Epilogue #2
I don't wait for her to come down. I strip my boxers off, and settle between her thighs. Her legs wrap around my waist immediately, pulling me close, and I push into her in one long, controlled stroke.
Tight. Hot. Wet. Perfect.
"Fuck." My forehead drops to hers. My arms tremble. Every nerve in my body fires at once, and the sensation of being inside my wife after six weeks of restraint nearly finishes me before I start.
She rolls her hips. Takes me deeper. "I missed this." Her nails score my shoulders. "I missed you."
I pull back and drive forward. Slow and deep. Deliberate. Feeling every inch of her gripping me. She matches my rhythm immediately, her hips meeting mine on every downstroke, her breath catching every time I bottom out.
I brace one arm beside her head and use the other to grip her thigh, pulling her leg higher, opening her wider. The angle shifts, and I go deeper, and the sound that comes out of her is so loud that Scout lifts her head from the floor and stares at us.
"Quiet," I murmur against her neck. "You'll wake Kai."
"Then you need to stop doing that thing with your hips."
"Not a chance." I do it again. Rolling forward, grinding against her clit on the downstroke. She bites my shoulder. Hard. The flash of pain mixes with the pleasure and I groan into her hair.
I increase the pace. Harder. Deeper. The headboard taps the wall in a rhythm that I'll think about every time I look at this bedroom. Lydia's hands grip my ass, pulling me into her, and her pussy tightens around my cock with every thrust.
"I'm close," she pants. "Stephen, I'm so close."
I slide my hand between us. Find her clit. Rub it in tight circles while I fuck her with long, steady strokes that hit the place inside her that makes her eyes roll back.
"Come with me." I press my lips to her ear. "I want to feel you come on my cock. Right now."
She breaks. Her orgasm tears through her in a wave that I feel from my cock to my scalp, her pussy clenching so hard that I can't hold back.
I bury myself deep and come with a force that hollows out my chest, my hips jerking against hers, her name in my mouth, her body pulling everything from me that I have to give.
We lie tangled. Breathing hard. My weight on her, her legs still locked around my waist, both of us slick with sweat and trembling.
"I love you." Her voice is wrecked. Raw. "I love you so much it scares me sometimes."
I lift my head. Look down at her face in the moonlight. Flushed. Eyes bright. Lips swollen from my mouth. The most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I've seen the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean from the door of a helicopter.
"I love you," I say. "I love our son. I love this cabin and these dogs and this mountain. But you're the center of it. You're the reason all of it works." I press my mouth to hers. Soft. Reverent. "You taught me how to let go. I'm never going to stop being grateful for that."
She touches my face. Traces the line of my jaw with her fingertips. "Your father would be proud of you."
My throat closes. I press my face into her neck and breathe. Salt and lavender and Lydia.
Kai stirs in the bassinet. A small whimper, not a cry. The precursor to one. Scout's head pops up, and she looks at me with an expression that clearly says your turn.
"I've got him." I pull out of Lydia gently, clean up quickly, and lift my son from the bassinet. He roots against my chest, grunting. "He's hungry again."
"Bring him here."
I carry Kai to the bed. Lydia sits up, settles him against her breast, and he latches with the single-minded focus of a Nelson man who knows exactly what he wants. I pull the sheet up around her shoulders and slide in beside her, my arm around them both.
My wife feeding our son in our bed, in our cabin, on our mountain. Two dogs on the floor. Moonlight through the window. The sound of wind in the pines and the distant rush of the waterfall I walked into eleven months ago because I loved this woman more than I feared the water.
"Clara texted while you were feeding him," Lydia says, her voice drowsy. "She says Koda passed his final certification today. He's officially deployment ready."
"I know. Ryan told me." I press my lips to her temple. "He's the best dog we've ever trained. Your protocol, my handling."
"Our protocol." She leans her head against my shoulder. "Our program. Our dogs."
"Our everything."
Kai falls asleep on her breast. She eases him back to the bassinet without waking him, and Scout resumes her post with the quiet competence of a dog who takes her job seriously.
Lydia curls into my side. Her hand rests on my chest, fingers spread over my heart. Her breathing slows. Evens.
I lie awake a few minutes more.
Forty-seven people I pulled from the water. I know their names. I know their faces.
But the count isn't the last thing I think about anymore.
The last thing I think about is the sound of my wife breathing beside me, and my son sleeping three feet away, and a dog named Scout who guards them both like they're the most important things in the world.
They are.
They are, and I'm here, and the water is quiet.
I close my eyes.
I sleep.