I was half in a daze when he pulled away. My chest was heaving, and I was gripping his arms hard.
“Can I taste you?” His voice all sandpaper on charcoal.
Well, he had been for the past however-long-he-had-been-kissing-me, but he could have asked me for a kidney at that moment, and I would have said yes.
His knees hit the ground with an almost silent thump, but I was so sensitive at that moment that I would have heard a pin drop a mile away. I heard the distinctive sound of a branch breaking, but what was a branch breaking in comparison to the man before me, who had slid down my pants and was now kissing and biting my thighs.
And then his tongue was on me, in me, and all I could see were stars.
“Oh, Mina,” he groaned into me, “you taste delicious.”
He took his time savouring, coaxing out little sounds out of me that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep in. I gripped his silky hair and begged him, so far gone that I was sure that he wouldn’t be able to make out a word I was saying.
When I came, I whited out, coming back to the world slowly minutes later. Jin Woo had one arm around my waist, his free hand straightening my clothes, even though he had dressed me immaculately.
He was definitely also hard; I could see the straining length of him in his pants. But when I reached for him, he caught my hand in his and kissed the inside of my wrist.
“No,Naekkeo,” he said gently, “this was for you, to make sure that you remember that you are additive. If you want, we can do more when you are rested.”
“Yup, yes, please yes!” Well, there went any chance of coming off as cool and collected.
Jin Woo’s laughter boomed through the woods as he steered us back to the cabin.
“But what about you?” I asked, guilt pinching me.
He gave me a slanted smile that was so much like Ettore’s that it was uncanny.
“That is whatfiancésare for.”
***
Jin Woo had distracted me admirably, but by the time the sun had set, I was on edge again. That voice, the one that begged me to bite and claim and own, had been silent all day but an hour in the cabin with all of them, and it was beginning to speak to me again.
They had once again failed to catch a sheep, something about them being ‘slippery dicks’, but it seemed that we were learning from our mistakes: the fire was crackling loudly and merrily, and they were all pressed close to it, practically on top of each other like a puddle of puppies. I clung to the warm edge of the rock fireplace and fought the urge to throw myself into the pile.
I needed to lay everything out on the table. The longer I waited, the worse it would be. I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t exile me, not after last night, but my mind spun off with a hundred other dreadful possibilities. Namely, that they would look at me with such disgust that I would wish that I had drowned when the ferry went down. This was the most time I had spent with people who weren’t my coworkers in years. The first time in years that someone had liked me for something other than my good performance at work. It would be crushing when they suddenly hated me. I didn’t know how I would handle it. I didn’t think I could.
“I need to tell you guys something.” I finally made myself say.
Bartosz had been avoiding eye contact with me all day, well, since we had come to an understanding, but he pushed up from where he was reclining, Roman emperor-like on the floor.
“All of us, or just those three?” He gestured at Ettore, Jin Woo, and Oskar with his chin, “cause it’s frigid outside and I don’t want to have to go and freeze my balls off waiting for you all to finish chatting.”
I shot him a look, but said, “ All of you.”
Bartosz promptly slumped back to the ground, his eyes glinting in the flickering firelight.
Oskar eyed me warily as I took one last deep breath and prepared to speak.
“I-I have an obsessive disorder. It was probably part of the reason that I had to stop seeing Oskar. I’ve had it since I was twelve. Usually, I keep it under control; I’m pretty heavily medicated all the time, but my meds got washed away when the boat capsized.”
I kept my eyes trained on my hands in my lap as they flexed as I squeezed my fingers, as if the little bit of pain would let me to get all of the words to flow out smoothly.
“I don’t really know how I will react since I’ve never really been off my meds, but I can feel myself becoming obsessive, territorial over this place,” I swallowed hard, “over you all. I’d like to make a plan to make sure that you all are not uncomfortable.”
I looked up as I finished speaking. Jin Woo had a warm expression on his face. Bartosz looked intrigued, his hair spiked up as if he had just run his fingers through it. Oskar had turned entirely away, his back to me, which hurt even more than I thought it would, but was expected.
It was, however, Ettore, who spoke.
