SWNOVELS Chapter Finn Rhodes Forever: Epilogue 1 – Finn
ONE MONTH later
The late September sun warmed my skin as I spread out on the blanket, hands behind my head and eyes closed.
At the sound of her boots approaching, I smiled. I still couldn’t believe it was real, our life together.
“Don’t you look comfortable.”
I opened my eyes to see her standing over me with a wry smile on her pretty face. I winked at her and gestured to the blanket beside me. “Hello, baby.”
“Hi.” She flopped down and gave me a quick kiss as I unpacked our lunch.
“How’d the media interview go?”
She wrinkled her nose. “They asked the same question three times.”
The day after Liv and her advisor published The Pink Sand Verbena—the Hidden Flower, her phone and email began blowing up. The media loved Liv’s story of persistence and hope when no one else believed in her, although the university didn’t appreciate it when she stated that to interviewers in her blunt way. The story of the flower that had remained hidden in the woods for a hundred years gained international exposure, and in the ecology science world, all eyes were suddenly on our tiny town.
Randeep Singh added a tour once we showed him the route.
“Is there a ledge behind that waterfall?” he had asked.
Liv and I had exchanged a glance, hiding our grins.
“Not sure,” I had told him. “We didn’t go in that area.”
The best part? Due to the media attention, the research funding was rolling in. Liv’s university opened a research hub here in Queen’s Cove, where she now worked, continuing her research on how plants adapt to climate change. The researchers who had been laid off from the center in Port Alberni were moving in next week.
“Did Holden say when the flooring would arrive?” Liv asked.
Oh, yeah, and that old house at the edge of town? We bought it.
“Next week. We can install it on the weekend. My dad wants to help.” I tipped my chin at her. “You still okay with moving in during renovations?”
Holden and Sadie had offered for us to stay with them, but we wanted our own space.
She nodded. A soft smile spread over her face. “It’ll be fine. We made the right call having our birthday party at the bar, though.”
We shared a private smile and Liv rolled her lips, eyes glittering. Our birthday party was in two days, and we had invited the entire town. We had something special planned—but it was a secret.
“You ready?” I asked her.
Her smile lifted, and her expression was so soft and sweet, it hurt my chest. “Yes.”
My gaze roamed Liv’s face, sunlight dancing off her cheekbones and the different tones in her eyes. My heart squeezed.
“Olivia,” I said, shaking my head, and her eyes sparked. “You’re so beautiful, you make my heart hurt.”
She huffed a laugh and peeked down at her hands, still smiling. “I never get sick of hearing you say that.”
“Good.” I shifted closer to her on the blanket. “I never get sick of saying it.” I leaned in and pressed my lips to her temple, inhaling her sweet scent, letting it fill my lungs. Her skin was warm against my mouth and my arm wrapped around her shoulders, brushing the soft sleeve of her plaid shirt. I hummed against her temple and she sighed, leaning into me.
“Do you need to rush back?”
She shook her head. “I have a few minutes.” Her eyes turned coy, the smile curling up at the corner of her mouth.
My mouth brushed her ear. “Bet I can make you come in less than five minutes.”
Her breath caught but she shot me an amused look of disbelief. “Trust me, you can’t.”
“Oh, yeah?” I lifted her chin, studying the shades of brown and amber in her eyes. “You think I don’t know how to make you feel good?” My voice dropped to a low murmur and her eyelids fell halfway. A ripple of smugness moved through me and my smile lifted higher. “You think I don’t know exactly what makes you squirm?”
My knuckles brushed her shirt, lingering on her nipples.
“You’re cheating,” she breathed.
My hand came up to tuck a lock of soft pink hair behind her ear, and her eyebrows pulled together like she regretted saying that, like she wanted me to keep touching her.
“You know what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately?” I asked her.
“What?” she breathed.
“Remember two weeks ago, when we took a drive up the coast in my car and you wanted to pull over at that lookout?”
She nodded and my fingers trailed down her neck, slowly skimming over her skin. She shuddered.
“And we sat there in my car, watching the sun go down over the water until the sky turned dark and the stars came out?”
She nodded again, biting her lip. My thumb brushed the base of her throat and she swallowed.
“And my hand trailed higher and higher on your thigh until you couldn’t take it anymore, you just had to ride my cock in the backseat?”
She made a soft whimper and her pupils expanded. My erection strained against my zipper.
I picked up her phone and showed her the time. “I have until one seventeen.”
A light flush grew on her cheeks but she snorted and rolled her eyes. “Good luck.”
I grinned at her. “I don’t need it. Come here.” I shifted to face her and framed her jaw with my hands, pulling her to me so I could kiss her. Her lips were soft and when I licked at the seam of her mouth, she let me in.
I groaned at the hot slide of her tongue against mine.
This never got old. Every kiss from Olivia was a gift.
