Jeannie kissed the side of Sam's face, then drew his head into her lap. Placing her hand over her stomach, she smiled, knowing their baby was safe.
Sam's eyelids quivered, and then he opened his eyes slowly. "I'll always take care of you." Lifting his hand, he laid it over hers on her stomach. "Both of you."
"Your love saved us," Jeannie told him.
"Your love saved all three of us," he said, then closed his eyes and drifted off into a restorative sleep. When his limp hand slipped off hers, she grasped it and laid it on her stomach.
"Everything is all right, sweetheart," Jeannie told their unborn child. "Mommy and Daddy are here, and we love you as much as we love each other."
Epilogue
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They married a month later in the small Congregational church on Beach Boulevard. Sam was devastatingly handsome in a gray striped morning suit, and Jeannie angelically lovely in Miriam Howell's ivory satin wedding gown. They honeymooned on Le Bijou Bleu, putting the horrors of Maynard Reeves's madness behind them.
Seven months later, little Miss Samantha Dundee came howling into the world, after having made her mother and father suffer together through ten hours of labor. But once they held their daughter in their anus, they agreed that they just might give her a brother or sister in a few years.
After enduring the torment of the damned, Sam and Jeannie found heaven on earth. They loved deeply and completely, sharing every joy, every sorrow, every pleasure and every pain. He would forever be her elegant savage, and she his angel of mercy.
Sam didn't take their happiness for granted. As he had once guarded Jeannie from a world gone mad, he now guarded Jeannie and Samantha, making it his mission in life to surround them with the shield of his loving protection.
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