Folk tipped his face up, stargazing between the treetops. “When we knew we’d have to trust each other to stay alive, he asked me who I was. Bringing him here was the easiest way to show him.”
“What did your parents make of him?”
Folk shrugged. “They’re good with broken things. Jekka mothered him within an inch of his life, and my dad knew to keep his distance until he settled. Same as Locke, really, but he hasn’t been here in a while.”
I already knew that. Jekka asked about him and Ranger every time we came, and Folk’s answer was always the same.“You can ask them yourself soon.”
We kept walking and came upon a cabin deep in the woods. It was close enough to the main house that someone could raise us if Ivy needed me but far enough that we were, for the first time in a while, truly alone.
The cabin was Folk’s. He’d built it as a teenager so he could see the ocean from his bed, and he hadn’t slept in his childhood bedroom since he was thirteen years old.
There wasn’t much to it—one room with a tiny bathroom at the back. A bed. A wood stove for the winter, and a gas hob for boiling a kettle. But the beauty was the view, a floor to ceiling window that opened out to a clear horizon. It was dark enough that we couldn’t see the deep-blue sea, but I could smell it, and it felt like home.
Folkfelt like home, wherever we were.
Kissing him was everything. Automatic, the second we stepped inside and I pushed him against the rustic door. Though, with the window raised and the sea breeze biting into my heated skin, it didn’t feel like we were inside.
We weren’t wearing many clothes. Just cargo shorts and underwear. They fell away like they’d never been there, and I let instinct guide me in what happened next. Folk was versatile—he’d spoken nothing but truth when he’d told me way back when that he had no boundaries—but he was a mood fuck, and I was still learning how to read him.
That was the thing about loving Folk. He was so good at giving me everything, but sometimes it was hard to know what he needed from me. His cues were subtle, easy to miss if I got lost in him too fast.
I tugged him from the door, walking backwards to the bed, gauging his reaction. Sometimes he pushed me down and owned me. Others he lay back and let me do whatever the hell I wanted, when the truth was, I wanted it all.
And I wanted it all night long. This... these long fucks we rarely had time for, I lived for them.
We hit the bed. I wound up on top of him and set about worshipping every inch of his knockout body, from his fierce, lean muscles, to his sun-warmed skin. The scar on his belly and his hard cock.
Folk loved messy, drawn-out blowjobs.
I loved them too, though it still bemused me that I could turn this fearsome and clever man into a sweaty, shaking pile of limbs. Stillastoundedme that I was any good at it.
I’d never imagined fucking anyone the way he liked me to fuck him. That I’d have the confidence to do it. I pushed him onto his belly and drove into him from behind, pressing him into the mattress, my hand firm between his shoulder blades. My breaths harsh. His moans guttural and raw. I fucked him hard and fast. Slow and deep. Then hard again. I’d learned to be brave with him. That for all the steady calm he saved for everyone else, Folk was a man of extremes.
I flipped him over. He cinched his legs around me and arched his torso, his skin shiny with sweat, mottled by the rough touch he craved.
His gaze was a thousand stars. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” I smiled into a heated kiss, knowing we were going to come like this, together, wrapped up in a world that was just ours.
I slowed the pace, letting my fingers dig into his shoulder, my other hand a vice around the headboard of the rustic wooden bed. My muscles began to bunch, release bearing down on me. “Touch your dick.”
Folk choked out a laugh, obeying, and it was the most beautiful thing to watch his body jerk with pleasure, his jaw set, eyes heavy and rolling.
He came so fucking hard. Extreme, remember? But he was still quiet about it; we both were, like always, groans muffled by kisses and hot skin. My body pouring everything into his with a soft sigh.
I tried not to crumple on him. Failed, but it didn’t matter. Folk could take it, though I’d been worried about him for a while after that damn fucking dive. The one where he and Alexei had wiped out three generations of the Sambini crime dynasty. I didn’t much care about that particular detail, but the aftermath had been brutal.
For Folk, and for me.
For Cam, Saint, and Alexei.
We were over it now, the trauma boxed up and shipped out, but those rough weeks when Folk had been so incapacitated... I swear to God, I’d left as much of myself there as Folk and Alexei had left in the ocean.
“Seth.” Folk’s mellow voice was a whisper. “Stay.”
“Hmm?”
Folk eased us both sideways and tapped my temple. “Turn it off. Ivy’s safe. We’re naked. There’s nothing you need to be worrying about right now.”
