Epilogue #3
“Ass up, little ember.” I say as I let my hand slide up her spine and gently press the upper part of her body against the mattress. “Face down.”
A broken sound leaves her as she bows so beautifully for me.
I settle behind her and let the head of my dick drag through the wetness between her thighs first, coating myself in her, hot and slick, then press forward until I am lined against her ass.
I use her own juices, spreading them over that tight ring of muscle with my thumb, working her open just enough that she will feel every inch without being hurt.
She clenches, then eases. I kiss the base of her spine while I do it.
I wait until her breathing changes from startled to wanting.
“What is your safe word, little ember?”
“Red,” she gasps into the dark.
I line up, coat her asshole with her juices, and slide in with one firm thrust.
“Oh my god!” She screams but her body is already settling to the intrusion and meets my movements to let me know she can take so much more.
The heat of her takes the air out of my lungs.
She is so tight, so fucking perfect. She makes a raw sound into the pillow and I stay still for a second, buried in her, one hand spread over her back, feeling every tremor move through her body into mine.
I need that moment to steady myself before I murmur against her spine.
“Good girl. Now scream for me.”
I pull back slow enough that she feels every inch of me leaving her, then push in again, deeper this time, watching the way her tied hands flex against the headboard.
The drag of her around my dick is almost too much.
I set a rhythm that is controlled only because I refuse to lose her in the middle of this, each thrust measured, each one a little harder once her hips start pushing back to take me.
“Kai—” My name comes out wrecked.
I slide my free hand around her hip and down between her thighs, finding her pussy still soaked, her clit swollen under my fingers. I rub her there while I fuck her ass, and the sound she makes punches straight through my chest.
“Please, baby… Don’t stop. Right there!”
“I’ve got you.” My voice is low as I straighten and grab her hips, but she’s already meeting every thrust I make. “Fuck… Just like that. Fuck, yes.”
The bedframe knocks softly against the wall and the room fills with the wet, filthy sound of my body driving into hers.
I can feel her clenching around me every time my fingers circle her clit.
It makes my vision narrow. Nine months of having her and it still wrecks me, the way she gives herself over, the way she trusts me with the parts of her that used to scare her.
“Oh my God—” she gasps, then it turns into a guttural moan. “Kai. Kai, I’m—”
“I know.” I press her harder into the mattress, hips snapping forward, my fingers working her faster. “Come for me, little ember. Let me feel it.”
She breaks with a cry that is half scream, half my name, her whole body locking up around my dick so tight I have to grit my teeth to stay with her.
The pulses run through her ass, through her pussy against my hand, through every place I am holding her.
I fuck her through it, slower, deeper, chasing the last of her orgasm until she is shaking and wet and making those small, helpless sounds into the sheets.
That’s what undoes me. I bury myself to the hilt and come with a rough groan against her back, spilling inside her in hard, helpless throbs.
The heat of it is almost violent. I stay there, pressed to her, one hand still between her thighs, the other braced beside her tied wrists, breathing like I have been running.
She clenches around me again as she feels it, a soft, stunned moan leaving her throat.
For a long moment neither of us moves. I kiss the damp skin between her shoulder blades, then her neck, then the corner of her mouth when she turns her face toward me on the pillow.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur again, quieter now. “I’ve got you.”
After our breaths turn to normal, I untie her wrists and gather her against me, slower now, careful with the places I just used and the places I have spent months learning how to hold.
She fits to my chest like she belongs there, not because she cannot stand without me and not because I only feel like a man when she is under my hands, but because we chose this after we had every reason not to.
On the nightstand, next to her water glass, is a black envelope I left before court.
No wax. Sometimes her name, sometimes Little Ember, and a letter she will open when she wakes, the way she has opened every one since I stopped hiding to write them.
This morning I wrote her name on the envelope. This day deserves it.
I press my mouth to her hair. She murmurs something half-asleep against my throat, something that sounds like my name, and I stay awake a little longer than I need to, listening to her breathe, knowing this is the only ending that was ever going to be enough — not rescue, not ruin, just Julia in the daylight, still reading my words, still choosing me back.