Epilogue
Grace
Three Months Later
Isaw him first.
In fact, I’ve spent over an hour watching for him.
I’m sitting on the big swing Nate bought for Shep and me.
We installed it on the wide concrete slab in front of the house, where it’s a bit incongruous but entirely comfortable.
As I watch, Nate’s black Audi pulls up alongside my vintage Range Rover in the his-and-hers carport I designed.
He’s clearly on the phone, earbuds in, his voice snapping quick and pissy to someone who can only be Dare. I shift further back in the swing.
“Let’s see how long it takes him to notice us,” I whisper to Shep.
The big dog snuggles his face deeper into my lap, and I grin silently as Nate walks towards the front door, his eyes narrowing as he listens to whatever Dare is saying.
He almost didn’t go to the office today, given the news from Tim a couple of days back.
The toxicology report from Nick’s autopsy confirmed a faint positive for heavy metals.
I was tested as soon as we commissioned the report, and Dr Eileen has started me on a detox protocol.
The dots are joining up for an arrest for Mother, but it’s something I try not to think about these days.
I don’t want to think about how she was poisoning me alongside the consistent exposure to gluten, adding arsenic to my food whenever she felt her control was slipping.
She was poisoning Nick, too, though at much lower levels.
Not enough to have murdered him, but maybe enough to have slowed him down the morning he died.
She’ll go to jail—Watson says that’s for certain.
I just want to be here. With Nate. Court proceedings will force my attention at some point, but for now I’m an almost-graduate architect sitting on a slightly tacky swing in front of the house my man built just for me. For now, that’s enough.
Nate advances, shaking his head at something Dare is saying.
“You tell that fucker I want double or nothing. Even if it takes until next quarter, we’re not settling for half-assed shit for our users. They’ll walk, brother, if we give them anything less than excellence.”
Nate still hasn’t noticed me even though I’m only about three metres away. He takes his key out of his pocket, fumbling when he realises the door is unlocked.
“The fuck…?” he snarls, then he tilts his head to one side. “No, not you, man. I’m home, okay? Fucking off.”
He takes the earbuds out and he turns his head, dark grey eyes landing on me almost immediately.
I can’t help it—I burst out laughing.
Shep takes that as his cue to jump off the swing. Forgetting his manners completely, he goes up on his hind legs to give Nate kisses, which Nate accepts with a laugh of his own.
“All right, you big baby,” he says, “sit down so I can say hello to my wife.”
Shep obeys and Nate is in front of me a second later, holding his hand out. I hesitate, biting my lip a little.
“How was your day?” I ask, ignoring his beckoning hand.
His brows go up. “You already know how it was, Grace. You stayed here. So it sucked.”
I shake my head, leaning back into the swing, but keeping it still with the tips of my bare toes. “You’re not allowed to guilt me into going to Auckland with you every week, Nate.”
“Oh, this isn’t guilt.” He lowers his hand but widens his stance. “This is me, coming home to a girl who clearly needs some… correction.”
I tuck my foot up and Nate is forced to back away as the swing resumes its slow parabola. Looking down contentedly, I watch my black Australian opal flash turquoise, blue, and yellow from its place on my left hand. It took Nate ages to find one without any orange.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, though I can’t quite hide my smile.
“What to do with a wife who needs correction,” he muses, and I hear him loosen his tie. “Three things come to mind.”
“As usual,” I murmur.
He throws first his tie, then his suit jacket onto the other end of the swing in a huff of silk.
“First option, Grace: we go inside and take a shower together. I make you come until you cry, then I fuck you in the sauna.”
A nervous sound comes from my throat but Nate ignores it, unbuttoning his shirt cuffs.
“Second option,” he continues, “I put you over my knee in the bedroom and spank you good and hard. Dealer’s choice where I put my cock after that.”
I already know exactly what he’ll do to me if I end up with the second option.
He’s shown me—recently—and I was too sore to sit for a delicious couple of days afterwards.
My stomach swoops when the swing suddenly halts.
Nate’s caught it with his foot, and he bears down on me, fastening his eyes to mine as his voice drops low and dangerous.
“Final option. I put Shep inside the house. Then I count… to ten.”
My breath stops as I look into his eyes, flat and grey. I know exactly what’ll happen if I take that third option, though we’ve only ever done this once before. And it’s exactly what I want after such a relaxing day of quiet design work, punctuated by a lovely visit with Mihi.
Nate sees my answer in my eyes.
“One,” he begins, not taking his foot off the swing. He starts rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.
“Fuck,” I mutter, bolting down the front path as he gives a quiet chuckle.
I don’t bother to look back as he pauses the count to order Shep into the house.
He’s at ‘four’ by the time I hit the woods.
I’m barefoot, which isn’t great, but there was no time to get shoes.
There are paths here, winding ways that lead to little huts and firepits Mihi and her brothers built decades ago.
I skip past a hut, checking over my shoulder.
I can’t hear Nate anymore, which means he’s already in the woods with me.
I head west, jumping over a creek that runs towards the cliff about twenty metres off.
The slowly setting sun is just beyond the edge of the treeline when I begin to circle back along the paddock, as quietly as I can.
I get to the deer fencing that demarcates the western side of the woods, and put my back to it. I listen hard, but blood surges through my ears.
A crunch of leaves to my left. I turn that way, fear making it hard to catch my breath.
“Little heart,” comes his voice, “little heart, let me come in…”
I sprint towards where the trees are densest, where it’ll be harder for Nate to follow without risking his suit. Ducking around a nasty patch of gorse, I have to crouch to get underneath a half-fallen tree covered in fern fronds.
It’s a bad move.
Nate doesn’t give a shit about his suit—he follows me right into the thicket. He crawls through the loam, that familiar lupine grin in place as he draws closer. I falter in the undergrowth, frozen by that ferocious expression.
“Such a pretty girl,” he murmurs, a hand flashing out to grab my ankle, “when she’s oh-so-scared.”
I’m under him a moment later, his big body caging me beneath the fallen tree. There will be leaves in my hair. Dirt under my fingernails. I say the only thing I need at a moment like this, when I’m scared and turned on and beyond myself: “I love you, Nate.”
“Yeah,” he answers, his voice low with lust, “you fucking do.”
We grapple in the growing forest dark, teeth and hands, before there’s a tearing of fabric and he’s inside me, hard and deep.
“I love you,” he whispers, slowing down to kiss me. “I fucking love you, Grace.”
I bite his lip almost hard enough to bleed, reminding him that orange is my safeword, and he’s not allowed to break the scene without it.
Chuckling darkly, Nate secures my wrists against the forest floor.
Then he devours me.