Epilogue - MAL
My bag lives under the bed, unpacked and empty for the first time I can remember.
My bed.
Our bed.
I don’t fucking know. Just that I love sharing it with Skylar as much as I love him, and apart from my friends, I don’t miss a single thing about my old life.
The endless movement and constant chaos.
The barbed hits of adrenaline I used to chase like a regular fucking fool, when real life was right there all along.
Those rushes are dead to me. I don’t need them, I’ve found new ones, better ones, in the quiet warmth of Skylar in my arms in the middle of the night. In the way he times my pulse when he thinks I’m asleep. In the heart-healing moments when he smiles, and I remember how lucky I am to see it.
It’s not freefall over snow-capped mountains, but it feels like it. The danger of holding his heart in my hands. In him holding mine. Danger that ends in belonging instead of death, and this life…this bed, it’s the sweetest war I’ve ever fought.
Skylar moves down my body as though he has all the time in the world. As if he didn’t work a sixteen-hour shift today and then boss an eight-mile run with me straight after—a compromise to keep him out of that hell pit gym downstairs now he’s back at work full-time.
As if he has every intention of sucking my dick when I know he won’t.
He doesn’t do that…
I prop myself on my elbows, the rogue organ in my chest already thumping a renegade rhythm. “What are you up to down there?”
Skylar looks up, gaze heavy-lidded from the lazy night we’ve already spent rolling around on this bed, taking advantage of Jack and Sol working the bar.
Those grey eyes razor sharp with the kind of mischief that’ll put me in an early grave.
Then he lowers his mouth and swallows me whole, and I’ve never been more grateful for the shanty riot going on downstairs right now.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I’ve made peace with this not happening. Because it doesn’t fucking matter. Everything I already have with Skylar is fire and brimstone wrapped in love. I don’t need anything else.
I don’t.
I don’t .
But, of course, I’m wrong, and as he takes me apart, I get to thinking how I ever lived without it.
Because Skylar doesn’t just blow me. Fuck, no.
He owns me while I watch, every muscle locked and trembling, dismantling me piece by piece with the same tough love he gives everything else he cares about, and I’m going to fucking die when I come?—
He pulls off. Slowly. Eyes dark with deeper intent. “How are you feeling today?”
There’s no air in my lungs. Somehow I find words. “You’re asking me now?”
Skylar grins—no, he smirks. “I’m double-checking.”
“Why?”
He plants his hands and hauls himself back up the bed, lean muscles popping in a torso that’s gained some timber in the past few months.
It brings us face-to-face and he nuzzles my jaw. “I was thinking I might fuck you tonight.”
My heart stalls out. Flatline. A split-second glitch that has me thinking I’ve misheard him. “Eh?”
Skylar laughs, my favourite thing. “You said you like both. Were you lying?”
“No. Fuck. No. I just haven’t thought about it.” Which is a fucking lie. I’ve thought about it a lot—usually at night when he’s not here and I’m alone on the sofa, too wound up to sleep. But like him sucking my dick, it’s never felt important enough to want it.
Even though I do.
“You really want to fuck me, Sky?”
My voice is hoarse.
Skylar smirks even more, eyes still hot with arousal, hair mauled by my rough hands, everything about him screaming yes .
It’s why he doesn’t answer with words. Because that feral edge he gets sometimes, when it’s late and we’re alone, it’s all I need.
He leans down, kissing me, deep and rough, as if he’s already inside me, as my hands skim his heated skin, tracing the ink there, the muscle, anchoring myself in his flesh and bone.
I’ve wanted him forever. My whole life before I met him. Before I knew him. I just didn’t know it. Just like I never knew how much I wanted this.
Skylar’s not a gentle lover.
Neither am I.
We have our fucking moments, but it’s rare for us to slow down as much as he does as he presses inside me, stretching me, possessing me.
Loving me.
And fuck , I need that slowness from him. Just for a moment, as my body adjusts to something I haven’t asked of it in literal years.
“Damn.” I take a shaky breath, curling my leg around his hip as my nerves light up, my dick throbbing between us.
Skylar’s lips curve again, but it’s a sweeter smile this time, a hazy one as his eyelids flutter. “That’s so fucking good.”
It’s beyond good. But I’m beyond words. I hold his gaze as he checks in with me. Watch him grip my hips like he owns every cell of my body, working his way up to fucking me with a rhythm that tears me up and puts me back together again.
His breath on my neck.
His body fused to mine.
I’m bigger than Skylar, but like this, it doesn’t feel that way.
He groans, low and ragged. Then he thrusts a tiny bit harder and my whole world spins into something I’ve never imagined.
