30. On His Knees #3
Five years I hoarded them. Told myself I'd never once spend them, that he hadn't earned the currency and never would.
But sitting here with him kneeling in the grass and the fire warm at my hip and the truth loosened all the way out of me by whisky and want — I find I don't want to hoard them anymore.
A grudge is a heavy thing to carry…
I've been holding this one so long my arms had forgotten they were ever tired.
Something eases in his entire face at that. He smiles up at me, slow and stunned, and it takes a decade clean off him, turns him young in the firelight, turns him into the boy I first fell for a whole lifetime ago.
Then he rises — smooth, unhurried, all that easy banked strength — and scoops me right back up off the bench and into his arms. He turns to face the house and announces, to the yard at large.
"I'll be upstairs. Fucking Amber. In an actual bed, like a gentleman." He pauses, deadpan. "You two are more than welcome to join later. If she'll have you both."
"Well, damn," Sawyer says again, grinning ear to ear. "He's actually the bold one. Who in the hell knew?"
"He's the leader," August says, with a fond, resigned little sigh, "when he feels like being one about it."
"Careful," Sawyer says, turning to August now, lower, a whole different kind of grin sliding onto his face. "That almost sounded like a compliment. Wouldn't want anybody thinking you'd gone soft."
"On Beckett?" August scoffs. "Never in my life." A beat, and his voice drops. "On other things, the jury may still be out."
The look that passes between the two of them across the firelight could start a second blaze in the yard.
Beckett shifts his grip on me — and all at once I'm up and over his shoulder, backside in the air, the entire world flipped upside down, and a shriek of a laugh tears its way out of me before I can catch it.
He punctuates the whole undignified maneuver with a firm, entirely unrepentant slap to my behind that makes me squeal, then twists to look back at the pair by the fire.
"Don't either of you go around telling folks I didn't try to be a team player tonight," he tells them. "Now. Go on and get yourselves a room."
They're both still openly gawking after us as he carries me off across the yard, effortlessly, like I weigh no more than a passing thought.
I'm a helpless, giggling mess dangling down the length of his back — partly the whisky, partly the blood all rushing to my head, mostly because I have absolutely caught on to precisely what my traditional, granite Alpha is up to right now.
"Isn't that just nice of you," I hum against the broad plane of his back, grinning into his shirt.
He chuckles, the low sound rumbling all the way through his frame and straight into mine. "Those two need their alone time," he says, easy, "about as bad as I want mine with you."
It shouldn't undo me, a thing that small — a man thinking about what his packmates need on the same night he's finally getting the thing he wants.
But it does.
It's the exact brand of quiet, unshowy caretaking I spent five whole years telling myself I had invented. That no man actually does it. That I'd dreamed it up out of thin air just to explain to myself why losing all of them had hurt so unbearably much.
Hanging upside down over his shoulder, I catch one last swaying glimpse of the fire behind us — August and Sawyer haloed gold in front of it, heads already tipping back in close together, nearer than they were a minute ago. I smile into Beckett's shirt.
Good.
Everyone getting a little taste of the thing they've been starving for. It's the most this rented house has felt like an actual home since the four of us first moved into it.
"Fun." I hum it, delighted and warm and upside down.
Then, because I cannot for the life of me help myself, because I'm drunk and glowing and finally, finally being fought for the way I long ago stopped believing I ever would be:
"Are you going to fuck me like you mean it, though? Or was the kneeling the whole show?"
"Do I ever, in your experience, deliver less than I promise?"
I pretend to give it genuine, serious thought, my chin propped against his shoulder blade as the house comes up warm and dark ahead of us.
"...Actually," I admit, "no. You never have, come to think of it." A beat. "But you know exactly how it is, Mr. Shaw. Actions speak an awful lot louder than words."
He carries me over the threshold, and the door swings shut behind us on the fire and the smoke and the whole watching night, sealing the two of us into the sudden hush of the house.
His boots are steady and unhurried on the stairs. His hand is a warm brand splayed across the back of my thigh.
Every single step is carrying me toward a room I have very, very deliberately not let myself go into with this man in five long years, and every last inch of my body knows it, hums with it.
I catch the very edge of his slow smirk in the dark, and I feel the low rumble of his agreement settle through his whole chest before I ever hear the words shape themselves.
"You're right," he says. "Actions speak louder than words. So let me prove to you my intentions, Sweet Apricot."