"I've got you." His voice is wrecked. "Come on. Let go."
I come with his cock buried deep inside me, clenching around him, his name the only word I have. He thrusts through it twice more and pulls out — comes hard across my stomach, shuddering, a sound grinding out of him that he's got no control over. I feel the warmth of it on my skin and watch his face while it happens, the way it unmakes him completely, and I think: I want to see that again. I want to see that many more times.
Afterward we lie tangled in the narrow bedroll with our breathing the loudest thing in the room.
"I love you," he says. Into the dark. Not carefully. Just: the fact of it.
I breathe. Let it land. Feel the shape of it.
"I know," I say. Then: "I love you too. I've been trying not to for a while."
"How'd that work out?"
"Terribly." I press my mouth to his jaw, letting the stubble of his beard brush against my lips. "You're very hard to resist."
"You resisted me pretty effectively for the first several days."
"I was resisting very hard. Internally."
He laughs, low and warm, and pulls me closer, and I close my eyes and sleep like I haven't slept in years.
eight
Dutch
ThreedaysbacktoClearwater. Best three days I can remember.
This is not a statement about the journey, which involves a bridge I assess as stable that is very much not, a herd detour that costs us four hours, and a night of rain that turns our campsite into a situation requiring significant improvisation. The travel is objectively not great.
But Avery laughs at the bridge. A real laugh, the full version that she doesn't bother controlling. I go in to my knee on the ice and apparently my expression is worth the moment. And Jenna, walking behind us with the tact of someone who has completely figured out what's happening and decided to let it, says "I didn't see anything" and keeps walking.
And the second night, huddled under a rock overhang while rain hammers everything outside, Avery leans into my side and says, completely unprompted: "I'm glad you climbed over my wall."
"Even though you almost shot me?"
"Especially. It meant you were serious."
I press my lips to her hair. "I was terrified."
"Of the rifles?"
"Of you deciding to use them before I could explain." She tilts her head up. "I needed you to hear me. That was the only thing I was thinking about."
She looks at me for a moment. Then she kisses me, slow and warm, while rain hammers the rocks, and from six feet away Jenna makes an aggressively pointed sound.
"Go to sleep, Jenna," Avery says.
"Already asleep," Jenna says. "Completely unconscious. I can't hear anything."
I get a look at Avery's face. She's fighting a smile.
We come through the gate to find Harry waiting.
He looks at the three of us. Looks at Avery and me specifically, the half-step closer than colleagues, the way we've stopped pretending we're not doing whatever it is we're doing.
"Settlement's intact," he says. "Minor incidents, handled." A pause. "And there's someone in the medical building. Arrived yesterday with a network convoy from the south. She's asking about Jenna."
Jenna lets out a little gasp.
