Five Brothers
: Epilogue

Four Years Later

I think I’ll marry Army next. Or Trace. He’s agreeable and teachable. Why not? It’ll be great.

Or … I could just run the Bay on my own. The newly widowed queen who steps in, because she’s a fucking widow now, because she’s going to kill Macon Jaeger!

“I need a shower,” he says, laughing as he comes through the door with his brothers.

I pull my thumbnail out of my mouth and spin toward him as I stand at the window.

He drifts into the dark house, the grandfather clock chiming 5:00 a.m. “Let me wake up Krisjen first.”

But I grab the framed picture of us, me in his arms, my legs wrapped around him, my happy smile peering over his shoulder as the camera captures only his back. Good times. Better days.

I throw it across the room, but it just clips his shoulder.

He rears back, stumbling, but then rights himself and looks in my direction. “Ow.” He rubs the spot it hit. “What the hell?”

“You’re two days late!” I bellow.

His face falls, and he holds out his hands like he’s trying to wrangle a horse. “I’m sorry, okay? I …”

But I grab the coffee-table book of Mammoth Cave that I got in Kentucky, because we just closed our eyes and picked a place on a map for our honeymoon.

I throw it as Army, Trace, and Dallas back up, out of the way. I grab the remote, a magazine, and a potted plant, and hurl every single one at my husband. He ducks out of the way as Trace chuckles at the scene.

“I told you it would be unpredictable,” Macon argues.

“And I told you to get a satellite phone!”

I hurl a candle, throw Dex’s soccer ball, and pick up the crystal bowl Clay got us for our wedding, but stop and put it back down. It’s pretty.

“Worrying my ass off, wondering if you were shot or strangled or kidnapped or sinking to the bottom of the ocean,” I yell. “And I can’t call the cops!”

He moves in. “Come here.”

“I’m not a fan of you right now!”

“Steel stomach, remember?”

Ugh! I stomp on his foot, and he grunts, clenching his teeth. Grabbing me, he swings me over his shoulder.

I flail, kicking. “Let me go!”

“Go to the bar for a while,” he tells his brothers. “I need to deal with this one.”

And I feel a slap on my ass. I flinch and then growl.

“Might get loud …” Dallas taunts.

“Don’t you spank me in front of them!” I shout.

“Don’t worry, Krisjen.” Trace chuckles, and I hear the door open. “We know you’re the boss of him.”

Laughter fills the air as they drift out of the house, and Macon spins around, carrying me up the stairs.

Tears spring to my eyes. I was so worried. Every second. At any moment, he could’ve been gone forever, and I might never know what happened to him.

“Let me go.” I slap his ass as I dangle there. “You deserve the silent treatment for the next two days after that stunt. Because that’s how long it’s been since I’ve slept!”

We reach the top, and he carries me into our bedroom, closing the door.

“Let me down!” I yell.

His hand grips the back of my thigh, his fingers crawling inward as he kisses against my jeans.

“I thought you were giving me the silent treatment,” he teases. I clamp my mouth shut, pouting and trying to keep from crying out of relief as I hang there.

“We got the containers,” he whispers.

Fine.

“Then they pushed us overboard and tried to sink our boat,” he says.

I suck in a breath. Oh God.

That’s what I’d been afraid of.

I understand that these black-market deals to get lumber, steel, cement, and pipes—which all the local suppliers were either withholding or were overcharging for, thanks to Garrett Ames—could be dangerous, but I always hope Macon’s reputation will precede him.

But every once in while we run into a dealer who would just rather take the money, try to kill them, and sell the items they already sold again. It’s bad business, but when they’re coming from overseas, they don’t care. They’ll never see you again anyway.

“We took their boat instead,” he tells me. “I marooned them on Coral Cay. For now.”

Coral Cay is a small island with about one tree for shade, but otherwise it’s pretty barren. There’s nothing and no one, and if a ship or a Cessna does pass by—which is likely, given that it’s only a few miles off the coast—they’d hide. Anyone Macon sticks there doesn’t want to be caught anyway. There’s food and water, and he’ll go back in a few days once he’s found a cargo ship that he can stash them on to get rid of them.

