothing like having my hands on Madeleine.
Touching her has calmed me and healed me since Day One, since long before I was ready to admit the power she had over me and my grief.
But there’s no guilt now.
No conflict.
No confusion.
Nothing but pure joy and love and hunger and anticipation, because fuck is it always good with my wife, and when she’s like this, naked and sinuous and undulating above me, it’s transcendent.
She writhes in my lap, her pussy hovering a couple of inches above my swim-short-clad erection as she leans forward, hands clamped onto my shoulders, dragging her pebbled little nipple against my mouth.
‘What do you need, sweetheart?’ I ask, my lips brushing against her skin. I can’t even imagine how I must look right now, like a man crazed with love. But I couldn’t care less. I’m completely in her thrall, and I’m fine with it.
A lot more than fine.
She grinds down, rubbing herself against my erection while shoving her tit further against my mouth, and she’s so fucking wanton that I could blow just like this.
There is nothing that gets me off more quickly than my wife being totally fucking shameless. Being so desperate for me to touch her that she’ll do anything.
‘I want my husband to claim me,’ she says in a throaty whimper that goes straight to my cock. ‘I’ve been thinking about it outside, and I couldn’t last. I want you to use me and claim me and fuck me and make me obey you like I’m some fucking virgin mail-order bride and you want your money’s worth.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I manage. I don’t know where she comes up with these depraved fantasies, but she’s yet to conjure up one that doesn’t ignite the darkest parts of me.
We’ve done the virgin fantasy a few times and it really fucking works for both of us.
I love my strong, brave, liberated wife exactly as she is, but when she whispers in my ear that I’m the first to touch her there, things usually spin out of control pretty quickly.
Her nipple is so small and hard against my tongue as I toy with it.
Like a tiny coconut-suncream-scented sweet.
I can’t resist catching it lightly between my teeth as I lave it.
She sucks in a sharp, shuddery breath. Her nipples are already tender, she’s told me, but she’s also said they’re more erogenous than ever, so I trust her to tell me if pleasure turns to pain.
‘Don’t grind on me yet,’ I mumble as I pluck at her other nipple with my fingertips. For both our sakes. She moans loudly as she hovers above me, and I’m hoping her pussy feels as needy, as bereft as my dick.
‘My new bride has fucking amazing tits,’ I tell her between hard sucks. ‘I hope her pussy is as good. Do you feel an ache between your legs yet?’
‘Yes,’ she moans, rubbing her cheek against the top of my head as she grips my shoulders more tightly.