Extra New Epilogue
DECKER
Later That Night
My wife is shimmying in my kitchen.
Doesn't know I'm here. Doesn't know I've been standing in the doorway for a full thirty seconds, watching her hips sway to whatever song's playing in her head. Pink ruffled apron tied around her waist. Pink fuzzy socks. A smear of flour across her cheek. Nothing else.
The bow on the apron sits right at the small of her back, the loose ends draping over what is otherwise an entirely bare ass.
I'm going to untie that bow with my teeth.
Newly pregnant with my baby, and she still wrecks me harder than the day I met her.
"Nice outfit."
I see her half smile as she ignores my comment. "Practice run for the chef-in-training thing next week. Brown butter shortbread. Twelve eggs in. It's a serious operation."
"Looks like it."
"Don't even think about distracting me, Deck. This recipe is hard."
I cross the kitchen slowly. Set my keys on the counter. Pin her against the island with my chest against her back, my mouth at the spot behind her ear that makes her knees give.
"Just watching."
"You are not just watching ."
"Just watching and holding."
My free hand slides up under the apron. Bare skin, warm from the kitchen lights. My imagination tells me her belly's just starting to swell with our baby, and I trace the curve of it with my thumb. The most fragile and ferocious thing I've ever felt under my hand.
She tries to pick up the next egg, but misses. The carton tips. Three eggs hit the floor like a small artillery strike.
"Oh no— Deck, the eggs!"
"They're done for, baby."
I step back to look at the damage, and my boot comes down in egg yolk. Slides about six inches before I catch myself on the counter.
May loses it. Doubles over laughing, holding her belly, the laugh bouncing off the cabinets. She's still giggling when I pull her back against me, her bare ass pressing right against the part of me that has been at full attention since I walked in the door.
"You think this is funny." I lean down to her ear. "Let me tell you what's actually funny."
"What?"
"That you thought you were going to bake shortbread tonight."
She goes still in my arms.
She knows what I mean.
I run my hand down her spine, slow, all the way to the swell of her ass. Squeeze gently.
"You ready, sweet girl? Bend over for me."
She bends forward without me asking, lays her forearms flat on the counter, presses her cheek against the cool marble.
I can see flour on the back of her thigh, where she must have brushed against the counter earlier.
The picture wrecks me. Bare ass, my baby in her belly, flour on her cheek, eggs murdered on the floor.
"Christ, May."
"What?"
"You're the prettiest thing I've ever seen."
I undo my belt one-handed, the other still on her hip, keeping her in place against me.
My slacks hit the kitchen floor with a thud.
The olive oil is right there on the counter, glinting at me like it's been waiting for this moment, and yeah, the kitchen is a war zone, but why not.
I pour a generous drizzle into my palm and slick myself up, the cold of it against my heat making me hiss through my teeth.
"Decker."
"What."
"That's expensive olive oil."
"Worth every penny."
I position myself against her, one hand spreading her gently, the other holding her hip steady.
"Breathe, baby."
"Okay."
"Push back when you're ready."
She does it slow, easing back against me, and the heat of her, the impossibly tight grip, has my vision tunneling before I'm even an inch in. My forehead drops to her shoulder blade. I have to grit my teeth to keep from losing it right there.
"Holy hell, Deck."
"I know, sweet girl. I know."
"Is it... Is it always going to feel like this?"
"Like what?"
"Like I might split open in the best possible way."
Jesus Christ. The shit she comes up with. I bury a laugh against her neck, because I'm afraid if I make any noise that isn't laughter I'm going to come like a teenager.
I move in deeper, a fraction at a time, sweat dripping off my temple onto the marble next to her cheek.
She's gripping the edge of the counter so hard her knuckles have gone white, and I keep one palm flat between her shoulder blades, the other tracing slow circles low on her hip, like I'm trying to gentle a horse that's about to bolt.
"That's it, sweet girl. That's my girl. Almost. Almost."
When I'm fully seated, I hold still, both of us breathing like we just ran a flight of stairs. Her body's a furnace around me. Every pulse of her grips me tighter, and I'm afraid if I move I'll lose it, but I'm also afraid that if I don't move I'll lose it, so I'm just stuck there praying.
"You okay?" I manage.
"This is — wow. Is this what it's like?"
"It's like whatever we make it, baby."
"I like it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Move, Deck."
I withdraw an inch and push back in, slow, watching the line of her spine arch and flex.
The second pass goes deeper than the first. The third deeper than that.
By the fifth she's making little noises in the back of her throat, the kind that have always been my undoing, and I have to slap my palm flat on the marble to keep from coming.
"Holy hell," she whispers again.
"You like that?"
"I really do."
"That's my dirty girl."
She giggles mid-act, in a kitchen full of broken eggs, my baby already in her belly, and I have never loved her more.
I reach around and find her between her thighs, and she's so soaked she's dripping down the inside of my wrist. The first touch makes her jolt under me like I shocked her. Second touch, and she's pushing back to meet my hips. Third, and she's lost.
"Decker — Decker — "
"Got you, baby. I've got you."
She comes apart on a wail that bounces off every cabinet in the kitchen, her body squeezing me so hard my vision actually whites out around the edges.
I follow her over the second I feel her break, emptying into her with my forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, my arm wrapped tight around her belly.
I stay there a while, breathing her in, both of us slick and shaking against the marble.
"I love you," she says, muffled.
"I love you back."
I pull her up against me and turn her face for a kiss. Flour on her cheek. A streak of egg yolk on her thigh now. The kitchen looks like a crime scene.
"You'll need to buy me more eggs."
"Already bought you a grocery store."
Her eyes go wide. "What?"
"Built it last month. Opens in spring. Bakery counter in the front. Your name on it."
"DECKER."
"What?"
"You did not."
"I did."
She bursts out laughing. That bright, pure May laugh I'd burn down half the city to hear. "You're the most ridiculous man I have ever met."
"I know."
I kiss her one more time, and grab the paper towels.
My wife. My baby. My kitchen. My eggs-on-the-floor.
Worth every single one of those fifteen thousand seven hundred days.
Allister and Leah are next…can the big man handle the little girl? See for yourself HERE