Epilogue
BLAIR
Iwake to the flicker of candlelight, dozens of them casting warm, golden shadows that dance over the walls and ceiling like living things.
The room smells of wax and salt air and the faint trace of the cologne he only wears on special nights.
For a moment I lie there, suspended between sleep and waking, feeling the familiar weight and fullness of him already deep inside me.
Nash. My husband.
It’s our first wedding anniversary and I stir with a soft sigh, my body instinctively clenching around the thick length of him buried so perfectly between my thighs.
He’s been waiting for me, wicked and perfectly still, watching me sleep while he stayed inside me.
Just like the nights when he used to come to me masked and silent, claiming me before I even knew he was there.
Only now there’s no fear. Only love. Dark, all-consuming love.
He’s wearing the mask. The same black one from the beginning.
It covers his face, turning his eyes into something predatory and beautiful in the candlelight.
The sight of it sends a shiver racing down my spine, heat pooling low where we’re joined.
Even after a year of marriage, the mask still does something filthy and delicious to me.
“Happy anniversary, Mrs. Everett,” he murmurs, voice low behind the leather. He rolls his hips once, slow and deep, pushing even further into me until I gasp.
I reach up, fingers tracing the edge of the mask. “You wore it.”
“I’ll always wear it.” He leans down, murmuring against the shell of my ear. “It brought me you.”
He starts to move then, in long, unhurried strokes that drag against every sensitive place inside me. The candles flicker with each thrust, painting his broad shoulders and the flex of muscle in shifting light and shadow. I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper.
“I love you like this,” I whisper, arching beneath him. “When you let the darkness out just for me.”
He groans, his hips snapping harder for a moment before he slows again, savoring me. “You were always meant to be mine. Even when I was hiding behind this mask, watching you sleep, touching you while you dreamed…I knew. Some part of me always knew you’d choose the monster.”
I moan softly as he grinds against that perfect spot, pleasure building in slow, luxurious waves. I slide my hands up his chest and over his shoulders, then reach for the mask. He stills, letting me hook my fingers beneath the leather.
“Take it off,” I breathe. “I want to see my husband.”
He lets me pull the mask away. The man beneath it is devastating, with silver threading his dark hair, his sharp jaw clenched with restraint, and eyes burning with that same obsessive love that once terrified and thrilled me.
Nash. My Nash. The man who stalked me, claimed me, and ultimately saved me from the life I was running from.
He kisses me the moment the mask is gone, deep and claiming.
He strokes his tongue against mine as he thrusts harder, faster, one hand sliding down to grip my thigh and hitch it higher around his waist. I cry out into his mouth, my nails digging into his shoulders as pleasure coils tighter and tighter.
“I love you,” he rasps against my lips, breaking the kiss only to trail his mouth down my throat. “Every day I wake up next to you, I can’t believe you chose me. That you let me keep you.”
“I chose the man who saw me when no one else did,” I whisper, gasping as he hits that perfect angle again. “The man who was willing to destroy everything for me. The man who still takes me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.”
He growls, the sound vibrating against my skin as he drives into me harder. Candlelight flickers wildly across our joined bodies, and I’m so close already, trembling on edge, every thrust pushing me closer to shattering.
“Blair,” he commands, voice dark and velvet-rough.
I meet his eyes as the orgasm crashes over me, intense and overwhelming, drawn out by the slow and deliberate way he fucks me through it.
I cry out his name, clenching around him as my whole body shakes with release.
He follows moments later, burying himself deep and groaning my name like a prayer as he comes, pulsing inside me and filling me with heat.
We stay locked together afterward, breathing hard with our foreheads pressed together. He brushes damp strands of hair from my face, kissing me softly.
“Happy anniversary, my love,” he murmurs.
I smile, cupping his face, tracing the lines I’ve memorized a thousand times. “Happy anniversary. To the man who kidnapped my heart in the middle of the night…and never gave it back.”
He laughs, the sound I’ve come to crave more than anything, and then rolls us so I’m draped over his chest with his arms wrapped tightly around me.
We’ve come so far from that first night he found me sleeping in his house. From the mask, and the fear, and the forbidden hunger. We’ve survived my father’s rage, the scandal, the whispers. We’ve built something beautiful out of something dark.
And as I drift back toward sleep, safe in the arms of the man who once stalked me through midnight shadows, I know with absolute certainty I would choose him again.
Every single time, in this life and every one after.