It could’ve easily turned bad, though. It’s only a matter of time. What would happen to us if Trace had been lost? Or Army? It’s not just Macon I worry about. Losing anyone would devastate him.

He presses his lips into my thigh. “This is all I thought about out there in that black water,” he whispers. “Guns pointing at us … The depths below … I had to get back to you.”

A tear drops to the floor, and I wipe my eye.

“Still not talking to me?” he goads.

He puts me back on my feet, drops to his knee, and unbuttons my jeans, pulling them down below my ass. Yanking my underwear to the side, he sweeps his tongue up my flesh, and I gasp, gripping the dresser at my back. My clit starts to throb.

“Do you think I’m going anywhere?” he asks.

Tears fill my eyes.

He bites and plays with me. “You think that I’m going to widow my young bride and let another man have this?”

He tugs off my clothes, stands up, and then yanks my shirt over my head as well as his.

“Talk,” he growls in a low voice, pressing himself into me.

I press my lips together.

He takes my jaw in one hand, lightly squeezing both sides. “Your husband told you to open your mouth.”

He squeezes and squeezes until I have fish lips, and I’m almost laughing.

But I don’t. I’ve lived with four years of close calls like this. I’m entitled to a little pouting.

“Or maybe you weren’t worried at all.” He releases me. “Maybe you think I was with another woman the whole time.”

My eyes flare. That wasn’t even a thought, but now the image is in my head. Son of a bitch.

He grinds himself into me, holding my waist. “Feel what you do to me, Krisjen.”

I feel it.

The hard ridge in his jeans that just appears every time I’m naked. Or when I walk around in his clothes, or reach into a high cabinet and my stomach shows. Or bend over and my thong shows. Or sit in his lap or help him in the garage. He loves seeing grease on my face.

“You don’t think everyone knows Macon Jaeger’s little Saint has him wrapped around her little finger?”

I flex my jaw, my heart swimming.

He leans in. “Tell me what I need to hear,” he whispers.

No.

“Say it,” he demands.

Nuh-uh.

He caresses me everywhere, finally coming up to cup my face.

“All I could think about was this.”He comes in to kiss me, and I whimper, putting my hands on him. “Baby …” he begs.

The sound of his voice is desperate, and I can’t help it anymore. The relief floods me, and I wrap my arms around him.

“Mine.” I press my forehead to his.

“That’s what I want to hear.”

He whips me around to face the dresser mirror, and I break into a smile as he hugs me to his body and buries his face in my hair. It’s his comfort move. How he feels safe.

“I love you,” I tell him.

Turning me back around, he holds my eyes as he lifts me into his arms and carries me to our bathroom.

I hug with my arms and legs as he leans over and starts the shower, shrugs his jeans off, and steps in. He closes the door, the shower inside dark with the black tile I picked when we added it to our many renovations of the house.

Liv’s old room no longer exists, Macon and his brothers having to tear down the walls to make a hallway toward the new wing.

Liv and Clay are looking into buying an old, abandoned light-house a few miles away, but we have a few spare bedrooms in case they ever sleep over. Dex has his own room, Paisleigh has a balcony, where she likes to imagine she’s Juliet, and Mars opted to have his room in the attic. There’s a window that leads right to the tree where the old treehouse still sits. They built the wing around it, keeping a small courtyard in the middle on the lower level. Mars likes to sleep in the treehouse. Still. At sixteen years old.

Macon puts me down, and I soap up a loofah, starting to wash the sweat and ocean off him.

“I’ll get the satellite phone today,” he finally says.

“Thank you.”

“You really fucking love me, don’t you?”

I dart my eyes up to his, watching his proud smile spread like he has me right where he wants me.

I tear my eyes away from the way the suds drip down his golden skin and push him down on the stone seat of the shower. His eyes gleam as he watches me drop to my knees and take him in my mouth.

He exhales, holding my head to his body.

Yes, I love you. And I’m never losing you.

It was a long road for him to learn how to manage everything that goes on in his head, and some days he forgets how altogether.

But he knows that I love him, and that another good day is coming.

