Saint Christopher: Epilogue

Bonus Scene: Spoilers for Saint Christopher

Christopher

One thing Madeline didn’t tell me when we were travelling to her family’s farm: they found the promised land. Well, as much the promised land as you can get when you’re in the middle of an apocalypse.

The small community is tight-knit and there’s a sense of belonging that I haven’t seen on earth, other than with the other saints. And yes, it gets cold in the winter, but the weather is mild and beautiful. I spend a lot of time outside.

Life with kids, man. It’s a trip. I would never have expected how much I would love waking up to two kids jumping in my bed, saying, “Daddy, I want waffles this morning.”

Life is good. Exhausting, but in the best way.

As I walk through the field behind our house, I have to laugh. It’s getting harder to keep my secret from Madeline.

I glance back at her parents’ home, about half a mile away, where she is, with the kids. I try to imagine what they are doing right now—maybe playing Dominoes on the kitchen table. Little Jer loves setting them up to fall down in succession.

A small movement and flash of pink catches my eye and I watch as a small form emerges from one of the second-floor windows, walks across the porch overhang, and climbs, hand over hand towards the ground. It’s exactly the kind of vision I used to see, someone trying to escape from an upper level window—only it’s happening in real life.

The figure’s far enough away that at first, I think it’s Madeline, and I wonder what she’s doing sneaking around like that. But then I realize Madeline doesn’t wear pink. It’s Aubrey, her sister. I chuckle to myself.

Good for her.

Madeline has been back for three years, and while those years have been incredible for us and our amazing family, it’s been terrible for Aubrey, Madeline’s sister, and their parents’ only other daughter.

After Madeline’s safe return, we told the family about how Madeline was held hostage for a long time and about our dangerous travels northward.

After that, her parents didn’t let Aubrey leave the house for months, worried that she’d be taken and held hostage by some moustache-twirling villain. I mean, I get it. I still like to keep Madeline close—losing her again might kill me. Still, Virginia’s not as dangerous as the UC and Aubrey’s a young woman with interests and a life of her own. She just turned twenty, and she’s starting to feel claustrophobic around here.

But then, I married into the family, so I try to keep my mouth shut.

Humming to myself, I turn my attention back to the winding path, then have to stop abruptly because there, standing in the middle of the path after I round the bend, hands on her hips, is my wife.

I stop abruptly, so I don’t bump into her. “Madeline?”

“Madeline?” she mimics me. “Yes. Who did you expect? The woman you’re sneaking out here to meet?”

Madeline

Do I really think he’s cheating on me? No. Yes. I’m not sure. He seems at a loss for words, his mouth open, but nothing coming out. It would be comical except that I’m so angry with him, upset that after all this time, he’s still keeping secrets from me.

Christopher has been acting shady, sneaking out of the house whenever he thinks I’m occupied. He used to like visiting my family, but lately he’s been thinking of excuses to stay home.

“I saw you walking down this path yesterday after you told me you had a headache,” I say, jabbing my finger into his muscled chest.

His expression morphs from surprise to self-satisfaction. “You’re jealous.” His smirk makes me want to claw his eyes out.

“Quit stalling.” I pause. “And stop being so insufferable.” I avoid stomping my foot, but it’s a close call.

“You want to know what I’ve been doing?”

I cross my arms, unwilling to answer any more of his questions until he answers mine. Especially questions that annoying.

He chuckles to himself, and I thaw a little. He’s pleased with himself and it intrigues me.

“Come with me,” he says.

“You and your secrets,” I mumble. “I’m sick of them.”

That makes him laugh harder. “You won’t say that when you see my surprise. Where did you come from anyway?”

I shrug. “Dropped the kids off with my parents and told them I needed to run a quick errand.”

“Hmmm,” he says.

The trees in this part of our acreage run thick, and I have to walk close to Christopher in order to avoid scraping my arm. It reminds me of the last day of our journey to Virginia before the General caught me. We’d stopped at that waterfall…

I say, “What? Making sure you aren’t cheating is an important errand.”

“But you thought it would be quick?”

I sigh. I have to hurry to keep up with him and his long stride. “You can’t see the forest for the trees.”

“Ha ha,” he says. “I was going to wait until our anniversary to show you, but it’s not often we have an afternoon to ourselves with no kids.”

This has to do with our anniversary? That has a better ring than him meeting some floozie out here in the woods for some afternoon delight. Sunlight filters through the trees. We’re approaching the clearing where we have our extended family kickball games.