The slow drive of his dick inside me.
The press of his hip bones against mine.
His deep, deep kiss that touches every part of me.
Skylar sets a new rhythm. The harder push of his cock pulls startled moans from me, and I start to sweat, as if my body can’t contain the heat he’s stoking in my blood.
I’m gone.
I grip his shoulders and squeeze so hard that in my right mind, I’d worry I’m hurting him. But I’m not in my right mind. I’m in my best mind, that magical place where it’s just him, and an intense shudder passes through me, so pleasure-filled that my eyes roll. “Fuck. I fucking?—”
I can’t finish the sentence because I don’t know how it ends. My legs widen of their own accord, and I wrap them around Skylar, caging him tighter against me.
It adds pressure I’m not prepared for to my throbbing dick trapped between Skylar’s abdomen and mine. Friction skyrockets, and that’s no fucking pun. I groan and don’t give a single shit that my brother is probably on his way upstairs to hear every tortured sound falling from my kiss-swollen lips.
A band of pressured pleasure draws tight around my soul. I’m scared of it, but I chase it anyway, and let Skylar reel it in.
He grunts and kisses me, then he buries his face in my neck and a broken moan escapes him.
I tug on his hair, forcing him to look at me. “I’m gonna come. I can’t stop it—it’s too good.”
Skylar rears back a little, deepening the angle of his cock inside me, and gifting me a clear view of my own.
He grinds inside me, pulsing and flaring, jaw locked, shoulders tight with beautiful tension.
He pumps his body one more time and my dick fucking erupts .
White-hot ecstasy lances every inch of me, inside and out, and only the sight of him falling apart keeps me on this fucking planet.
I don’t know what happens next.
It’s bliss and blank space.
I shake like I’m going into shock. Skylar gives me the easy grin that’s still new to us both, but I don’t miss his medic’s gaze locking in as he scans me.
Fuck that. I poke him. “I’m fine.”
He grins a little more. “I know.”
Then it dawns on me that he’s trembling too, and fighting for breath, and I like that I’ve made him that way.
No. I love it.
I love him .
And I don’t even miss the cigarettes.
Morning comes too soon, and not soon enough. I love lying with Skylar in the dark, just listening to him breathe. But waking up to him still sleeping beside me is a new kind of perfection I didn’t know existed.
He’s naked, and his bare back calls to me. I trace a skull tattoo with my fingertip. He shivers in his sleep and I’m entranced, but the flash of my phone puts a halt to wherever I think I’m going with this.
Folk: It’ll be tonight
Fuck. I’d forgotten about that.
“What is it?”
I turn my head. Skylar’s awake, pillow lines on his face, fixing me with a stare that sees me down to my DNA. “Saint’s coming tonight.”
Understanding flares in his eyes. Then he’s sleepy again and flops back down. “You’d better tell Jack.”
“Now?”
“Hmm.”
He’s asleep, or trying to be, and it’s so tempting to press my face between his shoulder blades and do the same. But I need to tell Jack it’s D-Day, and love for my brother rolls me out of bed.
It’s still dark outside, but it’s not that early.
Autumn is fading and winter is closing in.
The sky is damp all the time and the ocean is a deep, moody blue.
On the horizon, I see the Sirona heading in.
Which tells me Jack’s awake. He never sleeps past dawn if Sol isn’t here, and fuck if I don’t know how that feels.
They’re not together.
Jack and Sol.
Sol and Jack.
I’ve been here six months and I still don’t know why.
They live for each other .
Always have.
I smell bacon and track my brother to the kitchen. Three grey dogs haunt his feet, from pewter to light silver. Fiadh and her pups, except they’re not pups anymore. “Saint’s coming tonight.”
Jack turns around. He’s been up a while, but it takes him longer than Skylar to put it together. To realise what it means. Then he just nods. “You want to eat before we go?”
Right.
Because I really don’t get to spend all day in bed with Skylar, and whatever’s coming my way, I know I’ll handle it better with food in my belly.
Still, though, my focus strays from my brother and back the way I’ve come. To where Skylar sleeps, unfed since the toast he ate for my benefit when he came home last night.
He does that sometimes. Eats when he’s not hungry to settle me.
It’s not necessary, but I don’t stop him.
I’ve come to learn the best way I can help him is to stay quiet.
To just be there with the kind of love that disarms shame, and respect every choice he makes.
Even the one not to seek treatment for the undefined eating disorder that’s dominated his entire fucking life.
“I’m not a soldier, Mal. There’s no safe place for me to bare my soul to a fucking therapist.”