Epilogue
Five Years Later
Billie
My husband still gets a little crabby sometimes.
I love him all the more for it.
Especially because he earns the right to be a bear.
Take today, for example.
It’s our four-year old’s birthday party and our house is a zoo.
My mother is fussing in the kitchen, there is a bouncy castle outside on the front lawn and the other parents are monopolizing my attention.
That last part makes him extra cranky. My irrationally jealous husband is convinced all the fathers are secretly in love with me.
Every time one of them attempts to make polite conversation, Knox appears at my side with the promise of death in his eyes. Silly, wonderful man.
Five years ago, on my nineteenth birthday, I packed a suitcase and moved to the top of the mountain, to Knox’s house, and one year later, we welcomed our daughter, Julia.
Our son, Colt, followed swiftly on her heels.
We barely had time to plan a proper wedding, amidst the revelation that I was pregnant at nineteen, but the ceremony was something out of a storybook.
The local preacher married us right here on this very mountain, the sunset lighting up the valley like an emerald.
I can still remember the fierce emotion in Knox’s eyes when we said “I do.” He still looks at me like that every single day.
That’s why I forgive his bad moods.
“When are all these idiots going to get out of our house?” Knox grouses, coming up behind me in the kitchen, drawing me back against his chest. “They’ve been here for hours, Billie,” he complains, rubbing his face in the curve of my neck, his calloused palm swiping right to left against my slightly exposed midriff.
“I haven’t been able to stop and breathe you in for hours. ”
My nipples prickle into tight little buds against the front of my tank top, lust swooping low in my tummy. “They’ll be gone soon, then we’ll settle in and take a nice, deep breath of each other,” I say soothingly, leaning back to receive his kiss. “I promise.”
“Oh, goodness, here they go again,” murmurs my mother, who takes that as her cue to sail out of the kitchen holding a fresh bowl of chips.
She is well used to our infatuation with one another.
One we can’t seem to hide, no matter how public the setting.
“Why don’t you two go have a breather now?
I can handle this crowd with my eyes closed. ”
That’s all the encouragement my husband needs to throw me over his shoulder and stomp down the hallway to his study.
No sooner are we inside the dark room is he hauling me off his shoulder and into his waiting arms, crushing me to his chest. I push up on my toes and mold the front of my body to his strength, giggling as he ropes a forearm beneath my bottom and lifts me off the ground.
“You drive me fucking crazy in those little jean shorts,” he mutters against my mouth. “The way that ass twitches while you run around filling drinks and laughing at bad jokes? All I can think about is you sitting on my face, little girl.”
That’s all it takes for the seam of said jean shorts to grow sodden. “Oh my gosh. Stop being so obsessed with me,” I say with faux haughtiness, tossing my hair.
His jaw flexes. “No.”
“Fine,” I sigh into a dreamy smile. “I guess I’ll put up with it.”
“You don’t have a choice,” he drawls, kissing me hard and tightening up every muscle beneath my navel. With anticipation. Need. Urgency.
“But if I did have a choice,” I whisper, nuzzling his nose with mine. “I’d choose you every time, Knox Morgan.”
He exhales unevenly, visibly overwhelmed. “Oh God, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. I love our life. Our babies.” I twine my fingers through the overlong hair at the nape of his neck, kissing my husband to anchor him, because I can sense he needs it.
Our love is so much for him to handle sometimes.
Other times, it’s too massive for me to carry inside my chest and in those moments, he holds me down and talks me through it, too.
“I love your heart. Your character. The way you feel on top of me.”
His heartbeat accelerates against mine.
“The way you feel in my mouth,” I breathe in his ear. “The taste of your come.”
“Billie.”
My open mouth rides over his without succumbing to a kiss. “You deserve a nice, hard suck from your wife for putting up with so much chaos today.”
His hoarse groan makes me shiver hotly.
“Put me on my knees, Daddy.”
“Lord help me,” he pants, loosening his embrace just enough for me to slide down the front of his body.
Into a kneel. Looking up at him through my eyelashes, I tug down the neckline of my tank top so he can look at my braless tits while I draw his zipper open and allow his engorged sex to tumble out into my waiting mouth. “Hell. Oh, hell.”
“Mmmm,” I moan, filling my mouth with his power.
“Fuck. Ohhhh fuck. Billie.”
My name is the last coherent word he says for the next ten minutes, while I serve my husband happily from my knees, dismantling his self-control one hard draw at a time, knowing he’ll be counting the minutes until he can do the same for me, later.
That look in his eyes when he’s on the verge of climaxing tells me he’s already thinking about it.
How he’ll please me in return, tonight in the dark, his tongue catching the moonlight between my thighs.
He’s always thinking about it.
He’s always loving me.
And I’ll love him, too, for the rest of my days.
THE END