18. Ivy
“Miri,” I shouted, trying to catch up to her. The sky had turned a shade of rosy pink, casting the forest and everything in it with an enchanting glow. The crickets chirped and the frogs sang, the nocturnal beings of Killwater Woods waking despite the fact it would never get truly dark.
My heart pounded, and I cursed all those cigarettes I had smoked since arriving. Miri could book it when she wanted to, and I was in terrible shape.
“Wait,” I said.
“What?” She whirled on me, her teeth bared and tears streaming down her cheeks. In all our years of friendship, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen her cry, and this might have been the most heartbreaking because I’d done it. “What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t care.” She tried to leave again.
“Wait.” Panic tightened my chest that she might disappear into the woods, never to be seen again, just like all those old stories we’d been warned about.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice cracked as she wiped under her burning brown eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I’m planning to fight it,” I confessed, “when I get back to the States.” I rubbed my hands over my face, hoping I would scrub myself awake and realize this was a horrible, terrible dream. “There hasn’t been any time to deal with it. We only just found out the day before we came here.”
A tense moment of silence passed between us, all the things we’d swept under the rug in four years weighing a thousand tons.
“I’m going with Carter to Los Angeles,” she said.
My heart dropped into my gut, my knees shaking as they threatened to give out. “What?”
“At the end of the trip, we’re going out there together.” Miri crossed her arms over her stomach, looking surprisingly small and delicate despite how angry she was with me.
I blinked back my confusion, struggling to catch up. It didn’t make any sense. She and Carter were never together. They’d never had what I had with either of them. “Why?”
“I know some people who can help him,” she said. “An agent or two. Right now, he’s just Ivy Washington’s maybe boyfriend. He’s going to need to shed that image if he wants to be taken seriously.”
My chest tightened into a fist and my stomach churned, agony in my veins and tears burning my eyes. Miri and Carter, together, in California. And me and Lex in DC, an entire country away.
“Which means a clean break,” Miri continued, pouring salt in my proverbial wounds. “You understand what I’m saying? Especially now that…Well…” She swallowed and held her head higher, staring me down. “Especially now.”
I understood what she was saying, and God, it sliced me open, pulling my insides out. My muscles tensed, and I fisted my hands at my sides.
“For four years, I’ve acted like it doesn’t hurt to see him pine over you, over both of you.” She took a step closer to me. “He loves me, but he’ll never love me like he loves you.”
I furrowed my brows, unsure of what she meant. “Carter?”
“No, dummy,” she said. “Lex.”
“He doesn’t love me?—”
“And the worst part”—she continued, stalking closer—“is that I get it. I know why he loves you. I know why they both love you.” She was inches away now, her breath hitting my lips and the heat from her forehead radiating against mine. “Because I’m in love with you, too.”
I had ached to hear those words for ages, and not in the friendly way she said them when we were in public. I wanted them the way she meant them now. They shot through me like adrenaline-laced desire, and I pounced, crushing my mouth to hers. I cupped her jaw and tangled my fingers in her soft hair, inhaling every last bit of her that she’d let me have, and she melted against me, tugging me closer, crushing our torsos against each other. When I pushed my tongue into her mouth, she sighed and brushed hers against mine, sending a surge down my body to my clit, pulsing in time with my heart.
Yes. Finally, I get to have her.
This wasn’t like last time, when I’d been all virginal innocence and blushing naivety. I now had four years of taking what I wanted from life, and now I wanted everything from her. I pushed her up against a tree and forced my leg between hers, where she ground down on it, rubbing her pussy against my thigh while I licked my way down her throat. She dug her hands under my shirt and under my bra, rubbing my nipples. I sucked in a breath at the contact, a jolt of electricity surging, sparking to life between my own thighs. I tugged at the fabric of her skirt, inching it up until I grazed her bare skin. Her muscles trembled, and I ventured farther north, finding her panties soaked.
“If you don’t want this,” I told her, “tell me to stop.”
There was hardly a moment’s hesitation before she said, “I want this.”
