"Avery?"
"I've watched you. I watched you fight for my people like they were already yours. I watched you go through that tunneltonight for thirty-two strangers and come out and sit with the eight we didn't save." I hold his gaze. "The man who didn't come three years ago is not the man sitting here. I'm done carrying what happened to him."
Something gives way in his face. Quietly, the way things give way when they've been held rigid too long. He covers my hand with his and holds it there, eyes closing, and breathes. Long and slow. Like a man putting down something he's been carrying so long he forgot what his arms felt like empty.
When he opens his eyes, something is different. Still tired, but lighter.
He pulls me to him and I go, and we hold on while the last of the light goes out of the sky.
Red River's deputy gives us a storeroom with a bedroll and a door that closes.
"Worst romantic venue in the apocalypse," Dutch says.
"You should have thought of that before you climbed over my wall."
He laughs. I pull him down to me.
It starts differently than it has before. No battle behind us, no grief driving it forward. Just the two of us on the other side of everything, and the particular courage of that — of wanting someone without a reason, without an excuse, just because you do.
He cups my face in his hands and looks at me for a moment.
"You okay?" he asks.
"Yes." Completely. "I just didn't think it would feel like this."
"Like what?"
"Like something I actually get to have."
He kisses me before I finish the sentence and it's nothing like the night after the battle. That was urgent, desperate, both of us half out of our minds. This is slow. Deliberate. His mouth moving against mine like he's deciding to, like he keeps deciding to, over and over.
I stop thinking in words.
He undresses me like he has all night. Mouth following his hands — my jaw, my throat, the curve of my shoulder — and I let him, which is the strangest part. I don't let things happen to me. I've spent three years deciding everything, controlling everything, keeping everyone at exactly the right distance. His lips brush my collarbone and I don't do any of that. I just arch into him and make a sound that surprises me.
"Look at you," he murmurs. Low and wondering, his eyes moving over my body. Not performing it. Just thinking out loud.
My stomach tightens. I reach for him.
He takes his time working down my body — my breasts, my ribs, the soft skin of my stomach — and by the time his mouth finds my inner thighs I'm already desperate, already pulling at him. When his tongue finally touches my pussy I stop being quiet. Three years of careful and controlled and not wanting anything too much, and none of it survives this. He licks into me slow and thorough, learns exactly what makes my hips jerk and does it again, and again, his hands holding me open and pinned right where he wants me while I fall completely apart.
"Dutch! Right there!”
He doesn't stop. Slides two fingers inside me and crooks them and keeps his mouth working and I come so hard I forget where I am, thighs locked around his head, the orgasm tearing through me in waves while he works me through every single one.
I'm still shaking when he comes back up my body. I get my hand around his cock, thick and hard and he groans intomy neck when I stroke him, hips rocking forward without permission. I feel how much he wants me and it makes me want him more.
"Now," I say. "I need you inside me now."
"Yeah." Rough. "Yeah, okay."
He pushes inside me and we both stop.
Just that. Just the fullness of him, the specific weight, his forehead dropping to mine. His eyes are open. So are mine. I don't know why that feels like the most intimate thing that's happened tonight but it does.
He fucks me slowly at first, deep and rolling, his whole body into it, and I feel every stroke everywhere. His mouth finds my throat, my jaw, my mouth, and I wrap my legs around him and dig my heels in and ask for more without words. He gives it to me. The pace builds until it's not slow at all, until the bedroll is moving across the floor and I'm clinging to him and saying things I can't hear over my own pulse.
"Don't stop." My nails in his back. "Don't stop, don't stop!"