Except there’s a new addition to the field.

I pause at the treeline, my heart beating faster. “Is that a gazebo?” I ask, my voice two octaves higher than normal.

Running forward, I take a closer look at the structure.

It’s solid and beautiful and stills smells like freshly sanded wood. I run my hand along a column. “This is beautiful,” I tell him.

“It still needs a coat of paint and the railing’s not done.”

I laugh, the sound a waterfall of happiness and relief in the late afternoon as I mount the steps only to see another surprise. Inset in the center of the gazebo is a bubbling pool of water. My voice goes hushed. “Christopher?”

He comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me, pulling me back against his body. “Yes, love?” he whispers in my ear.

“Is that?” I can hardly choke the words out—I’ve wanted a hot tub for my whole life. It’s my favorite—but when electricity became so scarce and clean water became more scarce, I gave up on that dream. “How did you do this?”

“Well, you know Jude came through last week.”

“I know.” Jude’s the Patron Saint of Lost Causes. They had taken quite a few “long walks” together. I thought Christopher might be complaining about me—between the two kids, his travel business, and my family’s farm, we haven’t had as much time together as usual.

“Jude helped me rig up this up. The pipes are connected to an old well we found back here and the mini-generator heats the water.”

I step away from Christopher so that I can twirl around. The gazebo’s so beautiful and the hot tub so perfect, and my husband so… unexpected.

But there’s another detail that catches my eye. I rush forward to take a closer look at the vine growing on the side of the column. “Are these—”

“Moonflowers.”

I turn to him, my gaze unfocused, and reach out to touch one of the blossoms. The fragile bud is still twisted shut since it’s not evening yet, but soon enough it would open its blossoms to the moon. I flash my moonflower wrist tattoo towards Christopher’s moon tattoo. The tattoos had been an extreme act of sentimentality, but I never regretted it, not even when I wondered if the man was cheating on me.

“Don’t touch it,” Christopher says suddenly.

My hand, which had been drifting closer to the bud, withdraws. “What? Why?”

He frowns down at me, ever the gardener. “The moonflower is poisonous to touch.”

I back away from him a step. “That’s news to me. Since when?”

He shrugs, looking a little confused. “It’s always been poisonous. I thought you knew that.”

“Why would I get a tattoo of something dangerous? I thought it was pretty.” I feel so stupid, suddenly. How many people knew my romantic gesture was poisonous?

He shrugs. “I just… I always thought it was sweet.”

Poison as sweet. “Christopher,” I sigh. “You’ve got to tell me these things.” Even as the words come out of my mouth, I realize how unfair they are. I got the tattoo as a surprise for our wedding. To tell me the negatives about my tattoo after I already got it permanently inked would have been mean.

Christopher is a lot of things, but he’s not mean.

First, I accused this man of cheating when he was actually building this gorgeous hideaway. And then I got irritated with him for not reading my mind. All in the span of twenty minutes.

I take a deep breath, releasing my misplaced fears and take a step closer to him. His moss green eyes focus on me then drop, lingering on my breasts.

I move slowly, rolling my hips as I approach him, then pause and whisper, “I love the gazebo.”

He makes an effort to lift his eyes to my face. “How much?” His voice is low and magnetic when he says, “The hot tub works.”

I swear, his words make me a little wet. He knows how much I’ve longed to dip into one, to relax my body and immerse myself in the hot water, letting all my apocalyptic-level worries float away.

Relaxing isn’t what’s on my mind now, though.

Changing course, I move away from Christopher and approach the hot tub. I toe off a shoe and dip a foot inside the bubbling water. Then, I turn to look at the man I love. “Have you tried it out yet?”

He watches me, eyes hooded. “No. I’ve just tested the temperature and the chemicals. I was waiting for you.”

That’s all I need to hear. My gaze sweeps the tree line, making sure that we’re completely alone, then I reach down to the hem of my shirt and pull it up slowly, barely taking my eyes off of my husband’s. His pupils flare and immediately, he’s by my side, his large hands helping me remove my shirt. He unclips my bra next, and I let it fall to the ground. When he leans down to suck on a nipple, I stop him, a single finger on his lips.

“Wait,” I say. “Back up two steps.”

He obeys, as he always does when he knows he’s about to get laid, but he manages to keep his eyes on me, even as he’s shucking off his own shirt and pants, letting them fall into a pile at his feet.

