Epilogue #3
I braced my hands against his chest and kept control, letting the moment belong to us instead of turning it into another careful negotiation. Nolan watched me with the same open attention he’d carried since the marina, but there was no apology in it now, only want.
The effort caught up with me after a while. My pace faltered, and Nolan noticed before I said anything. His hands tightened at my waist, supporting rather than steering me.
“You okay?”
“Don’t you dare start worrying again.”
“I’m not worrying.”
“Good.”
As my legs weakened, Nolan caught my hips before I could lose the rhythm.
“Your legs are shaking. Let me take some of the work.”
“I need a different angle, not a timeout.”
His mouth curved despite the strain on his face. “Good clarification.”
The blanket was a total loss, and the sand underneath made every shift worse. I slid off his lap, abandoning the blanket entirely to get onto my hands and knees in the soft, warm sand.
“You know there’s a blanket right there,” he said.
“The blanket has betrayed us.”
“That’s fair.”
Nolan followed me without trying to decide what came next. That small thing mattered more than it should have. Months ago, he would have taken over because it was the only way he knew how to operate. Now he waited until I reached for him.
So I did.
He knelt directly behind me, pulling my hips flush against his thighs. He anchored me and drove his cock deep into my pussy.
I gasped, the sudden depth stealing the breath from my lungs.
The new position gave my tired legs a break, and we found each other again without the careful hesitation that had followed us through the beginning. Sand pressed beneath my palms. The breeze moved across sweat-damp skin, carrying the smell of saltwater from the shallows.
Nolan’s hand settled at my waist.
“Still good?” he rasped, his chest warm against my bare back.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Yes. Stay with me.”
“I am.”
This time there was no pause after the answer.
The sand shifted beneath our sweaty bodies as his thrusts turned fierce and urgent. The ocean breeze whipped my tangled hair around my face, stripping away whatever civilized polish we used to pretend we had.
The intensity built until everything unnecessary dropped away—the ruined blanket, our abandoned clothes, even the ridiculous certainty that we would be finding sand in places we didn’t want to discuss later. None of it mattered enough to interrupt us.
This was nothing like our old bedroom.
There had been spotless sheets there, closed curtains, and a house designed to keep the outside world away while somehow letting it dictate every part of our marriage.
Out here my hair was tangled from the wind, Nolan had sand on his knees, and neither of us would have survived five minutes in front of one of Reid’s cameras.
I preferred this.
I reached one hand behind me.
Nolan caught it at once.
His fingers threaded through mine while his other arm wrapped tightly around my waist, anchoring my body to his as he pounded into me. Something settled inside me at his touch. I wasn’t reaching back to make sure he was still there. I already knew that.
I just wanted his hand.
He tightened his grip as our pace increased, his arm drawing me nearer whenever the sand made me slip. There was no need for another conversation about caution or permission. He listened when I moved, followed when I guided him, and stayed with me when the last of my control gave way.
“Nolan, I’m almost there!” I shouted over the wind.
“With me,” he said, his voice dropping into a guttural growl. “Come with me!”
My fingers crushed his.
The climax ripped through me, sharp and agonizingly sweet. I screamed his name into the open ocean air, losing myself in the rush of pleasure.
A second later, Nolan let out a heavy, shuddering roar, his cock twitching deep inside me as he came.
He collapsed over my bare back, his chest heaving, and pressed a hot kiss against my shoulder.
My fingers stayed locked with his as we came apart together.
Nolan eased us down onto the sand until I was tucked against his side, his arm curved around my waist. The blanket lay twisted a few feet away, abandoned beyond rescue. He brushed his fingers through my hair, stopped, and plucked out a grain of sand.
“You have sand everywhere.”
“So do you.”
“I think you have more.”
“That’s because you shoved me off the blanket.”
“You moved us off the blanket.”
I lifted my head and looked at him. “Are we really assigning blame for this?”
His laugh carried across the empty sandbar. “No. I value my life.”
We stayed there until the sun beating down on my skin burned hotter than the ache in my muscles. There was no reason to rush. No baby crying from the next room, no charter captain waiting on bait, no broken motor demanding Nolan’s attention.
Eventually, practicality won.
Our clothes had ended up scattered, and getting dressed turned into another argument when Nolan discovered the leg of his shorts had collected sand.
I shook out my shirt and pulled it on while he stood near the water trying to clean himself up with all the dignity of a man who had abandoned it an hour ago.
“Very graceful,” I said.
“You’re welcome to come help.”
“I’ve already contributed enough to your problems today.”
“Debatable.”
By the time we returned to the blanket, the sandwiches looked as though somebody had sat on them.
I picked one up and stared at the flattened bread. “You crushed them.”
Nolan unwrapped his and inspected it. “I think we both contributed.”
“The cooler was on your side.”
“And yet somehow I’m still being blamed.”
“You’ll recover.”
The drinks had lost most of their chill, but we ate anyway, sitting shoulder to shoulder while the sun dropped lower over the water. The sandwich was terrible. I finished every bite.
Nolan looked down at the mess of sand clinging to his shirt and laughed under his breath. “Skipper is going to take one look at us when we get back and know exactly what happened out here.”
“It’s a secluded sandbar, Nolan. I think Skipper sent us out here expecting this to happen.”
“That makes it worse.”
“It makes him smarter than both of us.”
He held the grin for a moment, but it slipped away as he looked out over the water.
“I keep wanting to promise you that I’ll never screw this up again.”
There it was.
The old Nolan would have followed that sentence with something enormous. Forever. Always. Never again. Words polished until they sounded strong enough to hold up a marriage.
I looked down instead.
Grease still lived around the edges of his fingernails despite the saltwater and sand.
There was a nick across one knuckle from work at the marina, and another faded scrape closer to his wrist. Those hands had carried our daughter through sleepless nights, hauled bait, repaired docks, changed diapers, washed bottles, and reached for me only after I reached back.
I took one of them.
“You don’t need to promise me anything anymore, Nolan. You’ve done enough. We’re home now.”
His thumb moved across my fingers. “You were always my home.”
I met his eyes.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Nolan.”
That was enough.
We shoved the ruined wrappers into the cooler and folded the blanket as best we could, though sand poured from it every time Nolan shook it. He carried the cooler while I tucked the blanket beneath my arm, and we waded back through the shallows toward the skiff.
Nolan stowed everything before climbing aboard. I settled beside him while he pulled the anchor, started the outboard, and steered us back through the channels toward the marina.
Late sunlight stretched across the water ahead of us. Somewhere beyond the mangroves, our daughter was waiting, probably asleep against Skipper while Lawson pretended he hadn’t spent the afternoon checking on her every ten minutes.
Nolan reached across the bench without looking away from the water.
I gave him my hand.
He threaded his fingers through mine as the skiff carried us toward Osprey Bluff, back to the private, imperfect life that belonged to us.