Callie steps closer to me once we leave his platform. “He may be right.”
“About what?”
“Balance,” she says. “If people think it’s off, they push.”
“They will not push you. Or me.”
“They might,” she answers calmly. “Not because they hate me. Because they want what you have.”
“You are not a thing to be taken,” I growl. “Despite what I did. I acted rashly back then, on the beach. Now, I would have done it differently.”
“I know,” she says. “But now the other men think as you did back then. Some of them.”
We stand there for a moment, the village moving around us. Men pass and boys laugh. Smoke curls upward.
That night, after the meal, she wears the garment. It draws looks. I keep my place beside her. I do not leave her alone.
Later, in the hut, she turns slowly in the torchlight. “This is nice. It’s wonderful how he made the first dress without ever having seen one.”
“Some Dry tribes wear longer garments like that,” I tell her. “At least their shamans do. I suppose Carter’ez holds you in high regard and realizes you have more to cover than most of us.”
She glances at me over her shoulder, a small smile playing at her mouth. The skin catches the light when she moves, dark and supple, shaped to her in a way that tightens my chest. I reach out before I think better of it and rest my hand at her waist. The warmth of her bleeds into my palm.
“You like it,” she says softly.
“I do,” I answer. My thumb traces the edge where skin meets skin, where the tailor’s careful work ends and she begins. She shivers, and the knowledge that I can do that to her settles deep and heavy inside me.
She turns to face me. The torchlight lights up her hair, her eyes. For a moment, we simply look at each other, close enough that her breath brushes my throat. Outside, the village sounds fade into the night. There are voices, laughter, the crackle of distant fires. But here, there is only her.
She steps closer. Her hands find my chest, curious and sure, as if she has already decided where she belongs. Her fingers stroke across my stripes. I lower my head and breathe her in. When my mouth finds hers, it is slow at first—a testing press that turns hungry almost at once. She answers without hesitation, rising onto her toes, fitting herself against me as if the shape of us has always been this way.
I guide her back toward the furs. The torch throws our shadows large against the hut wall, tangled and dark. I take my time, loving the sounds she makes when I touch her, the way her body arches toward mine as if pulled by an unseen tide.
The world narrows to heat, breath, and the soft rustle of skin. I shed my doubts with my loincloth, leaving it by the door. What remains is want, simple and fierce, and the steady rhythm of her under my hands.
Her breath hitches as my fingers trace lower, skimming the curve of her hip, and she whispers against my mouth, “Don’t hold back, Crat'ax.”
I growl low in my throat, the sound vibrating between us, and she answers by sliding one hand down my chest, past the pulsing stripes, until her palm curls around the thick base of my larger cock while her thumb teases over the softer, curved length beneath it, drawing a sharp hiss from me as both shafts twitch eagerly in her grip.
She pulls me closer with that gentle, insistent hold, guiding me until the blunt head of my primary cock nudges her slick entrance and the smaller one presses hot against her clit. Then she rocks her hips in a slow, deliberate circle, coating us both in her wetness as she murmurs, “Now take me, fill me.”
18
- Callie-
It takes Crat'ax so long to fall asleep after our lovemaking that I almost give up hope and go to sleep myself. But then his breath finally goes even slower than before, and I know he’s out.
Still I wait for half an hour to make sure he’s sleeping deeply. I made sure he doesn’t have his arm over me, so I easily stand up and put my old jumpsuit on.
The sounds from outside have gradually gone away. All I hear now is the waves lapping on the wooden pillars that support the platform.
I quietly open the door and look out. Nobody is there. I’m sure they must have men on guard duty at night, and I know there’s a canoe always out checking for splix. But I see no movement and no lit torches.
The blue moon Yrf is in the sky, showing a fat, perfect crescent that gives me just enough light to see by, but not so much that I feel exposed.
I climb down to the water level. Crat'ax’s boat is there, as well as several canoes. I already know I can’t use his boat, because it’s just too big and heavy. I don’t like the canoes either. They’re much too unsteady. But the boat that the boys made is much better, and I used my influence to have them make it perfect for me. The paddle oar is thin and light, and the outrigger makes the whole thing steady. I have even paddled it around a little bit while the boys gave me instructions and advice, so I know how it works.
I untie it, get aboard and quietly push off from the village.
