He starts to grind. Slow at first, drawing almost all the way out, then pushing back in. He keeps the pace even. His hand slides under my lower back and tilts my hips up. The angle changes and I gasp.
He moves faster. I dig my fingers into his shoulders. His skin is slick now even in the cold. The blanket bunches under us. I nip at his throat, right under the star. He makes a surprised sound deep in his chest and his rhythm breaks for a second, then comes back harder, pistoning into me, splitting me open deliciously.
His hand floats up to my jaw and he tips my face so I'm looking at him again. He won't let me look away. He just keeps fucking and fucking, hardening in me as I tighten around him, both of us spiraling towards mountain peaks of our own.
I feel another orgasm building in me. "You're going to make me cum again," I moan to him. He growls with savage pleasure, then shifts his weight so he can slide a hand between us and finds my aching clit with his thumb. He works it in time with his hips.
"Then do it," he says. "I want to see your face when you crumble for me."
Well, that's about as good as filthy talk gets,I think. I thought cumming with his mouth on my center was the best experience of my life, but I was wrong.
This is.
I cum around his rock-solid length, clenching and spasming, my whole body pulling tight and then letting go again and again. He keeps moving through it, never stopping.
At least, not until I start begging for him to. "Cum in me," I plead. "Please, please, Afon…"
A few more strokes and he goes rigid above me. He buries his face in my neck. I feel him finish, his breath hot against my skin, his arms locked around me.
Eventually, we both flop to the ground, sweating despite the chill in the air. I lie there listening to Afon's heart slow under my ear. His hand strokes up and down my spine, slow, like he can't quite believe I'm real and needs to check as often as possible. I find his other hand in the dark, the left one, and slide my fingers between his.
The ring is still there. I feel it against my skin, cold metal between our palms.
"You didn't take it off," I say. I don't mean it as an accusation. I'm too wrung out for accusations. It's just a true thing, said quietly into his chest.
He's silent a moment. Then: "No."
"Are you ever going to?"
His thumb finds the band, turns it once, that old reflex. But then he stops. He brings our joined hands up and presses his mouthto my knuckles, and when he speaks his voice is rough with emotion but absolutely sure of what it's saying.
"Someday," he says. "Once I tell you the rest. When you know everything and you're still here. Not because I'm leaving her in the past, but because I'm letting you into it."
His arms tighten around me. The night is cold, but the fire is warm, and the man holding me close burns hot enough to keep away the shadows.
26
AFON
She falls asleep before I do.
That's how it always goes. She talks and talks, and then somewhere in the middle of a sentence, the words slow down, her breathing changes, and she's gone. Out like a light. Like she trusts the dark now.
The snow has eased off some, the wind dropped to a soft whisper in the spruce. Caroline's breath is warm against my skin. I lie there with her cheek on my chest and her hand in mine. It's self-indulgent, but fuck it, I'm indulging tonight.
Just this once. Just for a while.
I don't sleep. I don't want to. Sleep would waste it.
For one hour, I let myself be a man who has this. It's the longest I've gone without thinking about Reznik in three weeks.
Then the hour ends. Good things always do.
The dread comes back the way the cold comes back when the fire dies: slow at first, then all at once. There's no use fightingit. Besides, I have things that must be done. Not far from here, in a rundown logging camp, a dead man in a long coat is commanding a growing army of killers with our scent in their nose. I haven't heard the whine of snowmobiles since we bedded down, but I'm ready for them to pierce the night at any moment.
Which isn't to say that they're necessarily coming. They have time and the luxury of patience. I have neither.
But the clock of Reznik's approach isn't the only thing hanging over my head. There are also two more parts to the story that I owe Caroline. I can't stop thinking about what will happen when the ugly truth finally comes out of my mouth.
