She meets me in the middle and it’s impossible to tell who initiates the kiss, only that it’s perfect, the most soul-binding kiss we’ve ever shared. I feel my heart leaping around in my chest, my seed rejoicing, a thousand hopes for our future coalescing into this one moment.
“It’s real,” she says, clasping my face in her hands, staring up at me with her verdant greens. “We’re doing this, aren’t we?”
“Forever,” I say passionately, pulling her toward me, mashing my sweat-dappled body against hers. “I love you, Juliana. I can’t wait to start a family with you.”
“I love you too,” she says, squeezing tighter against me, as Rebel leaps around us, sharing in the joy.
Extended Epilogue
One Year Later
Juliana
“So, I’d say that was a success, wouldn’t you?” I say, finally letting myself lean against the wall to give my calves a break from the heels.
I knew my body was going to kick up a fuss so soon after giving birth to little Anna – named after my mother – but nobody told me how long pregnancy calves truly last.
Not that Jett cares.
Even today, when I was getting ready for the winter ball, his hands were roaming all over my body, his breath whispering hotly in my ear.
“Even now?” I’d laughed, wriggling away from him with great effort. “Look at me. I still look pregnant.”
“Especially now,” my husband had snarled, his hands smoothing down my hips to grab big handfuls of my flesh. “You look so beautiful when you’re like this, all full and round and curvy from pregnancy. You look so fertile and fresh and alive. It makes me want to put another baby in you.”
“Soon,” I whimpered, as he stalked me across the bedroom.
It was hard to focus on putting in my earrings with him standing there in just his gym shorts, his body seeming to get stronger and more capable with each passing month.
I don’t think he’s ever going to let age slow him down. He’s ten times the man any silly boys my age pretend to be.
Patricia tugs me back to the present when she clicks across the function hall in her heels, looking sleek and stylish and every inch the Patricia who was my boss on the east coast.
“You killed it,” she says, adjusting her purple hipster glasses. “You absolutely killed it, Julia.”
I feel my cheeks glowing red.
This was my first solo venture, planned, organized, and executed by me alone, with Patricia serving as my assistant for the night.
“Thank you,” I say. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
She walks over and we hug each other briefly, closer now than we ever were before I learned the truth about who she was, about how we’d found each other.
She still says sorry sometimes – mostly after a few glasses of champagne – but I always tell her the same thing.
She saved me, and I’ll never stop being thankful.
It led me here, to this wonderful bright life, with a husband who loves me and a daughter with the cutest smile in the world. I don’t care what anybody says. My Anna takes the gold medal on that one.
“Anything planned for the rest of the evening?” Patricia asks.
I think of the promise I made to Jett before I left when his predator’s hands were gripping my shoulders and he had me pushed savagely up against the wall, shimmering pleasure coursing through me.
“You’re mine when you come home tonight,” he growled. “I’m going to taste you, every single part of you. You’re going to be my little personal fuck toy again. And if you think Anna’s the only one tasting that sweet milk of yours, you’ve got another thing coming. Understand?”
“Yes,” I’d moaned, every instinct in me willing me to crush my body against his, to feel his massive manhood throbbing through his gym shorts.
“Oh,” I say now, with the most casual shrug I can manage. “I think Jett and I will probably just have a quiet night in.”
Extended Epilogue
Ten Years Later
Jett
Little Jeff – named after Juliana’s father – leaps from behind the broad tree trunk with a stick as a gun, aiming it at me.
His oak colored hair bobs around his face as he grins and fires the stick, making lip-smacking bang-bang noises. His blue eyes seem impossibly bright in the sunlight that filters through the trees.
“I got you, Daddy,” he laughs.
“Ah,” I roar, throwing my hands in the air so that my own stick goes flying.
I fall to the ground and make his favorite dying noises.
I go ribbit like a frog.
He laughs like he does every time, running over to me, falling to his knees, and thumping my chest with his tiny hands.
It’s difficult to believe that my four year old is going to grow up one day, going to become a teenager, and then a man. Part of me wishes I could freeze him like this, my perfect toddling boy.