“So how do you feel?” I ask.
“Free,” she says, tugging on my shirt to bring me down to her. “Now take me inside.”
“My pleasure.” I grin, scooping her up into my arms. She giggles as I carry her through the back door, but by the time we reach the stairs, she’s not laughing anymore. Her mouth is on my neck, nibbling gently against my skin, her hips already grinding against the hardness forming between my legs.
I take the stairs two at a time.
Barging into the bedroom, I set her down and stare at her beauty. She looks back at me with those beautiful eyes that couldn’t even hold my gaze when we first met. Now they’re locked on mine, unblinking.
She’s mine.
“This is how it all started,” she says. “A Friday night. Me in bed.”
“Only this time you’re not alone.”
I pull my shirt off and toss it aside. She sits up, reaching for my belt. Like two hungry animals, we undress each other. It feels wonderful. Two people choosing each other with full knowledge of who the other is.
Pressing her back down, I kiss her neck and her collarbone, then find each of her breasts and suck her nipples between my lips, causing her to gasp. As I trail my kisses down her belly, she threads her fingers through my hair and whispers, “Yes, Daddy.”
The word wrecks me, causing my cock to pulse and throb as I groan against her soft skin.
I spread her thighs and taste her slowly, savoring her in a way I couldn’t that first night. Her back arches off the bed, and her moans fill the room, not muffled by a hand or silenced by shame. Loud and unapologetic.
“That’s it, baby girl,” I murmur into her. “Let me hear it.”
It happens fast. She comes on my tongue, her thighs clamping down around my head, her fists grabbing the sheets the same way she told me she would when she was alone in bed, wishing someone was there to fully fulfill her.
I did that.
She asked me to. And now she doesn’t have to wish anymore.
I move up her body and slide inside, both of us groaning as we link. I watch her face twist in ecstasy as I start pumping. She wraps her legs around me, which she knows I love, and pulls me deeper. Her eyes never leave mine.
“God, I love you,” she says again, like she can’t stop saying it. Like she’s making up for twenty-one years of never saying it to anyone.
“I love you too, baby,” I tell her, rolling my hips, hitting that special spot inside that I know she loves. “Every stubborn, beautiful inch of you.”
We move together slowly, passionately, building to something that has been growing ever since the moment she ran from me at that party. And when she comes again, crying out my name—not “daddy”—I follow her over the edge, spilling into her while the world narrows into just us.
Just this bed. Just her eyes, locked on mine, filled with trust and love and absolute certainty that she’s exactly where she is supposed to be.
After we come down, I roll to the side, and she curls into my chest. I stroke her hair as her breath slows and look up at the ceiling, the same way she described looking up at the ceiling of her apartment, wondering if she’d be alone forever.
You’ll never be alone. Not ever.
“Dawson?” she murmurs, half asleep already.
“Yeah, baby?”
“This is my home.”
I kiss the top of her head and pull her closer, breathing her in, feeling more anchored to my life than I’ve ever felt. “Yes it is.”
Outside, buried in the backyard, Charles rests in peace, his services no longer required.
Evie found something real. She found me.
And I found her.
