Epilogue
Cora
One Year Later – Christmas Eve
The cabin is warm and smells like everything good in the world: fresh-cut pine from the tree we dragged in last week, cinnamon from the gingerbread I baked at dawn, and the faint, lingering trace of the vanilla candle I lit because Dawson says it reminds him of me.
I’m standing on the little wooden step stool in front of our nine-foot blue spruce, one hand braced on my lower back, the other carefully hanging the last hand-blown glass icicle.
My belly is enormous, our daughter is due in four days, right after Christmas, and she’s measuring big, just like her daddy.
I’m wearing Dawson’s oldest red-and-black flannel, the one that used to swallow me whole and now stretches tight across my breasts and belly, buttons straining heroically.
It’s the only thing that still fits, and I love it because it smells like him.
The tree is almost finished. White lights twinkle in soft spirals, paper snowflakes I cut last night dangle from the branches, and the vintage glass ornaments my grandmother gave me years ago catch the firelight and throw tiny rainbows across the log walls.
I reach up on tiptoes to hang the final icicle, and the baby gives a solid kick that makes me laugh out loud.
“Easy, little girl,” I murmur, rubbing the spot. “Mommy’s almost done.”
The front door opens with a gust of cold mountain air, and the flames in the fireplace dance.
Dawson steps inside, arms loaded with split pine, snowflakes glittering in his dark hair and beard like someone dusted him with sugar.
His cheeks are red from the wind, eyes crinkling the second they land on me.
He stops dead in the doorway.
“Cora,” he growls, low and dangerous and full of love, “get your very pregnant, very gorgeous ass down from that stool before I lose ten years of my life.”
I grin, deliberately slow as I place the last ornament. “Almost finished.”
He drops the logs into the box with a clatter that echoes through the cabin, crosses the room in four long strides, and lifts me down like I’m made of spun sugar instead of thirty-eight weeks pregnant and waddling.
His hands span my hips, thumbs stroking over the hard curve of my belly, and our daughter kicks again, right against his palm.
“Hey, baby girl,” he whispers, voice softening instantly. He drops to one knee in the middle of the living room, presses his cold cheek to my belly, and murmurs something too low for me to hear.
Then he stands, cups my face in his big, rough hands, and kisses me like he’s been starving for it all day. Which he probably has.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he says against my lips.
“I was resting,” I protest, nipping his bottom lip. “Horizontal resting is boring when there’s a tree to decorate.”
He laughs, the sound rumbling through his chest and into mine, and walks me backward until my thighs hit the kitchen counter. In one smooth move, he lifts me onto it, steps between my knees, and slides the flannel open just enough to bare me to the warm air.
His eyes darken, roaming over my swollen breasts, the roundness of my belly, the slick shine already between my thighs because pregnancy has turned my libido into a wildfire, and he knows it.
“Hi,” I whisper, suddenly shy even after a year of this man seeing every inch of me, inside and out.
“Hi, sunshine.” His voice is gravel and reverence. He leans in, kisses the corner of my mouth, my jaw, the spot just below my ear that makes me shiver. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m blushing. “I’m a planet.”
“You’re my planet,” he corrects, and slides one big hand between my thighs, cupping me gently. “And you’re soaked.”
I gasp as his thumb finds my clit with devastating accuracy. “It’s these damn pregnancy hormones.”
He chuckles, low and filthy, and drops to his knees right there on the kitchen floor.
The first slow lick has me gripping the counter so hard my knuckles go white.
He takes his time, licking me open like I’m the best thing he’s ever tasted, beard scraping the sensitive skin of my inner thighs until I’m trembling.
When he slides two thick fingers inside me and curls them just right, I come with a broken cry, thighs clamping around his head, his name echoing off the log walls.
He stands and kisses me so I taste myself on his tongue. Then he lifts my legs, wraps them around his waist, and slides into me in one slow, perfect thrust.
We both groan.
He’s enormous and I’m swollen and sensitive, and the stretch is exquisite. He stills, buried to the hilt, forehead pressed to mine, one hand cradling the back of my neck, the other supporting my lower back so I don’t strain.
“Best fucking Christmas ever,” he whispers, right as he starts to move.
I come again almost instantly, clenching around him so hard his rhythm stutters.
He kisses me through it, swallowing every sound, then sets a gentle, relentless pace that has me sobbing his name into his mouth.
When he finally follows me over, it’s with my name on his lips and his arms locked around me like he’ll never let go.
Afterward, he carries me to the couch, wraps us both in the same quilt from that very first blizzard night, and cradles me against his chest while the baby kicks happily between us.
The record player spins softly and slowly, and when “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” starts, he stands, pulls me up with him, and sways us in front of the fireplace.
The tree lights twinkle behind us, the same battered sprig of mistletoe still hangs above our bed upstairs, and snow falls thick and silent outside the windows.
His wedding band glints against my skin when he cups my face. My cheek rests over his heart, right where it belongs.
One year ago, I drove up this mountain with a tin of snickerdoodles and no idea I was about to find my forever.
Now I’m married to the grumpiest, gentlest, most perfect man on earth, carrying his daughter, decorating our tree in his flannel, and slow dancing by the fire.
I close my eyes and breathe him in.
Tonight, the world is quiet and warm and ours.
Best Christmas ever.
And it’s only just beginning.