Epilogue
Three Years Later
Beau
The humid air hits me square in the face when I step outside, balancing three glasses of ice-cold lemonade on a tray despite the heat. I stop to catch my breath, questioning once more the wisdom of staying outdoors on an afternoon as hot as this one.
But then my eyes find her, and the weather suddenly doesn’t matter. Not when it seems to suit my sun-hugging wife.
She’s seated on the porch swing, the gentle creak of the chains humming through the quiet afternoon.
Curled up on her lap is our son, who seems to have fallen asleep in the time it took me to walk inside and grab us some cold drinks.
It’s not like I had to harvest the lemons and make lemonade from scratch.
I couldn’t have been gone longer than five minutes, but it was enough for him to fall asleep.
My eyes shift from my wife and our son to the two dogs engaged in a game of chase across the lawn, while the rest of them lounge in the shade near the swing.
My whole world, right here in this yard.
I take a mental picture of the scene, wishing my hands weren’t full so I could capture the moment on camera too.
It’s not often that I stop to take a look at the family we’ve built over the past three years.
A small, perfect universe in our corner of the world.
The sheer, overwhelming beauty of it all, this quiet domesticity, leaves me breathless.
And it’s mine.
All mine.
When my wife turns, her lips stretching in a smile, I feel that jolt in my heart I felt when I first saw her.
“He’s sleeping,” she mouths, nodding to the toddler on her lap.
I walk over to them, then place the tray gently on the table by the swing.
“I’ll take him to bed,” I murmur, reaching down to lift our son from her lap.
He whines softly before settling comfortably in my arms, dropping his head on my shoulder, and I feel a mix of protectiveness and deep tenderness that makes my chest ache.
I brush my lips over my wife’s forehead before turning to carry the little man to bed. Holding my sleeping son, feeling his weight in my arms and the soft rise and fall of his chest against mine, reminds me of the world I almost lost when I left that hospital three years ago.
I can’t imagine a life without Rosalie and our son in it, and yet, that was almost a reality.
He whines again when I lower him to his toddler bed, waking for a brief second before falling right back to sleep. I move to pat his chest when something catches my eye. My brows furrow as I read the writing on his T-shirt.
“Big brother,” I read out loud, my head whipping around when I sense my wife step into the room. She chuckles at my shocked expression, waving the pregnancy test at me like a wand.
“So, what do you think of the little surprise, Dad?”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Uh huh.”
I move to her so fast it barely registers, wrapping my arms around her waist and spinning her around. We both freeze when her legs knock the dresser, turning our heads to the bed where our son remains blissfully asleep.
“Why don’t we take this little celebration to another room?” She giggles, brushing her lips over mine and sparking a fire under my skin.
“You have my vote on that,” I say, dropping my hands down to her butt and fondling her over her sundress. “We have plenty to celebrate.”
Our lips find each other as we back out of the room.
I grab the doorknob and shut the door softly behind us, hoping to Christ we make it to our room before we start tearing at each other’s clothes.
It was all fun and games when we could make love anywhere in the house, but that changed when our little boy learned to walk and open doors.
We make it to the room, barely, before I flatten her to the wall. My mouth drops to her neck, and I rake my teeth up her throat when she tips her head back. She moans loudly when my right-hand snakes under her sundress and rubs her pussy, stroking her over her panties.
“Oh, Daddy,” she moans, sliding her fingers under my shirt, making me groan as she drags her nails over my stomach and up to my chest. I hiss when a nail scratches over my nipple, my hard cock jolting in my pants at the pain-pleasure sensation.
“Fuck, baby, do it again!”
“What? This?” she asks, dragging her nail over my nipple again and making my cock jerk hard in my jeans.
“How the fuck can you still undo me like this?” I rasp, peeling her panties down her thighs before sliding my finger inside her and groaning when I find her wet. “After all this time together, you still manage to steal my breath away.”
