EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
Ugh! Nothing ever goes right when it comes to Lucian and me.
I stand at the entrance to the church with my father, looking like a white whale in my Versace wedding dress. The fabric is straining against my stomach, and I feel far less pretty than I ever imagined I would on my wedding day. I already had to have the dress altered three times to match my ever-growing tummy, and I think it could have used one last go before the wedding.
“This is not how I pictured getting married,” I grumble, my hand cradling my belly.
Five months pregnant. Apparently my birth control was no match for Lucian's virility. He gave me the option of postponing the wedding, but like an idiot, I said no, too excited to be married to him to want to wait.
“You look gorgeous.” Janice messes with my hair, making sure that my ringlets are perfect.
I scowl at her. She looks absolutely stunning as usual. A total attention stealer. Hopefully, Lucian doesn't look at her more than me. You'd think that with as long as we've been together, I'd be over my jealousy issues by now, but I'm not.
“I look pregnant.” I poke at the bundle in my stomach.
“You are pregnant,” Derrick reminds me. He looks dashing in a tuxedo.
The wedding is traditional all the way, which kind of surprised me. I always thought I'd want some huge lavish wedding, but Lucian and I eventually agreed to keep things small. With me being pregnant, he was worried about the stress that it would cause for me and the baby. And besides, it's not like we have a huge guest list.
Small wedding, big honeymoon, he told me. After the wedding, we'll be taking a one-month tour of Europe. I'm so excited, but almost more excited to get out of this strangling dress.
“Are you nervous?” my father asks me as the wedding music starts to play and the doors open so that the rest of the wedding party can go out before us. His eyes are glimmering with tears, which makes me want to start crying.
“No.” I shake my head. “I'm not nervous because I made the right choice.”
I catch a glimpse of Lucian standing at the alter and my heart flutters. He looks too good to be true, devastatingly handsome in his tuxedo. His posture is perfect, his face freshly shaven, his hair meticulously slicked over. The thought that I'm going to get to unwrap him later already has me horny, which is shamefully embarrassing considering that I'm standing next to my father and am about to walk into a room full of people.
I suppose it's a good thing though. It's been over a year and we're still very much in love. Things could not be going better.
When I found out I was pregnant, I thought Lucian would freak out, but he took it in stride. Heck, he'd even welcomed the news more than I had. We had planned to start working on getting pregnant six months after the wedding, but apparently my damn body couldn't wait. Oh well, just talking about having a family with him gave me baby fever.
The legalities involving Lucian shooting the robber took almost a full year to come to a close. It also took that long for me to come to peace with the thought that he had made the right choice. The robber had a criminal record a mile long that included drug dealing and rape. He had recently gotten out of prison and didn't have a family. That last part made me feel loads better about it. Everyone came to Lucian's defense, and, of course, large amounts of money helped to make the issue go away with little publicity.
Janice and I mended our relationship. That too took a while. For the longest time, she held resentment against Lucian. I'd even go as far as to say she hated him for seducing her, but she eventually got over it. Now we can all hang out together with limited awkwardness though Janice and I have admittedly been drifting apart since we don't live together anymore. It's sad, but I suppose that's what happens when your life progresses in two different directions.
While Lucian stopped working at Flesh, he still remains fairly active in the BDSM community. We go to munches together and take classes on BDSM, and I've gotten to know some of his lifestyle friends, which I was kind of surprised to find are just normal everyday people.
Life is good. I do what I can to keep him happy, and we've opened a pretty stable line of communication where we both feel comfortable expressing what we need. I honestly think that's probably the main reason our relationship has worked. We don't avoid each other anymore when we tick each other off, which does still happen on occasion. But boy the makeup sex is explosive.
Even though I had desperately hoped we'd someday get to this point, I never thought it would really happen. It's not the perfect rainbows and butterflies relationship I had seen in my future before I met Lucian. It's something so much better, complex and three-dimensional and never boring. Full of romance and hot sex and dark nights tied up in the dungeon begging for him to let me come. And even though I still hate to admit it, it's all thanks to Flesh.
THE END.