I tried to go slow, I did, but she kissed me back, tasting me and making these sexy little gaspy moans that lit my blood on fire, and soon enough, she was on her back and I was on top of her, pressing kisses down her neck. Her breath caught again when my teeth scraped the sensitive spot beneath her ear. My hands were on her breasts, pinching and rolling her nipples as she arched into my hand. Smug satisfaction coiled low at the base of my spine as she whispered my name.
“Is this all you’ve got?” she asked in between moans.
My head tipped back and I laughed. “You’re such a little liar. I bet you’re soaked.” I pulled the neckline of her top down, baring her new tattoo.
A delicate pink flower sat over her heart. I rested my palm against it for a brief moment before pulling off my own shirt so she could see the matching one over my heart. Her gaze dropped to it and she smiled.
I winked at her.
We got those tattoos the week after she defended her dissertation. The panel of professors had submitted their responses faster than usual—approved. Liv had her PhD.
The flower meant so much more than her getting her PhD, though. It was us, it was the love we shared, persisting over the years, even though it was hidden. Waiting for us to find it.
At the edge of my tattoo, I had the artist incorporate her name, tiny and scripted among the flower’s leaves, barely noticeable except to us. Olivia’s name right over my heart, where it belonged. I had told her we were fulfilling the bet I lost when we raced to the top of the ridge, moments before we spotted the flower, but Liv knew the truth.
My heart always had and always would belong to Olivia Morgan.
Beneath me, she looked up at me like I was everything to her. I held her gaze as I wrapped my lips around one of the stiff peaks of her breasts. Her eyes glazed and my cock ached, dripping with pre-cum in my boxers.
My hand slipped down the front of Olivia’s leggings to find her wet. The breath whooshed out of her lungs as her mouth fell open and she let out a low moan.
“Look at you,” I murmured, shaking my head while my fingers dragged slow, lazy circles on her clit. “You’re making this too easy for me, baby.”
She clenched her jaw. “You’re running out of time.”
A low laugh rasped out of me as I watched her face. “You taunting me would mean more if you weren’t soaking my hand, Morgan.”
She huffed a laugh, biting her lip, and when her eyes met mine, my heart squeezed again.
“I love you so fucking much,” I whispered.
“I love you, too.” Her eyes melted, soft and full of affection. “I’ve always loved you.”
“Alright.” I sped up the circles on her clit, and my erection pulsed as she winced with pleasure, arching on the blanket. “Enough of this lovey-dovey bullshit. Time for you to come.”
“You wish,” she bit out, breathing hard.
I pushed a finger into her tight entrance and we both swore.
“Right there, huh?”
Her eyes were closed when she shook her head. “Barely felt it.”
I added a second finger and she whimpered. Around my hand, her muscles rippled, tightening and trembling. Her hips tilted with my movements.
“Really?” I asked. “Barely felt it?”
“Uh-huh.” She mouthed oh my god and her hand came to my thigh, gripping me like she needed to be anchored.
A wicked smile curled up on my mouth as I watched her fall deeper and deeper into pleasure. “Huh. Guess I’ll have to up my game. What about this?” I crooked my fingers to reach her G-spot and massaged the bundle of nerves.
“Fuck,” she gasped, eyes squeezed closed. “Fuck, Finn.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s what I thought. Liv,” I drawled into her ear, my voice loaded with smug teasing that made her even wetter, “it kind of feels like you’re going to come.”
“Nope.” She gripped my thigh harder and moaned as I worked her G-spot. “I’m not.”
I beamed down at her writhing on my hand, her hair shining in the sun and her tits pressed to the sky. Paradise. This was paradise.
“Oh, you know what I forgot?” I crooned.
“What?” Her voice was thin and from the way she squeezed my hand, I knew she was close.
I shook my head. “I can’t believe I forgot your clit.”
Her eyes flew open. “No,” she whined.
I nodded at her with a knowing smile. “Yes.”
With my fingers inside her, I pressed down on the tight bud above her entrance with the heel of my hand, giving her more friction and pressure as I stimulated her front walls, and her wet pussy clamped down on me.
“Fuck,” she gasped. “Fuck.”
“There we go.” Her muscles pulsed around my fingers as her hips bucked. She moaned as she came on the blanket in the middle of the forest, looking so gorgeous. “Good girl. Keep riding my hand.”
She rippled around my fingers, tits bouncing with her writhing movements as she slowly came down from her climax and opened her eyes.
I made a big show of looking at the time. “One seventeen.”
She rolled her eyes, grinning. “Whatever.”
I leaned down to kiss her. “Pretty good.”
“It’s fine,” she said against my mouth, her breath tickling my face.
We kissed slowly and unhurriedly this time, and eventually I lifted my head to ask, “Hey, Liv. What’s the magic number?”
She laughed. “I’m not answering that.”
