“Stop,” Mom says, wiping my eyes. “You’re making me cry.”
Jenna, Matt’s new wife, laughs. “If that makes you cry, wait until you learn what your boys have been talking about all night.”
“What?” she asks, looking around the room at my beautiful family.
“We’re all placing bets,” I say with a smile, lacing my fingers with Hatties. Dying to get the hell out of my parent’s house and get my wife home. Alone. I want to win this fucking bet.
“Bets?” Mom’s eyes widen, as if panicked.
“You’re going to give your mom a panic attack,” Gabriella, Spencer’s wife, says. “Don’t worry, Joy, it’s a good bet.”
And Gabriella is right — the bet is good. It’s a bet on who will be giving our parents the first grandkids.
My parents have us all take a family photo — I was right about her wanting to get one, and I am glad that er crazy scheme worked out. my borders all do seem genuinely happy. Though, I might be biased in my thinking to believe I am happiest of all.
Hattie pulls me down the hall. “So, can we leave soon?” she asks, licking her bottom lip.
“You’re the one wanting to go? I figured you’d love being at family gatherings.”
We’ve been married almost one month exactly and I couldn’t be happier. Hattie is everything I never knew I needed. Funny, charming, sexy. She brings out the best in me, and I want to be her protector, her safe place to land. Her man.
“I do love being here, but all that talk of that bet got me in the mood for something else…” There is a sparkle in my wife’s eye I can’t resist. “I was wondering where your childhood bedroom was,” she asks.
I chuckle, leading the way. We climb the stairs to my attic bedroom and once we get through the door I lock it tight.
“Wow, quite the security system you had rigged up here,” she says with a laugh.
“I had a bunch of brothers , and I wanted my own private lair,” I say, reaching for her zipper on the back of her holiday dress.
“So you could entertain all those girls at the Snow Valley High School?”
“It was a decade of idiotic moves, I know that now,” I tell her. “Forgive me?”
“It led you to me, so yes, I do.” She smiles, letting her dress fall. “And I am thankful for the lair, and the security — because it means we can sneak off during family gatherings. And try to win bets.”
I grin, drawing my bride close. “I’m thankful for you. For your smile, your laugh, and also …” I lower myself to my knees, kissing her breasts, then her belly as I move to the floor. “And your pussy. Fuck, Hattie, you are perfection.” I plant kisses on her sweetness until she is a giggling mess, needing the bed for balance. As she lies on her back,I spread her knees, running my tongue up and down her slit, licking my love the way she deserves.
“Go, I love you,” I tell her. “So fucking much.
“I love you more.” She draws me to the bed, unzipping my jeans, taking hold of my shaft, stroking me. “I love you so much, Hartley.”
“There is no doubt about it, we are a family,” I tell her.
Tears fill her eyes as I move against her, filling her up with my stiff cock, needing her tight warmth to wrap around me, craving her juicy sweetness against my rod. “We are a family, you and I,” she whispers.
“And I feel complete with you,” I tell her.
Epilogue 2
Hattie
5 years later…
My four-year-old daughter Amelia sits in my lap, thumbing through the pages carefully. It’s her baby book, and with it being her birthday, she wants to look back at when she was so tiny in her parents’ arms.
We’re sitting in front of the wood-burning stove, in the same log cabin I walked into the first day I met Hartley.
Back then my heart still had a lot of healing to do, and I was nervous and scared… and I smile now, thinking of my first impression of Hartley. He was more handsome than I imagined, but also a bit more gruff than I dreamed about.
Turns out he just needed to let down his wall and let me in, and I had to do the exact same thing.
“Grandma Joy was wearing a Christmas sweater!” Amelia says with a smile, pointing to the photo of her being held by Hartley’s mother for the first time, in the hospital.
“Of course she was,” I say with a smile. “It was December first.”
That’s right. Our little girl was born December 1st, one year after we met. One day less than a year after we said I do.
Hartley joins us in the living room with a tray of hot cocoa topped with marshmallows.