Epilogue
SUMMER
One month later
The scars are healing.
Not gone, they won't be gone for a long time, maybe ever. But the cuts on my arms have closed into thin pink lines, the bruises have faded from purple to yellow to nothing, and the split in my lip is just a faint white mark I can feel with my tongue if I look for it.
I sleep now, not well, not always, but I sleep.
Kairo still wakes up before me, still checks the monitors, and still has Andreas run security sweeps twice a day.
He thinks I don't notice. I notice everything, I always have.
But the panic that used to sit in my chest like a stone has loosened. Some days I don't feel it at all.
The island looks different to me now, or maybe I look at it differently. The humidity doesn't feel like suffocation anymore. It feels like a wall between me and everything that happened out there, and I'm grateful for it.
I swim every morning. I read in the library.
I eat dinner with my husband, and sometimes we talk, and sometimes we don't, and both feel easy.
He still watches me like I might disappear, still pulls me into his chest in the middle of the night when he thinks I'm asleep, still whispers things into my hair that he'd never say in daylight.
Today I'm nervous, and I don't do nervous well.
I've been planning this for two weeks. I found the tattoo artist through one of the staff, and she made some calls, asked around the village, and came back with a name and a phone number written on the back of a receipt.
I called him myself, explained what I wanted, where I wanted it, and how it needed to look.
He came to the villa yesterday while Kairo was on a call with Andreas, set up in one of the guest rooms, and I lay face down on the bed and bit the inside of my cheek while he worked.
It's simple black ink, clean lines, just his name.
Kairo.
Low on my back, centered at the base of my spine, right where his hands always settle when he pulls me against him. Right where he'll see it when he's behind me. He tattooed my name on his body five years before I knew he existed, and I'm choosing to put his on mine.
I'm standing in the bathroom, my back to the mirror, craning over my shoulder to check it one more time. The skin is still tender, slightly raised, but the letters are perfect. Bold enough to read, small enough that it's just for him, just for us.
I hear his footsteps in the bedroom.
My heart kicks once, hard, and I pull my shirt down. I'm wearing one of his, it’s black, too big, and hits me mid-thigh. Nothing underneath, I've thought about how to show him. Something clever, something dramatic.
He appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame the way he always does, arms crossed, watching me like I'm the only thing in the room worth looking at. His hair is damp from the pool. Salt, chlorine, and sunscreen.
"Come here," I say.
His eyebrow lifts, he's not used to me giving the orders. But he pushes off the frame and walks toward me, and I can see the exact moment his expression shifts from amused to alert. He reads me too well.
"What are you up to?" He smirks while still being on alert.
"Turn me around."
He stops in front of me, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off his skin. His eyes search my face as he is confused by my request.
"Turn me around, Kairo."
His hands find my hips as he slowly turns me, so my back is to him. I reach down, pull the shirt up, gathering the fabric in my fists, and lift it above my waist. The air hits my bare skin, and I feel him go still behind me.
Silence.
I count the seconds by my own heartbeat.
One. Two. Three.
His breath comes out in a shattered exhale, the sound a man makes when something hits him in the chest, and he wasn't braced for it. His fingers brush the skin beside the tattoo, barely touching, tracing the air around the letters like he's afraid contact will make them disappear.
"Summer." My name in his mouth sounds like it's been dragged out of somewhere deep.
His thumb traces the K first. Slow. Reverent.
Then the rest of the letters, one by one, his fingertip following the lines like he's memorizing them through his skin.
I feel his breath on my lower back, warm and unsteady, and I realize he's leaned down to look closer.
"You …" His voice cracks. He stops and tries again. "When?"
"Today, while you were on the phone."
His forehead presses against my spine, just above the tattoo, and he stays there.
His hands shake, I can feel them trembling against my hips, and something in my chest splinters open because this man, this dangerous, obsessive, brutal man who killed for me, who built an island for me, who tattooed my name on his arm, is shaking because I chose to mark myself as his.
"You put my name on your body," he says against my skin.
"Right where you can see it." I look over my shoulder. "Every time."
He makes a sound I've never heard from him before. Low, raw, almost wounded, then his hands tighten on my hips, and he spins me back around to face him. His eyes are dark and wet and furious and soft all at once, and he kisses me so hard my spine hits the bathroom counter.
"You're mine," he says between kisses, and it sounds different now. Not a threat. Not a claim. A fact he finally believes that I believe too.
"Yours," I whisper back. "Was there ever any doubt?"
He pulls back and looks at me, and for the first time since I've known him, Kairo Saint doesn't have a single word left.
He just drops to his knees, presses his lips to my stomach, and stays there.
I run my fingers through his damp hair and look at our reflection in the mirror behind him.
This man on his knees, my hand in his hair, his name on my skin.
A month ago, I was sold to a stranger, and now I'm standing in our bathroom, barefoot, wearing his shirt, and I've never felt freer.
The gold band on my finger catches the light.
It doesn't feel like a noose anymore.
He stays on his knees for a long moment, forehead pressed to my stomach like he’s praying.
Then something in him snaps. Kairo surges up and spins me around so fast my palms slap the marble.
I brace myself against the counter, arching my back instinctively.
In the mirror, I watch his face dark, unhinged, completely feral as he stares at the tattoo.
His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise.
He doesn’t prep me. He doesn’t ever need to, I’m already soaked.
He lines up and thrusts into me in one brutal stroke, burying himself to the hilt.
I cry out, the stretch sharp and perfect.
“Mine,” he growls, eyes fixed on the black letters at the base of my spine. “Fucking mine.”
He fucks me like a man who almost lost everything and just got it back. It’s hard, deep, possessive, the only way Kairo Saint knows how to fuck. Every thrust makes the fresh tattoo pull and sting, and the pain only makes him groan louder.
“Look at it,” he rasps, one hand fisting my hair to keep my head up so I can see us in the mirror. “Look at my name on you while I fuck you. This is where you belong. Bent over with my cock inside you and my name marked on your skin.”
He slams into me again and again, the sound of skin on skin echoing off the marble. His eyes never leave the tattoo. Every time he bottoms out, he grinds deep like he’s trying to imprint himself even further inside me.
“Say it,” he demands, voice unhinged. “Tell me who you belong to.”
“You.” I moan, pushing back against him. “I belong to you.”
His grip tightens, almost painfully, and his pace turns savage. He’s watching the tattoo move with every thrust, watching his name bounce on my skin as he claims me.
“Again,” he growls. “Louder.”
“I’m yours, Kairo! I’m yours!”
He snarls, one hand sliding around to press over the tattoo like he’s sealing it there forever. His other hand finds my clit and rubs hard, relentlessly.
“Come for me,” he orders, voice rough. “Come with my name on your body and my cock buried inside you.”
I shatter.
The orgasm hits me so hard my vision whites out. I cry out his name, pussy clenching around him, body shaking violently. He follows right after with a broken groan, slamming deep and flooding me, hips jerking as he empties himself completely.
He doesn’t pull out.
He stays buried inside me, chest pressed to my back, arms wrapped around me like iron bands. His fingers brush the fresh tattoo, reverently.
“Mine,” he whispers against my skin, voice hoarse and possessive. “Finally, mine. And I’m never letting you go again.”
I reach back, threading my fingers through his hair, and smile at our reflection in the mirror, wrecked, marked, and completely entangled.
“Good,” I whisper back. “Because I don’t want you to.”
THE END