I tilted my head, and she grinned at my playful expression. “It’s three.” My hands came to the waistband of her leggings and she lifted her hips without argument as I slipped her pants down, helping her take her boots off until she was bare from the waist down.
“Might as well get rid of this,” I said, yanking her shirt over her head, and she laughed.
“You’re an animal.” She shook her head at me, lying back onto the blanket as I stared at her body.
The smooth curves, the soft skin, her nipples looking so pretty and sweet, her pussy still glistening from my fingers—she took the words right out of my mouth.
“You okay?” she asked softly.
I only nodded, running my hands up her thighs before I pushed them apart. “With you? Always.”
She gasped when the pad of my thumb brushed her clit, gentle so I didn’t overstimulate her. We held each other’s gazes and that overpowering, intense warmth filled my chest. I dragged her wetness over the soft skin between her legs and she bit her lip.
“God, that feels so good,” she whispered.
“I know, baby.” I leaned down to kiss up her inner thigh, watching her jaw go slack as I slipped my fingers back inside her to find her wet all over again.
When my mouth met her pussy, our groans mixed together. I buried my face between her legs, working her inner walls while my lips and tongue raced over her, lapping up her arousal, winding her higher and higher while my cock ached. I sucked her clit and she rocked against my mouth to get more. Her hands were in my hair, grasping and tugging, urging me on, and she moaned my name again and again as I drew her orgasm out of her.
“Yes,” she choked out as she began to shake under my mouth, tightening on my fingers. “Like that.”
“Uh-huh.” I sucked her clit as she rode her pleasure out against my mouth, soaking my face. Her taste, fucking hell, her taste.
“Oh my god.” Her chest rose and fell and she looked down at me with a dazed, sated expression. Her throat worked. “Oh my god,” she repeated.
“Turn over.”
“What?”
“Flip. Over.” My hands came to her hips and I turned her over on the blanket before yanking her ass up in the air. “There. Like that.”
“Hurry.” She arched her back as I raced to undo my belt, pulse thudding in my ears.
My cock was beaded with pre-cum when I pulled it out, and Liv let out a choked breath as I dragged the tip up and down her entrance. Her hips pushed toward me.
“Stop teasing me,” she demanded.
“You’re not in charge here.” I circled her entrance with the head of my cock, loving the way she could barely hold herself up on her forearms.
“Please, Finn.” She tilted her hips up to give me access. “Please fuck me.”
I grinned. “I love it when you ask nicely. You’re always so sweet when you’re desperate to come on my cock.”
“Shut up,” she bit out, and I laughed.
“Say the nice words one more time, baby.”
She growled and glared at me over her shoulder. “Please.”
My heart danced, happy and smug. “There we go.” I fed my cock into her snug entrance and we moaned together.
Oh, fuck. After two orgasms, she was soaked, and I pushed through her tightness until I bottomed out.
“Deep,” she choked out. “That’s so deep.”
“I know.” My eyes were closed as I let her body adjust to my size. “Fuck, you feel amazing.”
She rolled her hips, working herself on my length while I was buried deep inside her, and my brain was already beginning to splinter. So fucking good. So warm, wet, tight, and deep. Her pussy gripped me like a fist. My balls ached with the need to come inside her.
“Baby,” I gritted out, jaw tight. “Need to move inside you.”
Her head bobbed in a jerky nod and I pulled out before pushing back in, moaning. Her pussy clenched.
“Your moans make me so wet,” she gasped.
Another wave of her arousal coated my erection. I gave her hip a squeeze. “I can feel it.”
I found a rhythm and when her gasps and moans made the pressure around the base of my spine tighten, I reached around to her clit to stroke her into an orgasm. It didn’t take long. With Olivia, the third was always the easiest. I brushed her clit with gentle, fast, fluttery strokes the way she had done in front of me the other night, and before long, she was crying my name into the blanket while her muscles flexed and spasmed around me.
“I can’t hold out any longer,” I told her. “Need to come inside you.”
She nodded, still pulsing and squeezing around me, and I began to fuck her harder, thrusting into her as desire sliced through my brain. My balls pulled up close to my body and my head tipped back as heat raced up my spine.
“Olivia,” I managed as I palmed her ass, stroking her soft skin before I laid a quick slap across her ass cheek. She moaned and tightened on me again, and I slipped over the edge of control.
My heart banged in my chest as my pleasure boiled over and I spilled inside her. My cock pulsed as I came, filling her and getting her inner thighs even more slick. I emptied into her, pressing my hips into her ass, unable to think, unable to speak, suspended in time and space, buried deep inside the woman I loved.
Where I belonged.
We collapsed onto the blanket together, me still inside her as we caught our breaths. She let out a soft, relaxed noise as I pressed a kiss to the back of her shoulder.
“I love your new job,” I whispered into her ear, and she shook with laughter.