Epilogue

6 months later

Jessibelle

I pulled out the paper and looked at the headline. I still couldn’t quite believe we’d pulled that off. The front page showed a picture of Johnathan Rose being led away from the courts, his mouth set in a hard line as he tried to avoid the flashes of the cameras around him.

“Hey, baby.” I leaned across the bed to get the attention of the beautiful man who was half-asleep before I woke him. He turned over and peered at the front page, frowning, and managed a flicker of a smile after he saw the story.

“It’s finally over,” he remarked, with a long sigh. “I can’t believe it.”

“Me, neither.” I grinned, but the smile dropped from my face when I saw the pained furrow that deepened in his brow.

“Hey, it’s okay.” I reached for him and squeezed his arm. “It’s going to be all right. You did the right thing. You know that, don’t you?”

“I guess,” he sighed. “It’s just. . .shit. . . it’s hard. That’s my brother.”

He tapped the face on the page in front of us and pulled himself up in bed. The light was streaming into my apartment and the place was beautifully lit, a crisp winter morning I knew would punish me with ice-cold air as soon as I rolled out of bed. But I didn’t want to get out of bed yet, not until I was sure the man I loved could face the day beside me.

It had been a rough few months. There was no way his brother betraying him followed by a grueling court case where he was forced to stand against people who should’ve been on his side all along wouldn’t mess with him. They’d argued and fought and did everything they could to ruin his reputation. They insisted we doctored the photos, obtained the emails illegally. We fought his case, as bravely as we could, and when he came home with me at the end of every night, I could see the emotional toll it had taken on him. In the end, justice prevailed. And the cherry on the shit sundae of this case? Aston, who lied to me about quitting his job, was hauled up on every ethics and conflict of interest charge in the books as well as being a party to the conspiracy. Turned out he stood to gain a hefty piece of Johnathan’s new business if they had won.

I was there when they’d arrested his brother. He’d gone to pieces. Both of them had. I’d never met Johnathan before, but as soon as he laid eyes on me, he seemed to understand I was nothing but bad news for him. When he saw the cops and realized what was happening, he turned on Zach just like that.

“This is so fucking typical of you,” he spat at his older brother as they led him away. “You could never let me have anything, could you?”

“This isn’t about having something or not,” Zachary called out as his brother was pulled in the direction of the door. “This is about you trying to fuck over my company, do you understand that?” Zachary went on, and I could tell there was a part of him still appealing to the man he still saw as his little brother. “I didn’t want to have to do this, Johnny. You have to understand that.”

“It was never about doing the right thing with you,” he spat in his brother’s direction once more. “You were always the good son, weren’t you? The better son. I’ve always known people like you, and they always turn against people like me.”

“You had every opportunity I had,” Zach protested. “Dad gave you that.”

“Dad gave you the business,” he argued. “He gave you everything you wanted, and I was left behind trying to catch up. You never had to start from where I did, do you realize that? And if they’d given me the company, you wouldn’t have gotten fucking depressed and let it all go to shit.”

“And you were in the middle of it trying to put your own stamp on everything while I was sick!” Zach said. “You brought all of this on yourself. I would’ve worked with you if you wanted more. You know that. I would’ve done anything.”

“Except take a step back and let me take some control for once.” Johnathan twisted his head away from Zach as though he couldn’t even bear to looked at him any longer. “Take me away. I don’t want to be around this two-faced asshole any longer.”

And that was the last time we saw Johnathan. I figured it might have been better to start my relationships with Zach’s family on a slightly more positive note, but as long as I had Zach, I didn’t give a damn. We won the case. Our evidence was airtight, and we wound up getting Johnny put away for a few years while the rest of them had suspended sentences for their part in the collusion. I could put to bed any nervousness about Alana and Zach, because the disgust with which he looked at her as she was sentenced was clear to anyone even glancing in their direction. I guess once your ex hooked up with a family member, any attraction that might have lingered there was firmly nipped in the bud for good. Not that I was complaining.

And, as Johnathan was led away to serve his time, I held Zach’s hand tight beneath the defendant’s table. I knew how hard this was for him, especially after he’d lost his father. Seeing his brother dragged off to prison for betraying him and the family business couldn’t have been easy. But Zach was strong, maybe too strong, and refused to talk about it for the first few days. He came and slept at my tiny apartment every night, even though he had his mansion all the way out of town. He didn’t want to be there alone.

I was cradling him in my arms, his head on my stomach, and I felt this surge of protective love for him. He was suffering so much with everything he’d been through. Yes, he might have looked like some fairytale perfect man from the outside, with his looks, his obscene amount of money and his mansion, but he was a real man with feelings and emotions.

As I felt him close to me I knew on the inside, he was as vulnerable as anyone else. He’d had his entire life flipped upside down over the course of a year. It would have been enough to knock anyone sideways, even the strongest amongst us. And that was a side of him that melted my heart. He was soft and strong, smart and compassionate. He’d understand my struggles because of what he’d been through. And all I wanted in the world was to help him get back on his feet.

