Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
RAVEN
The familiar scrape of rough fingertips trails up my inner thigh, making me tremble before I’ve fully even woken. I groan, arching into the touch and reaching in the darkness until my fingers find thick hair.
Warm lips skate along my neck, gentle brushes and light kisses becoming more urgent as they move across my shoulder blade, down my chest, over my breasts and stomach, and move farther south.
Those fingers between my legs shift higher, until the lightest brush of them across my core makes me twitch and tighten my hold on his hair.
“Mmm…what are you doing, McBride?”
He rubs his rough beard against the top of my thighs, the abrasion so deliciously sensual it makes me grin even before I’ve opened my eyes. One of his thick fingers slides into me easily, and his warm breath flutters over my pussy. “I would think that would be obvious, Firefly.”
My own words coming back to haunt me…
But not the kind of haunting the horrific memories used to do to this man.
This is the good kind.
The kind I will gladly live with for the rest of my days.
Connor snakes his tongue out across my clit in the most deliciously slow way and that reminds me that the night I said that to him changed everything. It was the night I realized Connor McBride had become so much more than my enemy—he had become my everything.
And this man absolutely loves to do this anywhere, any time of day, whenever the goddamn mood strikes him, and apparently it struck him this morning before the sun even came up.
He groans his approval, his chest rumbling against me, and he curls his finger deep inside me into that perfect spot he always finds so easily, and begins his sensual assault with his tongue.
I tighten my grip on his hair, loving the feel of the thick strands running beneath my fingertips as he does this to me, as he wakes me in the most Connor McBride way possible.
Because he’s always so attentive.
Always taking care of me.
Always giving me everything I need, sometimes before I even know I need it.
He swirls his tongue in a way that has a gasp falling from my mouth, followed by a slow groan as I arch into him and feel his grin against my wet flesh. His tongue skates over my skin, exploring it as if it’s brand new territory instead of his favorite place to be.
But this is early…even for him.
“What’s gotten into you this morning, Conor McBride?”
Those dark eyes flick up to meet mine, and a slow grin spreads across his wet lips. He turns his head slightly to rub his beard against my thighs, and I twitch.
He slowly drags his finger in and out of me. “Well, I'm hoping that I'm going to get into you this morning.”
I laugh, and then quickly slap my hand over my mouth as the sound carries through the cabin.
Connor arches a brow. “You know the rules. If you wake her…”
He doesn't finish the sentence because we both know the consequences of getting a little too loud when the baby's sleeping, and it typically means one of us or both of us are left hanging.
That isn’t anything either of us wants…
Dipping his head, Connor kisses my pussy gently. “Can you be quiet for me, Firefly?”
I bite my lip and nod, and he grins before he ducks his head again, and this time, begins to devour me in earnest.
“Oh, fuck…”
Maybe I can’t.
I tip my head back and arch into him, allowing my hips to rock against his face in the same rhythm he uses to lick and suck and kiss and roll his tongue across my most sensitive places.
My body responds just like it always has to him—desperately trying to get closer, craving all the rough, rugged parts of him, even the ones that people are scared of, even the ones he's scared of.
Those are the ones I love and need so much, the ones that make him my protector, my partner, the wonderful father of my child, and eventually, my husband.
I glance down at the ring on my finger that glints in the morning sunlight just starting to trickle in through the cabin window, so bright and shiny against the black of his hair.
A light in the darkness…
He called me that once, when he was in his darkest hour.
But he’s become that for me, too.
Whenever I question if I did the right thing, when those nagging shadows of guilt threaten to darken the brightness he’s brought to my life, I remember that it’s always darkest before the dawn. And dawn always comes.
Like it’s about to soon.
Like I’m about to soon, if this man has anything to say about it.
Connor pulls his finger from inside me and probes his tongue deep inside me, and I can't bite back the little mewl of pleasure and need that fills the back of my throat.
“Be careful, Firefly…”
His low, ominous warning is enough to make me bite down hard on my lip, but also seems to spur him into action.
