Epilogue #2
Lucian finger-fucks me in deep, intentional strokes that drag against that place until my stomach clenches. Caleb matches him from behind, not thrusting so much as opening me, teaching my body to accept the stretch, to want it, to rock back for more even as tears start in my eyes.
Lucian releases my nipple only long enough to look at the wet, reddened peak. Then he takes the other one, sucking until I sob.
“Please.”
“Not yet.”
“Lucian, I…”
“Do as you’re told, wife. We want you wrecked when you’re allowed to come.”
Caleb’s free hand spans my hip, holding me still when I try to chase the climax they keep just out of reach.
He knows me and my responses so perfectly well.
Every time the coil tightens, Lucian eases the pressure on that spot and Caleb stills inside me, and I hang there, shaking, dripping down their wrists, furious and desperate and so loved I can hardly bear it.
“She’s close,” Caleb says.
Lucian presses against my G-spot again, firmer this time, and my whole body jerks. “Not yet.”
I am sobbing now. Not from pain. From too much. From being back with them. From them taking me in both places at once while Lucian sucks on my nipple like he has all night and no intention of being merciful.
“I can’t hold it.”
“You will.” Caleb stretches me a fraction more, slick and relentless. “Breathe through it. Give us another minute of this. Let us have you like this.”
Another minute is impossible.
They demand it anyway.
Lucian’s mouth tugs my nipple in time with the curl of his fingers. Caleb works me open until I am nothing but shaking and wet sounds and the humiliating, holy knowledge that I would let them keep me here forever if they asked.
Sweat slides between my breasts. My voice breaks on their names.
“Now,” Lucian says at last, and the word is almost tender. “Now you come. Don’t you dare hold a single piece of it back.”
I don’t.
The orgasm rips through me so hard I scream. It is not a pretty sound. It is raw and startled and endless, my body clamping down on Lucian’s fingers and on Caleb’s at the same time, the two rhythms colliding until I cannot tell which climax belongs to which man.
I sob their names. I sob please after I have already been given everything.
My forehead drops to Lucian’s. Tears run hot down my cheeks as he kisses me through it, still working that spot, still sucking my nipple in softening pulls while Caleb holds the stretch and murmurs wrecked praise against my spine.
“That’s it. That’s ours. Let it happen.”
Another wave drags me under, holding me there until I am limp and crying and laughing in the same breath, until the fullness becomes too much and they ease out of me with a care that makes me cry harder.
Caleb gathers me from behind. Lucian keeps my face in his hands.
“I’ve got you,” Lucian says.
“We’ve got you,” Caleb amends and kisses my shoulder.
I can’t respond.
I can only hold on against Lucian’s chest and shake, possessed in every place they asked for, and certain, finally, that the future is ours to create, this time with all the right things.
When I can speak, it is only one word.
“More.”
Lucian’s smile is slow, wrecked, and utterly certain.
“Yes,” he says. “That is the idea.”
They do not rush the aftermath.
Caleb eases out of me carefully, and Lucian gathers me closer and lets me hide my face in his throat while I come down from the physical and emotional crash.
One of them strokes my hair. One of them says my name like a prayer that finally has an answer.
Then I reach for Lucian’s belt.
“Sophie—”
“I said I wanted the future.” My voice is hoarse. “That includes you inside me while I can still feel him.”
He searches my eyes for doubt and finds none.
They undress without ceremony and without silence.
I push Lucian’s jacket off his shoulders.
I open his shirt and put my mouth to the pulse at his throat.
Caleb sheds the rest of his clothes and comes back to us naked, scarred, cock rigid, looking at me as if I am the first safe place he has ever been offered.
Lucian lifts me and carries me to our bed this time, and when he lays me down, he follows, sliding into me with a groan that sounds like relief. I am swollen, sensitive, still fluttering from the climax they gave me, and the fit of him makes my head fall back.
“I love you,” he says, and it is not strategy. It is the man beneath the polished, devastating exterior. “I will spend the rest of my life proving that kneeling was the easiest thing I have ever done for you.”
Caleb stretches out beside us and takes my hand, twining our fingers so the bands click softly together. When Lucian stills, buried deep, Caleb kisses me and then looks at his partner.
“Your turn to hold her,” he says. “I need to feel my wife.”
They move me between them as if they have been practicing this in their minds for years and only now have permission to be gentle about it.
Lucian withdraws, and Caleb takes his place, thicker, slower, that relentless attention trained on my face. Lucian’s fingers return where Caleb’s were, slick again, just resting there this time, a promise rather than a demand.
With them both filling me, I scream out another climax, their names broken in my mouth.
Caleb follows with a sound that is utterly broken.
Lucian takes me after, deeper, shaking, and when he comes, he holds me through it as if the world beyond the bed has ceased to be relevant.
For a long time, there is only breathing.
Caleb disappears and comes back with a warm cloth. They clean me with the same care they used to put the rings on—no joke, no command, just the quiet work of men who intend to keep what they asked for.
Lucian draws the sheet up. I end up where I have always ended up when the fighting stops: Caleb at my back, Lucian at my front, the city pouring gold across the ceiling.
Lucian lifts my left hand and kisses the stack of metal there.
I close my eyes. The ache between my legs is sweet. The newer ache is sweeter. Tomorrow there will be offices and arguments and the ordinary labor of remaining three people who chose one life.
Tonight I have the only ending that was ever going to satisfy me.
“I’m yours,” I tell them, and this time the word does not sound like a sentence.
It sounds like a beginning.