It came out on a breathy sigh, and I crushed my lips to hers again. I took my time exploring, rubbing, and teasing her, shoving her thong to the side so I could spear through her silky wet skin. She was already so aroused, and it pained me to know she’d wanted this as long as I had. Wasn’t that a damn shame? All this wasted time.
I captured her moans on my tongue and rubbed her the way I remembered, the way I knew she liked, inching closer to her entrance, working her clit with the heel of my palm.
“Yes,” she moaned, twisting her fingers into my shirt. Pain mixed with euphoria when she sank her teeth into my bottom lip, and I chuckled into her mouth, slipping a finger inside of her. Fuck, we were desperate for each other, and she was so warm and slick, her muscles tightening when I worked my middle digit in with my index. When she fell apart, I memorized the way the pink glow from the sky made her seem otherworldly—like a fucking angel, like she’d fallen from the heavens to drag me down with her.
I pulled her to the ground, and she rolled us so she was on top, but I wasn’t done with her yet, so I twisted, rolling back over her and making her squirm under me. She dug her fingers into my sides, tickling me, making me collapse and give her leeway to switch positions. When she was in between my legs, she put her hands on either side of my head and leaned over me with that post-orgasm glow on her face.
“I’ve missed you,” she said. “I’ve missed this.” I darted my gaze between her eyes, looking for any shred of insincerity. When I found only earnest adoration, I fell just a little more in love with her. “I don’t think I can pretend any longer, darling.”
“Are you sure you want me?” I rubbed the back of my fingers down the side of her face, memorizing her satin skin, the most delicate thing in the world.
She leaned in to kiss me before muttering a quiet, “I’ll always want you.”
Miri disappeared down my body, dragging my shorts and underwear with her, and I yelped when she bit the inside of my thigh. She licked with her fiery tongue over my clit and sucked at me, sending sparks of euphoria up my spine and down my legs. She slid her fingers inside me while she licked and lapped, and every molecule in me shook with fulfilled anticipation, the delight that was this moment with her.
“I remember this.” She kissed the side of my knee and looked up at me. “I remember how much you wanted me. How hard you came that first night. Do you remember, darling?”
God, she was so fucking hot, and I had wanted her so much. I still did. I feared I always would. She nibbled at the sensitive parts of me, being rougher than I was with her because she knew I liked it. The quick little slice of pain set me off. I came with my hands fisted in her hair, her fingers deep inside of me, and her teeth in my skin.
When my hormones leveled and I panted down my euphoria, I rolled us so I could explore her with my mouth, kissing and flicking and licking that pulsing flesh. I loved the way she curled around me when she came. I loved the way she cried my name. I realized, with heartbreaking certainty, that I would miss her when this was all over. More than I’d ever missed her before.
Because I was also certain I loved her as fiercely as she loved me.
The world hummed around us. The earth vibrated, echoing through me. Like some kind of link tied me to the very soul of the planet. Magic pulsed in the air, tasting like the sweetest honey in the world, or maybe that spiced wine from the party. It yanked me under its rapture.
When I looked up Miri’s body, her glazed-over eyes told me she’d been taken in by the same force.
A high.
A drug.
Overwhelming.
Potent.
Omnipotent.
* * *
I sensed them the way most people knew which direction the sun was shining. Heat radiated in the pull between us, tugging Miri and me closer to the water—almost as if it were a tangible thing, almost as if I could reach out and touch the tether to them.
I broke the tree line and found them bathing in the creek, their foreheads pressed together and their arms over each other’s shoulders, Lex’s tattooed skin a stark contrast to Carter’s blank canvas.
I didn’t know what happened between them, but I could guess. The same thing that had happened between Miri and me. Now that Pandora’s box had been opened, why would we deny ourselves a dance with the demons inside? All except hope because there was no more hope for us. There never was.
I stripped my T-shirt and bra over my head and pushed my shorts down to the ground, grabbing Miri’s fingertips after she took off her dress. We walked hand in hand into the water like the fight between us had happened ten years ago instead of an hour ago.
We said nothing.
Nothing needed to be said.
When Carter looked up, I knew all I needed to know. Instinctively. We’d done this a million times before. We’d been doing this since the dawn of time. The drums from the party echoed in the distance, the music a soft accompaniment to the leisurely way we explored each other’s mouths. He put his hands on my waist and pulled me closer so I could wrap my legs around his hips.
