Epilogue
CELINE
I read it three more times before I’m ready to sign it.
Not because anything is unclear. Because I want to be certain I’m not skimming the way I skimmed thirty-one pages over a year ago in a conference room on the forty-second floor, coffee going cold, my mind running numbers on Lena’s bills instead of absorbing a single word of what I was agreeing to.
I owe this document more than that. I owe myself more than that.
The mutual decision clause reads differently every time I return to it, in plain language, whereas the original buried everything in distance.
Any decision materially affecting our daughter requires both signatures, both voices, both names.
No qualifiers softening it into something he could quietly walk around later.
The exit clause sits near the end, and I read it the slowest of all.
A real door this time. Defined terms, no offshore structure engineered to make leaving theoretically possible and practically impossible.
If I ever wanted out, fully and completely, the path exists, clean and unobstructed, nothing leveraged against me to keep me here against my will.
I have spent over a year of my life inside a structure built specifically to trap me.
This document does the opposite. It hands me the key and trusts me to choose, every single day, whether to use it.
I don’t think I will. That’s the part that still surprises me, reading it alone at the kitchen table while Elena naps down the hall, understanding that the freedom to leave is exactly what makes staying feel like something I’m choosing rather than something I’m trapped in.
I find him in his office that evening, the document in my hand, the pen he left beside it on my nightstand now resting on top of the final page.
He looks up when I come in. Whatever he sees on my face must tell him something, because he sets down what he’s reading and gives me his full attention the way he’s learned to do, slowly, over the course of a year that started as a trap and became something neither of us planned for.
“You finished it,” he says.
“I finished it.”
I sit across from him, at the same table where everything nearly broke apart, the same room where he locked a door once because he was desperate for me to hear something true. Tonight, nothing is locked. Tonight I’m here because I want to be.
I pick up the pen.
I hold it for a moment longer than necessary, not from doubt, but because some moments deserve to be felt fully before you let them pass into something that’s already happened.
I think about the woman who signed page fourteen without reading it, frightened and desperate and out of options. I think about everything between that woman and the one sitting here now, council dinners and offshore diagrams and a daughter sleeping down the hall with his mother’s name.
I sign.
My full signature, not the rushed scrawl from that conference room a year ago, but something considered, something that belongs entirely to a decision I’m actually making rather than one circumstance forced on me.
I put the pen down.
I look at him across the table. Forty-five years old, silver hair catching the lamplight, the most difficult, infuriating, impossible person I have ever shared a room with in my entire life.
I have been legally married to this man for over a year now.
I have hated him and feared him and, somewhere along the way I still can’t fully trace, fallen in love with him so completely that I no longer know how to imagine my life without him in it.
“I have one condition,” I tell him.
His eyebrows lift slightly, curiosity replacing whatever wariness he started with.
“Name it.”
“Two things, actually.” I hold his gaze.
“First, I want a real position. Not wife, not assistant, not a title that exists to make the council comfortable. I’ve spent over a year inside this organization doing real work, the amendment I negotiated myself, the guardianship language I helped rewrite, the months I spent mapping a corporate structure your own legal team built to be unbreakable.
I want that work to be recognized formally.
A defined role, real authority, my name on something that isn’t just a marriage contract. ”
“Done,” he says, without hesitation, as he’d already half expected this and built room for it. “What’s the second?”
“One day a week,” I say. “No council, no business, no exceptions, not even emergencies unless someone is actually dying. Just us. You, me, Elena. A day that belongs to nothing except the three of us, protected the way you protect everything else you actually care about.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and I watch him take this in fully, not as a negotiation to manage but as a promise he’s about to make and intends to keep.
“Sundays,” he says.
“Sundays.”
“Done.”
I look at him for a long moment, the document signed between us, every condition named and accepted without argument, and something settles in my chest that has been unsettled since the day I found page fourteen.
“That’s it,” I say. “That’s everything.”
“That’s everything,” he agrees.
