Epilogue #3
He kissed her shoulders one at a time, slow and deliberate, his teeth grazing the ridge of bone before his mouth soothed the spot with warmth.
Mary’s fingers threaded through his hair.
He trailed lower, his lips finding the swell of her chest, and he worshipped her there with a tenderness that made her back arch and her breath leave in a rush.
His mouth was warm and unhurried, tasting, savoring, learning what made her gasp and what made her grip his hair tighter, and he paid attention to every response the way he paid attention to everything about her, completely and without reservation.
“Evander.” His name came out broken, half plea, half prayer.
He smiled against her skin. She felt the curve of it, and then the gentle press of his teeth against the soft flesh, a small, teasing bite that sent heat spiraling through her body.
His mouth traveled lower, across her ribs, and he kissed the flat of her stomach with a reverence that made her eyes sting, because this was the body he had offered to give a child, and now he was learning it not as an obligation but as a devotion.
His lips traced the dip of her navel. His breath was warm against her belly.
His hands spanned her waist, his thumbs drawing slow circles against her hipbones, and Mary trembled beneath him, not from cold, not from nerves, but from the sheer overwhelming tenderness of being touched by a man who had spent years refusing to touch anyone and was now making up for every lost moment.
He kissed his way back up, retracing the path, his mouth finding the places he had already claimed and claiming them again.
Her belly. Her ribs. The soft curve of her chest where her heart beat fast against his lips.
Her collarbone. The base of her throat, where he lingered, his teeth nipping gently, and Mary gasped and pulled him up to her mouth and kissed him with everything she had.
The moonlight shifted across the bed. The fountain murmured below the window. And Evander loved her with the unhurried devotion of a man who had once been afraid of this and could no longer remember why.
When they came together, Mary gasped, and Evander stilled, his forehead pressed against hers, his breath ragged.
“All right?” he whispered.
“More than all right.” She pulled him closer. “Do not stop.”
He did not stop. He moved with her, slow and deep, and the rhythm they found was their own, built from midnight kitchens and corridor kisses and the thousand small surrenders that had brought them here.
Mary’s fingers gripped his back. Evander’s hand cradled her face.
Their eyes held, open and unguarded, and the intimacy of being seen, fully, without walls or armor or distance, was more undoing than any touch.
The pleasure built between them, rising in waves that crested higher each time, until Mary’s breath shattered and her body arched against his, and Evander followed her over the edge, her name on his lips, his hand still holding her face as though he would never let go.
Afterward, they lay legs tangled together, the moonlight striping across their bodies, the night sounds of the countryside drifting through the open windows. Crickets. A nightingale. The distant murmur of the fountain.
Mary rested her head on Evander’s chest. His heartbeat was steady beneath her ear, the rhythm she had first felt through his shirt in a dark corridor and now knew by memory.
“Evander.”
“Hmm.”
“I think I might be happy.”
His arm tightened around her. “You think?”
“I know.” She pressed her lips to his chest. “I know I am happy. I am happy, and I am in France, and my husband planned a honeymoon across Europe, and my sister is married, and my nephew is safe, and the man I love is lying beside me without a single wall between us.”
“No walls,” he agreed. “Just the two of us and a very large bed and a month of empty road ahead.”
“A month.”
“At minimum. I left the return date open. Godfrey nearly fainted.”
Mary laughed, and the sound filled the moonlit room, warm and real.
Evander drew her closer. Beneath the soft sheets, his hand found hers, and their fingers entwined as the long night settled around them. Neither of them was ready for it to end.
“I love you,” he said. Simply, without fanfare, the way he said it now. Every morning. Every evening. As if the words had been living inside him for years and were making up for lost time.
“I love you.” Mary traced the line of his jaw, rough with the day’s stubble. “And I am going to keep saying it until you are thoroughly sick of hearing it.”
“I will never be sick of hearing it.”
“Good. Because I have an entire European honeymoon to fill, and I intend to say it in every country we visit.”
Evander kissed the top of her head.
Mary closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat. Beyond the open window, the nightingale sang, and the fountain murmured in the courtyard below.
The chateau held them in the silver hush of the French moonlight.
Beyond it waited the road ahead, empty and long, bright with the promise of two people who had chosen each other against every odd, through every obstacle, and because of every imperfect, terrifying, extraordinary thing love had asked of them.
Mary smiled against his chest.
And the story, which had begun with a basket on a doorstep and a bride in the wrong dress, ended where all the best stories end.
With two people, together, in a room full of light, with nothing between them and everything ahead.
The End?