In one fluid motion, Carter slid inside me like he’d been waiting for me, like his whole life had been bringing him to this moment, and he had only one purpose, to connect us. Now that he had, he gasped and clung to me, his nails digging into the skin on my hips. I ran my fingers over a bite mark on his shoulder, understanding on some level that it must have been left there by Lex, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.
I felt free—truly and unequivocally free.
He rocked into me like we had all the time in the world. Slowly. Gently. Not so much to fuck as to have as much of our skin connected as possible, because we might never get to touch each other like this again.
Hands crept up my spine, Miri’s perhaps, and lips trailed across my shoulder. Another set of hands roamed across Carter’s chest, and he let his head fall back against Lex’s shoulder. Lex bit Carter’s ear, trailing his mouth down the side of his neck. The sight made my cunt pulse, and Carter let out a pleased laugh, pulling me tighter against him. He felt it, and he liked it.
Miri found my mouth, and in a dizzying frenzy, she pushed her tongue between my lips, licking at my teeth and asking for entry inside. I felt her anticipation like it was my own.
The energy of this time and place molded to my molecules, grafting itself to my DNA, like the woods were inside of me. The night sounded louder, the music more intense, the coral-colored sky more vibrant, Miri’s taste and scent more enticing than ever before.
My thoughts barreled through my mind, chaotic, incoherent, speeding like a rocket.
Touch. Lick. Take. Kiss. Hands. Skin.
Take. Take. Take.
Miri teased my nipples, and Carter slid his hand up the center of my body, interlacing his fingers with hers somewhere around my sternum. Lex’s hand disappeared below the water, and I soon felt a thumb brush up against my clit, sending a shock up my body that had me gasping into Miri’s mouth.
Carter surged deeper inside of me, Lex rubbed me harder, and Miri explored every inch of my skin with her hands, her lips like velvet on my neck and mouth. It could have been a minute or it could have been an eternity, but my climax hit me like a sledgehammer and broke me into a thousand jagged pieces.
I moaned and cried out and tensed as a powerful wave crashed into my spirit. I let it take me. Carter’s cock twitched inside me and he groaned, holding me tighter, like my ecstasy had become his ecstasy and I could feel the weight of our union tying us together forever.
Lex gave Carter one last kiss and circled around his body, a rush of heat going through me when he pressed a tender peck to my lips before setting his attention on Miri.
Yes. Beautiful, lovely Miri.
He wrapped her legs around his waist and leaned his forehead against hers, sliding into her as easily as Carter had slid into me. Carter went behind Lex, and I positioned myself next to Miri, granting myself the privilege of her silky skin, soft breasts, and pebbled nipples. I sucked them into my mouth, licking and biting my way up her chest to her neck and taking the opportunity to mark her the way Lex had marked Carter. She hissed, but held my head closer like she wanted more.
I gave it to her. I gave her everything she wanted, and when she hit the peak of her own orgasm, it rang through me, too. Her emotions were my emotions. Her joy, my joy. As I held her and kissed her, my attention drifted to whatever Carter was doing behind Lex.
My enemy’s head lay back against Carter’s chest, his hand on Lex’s forehead and a look of pure rapture on Lex’s face as Carter did something between them under the water with his other hand. When Lex came, groaning and curling into Miri, something shifted between us. I felt it instantly. It zapped through my stomach, down the back of my legs, and up over my scalp. A knowing. A feeling.
Almost as if I could see it, burning and blinding, a permanent aura around us, cocooning us in this safe idyllic heaven for eternity.
* * *
Years might have passed while we touched each other in the water. Decades or millennia, I didn’t know.
It felt like a dream, like I’d wake up any second alone in my bed. Maybe I’d gotten too intoxicated and the world refused to right itself—not as we dressed and sought a drier place to spend the night, not as we followed the mossy emerald trail farther into the woods, not when we discovered a stone ruin covered in clover and ivy.
Perhaps it had once been a small castle or a military outpost, ornate and opulent, and while the walls were intact, most of it had long since been reclaimed by nature. I’d hiked all over these woods in the ten days we’d been here, especially this close to the creek. I didn’t remember seeing this, but now my heart swelled at having found it.