I will never get tired of the way his cock springs out towards me, and I lick my lips as I pull off my pants and underwear with one motion.

Then, I turn around, kneeling in front of the hot tub, deliberately teasing him with a view of my round ass.

He groans behind me.

Then, he’s there, his strong hands on my hips, lifting my whole body then dropping me lower and lower until I’m immersed in the warm, bubbling water. I roll my shoulders back and take a deep breath in and out, releasing thoughts of anything but what is right here.

The tub itself is a simple design, with a short seat bench on each side of the bottom. I’ve barely situated myself in front of one of the streams, when Christopher is there in front of me, his hair curling around his forehead from the steam.

He leans in and kisses me, lightly at first, then more eagerly. My legs open underwater, as if his lips hold some sort of sexual key to open them. He moves closer, and my breasts brush against his chest as he kisses me. They pebble with the heat, the friction, and his hands move to them, teasing and caressing.

Christopher takes his kisses lower, first lingering on my neck then travelling downwards. I lean my head back against the side of the hot tub as he pulls a hot nipple into his mouth and sucks on it. Then, growling, he bites it lightly.

I jerk up, splashing him with water—he hasn’t done that before.

He raises an eyebrow at me. “That’s for thinking I was cheating on you.”

As he ducks his head back to show my other breast attention, I clarify. “I thought you might be. I wasn’t sure.”

He nips at my other breast, but this time, I savor the sensation, stretching my arms out and leaning back so that my breasts stick out even further, ready for whatever kind of attention he wants to give them.

In that moment, I’m aware of everything.

The brisk, open air.

The bubbling heat of the water.

The sound of the birds calling to each other.

The feel of my man, kissing and teasing and nipping.

The scent of the nearby forest.

The anticipation that soon, aforementioned man would be in me, pumping in and out, making me forget everything else but the feel of him, the taste of him.

Energy surges and I lift my head to tug him closer if that’s even possible. I put one hand on his jaw and the other drifts underwater to stroke his dick. He’s already hard, but he lengthens in my hand, and I stroke even harder, hungry for the feel of him inside me.

He growls in my ear, shifting his body underwater to be on his knees and brings his member closer to my entrance. I shift so that I’m sitting on the edge of the seat, and as his cock touches me, a shiver of bliss threads through me.

He lowers his fingers from my breasts to circle the most sensitive part of me, and as the hot water envelopes us both, and as his cock pauses at my entrance, he gives my clit more attention, stroking and teasing.

I was unlocked before, but now I’m undone.

“Dear God, please take me,” I say.

“Still just a saint,” he says wryly, but before he’s finished his sentence, he impales me in one swift move underwater.

I wrap my legs around him, again letting my head fall back as he begins moving in and out of me.

I’m so full of heat, surrounded by it, that I might actually combust.

Christopher

Madeline looks like a siren, her hair damp around her face, her eyes glassy and unfocussed as I plunge into her, again and again. I keep playing with her, one hand underwater, circling her sensitive bud and the other on her breast, keeping her steady as her whole body moves in time with my rhythm.

“So hot,” she moans and I know it’s a compliment and a statement of temperature.

I lean down to scoop her up out of the water, and turn her around, so that she’s standing on the bench, warm ass out of the water.

“Cooler now?” I ask, smiling to myself as goosebumps raise on her arm. “Bend over.”

She obeys, and I thrust back into her from behind, holding on to her hips for leverage. I love her like this, bent over the edge of the hot tub, completely at my mercy, holding on to the side so she doesn’t fall down.

“You know what’s funny, Madeline?”

She doesn’t answer so much as moan again, and I smile at the sweet wet sounds coming from our bodies as I pump into her.

“You never apologized.”

“Apologized?” She’s confused, and she twists her head to look at me, but the angle’s wrong, and there’s no way I’m letting her move now.

“For your accusation.”

More moans. Then, she wiggles her butt at me.

I take that for the invitation that it is, and as I thrust into her, I smack her rounded cheek, first one side, then the other.

“Christopher,” she says, voice sultry, my name a complete sentence on its own.

I slow down my rhythm, savoring the moment and this whole perfect life.

Do I prefer it to heaven?

As I fuck my wife with abandon, in the mountains of Virginia, I wonder if I do.

But when I come inside her, the answer’s clear. Anywhere is better as long as she’s here.