Like me, he hasn’t been breathing, and now, we’re sucking in each other’s air for the first time in forever.
I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his trim waist as I kiss him with everything in me.
He’s here.
He came back for me.
“Does this answer your question?” he murmurs near my mouth.
“Not really.” I brush my lips against his. “I need a bit more to make sure.”
He chuckles, the sound easy and heartfelt as he claims my mouth again. This kiss is slower, more passionate. He’s tasting me as much as I’m tasting him.
There isn’t that constant aftertaste of alcohol. Now, he’s only like mint and ocean and…Xan.
My Xan.
He’s breathing me in as much as I’m breathing him.
He’s feeling me as much as I’m feeling him.
He came back.
Oh, God. He came back.
“Wait.” I shake my head, needing to get out of my haze. “You still have a few more days, no?”
His dimples make an appearance as he grins. “I came out early for exemplary behaviour.”
“Really?”
“Really. I had to come back for you, Green.”
“I missed you so much.” My voice breaks with my confession.
He groans, “You’re killing me, Green.”
“You have no idea how much I missed you.”
“And you have no idea how much I love you.”
I pause, blinking. “Say that again. I didn’t catch it the first time.”
“I love you, Green. I’m in love with you. It probably began that day you hugged me and told me you’d never let me go. It’s only heightened since then, and I might have hated you for it over the years, but I never once stopped loving you.”
If there were a moment I could freeze in time, this would be it. I want to grab it, snap a shot of it, box it, and look at it in the future, preferably every day.
My heart nearly bursts as I let my fingers roam to his nape and I whisper, “I probably started loving you before. It became a torture over the years, but it was so worth it.”
He leans over and bites my lower lip into his mouth. “So worth it, huh?”
“Absolutely.”
“As in you wouldn’t change anything about it?”
I pause before I say with conviction, “No. It’s because of that I became who I am.”
“And you became mine.”
I can’t contain my grin as he narrows his eyes.
“You have to say it.”
“Say what?” I play nonchalance.
“Mine?”
“Yours.”
Epilogue 1 – Kimberly
Three years later
Iwake up submerged in pleasure.
Literally.
My legs are wide open as Xander feasts on my pussy. His wicked tongue runs up, then thrusts inside me.
I back off the bed and grab his blond strands with a force that must hurt. That doesn’t stop him, though.
He eats me like a hungry predator and I’m his poor, willing prey.
His thumb finds my clit and he does that masterful thing, flicking and circling. It’s insane how much better he knows my body than I do. How he drives me crazy with the simplest touches.
The moment he teases it between his fingers, I’m a goner.
Complete and utter goner.
I scream his name as I come undone around his tongue. My breathing is harsh and fast as he licks my sensitive folds one more time.
When his face reappears from between my legs, he’s grinning so wide that his dimples form deep creases in his cheeks.
He darts his tongue out and licks me off his lips, and I can’t help the whimper that escapes me.
Oh, God.
That will never get old.
Since we started living together in college three years ago, Xander always wakes me up this way or with his dick deep inside me. Bottom line, he always wakes me up with an orgasm and those mischievous dimples.
I try to wake him with my lips around his cock, but that doesn’t happen too often. One, he’s always up first, and two, he usually doesn’t like it when I take away his ‘morning fun’ as he calls it.
“Morning, beautiful.” He climbs my body with slow, sloppy kisses up my belly.
I stopped my life-draining diet two years ago. It took too much to make that decision, so as soon as I began to keep my food in, I decided to adopt a healthy lifestyle but without starving myself.
Xander became my personal trainer for runs, and I might have wanted to kill him at the beginning for all the long jogs we did, but then I started to look forward to them. And, okay, the way he looked in his running clothes might have helped a bit. Fine, a lot.
He’s just delicious, and all the girls who jog in our park agree.
When I glared at them, he teased me and told me while fucking me that I’m the only woman he sees and ever will.
True, I still have those self-confidence issues sometimes, but now, I have my mechanisms and I’ve learnt how to easily move away from them by digging into my self-empowerment.
Now, I can look at myself in the mirror and finally smile. I can be myself and not want to be someone else.
And the person who played the most important role in all of that is this man who’s now kissing his way up my body – my non-perfect, full of stretch marks and scars body – and still has that wild, lustful look in his eyes.
He flicks my nipple with the pad of his thumb and I moan deep in my throat and run my fingertips over the place where his heart lies. He had a tattoo inked on his skin as soon as he returned from rehab and stayed away from Absolut Vodka. We do drink, but he never loses himself to it now.
Green.
That’s what’s on the tattoo. Just one word next to his heart.
He got me inked on him for life, and I still feel close to tears whenever I see it.
Xander is mine as much as I’m his.
His chest sticks to mine as he grins at me with that sloppy, sleepy, lustful smile.
“Morning, Xan.” I ruffle his blond hair. I can’t keep my hands off it and I might be too in love with the colour. It’s shining under the morning light coming from the balcony of our bedroom.
He leans on his elbows so they’re on either side of me. “Happy graduation.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me of all the things I have to do today. Kir was demanding to come here.”
Dad, Lewis, and Kirian will join us for lunch after the graduation ceremony, and then I’ve already made plans with Elsa, Aiden, and the others.
That is, if Aiden doesn’t decide to kidnap Elsa somewhere.
We always have family lunches and dinners now. Lewis and Dad are our fathers, and although I don’t call Lewis ‘Dad’ and Xan doesn’t do the same to my dad, we have that unspoken mutual understanding, sort of like the one Dad and Lewis had for years.
It’s easier this way and doesn’t give us grief from any prying eyes.
Mum moved to Paris two years ago. She sends us invitations to her exhibitions, but we don’t go. There isn’t even pain as we talk about her now. She’s like that distant relative no one actually cares about.
Even Kirian, who’s supposed to be attached to his mother, doesn’t want to spend time with her and is now striving to be a ‘proper’ man like Dad and his Uncle Lewis – his words, not mine.
“I’ll bribe Kirian with brownies so he doesn’t spend the night,” Xander says.
“Why can’t he?”
“Because we’re celebrating.”
“We’ll be doing a lot of celebrations for one night.”
“We’ll have to add one more then. The most important one.” He reaches under the pillow and retrieves a ring with a blinding green jewel on top.
My eyes widen as I stare between him and the ring. This can’t be what I think it is…?
“I’ve wanted to do this since RES, but Dad and Calvin said all that adult shit about college graduation and whatnot. Besides, I didn’t want to distract you more than I should. Needless to say, I’ve waited so fucking long to make you officially mine, to call you my wife, my life, and my future.”
I’m crying like a little girl by the time he finishes. “Yes! Absolutely yes!”
“I wasn’t asking. That means you have the chance to say no and I’m not having that, Green.” He slips the ring on my finger. Perfect fit – of course it is.
Sometimes, I think Xander knows me even better than I know myself.
He stops and looks at me more than I’ll ever stop to look at myself.
And for that reason, he’s not only perfect for me, but he was made for me.
Just like I was made for him.
“I love you so much, Xan.”
“And I love you, Green.” He claims my mouth in a slow kiss that robs my breath.
I’m melting and I have no interest in stopping it. London mewls, then jumps on the bed, demanding to join the celebration. She hates being left out.
Xander pulls away, “Now, for the wedding date.”
“What about it?”
“How about tomorrow?”
We both laugh as our lips meet again.