32. Folk
32
FOLK
There’d been times in my life, recent and past, when I’d felt completely disconnected from my body. Pain and pleasure had been real, but I’d lacked the presence to acknowledge them for what they were.
Pain, a scar from the past.
Pleasure, an anchor to the present.
Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten the perfection of the heady mix of both .
Seth pushed me down on the bed, no hesitance in hands as hard as they were gentle. He knew me—what I wanted and what I could take, and the nuanced difference between the two that I was too caught up in to work out for myself. He knew because he’d cared enough to learn. Because he loved me. And that knowledge held me tight as he pressed inside me, wicked and deep, regaining the rhythm we’d lost to switch positions.
He’d cut his hair two days after we’d got back from scattering Rocco, as if he’d been shedding his skin of my ghosts. The beard had stayed. I slid my fingers through it, arching my back.
Seth gripped my leg, my hip, angling me better, tension seizing his strong frame. Close . But I was closer. Sweat built on my skin, heat in my blood, my heart beating out of my chest, sweet madness overcoming me.
I pulled him against me, crushing us together while he thrust that steady beat inside me. It was so him—so relentlessly good , and I couldn’t get enough of it. Of him. Of this. Most people didn’t know the darker, insatiable parts of me. The parts that cried out for more.
More pleasure.
More pain.
More Oxy…
But I was a world away from that right now. Seth fucked me harder, his jaw set in a soft snarl, his low sounds of arousal pushing me higher, until I came with a wild shout.
He was quieter, groaning into the crook of my neck, his whole body shuddering, his heavier weight pinning me down, still buried deep inside me.
Bare .
I shivered.
Seth pried his head up, his sex-dazed eyes sweeping me, missing nothing. It’s why he didn’t move, not straight away. He knew I loved this. That I needed it. He kissed me—the kind of kiss that would’ve led to this if we weren’t already here. He held me as my cooling blood continued to dizzy me, and only the need to clean up drove us apart.
Seth left the bed.
I hauled myself up to the pillows, joints protesting, but I didn’t mind that this winter had found me in more pain than ever. I hadn’t for a while now— since Rocco —and I hadn’t thought too hard about what that meant.
Seth came back and stretched out beside me, covering us with the sheet we’d kicked aside. I rolled closer, under his waiting arm, resting my head on his chest. It was how we’d woken on Christmas morning, when I’d opened my eyes knowing I was going to ask him to marry me with the next breath I took. He’d been wide awake then, already alert and watching over me, a habit he’d fallen into over the past year as my mental health had declined, one I knew would recede as I recovered, but I still felt guilty for in the moments I wasn’t distracted by other things.
Like the shy smile on his face. “How does that keep getting better?”
The sex. We’d had a lot of it over the past few weeks, making up for lost time, perhaps. And he was right; it was better every time. For me, because I was better. For him? I didn’t know. Maybe something had changed for him too. “I love you.”
Seth smiled, kneading the nape of my neck with gentle fingers. “I love you .”
We drowsed for a while. Until I got hungry, another trait I hadn’t realised had been so MIA until it had come back with a vengeance. Seth made lunch—we’d spent all morning in bed. I hassled Ranger, tapping him up for a hike I knew he’d like once I got him there, an ulterior motive he’d sniff out a mile away, no doubt.
And I wasn’t wrong.
Two hours later, he glared at me on the wet and windy beach. “I can see the rain from my house. What was so important you had to drag me out of it?”
“You don’t like walking on the beach anymore?”
“I like my bed.”
“You don’t have a bed and it’s the middle of the day.”
“So? Who made you the time police?”
No one. And Ranger was far from lazy. If he wanted to be in bed, it was likely for the same reasons as me. But I didn’t spend too long thinking about him fucking Viktor. Their love was as beautiful as it was unexpected, but me and Ranger…we had sibling energy when he wasn’t banging my sister and life wasn’t too stressful for us to be ourselves. Thinking about him fucking anyone was enough to put me off sex.
Right .
I could still smell Seth on my skin. Still feel?—
“Fuck’s sake.” Ranger kicked a piece of driftwood and stomped ahead of me.
