Epilogues #2
Lighting her flesh as she pulled back when I planted my boots out to the side to balance us on the bike.
“What are you doing?” she rasped.
“Can’t go on a second more not being inside you.”
Keeping my feet planted, I grabbed her by the waist and shuffled her around.
Woman straddling the bike and facing away so I could get a good look at her shirt while I went to work on my fly.
Shoving my jeans down just enough to free my anguished cock.
Brinley gasped as I jerked her panties aside, that flimsy skirt barely enough to cover her ass. My free hand wound around to the front of her neck as I pulled her back, mouth grunting at her ear.
“Not being inside you is nothing short of pain. Did you know that? Way I fucking ache anytime I’m not with you. Anytime I’m looking at you and you’re across the room. Anytime I think of you.”
“Then you’d better have me,” she wheezed, a needy huff from her lungs permeating the whirring night as I grabbed her under the back of one thigh, lifting her high enough to line her cunt up with my dick.
My fingers kneaded into the lush flesh at the back of her thigh, my swollen head poised at her entrance.
Her breaths held while she waited.
“Don’t tease me, Silas. I’m aching, too.”
“What do you need, baby?”
“Your cock.” It was pure desperation as she squirmed to get closer.
“Good thing it’s yours.”
I slammed her down on top of me. Taking her so damn deep that we both choked at the impact.
My cock squeezed around her spasming, clutching walls.
“Fuck. So good. So fucking good. Every time.” I rambled it into the choppy, heated air as I clutched her against me. “Nothing in the world like the feel of you. Heaven when I never thought I could earn it.”
“You belonged here all along,” she raked.
God, I liked the sound of that.
Belonging when I never thought I could.
Finding a home when I thought I was only meant for destruction.
“Together,” I grunted, my hand fucking shaking where I still held her against the throat, feeling the rapid flutter of her pulse beating against my palm.
Feeling the life. The goodness seeping in and taking over.
I let my palm glide down, riding it over her abdomen and under her shirt so I could get to one full tit.
Pulling the fabric down and toying with her nipple while she ground on top of me.
“Yes. More,” she whimpered, her back rubbing against my chest.
“All of it already belongs to you.”
Her shirt might have said she was Property of the Prez, but it was me who was in chains.
Hostage.
A prisoner.
The only fucking thing I wanted to be.
My other hand joined the first, and I drew her shirt up higher, exposing both tits to the glinting moon.
Rolling and rubbing the pebbled, hardened buds as she rocked over the top of me.
Pleasure sparked and lit.
I kept gliding my hands upward, guiding her arms up until they were locked around the back of my neck.
I kissed along the shell of her ear, muttered, “Ride me, Little Wildfire. Take what’s yours.”
And she did.
She rocked and bucked as she drove me to disorder.
To madness.
To ecstasy.
To a place I’d thought unattainable.
Nonexistent.
But it was only this one fiery woman who could show me what was possible.
The one to shine her light into my life.
Reawaken what was lost.
Remind me of my purpose.
I slipped my hand up her skirt and rubbed her clit.
It was seismic, the explosion that went off between us.
Combustion.
Decimation.
But sometimes it takes fire to remold the misshapen.
And as for me?
I would gladly burn for the rest of my life.
It was quiet as we edged through the darkened house, and the stairs creaked beneath our quieted footsteps as we ascended.
My arm draped around her shoulder and her cheek pressed to my chest.
She was barefoot, her shoes dangling from my fingers. We hit the landing and moved down the hall, and I wasn’t surprised at all when she took the left into Kai’s room.
His door was cracked open, the same as Meems’s, in case he woke in the night.
He rarely did, anymore.
The nightmares distant.
This home his safety.
These walls fortified with love.
I saw to it that his biological mother had enough money that she would never show her face again, rights signed off to me and Brinley.
Brinley who came to stand over his crib.
The kid dressed in motorcycle pajamas, cherub cheeks pink, his thumb in his mouth, sucking away in his peaceful dreams.
“He’s so beautiful. I could stand here and stare at him all night.” Brinley ran tender fingers through his hair. “I never thought I’d get brave enough to allow myself a family.”
From behind, I curled my arms around her waist, hooked my chin on her shoulder, and rocked her slowly as I gazed down at our boy.
“I didn’t think I’d be brave enough, either. Not until you showed me that I could be enough.”
“You’re more than enough,” she whispered.
