I know better. This is the thing that gets people killed. This is the wanting, blinding me, the same as last night.
But fuck it.
I go to her anyway.
I tell myself it's the cold. We need the warmth, to stay close, conserve heat. I know I'm lying and I do it anyway, because she's holding the blanket open and her face is soft. I am so tired of standing on the cold side of everything.
I get under the blanket and she folds against me, all warm and loose-limbed from sleep, and I find her mouth with mine.
Last night was a wall coming down—all that pressure, all that frustration, finally let go. This is something else. There's no fight left in either of us. There's just her, and the gray morning, and the snowflakes falling softly all around us like manna from heaven.
I take my time. I get the flannel off her and lay her back on the blanket, then spend minutes gazing, licking, touching, kissing every inch of skin I can find. Last night had a desperate element to it that made me rush more than I would've liked. Today, in the light, I can worship her like I ought to.
Her breath hitches when I touch herthere.
A kiss to the underside of her chin draws out a moan.
A nip at the crook of her elbow makes her gasp.
Grazing fingers across her ribs or the crease of her thigh makes her squirm so fucking deliciously, so small and breakable, so feminine, so pure.
"You're beautiful," I tell her, both because it's true and because I watch what it does to her when I say it.
Her reaction is everything I wanted. Her whole body goes warm under my hands. Her hips lift toward me.
So I say it again. I purr it against her skin.
"Look at you. Look how good you are."
She comes apart at the praise, easy as anything, like nobody's ever told her these things. It's as if she's been starving for it the same way she accused me of starving her. Her hands find my hair and hold on. Her breath goes ragged.
I like seeing how she responds to me. I taught myself my whole life to be stone, unyielding, never-changing. But Caroline? She is a breath of fresh air in every sense. She's warm and fragrant and she moves so perfectly. Praise fills her up, I'm learning.She likes to be told how impossiblyrightshe is. She likes to be wanted out loud.
I'm not surprised. She's spent her whole life with men who couldn't say a single true thing. I've been one of those men to her too. The silent kind. The kind who shows and never says.
Not now. Never again, if I can help it. For now, I tell her everything, soft and filthy, my mouth at her ear, and I watch each word ripple through her like flower petals scattered on the wind.
When I finally move over her, she's begging for it. I give it to her slow, slower than last night, feeding one inch of my cock at a time into her wet warmth and gazing intently at her face as she gasps, moans, splutters, keens, writhes, does all the most beautiful things I've ever seen, one after the next. There's not enough money or firepower in the world to make me look away from her right now.
And there's not a chain that's ever been forged that could keep my mouth tethered shut. Not when there's so much I want to say to her. I praise every sound she makes and every curve she possesses. I tell her how fucking good she feels, how she wasmade for this, made for me, and how she's going to milk my soul out of me through my dick, and that if I die in the process, well, fuck it, that's exactly how I've always wanted to go.
A few strokes later, I follow her down into the warm dark of bliss.
"Afon." Her voice is small. Careful. Not like her.
"Mm."
"What happens to us after this?" She doesn't lift her head. I feel her ask it against my sternum more than I hear it. "When this is over. When we—ifwe—get down off this mountain, when you're not standing between me and a bunch of guys with guns anymore…" She hesitates. "When you've told me everything…"
She's been circling this for days. We both have. It's been there the whole time, under every joke and every fight and every night in the narrow bed. The question the whole mountain's been built around.
What happens to us.
I keep my hand moving up and down her back. There's a version of this story where I tell her the truth, which is that I don't know what happens because she doesn't know yet what I did, and once she knows, it might not beusanymore. It might be her, on a train back to Manhattan, looking out the window, never wanting to hear my name again.
And she'd be right to. That's a real possibility, maybe the most likely one, and I owe it to her not to pretend otherwise.
There's another version where I tell her what I want, which is the truthand more.It's the truth plus the reveal that I want a happy ending, too. I wanther, and a roof that isn't burning, and a fire I build for warmth instead of survival, and mornings, and years. I told myself twenty years ago that nobody gets that shit twice, but I decided at some point along the way that I would beg to have it a second time anyway.