“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Miri grinned at us, running a finger down a wooden window frame as she walked closer. “Maybe we could live here forever.”
I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and put my head on her shoulder. “Who says we can’t?” Pure ecstasy rattled through me. Her happiness. Mine. They were so interconnected, I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“C’mon.” Lex grabbed my hand and I grabbed Miri’s. He led us through a door and into a large rectangular space with the remains of a hearth at the far end. Vines stretched the length of the walls, and the floors were compacted dirt, as if they’d never been finished. It reminded me of a witch’s cottage from one of those fairy tales I used to read to my siblings when I was younger, and truthfully, I wasn’t entirely sure that it could be anything else.
“We might as well stay here tonight,” Carter said, hands on his hips as he assessed the small space. “No sense in getting lost in the woods trying to find our way back in the dark.”
“No complaints from me.” Miri spun around with her arms out to her side, seemingly lost to the romance of it all. I still felt high. My head swam and my heart raced. I might never come back down again, and that was sooooo fucking okay with me.
Carter and Lex built a fire so we’d have more than the glow from the sky to see. None of us had any idea if it was safe to burn wood in the ancient space, but who the fuck cared? When it appeared like the smoke billowed out of the top, we stopped worrying about it.
Peace fell between us, the first peace I’d had in years. I didn’t hate Lex. I wasn’t angry at Miri or Carter. I wasn’t angry with myself. I lay in the dirt with my head in Miri’s lap, her fingers running through my hair in a sensual rhythm that set calmness in my soul. Carter’s head lay on my chest, his ear over my heart, and Lex sat parallel to me with Carter’s legs sprawled across his thighs. We’d been teasing each other for hours, laughing and giggling about the things we’d done. The things we wanted to do.
“I can’t believe you’re going to marry him,” Miri whispered. Lex and Carter talked among themselves, not paying us girls any attention.
“Shh.” I put my fingers over her mouth to silence her. “Don’t ruin it.”
She kissed my knuckles and leaned down to do the same to my forehead, making me feel cherished and adored. I felt the same about her.
“What if…” she said. “What if you married me instead?”
“I would marry you in a heartbeat.”
“Would you marry me tonight?” Her eyes lit up, glittering with mischief in the firelight.
“Of course.” I’d like to say I felt completely in control of my actions, that there was a part of me that still had agency and would be able to remember everything that came after. In that moment, the words spilled out of my mouth before I could consciously stop them, like whatever coursed through my veins made the decision for me and I was only a puppet on a stage.
“Carter is ordained,” Lex cut in. “He married two of his friends from home. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s true.” Carter nodded. “But I won’t wed you to Miri. The only person you get to marry is me.”
“Wait.” Lex grinned and tilted his head to the side. “What if I wanted to marry you, Chicago?”
“Why can’t we all marry each other?” Miri giggled like she’d meant it as a joke, but in the transcendent glow of everything about that night, it made an incredible amount of sense.
What if we all married each other? What if we made vows between the four of us to love, honor, and protect each other until we died? So it didn’t matter if I had to be with Lex in DC? So it didn’t matter if Miri went with Carter to California?
In our hearts, we would be together. Forever.
Some part of me knew it sounded ludicrous. I should’ve listened to that little voice and thought this through, but I was caught up in the fervor of the night. The taste of sex hung in the air, the drums echoed in the distance, and the sounds of every other animal in the immediate vicinity erupted with exactly what we were doing, loving and living and copulating.
“I would marry all of you.” Carter spoke low and sultry, using the tone as when he whispered dirty things to me.
“I would, too,” Lex said.
“Really, Lucifer?” I rolled my head so I could meet his gaze, and he looked as buzzed out as I felt, his eyes shimmery and that pleased smile on his lips. “Even me?”
“Especially you, X.” He pulled his grin wider, staring up at me like a villain in a fairy tale. A rush of fire exploded in my chest at the ravenous lust in that look, the same one he’d given when I came, like it was only a matter of time before he got his hands around my neck again.
