Epilogue #2
“I’ve been changing diapers at two in the morning. My standards have changed.”
I lowered myself onto the blanket and pulled him with me.
His kiss found me again, slower now. My hands moved beneath his shirt, over the muscles built by years of football and reshaped by months of hauling engines, ropes, and coolers.
The expensive polish had worn off him somewhere along the way.
What remained was Nolan, sun-browned and rough around the edges, looking at me as if there were nowhere else he wanted to be.
We shed our clothes between kisses, leaving them in a tangled pile near the edge of the blanket.
Then Nolan stopped.
Not because he had changed his mind.
Because I had covered my stomach.
I hid myself before I could talk myself out of it.
Months of pregnancy had changed me, and childbirth had finished the job.
I knew that. I loved what my body had done.
None of that meant I was used to standing exposed beneath full afternoon sunlight while my husband looked at every mark I’d spent months avoiding in mirrors.
“Nolan, wait.” I kept my arm across my middle. “I’m still getting used to how everything looks now.”
The quiet amusement left his eyes, but no pity took its place.
He reached for my wrist and paused there, giving me time to refuse.
I let him move my arm.
“How could I not look at you?” he said. “You’re beautiful, Piper. Every mark is part of what you gave us.”
“You don’t have to say that because I’m your wife.”
“I’m not.”
His gaze dropped to the faint lines along my skin.
Nolan bent and pressed a kiss there.
Then another.
I stared toward the water because looking at him became almost unbearable for reasons that had nothing to do with embarrassment. He wasn’t pretending the changes weren’t there. He wasn’t rushing past them to reach some version of me that existed before our daughter.
He was taking his time with the woman I was now.
“He isn’t looking away.”
The thought stayed with me as he kissed his way lower, unhurried and intent. He didn’t return to my mouth. Instead, his hands slid down to my knees, parting my bare thighs.
I reached down, my hands settling on his shoulders.
“Nolan—”
He settled between my legs, looking up at me, his breath warm against my inner thighs. “You are absolutely perfect, Piper. Every single mark on your body is a privilege to witness.”
Before I could answer, he buried his face between my thighs.
I gasped, my spine arching off the blanket as his tongue found my wetness. The rush of the ocean breeze faded beneath the slick, agonizingly hot glide of his mouth. He lapped at me hungrily, his thumbs pressing into my hips to hold me steady while his tongue swirled over my clit.
“God, Nolan… please. Don’t stop. Right there.”
He didn’t stop.
He worshipped me in the open sunlight, his mouth relentless and adoring. The embarrassment that had made me cover myself felt ridiculous now. I stopped trying to hide from him.
I tangled my hands into his hair, my hips bucking against his mouth until my breath turned into shallow, ragged gasps.
I tightened my grip, needing to feel the weight of him against me.
Whatever distance remained between us disappeared as he dragged his body up mine, his mouth tasting like my own arousal when he kissed me.
His hands moved over me with care that would have been sweet if he hadn’t kept stopping. Each time I shifted beneath him, his attention jumped straight to my face. Each time I drew him nearer, he eased back again as though one wrong movement might send us both running for the skiff.
“Tell me if anything hurts.”
“I will.”
“I’m serious, Piper.”
“So am I.”
His mouth brushed mine again, but the caution remained. Nolan had spent months teaching himself that wanting me wasn’t the same as having a right to me. I understood why that mattered. I had needed him to learn it.
I just hadn’t expected him to keep punishing himself after I’d already opened the door.
The blanket shifted beneath us as Nolan adjusted his weight. He paused again when my expression changed, studying me instead of letting the moment carry us.
“You can stop watching me like you’re waiting for an emergency.”
“I’m making sure you’re okay.”
“If I’m not, I’ll tell you.”
His eyes stayed on mine. “Promise?”
I touched his cheek. “Yes.”
That satisfied him for several seconds.
Then he did it again.
I laughed before I could stop myself, and Nolan pulled back with an offended look.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because you’re treating this like you’re defusing something.”
“I’m trying not to hurt my wife after she had our baby.”
“And your wife appreciates that.”
“Good.”
“But your wife would also like you to remember that she brought you to an empty sandbar and took her clothes off.”
His mouth twitched. “That’s a convincing argument.”
“I thought so.”
I kissed him before he could manufacture another question.