Once he found a doctor who didn’t aggravate him—and got to know them—it got a lot easier for him to keep talking to someone.

He knows he’s not alone. They check in with each other regularly.

And the time between one bad day and another has gotten longer and longer, and there are so many days when he’s the one taking care of me.

We’re lucky.

Every time I feel him, smell his skin, see him crook his finger with a smile on his face, I’m so goddamn lucky I found him.

“Mama Kris!” a kid yells.

I pull my mouth off my husband.

“Can I have pancakes?” the kid, Mato, from across the street, yells. I see a dark form peek around the bathroom door. “Willow says I can’t!”

Macon looks at me. “What the fuck?”

But the kid can’t see us clearly through the frosted glass. It’s fine. I stand up. “Of course you can have pancakes,” I tell the six-year-old. “It’s too early, though. Go home and get ready for school. I’ll be downstairs soon.”

“’Kay!”

And he slams the door on his way out. I look down at Macon as he runs a hand through his hair. “You need to talk to that kid about not coming into our bedroom.”

“I did.”

I lean down to kiss him.

But he just gives me a scolding look. “How did we get into a situation where we’re feeding eight kids who aren’t ours every morning?”

I slide my body on top of his, straddling him. “Kids can’t concentrate in school if they’re hungry,” I tell him. “If they don’t do well in school, they don’t become doctors, lawyers, and presidents. We’re in this for the long game, baby.”

He laughs, and I know I won.

It wasn’t really a big deal to start out. Willow and Mato’s dad is offshore working most of the time, and their mom has odd shifts at the hospital a lot, so I started having them come over here for breakfast. A few other kids started joining them. Kids need a well-rounded breakfast. Maybe if I’d tried not to starve myself so much in high school, I would’ve done better in math, too.

I reach underneath me, stroking my husband and fitting him inside of me.

“I’m getting to be an old man.” He sits up, holding me close. “I can’t have scares like that when my dick is hard.”

I place his hand on my breast. “An older man is the only one who knows what to do with this.”

And I slide his hand down my body that he’s kissed and tasted every inch of thousands of times, because he knows how to appreciate a woman properly.

We kiss, and I sink down on him, but then I stop.

Holding his face, I caress his cheek with my thumb, feeling his eyes on me.

But I can’t look, because if I look at him, I’ll chicken out. “I want a baby,” I say.

He’s silent. I keep caressing, finally forcing my gaze up.

He stares at me, his expression unreadable.

“Can I have a baby?” I ask him.

We avoided the subject for a long time. I wasn’t in any hurry. I had plenty of time, and I loved having him to myself.

But I also know he avoided the subject because he was scared.

I wait for him to argue. Or to make some excuse about why we should wait longer.

Or worse, to tell me he doesn’t want children at all.

He doesn’t say any of those things, though. Taking my hand, he puts it against his chest, over his heart. “Say that again.”

I feel the beat in his chest quicken.

I smile just a little. “Can I have a baby?”

He hardens even more inside me, and gasps, “Yes.” Then he kisses me hard and deep, moving slowly over my mouth.

I start to rock on him, but then a knock hits the bathroom door. “Macon! Krisjen!”

I startle at Trace’s voice, pulling away from the kiss.

“We’re leaving at nine!” he bellows.

I wince. Shit.

Iron. I completely forgot.

I start to move away, but Macon pulls me back down. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“There’s so much to do,” I whine.

Breakfast and backpacks, and I’ll need to log in to check that Mars handed in his assignment because he always forgets. Then there’s groceries to stock up on.

But Macon locks me in, pressing his cock up inside me. “Fuck no,” he gripes. “We pick up Iron today, and then there’s Callumfucking-Ames … This shitshow of a summer starts tonight, and I need another fucking minute alone with you before that.”

He kisses me through my laughter, and our quickie—which never turns out to be very quick at all—commences as I roll my hips and pant on top of him. Iron is finally coming home—after getting an extra four months for bad behavior, and Callum Ames is finally returning, or that’s the word.

It’s going to be a hot summer. If Macon gets through this without going to prison himself, it’ll be a miracle.

He touches my lips with his. “I love you,” he says.

I hug him. “Mine.”