“Then it’s settled,” Carter cut in, bringing me back to this transcendental reality. “We marry each other and be done with it.”
“I can think of a couple of governments that would have a problem with that.” Lex huffed out a laugh and leaned his head back to stare at the beautiful sky.
“Who says we have to tell them?” Carter said.
“We’ll know,” Miri added. “And that’s all that matters.”
“You’re okay with this?” I looked at Miri, furrowing my eyebrows. “I thought you never wanted to get married. I thought you never wanted to settle down.”
“Well, it’s hardly settling down if I have three spouses, is it?” She tucked a piece of hair behind my hair and kissed the tip of my nose.
My heart beat harder.
“And I’ve never felt about anyone the way I do about you three,” she added. “I don’t think I ever will again.”
“That’s the fucking truth,” Carter agreed.
Lex pushed to his feet, determination furrowed between his brows as he patted down his jeans. “We don’t have rings.”
“That’s okay.” Miri stood. “We’ll do it the old-fashioned way.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that until she ripped a piece of fabric from the bottom of her dress, a long strip of pastel lavender.
Hand fasting.
Literally tying the knot.
I did the same to my shirt, white cotton that bore the TWU logo across the chest. Lex tore off a piece of his black V-neck and Carter added a length of Bearsnavy. Miri tied the ends together into one ribbon about three feet long.
“Okay, hold out your right hand,” she said. I put mine in Carter’s, and Miri put Lex’s over ours and placed hers under the group. My stomach churned with giddy excitement while she wrapped the fabric around our joined palms, over and over. Lex and I helped her tie the two ends into a bow on top.
“Uh—okay. Vows,” Carter said. “I’m going to wing this. I’ve never married four people at one time before.”
“I vow to love you,” I cut in as inspiration hit me in the vocal chords. “All of you. I will honor and cherish you and treat you with respect.” I didn’t know where this was all coming from, only that it poured out of me like it had been there for ages, waiting to spill over. “I will never betray you.” I met Carter’s indigo stare, saying this part especially for him. “I will never hold you back from your dreams.” My heart gave a little girlish skip when he flashed those dimples at me. “Or each other,” I said to Miri. And finally to Lex, “I promise honesty. From today. Until the end.” I cleared my throat, emotion starting to overwhelm me and tears prickling at the corners of my eyes.
“Yes,” Carter said. “I make the same vow.” He repeated it back, putting his own spin on a few words. Lex and Miri said the same. And once our promises hung between us, a violent sting hit me in the center of my palm. Like an insect bite. Or a hot poker.
I winced and tugged against Carter’s hand, trying to let go and get out of the knot. Compared to the otherwise dreamy world around us, this was agony.
“Fuck,” Carter said. “What is that?”
“Ahh.” Miri scrambled and clawed at the knot to get free. “I don’t know.”
It burned, and when I finally got my hand out, I opened my palm and found scratches in the center of my palm, like someone had taken a branding iron to my skin along the lifeline. Tiny letters.
Until the end.
“Until the end?” I said, wincing against the ache. I looked over at Miri’s hand, and she had the same marks in the same spot. “Where did that come from?”
“How the fuck—” Lex started.
“Whoa.” Carter buckled at the knees, his hand going to Lex’s shoulder to keep himself upright.
Whatever he felt, I felt, too. The world started to go wonky. A warmth spread from my palm up into my heart and down my spine, coating the length of my legs and toes. It radiated up my neck and over every piece of hair.
I’d never know pain again. I’d never know loss or death.
My world was perfect. And I was perfect. And so were my husbands. And so was my wife.
We weren’t the first to stand in this spot and say these words. We wouldn’t be the last. In that moment, we were so connected to all that had come before us and all that would come after us that we were infinite.
Time blurred by so fast, I could barely comprehend it.
Hands.
Hands everywhere.
Lips and tongues and mouths.
Skin.
Fiery, hot skin.
And ecstasy.
I drowned in my pleasure. I let the lust wrap itself around me and crush me in its shiny, sparkling grasp. We were a mass of electric life, pulsing and vibrating with the need to consume everything about each other.
We didn’t fight it, we couldn’t any longer.
We didn’t even come up for air.