Clothes tangled around our knees, our ankles. He worked them off me with surprising care, as if peeling away bandages. When I was bare, he stared, eyes hungry but reverent.
He ran his hands down my sides, tracing the lines of my body as if memorizing them for later. He dipped his head, kissed the curve of my hip, then moved lower.
His mouth was hot, the contrast with the cold air making every nerve ending stand up and scream. I clutched at the blanket, at his shoulders, at anything that could keep me tethered to the world.
He teased, tasted, and drew it out until I wanted to scream. I moaned instead, low and rough, the sound unfamiliar in my own mouth.
He came back up, kissed me, then slid inside. The shock of it was instant—a perfect, blinding fit. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulled him as close as possible.
We moved together, slow at first, then faster. The blanket scraped my back, the firelight casting red halos on our skin. Sweat and ash mixed on my shoulders. My hair tangled in his fingers.
I lost track of time, of space. All that mattered was the point of contact, the grinding build to an impossible release.
When it broke, I shattered—body, mind, every cell gone to static. He followed, burying his face in my neck, the vibration of his groan echoing in my skull.
We lay there, side by side, staring at the stars through the haze of dying fire. My body shook, not from cold, but from the overload.
He wrapped the blanket around us, pulled me into his chest. I let him, too tired to care about pride or boundaries.
“I’m glad I stayed,” he said, voice muffled by my hair.
I shook my head, buried my face in his shoulder.
We listened to the fire tick down, the last of the embers fading to black.
For a moment, the world made sense.
Then the motion light flicked back on, and we both laughed, low and spent, as if we’d outsmarted the dark for just one night.
After that, we didn’t speak for a long time. There wasn’t much to say. My head rested against his chest, the rough wool of the blanket bristling between us, our legs a tangled mess of sweat, old ash, and upended biology. The fire had gone dark, but the heat radiated up through the pit, a last stand against the pre-dawn chill.
Nitro lay on his back, one arm under his head, the other wrapped around my shoulder. I listened to his heart, the arrhythmic kick of it. Even at rest, it never settled, always ready to bolt. I counted the scars on his hand where it rested on my collarbone, the white ridges a road map of everything he’d survived.
The wind rustled through the pines, and the sensor light at the garage clicked on, then off, then on again, as if it couldn’t make up its mind about whether we were a threat.
He spoke first. “You ever regret it?”
“Which part?” I traced the letters on his knuckles, memorizing the feel of them.
He exhaled, smoke memory, not real. “All of it. The work. The running. Getting so far from where you started, you can’t even see it anymore.”
I watched the sky, the edge of it bruised, hinting at sunrise. “I used to. Now I think the only way is forward, even if you have to burn the road behind you.”
He grunted, shifted, pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “You’re smarter than you look.”
I smiled, eyes closed. “I’m not. I just learned to make peace with my own wiring.”
He was quiet, the words settling. I wondered if he was sleeping, but the twitch in his fingers told me otherwise.
I waited, then said, “You want to know something stupid?”
He snorted. “Always.”
“When I was a kid, I used to walk to the edge of the mesa after dark and look at the lights down in White Rock. I thought if I stared hard enough, I’d be able to see every family, every secret in every house. Like, if you watched long enough, you could solve people.”
He laughed, low, the vibration rumbling through my chest. “You try that with the club?”
I nodded, my cheek pressed to his ribs. “Didn’t take long to realize nobody wants to be solved. Not really.”
