Epilog - Pearl

Epilogue - Pearl

Six months later

A loud crash comes from the living room downstairs. My heart leaps into my chest as I keep the bedside light off, sliding out of bed and kneeling on the rug. I reach beneath the bed for the locked box with a gun in it, punching in the code and scanning my fingerprint. The lid pops open and I take the pistol out, making sure it's still loaded from the last time I took it to the range. With my heart in my throat, and blood rushing in my ears, I head out of the bedroom, avoiding the floorboards in the hallway I know are creaky.

Where the hell is Maxim when I need him?

If he weren't working late tonight, prepping for Orlov Tech going public on the stock market in a month, he would get the thrill of dealing with whoever decided to break into our home. He would be the one ready to kill without hesitation.

I knew we shouldn't have extended the trip to Japan. If we came home when we were supposed to, he would be here to deal with this right now. As I descend the stairs, whispering starts from one of the other rooms before it falls silent.

My finger is light against the trigger as I round the corner.

"Surprise!" Aesha shouts as she leaps out from behind the couch.

Light floods the room and standing beside a broken vase with a sheepish smile is Maxim.

He crosses the room and takes the gun from me, putting it up on the high shelf. "I guess I should have known my huntress was going come down here ready to kill."

I groan and bury my face in his chest before leaning back to rub some of the sleep from my eyes. "I don't know what the hell you think you're doing, but it's the middle of the night."

"Well, I thought it might be nice to do something for your twenty-third birthday." Maxim tugs lightly on a strand of my hair. "You could at least pretend to be excited for the cake I picked up."

"Why didn't you say there was cake?" I stand on my toes and press a kiss to his cheek before brushing by him and pulling Aesha into a tight hug. "You should've warned me about this. What kind of best friend are you?"

She giggles and rocks from one side to the other, hugging me and nearly sending both of us tumbling to the ground. "What else was I supposed to do? The poor man called me and said that he needed some help planning out a surprise for you. I wasn't going to tell him no."

I wriggle out of her hands and turn to Maxim with my hands on my hips. "This was your idea?"

"Ooh, you're in trouble now," Nikita says in a singsong voice as he grabs a small white cake from the console table and disappears with it into the kitchen.

He rubs the back of his neck. "Do you not like it?"

This is the most unsure of himself I've ever seen my husband look.

I throw myself at him, laughing when he catches me and spins me around before setting me back down. "I love it. This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me in a very long time."

Aesha nods, darting past me and heading for the kitchen. "It's true. Normally we just go out and get plastered on her birthday."

"You didn't have to do this for me. I know how busy you are with work." I glance around at the candles lining the room, their flames flickering. Tears gather in my eyes as I look up at him. "How the hell am I ever going to top this for your birthday?"

He smirks, cupping my ass and hauling me closer to him. "I'll send you pictures of my lingerie recommendations."

"Well, shit. I already booked the private plane to go back to Russia." I tap a finger to my chin before shrugging. "And that means that I'm going to have to tell Ivan that there's no need to let you work from your home in Krasnodar Krai for a year either. That's going to be embarrassing. You have no idea how hard I had to beg him to allow us that."

"You did what?" Maxim's jaw looks like it's seconds away from falling off. "What did he say when you asked him?"

"Well, as you know I can be rather charming. And then when I told him that I plan to seduce you while we're there and get pregnant, he was all for it. He thought that you could use a little more chaos in your life."

He sweeps me off my feet, laughing as he kisses me. "It looks like we're going to spend a year teaching you how to shoot a damn bird."

"I can shoot a bird. I just needed you to think that I needed a big strong man to save me."

He scoffs, setting me back down on the ground. "You've never needed anyone to save you."

"You're wrong about that." I blink back the happy tears as I hold him close while the clock chimes midnight. "I needed you to save me from myself."

He grins, looking over his shoulder at the kitchen. "Nikita promised to keep Aesha busy."

Heat floods my cheeks. "You're crazy."

"Just a quickie," he says, his voice rough and low as he drags me into the library next to the living room. He hauls the night dress I'm wearing over my hips and pins me against the wall. "What kind of birthday would it be without sex?"

Laughing, I nod, already dripping wet. He's been gone most of the day and I didn't realize how much I missed him until I saw him standing there with his surprise.

Maxim trails kisses along my neck, his warm lips closing over my pulse and sucking on it until it's skipping one beat after the next. I keep my hands on his shoulders, holding myself steady as he slips down his black slacks, pulling out his hard cock. The head butts against me as his mouth returns to mine.

He cradles me like I'm the most important thing in the world as he inches inside me, giving me enough time to adjust without the devotion he normally shows to my pussy before entering it. We break away from each other breathless as he thrusts faster, driving deeper into me. I bite back the moans, my heart swelling to the point of almost bursting with how much love I have for him.

It takes no time at all for him to push me to the edge of an orgasm, his hands trailing over the body he's spent hours memorizing. As I come, I press a kiss to the side of his neck where our anniversary is tattooed. He got it inked over the vein and at the time I thought he was insane. Until he told me that the anniversary was like the blood flowing through his veins. If anything were to happen to us, he didn't think that he would be able to continue living.

To this day it's still one of the sweetest things he's ever done for me, even though the man doesn't have a romantic bone in his body.

"Happy birthday, Pearl. I love you." He kisses me again as he finishes. His arms wrap around me, keeping me pressed against his body as our hearts beat as one.

"I love you too."

When a throat clears in the other room, he puts me down, his gaze still locked on mine, looking happier than I've ever seen him before.

Nikita comes back into the living room with Aesha, and plates of cake in their hands.

Aesha winks at me. "The library, huh? Come on, cake is here. I hope this is the best birthday you've ever had."

"It is."

As I sit down in the living room, digging into the delicious cake, I know that this is only the start of the most beautiful years of my life. I have my best friend and family surrounding me, and in the last several months the love Maxim and I share has only grown.

We may be hard to love at times, and our relationship can be rocky when we get too stubborn or push too hard, but I know I've found my perfect match in him.

And when things get too difficult, we just reset to our day one again.

*****

THE END