Epilogue #2
She wore a dark green silk slip dress beneath—the exact color of the gown she had worn to the Boosters Gala three years ago in Plattsburgh, the silk pooling like liquid around her thighs, leaving the smooth, honey-warm expanse of her bare back and shoulders exposed to the room's warmth.
I crossed the floor in three silent strides.
I didn't give her time to turn around.
My large, calloused hands settled firmly on her hips, my broad frame crowding her forward until her thighs pressed flush against the edge of the cedar table.
Penny let out a soft, breathy gasp, her head falling back against my shoulder, her dark curls spilling over the bare skin of my chest.
"You didn't do post-game media," she whispered, her voice husky and sweet in the dark, her hands reaching back to rest over my forearms.
"Declan handled the media," I rumbled against the curve of her jaw, my mouth grazing the sensitive skin below her ear, my stubble rasping over her neck. "I had twenty-five minutes of ice-bath, ten minutes with Cole, and then I drove eighty miles an hour to get into this room."
"Speeding is an administrative violation, Captain," she murmured, her hips shifting back against mine with a natural, slow-burn friction that sent a bolt of pure, scalding heat straight down my spine.
"Write me a ticket, Dr. Correa," I growled into her neck.
My hands slid upward from her hips, gathering the green silk of her dress, easing the fabric over her thighs and waist. The silk fell away, pooling around her bare feet on the dark floorboards.
She stood before me in the moonlight, soft, curved, and magnificent—her body marked by the sacred work of carrying our daughter, her skin glowing with a fevered, velvety heat that made my hands shake.
I turned her around in my grip.
I hooked my palms beneath her thighs, lifting her hundred and twenty-two pounds off the floorboards, and set her down on the edge of the mattress.
Penny’s legs parted on pure, unhesitating instinct to bracket my hips, her arms looping around my neck, her hazel eyes dark, dilated, and swimming with gold flecks in the amber light.
"Justin," she breathed, her fingers tangling in the dark hair at my temples, pulling my face down to hers.
"Look at you," I murmured, my voice a low, ruined gravel as my forearms settled on either side of her shoulders, propping my weight above her on the linen. "Prettiest thing on this earth. My wife."
"Yours," she whispered, her lips parting beneath mine.
I didn't rush. I had spent three years learning every millimeter of her body, and I was going to worship every inch of it until dawn.
My mouth took hers in a deep, agonizingly slow claiming that tasted of mint, cedar, and the salt of our shared history. Her tongue met mine with a fierce, breathless hunger, her body arching off the mattress to meet the heavy, solid pressure of my torso.
My hands slid down her ribs, mapping the delicate bones, before settling firmly over the lower curve of her abdomen.
I paused, my calloused palm flat against the smooth warmth of her stomach, remembering the night in Maine when I had knelt in the slush and wept against this very skin.
A violent, sweet shudder rippled through the corded muscle of my neck.
"Good girl," I rasped against her lips, my hips settling into the notch between her thighs with slow, measured, breathtaking friction. "Look at what you've given me, Penny. Look at our life."
"I'm looking," she sobbed softly into my mouth, her heels locking around the backs of my calves, pulling me deeper, her hands digging into the heavy muscle of my shoulders.
I moved with heavy, deliberate authority, holding her anchored in the center of the dark sheets.
Every stroke was a sacred, physical vow—a declaration that from the freezing, concrete underpass of The Forge to this sun-warmed house on the water, there had never been another destination.
"You're my whole life, Penny," I growled into the hollow of her collarbone as her breathing turned ragged and shallow, her body winding tighter and tighter beneath mine. "Every single breath in my lungs belongs to you."
"All mine, Justin," she cried out, the words breaking on a breathless gasp as her back arched, her entire nervous system releasing in long, trembling, rhythmic waves that rippled through her spine.
I held her through the crest, my jaw locking tight, my forehead pressed hard against hers as my own release tore through my chest, spilling into her with a fierce, unyielding devotion that left us gasping for air in the quiet room.
* * *
The birch coals in the hearth had faded to a deep, whispering orange.
Outside the glass, the morning light was still two hours away, the lake silent beneath a blanket of mist.
Penny lay curled flush against my left side, her head resting flat over my breastbone, her bare arm draped across my ribs. Her dark curls were a soft, fragrant tangle across my shoulder, her breathing slow, deep, and heavy with absolute peace.
Her fingers lightly traced the jagged white line through my left eyebrow, her platinum band cool against my skin.
"You were terrifying on the ice tonight, Number Four," she whispered, her voice sleepy and rich with affection.
"I'm an enforcer, sweetheart," I rumbled, my fingers stroking slowly down the long curve of her spine, holding her tight beneath the heavy charcoal quilt. "It's what I do."
Penny lifted her chin, looking up into my dark eyes, a small, knowing smile touching her lips.
"You're a teddy bear who lets a two-year-old ride him like a pony," she countered softly.
A quiet, gravelly chuckle shook my chest, vibrating against her cheek.
"Only for two girls in this world," I rasped, leaning down to press a slow, lingering kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in her scent until my chest was full.
I looked across the bedroom—at the open door leading toward our daughter’s nursery, at her doctoral degrees framed on the wall beside my championship plaques, at the keys sitting on the cedar dresser.
The fear was dead. The debt was settled. The ghosts had starved.
I tightened my arms around her, pulling my wife deeper into the warmth of our bed, holding the only thing that had ever truly mattered.
"Three years ago, you walked into my runway with an aluminum box," I murmured into the quiet room.
Penny smiled against my sternum, her hand flattening over the heavy, rhythmic thud of my heart.
"And you threw three hundred dollars at my chest, Ibarra."
"Best investment I ever made," I rasped.
I closed my eyes in the dark, our heartbeats colliding in the quiet house, anchored forever on the right side of the frozen line.