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“Probably.” I put the cup down. “I have been doing this work for nineteen years. In that time I have made exactly one plan that extended past the end of a contract, and I made it eleven nights ago, on a bunk frame in a ranger post, while you were asleep on my shoulder theorizing about a lens. She goes still in the way I have learned means she is listening with her whole body.

“It included you,” I continue. “Not as cargo. Not as a temporary civilian I was obligated to keep breathing. As the reason the plan existed at all. And every day since then I’ve been adding to it—boats, a conversation with Elder Moss, the possibility of learning to eat what Edda cooks without commenting—and none of those additions have an exit clause.”

“Draeven—”

“I’m not finished.” I meet her eyes. “You cancelled your ticket six days ago. Right after the storm. Before the ledger, before Selka, before any of the observatory business. You did that without asking me for anything. So I’m going to stop pretending the arithmetic still runs the same way it did on day one.”

She is across the table and in my lap before I finish the last sentence, kissing me hard, tasting of the bitter tea she prefers and the salt of the marsh still clinging to her skin. I stand with her wrapped around me, carry her the short distance to the narrow bed that has somehow acquired clean sheets, and lay her down.

This time there is no storm to hide behind and no question left unanswered. I undress her slowly, mapping every new bruise from the fight for the village, every scrape, the healing cut on her palm. She does the same to me—careful around the fresh stitching on my forearm, the graze across my ribs—until we are bare and the only light is the single lamp left burning in the front room.

I start at her throat. My mouth finds the soft hollow just above her collarbone and stays there, tasting salt and the faint soap she used after the repairs. She tilts her head to give me more, fingers already sliding up into the base of my spines. They lift under her touch, a full involuntary flare that makes her breath catch against my ear.

“I like when they do that,” she murmurs.

“They like when you do that.”

I work lower. One breast fills my palm while I take the other into my mouth, tongue circling the nipple until it tightens, then sucking hard enough that her back arches off the mattress. I switch sides, give the same attention, then trail open-mouthed kisses down the soft plane of her stomach. Her muscles jump under my lips. When I reach the dark curls between her thighs I settle onto my knees at the edge of the bed, pull her hips closer, and spread her open with my thumbs.

She’s already wet, the slick folds gleaming in the low light. I take my time looking. Then I lean in and lick a long, slow stripe from her entrance up to her clit. She makes a broken sound and her thighs try to close around my head; I hold them open and do it again, slower, flattening my tongue so she feels every inch of the drag. On the third pass I seal my mouth over her clit and suck, gentle at first, then firmer when her hips roll up seeking more.

Two fingers push inside her while I keep working her with my mouth. She’s tight, the heat of her almost startling after the cooler air of the room. I curl them, find the ridged spot that makes her thighs tremble, and rub it in steady rhythm while my tongue circles and flicks. She is loud tonight—no storm to swallow the sounds—and every moan, every sharp inhale, every time she says my name like a plea, goes straight down my spine.

I bring her close twice and ease off both times, learning the exact pressure that makes her shake and the exact moment she starts to tip. On the third approach I don’t stop. I suck harder, curl my fingers deeper, and she comes with a cry that cracks in the middle, her whole body locking, inner walls fluttering hard around my fingers. I keep licking her through it, softer now, until the last tremor fades and she is panting, boneless against the sheets.

“Inside me,” she says, voice rough. “Now. Please.”

I rise over her. My cock is heavy, ridged, the head already dark and leaking. I notch myself against her entrance and push in with one long, controlled stroke. The first time we did this I was careful because I was afraid of hurting her. Tonight I am careful because I want to feel every millimeter of the way she opens for me—the way her body yields, the way the first ridge catches and then slides past, the way her mouth opens on a silent gasp when I’m fully seated and the last thick inch presses deep.

“Fuck,” she whispers. “I forgot how much of you there is.”

“You’ll remember.”

I set a deep, rolling rhythm—slow enough that every ridge drags along her walls, hard enough that the bedframe knocks softly against the wall with each thrust. Her legs wrap high around my waist. One of her hands finds the base of my spines and holds on; the other cups the side of my face like she’s anchoring herself. I keep my weight on my forearms so I can watch her: the way her eyes go half-lidded when I grind deep, the way her mouth opens when I change the angle and find the spot that makes her clench hard around me, the flush that spreads down her throat and across her breasts.

We stay like that for a long time. No rush. No frantic race. Just the wet sound of me moving inside her, the soft creak of the bed, her breathing and mine. When she comes the first time it is quiet and intense—her whole body locking up, inner walls pulsing in long waves that nearly pull me over with her. I fuck her through it and keep going, slower now, deeper, until the second orgasm builds and she comes again with my name broken on her tongue, heels digging hard into the small of my back.

I pull out before I finish, flip her onto her hands and knees, and push back in from behind in one smooth thrust. The new angle wrings a fresh moan out of her. I grip her hips, set a harder rhythm, and reach around to find her clit again, rubbing in tight circles while I drive into her. The slap of skin on skin fills the small room. Her arms give out eventually; she drops to her elbows, face pressed to the mattress, and pushes back to meet every stroke.

“Harder,” she gasps. “I can take it—don’t hold back⁠—”

I give her what she asks for. Longer strokes, deeper, the full weight of my body behind each one. My spines are fully flattened, every sense narrowed to the heat of her around me, the way her cunt grips and releases, the wet sounds, the smell of sex and clean sheets and the marsh still clinging to both of us. When she comes a third time it is messy and loud, her body shaking hard enough that I have to hold her up, and the rhythmic clench of her around my cock finally pulls me over the edge. I bury myself to the hilt, forehead pressed between her shoulder blades, and empty into her in thick, pulsing jets that seem to go on forever.

We stay locked like that while the aftershocks fade. My breath is ragged against her skin. Hers is the same. Outside, the instrument in the village has stopped. The house settles around us with the soft creaks of wood that has been repaired by people who care about it.

Eventually I ease out. Cum slips down her inner thighs. I gather her against me on the narrow bed, her head on my uninjured shoulder, one of her hands tracing idle patterns over the plating of my chest. The lamp in the front room throws a low golden rectangle across the floor.

“Six days,” she says eventually, voice soft against my throat. “That’s when I cancelled it. After the storm. After you told me about the eight families and the warm house you wouldn’t take.”

“I know.”

“I wanted you to hear it from me before we go down there.”

I press a kiss to the top of her head, then another to the healing cut on her palm when she lifts it to rest against my cheek. “I heard it.”

We sleep for a few hours in the repaired house, bodies still tangled, and when the first grey light of pre-dawn seeps through the new window I wake her with slow kisses along her shoulder and the knowledge that whatever waits forty kilometers south, we are no longer counting the days until she leaves.

CHAPTER 17