He stands, comes around the table, and I rise to meet him, the contract finished, the pen set down, nothing left between us now except exactly what we are.
“You read every page this time,” he says quietly.
“I did.”
“What was different?”
I think about the question for a moment, genuinely considering it, because the answer matters and I want to give him the true one.
“The first time, I was reading to survive something,” I say. “This time, I was reading because I trust the person who wrote it. That’s the whole difference.”
His hand finds my jaw, the same way it has a hundred times before, except nothing about this moment carries the urgency of fear or argument or proximity. This is slower. Deliberate. Two people who have finally arrived somewhere they both chose, with full knowledge of everything that came before.
“Celine.”
“Don’t talk me out of it,” I tell him, echoing words from months ago, except this time there’s nothing to talk me out of. There’s only this. Only us. Everything we’ve built stands exactly where we want it to stand.
He doesn’t say anything else.
He closes the distance between us in one step. His hand slides into my hair as his mouth claims mine.
The kiss starts deep and claiming, his lips firm and sure against mine, but hunger takes over fast. His tongue strokes into my mouth with intent, tasting like dark coffee and the faint bite of whiskey from whatever he drank earlier.
I meet him with the same fire, kissing him back hard, my fingers already working at the buttons of his crisp white dress shirt. The fabric feels warm from his body, still perfectly pressed from the long day.
He backs me toward the desk with purposeful steps. My hips bump the edge first. He lifts me easily onto the polished wood surface, shoving the few remaining papers aside with one impatient sweep of his arm.
The cool surface presses against the backs of my bare thighs where my navy pencil skirt has already ridden up. I part my knees instinctively to make room for him as he steps between them, his charcoal trousers brushing against my skin.
I tug harder at his shirt until several buttons pop free and scatter across the floor. My palms spread over the warm, hard planes of his chest, nails dragging lightly down the ridges of muscle.
He growls low in his throat, the sound vibrating into my mouth, and pushes my skirt higher up my waist with rough hands. The movement exposes the black lace panties underneath and the tops of my stockings.
His mouth breaks from mine only to trail hot and open along my jaw and down my neck. He sucks at the sensitive skin just below my ear, hard enough that I know it will leave a mark.
One of his hands wraps firmly around my throat, holding me exactly where he wants me, thumb pressing lightly under my jaw in that possessive way that makes heat flood between my legs. His other hand slides up my inner thigh, teasing the edge of my soaked panties before pushing the lace aside.
“Zane,” I gasp as two thick fingers drag through my wetness and push inside me without warning.
He curls them deep, stroking that spot that makes my back arch off the desk.
My head falls back into his grip, and a needy moan slips out of me.
I grip his silver hair with one hand, pulling him closer while my other hand clutches at his open shirt.
He pumps his fingers harder, steady and relentless, his breath hot against my neck as he keeps sucking and biting at my skin. The wet sounds of his fingers moving inside me fill the quiet office along with our ragged breathing.
His scent surrounds me completely, warm skin and cologne and pure masculine hunger, and I feel myself growing wetter around his fingers with every stroke.
He pulls his fingers out of me suddenly, leaving me empty and aching. Before I can protest, he drops to his knees in front of the desk, his broad shoulders pushing my thighs wider apart.
He yanks my panties fully to the side and leans in, his hot mouth covering my pussy in one possessive stroke. The first drag of his tongue from my entrance up to my clit pulls a sharp moan from my throat.
He doesn’t tease. He devours. His tongue licks broad and hungry through my folds, tasting every inch of my wetness before he seals his lips around my swollen clit and sucks hard.
“Zane,” I moan, louder than I intend.
My fingers tighten in his silver hair, gripping the thick strands as I hold him against me.
He growls against my pussy, the low vibration shooting pleasure straight up my spine.
He pushes his tongue inside me, fucking me with it in deep, wet strokes, then returns to my clit with relentless suction. My thighs tremble around his head.