He slides his big, rough hands under my ass and lifts me, angling me up in a way that allows him to bury his face against my pussy and consume me in the way he knows I love, to give me a hard, fast release, because the sensual, slow ones seem to be harder and harder to find time for these days.
But they’re all good.
Anything this man wants to give me, anything he needs to, I’ll take it.
The orgasm doesn’t build slowly. It hits me hard, blindsiding me the same way my feelings for Connor did. They consumed me the same way a fire does the forest, and all the arguments we had over the years were the kindling that helped ignite the blaze.
I jerk on his hair as I twitch beneath him, his tongue still lapping at my pussy as he suctions his mouth over my clit and drags his teeth over that tiny, pulsating spot.
A cry catches in my throat, and I manage to swallow it down as I gasp for air, my body riding out the waves of pleasure he keeps sending through me with his expert attention.
When it finally ebbs, and as I sink back down onto the mattress, Connor crawls up my body and slides his thick cock into me before I'm even done quivering.
“Happy anniversary, Firefly.”
I groan beneath him, clamping down on his cock as I shift to accommodate his size and luxuriate the gloriously painful stretch of him filling me. “Anniversary?”
With my head still clouded from the orgasm, it takes me a second to process what he's saying before my eyes flicker open to meet his dark ones.
That darkness used to scare people on the mountain, but it never scared me. And now, I can't imagine not waking every morning to these beautiful onyx eyes.
“A year ago today, I dragged you up here…”
I grin. “Against my will.”
The corners of his lips curl up. “How did that turn out for you?”
I reach up and drag him down to me to kiss him. A slow, deep, mind-bending kiss that has him driving that extra quarter of an inch inside me with a sharp thrust of his hips. “Fuck…pretty damn good.”
CONNOR
I freeze and lift my head, arching a brow as I stare down at Raven. With her blond hair sleep tousled and spread out on the pillow beneath her, her cheeks and breasts pink from the rush of her orgasm, her body pinned beneath me, she’s never looked more beautiful.
“Good? That's all you have to say, Ms. Brilliant Reporter, who's so damn good with words?”
She laughs lightly, scoring her nails across my scalp in a way that makes my eyes drift closed and a low groan fill my chest. “We could argue about the proper verbiage if you'd like.”
Raven squeezes around me, her cunt tightening like a vise on my throbbing cock, and even after all this time, she still has the power to undo me in a goddamn second.
I lower my forehead against hers and release a shaky breath. “If I start arguing with you, Firefly, this is not going to last very long.”
She laughs, and I capture the sound with another kiss, terrified she's going to wake Constance, and we're not going to get to finish what I started this morning.
Raven moans against my lips and rocks her hips, trying to get me to move.
We can table this argument until later, because right now, I just need this woman. I need what she can give me, what only she brings to my life. The sense of completion. The sense of peace that I've been looking for ever since the day the mountain changed forever.
It hasn't been easy to find, but as I drag my hips back and plunge into her again, I know what I have found: home, my real one.
It isn't the homestead where I grew up, or where our cabin stands.
It isn't even up here, the place where I brought her a year ago to try to protect her.
It's being with her like this, wrapped around each other—content, happy, moving together like we were always meant to be this way.
She wraps her legs around my lower back, linking herself to me in a way that makes it feel like we’ll never be torn apart. We roll our hips to meet each other, and the bed creaks, the sound so loud in the quiet of the new cabin this early in the morning.
But there's no stopping now, not when I've got her like this.
I kiss her fiercely, needing her to understand everything I'm so terrible at saying with words.
How lost I was without her. How much she’s changed everything for me. How completely impossible it would be to go on without her.
She returns it in kind, squeezing around my cock in response, as if to tell me she understands me, understands what I need, and she somehow always has, even when she hated me, even when she wanted me gone from her life, she did everything she could to keep me in it, and now her body does everything to keep me inside her.
