Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER…
HOPE
“How do you expect me to get to the party on time when you put on a dress like that?” Marshall asks when he first lays eyes on me in the same sparkling black dress I wore last year. One he unfortunately didn’t get to see before he was hauled off to jail for defending my honor.
“You like it?”
“Like it?” He comes up to me, caging me against the living room wall next to the Christmas tree we won’t take down until tomorrow. “I want to fuck you into next year while you’re wearing it.”
“I like the sound of that.”
His hand finds the slit in my dress, his fingers teasing my inner thigh. “Maybe even right now.”
“Now?”
“You have a problem with being late?”
“I didn’t plan the party this year,” I say, biting my bottom lip. My core tingles at the thought of being fucked by my husband up against the wall.
“You still okay with that?”
“Yep,” I say, working at the button of his black pants. “Running an event like that is not my thing.”
Adrianna Carter approached me this year to ask if I wanted to help her plan the town’s New Year’s Eve party, but I turned down her offer.
I don’t need a fancy title to feel good about my life.
I have my small business—which has doubled in size since this time last year.
I have a good relationship with my sister that continues to strengthen from a distance—she ended up in a little town called Caribou Creek and insists Marshall and I need to visit her soon.
We have the best dog in the world. And I have a man who loves me more than life itself.
The same man who currently has his finger dug beneath my panties.
“So fucking wet,” he growls against my ear.
“I have a thought,” I tell him, freeing his cock from the confines of his pants and boxers and giving it a couple of strokes.
“What’s that?” he asks, plunging a finger into my channel.
I gasp, my head falling back against the wall. “You should put a baby inside me.”
“You mean that?” he asks, gripping my cheek until we lock eyes. There’s such love in his hazel gaze that I can hardly handle it.
“Those ten kids aren’t going to make themselves, you know.”
Marshall hooks his fingers around my panties and yanks them so hard they rip. “Baby number one, coming right up.”
He fills me with one savage plunge, and I cry out.
“I love you. So fucking much.”
I try to say it back as he pummels into me, but the sounds that escape my throat aren’t intelligible. But we don’t need words. Marshall knows how much I love him—how much I’ll always love him. And that’s never going to change.