I’m wet enough that he can slip inside without trouble, and I swear my eyes roll back in my head. Fuck, this feels like coming home in a way that I never knew it could, and I can’t keep up the game. “Yes,” I say, voice strained. “I’ll move in with you.”
Edward takes my mouth hard. “I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Now tell me your name.”
“Julia.”
He grins. “Guess I have some work to do to make you forget, don’t I?”
I don’t get the chance to respond. Edward works me with long, smooth strokes, hitting me so deep and so fast that everything is lit on fire. Pleasure builds and breaks over me, and I shout it out, unable to hold it in and not wanting to hold it back. I’ve never been able to come with anyone—or even by myself—the way I do with him. It’s impossible and amazing and I feel like I’m shining like a star.
I look up at him, and he’s looking at me with that fire in his eyes that makes me absolutely quake, and I can’t take it. Just that look makes me come again. It’s possession and love and lust all wrapped up into one. “I love you,” I tell him. There isn’t any other way to express the feeling building in my chest. “I love you.”
“You will never know how much I love you, Julia. But I’m going to try to show you, starting with making you forget your own name.”
“It’s not going to happen,” I say. “I’m very familiar with my own name.”
Edward just grins, and tips my hips so that I can take him deeper. “We’ll see about that.”
Epilogue
Edward
Eight Months Later
“Honey, I’m home!” I call out the words as I come through the door, knowing that they’ll make Julia laugh. We’ve never really been ones for pet names except for in jokes, so I use them whenever possible just to see the amused smile on her face.
But this time I don’t get a response. “Julia?”
“Up here.” That’s not a happy tone.
I have flowers that I brought home for her. Violets. They’re her favorite. I put them in a little vase before walking up to the bedroom that used to be just mine but that we now share. All the blinds are drawn and Julia is laying on her side of the bed, curled away from the door. But she’s fully clothed, so she’s not sleeping. “Are you okay?” I ask her, coming around to her side of the bed.
I can tell immediately that she’s been crying. But I’m distracted by her, and her swollen belly. Even in the midst of whatever is making her sad, she protectively cradles her stomach, drawing little circles on it like she’s done nearly every day for the last five months since we got the news. She regularly tells me that she thinks that she looks weird, but I think she looks more beautiful than ever.
There’s nothing I can do to describe how incredible it is that she’s carrying our child. And that she has a glow that she can’t see. Even Jane is excited by the baby, and the help we’re going to get when the baby is born is well worth some of the frustrations that come with living next to your soon-to-be mother-in-law. “What’s wrong?”
“It doesn’t fit?”
I lean over and kiss her on the cheek before sitting beside her. “What doesn’t fit?” It takes me a second, but I see that her gaze is focused on the ring sitting on her nightstand. The engagement ring I gave her three months ago. It sparkles in the dim light. When I proposed, Julia said yes so fast that I almost got whiplash, and she swore that she’d never take the ring off. “Oh, Julia, that’s okay.”
“I know,” she says, voice thick with tears. “I feel stupid for being so upset about it. But it just…it’s making me so sad and I can’t help it.”
I turn her face to mine. “We’re not any less engaged because you don’t have the ring on right now.”
“Yeah. It’s just hormones, but it sucks.”
Kissing her softly, I distract her enough that I feel her body start to loosen. “It might be hormones, but that doesn’t make it less real. What upsets you upsets you.”
A tear runs down her cheek, and I catch it. “I brought you these,” I say, putting the vase on the nightstand with the ring.
“They’re really pretty.”
“Just like you.” She snorts and rolls her eyes. But that’s not something that I’ll let stand. “Julia, do I have to show you again?”
Her face changes suddenly. It’s not sad, it’s hungry. For me. “Maybe.”
I can’t make her believe that she’s beautiful, but I’m hoping that with enough time and dedication, she’ll see what I see. That she’s the most incredible woman I’ve ever known, and I can’t wait to spend my life with her. And she’s fucking hot.