Epilogue #2
I pull her closer, and she comes willingly, and we fall back onto the bed together.
The kiss deepens - familiar, unhurried, the kind of heat that doesn’t need to prove anything because it already knows what it is.
Her hands find the hem of my shirt. I get her out of her blouse one button at a time, kissing each new inch of skin like I’m still learning her, even though I could map her blind.
Collarbone. The soft spot under her jaw. The place between her breasts where her heartbeat lives.
“The kids are down?” she murmurs against my mouth.
“Out cold. Dragon story worked its magic. Luca was humming before I finished the last page.”
“Good.” She nips my jaw. “Because I have been thinking about your hands on me since you drowned that sauce in garlic and looked at me like I was the one on fire.”
“I always look at you like that.”
“I know. It’s disgusting. I love it.”
I laugh into her throat and roll us so she’s straddling me, her hair falling around our faces in a dark curtain that smells like her shampoo and the kitchen and home.
She peels my shirt the rest of the way off and tosses it toward the chair.
I unhook her bra and toss it somewhere in the general direction of the dresser - it lands on her half-finished bracelet, which feels appropriately us.
When I get my mouth on her breast she sighs like she’s been waiting all day for exactly this, and maybe she has.
Maybe we both have. The ordinary miracle of wanting each other at the end of a long domestic evening.
I take my time. Tongue and teeth and the flat of my palm on her other breast, rolling her nipple until it’s tight. She rocks against me, shameless, the soft heat of her cunt pressing through her pants against the hard line of my cock.
“Still so fucking responsive,” I murmur against her skin. “My wife. My filthy, beautiful wife who sits through supplier calls about sapphires and then comes to bed and lets me wreck her.”
“Who says I let you?” She grinds down harder, shameless, and I hiss through my teeth. “Maybe I’m the one doing the wrecking.”
“Prove it.”
She does. She gets my pants open and my cock out with the efficient confidence of a woman who has been married to this body long enough to know exactly how to undo me.
Her fist strokes me slow and tight, thumb smearing the bead of wetness at the tip, and the sight of her hand on me - wedding ring glinting, craft-kit bracelet still on her other wrist - nearly finishes me before we’ve started.
“Christ, look at you,” she teases. “Drowned the sauce in garlic, survived the children’s honesty, and now you’re leaking all over my hand. Pathetic.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Your menace.” She slides down my body before I can retort, wraps her mouth around the head of my cock, and sucks - slow, filthy, eyes on mine the whole time.
I fist the sheets and bite back a groan that wants to be loud.
She knows exactly how I like it: deep enough to make her eyes water, then the swirl of her tongue under the head, then her hand twisting at the base while she hollows her cheeks.
The wet sound of it fills the quiet bedroom. Somewhere down the hall the house settles. I card my fingers into her hair and hold on without pushing, letting her set the pace, watching my cock disappear between her lips like a man who still can’t believe he gets this.
She takes me deeper, gagging softly once and then adjusting, and the care in it - the practiced, married knowledge of exactly how far she can go - is somehow filthier than any stranger’s enthusiasm could ever be.
I whisper her name. She hums around me and the vibration nearly ends the evening early.
“Fuck - Ariah - your mouth - you’re going to kill me…”
She pulls back just enough to speak, lips brushing the head. “Death by blowjob. What a way to go. The papers would have a field day.”
“Ariah…”
“Shh.” She licks a stripe up the underside and I swear through my teeth. “Kids, remember?”
She pulls off with a wet pop and grins, lips shiny. “Still works, then.”
“Still ruins me. Get up here before I come down your throat and embarrass myself.”
“Maybe I want that.” She strokes me once, considering, eyes wicked. “Maybe I want you to come on my tongue and then get hard again so I can ride you properly. We have all night.”
“Maybe next time.” My voice is wrecked. “Right now I need to be inside my wife. I’ve been thinking about it since the garlic. Since dinner. Since you stole vegetables off my plate like you always do.”
“Romantic.”
“Filthy. Closely related, in this house.”
She climbs back up, shoves her underwear aside without bothering to take them off - efficient, married, perfect - and sinks down onto me in one long, devastating slide that punches the air from both our lungs. “Fuck. There. That’s better.”
“Christ, Ariah…”
“Shh. Kids.” But she’s smiling, wicked and fond, as she starts to ride me in a slow, rolling rhythm that makes the bed creak softly. I get my hands on her hips to steady her. She braces on my chest. “You’ll just have to be quiet while I use this cock. Think you can manage that, Grimaldi?”
“I’ll manage anything you want as long as you keep doing that - god - right there…”
She finds an angle that makes her breath hitch and stays with it, fucking herself on me with the unhurried greed of someone who knows we have all night, all year, the rest of our lives.
I thrust up to meet her. Watch her tits bounce.
Watch the flush climb her throat. Watch her mouth fall open on a silent moan when I get my thumb on her clit and rub in tight circles.
“Like that?” I whisper.
“Exactly like that. Don’t stop. Don’t you dare…”
“Wouldn’t. This is the best part of my day. Too much garlic included.”
She laughs and the laugh turns into a moan she has to swallow, and I feel her clench around me in answer.
We stay like that for a stretch of minutes that feel stolen from a better life - except this *is* the better life, the one I almost lost, and the knowledge of that sits under every thrust like a second pulse.
“Tell me,” she breathes. “Tell me something filthy.”
“Your cunt is perfect. Hot and tight and dripping down my cock. I’ve been hard since you kissed my cheek in the kitchen. I’ve been thinking about bending you over that island since Luca started his garlic philosophy.”
“The children…”
“Are asleep. And I’m being quiet. Relatively.” I rub her clit faster. “You’re the one who’s going to give us away if you keep squeezing me like that.”
“That’s it, amore. Take what you need. Use me. This cock is yours - has always been yours - fuck, look at how well you take it…”
“Pietro…” My name is a gasped warning.
“I know. I’ve got you.” I keep the pressure on her clit and thrust up harder, matching her rhythm. “Come on. Come on my cock like the greedy wife you are. I’ve got you. Always got you.”
She shatters beautifully - trembling, silent except for a swallowed moan that she muffles against my palm when I offer it, her cunt gripping me in pulsing waves that drag me right to the edge. I almost follow her. I don’t. I want more of this. I want the second act.
I give her a minute to come down. Kissing her temple, stroking her back, murmuring nonsense in Italian that makes her smile against my throat and then I flip us before she finishes coming down fully, hitch her knees up toward her chest, and drive into her through the aftershocks.