Epilogue
KADE
Four years ago, I didn’t believe in love.
Now I was standing in the skeleton of a house I was building for a young couple who’d just gotten engaged, thinking about how wrong I’d been about everything.
The framing was done, the roof was on, but the windows weren’t in yet. February wind cut through the open spaces, carrying the smell of fresh-cut lumber and the promise of snow.
My crew had knocked off an hour ago, but I’d stayed behind to finish some detail work. The Andersons wanted to move in by spring, and I wasn’t going to let them down.
My phone buzzed. Gemma.
Bringing you dinner. Don’t argue.
I smiled despite myself. Four years of marriage and she still surprised me. Still made my chest tight every time her name lit up my screen. I’d spent so long convinced that love was a trap, that relationships only ended in destruction. Turned out I just hadn’t met the right woman yet.
Headlights swept across the plywood subfloor as her car pulled up outside. That was fast. I set down my tools and headed toward the gap where the front door would eventually hang.
She climbed out carefully, one hand bracing her lower back.
The bump was still small—only twelve weeks along—but it was there.
Visible proof that our family was growing again.
Our daughter, Natalie, was three now, probably tucked into bed at Gemma’s parents’ house, blissfully unaware that her baby brother or sister was on the way.
Gemma walked toward me carrying a paper bag that smelled like the roadhouse, her long coat buttoned against the cold. The wind caught her hair, and she laughed, pushing it out of her face.
“Delivery for the hardest-working man in Wildwood Valley,” she said, holding up the bag.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.” She stepped through the doorframe into the half-built house, looking around at the exposed studs and subflooring. “Nice place. Very open concept.”
“Windows are coming next week.”
“Shame.” She set the bag down on a stack of lumber and turned to face me, her eyes glinting with something I recognized. Something that made my blood heat. “I was hoping for some privacy.”
Before I could respond, she reached up and undid the top button of her coat. Then the next. Then the next.
The coat fell open.
She wasn’t wearing a damn thing underneath.
The coat slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet like spilled ink.
Naked except for her boots and the flush already creeping across her chest, Gemma stood there in the skeletal heart of the house, moonlight and distant streetlight striping her skin in silver and shadow.
Her belly curved gently, just enough to remind me what we’d already made together—and what we were still making.
I crossed the distance in two strides.
Our mouths crashed together, hungry, no preamble. Her lips were cold from the February air, while mine were warm from work. She tasted like coffee and the faint mint of the gum she always chewed on the drive over.
I kissed her like I was starving, tongue sweeping deep, swallowing the little sound she made when I tugged her lower lip between my teeth.
“Cold?” I murmured against her mouth.
“Getting warmer,” she breathed.
I stepped back and gently spun her around so her back pressed to my front.
She gasped when her bare skin met the rough flannel of my shirt.
I wrapped one arm across her chest, palming her breast, rolling the tight peak between my fingers until she whimpered.
My other hand skated down her stomach, stopping between her thighs.
She was already soaked.
“Jesus, Gemma,” I groaned into her neck, teeth grazing her pulse. “You drove all the way here like this?”
“Thought about you the whole time.” Her voice was wrecked. “Imagined you bending me over every sawhorse in this place.”
I pressed two fingers inside her, curling them just right, and she bucked against my hand. My cock was so hard it hurt, trapped behind denim. I couldn’t wait anymore.
I yanked my belt open, shoved my jeans and boxers down just far enough. My erection sprang free, thick and throbbing. I nudged her thighs apart and slid between them—not inside her yet, just gliding along her slick folds, the head bumping her clit with every slow thrust.
We both groaned at the same time.
“Fuck,” I rasped. “You feel so good.”
Her hips rocked back, chasing the friction, coating me in her wetness. I kept that slow, torturous slide while my fingers found her clit, circling, pressing, matching the rhythm of my cock gliding between her legs. She was trembling now, thighs shaking, breath coming in short, sharp pants.
“Come for me, baby,” I growled against her ear. “Let me feel it.”
It didn’t take long. Her head fell back against my shoulder, mouth open on a silent cry, and then her whole body seized—inner muscles fluttering, thighs clamping around me as she came hard, slick heat pulsing against my shaft.
I held her through it, fingers relentless on her clit until she was whimpering, oversensitive, trying to twist away and pull me closer at the same time.
When the aftershocks finally eased, I kissed the side of her throat. “Spread your legs,” I ordered, voice low. “Grab the beam.”
She obeyed instantly. One hand wrapped around the rough two-by-six. She leaned forward, ass tipped up, back arched, offering herself completely.
I lined up and pushed inside her in one long, deep stroke. We both moaned—loud, shameless, echoing off the bare framing.
She was impossibly tight, hotter than sin, so wet I could feel every ripple as I sank to the hilt. I pulled back slow, then slammed home again, harder. Exactly the way she loved it. Deep. Rough. Claiming.
“Like that?” I gritted out.
“Yes—God, yes—don’t stop—”
I didn’t. I fucked her with long, punishing strokes, hips snapping, the wet slap of skin on skin mixing with the creak of the beam she held onto.
One of her hands left the wood. I felt her arm shift downward and knew exactly what she was doing.
Her fingers were on her clit again, rubbing frantic little circles while I pounded into her.
That sight—knowing she was chasing her pleasure while I filled her—snapped something primal loose in my chest.
“Fuck, that’s it,” I growled. “Touch yourself while I fuck you. Let me feel you come on my cock again.”
She cried out, her walls fluttering around me. I drove deeper, harder, chasing my own edge. The pressure built at the base of my spine, white-hot and inevitable.
“Gemma—”
“Come inside me,” she gasped. “Please—fill me up—”
I buried myself to the root and let go.
The orgasm hit like a freight train. I groaned her name, hips jerking as I spilled deep inside her, pulse after pulse, marking her in the most primitive way.
She came right after me, clenching so tight it dragged another ragged moan out of my throat.
We rode it out together, shaking, breathing hard, locked in place until the last tremor faded.
I stayed buried inside her for a long minute, both of us panting, my arms wrapped around her from behind, one hand splayed protectively over the small curve of her belly.
Finally, I kissed the nape of her neck, still half-hard, still reluctant to pull out. “Love you,” I said.
“Love you more.” She laughed softly, breathless. “And I’m pretty sure we just christened the Andersons’ future living room.”
I chuckled, easing out of her with a reluctant groan. “They’ll never know.”
She turned in my arms, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. I tugged my jeans back up, then bent to retrieve her coat and drape it over her shoulders.
“C’mon,” I said, nodding toward the stack of lumber where she’d left the bag. “Food’s getting cold.”
We sat on the makeshift bench—two stacked sheets of plywood—and she unpacked the roadhouse containers.
Ribs, coleslaw, cornbread, mac and cheese, the works.
She handed me a foil container and a plastic fork, then leaned against my side, coat open just enough that I could see the curve of her breast.
We ate in comfortable silence for a while, the February wind whistling through the missing windows, the house smelling of sawdust and sex and barbecue sauce.
I glanced down at her, at the way she licked sauce off her thumb, at the soft glow of contentment on her face.
Four years ago, I didn’t believe in love.
Now I was sitting in the bones of a stranger’s future with my wife—my pregnant, insatiable, ridiculous, perfect wife—and I couldn’t imagine anything better.
I leaned over and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Maybe someday we’ll build one of these for us,” I said quietly. “Big enough for three kids. Maybe four.”
She smiled against my shoulder. “Only if you promise to christen every room the same way.”
I laughed low. “Deal.”
We finished the meal like that—in the half-built dark, full and warm and stupidly happy—while the wind carried the promise of snow and the future kept quietly taking shape around us.