“That’s what I’m going to be, Brinley. To both of you. To every kid we get lucky enough to make. More than enough because you deserve everything.”
Brinley
I was in the office in my usual spot, tapping at the keys of the laptop.
A blaze of sunlight lit the frosted glass panes out front, the lobby empty, though I was in constant company with the sound of teasing jests and laughter that lifted above the heavy metal music that screamed from within the shop.
The mood alive and thrumming through the walls.
I was content in it, but oh boy, there was no denying the thrill that sailed through me when I felt the squall of energy rise behind me.
Every molecule in my body tightened and expanded in anticipation.
A flashflood of it when Silas swung open the door.
It was never necessary to turn around to know it was him.
My husband had his own special brand of volatility.
His boots squeaked on the old linoleum floor as he edged up, and he leaned over the back of me, arms looping around my waist and his nose burrowing into my hair.
“What are you doing, baby?”
“What does it look like? Working.” I tried to play it off like he was an annoyance when the only thing I wanted was to feel those brutal hands gliding all over my body.
He grunted a rough laugh into the side of my neck.
Leave it to Silas to send chills scattering.
He lifted his head a fraction so he could read what was on the screen.
I could feel the awed force of his smile. “My little criminal mastermind.”
I huffed as my fingers continued to move across the keys.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s criminal not to do it.”
Silas chuckled, the sound sinking deep. “I like the way you think.”
I’d found everything here.
My family.
My home.
My calling.
I’d become entrenched in Crimson Crows’s mission as deeply as Silas and the rest.
Working closely with Cash to move the money each operation brought in.
Funneling it.
Laundering it through a bunch of the businesses I found out Silas owned.
A restaurant and a jewelry store and the bar he’d recently purchased down by the creek. It was the same one where he’d been only an innocent, vulnerable kid who lost himself as a runner for Kent Ellison.
Plus, I was the one who searched for the nonprofits that we sank the money into.
Anonymous gifts that came from out of nowhere.
Cash had been my mentor, and he’d joked that I’d earned the equivalent of a PhD in the five days it’d taken him to show me the ropes.
I’d always been a good student.
Even better with numbers.
Had always believed I wanted to do something with that.
Funny how it turned out that something was cooking Crimson Crows’s books.
Meems was right.
I was going to be a chef, after all, just not quite the one she imagined. But I had to admit, I’d gotten really good at making Silas’s favorite pie.
“You do, huh?” I whispered, trying to focus on the task at hand.
Impossible when my husband started kissing up and down my neck.
“Like everything about you, actually,” he murmured against the skin.
A little moan worked free, and I struggled to focus.
“Look.” I pointed at the screen. “I found this veterinary center right here in Crimson Creek that’s known to give free care to animals belonging to low-income families. They just received a twenty-thousand-dollar grant.”
“That’s fucking good, baby,” he enthused in his low, rough voice.
Though he didn’t give up in his needy pursuit, sliding the chair out with me in it, leaning further over so he could drag up the skirt of my dress.
Then he went flying back when the lobby door suddenly opened and a bright wedge of light flooded into the room. Squinting, he ran a flustered hand through his hair, doing his best to appear casual as Elena walked in with Kai.
She smirked. “You might as well drop the act, big brother. Do you actually think I couldn’t feel you in here getting handsy from a mile away?”
“Hands, Daddy!” Kai pushed both of his hands out, waving his little fingers in the air.
We both choked over a laugh, though Silas was murmuring, “Hey, little man. That’s right, you’ve got two hands, don’t you?”
“One, two, fee!” He bounced on Elena’s hip, letting go of one of his adorable little squeals.
I stood, shaking myself off a bit.
This was my favorite time of day, after all.
The time when Elena brought Kai to the shop so we could all have lunch together. For most of the summer, we’d had picnics out beneath the trees, but since the weather had begun to cool, we’d taken to either eating here in the lobby or out in the shop.
“Mommy!” He reached for me.
My heart did a somersault in my chest.
Racing as it stretched and expanded.
We thought we’d test it out. Calling Silas ‘Daddy Silas’ and me ‘Mommy Brinley’, wondering if it would be awkward.
If it would feel like a lie.
It hadn’t because that’s what we’d become.
His parents.
Silas and I might have loved each other, body and soul, but this little boy was the light of our lives.
“Hi, my sweet boy.” The words were thick with adoration.
“I get Mommy.” He kicked his feet in a bid to get down.