I pushed the newspaper off the bed, fixing him with a stare and a playful grin that told him exactly what was going through my mind. He cocked an eyebrow and slid a hand over the small of my back. If there was one thing that seemed to get his mind off everything that was going on, it was the chance to indulge our physical chemistry without worrying about what our true feelings for each other were. For so long, every time we’d touched, I’d found myself drawn into this internal monologue about whether we could ever really be together, and what it would look like if we did.

Now, I knew we could, and it just looked a little different from the storybook life I might’ve once planned for myself with someone like Zach. He leaned up to kiss me, wrapping his arms around my waist, and then flipped me over so I was below him on the bed. I let out a squeal and a giggle, both swiftly silenced by his mouth covering mine. I moaned softly as his hand pushed up the hem of the shirt I slept in, his fingers grazing over my nipples just a touch, bringing them both to hardness under his skin. God, he knew exactly how to touch me.

His hand traveled downward, his lips not breaking from mine. He coaxed my lips apart gently, and our tongues met as his fingers slipped between my legs and found my pussy. He pulled back slightly, the light casting the look on his face in soft focus, and then he kissed me again as he stroked my pussy. I wriggled against the sheets beneath me, the moans and sighs of pleasure absorbed by the sweet kiss.

I could feel him growing hard against my leg and thanked my lucky stars again that we’d gotten around to getting me on birth control so we wouldn’t need a condom. There was something about the skin-on-skin that was so unbeatably sexy, so impossibly hot. I grew slick around his fingers just thinking about him. He pushed one inside me, moving down to brush his lips over my neck, and I wrapped my hands around his back to rake my nails up his bare skin. I loved the way his spine flexed and moved beneath my fingers, the way his muscles seemed to strain under his skin. I loved these morning sessions, the ones that seemed to bleed over as though we were both still half-trapped in a dream.

He pulled his finger from me and pushed my leg back, positioning his cock right against my slit. I opened my eyes and stroked a finger down his jaw, which was still slightly rough from the stubble he’d grown out for a couple of days. He smiled at me, eyes soft, and dipped down to kiss me while he pushed inside of me in one smooth motion.

“Fuck,” I gasped loudly, glad I could be as loud as I wanted for a change. No panicking about someone walking in on us.

He thrust slowly, reveling in the greater friction of the first push, prolonging that pleasure. My hands traveled down to cup his butt, pulling him into me, making it so I could feel every inch of his cock inside me. I loved this feeling perhaps more than any other in the world, the feeling of that initial thrust as he opened me up again. The last time we’d had sex had only been a matter of hours ago, but that didn’t mean that my body didn’t crave him just as hungrily as it had the last time.

He kissed my neck again, his lips finding that sensitive spot where my ear met my throat, and I arched my back off the bed, pressing my entire body against his, loving the feeling of him, needing more. My hands tensed on his back, and I hooked my ankles behind him. He took this as the invitation it was, fucking me harder, moving with more intent. These early-morning encounters never lasted long, our languorously long fuck-sessions generally taking place later in the evening. But this was getting us where we both needed to go, indulging the desire that rose in me when I woke up next to him. Showing him I was still here and loved him and wouldn’t leave him. Telling him with my body what I sometimes struggled to tell him with words.

“Fuck, Jessi,” he panted in my ear, and I recognized the urgency in his voice. He was close. He wasn’t the only one.

“Ahh,” I moaned as the orgasm burst over me. It wasn’t as intense as the one I’d had the night before, but rather, it fulfilled some need deep inside me, taking care of the urge to be near him and to feel his body next to mine.

My skin prickled, and my legs twitched behind him, my toes curling against the soft sheets that had bundled up toward the bottom of the bed. A thrust or two after I came, Zach came inside me, burying his cock deep within me as he finished with a heavy growl of pleasure that echoed through the apartment.

He kissed me hard and eased out of me and flopped down on the bed, his hand falling to his stomach as a grin broke out over his face.

“You’re such a beast.” I said playfully. “All that growling you do.”

Without skipping a beat, he flipped back, “And you’re my beauty.” He reached over to pull me on to his chest. I ran my fingers over his torso, tracing the shape of his abs in the morning light. I glanced up at him to find him staring down at me, a small smile on his face.

“What’s up?” I asked. I was one of those people who liked to know what was going on in everyone else’s head at all times, and Zach had proved a particularly hard nut to crack when it came to stuff like that. He reached down and brushed a strand of hair away from my face.

“I just think,” he said, “that there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you.”

“I love you,” I murmured before I could stop myself. The words felt so right.

“I love you, too,” he replied, and he pulled me into another kiss. Before I knew it, I was lost in him again, and part of me hoped I’d never find my way back. Because he was right.

“Jessi?”

“Yeah?”

“I uhm. . .I know this isn’t fierce, or romantic, or even beastly. . .” He turned to me and looked me in the eyes, his finger tracing my cheek. “Will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?”

My heart caught in my throat. I never imagined us going this far. “Marry you?” I asked, choking on my own spit.

“Will you?”

I jumped up on top of Zach and bounced on the bed. My heart was full of emotion and my answer couldn’t come out fast enough. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Zach let out a beastly growl and pulled me to him, holding me so tight, I gasped. Yes, this was exactly where I needed to be. In his arms, in his heart, in his life.

The two of us together, forever, and I never, ever wanted it to end.

~ T H E ~ E N D ~

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