“For the same reason you still affect me,” she whispers, kissing my jawline as her fingers trace my pecs, teasing my nipples with her nails until I’m out of breath. “Because you love me.”
“I adore you,” I rasp, yanking down my zipper with my free hand. “I worship the very ground you walk on, Rosalie. You’re my world.”
“And you’re mine.”
I spin her around to face the wall, burying my face in her hair as I drive my cock deep into her, stretching her tight pussy with my thickness.
I reach around her and cup her perky tits, teasing her pebbled nipples between my fingers as I begin to take her hard and fast against the wall.
“You’re so fucking sexy,” I breathe into her nape, groaning as her wet little channel squeezes me, her pulsing walls pulling me closer to the edge.
“And every inch of this sexy body belongs to me.”
“Yes, yours, Daddy,” she sobs, lifting her ass to meet my thrusts. Her cries grow fevered when I reach down and strum her clit in time with my thrusts, fucking her harder and faster into the wall, laying claim as I’ve done a thousand times over.
And when release crashes over us, it threatens to send us both to the floor.
I cup her mouth to mute her scream before it can carry and wake our son, burying my mouth in her neck as my own orgasm roars out of me.
I hammer into her, stroking her clit through the climax until she’s bucking against me, her thighs shaking violently as pleasure rolls through her body.
Her sex cinches hard around me, taking every drop I pour into her until I’m empty.
We slide down to the carpet, our limbs boneless and heavy, falling on our backs and staring up at the ceiling, fighting to catch our breath.
“That was...”
“I know,” I say, reaching for her hand and linking it with mine. “Not a bad way to celebrate.”
She chuckles, turning her head to look at me. “You really had no idea?”
I bring our linked hands to my lips. “I suspected,” I confess. “The female dogs, Athena and Nike, have been very protective of you lately, more than usual. Athena was protective of you when you were pregnant with our son, remember?”
“Yeah, she wouldn’t leave my side for a second.” She laughs. “Kristin was the first to notice. She called me from Atlanta and convinced me to get a pregnancy test.”
I smile at the memory. Kristin was the first person to notice something was different during Rosalie’s first pregnancy.
She called us one evening from Atlanta and spent half an hour insisting Rosalie was pregnant before finally convincing her to take a test. When it came back positive, she was so excited she nearly cried over the video call.
I knew it the second I heard them on the phone. Even from Atlanta, Kristin still knew Rosalie better than anyone.
Now three years later, every piece of my life has fallen perfectly into place.
“Soon, we’ll have a household full of babies and puppies.”
“Yeah.” She sighs happily, resting her head on my chest. “Isn’t that great?”
“It’s perfect.”
Three years ago, I never would have imagined this.
Training and breeding dogs was my passion, and not hers.
She came into my life and had to live with dogs that terrified most people, and although they loved her and she seemed to love them back, there was still a question of how it would work out long-term.
But it became her passion too—caring for the female dogs and their puppies. She quit her job at the diner and put her time and effort into helping me, focusing on the breeding side of things.
“I love every single one of those fur babies,” she says, echoing the same words she did when I raised the question all those years ago.
“I never had much of a family before. I lost my parents at eighteen, barely an adult, and even before that, I rarely saw them. Then I met Kristin, and through some twist of fate, I was led to you. Suddenly I had everything I never realized I was missing. I wasn’t alone anymore.
Even when you’re not here, I’m not alone.
I wouldn’t trade this life for anything in the world. ”
I dip my head and brush my lips over hers as words fail me. There simply aren’t enough to express what I feel for her.
Mine.
My life. My world.
“I love you.” My blood heats as I deepen the kiss, my hands moving over her body with renewed urgency, seeking to reignite the fire that had only just begun to cool.
My mouth seeks hers with a hunger that calls for me to mark and claim what’s mine.
She’s my entire world, and as the words fail me, I decide it’s only right that I show her with my touch.
~The End
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