Grinning, I followed him to the edge of the sea pool and took a seat on a rock while he rolled a cigarette a good few feet away. Waited for him to get over his grump and give me space to admit he was right—I’d brought him here for a reason.
He lit his smoke, dark gaze skating over the pool. It was too cold, and the sea filling it too rough, to bring Ivy right now, even with her wet suit, but a few older kids messed around on the rocks above the far end, as close to other people as Ranger seemed in the mood for, but he made no move to walk on. Just glared at me again with zero malevolence. Because I knew him. He’d been worried about me, and I didn’t like that. He’d wasted enough of his life worrying about my wellbeing—war, cancer, addiction. And that was without the craziness of the past few years. Craziness that had left him contorted on a bed, delirious with pain, and nearly cost me this moment.
It had nearly cost me him .
“We’re going to get married in the summer.”
Ranger’s scowl softened a touch. “Good for you.”
“I’m hoping you’ll be my best man.”
His glower returned. “Fuck that. Make Poet do it.”
“Why?”
Ranger gave his cigarette a rough time, sucking it dry before he followed the Rebel King rules of stubbing it out and disposing of it responsibly. “I’m not your best friend.”
“No? Who is then?”
“I don’t fucking know. Locke?”
“Locke has Logan, and me and Po don’t have that kind of relationship. You know this.”
“Decoy then.”
“He’ll have other things to do.” Dryness laced my tone.
Ranger didn’t laugh. His fingers twitched for another cigarette and he frowned so hard he had to be in danger of a migraine. “What about Alexei?”
“ No .” I loved Alexei and we had a bond I didn’t share with anyone else, but we’d barely shared a fraction of the life I’d lived with Ranger. “Ash, I want it to be you.”
Ash . Rocco had called him that first, before his habit of wandering off and not coming back for days at a time had led to my dad, of all people, coining him Ranger.
He sighed, his gaze flicking to the teenagers who’d climbed a little higher up the rocks before he let me have it. “Fine, but don’t ask me to do anything fancy.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. You want to walk some more?”
“Nah. Vik’s meeting me here and making me go and see the demon spawn.”
The babies. Plural. A fact that had somehow passed me by, much to my sister’s crowing delight.
“Are you all blind? Or did you think she was carrying a rhino in there?”
“Did you know?”
I blinked back to the present.
Ranger stared at me.
“Know what?”
“That it was twins. It makes sense now, I remember Lettie walking like that, but…” Ranger shook his head. “I don’t like thinking about her, so maybe I didn’t want to see it, you know?”
Lettie .
Rocco’s wife.
I’d barely met her, and I hadn’t been around when she’d carried Rocco’s boys. When she’d died giving birth to them. But Ranger had, so had Locke, and I wondered if that had been on Locke’s mind when he and his lovers had chosen to keep so much to themselves.
“I didn’t know,” I admitted. “Finch said we must’ve spent nine months with our heads where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“She always thinks that.”
“Yeah, well this time she’s right.”
Ranger smirked and I didn’t want to know where his mind went when his thoughts turned to my sister. His commitment to Viktor was absolute, but his affection for Finch ran deep. If she hadn’t been so resolutely aromantic, who knew?—
No. It felt wrong to even think about. Viktor and Ranger, their love was a rare thing. I knew it, because it had taken me thirty-five years to find that kind of love for myself. To find my home in a place I’d never intended to stay. And now I was getting married, I had a child, and more friends I called brother than one man deserved.
On cue, bike engines rumbled.
I turned my face to the wind, sensing the shift in Ranger’s mood. In my own as I realised Viktor hadn’t ridden here alone.
Seth .
I watched his bike roll to a stop beside Viktor and raised my hand in greeting, a smile halfway to my face as he tugged his helmet from his face and scanned the horizon, looking for me .
It was a good feeling. The best. But my smile faltered as the expression on his face registered. The frown. The downright alarm as he rolled from his bike and shouted, pointing beyond me.
His words were lost on the wind. I spun around, searching for whatever had spooked him, the world a blur as a long, lean body leapt over my head and fired like an arrow into the freezing water.