My hips roll against his face, chasing the heat of his mouth. The wet, obscene sounds of him eating me fill the office, mixing with my broken gasps and the occasional scrape of his stubble against my sensitive skin.
He slides two fingers back inside me while his tongue works my clit in tight circles. He curls them perfectly, stroking that spot over and over until my entire body tightens. I’m right there, right on the edge, when he suddenly pulls his mouth away and stands up between my spread legs.
He frees his cock with quick, impatient movements. The thick, hard length springs free, flushed dark and already leaking at the tip. He grips my hips, yanks me right to the edge of the desk, and thrusts into me in one powerful stroke. The sudden stretch pulls a loud cry from my lips.
He buries himself to the hilt, groaning deep in his chest at the tight heat of me around him. For one second, he stays there, letting me feel every inch, before he starts fucking me hard.
The desk creaks beneath us with every deep, punishing thrust. His hand returns to my throat, wrapping firm and possessive as he holds me in place.
His other hand grips my hip, fingers digging into my flesh hard enough to bruise. He pounds into me with long, brutal strokes that hit deep every single time, the wet slap of skin against skin echoing loudly in the quiet room.
“Mine,” he growls, voice rough and low. “This pussy is mine.”
I wrap my legs tight around his waist, heels digging into his lower back as I meet every thrust. My nails rake down his chest and over his shoulders, leaving red marks across his skin.
Sweat beads on his forehead and chest, making the open white shirt cling to his body.
The smell of sex and his cologne and my own arousal fills the air between us.
He suddenly pulls out, flips me over onto my stomach across the desk, and kicks my legs wider apart. Papers scatter to the floor.
He thrusts back into me from behind even harder than before, one hand fisting my hair to pull my head back while the other presses between my shoulder blades, pinning me down.
The new angle makes him feel impossibly deeper.
Every stroke drags against that perfect spot inside me and sends sparks exploding through my body.
I moan his name again and again, the sound muffled against the desk. My walls start to flutter and clench around his cock as the pressure builds unbearably fast. He reaches around and finds my clit, rubbing tight, ruthless circles while he keeps fucking me with those deep, punishing thrusts.
The pressure inside me snaps.
My orgasm crashes over me hard, my walls clenching tight around his cock as pleasure rips through my body in heavy waves. I cry out his name, loud and broken, my fingers scrambling against the desk for something to hold onto while my thighs shake uncontrollably.
Zane thrusts into me a few more times, deep and erratic, then buries himself to the hilt with a guttural groan that vibrates against my back.
He comes hard, pulsing inside me as he fills me with hot spurts. His hand loosens in my hair and slides down to grip my hip instead, holding me firmly against him while he rides out the last of his release.
For several long moments, we stay exactly like that, locked together, both of us panting. His chest presses against my back, his breath hot on the back of my neck.
Slowly, he pulls out and turns me over onto my back again. He stays standing between my spread legs, still half-hard and slick with our combined release.
He leans down, resting his forehead against mine as our ragged breathing gradually slows.
His hand slides from my throat to cup my jaw with surprising gentleness.
He kisses me softly, almost reverently, tasting like salt and sex and the faint trace of whiskey.
When he pulls back just enough to look at me, his eyes are dark but warm in the lamplight.
“Sundays,” he murmurs against my lips, voice still rough.
“Sundays,” I whisper back, a small smile curving my mouth.
He stays inside me a little longer, softening gradually, as if he’s reluctant to break the connection. One of his hands strokes slowly up and down my thigh while the other brushes damp strands of hair from my face.
The signed contract sits on the table just a few feet away, but right now it feels like distant proof of something we’ve already sealed in a much more primitive way.
I run my fingers through his silver hair, gentler now, and pull him down for another slow kiss.
The city outside the window is quiet. Elena sleeps peacefully down the hall. For the first time in a very long time, everything feels exactly where it should be.
The End.
P.S. Looking for your next binge read? I have a feeling you’ll love Claimed by My Ex’s Dad! Swipe to the next page for a little sneak peek…