The head of my cock catches with each retreat, and she clenches down, increasing the friction, ensuring both of us are trembling and on edge.
I tear my mouth from hers and kiss along her cheek to her ear. “Should I pull out and make you come down my throat again?”
She moans and shakes her head, wrapping her arms around me and clinging to me, tightening her hold there and with her cunt. “Definitely not.”
“I don't know…” I nip at her jaw. “It would be nice payback for what you did to me the other night.”
Her laughter shakes her body, and my cock aches at the memory of her dropping to her knees in the goddamn woods and taking me all the way to the back of her throat.
“No games today, McBride. There will be plenty of other times for that.”
I grind my hips against hers. “But I do love to play with you, Firefly.”
She groans. “Oh, I know. Now, move.”
Her heels press into my lower back, and I comply, increasing my pace, pounding into her until the creak of the bed frame echoes through the house.
Any chance of us remaining quiet disappears as her body starts trembling, her head thrashing side to side as her orgasm builds.
She comes on a startled cry I barely manage to catch with my mouth as her pussy tightens and ripples along my length.
I pound into her in sharp, hard thrusts, until her body finally sags slightly, until I’m confident she’s done, then I pull out.
Her eyes fly open. “What—”
I shift back and roll her onto her stomach, then grasp her hips and tug them up and back slightly to slide my cock back into her again.
She issues a deep groan, and I pin her down to the mattress with one large hand at her upper back, the other at her hip, and drive into her, watching her ass jiggle and my cock disappear into her slick cunt.
Like this, I don't last very long.
Raven Perry submitting to me, being able to let go, is the sexiest thing I've ever experienced in my life. Because this woman doesn’t back down from anything or anyone, but like this…she gives me everything.
I growl low before I come, sliding my hand up into her hair and jerking her head back, so I can kiss her as I empty myself deep inside her.
She moans and tightens around me before I collapse onto her on the bed, rolling onto my side, and bringing her with me, so she doesn't have to bear my full weight.
My cock stays buried inside her as we both struggle to catch our breaths.
Locked together in the place that brought us together.
We lie like this, wrapped around each other, the sounds of the mountain starting to come to life floating in through the windows—the birds chirping, the light rustle of the leaves in the breeze, and then the baby's cry…
I grin, running my fingers through Raven's hair. “It wasn't going to last very long.”
She laughs. “I know. I'll go get her.”
“No, I’ve got her.”
I kiss Raven’s temple and ease out of her with a groan, then swing my legs off the bed and reach for my boxers, tugging them on before I stumble from our bedroom out and across the hall to the cracked door of the nursery.
Another little cry fills the air, and I ease it open and pad in on bare feet across wood floors Killian, Liam, and I spent weeks perfecting to ensure the baby won't have any sort of splinters when she starts crawling.
I stare down at my beautiful daughter in the crib Liam built for her that sits beside the massive wood carving of a firefly that Killian did for her room.
This is where it belongs, not in our main house on the homestead. Here. In this special space where we come to when we need to get away. This place that brought us together and became our secret refuge.
It may have been tainted by what happened, but it also became proof that we can work past those old bad experiences and haunting memories and concentrate on the good ones.
Like her.
I scoop her up, her bright eyes searching my face with another little cry as I settle her against my chest. She instantly calms, snuggling against me.
Christ, how did I ever get so lucky to have any of this? To deserve it?
It might take me another lifetime to figure it out, but as I bury my face against Connie's thick hair and inhale that sweet baby scent, I'm more confident than ever that McBride Mountain will always be my home, because it's where everything I love is.
My friends. My brothers. Their wives. But mostly, my Firefly and this little miracle I'm holding right now.
Mom didn't get to see her grandchildren born, but I know she's watching us. I know she's proud of who her sons have become, even if there are times when we're not.
She'll always watch out for McBride Mountain and the family she built here, through blood and choice, and we'll never leave it.
I hope you enjoyed Bigger Than the Mountain Sky.