The next few moments were different. Not reckless, not careless, but less restrained. Nolan finally trusted the answers I kept giving him, and the careful distance between us disappeared.
Still, when he hesitated again, I caught him before he could pull away.
“You feel incredible, Nolan. But don’t hold back.”
His forehead rested against mine. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean—” He stopped and looked at me. “I’ve spent months making myself keep my hands off you. Every time I wanted to touch you, I remembered everything I’d already taken for granted.”
The words should have hurt.
Instead, they made me reach for him.
“You were supposed to learn how to listen to me,” I said. “Not spend the rest of our marriage terrified to want me.”
“I’m not terrified.”
“Then stop acting like I might break.”
The hesitation vanished from his face at that.
For years, Nolan had taken too much for granted. Then he had swung so far in the other direction that sometimes he seemed afraid to claim even the things I offered freely.
I didn’t want either version.
I wanted this one—the man who listened when I spoke, trusted me when I answered, and understood that my choices belonged to me.
“Then stop doing it,” I said. “Touch me, Nolan.”
His mouth found mine again, and this time there was no apology tucked inside the kiss.
Nolan shifted his weight between my thighs. He reached down, guiding himself to me. He let out a long, ragged exhale as he pushed inside me, filling me completely.
He set a slow, deliberate rhythm. It felt incredible, but the restraint was obvious. He was still terrified of breaking me.
The blanket had twisted until one edge dug into my shoulder and sand had worked its way underneath.
Nolan noticed me shifting and started to pull back. “Hold on. I’ll fix it.”
“I have a better idea.”
Before he could retreat, I planted both hands against his chest and pushed. His eyes went wide as I suddenly rolled us over, forcing him flat against the blanket as I followed.
He stared up at me, his cock slipping out as we moved. “You could’ve just told me to move.”
“I did move you.”
“I noticed.”
His grin lasted only until I climbed over his hips, straddling him in the bright tropical sun. Reaching between us, I grabbed his slick cock and guided him back inside me, slowly sinking down until I took his entire length. The deep, satisfying ache in my thighs felt like a victory.
Then the humor faded into something quieter, his attention fixed on me as though he was waiting to see what I wanted next. That was the part I liked most: he waited.
Months ago, Nolan had made decisions for both of us and called it protection. He had decided where I belonged, what I could handle, how much of his life I was allowed to occupy. Now his hands rested at my waist without steering me anywhere.
I chose the pace.
I didn’t give him a choice. I set a brutal, demanding pace, riding him hard beneath the open sky.
Nolan groaned, gripping my rocking hips to steady me.
The sun warmed my shoulders while the breeze came off the water, and Nolan followed every change I made without trying to take over.
His fingers tightened when I tested him, then eased when I slowed.
“You’re enjoying this,” he said, his voice a ragged growl.
“Maybe.”
“That’s cruel.”
“You’ll survive.”
“I’m starting to question that.”
I laughed, and his hands slid higher, his calloused thumb finding my swollen clit and rubbing it relentlessly every time I ground down on him.
Sharp, electric shocks of pleasure radiated through me, my body arching into the sun.
For once, I didn’t care what I looked like from above. I wasn’t thinking about stretch marks or the softness that hadn’t been there before pregnancy. Nolan wasn’t looking at me as though he wanted some earlier version of his wife. He wanted me as I was, right there with him.
I leaned down and kissed him, and whatever patience he had left unraveled.
“I missed this,” he said against my mouth. “I missed you.”
The words stopped me for a moment, not because they hurt, but because they didn’t. There had been a time when every declaration from Nolan came attached to a promise I wasn’t sure he could keep.
Now I had months of proof behind the words: midnight bottles, dirty work shirts, scraped hands, mornings on the dock, nights when he walked our daughter through the apartment until she slept. I didn’t need another promise, so I kissed him again.
His hands stayed where I had put them, following rather than leading, and I changed the rhythm just to watch his control fray. I loved having him pinned underneath me in the sand, dismantling him piece by piece.
“Piper.”
“What?”
He gave me a look that answered the question.
I smiled. “Stop treating me like glass.”
“I thought we settled that.”
“We did. You’re slipping.”
“I’m trying very hard not to lose my mind.”
“Maybe I don’t want you trying so hard.”
That finally pulled a laugh out of him, though it broke off into a heavy groan when I shifted again.