Epilogue
“You’re early,” she says.
“Shift ended early.”
I lock the door behind me and flip the sign.
The courtyard is empty, the other shops already dark.
Through the back window, I can see the greenhouse she added last spring, the glass fogged with humidity, rows of seedlings on the shelves she asked me to build.
I built them twice because the first set wasn’t level enough.
Our daughter is with my mother tonight. Karen drove up this morning and took Leilani to the resort pool, and when I called to check in, she told me to stop calling and go find my wife.
The shop looks different than it did five years ago…
and exactly the same. More inventory, better lighting, a second cooler she bought with the resort contract money.
A framed photo of Leilani and Laurelle’s grandmother is tucked by the register, taken last Christmas in Raleigh.
But the bones are the same. The stone walls, the buckets along the floor, the workbench where she was standing the first time I walked in here holding an order form and trying to remember how to talk to a woman.
On the workbench next to her elbow is a finished arrangement in a glass vase. Purple and white, trailing greenery. The station flowers. Five years of weekly deliveries, and the crew still acts surprised every Monday. Like they’ve never seen wildflowers before.
“That one’s not done,” she says, nodding at the vase. “The eucalyptus is wrong.”
“It looks fine.”
“It’s not fine. It’s unbalanced.”
She wipes her hands on her apron and reaches for the vase. I come around the counter and catch her wrist.
“Leave it.”
She looks up at me. Dirt on her fingers, pollen on her collarbone. Five years, and she still has pollen on her collarbone. I pull the apron string at the small of her back. The knot comes undone, and the apron falls between us.
“Dean.”
“The eucalyptus can wait.”
I pull her close and kiss her, slow and deep, tasting the faint sweetness of the herbal tea she drinks while she works. Her hands come up to my chest, fingers curling into my station shirt, but she pulls back a breath later, eyes darting toward the front windows.
“Dean… someone could still walk by,” she whispers, even as her lips chase mine again.
I don’t answer with words. Instead, I slide an arm around her waist and walk her backward through the shop, past the coolers and buckets, into the back room where the air is warmer and heavier with the scent of soil and green things.
The potting bench waits under the single overhead bulb—scarred wood dusted with dirt.
I grab a burlap sack from the neat stack against the wall, shake it out, and spread it over the bench, smoothing the rough fabric to give us something softer than bare wood and packed earth. Laurelle watches me, cheeks already flushed, lips parted.
I lift her easily onto the covered bench.
Her hands go to her jeans, but I’m faster.
Kneeling, I peel her shoes off one by one, then drag the denim and her underwear down her legs together, kissing the inside of her knee and her thigh as I go.
She pulls her top over her head and reaches back to unhook her bra, letting her breasts spill free.
They’re fuller now, round and heavy with the six months she’s been carrying our second child. Her nipples are already tight, and the sight steals the breath from my lungs for a second.
I settle between her spread thighs, palms sliding up her skin, and lean in. The first slow lick draws a sharp gasp from her. I take my time, savoring the taste of her, the way her hips roll against my mouth, the little sounds she tries to muffle.
When I slide two fingers inside her and curl them just right while my tongue works her clit, her thighs start to tremble. She comes hard, back arching, one hand fisted in my hair as she rides it out with a broken moan of my name.
I stand, breathing hard, and yank open my station pants. I shove them and my boxers down to my thighs. My cock springs out, thick and aching, flushed dark at the head. Laurelle’s eyes drop to it, dark with want, and she lets out a soft, hungry sound that goes straight to my balls.
I grip her hips, angling carefully around the swell of her belly, and push inside her in one smooth, deep thrust. She cries out sharply, a broken “Oh God, Dean—” as her nails dig hard into my shoulders and her pussy clenches around me like a hot, velvet fist.
Fuck, she feels incredible—tight and slick and so fucking wet from how turned on she is, her walls rippling and squeezing every inch of my hard cock as I stretch her open.
The heat of her is unreal, like she was made to take me, gripping me so perfectly, I have to grit my teeth to keep from coming right then.
“That’s it, baby,” I groan against her ear, voice rough. “Feel how deep I am? Your pussy’s so fucking good—hot, tight, sucking me in like you never want me to leave.”
I start to move, slow and powerful at first, savoring every drag and slide.
Laurelle moans loudly, the sound raw and needy, her head falling back as her heavy tits bounce with each thrust. The wet, filthy sound of me fucking her fills the back room, mixing with her gasping whimpers and the steady creak of the potting bench beneath us.
Her hand slips between us, fingers circling her clit fast and desperate while I keep one palm braced on the bench and the other cupping her breast, thumb stroking the sensitive peak.
I can’t stop looking at her—those gorgeous, swollen tits bouncing heavier than usual because of the pregnancy, her lips parted on those soft, needy little cries that drive me insane, her eyes half-closed in pure pleasure.
I drive into her harder, deeper, picking up pace. “Look at you,” I rasp, voice low and wrecked. “So beautiful, taking my cock. I love how you squeeze me, Laurelle—every time I thrust, your pussy flutters like you’re trying to pull me even deeper. Fuck, you’re dripping down my balls, baby.”
Her moans get louder, breathier, turning into desperate little sobs of pleasure as her fingers move faster on her clit. Her walls start fluttering wildly around my cock, gripping and releasing in rhythmic pulses that make my vision blur.
“Come with me,” I growl against her mouth, thrusting hard and grinding deep. “Let me feel you come all over my cock.”
She does—clenching impossibly tight around me with a sharp, keening cry, her whole body shaking as her orgasm crashes through her.
The intense, milking squeeze of her pussy is too much.
I bury myself as deep as I can and spill inside her with a guttural groan of her name, pulse after heavy pulse, filling her with my seed while her walls keep fluttering and drawing every drop out of me.
We stay locked together, breathing hard, the warm curve of her belly resting against me, my hands still stroking her skin like I can’t bear to stop touching her.
The shop is dark now. The courtyard is quiet outside the window.
The eucalyptus is still wrong. She’ll fix it in the morning, and Monday the crew will find them on the kitchen table in the same spot they’ve been for five years.
Nobody will know that the arrangement sat overnight in a locked shop while I held the woman who made it.
Some things I tend because I have to. Her, I tend because I’d fall apart if I didn’t.